Mother Knew Best (12 page)

I now had a lot to write about and I thought about my father's elephants. When my parents were first married they lived near the Crystal Palace and one night my father returned somewhat merry from a regimental dinner. The road was dark and he slipped on something obnoxious on his front path. He managed to reach the steps to his basement door but when he went to go down them he found himself floundering about on something warm and rubber-like. Suddenly there was an unearthly scream. The windows flew open and Mother and the neighbours appeared with lamps. An elephant had escaped from a circus and wandering about in the dark it had got wedged in Father's area. The next day this poor creature was paraded round the streets in chains and my father said every now and then the other elephants would beat the escapee with chains. I cried when he told me that.

When the results of the composition contest were announced, Chegwidden of Woolmore Street, Poplar, had come top. I received a certificate and was over the moon, but no one at home seem surprised or enthusiastic, and my friends at school couldn't have cared less. They were always talking about the day they would leave school, ‘and get some money for our mum,' but my mother had never asked me for money. I never wanted any for myself although I nearly got pocket money after the war. Father lined David, Cecil, Marjorie and me up and said he would give us twopence every Saturday. When he came to my turn he had run out of coppers and told me to ‘ask your mother.' How could I ask Mother when I knew she ‘had to manage,' but he didn't keep it up with the others either. Mother bought me the girls' paper each week and one week Cecil came in and snatched it from me. I should have waited for it back, but I was in the middle of a story about a boarding-school, and, snatching it back, it tore just as Mother came into the room. ‘I will buy no more girls' papers if that is what is going to happen,' she said. Cecil laughed, but Mother was true to her word.

Fired with my composition success I entered the poetry contest. I wrote forty-eight verses about a cow and a donkey escaping from a cruel farmer. I was sure no one had ever written such a beautiful poem. When the results were announced I didn't even gain a mention and Miss White said perhaps now I would realise that what counted in this world was not quantity but quality. Nobody had told Mother that! Miss Wilkie sent for me. She had shown my composition to her friend, the headmaster of Millwall Central School and even though I hadn't passed the scholarship he would be pleased to give me the opportunity I deserved and accept me at his school. I was so excited I fell over twice on the way home and arrived with my knees bleeding and stockings torn which made Mother tut. While she was bathing my knees I stammered out my marvellous news. Mother said quite calmly, ‘Thank Miss Wilkie for her kindness, but we don't think a mixed school is suitable for you.' My father had seen the boys and girls ‘larking' about on the way home and had conveyed his views to Mother. There was no point in telling mother I wouldn't lark about, I only wanted to learn to be a teacher. I told Miss Wilkie and she said, ‘Such a pity, such a pity.' Still, Mother couldn't take my P badge away from me, and I knew she wouldn't want to. Why couldn't I have what the others had, why was Dolly different?

I was now old enough for the Girl Guides. I had listened avidly to the adventures of the other girls. Amy had badges from her wrist to the shoulder, Winnie was a lieutenant. They had such good times.

One day a princess was coming to inspect the guides in the local park. Winnie was the only one of the family to possess a Sunday hat. Mother received a grant for Winnie's school uniform and instead of buying at the prescribed shop, Miss Cook had made the school uniform more cheaply. Yet Winnie was thrilled and Miss Cook proud. The teachers all asked where Winnie obtained her uniform, and the paid scholars were jealous for Winnie's was tailor-made with better material. Mother had some money over from the grant. It was Winnie's money, said Mother,
she
had won the scholarship and she bought Winnie a cream straw hat with shiny cherries on it. No one had ever seen such a creation. Winnie kept it wrapped in tissue-paper and Amy envied and desired this hat more than anything.

On the morning of the guides' inspection Amy requested a loan of the hat. She wanted to impress her friends and perhaps the princess might see her. No, said Winnie, and off she went in her lieutenant's uniform. The princess had started down the rows of guides, standing to military attention when, across the park Winnie espied the hat. Amy was wearing it surrounded by admiring friends. Winnie shot out from the line of guides, and leaping all fences and railings in between she reached Amy, snatched the hat, thumped her and leaving her crying, re-leapt the railings and arrived back on parade holding her beautiful hat behind her back. She took it home, inspected it and wrapped it lovingly back in tissue-paper. But sadly one day she went to look at it and ‘someone' had bitten all the cherries until they turned into cotton wool. The lovely hat was ruined.

