Mother Knew Best (17 page)

Sister Annie took me for confirmation classes and taught me the catechism. I learnt the ten commandments religiously for I remembered what happened to Amy when she attended confirmation classes. The Sister then in charge was very, very old, very, very bent, with a permanent shake and a deep man's voice and craggy face I found frightening. She would call out the number of a commandment and wait for a girl to recite the correct commandment. The only one Amy had learnt was ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery.' She knew neither the number nor the meaning of this commandment, so that whatever number the sister called out, Amy recited in her loud voice, ‘Thou should not commit adultery.' She knew she would have to be right once out of ten; Sister's stern admonishment for Amy to be silent each time she was wrong made no difference to the eager Amy, determined to shine on at least one commandment. Finally the ancient virgin's righteous indignation at Amy's insistence on this terrible recital was brought to breaking-point and Amy was dismissed from the class. Arriving home in disgrace Mother tutted at Amy's brazen demeanour which Father thought comical, and so I was very careful to learn all the commandments with their appropriate numbers. I thought I should finally be turned into a saint when the bishop laid his hands on me, but nothing happened. I heard no voice calling me to Him and I felt I had been let down. Marjorie heard beautiful music when the bishop laid his hands on her head, and I felt quite envious of her state of grace.

I must have been a little saint-like though, for I was chosen to be a Sunday school teacher in the little kindergarten and I told the children lovely bible stories. One day the superintendent was away and I had to take the collection. This was then taken to the church and blessed at the evening service with the adult collection. I didn't do very well, perhaps the little children thought I was not a real grown-up, no one to be afraid of, and they didn't put their money in the little velvet bag I passed among them. It had a gold cross embroidered on it. The collection came to 3½d., and I got reading after Sunday school and forgot to take it to church that evening. It remained in my bedroom and I borrowed a penny from it for something or other, knowing Winnie would give me a penny to replace it for the following Sunday's blessing. Mother found the collection bag, this holy receptacle, in my bedroom, was horrified it should be there at all, more horrified I had borrowed from it. ‘Those who go a-borrowing, go a-sorrowing,' she said sternly to me, frightening me very much for I hadn't borrowed human money but holy gold. She put the penny in and I was despatched to the rectory, trying to make up a story about the delay which would ring true. The maid showed me into the waiting-room at the rectory and I enjoyed the time I had to wait, for the rector was having a musical evening and the strains on the cello were lovely and sad. I think he was annoyed about being dragged away in the middle of the recital, and I somehow don't think he believed my story, and he looked a little aghast at the size of the collection.

A little while before I was due to leave school, Sister Kathleen asked Mother to bring me to a garden party which was to be held in the grounds of the rectory. A gentleman from the City was to open the fete and Sister Kathleen wanted to introduce us to him for she felt, indeed she had no doubt, that my bright and smiling countenance and Mother's ladylike appearance would ensure for me a situation in the City gentleman's firm. In addition to my cheerful face I was of course, sober, respectable, and most important, Church of England. The joint belief of Sister Kathleen and my mother, that a wonderful future was assured for me, was not, however, shared by me. I felt it was a pity that I had been in the school choir solely because of the winning smile Miss Wilkie asserted I possessed, for it seemed I was being compelled to wear a fixed grin when at heart I felt depressed and unsure of myself.

Adult confidence in me only made me feel more certain I was incapable. It was assumed that the larger and poorer a family, the tougher, less sensitive, are its members, not only because they had learned to share everything, but also because the home truths administered by brothers and sisters automatically knocked off all prickly corners. Outwardly I may have appeared as confident as the rest of the family but inwardly I possessed an inferiority complex because I knew I was inferior. Supposed compliments dished out to me by family and friends, intended to bolster me up, were delivered in such a way as to cast me further down. While I was reading they would say ‘The trouble with Dolly is…' or, ‘Funny, I never noticed before that Dolly's hair is golden in the sun,' or ‘At least Dolly has good ankles,' so these remarks, prefaced as they were with suspect words, I took for condolences, and became more despondent and inwardly nervous.

