Mother Knew Best (9 page)

I was glad to be away from that grown-up boy next door who held a sixpence in his hand, and whispered in a nasty hoarse voice when the girls who were not grown up went through the yard, ‘I'll give you sixpence for a look.' All the girls ran frightened indoors. Sixpence was a fortune but we knew he was a nasty boy-man.

The day we moved I said goodbye to our little house. I went into the tiny yard and removed the loose brick from the wall. It was my secret place for my treasures, although all I ever had in it was my ‘bonce and gobs' (five-stones); the bonce was a real ball but the gobs were just rounded stones I had collected, but with use they had become just right for bonce and gobs, and I was a champion.

I looked at the drain and wondered where the horrible eel was now. Mother came into the yard and must have read my thoughts for she laughed at my face and said, ‘There is no worry now, he's probably swimming in the North Sea,' I thought of a huge black monster in the ocean and hoped he wouldn't turn over the ship that Charlie was a sailor in, but if the thing had turned the ship over I would still rather it was in the North Sea than anywhere near me. I remembered the day of its escape and I shuddered, but anyway it was Charlie's eel so he was to blame if it was causing trouble anywhere. He had brought it home as proudly as if he'd been on a dangerous mission and had captured it at the risk of his life. Because he was so pleased and excited about this creature Mother tried to hide her fear and dislike of the wet and slimy reptile.

Charlie said if it were taken care of it would grow as large as a boa-constrictor and it was tenderly placed in a pail of water in the tiny back yard. He fed it regularly and it really did begin to grow. To me it seemed enormous. I was terrified of it, it seemed to know when I was going through the back yard, for it swam round in its pail and looked straight at me with its two wicked eyes. When Mother was hanging out the washing and looked at this snake up went her shoulder and in went a little siphon of breath. My brother used to stroke it and talk to it. Goodness knows what he intended to do with it, for it was getting too big for its pail. Would it come into the house looking for more water? I used to cling to Mother's skirts tightly on the way to bed, pleased when all the windows were closed, and this serpent was with me in my dreams. What it would do when it found me I never dared to think, and an invitation from my brother to touch it sent me into hysterics.

My day of salvation came in the shape of little Marjorie. Whether she was just being curious about the eel (she was known as Miss Inquisitive) or whether it was an accident during play I don't know, but the eel's pail was knocked over and out slid the eel. Our screams brought Mother to the yard but with one terrified look she ran back into the house, whereupon I began to cry. I thought she had left me to my oft dreamt-of fate. I couldn't run after her for I would have to pass the eel and the yard was so small. If I ran out of the gate it might start to chase me. I knew that its life's desire was to get me. If I had been brave enough to touch it when invited, it might not dislike me so much now.

Just as I felt the eel was mesmerising me and I couldn't move, Mother came running from the house. In her hands she held her best pair of fire-tongs, which had been a wedding present. They were about a yard long, shining silver with round ends about the size of a penny, but they were hinged at the top and only an expert could pick up a piece of coal with them, for the two hinges seemed to swivel round and move the wrong way as you grasped a piece of coal. They went sort of knock-kneed. I felt ashamed to have thought that Mother would have deserted me. She advanced very slowly and quietly on to the silent snake but just as she was ready to close the tongs it made a lightning movement and Mother just missed it. Calmer now, and a bit more desperate, and perhaps brave, for it hadn't attacked so far, though of course it was now nearer the drain, she really lunged at the eel and at one time actually held it for a few seconds in the tongs, but their length was defeating her. She was like someone trying to eat spaghetti for the first time with giant chopsticks, although I doubt if a spaghetti-eater would have uttered the warlike cries Mother was uttering; the eel, however, perhaps bruised by the tongs became very lively and made fast for the drain. I thought perhaps his brothers and sisters were calling him from the sewers.

Mother really did have another chance to retrieve him and be decorated for bravery by my brother, but suddenly she smiled at me, stood back and let the tongs fall and I felt like cheering when the eel finally disappeared down the drain. Mother went back into the house with a guilty look on her glad face for now she would have to face the eel's sorrowing owner and prepare her story. She would never say who knocked over the pail, but the echo of her karate-like cries lingered on in that little yard.

