Extract from The Mauricewood Devils

I don’t think you ever get over something like Mauricewood. I suppose I was lucky in that the whole town suffered and I had my mother and father and my sister to help me. I wouldn’t have coped half as well if I hadn’t had them – and Sadie.

Sadie was my best friend from when we were children. We’d stayed in the same street and our mothers were friends. Her father was killed when he was just a young man. He fell off a roof and they brought him home on an old door. After that, my mother would often make an extra lot of soup and I’d be sent over with it in a bowl with a tea towel over the top. I didn’t dare trip. Or if she was baking – my mother was a lovely baker – something always went across the road. Sadie was as often as not at our house. She was a right character, full of fun and cheery. She had the bonniest black hair and big brown eyes. She was always small, and I was always bigger than her. And she loved singing. Her father had been a singer; he’d known all the old songs, the bothy ballads, and she was a quick learner, too quick her father said. She shouldn’t have been singing some of those songs. We didn’t know the half of what they were about. We just giggled because we knew they were about courting and how you got babies and that we didn’t dare sing them at Sunday School.

We both started at Harper’s paper mill on the same day. My father had word from the foreman to send us down. Sadie got a start collecting shavings; with her being so small they must have thought that she’d be better at getting under and between the machines to pick them up. They started me on the rag picking. I couldn’t say which of us was worse off. The rags were full of dust from the disinfection powder and I’d breathe it in and half choke sometimes. And the stuff wasn’t really clean. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve come across a dead mouse or dried-in dirt sticking things together. My job was to cut off buttons and hooks and eyes, to cut the bones out of corsets, and get rid of anything sharp or hard that wasn’t

THE MAURICEWOOD DEVILS going into the paper. We lasted about six months there. Sadie left first. She was sick of the fleas! That and doing nothing but crawl about the floor and trail huge bags of shavings from the bottom of the mill to the top. She wasn’t scared to speak her mind, Sadie. She told them straight that their mill was dirty and that she was disgusted at having to wash herself out of the same barrel as everybody else before she went home. I left not long after. Sadie had got into Valleyfield and was in the cutting – a cleaner job – cutting the paper as it came off the guillotine and putting it into boxes for the overhaulers. She got me in beside her and we had a great time. It was hard work and we did the same things day in day out but we had a good laugh and it wasn’t too long before we got ourselves into the overhauling. We were good workers and we were both smart. The overhauling salle was so clean and big and airy with lots of windows so that we had plenty of light to work in. It was amazing how fast we could check a ream of paper. Although we suffered bad with paper cuts. There would be times when our hands were red raw.

My mother bought boracic ointment for me to rub into them. But I was lucky; I was never bothered with dermatitis like some of them were.

We were always together. Saturday afternoons, after we’d got our pay and divvied up at home, we’d go down the street with the money we had left and rake around, maybe buy something for ourselves if we’d saved up enough, maybe some lace to diddle up an old dress if there was a dance that night. Then on Sunday we’d be at Church: Sadie at the Parish, me at the Free, though we never let that bother us.

Sadie would call me a Disrupter and I’d tell her that she’d burn in hell with all the rest of them that were damned, but we’d be laughing when we said it.

On Sundays we went to church; we’d put on our best clothes and sit on a hard pew for the best part of two hours. I’d suck

pandrops and let my mind wander during the sermon. I’d always try my best to follow the gist of what the Minister was saying but my mind would drift and, as often as not, I’d be dreaming about what I might get up to with Martin Stark if only I could get him to notice me. The Minister would be doing his best to help us stay on the paths of righteousness and I’d be wondering how I might sort my hair for later on when Martin might be in the crowd that went for a stroll to the Roslyn road end.

That was the thing to do on a Sunday night if the weather was fair. All the young ones would walk out there. They’d come from Penicuik, Auchendinny, Roslyn – even some from Loanhead. There would be a good crowd all blethering and carrying on. Many’s a couple got together that way. That’s where Sadie met Johnny Glass. He’d just come into the town to work in the mine. I still find it hard to say its name. Johnny was lodging with Davie and his first wife, Maggie. He was a fine lad, Johnny Glass; you never heard a cross word out of him. He was the last one they found, a good few days after Davie. I’d never seen Sadie in such a state as that day they got him out. I went with her when she went to identify the body.

It wasn’t as if she didn’t know what to expect. We’d all been looking for our own since they’d started bringing the bodies out. Jimmy Irvine had lain for three days in that shed they used as a mortuary before they decided it must be him. So we’d seen what the six months since the Disaster had done: turned them red with the rust that had seeped out of the ironstone; mummified some so that they looked as if they were still living. But those who had found them warned us not to touch because their skin and hair would just come away in our hands. Some were sprouting fungus… and the smell! They spread chloride of lime all over the floor to mask it. It was hard not to be sick. Sadie was worried that Johnny had been bashed about, and when she went in they had his face covered with sacking.

THE MAURICEWOOD DEVILS She made them pull the cover back and nearly fainted at what she saw. Johnny had been handsome. They were a very loving couple. The only way she knew it was him was the top button missing off his shirt. She’d meant to mend it all week before the Disaster. It wasn’t as if she didn’t have any buttons to mend it with.

Everybody in Penicuik had a box of buttons from the mill. Her legs gave way then.

The men who were in there held her up and helped me get her back outside. I sat her down on a pile of wood and kept hold of her until she recovered. My mind was racing because I knew that we’d have to get him buried. Bob Grier came across to us to ask if they could coffin him right there and then and what did she want them to do with him because some of the bodies had been taken straight to the cemetery. I’ll never forget the look she gave him. I’m not ready for that, she said, I’ll need to take him home. Then she turned to me, I need to take him home, Jess.

I can’t just leave him. Bob took me aside to say that at least two were being buried tomorrow at the Auld Kirkyard. I knew this because I’d spoken to Jimmy Irvine’s wife earlier that morning. Jimmy and George Pennycook were being buried and it would be no hardship to bury another one. So, while they put Johnny into a coffin, I took Sadie home. The second time in a week that I’d done that walk only this time it was me doing the supporting. I couldn’t remember much about the first time. But now I found myself aware of the first hints of green coming through the grass at the side of the road, of catkins hanging over the fence with what looked like yellow powder dancing on the edges of them. I told her what Bob Grier had said about the two burials in the morning. I tried to get her to see that it would be as good a day as any – that it wouldn’t be a good idea to keep him any longer, especially for the children’s sake.