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Dear Octopus
I’m not sure when I realized I had a big family, that I was a small cog in a much larger wheel. Perhaps I’d always been aware of what author Dodie Smith called, “The family—that dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape nor, in our inmost hearts, ever quite wish to.”
The first cousin I remember is Celia, who is three years older than me. I remember her coming to Nan and Grandad’s house when we lived in London. She had lovely soft dark hair, almost black, styled in ringlets that spiraled down to her shoulders. As soon as I saw those ringlets, I wanted some exactly the same. And I was fascinated by a dark red stain on her face, something to do with an illness. Last year, as we sat drinking tea in the conservatory of her home in Hastings, East Sussex, I asked her about that red mark. At first she seemed perplexed, because she could not recall the mark, and then remembered she’d had some sort of fever that caused her to have nasty red blotches all over her face and neck. Was it rheumatic fever? Or scarlet fever? Or one of those other childhood illnesses? It might have been something I could have caught, because that was a time when if a mother heard of the children in a family going down with mumps, chicken pox, whooping cough or measles, she’d send you round there to play, so you could catch whatever it was and get it over with—and I never caught what Celia had.
But I certainly caught her love of fashion, probably due to the fact that I was given her hand-me-downs. She had two older sisters, Pat and Rita, so I had the castoffs from all three—but it was Celia’s discarded clothing that I loved the most, because by the time she hit her teens, Celia was a dedicated follower of fashion and she moved onto the next thing very quickly. The “Twiggy” dress with an empire line and three little bows meeting at a Peter Pan collar—thank you, Celia, for those two dresses! The air-force blue wide-wale corduroy suit with a matching miniskirt and long thigh-length jacket from Clobber, the range launched by then hip designer Jeff Banks, who was married to singer Sandie Shaw—thank you, Celia! The black miniskirt . . . the Old English oversized red watch . . . those burgundy velvet jeans—thank you, Celia! And then I grew taller than Celia, but the die was cast. Now when I see her we’ll often admire each other’s clothing. We dress in a similar fashion—tunics with mandarin collars, long jackets, nice soft cardigans, white blouses, and the same kind of leather boots. Our hair is very different, though when I was six, as soon as my hair had grown long enough, I asked my mother to put my hair in ringlets just like Celia’s for the school photo. She did—though I hadn’t grasped that before I went to bed my hair would have to be twisted into rags my mother had ripped from an old table cloth. Having slept with those green and white check dreadlocks pulling at my roots, I woke with a bad headache that stayed with me all day, so I was hard-pushed to make even my toothless gummy smile. I had lovely blonde ringlets, though.
But time marches on. When I saw Celia earlier this year, she commented that she really liked the way I was letting my grey hair come in. Hers is still almost jet black.
My cousin Tony was living with Nan and Grandad when we went back to London. He was a teenager then, and thought that teaching me to swear when no one else was around—telling me to say “F**k you” instead of “Thank you”—was just hilarious. He still laughs about it, though my mother heard me say that dreaded word just once before she dragged me off and slapped me so hard, my legs stung for a day. For a long time I just nodded when I should have been saying, “Thank you” just in case the wrong word came out.
Cousin John came to stay with us at The Terrace when his dad had tuberculosis and was in hospital having half a lung removed. This was the second time John had stayed with us because his dad was ill and my parents loved having him around, especially Mum, because he was the son of the sister closest to her, and she adored young Johnny as if he were her own. I wasn’t at all keen, because I had to sleep in my brother’s cot in the room we shared, while Johnny slept in my bed. Of course the side rails of the cot were not raised, as they would be for my baby brother, so I felt as if I were in a bed—I didn’t want to be considered a baby anymore. One morning cousin John pulled up the rails, locking me in the cot, and proceeded to poke a stick at me as if I were an animal in a cage. When my mother ran in to find out why I was screaming, John looked saint-like and innocent, shrugging as if he had no idea. My mother would have let him get away with murder, yet she would never tolerate her children crying for nothing—her favorite line was, “If you don’t stop crying, I’ll give you something to cry for.” On that day, I was the one who was told off. Like an elephant, I remember that.
What I really loved was the mass onslaught of family, the caravan of cars that would come rolling down the road to our house at the end of The Terrace: cars full of aunts, uncles and cousins from London—here was my mother’s side of the family turning up en masse on a Sunday morning, or sometimes on a Saturday afternoon to stay overnight. Dad would bring out his pasting tables, the long trestles he used for work to lay out wallpaper for pasting, and those would be set up in the dining room for the kids, covered not with tablecloths but with old scraps of wallpaper, because you know what kids are like with food. The “grown-ups” would sit in the kitchen. Packed around those tables like sardines, we’d all be gabbing away, my cousins excited about being in the country and us just happy to have company. None of the families had much money, really, but everyone brought something to add to the feast. It was noisy, colorful and suddenly not so calm any more—The Terrace was a quiet place, as a rule, mainly elderly folk, and we were that young family at the end of the street.
