Lemon Sherbet and Dolly Blue

by Knight, Lynn

  A friend from the Caged Bird Society came to remove Willie’s budgerigars and canaries. With bad days gaining on good ones, looking after them had become too much for him.

  ‘Are you alright, then, lad? ‘Well, let’s be doing it.’ Willie led him to the bottom of the garden. Before transferring the birds to their travelling cages, he took each one on to his forefinger, making his finger into a perch and tenderly stroking their tiny head. Willie spoke quietly to each bird, as if to ensure they knew how sorry he was to lose them. When, at last, he straightened up, Willie was holding the key to an empty aviary.

  18

  Chocolate Fudge for Alice Faye

  LIKE EVERY YOUNG SOPHISTICATE, MY MUM HAD A HANDBAG which fastened with a satisfying click. And her very own driving licence, albeit in her father’s name. Despite never owning a car, Willie kept his licence up to date and passed the expired one to Cora. Ever the cock-eyed optimist was Willie. Nestling at the bottom of her bag was the toy handgun essential to any gangster, and cigarettes, fine cylinders of white paper, lovingly rolled and glued by Eva, and topped off with filter tips made from strips of the sticking plaster sold in the corner shop. Cora was particularly proud of these – no wonder – and kept them in a pink celluloid case; a pearlised hand with impossibly slender fingers formed its delicate clasp.

  ‘Have one of mine.’

  ‘Sure. Don’t mind if I do.’ Sometimes she was quite the Hollywood young lady.

  Not surprisingly, for someone who first glimpsed the screen as a babe in arms, my mum was schooled in the cinema. By the time she was seven or eight, the Lyceum vied with Woolworth’s as her place of worship and George Formby was losing out to more exotic fare. Deanna Durbin was a favourite; Cora saw all her films, but liked Three Smart Girls the best, especially the ending, when, thanks to the sisters’ scheming, their warring parents are reunited. Cora, Grace Blake and Ada Porter adopted their roles and gave themselves new names – Babs, Betty, Billy – Cora naming herself ‘Billy’ after her Dad. There were mysterious alphabets and codes to unravel, whose magic letters x (v_ * remain secret to this day; and Wild West adventures to create. If Cora wasn’t a cowboy like Jesse James when she grew up, she’d be fast-talking, sassy and clever. In a few years’ time, she’d want to be a newspaper reporter like Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday, or a smart office-worker like Mopsy in the comic-strip cartoon. For now, she practised touch-typing on her own typewriter (rows of buttons stitched on to a cardboard box), and invented adventures for the film stars who occupied her doll’s house.

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  – Advertisements on facing pages, Woman’s Weekly, 8 February 1936 (2d)

  My mum’s doll’s house, a fourth-birthday gift, though loved for several years thereafter, was bought from shopkeeper Mr Nield when his daughter Madge outgrew it. Built in the early ’20s, this double-fronted house, with its sloping roof papered in imitation slate, and cotton-reel chimney stacks, was a symbol of suburbia, with four main rooms, an inviting hallway, a bathroom on the top landing, and two attics at the back.

  Its only drawback (as with so many houses of the period) was the size and position of its kitchen, which had to be tucked behind the stairs. A kitchen had not figured in the thoughts of its designer, Mr Nield. (What 1920s’ draper’s daughter aspired to invent kitchen stories?) And so (as I discovered when the doll’s house came to me), you had to overlook the tight squeeze for the kitchen cupboards, stove and sink. Other than that, it was perfect.

  Despite its exterior decor and domestic drawbacks, this was no miniature Acacia Avenue, but a far more glamorous abode: home to Alice Faye, Tyrone Power, Jeanette MacDonald, Shirley Temple and Nelson Eddy. And, as its daily routine was moulded on stories gleaned from 1930s Hollywood, a Black Mammy stood behind the kitchen stove.

