Mother Knew Best (21 page)

At seventeen, as Mother considered me to be now a young lady, I was allowed to put my hair up. I would have liked to have had it bobbed, but daren't mention such a criminal act to my parents, for they had never got over the shock of Amy's brazenness when she had arrived home one day minus her lovely long, thick, dark tresses. She pranced into the kitchen thinking she looked truly beautiful. I thought she did, but Mother, shocked to the core, said in a great temper, ‘Get out of my sight, away from me, for you look just like a little monkey.' Father, always alert to the rights of the individual, even though it never got him anywhere, despatched one of the boys to the barber's for the return of Amy's shorn locks. I thought he intended to use them in his plumbing work, mixing them with tallow, even though the coil of waxed hair he used in his work was yellowish and snuff-coloured.

The barber, a Jewish man, called, strangely, Jesus, refused to part with Amy's hair and my father got in a swearing temper. I thought his remarks about Jesus not at all religious. Dad was certain that some blue-blooded duchess or, even worse, the rich wife of a bloated capitalist would be lording it about in a wig made of Amy's rich dark hair, and she the daughter of a red-hot socialist. I got the impression from my father that all aristocratic men were disease-ridden and all possessed bald-headed wives because of the rich food and wine they consumed, and I was so glad my favourite meal was sausages and I knew I would hate wine. No, it was much better to be poor—healthier according to Father—holier according to the vicar and so much easier to enter the kingdom of heaven—even though putting up my abnormally thick and unruly hair was proving a difficult task for Mother and a miserable time for me.

Mother had to agree it did not suit me in a bun on the top of my head. Someone remarked at that stage that it looked as though a swarm of birds or bees would fly out of my crown if a gun had been fired. In the end, my hair was divided into two thick uneven plaits. I wore a plaited circle over each ear called earphones. Ever after I lived in a quieter, more muffled world. As I almost had to lip-read and gazed intently at people while they were speaking to me, I gained the fine reputation of being a most sympathetic listener, and because of my direct staring look, a sincerely honest girl.

To keep my unruly earphones from falling down I was forced to use packets of iron hair-pins and my ears became almost permanently doubled over as ledges for my plaited coils. Coinciding with the raising of my tresses I suffered other dis-tresses; I suddenly became acutely self-conscious, and shy. I went through an agonising period of daily stage fright. Walking in the city streets to and from work and at lunchtime was sheer torture. I would wonder if I could walk across the pavement and reach the kerb with normal strides, or if I would be forced to take a couple of small mincing steps to get me down or up the kerbs safely. Would my normal paces take me beyond the kerb making me fall, or would I have to execute a shuffled hesitation at the kerb, and so cause a pile up of stockbrokers and city gents and ladies walking quickly behind me, unaware of impending doom? I would be underneath, unable to make a quick getaway.

In addition to this very real fear, if that wasn't enough, I was sure that my bloomers would fall down one day in the City. Suppose they fell down just as I was negotiating a kerb, how could I emerge from beneath the pile-up minus my bloomers, although perhaps if there were other ladies in the pile-up I could say they weren't mine? I took to wearing packets of safety-pins round the whole of my waist, pinning to my vest and petticoat the offending garment which was so set, I was sure, on doing an Isaac Newton on me. When I undressed at night and piled up the piles of hair and safety-pins, Marjorie said I could have opened an ironmonger's shop. Mother laughed at me and said I must avoid shops which sold magnets, or I might be dragged inside. When she saw my worried face she said, well, perhaps only pinned to the window.

My seventeenth year was a fearful one for me, small wonder that reaching the haven of my home, I stayed there, finding a more relaxed world of satisfaction in my books, and the green apples which I consumed non-stop. The doctor must have been wrong when he had insisted I was a gastric child, for I loved green apples, and they caused me no discomfort.

The job I had at General Buildings, Aldwych, was just up my street. The work was simple, the office staff easy-going, the wages enough for my needs and I settled down happily sure that an easy-going Mr Right was just around the corner. Mother would be pleased and life would go on without problems or calamities. At this firm was a young man, of good background, who came from Surrey. There was nothing between us, he was younger than me, he came to me for advice, and from my eighteen-year-old maternal and older-woman position I advised on life's problems and encouraged him in his ambitions to get on. Someone had given him an old motor-bike and he would tell me of his prowess on this wonderful and modern machine. As Mother believed me when I exaggerated as to my progress, so in a motherly way I believed this young man, and when one evening he suggested he drove me home to Poplar, I agreed, for I was saving up for a winter coat, and to save the sixpenny fare was a great incentive.