Mother decided I should have a new dress for my coming out and Miss Cook made me a special one for the occasion. It was cream silk with cream georgette sleeves. I didn't like the shape of the frock for it was low-waisted, if waist was the right word, for the wide sash was just about crutch level and to make matters worse in the centre at the front of the sash was a large rose, made of the silk material. This rose Miss Cook had corded and it was much admired by Mother. The large full georgette sleeves, tight at the embroidered cuffs, I thought were very beautiful and romantic. Of course, for a garden party, a hat must be worn, and that was where the difficulty would arise, for everyone agreed, ‘Dolly hasn't got a hat face.' My sisters could look attractive even in the little egg-cosies they knitted in one evening. When I tried any of these on even Mother laughed and Father rubbed his head. But Mother was sure somewhere there was a hat to suit Dolly, and Marjorie was despatched with me to purchase and seek this creation. She was truthful and sensible, and we would arrive home with this crowning glory.

The Poplar shops were unable to accommodate me, one assistant remarking sourly that if none of the hats in her shop suited me I wouldn't get a hat anywhere. Mother was so determined I should be successful that she despatched us to Lewisham where there was a magnificent store. ‘Why,' said Mother, ‘the gentry shop there.'

The Lewisham store had large and heavy swing doors. These appeared to close, then suddenly exuded a noisy hiss, giving an unwary customer a firm push in the back. Standing outside these swing doors when we arrived was a tiny old lady. She wasn't wearing the usual black granny uniform but we could tell she was as old as a granny in her little metal-framed spectacles. She was dressed in a large coarse grey type of army greatcoat which almost reached the pavement and nearly covered her tiny buttoned boots. Her grey hand-knitted hat, with a large black button at each side, was like an upturned rowing-boat, and as she wore this sideways on her head I thought she looked like a miniature Napoleon, but Marjorie whispered to me that the old lady must be an orphan. I would have told Marjorie that all very old ladies were orphans, but I didn't want to upset Marjorie for she was to help me buy a hat.

We pushed open the heavy doors by concerted effort and the old lady trotted with us to the hat department where the kind assistant offered to leave us to choose a hat by ourselves. She stationed herself a short way from us but assumed an athletic pose, ready to dash forward when we had made our choice which she seemed to assume would be a rapid one. But each hat I tried on made me feel more depressed and Marjorie and the old lady more hysterical, although they both tried to hide their amusement from me. Whenever I became suicidally miserable some quirk in my nature always came to my aid and put a comical thought into my mind. When Marjorie passed me an enormous black shiny hat my first reaction was that it was a fireman's helmet and that it had got into the hat department by mistake, for it had a band round the crown with a large brass buckle, a large brim back and front and no brim on either side. The finishing touch was a long chin strap also completed with a large gold buckle. I tried on this huge black shiny hat which came down over my face and turning to little ‘orphan Annie', I said, ‘Keep the fire going until I get there.' Marjorie crossed her legs like a pantomime horse and started to bleat like a goat, the old lady's teeth fell down and she shook like a little skeleton; putting out a hand to steady herself she knocked over a hat stand on which was displayed a beautiful pink creation crowned by a bird of paradise. The assistant advanced menacingly, aghast at my dreadful and unmannerly behaviour. What would Mother say? I ordered Marjorie to take the old lady's arm and we made our way hurriedly from the store.

It was some time before I could calm Marjorie and the little old lady. We saw the old lady across the road and waved to her until she was out of sight. As we walked to the bus we were very worried at what Mother would say when we arrived home without the hat she was eagerly awaiting. In this desperate state we espied in the window of a tiny draper's shop, a cream straw hat. Its brim was turned up on one side and edged with brown ribbon. As it was the colour of my new dress I went in and tried it on. It was pronounced ‘ladylike' by Marjorie, this would please Mother, and so we bought it. It cost 2s. 11¾d. and so we also had a packet of pins to bring home to Mother. She said ‘h'mm' when I tried on the hat at home, and David said it was the shape of the dustman's hat.