  The doll’s house sleeping arrangements would have satisfied even the strictest arbiters of the Hays Code, that period legislation designed to keep sex out of the cinema. The women slept in one room, the men shared the other; Shirley Temple had a cot on the landing. At night, Alice Faye and Jeanette MacDonald smeared their faces with Vanishing Cream and ate chocolate fudge in bed, draped in the slinkiest of robes (remnants purloined from Annie’s rag bag and tacked into cylinders, with slits snipped out for armholes). Empty pill boxes from the corner shop made perfect hat boxes (Beechams’ pale pink drums were ideal); no film star travelled without one. While ‘the girls’ made plans, Tyrone Power and Nelson Eddy exchanged wisecracks in the next room.

  For all Cora’s fantasies of glamour, there were no sweeping chrome staircases or cocktail shakers: the stairs were carpeted in corduroy and fashioned with a banister made from a knitting needle; its knob made a satisfying newel post. The stars drank pretend-tea and their furniture came not from California, but a Sheffield toy shop. But there was a grand piano in the lounge where Jeanette MacDonald trilled up and down the scales and Alice Faye crooned in husky tones.

  Thompson’s Bakery was still producing ‘Grade A’ bread and, in keeping with the times, proclaiming the healthy goodness of its products. Annie’s Woman’s Weekly contained advertisements featuring photographs of ordinary little girls: ‘Yes she’s cute, but she’s not Shirley Temple…’ Cue Monica Poynting of Glasgow, transformed by a mass of Shirley Temple curls, courtesy of a 3d bottle of Amami shampoo. ‘Are you like any of the stars? If so, please send us your photograph.’ Amami paid successful candidates two guineas.

  If Amami wanted photographs, why not Jim? What better endorsement than a healthy-looking child, and one of the family? For several nights, after she had collected Provident, cooked and cleared away tea, Annie set about making a miniature baker’s outfit – white cotton trousers, tunic, baker’s pinny, and a small baker’s cap, everything down to the very last detail. The costume required considerable effort (and the demise of a linen sheet), but Annie wanted everything to be perfect. As soon as the outfit was ready, she and Cora gathered their props – a couple of Thompson’s free-standing advertisements and the all-important Grade A loaf – and decamped to Arthur’s Studio.

  Cora was photographed against a plain dark backdrop, the darkest Arthur could provide, all the better to highlight her crisp white suit. Smiling, she pointed at her Uncle Jim’s bread in its colourful waxy paper and the advertisement propped against the table: ‘Grade “A” Bread. All OUR bread is impregnated with the Ultra-Violet rays of Health. Thompson’s Sunshine Bread Sold Here.’ The perfect thirties sales pitch: charming, healthy kiddy, healthy bread. The whole thing was irresistible. Yet, Jim resisted. My grandma’s foray into advertising was over before it began.

  *

  ‘If a tiny stick is floating about in your tea you may expect a visitor’ – so said Eva’s copy of Household Management, a compendium of quaint old beliefs, fortune-telling and palm reading, along with essential recipes (boil cauliflower and all greens for twenty minutes), instructions on engaging servants, and on buying or building a house. Tiny sticks must have been constantly afloat in Eva’s tea – there was no let-up in the weekend mix of visitors.

  Kitty and Margaret; George – with a bunch of flowers for Betsy and a wish that he could present one to her eldest daughter; Ethel, still giving as good as she got, and Auntie Liza still regaling the family with tales of Staveley folk, and scenes witnessed and overheard while she sipped her glass of beer in the Foresters. No one told Liza women did not drink alone; I suspect few people challenged Liza about anything. ‘Our Liza’s a cock bird,’ Betsy fr
equently remarked of her favourite sister, a strong endorsement coming from her.

  Cousin Charlie’s wife still visited, and was as gentle as ever with her tentative smile but, these days, sweet Edie came alone. After nearly twenty years of bronchitic gasping, her precious Charlie had gasped his last. With Europe limbering up for a Second World War, the poor man finally died from the first one.

  Liza’s daughter, Emily, and her husband, Sidney, came via motorbike and sidecar. Uncle Sidney was a whizz with electrics and, on one occasion, strapped a wireless cabinet into the space normally occupied by Emily, and rigged up the set for Dick and Betsy. From then on, the wireless became a prominent feature: Saturday evenings were ‘In Town Tonight’.

