Mother Knew Best (10 page)

Suddenly a soldier came into the children's playground. I knew grown-ups weren't allowed inside the gate and I was puzzling why the old woman had not sent him straight out of the enclosure, when he approached me and began to push my swing much too hard. I was frightened and looked at the old woman, but she just smiled and I felt very embarrassed and miserable. The soldier then pushed my swing crookedly, I caught one foot in the railings and the swing stopped drunkenly. He helped me off the swing and holding my hand hard, he said his little sister was across the other side of the park and couldn't do her frock up. Would I come and show her how to do it ? I said, very bravely, for Mother had stressed we must be polite and respectful to grown-ups, ‘No, my mother wants me to go home straight away.' But he held on so tightly to my hand I couldn't pull it away and I went with him across the park to where we
never
went, for Mother always said we must keep away from the grown-up's part of the shrubbery. We went past the bowling-green and then reached the shrubbery where the old men sat, but it was too early for the old men. The lady who had looked after the park in war time came along in her breeches with the leather patches inside her knees, and her white shirt; she waved at me and I tried to go to her, but the soldier wouldn't let go of my hand and I still couldn't see his little sister anywhere. Then he sat down and took me on his knee and I began to cry. Just then the sun went in and as he put his hands round my neck it got darker and I thought there would be thunder.

I opened my wet eyes which felt heavy, and running across the flower-beds towards us were Mother and little Marjorie. Mother was shouting, her face was red and wet and Marjorie looked very indignant. I thought Mother should not be running over flower-beds for that was worse than treading on grass. All the notices mentioned about not treading on the grass, there was no need to mention the flower-beds because no one would ever do such a wicked thing as that, I had never heard of anyone so daring. I tried to call to Mother to get off the flower-beds, else she would go to prison, but my voice would not come. My neck was hurting, I ached all over and I wanted to be sick. Then the soldier threw me to the ground, a stone cut my face which began to bleed and the blood ran into my mouth all warm and salty and I just didn't want to worry any more, not even about Mother, but just go to sleep. I was so tired.

The soldier too ran across the flower-beds and Mother still kept running, not to me, but after the soldier; she was screaming now and the lady in the breeches came and picked me up and said, ‘There, there, it's all right now, try to walk.' Suddenly I was holding Mother's hand and Marjorie, the soldier and two policemen and crowds and crowds of kids were walking along East India Dock Road towards the police station. I wondered vaguely where all the children had come from and thought that if they had all been there before, I couldn't have chosen the swing I wanted. The policemen were holding the soldier's hands behind him and walking him in a funny way. I felt embarrassed at the public spectacle I had caused and wished the policemen would not walk the soldier in that dreadful way. He couldn't escape now.

When we arrived at the police station the crowds still wouldn't go away and the policemen got very angry with them. When we got inside the soldier was taken off somewhere and Mother, Marjorie and I sat on some very thin wooden seats and waited for the doctor to arrive. This was an awful thing; although I knew the answers to the doctor's questions my answers contained words which made me feel shy, and after my examination we went home. I felt so bad for I had made Mother run all the way from home on a Saturday after she had carried the heavy shopping bags from Chrisp Street. Why had I been such a coward instead of running away? Father and David were having their dinner. David looked at me as though I was a wicked girl. Father did not look at me at all.

My troubles were not over, for Mother, Marjorie and I had to go to court where there was a judge and I had to stand in a box and tell all about that Saturday morning in the recreation ground. Again, as I did with the nice doctor, I stumbled over the right words I knew everyone was waiting for me to say and I had to look at the soldier and say he was the one who ‘pushed my swing,' but I couldn't say it for I didn't remember his face. However, Marjorie stood up and gave evidence in such a manner that the judge complimented her and said she should really be Marjorie V.C., which I thought was strange for she
was
Marjorie Valetta Chegwidden. The old woman came to court and said she thought the soldier was my brother and she was told in future to challenge all adults out of bounds.

