Mother Knew Best (3 page)

Mother had been with the family for many years and was earning £13 a year. She was so anxious to save up to get married that she did a thing unheard of in the servants' hall. She asked for a rise. Old Mrs Green was horrified and indignant as Mr Bumble was. ‘Are you not happy here, Leah, you have a good home and situation, have you not?' Mother greatly daring and having burnt her boats said she thought Mrs Green begrudged her the money she did pay, and left the room preparing in her mind to pack her clothes for she would surely be dismissed in disgrace. But much to the astonishment of the other servants Mrs Green gave her the rise she asked for.

We would listen as little children to the tales of ‘the gentry,' of the enormous joints of meat and of the terrible waste of lovely food. The larders were bigger than our little house, and sometimes in the morning the huge vats of dripping would be wiped clean as though someone had washed them—rats, I thought. Then the gamekeeper would organise a rat hunt and all the men would take part. I wonder if Mother thought about this waste of food when years later, with a young family to feed, she was down to her last crust. I don't suppose so, for she always looked forward, never back. She never complained about her years in service, the long hauls upstairs with buckets of coal, the petty restrictions, and she never voted ‘Labour' much to Father's disgust.

My parents were opposite personalities. He was a fiery socialist, banging the table while glaring at Mother and shouting, ‘Better conditions for the workers, better conditions for the workers. Churchill robbed the road fund of sixty thousand pounds.' I thought that must be wrong. If my father knew it so did the police and Mr Churchill was not in prison. My mother infuriated my father for she wouldn't argue but would smile gently and he knew, however fierce he waxed, that she would remain a Conservative. ‘Your mother's bloody obstinate and can't see further than the nose on her face,' he would scream, but still she wouldn't be drawn and he nearly choked when he thought of what Keir Hardie, Beatrice Webb and Ramsay Macdonald (well not so much him) had done for Mother and she was still disloyal to her class.

Father was selfish and sometimes uncouth, I thought, well a little, and I didn't like to see him arranging his truss when it became uncomfortable, although this was not to be wondered at for he had made it himself. It was an instrument of torture. An iron band sewn around with bits of padding and old shirts. Mother used to smile enigmatically and say, ‘He only
thinks
he's ruptured,' but selfish as he was she was very proud of him, and his comfort and well-being were her chief concerns. She had nursed him through meningitis after he was concussed with a cricket-ball, and two bouts of pneumonia, and the doctor told father he owed his life ‘to that wonderful lady, his wife.' The word ‘lady' was I thought, such a lovely reward for Mother. She must have loved my father very much, I know, for she even washed and disinfected his spittoon, daily. No one else could have done that, and she always struggled to send him out with a shilling in his pocket for she said, ‘A man must keep his pride.'

I was born in the house at no. 3 Grove Villas. It had, I always felt, an imposing address for that district, and could be advantageously deceiving for us, when it had to be given to people who did not know the district, for Poplar in the 1900s was in the heart of the East End slums.

This little house in ‘The Grove' was one of about twenty-six. The first eight were very tiny and in pairs with a side door doing duty for the front, back and yard door. These eight ‘elves' residences were divided from the bigger bay-windowed houses by a very narrow side street called Arthur Street, and I always imagined that this street had been named after my eldest brother Arthur. Although I did not know what deed he had done to be so acclaimed, I was not surprised, for he was always so elegant in a ‘I'll walk down the Avenue' kind of way. He had such an air of superior condescension with a ‘Do I know you?' attitude to us younger ones that I was convinced that in that grown-up world of his he had done something very noble, or notable. The fact that he was half a century younger than Arthur Street made no impression on me, for if it hadn't originally been named after brother Arthur, then it had been renamed after him when he performed his mighty deed. I envied him this honour, and tried to pretend that something had been named after me. I chose ‘A Dorothy Bag,' which was a very pretty velvet or silk bag all the young ladies carried.

A high railway wall ran down the whole length of ‘The Grove' in front of the houses and my house also backed on to another very high building, the ‘Poplar Public Baths and Wash-Houses,' so without neighbours at either front or back of us, the little house possessed a privacy unusual for that district.

