Mercy Evans had three shoes

Mercy Evans had three shoes. Not three pairs of shoes, you understand, but three individual shoes. Her full name was God-Is-Merciful Evans, but as her Granpa said, if God was so darned merciful then he wouldn't have let her parents drown.

Unfortunately, Mercy didn't meet her Granpa until she was four years old, by which time she'd already been hastily baptised under the care of her Great Aunt Prudence. Great Aunt Prudence believed in God's Mercy, Obedience of Children, and Humble Gratefulness of Poor Orphans. Young Merciful was a great test of these beliefs, but Great Aunt Prudence knew that we were not put on this earth for pleasure and trusted that she would get her reward hereafter.

One day, when young Merciful was being particularly trying, Great Aunt Prudence took down a tiny shoe from a glass case on the mantlepiece. She placed it solemnly on the table by her chair. She informed young Merciful that her parents had been Wicked Sinners who perished in a shipwreck as part of the Awful Justice of God. A baby had been found at the bottom of the lifeboat, wearing a nightshirt made from a pillowcase, and one soft shoe. A handkerchief had been wrapped around her neck to keep out the cold sea air. This handkerchief was intricately embroidered with the letters A and E in navy blue. These details had been reported by the newspapers at the time of the shipwreck, in an attempt to find any relations of the poor nameless baby.

Prudence Evans (not yet called Great Aunt) recognised the description of the handkerchief as one of a set she had presented to her only nephew, Arthur. After a (brief and never to be spoken of) wrestling with her conscience, Prudence wrote to the harbour master claiming the handkerchief and, reluctantly, the child.

The harbour master's wife brought the baby in a fishing creel. She'd wrapped the little shoe in the handkerchief, and wrapped that in the pillowcase dress. Although it was spoiled by seawater stains, she'd laundered the dress along with the handkerchief, and clothed the baby in a napkin, binder and shirt belonging to her own child.

Great Aunt Prudence (as she now was) discarded the dress as fit only for rags. She unfolded the handkerchief and admired her embroidery. Glancing at the baby she gave a dissatisfied sniff. "I shall have to engage a Young Person. You'll need to stay until I do."

But the harbour master's wife was not impressed by Great Aunt Prudence. She had socks to darn, and bread to bake, and an unruly household to manage. Putting the creel on the hall table, she kissed the baby and marched to the door. "And you can send the clothes and the creel back with the carrier."

[North 16] The princess talks to herself

 She turned back to see Arkel's head poking down through the gap between the door and the wall.

"Are you talking to yourself?" he asked, eyebrows raised.

"No, I'm..." Irena faltered, confused. She shifted her legs in the small space, and stood up, suddenly conscious that she almost missed the other girl who was not her.

"You're crazy." Arkel said cheerfully.

Beautiful People link up: Em

Em from Brats. She's an awkward half-feral mute child. Beware, she bites.

What’s their favourite book/movie/play/etc.?

She can't read, but she likes looking at the book that Sparrow is using to teach Tekla to read and write. She understands more than she lets on, but doesn't like the way the black marks jump all over the page. Her favourite part is licking the glue off the pages.

Is there anything they regret doing?

She regrets nothing! She lives in the moment and is probably overall the happiest of the Brats. If something bad happens, she generally bites someone and moves on.

If they were sick or wounded, who would take care of them and how?

Bee would feed her syrupy things from their food stash, Zed would tend her wounds, Dee would finger-wrestle with her (and let her win), Tekla would build her a blanket fort and Sparrow would worry about how to get her to a medic.

Is there an object they can’t bear to part with and why?

She is insanely jealous of Tekla's soft toy bird and constantly finds dead things to carry around as a substitute because she thinks that's what Tekla's toy is. She doesn't understand why the others find this objectionable and keep taking her dead things off her.

What are 5 ways to win their heart (or friendship)?

Food, food, food, food and food.

Describe a typical outfit for them from top to bottom.

Frayed wool hat, baggy t-shirt, dungaree shorts with big pockets (for stashing stuff), dirty sandshoes with mismatched laces. Sometimes bandage mittens that Sparrow ties on to stop her scratching, but she tears these off as soon as she can.

What’s their favourite type of weather?

She likes all kinds, but especially storms. She could watch lightning and listen to thunder rolls all night.

What’s the worst fight they’ve ever been in?

When Exchange is besieged by the Outsiders and the Brats sneak into their camp. Em is caught stealing food and starts biting the guards when they catch her, and the others have to rescue her.