Amy was a patrol-leader and kept her pack under tight control. Once at camp she roused them at dawn and ordered them down to the river to bathe. They were all tired as they'd had hardly any sleep, and they had been up late singing camp-fire songs. They reached the river and Amy ordered them in, but just as they got into the water, wearing only their knickers, a herd of cows came galloping down to drink. Forgetting her pack Amy was the first to scramble through the nettles and brambles back to camp, where they all queued at the first-aid station.

When her pack was on kitchen duty, Amy insisted on doing the cooking, urging them on to refuel the fire. Suddenly the flames got too high and her uniform was burnt from neck to hem. I met the guides on their homecoming from camp. They must have been in a storm for their round felt hats were mis-shapen and pointed, their clothes were untidy bundles of rags underneath their arms, and one or two had met with accidents to the elastic of their bloomers. They looked dirty, tired and unrecognisable from the military pack that had moved off so freshly a week before. The following year they went to the seaside at Littlehampton, and Mother had a telegram to say that Amy had met with an accident. Letter would be following, nothing serious. Apparently, some bright spark had suggested a donkey derby. Amy was a jockey, but either she had got panicky when her saddle slipped or the donkey went too fast. Not only had she come off but the donkey had fallen upside down on top of her. Dad said he expected the donkey was more frightened than Amy. 

Mother said the guides wouldn't be suitable for me and I felt very sad when my younger sister, Marjorie, was allowed to join. I often wondered if it was the soldier's fault. Mother did worry about me. I wished I had been brave that day, perhaps I would have been a teacher, or at least a guide.

Mother spared no expense where a doctor was concerned for her children, although until now it had been a rare occurrence to have to call the doctor, the Cheggies were so healthy. At first we had Dr. Skelly, a grey-suited and grey-bearded man. He lived in a grey house in the main road and his surgery was in the basement. Always basements in Poplar. He invariably gave me the same medicine, cherry wine, pronounced delicious by the ‘tasters' in the family, but of course it was the vilest concoction ever. Mother had implicit faith in doctors for me, but if she ever needed one for herself she never believed the doctor. The different young partners who came to Mother would say laughingly, ‘Well, Mrs C., do you know what is wrong with you yet?' and Mother would say, ‘No, but it certainly isn't what you said.' She would meet a doctor's eye as he entered her bedroom and say, ‘Doctor, that medicine you gave me is of no use whatever, it has made me feel a lot worse.'

When she first had to wear spectacles the optician was trying her with a frame only, to get the correct fit, when Mother said indignantly, ‘Well, these are no use at all. I really think I can see better without spectacles!' My father bought his spectacles on stalls in the market, second-hand ones, for a few coppers. Metal-framed ones which he hammered, soldered and padded until they fitted him, the lenses being the most unimportant part, it seemed. He was a do-it-yourself medical man, too, for he visited the little shop near Upper North Street, a dark shadowy little shop with a tiny bow-fronted window, Baldwins, and here herbal medicines were sold. ‘You can't beat nature's remedy,' Father would say as he swallowed his rhubarb pills.

This shop also sold female pills and it puzzled me why male pills were not sold there too.

Mother always said we were a lucky family and never made a fuss when she was not well, so we were shocked when she was admitted to Poplar hospital with suspected gallstones. I didn't know how we could manage without her and it was a lonely feeling even though I had my brothers and sisters. Amy had two weeks' holiday and gallantly offered to be mother for that time, and promised everything would run on oiled wheels. She sincerely meant this and we had great confidence in her, although I knew I would not receive any special treatment regarding food I didn't like. It would be ‘take it or leave it.' She fetched the battered alarm clock from Mother's room and we all went to bed transferring all responsibilities and worries on to Amy's willing shoulders. She was shining with maternal ardour.

The next morning, however, I realised we were living in a fool's paradise to think anyone could take Mother's place, for we were rudely awakened by Father's shouting, ‘Bloody wars, gel, you'll have to do better than this, I'll get the sack.' We had all overslept. We rushed about leaving the house at minute intervals, without breakfast, tearing down the Grove as though our lives depended on it. Amy was very upset for she felt she let us all down. She could hardly avoid feeling this with recriminations pouring on to her shoulders from all directions. After all, she had possessed the alarm clock. She made up her mind to greet us that evening with a house spick and span and a truly delicious meal. Again we all believed her, for she really did mean it, but Marjorie and I arrived home from school to find Amy fast asleep. She had worked so hard all day attempting too much at once, washing, ironing, housework, cooking and, going upstairs in the late afternoon, had only sat on her bed for a moment. Exhausted she had fallen into a deep sleep.

