Scotland Street Volume 18, Chapter 30: Just the local women

By Alexander McCall Smith

Published 14th Mar 2025, 07:00 GMT

Irene tried to reply directly to Ellie, but it was clear that the incomprehension was mutual, as Ellie would turn to look quizzically at Graham, and wait for a translation.

“Does your mother actually speak English?” Irene asked Graham.

He smiled. “Aye,” he replied. “She speaks English right enough. She prefers the Doric, though. She has old-fashioned views about English, I’m afraid.”

Irene was intrigued. “And what are those?”

“She says she can’t tell whether somebody speaking English is lying,” she said. “She says you can’t lie in the Doric.”

Irene laughed. “Very old-fashioned,” she said.

“Aye, mother isn’t very modern,” Graham admitted. “But she’s had a hard life, you know.”

“Yes,” said Irene. “Living here can’t be easy. All that … all that weather. And then there’s the sea …”

“Aye,” said Graham. “The sea. Always there. You look out the window and it’s there. And the rain too. The rain’s there too.”

Irene was fascinated. Graham spoke with a deep voice, and his words, she thought, were pure poetry. The sea. Always there … You could only say that sort of thing if you really knew the sea, as Graham did. These were ancient currents in the blood. These were tribal memories going back centuries. This was the ancient wisdom of the people who had wrested their living from those waters and from this deep rich soil for generation upon generation. This was what she appreciated about these people: their rootedness, their depth.

At the same time, nothing was forever, and human society had to evolve; it had to confront the injustices and cruelties of our social arrangements and adjust to a more egalitarian vision of what life could be. In particular, these men amongst whom she found herself had to understand that they could not continue to be men in the way in which they had been men for a very long time. These fishermen, these strong, brave men who braved the North Sea to hunt the sliver darlings, had to understand that they could no longer justify going off fishing while they left their wives and girlfriends behind.

She asked Ellie, through Graham as interpreter, whether there she had come across many women on fishing boats.

Ellie looked thoughtful. The women, she explained, usually worked on shore. They dealt with the catch – cleaning the fish and packing them in ice or in barrels. The herring fishery, she explained, had been a major part of the life of Scottish harbours for a long time.

“Mother says,” Graham translated, “that if it hadn’t been for the women, there would have been no fish sent off to the fish markets. There would have been no fish on anybody’s table. It was the women who did all that work. They kept the whole fishing industry going.”

“But what about going out in the boats?” Irene asked. “Why did the women not go off in the boats and leave the men on shore to gut the catch and carry the fish baskets?”

Graham looked puzzled.

“Ask your mother,” prompted Irene.

Graham spoke to his mother in Doric. He shrugged at the end of his question.

Ellie hesitated. Then she gave a lengthy explanation to Graham, who nodded before he passed it on to Irene.

“Mother says nobody in their right mind would want to go out in the boats,” he said. “She says that the women knew better than to go out there and tug on the nets and lose their fingers in the trawling gear. She says they were far better off sitting at home, making soup and reading the Sunday Post.”

Irene shook her head. “Tell your mother she’s got it wrong,” she said. “That’s an interesting view, but very outdated.”

Graham hesitated. “Mother doesn’t think she’s outdated. Perhaps she knows how the women felt because she was one of them.”

Irene smiled. “I don’t want to argue with your mother, Graham. I’m sure that there are some things she knows about, but when it comes to these major shifts in the dynamics of human relationship, she might be just a bit out of her depth – just a bit.”

Graham looked at her. He did not like to argue. He was more interested in the deep, meaningful observation than the superficial cut and thrust of debate.

“We all have our own ideas of how the world is,” he said at last. “Folk see things differently.”

That was the end of that exchange, but the issue of male domination of the fishing fleet was not one that Irene was willing to let go. She decided that if she were to wait for new ideas to be discovered by the women of Peterhead themselves, she might have a long wait. The people around her – Ellie, Mollie, and others – seemed to be content with their lot, but that, of course, was a matter of false consciousness. That needed to be confronted, and if an outsider had to do that, well, so be it.

She was aware that Wally Scroggie’s wife, Mollie, was on the committee of the local branch of the SWI, the Scottish Women’s Institute. She had seen her reading a copy of the institutes’ magazine, and she had heard of a project that she had been involved in to help women refugees. Irene would never herself join an organization like that – far too homely, she thought – but she realised that if she wanted to make contact with the women of the town and to encourage them to challenge unacceptable attitudes, then speaking at an SWI meeting might be just the way to go about it.

She approached Mollie.

“Would you like me to give a talk at your SWI?” she asked.

Mollie was surprised. “Good heavens,” she said. “We’re nothing special. We’re just the local women.”

Irene smiled. That was the problem. Local women – that was a typical, imposed undermining description. That showed just how deeply-rooted the problem was.

“You aren’t just local women,” she said. “Each of you is endowed with unique talents and an individual perspective. Each of you can do anything you want.” She passed. “You could climb Everest if you wanted to.”

Mollie gasped. “Everest? That’s a Munro, isn’t it? I don’t know about that.”

“Yes, Mollie, of course you could. So let me give you all a little talk, and we’ll see what happens.”

“That’s awfie kind of you,” said Mollie. “Next week? We meet on a Thursday night. We take it in turn to make cakes.”

Irene sighed. She was going to change all that. The women who made cakes on a Thursday night could look forward to being out in the boats, bringing home the catch. The men could make the cakes in their place, not that they would any good at that, of course.