I did not go to the recreation ground for a long, long time after that Saturday, and then when I went again I was surprised to see a white marble statue beyond the entrance drive. Up white steps on a white plinth was the most beautiful angel imaginable. She had her stone eyes half-closed and was protecting the little children whose names were chipped out of the side of the monument. I counted eighteen names on the square tablet, names of the children who had died when the German bomb hit North Street school. David said the statue wasn't marble but white stone which would go grey in time.

Some time after that Mother was visited by the authorities and informed that Dorothy needed a holiday in the country. This holiday would be arranged by the Children's Fresh Air Fund, a country holiday organisation who set poor children up after a magical week in England's beautiful countryside, a week of luxury and heaven a child would never forget. I was very excited that I should be chosen for this gift, the only one of the Chegwiddens favoured by the gods. Mother seemed a bit apprehensive, but the authorities overcame her feeling of anxiety and the great day came for my transportation to heaven. I was taken by a stem-faced woman, with icy hands, to a railway station where I met more excited girls. We all had huge labels tied to our chests announcing we were from the East End and on our way to a Country Holiday Fund resort called Maidstone, in Kent.

We were sorted out at Maidstone and with two other girls I was delivered to a little terraced house in a street which looked just like the streets at home. Another stern woman read the Riot Act. She seemed to think because we were slum children we had come to destroy her home and she pointed to a cane hanging up on her kitchen wall. The other two girls and I slept in a single bed in a little box-room. They were tall girls and it was obvious from the start I should have to do as they told me. We had the same meal every day, mashed potato with little thin streaks of bright red cotton in it, and tiny bits of bone. I think the cotton was meat but I wasn't hungry and the woman said she supposed I wasn't used to good food. We were not allowed in the little front room and stayed in the small back garden all day. I counted the days until I could go home again.

The woman next door also had country holiday fund children and asked our benefactor, ‘What are your lot like this week?' and they worked out how much money they had earned that summer. If they weren't pleased to have us, and that was obvious, they were very pleased with the money. The great day came for our departure from Maidstone and our woman said some children didn't know when they were well off for we had been given the chance of health and happiness in the country, and she seemed to think, because we were excited to be going home, that the East End children were an ungrateful lot. I was going home to where I was loved but such a woman wouldn't have understood that.

Mother had tears in her eyes when she saw me at the station and she sighed every time she looked at me. My father said, ‘That's your country holiday fund for you. Dolly looks as though she wants a good disinfecting. They have to have so many on their books, you know.' He seemed in an awful temper, perhaps his pride was hurt because I had been the object of charity. Mother bathed me and she and I stayed up after the others were in bed for my head was itching and so I could not be with the others. She made a white paper collar for my neck and kept washing my hair in some smelly stuff again and again. Then I went to sleep with my head resting on her lovely bosom while she combed and combed every individual hair. She was very sad.

Next day Sister Kathleen came to see the healthy transformed Dorothy. She tutted and said, ‘Better a dinner of herbs,' and she would arrange for me to have a sunbeam friend. Mother didn't want me to but Sister Kathleen insisted, and a few days later a letter came addressed to me: ‘Miss Dorothy Chegwidden.' It was very exciting. It was from a rich lady in Wiltshire to tell me she was my sunbeam friend and I could choose two presents from the list she enclosed. I was so excited for the list began with a doll and doll's house and a doll's perambulator, and ended with a book and a tea-service for dolls. Mother just would not let me choose the first two presents on the list, thinking I was greedy, and in the end I was guided to ask for a tea-set and book. The little tea-set was very pretty with Japanese ladies on it and the book was a book on how to be a good needlewoman and make samplers of texts and run and fell a seam on chemises. Each page started off with a moral about naughty girls not receiving the rewards that good girls do.

The tea-set was so lovely I put it away in the bottom of the musty little cupboard in the kitchen, inspecting it occasionally like a miser inspecting his gold. One day I had a terrible shock. Someone had played with the tea-service and had broken a cup. Mother bought another cup but it didn't match the others and I never inspected it again. Mother didn't know or was not quite sure, who had dared to make tea in the lovely Japanese tea-set, so there was no one to accuse.