What names or nicknames have they been called throughout their life?

She gets called Em at the research clinic because her designation is 'M'. When Bee and Zed first find her, they nickname her 'Rat' because that's what they thought she was when they heard her scuffling around in the store room. Then when Sparrow joins them with her reading knowledge she tells them that the mark on Rat's wrist is a letter called 'M' and the one on Zed's wrist is a 'Z' and Bee's is a 'B'. Personally, she doesn't like the high, sharp sound of 'rat' but she likes the round, happy sound of 'emm'. So she ends up answering to that.

What makes their heart feel alive?

Being free. Climbing to the tops of things. Using the swing that Cap makes for them. Eating food until she's full. Being with the other Brats, but she doesn't realise this until they get to Central and she gets taken away from them all.

If you want to see the other blogs in the link-up then pop on over to Paper Fury

[North 15] A walk through the city

She slid herself off the edge, remembering at the last minute to bend her knees like Arkel had taught her when they were climbing in the caves. It still hurt though, and she'd scraped all the palms of her hands. She got shakily to her feet and stumbled to the corner. She heard Arkel's voice muffled in the doorway, and then it fell silent. The street was dark, so she shuffled forward, feeling her way along the wall with her sore hands outstretched. The doorway was even darker than the street, and she hesitated before stepping into it.

"Ow!"

She stood on something moving on the ground. The thing stood up. The face was at the same height as her own. She looked into the eyes of her double, and saw frightened recognition there.

"Why are you following me around?" It hissed.

Sundays at school; a class rebellion; school in wartime

'Our sunday walk at Wellington, sunday afternoons, was either around to Belleisle Conservatory and back along the beach, or the other way. When we were older we were allowed to go ourselves. We used to go to Rozelle House for our Guide activities. I joined the Guides during the war, so I never got to go camping. '

'Sunday night was when we all sat down to write our letters home, to our parents. Miss Garret the music teacher -'Gertie' - was the vice-principal, or 'second in command' - she took all our letters unsealed and read through them, for spelling, punctuation, and to check that we weren't saying anything derogatory about the school or teachers.'

'And when we were fourteen, we thought it wasn't fair that our letters should be read, so we - a group of us - went to Miss Carter, the headmistress, and asked her if we could seal our own envelopes. Miss Carter hadn't known that our letters were read, and told us to send them up next week sealed. It got to the next sunday, and we sealed our letters, and Gertie said "Girls! Who told you to seal your letters?" "Miss Carter" we replied, and Gertie wasn't very pleased.'

'Only one time, I remember, during the war, we could see a great glow in the sky in the distance from the dorm room window, when Clydebank was burning. That was the only time we spent down in the big hall, during the bombing. Four nights we spent down there. We lay on our matresses on the floor. It's quite a big entrance hall, once you go up the steps and through the door. I think most of us were in the hall, all cuddled up with one another. But some might have been in the dining room, all the big downstairs rooms. But wartime never really touched this part of the country. Oh we had false alarms and all the rest of it...'

'I  remember one time I'd been to the dentist, and I was sent home to rest because I was feeling a bit woozy from the sedation. I was in my bed, and I saw a plane over the sea, out the window, so I got up to look. I thought 'that plane's not flying right', and it got lower and lower and one wing tip just dipped in the sea, and the plane tumbled over and was down. It was over the weekend and they tried to lift it, but they couldn't, not til the monday. The pilot was still in the cockpit when they found him.'

Churches, maypoles, and the dangers of lochs - stories from my grandma

'The parish church that we went to when we were at school had box pews. You would go into the pew and you could shut the door. Each pew had its own door. No one could see what you were up to! Well, I suppose the rector could have, when he gave his sermon, so we never played up when he was there. There was the remnants of a - I think it must have been a bishop - in the church, 300 years old, at least that's what we were told.'

'The last year of school, we were allowed to go and help decorate for the harvest festival. That was how we got up on the roof, and to see the priesthole - it was on the way up to the roof. It was so small. You climbed up a wee stair in the church, into what was the priesthole. And then I think you must have gone up the stairs, further up the stairs to the roof.'

 'It was a lovely day and you could see for miles and miles. I don't think many people were allowed up there. We only got up because we were with the school and helping with the harvest festival.'