I waited in the Aldwych for this young man to appear and hardly recognised him for he was dressed as for a trip to the moon with an airman's flapped cap, enormous dark goggles, a mask, a thick fleecy-lined leather coat, wading leggings and laced boots. This ensemble convinced me he was the expert he had always vowed he was.

I sat on the pillion, finding it difficult to balance myself, and had to stretch painfully to get my arms around him. If I had not been afraid of hurting this young man's feelings I think I would have changed my mind about saving my fare at that moment. I was embarrassed, too, that my skirt had gone up to show more of my calves than was decent. However after the driver bashed the pedal down several times with no result and I was wobbling dangerously, suddenly with a terrific roar we shot off and I felt we were heading for the inside of the law courts. In a flash I knew this young man was not the efficient dirt-track rider he had boasted to me he was. I was panic-stricken and in pain for scalding hot splashes of water were spurting over the inside of one of my legs. Terrified I would fall off the back of the pillion and be run over, I tugged at my chauffeur with all my strength, anxious not to be the girl he left behind. He was mouthing something I couldn't decipher (I learnt later he, too, was terrified at being pulled off the bike, my hold was so limpet-like), and we reached Aldgate in no time, swaying perilously all the time. We went round the wrong side of a tram in Commercial Road, the tram-driver swore at us and people on the pavements stopped and stared in amazement. I was sure I would not see my family again and was sorry for the unkind things I had done and said to them all my life. They were all so lovely in my final memories of them. Fortunately the young man was efficient at turning the bike and we arrived in Arthur Street. Shaking, dirty, bits of grit in my eyes, my hair had come down, my leg was red and wet, I tottered up the Grove, thankful Mother hadn't seen me, unaware that news had already spread like wildfire before me. ‘Your Dolly's in Arthur Street with a big man on a motor-bike.'

I entered the peace and calm of no. 13. Mother was sitting in a chair with her Judge Jeffreys face on. She usually jumped up on my arrival, but this time she sat silently still. Marjorie, and Agnes who was visiting and waiting for her husband, and Amy and her fiancé stood by, a silent jury. No one smiled or said hallo, and I stammered out, ‘What's the matter?' ‘Matter?' said Mother, ‘You have something to tell me.' ‘No,' I said, looking every inch a criminal. ‘What do you mean?' ‘Well,' said Mother in a tone of great triumph, ‘You were seen with a man getting off a motor-bike in Arthur Street.' She said Arthur Street as though it were Sodom and Gomorrah. I glared at Marjorie, obviously the spy responsible for my presence in the dock. Marjorie promptly burst into tears. Mother was now angry that innocent little Marjorie should be accused and Mother didn't want the subject turned by attention being paid to Marjorie. Agnes started to cry in sympathy with her sister. I thought Mother enjoyed her judge's role in a way, for she was sure right was on her side. The difficulty was that I was not sure what crime I was charged with, and it would have been impossible to ask, for that would make Mother more cross than ever. I saw my Ethel Mannin book opened on the dresser. Oh, God, surely Mother hasn't been reading that. Ethel Mannin was so modern and before her time. I knew what page the book was open at. ‘She came willingly to his arms and it seemed to them both that two dark rivers had mysteriously flowed together, first on a high flood in spate and then reaching the calm flowing of one river now,' or something to that effect. Perhaps Mother knew what it meant. I didn't.

I tried to say I had just had a lift home with the office boy, but I caught sight of myself in the mirror, I looked as though I'd been dragged home through the jungle. In tears, rage, and pain I ran out of the room and up to bed. I knew I should have thought before riding on a motor-bike. No one did that, only ‘fast' girls. Mother knew I was not fast, so why did she always worry so about me?

All I ever wanted was a peaceful existence, and no one seemed to want to leave me alone. Arthur's wife had heard of a vacancy for a shorthand typist with a firm of rating surveyors and valuers in Bridewell Street. The wages were 35s. per week which was more than many men were getting then. Now my chickens were coming home to roost for I had boasted of my shorthand speeds. All lies. I couldn't tell Mother I was a liar, that would be the last straw. I couldn't refuse the interview, the family would not have allowed it. Perhaps, I hoped, I wouldn't get the job. But I did.

