Mother Knew Best (18 page)

Our back yard with steep steps down to the scullery and steep steps up to the ground floor, was bounded on three sides by other small yards. On one side a man kept pigeons which continually bleated. They didn't coo like doves in my books, but I thought they might on Winnie's wedding day. On the other side lived a retired accountant who had married his housekeeper. He had come down in the world to Poplar and spent his time, between fights with his wife, drinking heavily. His wife possessed glittering black eyes so that sometimes she had four black eyes, and the noise of her screaming when the rows were on was something terrible to hear. She seemed to goad the old man into attacking her. I thought it would make an unhappy background to a wedding to hear black-eyed Susan screaming. The funny thing was, I liked her very much, and she had two extremely beautiful and superior-looking daughters, and a delicate little son. On the third side the daughter of the house sang continually. She had a voice as good as any prima donna, reaching the highest note with ease. Even Father said it was a treat to listen to Emmy Hart so she must have possessed a remarkable voice. When I sang he would say, ‘I think you must want to go to the double u,' but I still loved to sing even though he thought I had stomach ache.

Winnie calmly and gaily went on with her plans, not knowing my secret thoughts, not that it would have made any difference. Suppose the guests wanted ‘to go' while the wedding breakfast was in progress. How could they step a few yards from the table to the W.C. in front of everyone? Worse still, suppose no one did, but me. This thought sent me to and from the lavatory for an hour before the wedding. Dolly always had to make sure.

Winnie's frock was made of blue silk, trimmed with lace, her hat a pretty cream straw. Marjorie was half a bridesmaid as although her new frock was summery it was not so fussy that it would not do service for Sunday school on summer days. In view of my delicate condition and approaching business-hood, my new frock was made of dark blue, long sleeved, and in a warm material, and it pricked. Marjorie was photographed with Winnie after the wedding on the steps of the church while the guests were throwing confetti.

Mrs Spink had been left at home while the wedding was in progress to guard the tables against marauding cats, and I wondered if she would have started on the luxurious sausage rolls and if they had been counted for one each. Although each dish was shrouded with white tissue-paper so no dust would fall on the food, I knew Marjorie and my brothers might find a way in, were they to have been left in charge. On Sundays when we were all at home Mother always counted things when she got the tea and cut the big cake ready for one piece each and so many prunes each. One day Arthur had eaten two of the stewed prunes after Mother had placed them in her china vegetable-dish on the dresser ready for ‘afters.' Winnie had said, ‘Now, that's not fair, Arthur, you know how Mother has to manage for us all,' and someone said, ‘Pop two rabbit's eyes in the bowl, they look the same.' The numbers came out right anyway for although I knew it was only a joke I never ate my prunes because of just the thought of the rabbit's eyes. Sitting down to Sunday tea when we were all at home Agnes noticed one slice of cake short, eleven pieces instead of twelve and she began to tell a tale about a cake cut in pieces and a little girl left alone in a room with the cake. Marjorie was playing underneath the table and at this lovely story she came out to listen enthralled and when Agnes reached the part where the little girl steals a piece of cake Marjorie was beside herself with delight. ‘That little girl was me,' she said proudly, and everyone laughed, well, all except me, I thought Marjorie could get away with anything.

Mrs Spink was the ‘lady' who came in on washing-days to help Mother. There was a huge pile of washing and Mother would light the copper fire early on Monday morning and not finish until tea time. Mrs Spink was a very poor woman who lived in Ivy Cottages, backing on to the Grove. She was a suppressed little creature with dark hair which she did up in strips of rag to obtain a faint curl in her hair. Her husband was like a pink Humpty-Dumpty and even though he had no hair it was obvious he had been a ginger man. He worked up in the City as an export packer and I could never understand why she was so poor, for she really was. Mother said her underclothes were pitiful to see. I wondered how Mother saw Mrs Spink's underclothes for this lady always wore a long skirt, man's boots and a knitted jumper stretched out of shape with moth-holes in it. Her poverty always puzzled me for she and her husband had no children and I had often heard Mother say, ‘Children keep one poor.' Mrs Spink adored my mother as though she were a creature from a different world. She insisted on calling her ‘Mum' as though my mother was mistress of one of the big houses, and she thought my mother's cooking was marvellous. She got on my nerves a bit for she was always disturbing my train of thought. Mother would always have us polite, and Mrs Spink was for ever saying nonstop, ‘Ain't it handsome, Dolly?' ‘Ain't it grand, Dolly?' ‘Ain't it beautiful, Dolly?' and Monday dinner times I spent my time saying, ‘Yes, Mrs Spink, Yes Mrs Spink.' On Mondays, washing-day, when there was only Marjorie and I left at home, we always had lentil soup, cold beef with baked potatoes in their jackets into which we pushed a knob of margarine, and then a pudding. Since Mother always made Mrs Spink a cup of tea and gave her a slice of cake as well, I thought her an enormous eater for such a little person.