There was great excitement and activity the day we moved to no. 13. Father and now two of the boys were away at the front, and there was no money for removal expenses, but we all helped. Mother had a neighbour to whom she had been kind, Mrs Nicholson, who was in Mother's opinion as good as any man. She was a thin, pale woman, very sad and tired-looking. She took the frames and windows out of the bedroom when the mahogany chest of drawers got wedged on the stairs. Marjorie was only four years old but she also helped and was given the china chamber-pot, the one with the roses on, to carry to the new house. I wouldn't have carried it even though Mother laughed and said, ‘It is clean,' but Marjorie carried it as proudly as if she were carrying the crown jewels and seemed pleased when everyone laughed at her careful progress down the Grove.

When Mrs Nicholson saw the basement at no. 13 with doors opening on to the outside world from both front and back of the house, she said in awed and excited tones, ‘Isn't it wonderful, Mrs Cheg, you will be able to have all the doors open to let all the nasty odours out.' This caused great merriment amongst us all, Mother trying to still our laughter and not to giggle herself, for she wouldn't have caused any hurt to her kindly, strong helper.

No. 13 contained six fair-sized rooms on three floors: the ground floor, although semi-basement, was much brighter and lighter than at the little house, and the kitchen, or living-room, had french doors which led into the area with steps up to the front garden and gate. The scullery had the same doors and steep steps leading to the yard and lavatory, which we all called the W, like a ranch, but Father always called it the W.C. or water closet, and on the red-painted door he printed in his beautiful white printing the capital letters W.C. I never knew why he did this for we all knew what it was.

On the ground floor, although it was quite above ground level and had a dozen or so steps to it from the front garden path, was the front room, our parlour, and a back room, my parents' bedroom. On the second and last floor were two large rooms, bedrooms for the family.

The front room had a bay window and there Mother lovingly placed her aspidistra after tenderly wiping it with a milky cloth. She visited Killwicks at Stepney and bought a green plush sofa and two matching armchairs. They had mahogany curved arms and legs and beautiful cream roses on the seats of green plush. A carved mahogany occasional table, a rug by the marble fireplace and a mahogany overmantel with many mirrors on it completed the furnishing of this luxury room. Father was very cross when he arrived home from the war; he thought Mother was turning into an extravagant woman, for she was to pay 2s. 6d. per week for this new furniture. But she said, ‘Well, Agnes, Winnie and Amy are at work and you, Arthur and Charlie will be starting, now that the war is over, it will be nice for them to have somewhere they can bring their friends.'

Father was not at all pleased and he only visited this elegant room at Christmas time, for he thought he was an economical member of the family having made his own chair. It was a monstrosity. A barrel. He had sawn some of the front staves of the barrel away, made a seat and arms and padded and upholstered these arms in some velvet he had found. He painted the barrel a horrible brick colour with some paint he had by him, then because he had to have things to last for ever he had wired the barrel round with strong wire, but where he had twisted the ends and cut the wire with pliers it was most hazardous for stockings and legs and it was something we all had to be wary of. He was like a circus performer when he sat in this barrel, for he could swing round, reach to the table, or the mantelpiece or wherever he wanted without alighting from his carriage. No one else could do it, for the barrel would roll over fiercely if anyone else tried to turn while sitting in it. It was unbalanced by nature.

We never gave Dad the satisfaction of knowing how very comfortable this barrel was but it was sought after by all the family when he was away, although at the sound of his approach the barrel-sitter would get out very swiftly, not because Dad would have minded, but because we had all insulted it so much we couldn't let him know it was like a pullman car. From this seat he would shoot expertly into his spittoon, and as I sat near him, reading, I almost grew up with a twitch, for although he never missed I was always worried he might. But now that we had an elegant front room the days of his spittoon were numbered and very soon it was gone from his life. When he said he missed it, I would have liked to say that he always did, but that would have been a lie, for he was as good as any cowboy in a saloon at the pictures. Dong!