When we first moved to The Terrace, only one car was ever parked there, and that belonged to the Martin family, who’d take me to Sunday school in their big woody wagon, until they moved away to a place called Birchington when I was five. After they left I was taken to Sunday school by Miss Jenner, who lived along the main road—she would let me sit next to her in her maroon car with the big steering wheel. But on a Sunday afternoon the entire Terrace knew when we had company because you could hear the cars as they turned into the street. A couple of my uncles didn’t have cars, so everyone would be piled in with those who had. The neighbors probably dreaded hearing our tribe turn up—a veritable battalion of kids screaming and yelling in the garden, then running down to the woods to create all manner of worlds, from the Wild West, to the jungle and even outer space, cousins making the most of being in the country before time and the fast approach of Monday called them back to London.
I have a photograph on my mantelpiece, taken when I was about six and John two. Auntie Sylvie and Uncle John had come down from London for the day and we’d all gone for a walk along Bishop’s Lane, toward Furnace Farm—one of the farms where Mum and Dad had lived and worked during those earlier years. We stopped at a row of deserted hopper huts that were fast becoming derelict. You could still go into the individual huts and you could walk over to the old brick cook house where everyone gathered to make an evening meal during the days of hop-picking, before the farmer invested in a machine to do the work. But the wooden weatherboards on the outside of the huts were deteriorating and planks had been taken away for other purposes, or stolen.
I love this photo, which my dad took, because I can remember that day and that walk down the lane on a summer’s afternoon, the midges buzzing above our heads. I remember my brother getting tired and Dad carrying him, and I remember Mum seeming to frown, but she wasn’t, it was only her way—and her eyes were getting bigger, because that’s what can happen with Graves’ Disease. Uncle John’s in the background, and there’s Auntie Sylvie and Mum, who’s holding onto my brother—because there were three Johns in the house when they visited, my cousin was known as “Little John” and my brother became “John-John.” I am sitting next to Martine. My beloved Martine, whom I adored. She was just six months younger than me, and her mother, Auntie Sylvie, was my mother’s closest sister. In almost every photo of us together I have my arm around her, o
r I’ve taken her hand, or we’re linked at our elbows. Martine was so witty. Even as a child she would have everyone laughing with a joke or an observation; her comic timing was a rare talent—and she always had interesting toys with her, the sort of playthings you couldn’t get in the country and that only London kids seemed to have.
Martine died in 2012, the same year as my dad—and from a blood disorder. That was too much like a bad coincidence, though in her case it was leukemia, exacerbated by the Addison’s Disease she’d endured for years. I always thought it a strange turn of events, that a girl who had more energy than she knew what to do with—effervescent energy, always up for laugh-out-loud fun, always there with a joke, a fast quip, a nudge in the ribs as she teased you—was felled by a disease hallmarked by extreme fatigue and often an inability to even lift a hand.
Sue and Jane, Rosehannah and Janice, Linda, Stephanie and Gillian, Martine, Jackie, Barbara and Karen, Josie and Sharon . . . we were a tribe of girls in what seemed like a family ruled by women, and we knew there were more because Auntie Ruby had another Janice and a Christine in Canada. Of course there were the boys, too. My childhood seems framed by this big, boisterous family. By aunts who laughed a lot and had good gossip to eavesdrop on, and uncles who entertained us until our sides hurt with the giggling; Uncle Joe who would strip off his shirt and pin clothes pegs to the skin across his torso, then chase us as the Peg Monster, and Uncle John who would show us the scar where they took his lung, and could make it move as if it were about to talk. On one of our trips to the coast, as the cars caravanned along, Uncle Jim stopped his car in the middle of the street, which caused drivers behind to pull to a halt. He leaped from his car, and ran back to have a mock fight with Charlie, who jumped out of his car, fists raised and shouting back at him. Uncle Pete emerged from his car and was roped into the act, calling out to my dad for help. We cousins squealed with laughter and the aunts tut-tutted as we watched the four of them pretending to have a punch-up in the sleepy town where Jim had decided we kids needed some entertainment. A crowd had gathered to watch, but soon the uncles and Dad jumped back in the cars and we were off again, ready for anything.
There’s a day that will remain in my memory forever. We were in Charmouth, in the county of Dorset on a cold blustery day. I think our company totaled about sixteen cousins and the uncles and aunts, so we were once again a tribe at play, wrapped up warm against the elements and not letting anything get in the way of a good time—which in Charmouth includes the collecting of fossils. But as we each stashed our hoard of ammonites and belemnites to take to our respective schools, Uncle John found an old tin water tank washed up by the tide, perfect to shield the camping stove, upon which the aunts made tea and fried sausages, which we ate with fresh, crusty bread. Then all the kids, uncles and aunts started playing football, which turned into any old game with a ball because it’s hard to kick a ball along a pebble beach. Injuries began to mount, so with rain pouring down, Uncle Charlie shouted, “Let’s start a band!” Pebbles in Tupperware, sticks of driftwood, spoons, forks and knives, the tin water tank—everything we could think of was drafted in for use by our family band of jesters. Despite the rain and a biting coastal wind, we sang our hearts out that day, and the cousins still talk about it.