Once Mother gave Mrs Spink a glass of home-made ginger wine and she drove me mad, much to Mother's amusement. 

For weeks it was, ‘Oh, the sensation, Dolly.' I supposed it was the only sensation she ever had in her life. Mother would buy mushrooms for my father and Mrs Spink would ask, ‘Are them the edgicated ones, Mum?'

Father couldn't understand why Mother had to employ Mrs Spink on wash-day for had he not bought Mother the world's first washing-machine? He had brought it home proudly one day not expecting it would receive such a reception from Mother. It consisted of a broom handle at the end of which was a copper trumpet. In the trumpet where it joined the handle were circular holes and through the holes one could glimpse glass marbles. This machine had to be pumped vigorously up and down in the bath of hot soapy clothes. It needed a strong navvy to work it, or a tall Amazon. Mother treated it with disgust after Father gave the first demonstration of this wonder invention. Watched by an eager family, rolling about in hysterics, Father tottered out of the scullery wet, red, hot and exhausted and breathing heavily. The machine worked on suction and he had to keep stopping his plunging activities to tear the clothes off the trumpet. It was obvious from Mother's pursed lips that she would never use this modern invention. Father had met his match once again in Mother, and the machine was left to stand in the little L-shaped corner of the scullery where over the years it turned greener and greener. ‘That's the last thing I do for your mother,' Father shouted. ‘She's an obstinate woman in every respect, against progress, we
must
move with the times,' he yelled. Then he went on about the working man being his own enemy. So Mother engaged Mrs Spink.

Mrs Spink had not started on the wedding feast. The tables were a picture and everyone seemed jolly. Later we had dancing and singing, Amy recited and Winnie's young brother-in-law chased Marjorie and me all over the house, down, up, in and out until Mother called me aside and ordered me to stop. In a hoarse whisper she informed me that I mustn't indulge in horse play now I had reached my teens. It was all right for Marjorie I thought, and I felt like giving her a push. Because I had been having such a good time I had forgotten all about the lavatory in the yard, in any case, Mother had said my thoughts in that direction proved to be ‘mock modest.' In some way Mother had made me feel very ashamed of myself for I hadn't thought there was that mysterious dark bad thing about being chased all over the place, and I wondered if any of the guests had observed my wickedness, whatever it was, and I knew they would know all about it. I sat quietly in the front room from then on. This pleased Mother for I knew she felt I was now safe, but I began to try to describe Winnie's wedding in my thoughts with little rhymes, when into my mind came the words ‘urinal union.' I stopped, horrified at my wicked brain, for Mother always gave a refined disgusted look whenever Father mentioned that he had been working down at the ‘men's urinal,' and I knew that must be a filthy and vulgar establishment.

Winnie went to the Bonnington Hotel for her honeymoon. It was in London and she and her husband were to stay there until they embarked to Australia. The day she left was heartbreaking, the whole family tried to send her off happily, but it was no good. It was as though she had gone somewhere to die. The girls from Winnie's office cried too. They said they would never meet anyone else like ‘Cheggie,' the office would be dead without her. As it was obvious they really meant this, Mother was very proud and she said, ‘Isn't it funny how people seem to take to our family?' So we were all included in Winnie's popularity poll. I knew myself to be different from the others, I was not open and naturally ‘taken to.' I knew that I was a hypocrite, a false friend, for I had to ‘curry favours.'

When the vicar told us of how Judas had betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver, he said the name of Judas in such terrible tones I knew that to betray for silver was the worst crime a man could commit, yet in my heart I thought Judas didn't have much choice, for it had been foretold in the scriptures. I also thought thirty pieces of silver a mighty big temptation. However, the vicar made his point and I prayed each night I would never be tempted. My friends were all convinced they would never betray a friend, but I was rather worried for myself. Of course I wouldn't betray Jesus, but a human, well, that was nearer to earth and although I agreed with my friends that we were all righteous, something inside nagged me. I knew myself better than they did.