  Betsy’s nephew Johnny provided a difference spectacle again. A hefty miner, with permanent black patches on his face, the typical marks of his calling, Johnny’s vast chest strained against Betsy’s damask tablecloth. His large fingers looked incongruous holding a slice of Eva’s sponge cake, and even more so cradling a china tea cup. A special constable in his spare time, Johnny delighted in telling the assembled company how he and his fellow specials knocked seven bells out of the worst offenders the minute they had them cornered in the cells.

  And, Sunday or not, there were the neighbours and weekend visitors to the shop. Every month or so, the Prentice sisters called with their young boys, rounding off a visit to relatives higher up the hill with a bag of boiled sweets for their return journey. The sisters were a curious combination: Sarah placid and well-made (as Betsy described her), Hannah as sharply spoken as she was angular. Sarah adored her young son, Ralph, who drove everyone else to distraction. ‘Oh, Eva, there’s the Prentice lad,’ Betsy would say, if she spotted their arrival through the sweet window. Little Ralph Prentice had fingers into everything and would not stop talking. ‘Mrs Nash, Mrs Nash, what’s this for, Mrs Nash? What does it do?’ (‘It’s a thing-a-purpose, Ralph. Now, put it down.’) ‘What’s that on the wall?’ On and on with constant questions, and all expressed with a clack-clack in his throat, thanks to the poor boy’s infected tonsils. Betsy explained to Ralph that he needed to be quiet to let the adults talk. ‘But Mrs Nash, I only wanted to know…’ and off he went again, like a wind-up toy.

  ‘Hush now, little man,’ doting Sarah would say, smiling at Ralph who, until pulled up short by a warning glace from Eva, was advancing on the sweets with grubby hands. Sarah’s sister, Hannah, was itching to clobber him but, as she could not hit her sister’s lad, made up for it by clouting her own. Typically, this sisterly exchange of indulgence and abuse was Dick’s signal to retreat to the wood.

  Do not feel that you must have an elaborate display of cakes, or very rich ones. It is much more important to have excellent and very hot tea, and nicely cut bread and butter, scones, or small sandwiches. Besides these, a few petit fours or simple small cakes and a plate of cut cake will be ample. Jammy or stickily iced things are undesirable, however attractive they may look.

  When a guest rises to leave, you will rise too, but you do not go to the door with her so long as other guests are present. (Don’t forget to ring the bell warning the maid to be in the hall, will you?)

  – ‘Entertaining’, Home Management, 1934

  Some neighbours also needed side-stepping. ‘Oh no,’ Dick would groan, at the approach of Mrs Cartwright, lapdog tucked firmly under her arm. ‘There’s “just a minute” coming.’ She never stayed for less than half an hour, and was still full of praise for Our Pearl. Or there was Mrs Jenkinson, another great talker. ‘Our cat’s got a long tail,’ Dick would mutter, as she embarked on her umpteenth story.

  Ten strides from the boundary fence, four trees from the path – Cora decided to bury some treasure in her grandad’s wood: a string of beads, a diamanté brooch and a toy watch. Precious jewels, were it not that the beads were a washed-out shade of blue, the diamantés clashed with their bakelite setting and the watch strap was not quite as elasticated as it once was. Not the perfect treasure trove, then, but – who was to know? Betsy provided a casket (an old tin with a broken hinge and slanting lid). Cora dug a hole. X marked the spot on the map she folded into four and slipped into her pocket, in case she needed to retrieve her treasure later. The map lived with the lucky horses’ teeth Cora discovered in the wood and carried everywhere – until Annie found them.

  The wood was an ideal spot for playing by herself but, on most weekends, Cora played with the Mill kids. Games belonged to Friday evenings and Saturday afternoons. (Sundays did not usually figure as a day for communal play – though not because everyone else was at church.) The short terraces had their share of matriarchs and families whose kids you wouldn’t cross – if you were planning to knock on a neighbour’s door and run away, you wouldn’t try that prank on the Lowthers – but, for the most part, everyone muddled along pretty well. The Mill kids looked after my mum. They asked Betsy if they could take her on their walks to the Meadows and beyond, and reminded Cora when they should head back: ‘Your grandma will be worrying.’ Though abrasive in speech and manner, these rough and tumble kids were kind. They weren’t spiteful like some of the children my mum knew at school, nor did they put on airs – not that many had much worth boasting about – or speak against her grandparents or aunt, although it would have been the easiest thing for someone to repeat a story or disparaging remark about Betsy, Dick or Eva. As far as the Mill kids were concerned, my mum was Cora Nash: she belonged to the corner shop.