Beyond the railway wall was the station and sidings where trains were shunted to and fro at dead of night. The noise rarely woke me but if it did I never found the clanking, squealing or crashing of the trucks as they collided with each other frightening or worrying, for that noise was the symphony which accompanied my birth. On the far side of the railway, set in pretty gardens, was the parish church of All Saints, our church, with its lovely clock and spire. From Mother's bedroom I could see the tops of the tall trees reaching up through the masses of little dwellings to pray to the sky, and, by climbing on to a chair, I could see beyond the church to the East India Docks where the ships had tall masts and coloured funnels painted with flags or stars. The sound of the shunting trains, the music of the church bells, the distant sirens of the ships, muffled like a throaty cough in foggy weather, were all a lovely and nostalgic part of my childhood.

The house contained four rooms. One of these rooms was really a cellar for it was half below ground level. It had a window, but as half of this was also ‘underground,' from the street it appeared as though the occupants were a new race of ‘torso' people. We lived, as it says in the hymn, ‘looking ever upward to the sky,' for this ‘cellar' basement we called the kitchen was the living, sitting, all-purpose room for twelve human beings. If I read about such a family and such a room in the newspaper today, I would be horrified and agree it was deprivation with a capital ‘D,' but for us, through the magic of my mother, it wasn't like that at all. It was a room of great happiness and love, and we were all lively and ‘normal.' (I think we were normal!) The fact that we were all ‘present and correct' speaks volumes for her as a miracle-worker, for in any other family in that district in those circumstances the majority of us would have been natural or self-induced miscarriages or infant mortalities.

I never knew we were deprived. Things didn't worry us then. Towels, for instance, were often tails of the father's old working shirts hemmed round; sheets for beds, what were they? Some friends of mine drank out of jam-jars. Once when Marjorie had been ill in bed and a friend from her office was calling to see her, Mother cut an old sheet in two and placed one as an under sheet and the other half as a top sheet, and provided she didn't fidget, well then it was as good as a pair of sheets, was it not? Mother had her priorities right, children must have love and food, food for their growing bodies and love to make them secure, and plain food was always best for children, fortunately.

The window looked out on to a cement area which the local children called ‘the airy.' The ‘airy' had a small drain in it and I spent quite a lot of time sitting at the window dreaming that I could see red mice and blue mice running in and out of the drain. This kitchen, which was approached through the ground-floor bedroom, down a steep wooden staircase, contained a fireplace with an oven attached at the side, a stone copper with a little iron door in it and a heavy wooden lid on top, a coal cupboard with a sink in it, and at the end of the room a cream-painted dresser on which the crockery was kept. Behind a chintz curtain at floor level was a wide wooden shelf on which there were saucepans and cooking utensils, always called ‘the pot board.'

This pot board had many valuable uses. It was our shelter during the Great War air raids, and our play ‘room,' for it made a lovely cave or hiding-place, and at the far end near the coal cupboard Father kept his wooden chest containing his working ‘tools.' He always kept the chest painted grey with beautifully picked out white letters on the side saying Sgt-Major W. Chegwidden, his regiment and number and the two handles were made of thick plaited rope with little hairs sticking out which pricked through my dress if I sat against the handles whilst playing near the pot board. The chest was very heavy, and I thought my father must be the strongest man in the world, for he took it all the way to France with him, or so I thought. He kept his working boots next to the tool-chest and if ever there was a ‘funny' smell in the kitchen these boots were always blamed and he was furious when he discovered ‘someone' had placed them outside in the ‘airy,' for they were often innocent. Once they were banished and the guilty party that time was the Stilton cheese an aunt had sent him from the country. Another time a nest of mice was found in the corner of the tool-chest.

Besides Mother and Father there were five sons and five daughters. Our parents had the top front bedroom, sharing this with the baby and the next youngest child. The girls had the top back bedroom and the boys the ground-floor bedroom. It was mostly two at the top and two at the bottom of a double bed and the odd one in a little truckle bed, the ‘iron' bed we called that. The door to the kitchen stairs was in the boys' bedroom and we would all troop through that room on the way in, out, and up, on our various and many joumeyings. A stranger in the boys' room would think we had risen from the bowels of the earth, for the kitchen stairs were so steep that, without a landing, we had to push the door of the room open before we reached the top stair.