My mother was always in her element when her family came down to see us, even though she’d pretend to complain, saying, “Here they all come for their Sunday dinner.” But we didn’t mind, even though the roast that should have lasted us through Tuesday, at least, would be gone by Sunday afternoon. Then there were the parties, big London parties with all the family dancing to old songs and new. Sometimes there was a reason for the celebration, but more often it was because we happened to be in London—everyone came together and there was a party. It would be late, often in the small hours, when someone would call out for Mum to end the evening, and you’d hear another voice yell, “Belt it out, girl.” She’d clear her throat, take a sip of her gin and tonic, and then the room would go quiet and she’d start to sing “The Party’s Over.”
I loved the way she drew out the word masquerade, lingering on every syllable—it’s time to wind up, this mass-cure-ayd—with a wobble in her voice before leaving a breathy second in the air and continuing on. She sounded a bit like Shirley Bassey, who had recorded a version of the song in 1959. My favorite song in her repertoire was “Moon River”—she would put her heart and soul into it, smiling when she came to the part about “two drifters, off to see the world.” After my dad died, she told the hospice chaplain how much she loved the song, and that it was a reminder of her and Dad, when they were young, because they were two drifters off to see the world.
Mum was a good singer, and according to the stories, during the war she had a chance to go for the big time when a well-known London music promoter heard her singing in a pub that was more of a club. That was the pub Uncle Jim came into one night when he was home on leave from the Royal Marines, a coincidence that ended with him grabbing my seventeen-year-old mother by her collar as she came off the stage, and telling her to go home and never let him see her in a place like that again. That’s big brothers for you. Mum told me that she knew how it was going to end as she was singing. She had been looking around the room, at the audience watching her, and then in the wide mirror behind the bar she saw her brother’s reflection as he walked in with some of his mates. Apparently she tried to turn so he wouldn’t see her face, which was futile because he would have known that voice anywhere. But on VJ Day, as street parties erupted across London and the rest of the country and then went on all night, people in Mum’s neighborhood carried an upright piano from one street to the next so she could really get the celebrations going. Mum could play piano by ear, but the only piano she ever owned was left at Black Bush Cottage on the night they left following Dad’s row with the farmer.
A couple of years ago, I was visiting my cousin Larry when we began talking about those good times of family and parties and everyone coming down to see us; days when he and his brother would run around the corner to play with the Saunders’ boys as soon as Uncle John had parked the pale blue Austin Cambridge motor car. I reminded him about the time he and his brother had tied Martine and me to a tree because we were supposed to be Indians in the Wild West, and they ran off on some expedition only to forget all about us. It was later, when Martine and I failed to turn up for tea and were not responding to calls from the attic window, that Mum and Auntie Sylvie had come looking for us and found us still tied to the tree, happily chatting to each other as if we’d only just been abandoned. We’d been sitting on the damp ground down by the stream, bound by an old rope for hours.
“You know, we used to visit you a lot because of your mum,” said Larry. “Her brothers and sisters knew she was lonely, living in the country.”
I sat back in my chair—we were having lunch at a pub in Whitchurch, Hampshire, where Larry lives—and I let his words settle in my mind. She was lonely. Was she? It had never occurred to me that my mother could have been lonely, but of course she must have been. She had been raised in a big family, amid the noise and energy of a city, in a tight neighborhood, and my father—who had always lived in a quiet house, and who was essentially a quiet man—was completely happy in the country. Now I wonder if she felt as I often feel living here in California, miles away from my roots—neither here nor there. She didn’t want to live in London any more, yet she missed so much of what she’d left behind.
My mother was a gregarious woman, a woman of sharp intellect and a killer wit. In just a few years she had gone from having a good government job and spending time with her family or friends—where she was often the center of attention—to doing back-breaking work on the farm. Now her only social life was with the clutch of other women she worked with on the farm and an hour or so of community interaction in the town on a Saturday morning. Was it any wonder that she loved to entertain people with her yarns, recounting her own past, warts and all, or making up
tales for the kids on the long journey back from the farm, or retelling stories she’d heard from the other farm worker women as we sat down for our tea in the evening? I knew all about Gladys’s life as a Land Girl, how she was conscripted in the war to join the women who kept farms running when men left for the services, and how she and the other girls were out on the farm where they’d been billeted and had been dying for a pee, so had rushed into the bushes to squat down—only to find they’d chosen a place with a massive nest of red ants, so they all ended up with sore bums. I loved that one. And I knew a lot about Shirl, who’d been “on the stage” at thirteen, and would have gone home with a man just to get a decent meal. It was a while before I knew what the bit about “going home with a man” meant, but I knew it wasn’t a good thing for Shirl to have done that at thirteen.
This Time Next Year We'll Be Laughing Page 12