Arthur complained that the collars of his shirt were creased and by Wednesday Amy had used up all the housekeeping which was supposed to last until Saturday. She had done lots of fancy cooking (with little cakes in crinkly paper to impress her boyfriend), and daily we were becoming more despondent, and, of course, bankrupt.

It wasn't any better for Mother. The hospital had decided to give her a starvation cure and on the Thursday when the doctor said she could have food again, she was given a piece of boiled fish which she said was as big as a walnut. The hospital sister then cheerfully told the doctor Mother had eaten a beautiful meal of lovely fish. Mother was feeling in a deprived mood therefore when Arthur and Father arrived for the visiting hour with their tales of woe and bankruptcy, not to mention rich food. Whether it was the minuscule size of the hospital fish or Father's low spirits, or whether Mother felt better, no one ever knew, but, much to the doctor's annoyance, she discharged herself, came home with Father and, without one moment's convalescence, became Mother again.

How different it had been for Father when he had been ill some years before at the little house. He did not disappear quietly and unobtrusively from our lives as Mother did, for we were woken one morning by the sound of a giant breathing painfully. The doctor arrived, diagnosed pneumonia, and ran from the house. Two policemen arrived with the wooden-slatted stretcher on wheels, the same stretcher which was used on Saturday nights to run a drunken man to the police station. But to show that Father was an accident and not a drunken man, the stretcher had an arch of black oilskin. Father was placed on the invalid carriage, wrapped in a red blanket, and strapped down. One policeman wheeled the stretcher while another walked by the side to assist its smooth passage along the bumpy road. Mother walked on the other side of the stretcher for Father was so ill she was going to stay with him through the crisis. The rest of the family followed the invalid down the Grove, those who weren't crying were trying to squeeze out a few tears for the sake of appearances, at the same time feeling a little ashamed that Father might be mistaken for a criminal because of the policemen and the wheeled contraption.

Mother came home so happy that Father had come through the crisis and one Sunday morning when she knew he was to sit on the balcony at Poplar hospital, she dressed us in our Sunday best and we walked to Poplar hospital to see him. We waited against the wall of the East India Docks until nurse brought Father out to a long chair. We crossed the road to the hospital railings. The older ones could see over the spearlike tops of the sooty iron railing, and the smaller fry squashed their faces in between the slats lower down. The nurse raised her hands when she saw us all, whether in surprise or horror I don't know, but she disappeared inside the french doors of the balcony and emerged quickly with two more nurses, one wearing a frilly baby's bonnet with a large white bow under her chin. They stared at us and we stared back, very respectfully of course, and when one nurse bent down and said something to Father we heard him shout in a strange voice which had gone all high and piping, ‘Yes, and they're ALL mine.' He threw his arms wide and appeared very excited. When we came home and told Mother about Father's high voice, she said, ‘Well, it was touch and go.'

So Mother was right to say we were lucky for her stay in hospital was brief, Father's successful, and Marjorie's visit very brief, but tragic for me, well, for my reputation. She was always fiddling about in drawers, or enquiring into things which had no earthly bearing on her circumstances, present or future, and even though I was reading an exciting book I was conscious of her ferreting. One afternoon Mother and I were in the kitchen and Marjorie was ‘busy' in the scullery, when she suddenly called to me in a voice of excited discovery. I went irritably into the scullery where she was standing at the kitchen sink with father's cut-throat razor in her hand. She was holding it, open and aloft, and as I entered she said, ‘This is marvellous. Look, it can even cut a hair off the back of my hand.' Before I had time to tell her to put such a dangerous thing away, she shouldn't have been going to Dad's cupboard in any case, with a theatrical sweep she drew the razor across her hand. The blade fell, slicing the back of her hand. For one horrible moment we both stood still, then she said, ‘Oh, just look Dolly, you can see my bones,' and then the blood came pumping out. I yelled for Mother who grabbed the pepper pot, smothered Marjorie's hand and said, quite casually I thought, that Marjorie must go to the hospital to have it stitched. Mother said to Marjorie, ‘Don't be frightened, you will have your big sister with you.' The big sister was apparently me. The first time I had been honoured with this title. Mother must have thought that in bestowing this title upon me at this time of crisis I would rise to the occasion.