Agnes was the eldest girl and Mother's first-born; I think perhaps she was also the most intelligent of the family. Mother kept a faded newspaper cutting and photograph of Agnes which hailed her as an infant prodigy at the age of three, when at a Charity Concert in Beckenham she acted and recited a poem, ‘Miss Mouse Came to Tea.' I always felt fate was unkind to Agnes to start her off so well, then transport her to the slums and endow her with nine brothers and sisters. She was a pretty, sweet-natured girl with soft brown hair, melting brown eyes and a soft mouth, very easily moved to laughter or tears.

Winifred Beatrice, Mother's second daughter and her fourth child was never, for one moment, any worry; indeed she was more help than any of the family, Mother's support and unselfish stay. She had brown hair and eyes, a round Claudette Colbert type of face, a good figure, and a direct look, and she always ‘whooped' when she laughed. Life for me, as a child, was full of Winnie and I just adored her, for she was so kind to Marjorie, the baby of the family, and me. Winifred was brave and calm, so who else would ‘Win the Scholarship' but her? The school was given a half-day holiday and her name went up on the Honours Board in gold lettering. She went to George Green's Grammar School for Girls, where the ‘scholarship girls' were looked down upon by the paying pupils, but that didn't deter Winifred. She made friends with the most affluent and had the nerve to bring them home, where, strangely enough, they all seemed to want to come again.

Edith Amy, always known as Amy, was an entirely different person from Winifred in temperament as well as looks. She was petite with a mass of luxuriant dark hair and high cheekbones, was very intense and dramatic, and possessed a quick temper. She was an exquisite needlewoman, had an unusual flair for clothes, and was a magnet for the opposite sex. My feeling towards her was one of caution because of her biting tongue, but I was envious of her conquests and her daring, for she was the first in everything. She had her lovely hair shorn before short hair was properly in, and she always started the fashions in Poplar. She had an actress's voice and would have us in tears at her recitations. She had the same girl-friend for years and years, and they would walk along, arm in arm, heads close together. I wondered what they talked about, for if I ever met them Amy would say in her Sarah Bernhardt voice, ‘Go home, Dolly.'

I was Mother's ninth child and her fourth daughter and I detested my name, Dorothy, which was shortened to Dolly, I disliked my red hair, my largish nose, my thin legs and wished I had been born the only child of rich parents.

I was the one member of the family without a special gift, and the ‘delicate one,' causing Mother worry and trouble. I was always ‘gastric' and Mother would get different meals for me as she thought me a ‘picky' eater and needed tempting. I always felt this special treatment meted out to me annoyed Amy, but I couldn't help feeling so ill. It would seem as though I was recalling some horrific dream, and calling for Mother I would faint. Once after I had been in bed for a long time with gastritis the doctor said he thought I was well enough to have solid food and he asked me if there was anything I felt I could eat. Pork chop was my first choice, sausages my second, fish and chips my third, and after this the doctor allowed me no more choices telling Mother I was to have a tiny piece of steamed fish, which I hated.

All the family loved little Marjorie, the baby, and they would say I was jealous of her from the moment she was born, although I cannot recall ever feeling like that, for I depended on her although she was three and a half years younger than me.

The memory of her birth is one of my earliest recollections.

It was a warm day in September, close and humid, and I felt I wanted to be with Mother and not go out and play with Cecil. Agnes knew that the whole family must be got out of the little house somehow, and she asked Winnie to take all the children out for a walk. This was unusual, a walk on Sunday evening, and I didn't want to go but Agnes said, ‘If you don't go, then Mother will have another baby and you won't be her baby any more.' In the end we all went down to Tunnel Gardens near Blackwall Tunnel, but it was closed and we all came home again. Agnes said to go out again and gave Winnie a penny to spend on us all. There were no shops open and, although Winnie was fourteen I don't think she knew at all what was happening. Anyway finally we came home and Agnes said to me, ‘Mother has got something to show you.' I remember climbing the little wooden stairs. The evening sun was making strange shadows on the walls through the trees, and in Mother's bedroom the counterpane was very white—it was her best one. She was in bed although it wasn't bedtime and lying on her neck and sucking it was a baby. Mother looked pleased but somehow guilty and defiant, and I came out straight away without saying anything.