Shoes Were For Sunday by Weir Molly

Author:Weir, Molly [Weir, Molly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780241957936
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2012-03-29T00:00:00+00:00

Seven

One of the most dramatic stories told to me by my mother was of an accident to me in babyhood, when a tramcar was pressed into the rescue operation. I was about nine months old at the time and my mother had stood me up on the sink-ledge by the window while she cleared up the bathing things before putting me to bed.

The china bath, washed and dried, was beside me on the draining board, and when I turned round at the sound of my father’s key in the door, my foot went through one handle, and I crashed to the floor. The bath broke into a dozen pieces, and an edge cut through the bridge of my nose like a knife. My mother used to shudder as she described the blood as ‘spurting up like a well’, but my father, quick as lightning, seized the two cut edges of my skin between his fingers, bade my mother throw a shawl round me, and before she knew what was happening had dashed down two flights of stairs, kicking over the basin of pipeclay water and the stair-woman in his flight. He leaped on to the driver’s platform of a passing tramcar.

‘Don’t stop till you get to the Royal Infirmary,’ he ordered. The driver was so impressed with his urgency that he did exactly that, and all the passengers were carried willy-nilly to the doors of the infirmary. To me the most impressive part of the story was that the tram wasn’t even going near the infirmary on its route. It should have turned at right angles at the points long before then. I was astounded that a tramcar should have been used in this way as an ambulance for me, and that the driver had dared vary the route from that marked on the destination board.

It was maybe this thrilling piece of Weir folklore which started my love affair with tramcars. When I was a little girl I only had the penny for the homeward tram journey, when my legs were tired after the long walk into the town for special messages. It would have been impossibly extravagant to ride both ways. That luxury was only indulged in when travelling with Grannie, and the journey to town then seemed so different from the top deck of the tram, the landmarks so swiftly passed compared with my usual walking pace.

Later, when I went to college and the novelty of gazing out of the window had worn off, I used the travelling time to catch up on my studies. I’d be so absorbed in the intricacies of book-keeping, or French, or drama projects that only the changing note of the tram, and the memorized lurching motion as it neared my stop, warned me that I was home and it was time to get off.

I was amazed one day when a conductor said to me, ‘I’ve watched you for years, and in all the time you’ve travelled on my car I’ve never seen you read a book just for pleasure – you’re a great wee worker.

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