Grove Villas was midway between two Schools, North Street, and Woolmore Street. My brothers went to North Street and we girls went to Woolmore Street.

Woolmore Street Mixed Infants School was a one-storey L-shaped building on one side of the road, and the big Girls' and Boys' School was a large two-storey building opposite, boys on the upper floor, girls on the ground floor. The playground was divided by a wall in which there was a green door, always locked, and woe betide any boy who climbed the wall to peep into the girls' playground. Our teachers were stern and strict but the boys' teachers were really harsh. I once saw a man teacher stamp on a boy's foot in temper. The boy was not wearing shoes or socks, and this was not an uncommon sight, even in winter. I loved the sound of the boys singing in the Hall above ours. ‘Who is Sylvia?' and ‘Clang, Clang, Clang on the Anvil,' for I always felt the boys sang more sweetly than the girls.

I started school eagerly enough for the tales of excitement and adventure my brothers and sisters told of school life were great, and Marjorie and I used to play schools at home. I was bitterly disappointed in the real thing. It couldn't be the same school my sisters loved.

I thought it silly to call my class the babies' class when most of us had younger brothers or sisters at home, and I knew I was grown-up. I was not a bit taken with the tiny chairs and tables. The chairs had curved arms and just enough space to get in properly. The teacher gave me a metal bowl and a small square of coloured bandage, and showed me how to shred it into cotton. This seemed silly to me. What could anyone do with little bits of cotton? When I was thinking how my back ached, the teacher took all our bowls away and gave us shallow tin trays covered with coarse gritty sand and we made letters in it, but the sand kept shifting about. I was one of the milk children because I was delicate, and in the morning I had to go to a cloakroom and drink a mug of milk. It had skin on top and was warm. I didn't like it much and then a lady in a green overall said she would give me a big spoon with lovely toffee in it, but it was fishy and tasted round my teeth all day.

Mother said perhaps it would be better in the afternoon, but when I went back after dinner it was worse, for we all had to put our heads down on the table and sleep. My head was on the table for years and years and the teacher looked as if she was sleeping. The little white knob on the blind was banging on the window in the breeze, and woke her up and when she climbed on to a chair to adjust the blinds, I could see her thick navy-blue bloomers. I wondered what Mother was doing and if I would ever go home again. Then a teacher went up and down the corridor ringing a noisy bell and Mother came to fetch me.

It was much better in the big girls' school. As I had hated the infants' school, well not hated, but it was yawn-making, though I was never frightened there, so I loved the big girls' school, even though I was frightened there at times. I never understood why I could be so happy where I was sometimes scared. My friends insisted they hated school and Dolly Chegwidden was crackers, but we all had fun, especially in the playground, so I felt they couldn't really have hated it. For one thing, they were not afraid of the cane or the black punishment book and thought I was a coward to be fearful of such things. But they, most of them, had knocks at home. I had never been slapped in the whole of my life, and I thought it must be the most painful thing in the world, even though the teachers always stated, when caning a girl, that the worst punishment was the entering of their names in the black book, for it would be there until eternity for all to see. ‘Yah, it never hurt me' was the attitude of my comrades to punishment. To me they were as brave as soldiers.

I was never late for school, thanks partly to Mother and partly to Polly. Polly was the grey and pink parrot one of my sailor brothers had brought home. Gradually it became as chattering a member of the family as any of us. It would scream, ‘Cecil, Cecil, Cecil' every morning, then ‘Late for school, late for school,' then ‘Amy, Amy, Amy,' we just had to be on time. Marjorie would say, ‘I'm not late for school, Polly, so you've got the time wrong.' Amy would glare at it every morning, and Mother would cover it with a cloth, for it didn't always seem to be able to count when we were all downstairs and would continue berating what it thought was an extra laggard.