On the Saturday afternoon of the garden party I repaired to my bedroom to make myself into a lady. I left off my woollen combinations because they would have shown through the lovely georgette sleeves of the frock. After examining myself from all angles in the mottled swing mirror on the chest of drawers (I thought my arms showing through the georgette sleeves, the most beautiful I had ever seen), I walked slowly and gracefully down the stairs to receive Mother's approval, which I was sure would be ecstatic. Therefore I was unprepared for her look of horror and disgust, and all because I had removed my woollen combinations. I was ‘almost naked,' she insisted sternly. After arguing with Mother until she lost her temper I went upstairs in a fearful rage and put the wretched combinations on again. The elbow length sleeves looked dreadful under the beautiful georgette but Mother said my arms were now much more ladylike and so we set off, me with the sulks, no winning smile which was to obtain for me a wonderful situation in life. Mother had a beautiful tricorne straw hat in which she looked lovely, but having rushed to prepare tea for the rest of the family, and after experiencing such a tremendous argument with me, she hurriedly got ready and in her haste and upset hadn't realised she was wearing her hat sideways. I was so full of my own misery that I hadn't even looked at her garden party ensemble.

The anti-climax came when Sister Kathleen sadly informed us the City gentleman had had to rush abroad, and when we arrived home again the family became hysterical at the sight of Mother's hat. Mother said irritably, ‘That's Dolly's fault. I don't know what I can do about her.' Then she added that she realised now why the Vicar kept laughing at her. Someone had taken a snap of Mother and me at the garden party. My woollen sleeves showed through the dress and Mother's hat looked as though it had been put on her head after a drunken brawl. I asked her if I should tear up the photograph, and she gave me a hug and said, ‘Yes,' which was her way of telling me that georgette sleeves do look better on top of bare arms. I always wished I could have a hat face.

At about the time I left school my sister Winnie got married. I was happy for her, but sad for myself, for she was going to live right up in the bush in Australia and I was sure I would never see her again. I looked forward to the wedding for I thought it would be a grand affair in the church hall, as Winnie and her husband-to-be were grammar school graduates—he had been a private scholar at a very exclusive establishment in Wales. He was an officer in the Merchant Navy and Winnie's office colleagues who would be coming to the wedding were girls who didn't
have
to go out to work. They lived in places like Kensington and St John's Wood. One of them even owned a dog with a pedigree, and he had papers to prove it, and his name was Cayley Pop Off. I was a human and I only had a very small birth certificate. Winnie's office friends all had boys' nicknames and I thought it was either because they had no brothers or because they were ‘pin money' girls.

Winnie's future in-laws were all coming up from Wales and I imagined it would be, for Poplar, a society wedding with me an important bridesmaid. Alas, shock number one; Winnie decided, very sensibly thought Mother, to save the expense of a big white wedding with bridesmaids. It was more important to consider her future needs in a new country. She then decided to hold the reception at home, then the biggest shock of all to me, but applauded by the others, Winnie said as the weather was so hot she would have her wedding breakfast in our back yard. ‘But the lavatory is there,' I said to my father. ‘Quite a convenience,' he chuckled. ‘We can pop in and pop out.'

Mother always thought I was discontented, ‘agin the government,' or ashamed of my home. It was none of these things. Had it just been the family and local friends I would have been as happy as the rest of the family, but the thought of people from a different world coming to see what the others ignored, to me was agony. Winnie said ‘My friends come to visit me, not my surroundings.' All Winnie's friends were middle class and Mother said proudly, ‘Once any of them come here, they enjoy themselves so much they all want to come again.' This was true and they were all such lovely girls, I had to admit that. But I remember how I hated the ‘charabangs' which drove round the East End in the summer months loaded with tourists and a guide gazing with fright at the slums. My father used to say, ‘They don't know how the other half live,' and I would have liked to put my thumb to my nose at them. I didn't know the exact meaning of such a gesture but I knew it was something which would upset Mother and I never did it, but it seemed a suitable action in my frame of mind.