Billy’s Story

It is a true story with a few embellishments in this chapter only. There are no accurate records of this period in Billy`s life.

“Gunner B” A Fifer

The year is 1929, Billy is 14 years old.

It`s 5 o clock in the morning.  It’s dark, it’s freezing and it’s December. Billy snuggles deeper into the old wooden cot that his Uncle Jim made for him. An old oak outhouse door and wooden props nicked from the pit. Nail it all together and there you have it, a bed.

The mattress is a starched, linen sheet that his Ma stitched together to make, what looks like a huge pillowcase. It’s stuffed with old wool. Wool that was blown across the fields during the shearing season, a few summers ago. His Ma and his sisters would all go searching the fields around Fife during the summer, hunting for that precious wool to turn into pillows, cushions and mattresses. They’d share some of it with their friends and neighbours, or barter it for herring, tatties and coal. On a good day. they might even get a rabbit or a hare. Food was scarce.

As usual, his Pop is already up and Billy can hear him throwing some more coal on the fire in the kitchen, getting it ready for his wife, Annie, to come through and make the porridge and tea for the men of the house, before they faced another 12 hour day of toil at the bridge. Coal that Billy had riddled out of the dross that came up from the Milton Mine on his only day off, which was a Sunday.  Sunday was a “lie in” day and Billy would snuggle under a wool blanket and a big pile of coats that belonged to his sisters. Thank Christ his parents didn’t attend the Kirk. A day of rest? Aye sure.

It’s the start of another week and if Billy doesn’t shift his backside and get up quickly, his Pop will come through and roar at him from the bedroom door. Maybe chuck a lump of coal at him. He was like that, or so I was told.

Having left the school just a few weeks ago, at the start of the summer, Billy, like most other lads in the village was immediately pressed into employment. He joined Pop and his crew and went off to build bridges and sea walls. Most of his pals and classmates were either sent down the coal pits or were working on local farms for a shilling a day. 12-hour days. A penny an hour. Billy didn`t fancy either for a full-time job and that’s why he persuaded his Pop to let him work in the family firm. There wasn’t going to be any pits or farms for Billy. Wages amounted to the same, a shilling a day and free digs. Billy had to learn to pay his way.

His Pop was a well-known construction engineer and bridge builder who travelled all over Fife, building small, stone, iron and wooden bridges over streams and burns, mostly in the countryside.

Billy had already worked with his Pop and the crew ever since he was allowed to wear long trousers. At 12 years old, weekends and school holidays meant Billy would be up at the same time as Pop, 5 am. It felt like it was the middle of the night, but he loved working outdoors, especially in the countryside. It was a welcome change from school and the crew continuously wound him up, kidding him on every chance they got.

Pop was a hard boss. He was mostly a blustery old beggar and ranted at the men for the smallest infringements. Billy was regularly cuffed around the earhole or had his backside kicked for not paying enough attention.

His Pop had always drummed it into him that he must “stick in and pay attention” at his lessons at school or he could end up like the others,  “doon the pit”, or worse.

Even at 14 years old, Billy was into everything that the crew were doing, and they would let him take part in building the stonework on the bridges or digging foundations. He was a strong wee lad and full of confidence. One of his first jobs was to look after the two Clydesdale Horses that pulled the firm’s wagon. They were housed in an old shed at the back of the house in the Milton. Billy and his sisters would take turns to feed, brush and groom them. Pop would come out and make sure the horses were being looked after properly. God help anyone who veered from his strict instructions.

Without the horses, there would be no work.

Billy was a fast learner and even though he was a nuisance sometimes, the crew relished having him around. He had a “face full of cheek”, as they would say in Fife. But he was a comical distraction at times, especially at “piece time”, when the men would tuck into cheese bannocks that were toasted over the fire, each man had an old tin full of scalding tea which young Billy had brewed over a fire in a charcoal black kettle earlier. Sometimes the men would send Billy into the surrounding fields to pinch a few big potatoes that went into the fire an hour or so before piece time.

Billy would regale them with stories of what he got up to at school with his pals. He always had a big smile when he told his tales, and they were received with some scepticism and wry smiles.

Aye, Billy was a grand wee lad.

In the years that followed, the firm found steady work and were building sea walls as well as bridges.  Where there was water, there was work.

Billy grew into a strong, clever and extremely driven young man. He was a team player and judging by the photographs that accompany this chapter, it`s fairly obvious that he was accepted as one of the crew, even though he was the boss’s son.

It is rumoured that the relationship between Billy and his Pop became quite fractious as time went on. Billy may have come up with better ways to engineer the bridges. He had a natural capacity for engineering.

At some point in Billy`s teenage years, his Pop forced a job on him that meant, Billy getting into an old Atmospheric diving suit and being submerged into deep water at a work-site, maybe a sea wall.

One can only imagine what a terrifying experience that may have been for a young lad.  No training, no health and safety and probably very little knowledge on diving.

This story was passed on through the family for many years after and it may have been a turning point in the waning relationship that Billy had with his Pop.

At school, Billy had excelled in arithmetic, maths and English and kept up with his studies long after leaving school. He couldn’t see himself as working in his father’s shadow for long and, furthermore, he wanted to work with mechanical engineering and possibly engines. Billy had dreams. He wanted to be a proper engineer. He wanted to fly, literally.

Whilst still in his teenage years, we don’t know exactly when, Billy disappeared. He left his job, family and home in the Milton.

To be continued in part 2