Mother Knew Best (16 page)

Mother said sadly that children were children for such a short time, and she would have liked to keep us always young, I felt. But when her sister Annie from Dorset ‘braved the dangers of London, the robbers and cut-throats' (this amused us), and visited Mother with Cousin Fred, she was proud of her growing-up family, for now only four, two boys and two girls, were not at work, engaged, or married. Mother and Auntie Annie hadn't seen each other for years and they sat side by side, and held hands. Cousin Fred's lifelong ambition was to visit Petticoat Lane. Auntie Annie was terrified for him; ‘Thou must not go, Snow.' Mother laughed when I asked why Cousin Fred was always called Snow. It was ‘thouest know.' Cousin Fred did visit that resort with his little leather purse. Father said he came back with a bargain pair of checked woollen trousers, discovering on arrival home that these bargains had been made for a man with one wooden leg. I think Father was teasing us. Auntie Annie persuaded Dad to take a holiday with Mother's brother Arthur who lived in a farmhouse in Romsey in Hampshire, and Mother was as excited as a child. There was much swearing from Father, already regretting his weakness to Auntie Annie in promising such an expedition, and we all set off. Father even took black Nugget polish for his boots, and on Waterloo station the case burst, scattering the contents, more swearing and raging, so that we finally got on to the train with lots of clothes in our arms.

It was the loveliest holiday I had ever had, and I preferred the country to the sea. We had been to Folkestone when I was younger for Father had gone to an army camp there. We had rooms with a Mrs Fawcett. Mother gave her money for food each day but was sure that this landlady bought margarine and charged for butter. Mother detested margarine. The beach was all stones which hurt my feet and I got sunstroke and spent my holiday painfully in bed with bright red curtains in the tiny bedroom through which the sun continually poured.

It was different at Uncle Arthur's. He was a very kind and gentle man, who watched Mother with brotherly affection, delighting in her laughter. His wife was a very strong man/woman, with men's laceless boots. She was silent, but jolly, and bathed us all in the barn, with much laughter, in an enormous round wooden tub. She didn't pat us when she dried us, as Mother did, but rubbed us down with great vigour. She brushed my hair with long hard strokes and my head seemed to go back to my waist. I think she was used to grooming the horses on the farm, and she loved brushing my hair so much I thought she would never stop, and I would never get my head upright again. She asked me if I would like to live on the farm with her and Uncle Arthur for always, but I said, not without my mother, and she tickled me until I gasped for breath. She was a strong loving woman.

Mother took us along the hedgerows and knew the names of every flower, bird and tree. She saw wild strawberries where we couldn't and said we had ‘town eyes.' She was like a girl she was so happy. My dad spent the holiday in his best suit, flushed, tottery and happy, although one tragedy marred the lovely holiday. We had found a tiny bird with its wing broken and feeling so miserable decided to put it in with the chickens, sure that they would mother it until it could fly again. Carefully we opened the door to the chickens' run, tenderly we placed the little bird inside, and the chickens came screaming and half-flying to tear this little bird to pieces in front of our terrified eyes. The chickens were like eagles with their wild screams, threshing talons and beaks. Our screams brought Mother running and she cried, and said why didn't we wait and ask her about the little bird. Sadly she said it was nature's way, the law of the jungle, and Father said, ‘Big fleas have little fleas.' We didn't know what he meant and thought secretly it was the country cider making him say strange things.

The following year Winnie became engaged, and as her fiancé was at sea most of the time, she was preparing her bottom drawer and couldn't mix with other young men; it was a time to be faithful; her ring with the diamonds was a constant reminder she was ‘spoken for.' It was a lovely time for Marjorie and me, for Winnie took us out every week-end. We went to Greenwich where we saw Queen Elizabeth's bath and she (Winnie, not Queen Elizabeth), rolled down the hills with us and we thought of the time when Mother had taken us all out on picnics there, and we tried to read the 24-hour clock and watch the red ball go up on the observatory. Mother used to take an enormous cold rice pudding in her enamel pie-dish. Sometimes Mother had taken us to Victoria Park; that was quite an expedition for we would have to go by train from Poplar station. It was only one station away, but it was a real exciting train journey. We would argue about which was the best carriage, and finally all pile in, and when the guard waved his green flag we would all sing.