'I remember one or two May Days in the village, with the maypole, and the dancing. They don't have them very much now. That was way back in '44 or '45. But they had the maypole up, on Astbury Green - the village green. And we watched the kids dancing around the maypole, winding in and out of the ribbons. As usual they had - they called it a rectory down there, but it was just a church manse really - as usual it was as big as they could make them!' [the implication being that rectors always had large families.]

'It was a lovely old church. I presume it's still functioning, but who knows in this day it might not be. There's so many old churches closing.'

'I remember one half term I went home with this girl called Casey Gant. She lived in Nottingham, and we thought it would be fun to go out on the river in a rowing boat. Casey's father spotted us on the river, the river Trent, and we were in trouble. We didn't realise we were in trouble, [but] there was a wier approaching. Casey's father was in his factory office, and saw us, and sent a motor boat to get us, and Casey got in trouble for taking us on the river.'

'So between that and Loch Lomond it's lucky I'm here at all! Oh that Loch Lomond was a terror. I think I was only about sixteen at the time (don't put that down! - well, if you must...). We'd gone up to Inverbeg. Inverbeg was quite a big place for the Youth Hostel Association and things like that. It was a beautiful calm day, and the lady I was with, her husband was a captain in the navy, and she was left at Inverbeg with the wee boy. And she said to me, 'Jean, can you row?' I said, 'A wee bit.'

'So we rowed over to Inverdenham, and we had afternoon tea. And between times a storm had blown up. I'll never know how we got back over to the river at Inverbeg. We had to go right up the side and back again. Boy was I glad to see the river at Inverbeg!'

'So that's why I have a fear of the Scottish lochs.'

across the fields for afternoon tea - stories from my grandma's photo album

Darvel, Aug. 1933

"That was taken at my grandmother's house. She was Jean --Jeanie. Mum's name was Annie, and she hated it, she hated the Annie, so she changed it to Anne and it stuck. She was called after her Aunt Annie." 

"Grannie had a wee greenhouse at the back, you know - a wee lean-to against the wall at the lane. Oh, I used to go up the hill at Darvel, what we called the Pond Brae --there was two ponds for curling and skating right up the top-- I used to go up to get tomato plants for my grannie. There was a nursery up there -- little thinking of my future with greenhouses and tomato plants!"

"These two were my mum and dad. That's when they were on their world tour -- they were away for about six months. I stayed with grannie."

"Now that was Prestwick shore. We came down to there for a month in the summer. We stayed in a hotel beside the station, near the golfcourse. That's me walking down the golfcourse side with an ice-cream. Now that doll came from Japan. It had a wee stand. And those dresses were from when we had dancing displays [at school]."

"We had picnics at Loudon Hill. Can you see my wee dog there? A wee black scotty dog called Exya. I called her that because she was born on the day of the Glasgow Exhibition opening. She was a lovely dog."

"That's Dickie - she was the head girl of the school --Great Moreton. Her cat was called Tito, after the Yugoslav president at the time. That's Mirelle, Jessie and myself --we were all around sixteen. I was wearing my winter coat from Great Moreton. It was a big country house. It had been made into a school. I went there from Wellington in 1944; I was there for two years. It was a nice school. But shortly after I'd left, Mrs Butterworth moved the school to Robie Hall. There's a big picture upstairs of the whole school. There was a tower, and the last year, four of us slept in the tower, and nobody bothered us because there was quite a narrow stair to come up. There was an empty room above us, and we would sit up there and smoke --and the odd glass of sherry!"

"Old Moreton Hall is a National Trust building now. On a sunday the prefects were allowed to walk across the fields to have afternoon tea in the dining room. When the rising bell went we had to get up and ring a bell around the dormitories to get all the other little horrors up. It was an actual bell --a handbell."

"Once we had a 'spider dance' --don't ask me why it was called that-- in a part of the building round the corner from the entrance, and the headmistress was asked, probably the last term we were there. We were all walking back round the path...this bedroom window went up and Ms Paton the maths teacher, she called out: "Girls! What are you doing up at this time of the night?" And a small voice was raised from the middle of the crowd: "It's alright, Ms Paton. I am with the girls." It was Ms Butterworth [the headmistress]. And SLAM, down went the window. She cracked the glass! I don't think we were very popular with Ms Paton after that..."

"That's Margaret Macfarlane and me, and Ms Jeffrey from Wellington. She was an awful clever girl. Anything she touched, she was good. That must have been before I left Wellington. We were doing our Saturday shopping in Ayr, but we had to have a teacher with us."