We settled down happily at the bigger house. If thirteen was an unlucky number to some, it never seemed so to the Cheggies. If my mother brain-washed us into thinking she was a lucky woman, we were lucky people, God had been good to us, she did it so subtly it was like that whiff of chloroform at the dentist's, very pleasant, putting the accent on the nice rather than the nasty. ‘You all have your faculties,' said Mother. ‘You must all be thankful for that.' I thought some of the family had more faculties than others, but agreed that we were all normal. Now I wonder if we were, for none of us walked down the Grove on the way home. Some of us looked like competitors in a walking race all disqualified at the tape, for the magnetic pull of home was too strong for any of us to walk there. From four o'clock onwards every day at regular intervals could be seen one member of the family running madly towards no. 13, and we would start to call, ‘Mum,' as soon as we turned into the gate.

We leapt down the steps to the kitchen and Mother was always standing by the door in her black frock, lace collar pinned with her brooch which had an amber stone in the centre. The white cloth was on the table, the kettle singing on the fire, we were home. It was a happy place of roaring laughter, fierce argument, but never a fight, never a quarrel and never a sulk. Peace began again immediately after a difference of opinion. Nothing was ever held over like a dark cloud, the sun broke through immediately after a storm, which at no. 13 was only a shower. In all my life I never once heard Mother say, ‘I'll tell your father,' which almost every other mother said, and she thought a sulky person a dreadful person. Only once was she not standing waiting to greet me with a smile when I returned home from school. She was still smiling then but sitting down in the wooden armchair. She had walked backwards down the kitchen steps after getting milk from the dairyman and had split her head open, necessitating a visit to hospital for stitches. The cloth was on the table but it was a terrible feeling for Mother to be sitting and not standing. I didn't like it at all.

She did something unheard of in the Grove. She planted grass seed in the little front garden, and Father made window-boxes so that Mother could plant her favourite petunias. The morning after Mother had planted the grass seed I woke up early. I had been excited the evening before; I was sure the grass would have grown and the Chegwiddens would have a lawn the very next day. I rushed downstairs, splashed my face at the scullery sink; ‘Never leave the house dirty,' Mum always said, and I went out to see the magic carpet. It was still black earth—what had gone wrong?—and there in the middle of the little front garden was a large printed notice standing up on a piece of wood for all the world to see; ‘Please keep off the grass.' Mother was very amused and soon all the Chegwiddens came out to inspect the notice, all giggling. We couldn't recognise the printing and never discovered the wag. But the grass did come up, thinly, and from a distance, if you held your head low coming home from school, Marjorie and I agreed it looked shadowy green. Someone once gave Mother a present of a delicious Cox's Orange Pippin, and she planted a pip from this in a little red pot. It grew, with her loving care until it was four inches tall, when ‘someone' inquisitive, accidentally snapped it in two. Mother bound it up with sticky rag and it was planted in the garden of the new house Arthur and his bride were buying at Beckenham. It grew into a fertile tree always laden with fruit and it was called Mother's tree.

One Saturday morning I decided that Marjorie, who was now grown up, being four years old, should come along with me to Poplar Recreation Ground. As it was so early in the morning we would be the first ones there and thus be able to choose any swing we liked. Marjorie, all excited, ran with me to the park. I was right, no other children were there, and the old woman in charge of the children's playground was only just unlocking the little padlock to the swings when we arrived. She had very bad feet and little pieces of her shoes were cut to let her feet out. Hairs grew out of little hard shiny bumps on her chin and I used to think she was very fortunate these bumps and long black hairs were only on her chin. My father had told us of the man he knew who had a long black hair growing out of a bump on his nose, and who one day had a fit of sneezing and thrashed himself to death.

I chose a big girl's swing, the end one near the railings beyond which was a very large shed. We never played in the shed for it always had a funny smell even though it was open-fronted and looked out across the park. Marjorie being happily settled on a babies' swing, I dismissed her from my mind. No harm could come to her in the children's playground. The old lady was in charge, there was a gate and railings all round our swings. I was happy, alone among the empty big girls' swings. At any time I liked I could change my swing, I could even have a go on all of them and in my dream world of plenty I swung joyfully on that sunny Saturday morning.