Winnie took us further afield, to London, and to Richmond where lived a cousin Trudy. She owned a Tea Shoppe with little bottle-glass windows and I was upset when Winnie refused Trudy's offer of a nice meal. I thought grown-ups were strange in their refusals of such lovely things and I was tired and had a blister on my foot. I lost my little Sunday handbag and Winnie said, ‘Don't cry, I will take you to Scotland Yard where all lost things are sent.' First of all she took me to a man's shop near Scotland Yard and bought me a little round beaver hat, just like the bank manager's daughters wore, and so the policeman called me miss when I told him what my little bag contained. ‘One piece of rag, ironed by mother to look like a hankie, two texts, one of the baby Jesus and one of the three wise men, a farthing, and a spare gob.' This last was a perfect round stone I had found and so was an extra to my set of ‘bonce and gobs.'

We went to Wales to meet Winnie's future in-laws. They lived in a village about eighteen miles from Cardiff and kept an inn. The inn had a yard attached to it where the farmers from the hills brought their cattle, horses, and pigs to sell on Mondays, and the inn was full of smoke and red-faced men talking a foreign language and laughing very loudly. I was too young to go into the bars but I could see them from the kitchen, and on Mondays there was a constant stream of tottering red-faced foreigners staggering to the men's lavatory. Further down the passage inside a shed in the garden was the ladies' lavatory for it had two black holes in a white scrubbed box and a smaller hole in a lower box. I was horrified at this. I thought a family of Welsh people would descend on me
en masse
, for there was no lock on the door. At home it was considered not the thing if one member of the family should hurry another up even in an emergency. I was frightened of the black bottomless pit and was sure some monster would come up from the depths and either bite my bottom or attach itself to my nether portions. Mother laughed when I told her of my distaste for country lavatories, for someone she knew in her childhood days fixed his family lavatory on his vegetable garden to fertilise the crops. This was the end for me and I wondered why the man and his family weren't poisoned when they ate vegetables.

We picked watercress from the stream in Wales and I wished Mother could have some instead of having to pay for it in Chrisp Street. The Welsh girls were beautiful with lovely pink-and-white skins. I never knew girls could have such lovely complexions, but their perfection was marred, for me, for I thought they had rather thick ankles. My father said it was through climbing the Welsh hills. It was the first time I had seen ants, and Winnie's future mother-in-law thought I was a funny London girl because I wouldn't eat her lovely Welsh cakes. She had to bang them first to shake off the ants. But suppose I thought an ant was a currant and swallowed it!

The parish church was the centre of our family's social activities. My brothers belonged to the boys' club and took their turns as choirboys, and Cecil pumped the organ. Amy and Winnie were guides, Agnes belonged to the girls' club, Agnes did exhibitions with clubs and dumb-bells, Amy did exhibitions with a skipping-rope. It was fantastic to see them. I thought I could do fancy skipping, but I hoped no one would ask me to swing the clubs for I was sure to send one spinning across the hall to knock poor old Sister Kathleen's head off. She looked after the church with Sister Annie. It was painful to meet Sister Kathleen. She had long bony fingers; she would place her forefinger forcefully in the cavity in my neck, holding my cheek from the mouth up very firmly between two other bony digits. Then she would ply me with questions about my dear mother and my lovely brothers and sisters. Since what I answered was unintelligible and the position of my mouth always caused me to dribble, I could never understand why she seemed delighted with my answers. My brother, Arthur, once told Sister Kathleen, when she had been describing the sewing-machine, that modern innovation, that his mother could sew faster than any machine, and she repeated this remark constantly all the years I knew her.

We had various curates come and go while I attended the church, all lovely young men, all aristocratic, and so the maidens at the church were in a permanent state of being in love with one or other of them.

We had, as a rule, thin serious rectors, and I preferred them serious, although we had a very fat jolly one once, like Edward Arnold the film star. So it was a sad shock for us all when he drank a bottle of carbolic acid one night on Hackney marshes.

‘Many a brave smiling face hides a sad heart,' Mother said, and I was fearful for her for a long time.

Then we had Mr Evans, the curate everybody loved. He worked tirelessly for the church and for the poor. He started boys' clubs, men's clubs, women's and girls'. We all wanted to do our best for Mr Evans. Amy always seemed to be blotting her copybook and was upset as she valued his good opinion.