  The lamp post in front of the shop served as starting point, winning post, marker, the lot, and was good for monkeying up, if you were feeling athletic. The rope suspended from the tree near the entrance to the swampy field by the canal could be clambered up at any time; rounders and other ball games were likewise played in all weathers. Any season was good for skipping too, although skipping required a huge rope, with often ten or more children waiting their turn, and up to half a dozen leaping beneath it. The thickness of the rope, the strength required to turn it (and the burn if it caught you), made this a game for older children. Occasionally, young adults joined in, sixteen-or seventeen-year-olds lifting their heavy boots or factory clogs clear of the rope, free of their adult selves for a moment.

  Most games belonged to daylight, but ‘leakey’ was only ever played at dusk, the encroaching darkness adding an extra dimension to the search. Cold night air wrapped itself round bare legs, chilblained hands and chapped lips; it was hard to be sure whether your shivers were due to the cold or delicious fear. Apart from the ‘looker’ leaning against the street lamp, shielding his eyes and counting into the silence (Betsy could hear the countdown inside the shop) and the light from the shop itself, there was no other lighting close by. All other players dissolved into darkness. My mum and the other young girls hid with someone older (and were always caught quickly for this reason), but even the youngest boys hid alone. Backyards, doorways, privies, beside chicken coops and rabbit hutches, inside coal houses or the enclosed porch of the pub; behind canalside trees, and as far up as the stone cottages – all these were valid hiding places: anywhere you felt brave enough to crouch and could make yourself invisible. Excited whispers faded into silence. Then the shout: Coming, Ready or Not.

  My mum saw how some children lived. One family at the Mill could not afford mats or lino: there was nothing to distinguish their kitchen floor from the cinder path beyond their back door. She saw, too, the casual slaps and cuffs and clips around the ear some kids endured; the ‘I’ll knock your block off,’ and much worse. (The discovery that children could be beaten was a revelation to Cora: the first time she understood this was aged six, watching Steerforth thrash David Copperfield in the film.) And so, when Annie sometimes told her, ‘You were born under a lucky star,’ she knew what her mam meant. She had no idea that Annie was thinking of something else altogether.

  Despite the supposed drawbacks of the close community at Wheeldon Mill, the living in one another’s pockets and everybody knowing everyone else’s secrets – or perhaps for this reas
on – not one child (or irritable adult) confronted my mum with the fact of her adoption. It was the children on a slightly higher social rung, the mind-your-own-business (though don’t think we don’t know what that is) council-house dwellers of Racecourse Road. Not Annie’s closest neighbour whom she took into her confidence when the family moved in and who never breathed a word to my mum. Someone else told.

  ‘Your mam’s not your real mam,’ or words to that effect, Molly Stapleton flung at Cora one afternoon, a small projectile designed to wound, though Molly could have no idea how powerful her weapon was. They were playing in a neighbour’s yard, my mum somewhat reluctantly. Molly was visiting her grandma who lived nearby and was aware that, though the adults thought it nice if all the children played together when she came to stay, Cora and the other local kids were less sure. Molly knew that she was merely tolerated (or worse: some of the others shouted ‘Clear off’ whenever she popped her head above the fence). She was younger than them too, and so enjoyed having this big stick to wave. It stopped my mum as surely as a real stick.

  ‘Yes, she is.’

  ‘She’s not. My nan says.’

  That extra stab of confirmation put my mum on guard. Puzzled and disbelieving, but wary now, she took the story home. ‘What nonsense,’ Annie reassured her. ‘Of course you’re my little girl.’ But she was cross. She’d go straight round and speak to Mrs Stapleton about Molly’s hurtful fib. She was in her coat before she reached the end of the sentence, and back home again almost as fast. Not another word on the subject was said by Annie or Molly. One sharp pinch and that was that. Until the next time.