The Borthwicks - Chapter 3
My mother had left the Elderslie Wallace Public School, where she and her siblings were all educated, the previous year and had started work in the Carpet Field Wareroom as a carpet sewer under the eye of her father. I'm told that the work of sewing carpets was hard on a young girl's fingers and her hands would get red and sore. Auld Mary McQueen, one of the older 'girls' would encourage the youngsters to go to the lavatory and 'pee on yer haunds'. Presumably the action of the urine was to tan and harden the young skin! Whether this remedy worked I leave to the reader to investigate!
Tom had previously started work as a kitchen boy in one of the Coats's houses in Paisley and was working his way up to be a chef in one of the big houses. At one point in his career he had a position on the yacht of Solly Joel one of the South African Diamond Millionaires, (but that's another story).
Come the War in August 1914, he transferred to the Royal Navy, though I have no knowledge of his wartime service, except that I seem to recall he was in Gibraltar at one point (or that may have been in the yacht). Eventually his career took him to Manager of the Picture House Cafe in the High Street Paisley. Mary Crooks Borthwick meanwhile carried on working in the Wareroom, her hands gradually getting tougher, through the work or whatever. The start of the War made little difference to her life, though all the young men of her acquaintance were now swaggering about in Khaki and Navy Blue when home on leave. Though she and John Pender were in no way close until after the war, I understand they were aware of each other's existence. On one occasion she did send John her picture though two of her friends were also in the snap. It wouldn't have been quite the thing to send a Boy a picture of herself alone; that would have been just too forward. She used to say that when the girlish chatter turned on what kind of lad she might like to marry, the picture of a tall dark-headed Cameron would somehow spring to mind.