Mr Evans held a concert for our local church talent. Everyone was there. Len was sitting behind Amy larking about with his friends. Amy, perhaps a little nervous at her forthcoming recitation, boxed Len's ears, just as Mr Evans entered. ‘Amy, Amy,' he said reproachfully, and poor Amy wanted to die of shame, or execute Len. Mr Evans called Len up first to open the concert. ‘A sea shanty, sung by Leonard Chegwidden,' announced Mr Evans. A red-faced Len started by inhaling all the air in the hall at one go. ‘One Friday morn when we set sail our ship across the bay—phew,' a mighty exhalation of Len's remaining wind and the sad words, ‘I'm sorry I can't do any more.' Mr Evans helped an exhausted Len off the stage. Amy recited ‘Barbara Freitchie' and the whole audience clapped so much she gave an encore. I was to sing, with Geraldine Fisher, ‘Won't you come and play in my back yard,' and I was dressed up in gingham, which I detested, for the occasion. Geraldine had recently come to the district. Her parents were old music-hall entertainers, and this concert could have been the opportunity for their daughter to be recognised. For weeks they had trained us, well Geraldine really, for she was a real trouper, had no shyness, and possessed a voice. I never knew what voice I possessed, I couldn't make out whether it was low, or high, or a musical speaking one.

The pianist started and so did Geraldine. When I should have come in I was still not sure what voice to use, so sometimes I sang low, sometimes high, sometimes in the middle. To my horror the whole hall was hysterical. Geraldine never spoke to me again. I felt ashamed and Dad's friend told him I was as good as Nellie Wallace. I did not need this insult to stop me from entertaining in public, or private, again.

We had Sunday school teas, yellow cake and watery tea, and we took our own cups. We went to Theydon Bois for an outing one summer, and, the first time I saw the sea, we went to Southend. Sister Kathleen was loaded with new clothes for children who would, of course, fall into the sea, and many of the children came back better dressed than when they went.

When Marjorie joined the guides, Mother, feeling sorry perhaps that she wouldn't allow me to be a guide, said I could join the King's Messengers, a sort of new kind of Band of Hope which the new curate had started. He was a refined, fair young man, intent on helping the poor, but I think the East End had been a bigger shock to him than he had bargained for because he had a dazed look about him. He was very earnest and sincere and on our first evening at King's Messengers (it was ½d. per month) as the membership cards had not arrived, he said we would all chat and get to know one another. He chatted for a while with dead silence from the would-be messengers. Then he said, ‘Shall we tell some funny stories?' My friends were delighted, but my heart sank, I was forever afraid we would be shown up in front of the upper classes. He told a few funny stories at which no one laughed, which puzzled him a bit, then seeing my friend, Lizzie, Lizzie of the hoarse voice, eagerly fidgeting, he said, ‘I believe dear Lizzie has a really good story for us, let's all pay attention and listen to Lizzie.'

Little Lizzie started and I dreaded to hear the end of the story, knowing Lizzie. Her story was the one where two old ladies are sitting on a tram when along comes a man with a donkey-barrow full of peas. One old lady remarks she hasn't had a pea for years and the barrow man says, ‘Gee-up, Neddy, there's going to be a flood.' The curate was shocked to the core. Such a story at King's Messengers. Then Lizzie, no one could stop her now, said, ‘The tram-driver can say, all those who can't swim, please go on top.' The curate swallowed and said, ‘Yes, well, perhaps we will leave early tonight as it is our first night,' and we ended with a prayer. Lizzie laughed all the way out of the hall and went off down the street laughing. Disgusted with my friend I ran home to tell Mother. She laughed and said she didn't think the curate would have a story night again.

Later when I was to be confirmed by the Bishop of Stepney and was beginning to be a saint—I know I looked like one and tried to behave like one—Cecil became a problem. He was in the choir and was a giggler, it didn't need much to start him laughing, and he complained to Mother that I made him laugh in church when I genuflected low before entering the pew and then looked at him with a very solemn face. Then all his friends would start too and the choirmaster had to read the riot act to them. I was ordered by Mother to sit at the back of the church far away from the choir stalls; I did this obediently but I sat at the end of the pew near the aisle and when I knew the choir was approaching I would innocently turn round and look at Cecil, and he still started to giggle at me, but Mother had nowhere else to banish me to.