I was in an office with three of the most expert stenographers I ever met in the whole of my City life. They were elderly but rapid workers. I had one week's reprieve from execution for the boss was away rating public houses in Hampshire, and I did some copy-typing and got to know ‘les girls.' They were very motherly to me and very kind. I should have told them my dread secret, but I hoped something would happen to me before it was discovered. I hadn't had appendicitis, I prayed for that. My prayers remained unanswered, and a week after I started at Bridewell Street I was summoned to the boss's office. I had been warned he was the fastest dictator in the city. They said he started dictating as he heard the office door open.

This doom-laden morning he had filled the other girls' note-books full and the number five sign in the glass box on the wall, waggled. Up I got, new notebook, sharpened pencil. They were right. As I opened the door I heard a voice talking at great speed about hereditaments in Dorset. I wrote down ‘h' perhaps I'd remember some of it. My pencil broke and as I reached the typist's chair my tears fell fast and sudden. Gone was the great dictator. As I poured out my sobbing story he began to laugh. He passed me a clean white handkerchief and said he would pay for me to attend the city of London College in Ropemaker Street until I was proficient in shorthand. In the meantime I could take slow dictation from the many young men articled to his firm. He said I was a young lady of promise. I didn't know what he meant, but he said the young men would be pleased to help me. And they were. All sorts of sizes of young men came to that office, all very upper class, and all charming, and each one helped me with dictation. It was, I thought, quite pleasurable. But in the outer office was a very ancient lady filing-clerk. Her minion was a tiny cockney office-boy, delicate, anaemic, with enormous bags under his eyes. I often used to think these bags were the largest thing about him.

I was coming through the outer office one day, the first one back from lunch, the office deserted and quiet, when this young boy flung himself at me and smothered me with kisses. He was like a limpet, I just couldn't tear him off. I was furious. If someone came into the office what would they think of me ? I was the older one, I would have led him astray. No one, I guaranteed, would have believed that a boy of this office-boy's age would have such feeling. I thought there must be something radically wrong with him, he certainly wasn't a boy. I dragged myself away, I daren't tell anyone, who would believe me, and I didn't want him to get the sack because he needed the money. I warned him what I would do if he ever did such a wicked thing again, and he just grinned and smacked his lips. So every lunch-time I either had to be late back from lunch, or wait until the elderly lady returned to the outer office from wherever she was wont to disappear. I could have coped with any of the charming young men, but this brazen boy, delighted with his prowess, was like a mosquito on the back of a rhinoceros.

I knew I could never take to my home any of the young men articled there, but the matrimonial committee of elderly ladies didn't, and neither did the young men. I went to the theatre with one young man and to Scottish dancing with another who had delightful brothers and a charming father, but his mother, straight-faced and unbending insisted on addressing me as Miss Chegwidden, plied me with questions as to what my father did, why I lived in Poplar, and what my brothers and sisters were. When she knew I had nine, she nearly collapsed. I wanted to tell her not to be frightened for her son, but who could blame her ?

Each year the senior partner took us all to lunch in a Surrey hotel, then home to his large house at Esher where we played games, won prizes, and had tea. He had a beautiful garden with a small river running through it. He was a charming man but he never took off his bowler-hat and when he passed me a large gun for target shooting—everybody had to try everything—I got nervous and fired it before I should have done and one of the pellets hit his hat. He wasn't cross, in fact he showed no emotion whatsoever, he just took the gun away and passed it to the next guest. But the next year he must have remembered for when it was shooting time he waggled his finger after me and pointed to the clock golf course. His son looked after me and said I was like a cornflower in a field of thistles. I suppose I was the only young female there, and I had no competition. I could never relax as the others did. When the lady of the house asked how my garden at home was looking, balancing my delicate china cup, saucer and plate on one knee took all my attention, I didn't exactly tell a lie when I said, ‘The grass needs cutting,' for we did have a couple of blades. The daughter of the house usually draped herself on the lawn. I couldn't take my eyes off her, she was like a picture from the
Queen
. She went to the Slade school of art and I felt like a clumsy red beetroot beside her.