Gift from the Gallowgate by Doris; Davidson

box as well.
    While this was going on, I was in my room – we lived in one of the upstairs flats – trying hard to light a match from the box I had sneaked through from the scullery. It was a task I
had never attempted before and I was determined to master it. I had gone through nearly the whole boxful, some breaking, some just refusing to light, when I suddenly struck lucky but got such a
shock that I dropped the match, at practically the same time as I heard Dad shouting from below ‘Maisie! The house is on fire! Get out! All of you, get out!’
    Panic-stricken, I ran through to the living room, at the front of the house, where Mum, who had been sitting reading with the windows closed because she had let our canary out, jumped up,
grabbed her handbag first and then we ran out.
    What follows may sound too far-fetched to be true, but – Brownies’ honour – it’s the gospel truth. It’s a scenario that could well be used in the ‘What
happens next?’ part of
You’ve Been Framed
on TV, and I bet very few would guess correctly.
    There we were, four households standing, white faced, in the small front gardens that were the responsibility of the downstairs tenants to look after. I believe that my face would have been
whiter than any of them. My thoughts were running guiltily on the lines of, ‘Dad’s set the house on fire from the cellar, but I’ve maybe set it on fire from my bedroom, as
well.’ It was a dreadful feeling, but I was only about ten and too scared to say anything.
    We weren’t left standing for long. Dad had managed to put out the fire in the cellar by closing the door and smothering the flames with an old curtain we girls had been using for dressing
up. His face black, his teeth gleaming white, he smiled a smile of relieved pride. ‘Sorry about that, folks. It was my fault, but you can all go back inside now.’
    The other three men – it must have been a Sunday afternoon – wanted to make sure that the danger was over, so they went round to inspect things, while the women shook their heads at
each other and made for their own doors. Before Mum and I even got to the foot of the stairs, we came face to face with a sad apparition – well, the apparition wasn’t sad, but we were
when we beheld it. The downstairs cat had my canary in his mouth. We never found out if the bird had escaped or if the cat had gone in through the door my mother surely hadn’t closed when we
ran out. Whichever way it was, I was heartbroken at the death of my pet. An hour or so later Dad made a little coffin for it, packing it round with cotton wool. I made a little gravestone from a
piece of folded cardboard and wrote the one word ‘Beauty’ on it and we had a solemn funeral at the bottom of the garden, laying my dear yellow Beauty to rest under the fence that
separated our garden from the next block’s.
    To save leaving anyone left wondering, the match that I managed to light had gone out when I dropped it. Thank goodness.
    Just a week or so after this, Mum presented him with another daughter. She wanted to call the baby Roberta after him, but he wouldn’t hear of it. She suggested Bertha next, and although he
said it reminded him of the German gun ‘Big Bertha’, he agreed. I think Bertha got quite a lot of teasing about the gun when she was older.
    *
    At Mid Stocket, my pastimes changed to a certain extent. There were not so many children around for a start and most of those who were there attended private schools. The girls
went to St Margaret’s or the Girl’s High, and the boys to Robert Gordon’s College or the Grammar School. We did play together sometimes, the surrounding terrain more suitable for
hide-and-seek and that kind of thing. At the other side of the road from our house there was a market gardener’s place with dozens of places to hide; places where today’s youngsters
could let their budding passions loose, but, at the same age, we weren’t interested in anything like that.