After Winnie was gone I was swanking to my friends about the rich things Winnie had taken with her to the bush. Ivy Smith said she had been right all the time, the Chegwiddens were rich and I had told a lie when I said we weren't. Who but a rich person could buy a real tortoise-shell comb? I could see that because I was showing off my popularity was beginning to wane, and when the comb was mentioned again I repeated what my eldest sister's husband had jokingly said to Winnie, ‘Real tortoise-shell, won't the fleas be stuck up.' They all laughed and at my dear Winnie's expense I regained my popularity.

I wrote to Winnie regularly, worried at her hard times. She worked like a navvy and met with disaster. Her home and possessions (oh, that real tortoise-shell comb) were destroyed by fire while she was rushing her husband to hospital on the horse-drawn waggon. Finally when it seemed prosperity was round the corner (they had a bumper wheat harvest), there was a wheat slump in Australia and I read that wheat had been dumped in the sea.

Yet Winnie, in spite of everything, found time to think of us at home. She sent me a pretty silk dress, with a portcullis arrangement round the waist. Each square of the portcullis was filled with a heavy round weight. I was so sure each weight was a silver half-crown that I unstitched the silk. But Mother was right, and Dolly shouldn't have been so unbelieving, for they
were
round discs to keep the portcullis from creasing so the frock would always look smart. I never told Winnie, but I never got it stitched back to its original chic-ness.

And, a great joy to Mother, Winnie sent Mother her first fur coat. Mother cried because she never thought she would ever have a fur coat (I didn't know she wanted one). She was touched and overjoyed with it, everyone admired it, Marjorie loved it and Mother lorded it in this fur coat at the Mothers' Union. Little cat that I was, I thought it hideous. It was, to me, an enormous coarse grassy-looking monster of a coat for it was, said Mother proudly, real kangaroo. ‘And it looks it,' I said.

Mother had been the proud possessor of this kangaroo coat for some time when the General Strike took place. Father was very poorly with influenza, and as Mother was worried about Father's influenza, because he'd had pneumonia once, she placed the kangaroo coat on his bed. I thought he would turn into a gingerbread man with the weight of it for it had a heavy satin lining as well. Mother left instructions for Father not to get up at any time to go to the outside lavatory. He must use the beautiful mahogany commode which she kept in case of serious illness. It had a tapestry picture of the countryside embroidered on its lid. Father was most indignant at this invitation. His pride was so great he would have been dying before he performed on a bed-pan.

One day, during the strike, I was playing ball in the back yard when I heard the top door open very noisily and saw my father falling down the steep stone steps on a visit to the lavatory. His face was scarlet, his eyes glazed, but he had heeded Mother's warning that he must avoid a further chill. He was wearing his long pants, his best boots unlaced, the heavy furry grassy kangaroo coat, and in his delirium, realising he must keep his balding head covered, he had tied a thick woollen scarf over his head and under his chin. To crown this ensemble he was wearing three hats, a cap, a straw panama and a velour trilby, the finishing touch being a large brown paper bag, lying slightly askew the hats. They had been put away, one inside the other, in the paper bag, and they leant drunkenly on top of the scarf like the leaning tower of Pisa. He looked like an eccentric millionaire because of the fur coat.

I fell down the steps to call Mother. ‘Dad's out, Dad's out,' I yelled. Mother and the rest of the family who were not out cheering the strike on, rushed into the scullery and gazed out of the windows in the scullery door waiting for the invalid's return. He staggered out of the lavatory, ensemble still intact, and was making his way to the upstairs steps when his dazed glance caught us all staring at him from down below. He tottered on the brink of the very steep steps and Mother said, ‘All get back, we're hypnotising him, he'll fall down the steps and kill himself.' He gazed in a stupid way and shook his head as though in a dream, for suddenly we all disappeared from sight, but Mother's order worked like magic and he tottered up the stairs back to his sick bed and sanity. When Mother returned from tucking him in she said, ‘It is true, we all have a guardian angel to look after us,' and one wag remarked that Dad's guardian angel must be rushing back to heaven to give the other angels a laugh. ‘Your father is a very proud, clean living man,' said my mother.