Mother Knew Best

by Dorothy Scannell

  Alas, many fires were lit before Winnie remembered the boots. Mother drew them from the oven with a cloth because they were so hot. We all looked at Winnie for the boots were perfect pantomime boots and could have done service for a male comic or an Arabian magician. Mother started to laugh, she tried not to, but the boots were so comical and Winnie’s face so unusually tragic and out of character, that what with the glass of port wine Father had given us all, even Marjorie and me (well, ours were little glasses), and the boys laughing, Winnie began to whoop with the rest of us. We were calm again until Mother said, ‘It was so strange. All the week I kept smelling something and couldn’t trace it,’ and we all thought of Father’s banished boots at no. 13, and off we all went again.

  The oven beside the fire caught Mother out many times, for in a hot summer she would put the butter in the oven, it was cool there, and Father often lit a fire on a summer evening, he always felt the cold. The butter was never thought about until it ran out all oily. Mother was often caught out with her puddings too. Christmas puddings needed hours and hours of boiling and Mother made so many she often went to bed tired and left the puddings boiling with a note to the last one in either to change the puddings over, or to turn the gas out, for we had a gas stove now. Each older member of the family carried out Mother’s instructions and the puddings all had to be boiled again for Mother never knew which ones had been changed or not. Father thought women stupid and disorganised, but Mother never knew which member of the family would arrive home last, and so she couldn’t put the name on the note. It was arranged in the end that the one who changed the puddings over should write on the note. No one made puddings like Mother and she would not put the mixture in the basins until every member of the family had stirred the stiff mixture and wished. These wishes we all took seriously and knew they would come true, but we little ones had a job to stir the stiff rich-smelling mixture and Mother had to help us.

  We never minded going to bed on Christmas night, for one thing we were tired, and for another we had Boxing Day to look forward to. In our house it was Christmas Day all over again.

  Chapter 12

  Purely Platonic

  Joining the public library was a red-letter day for me. It was one department then with no books for small children. Choosing a book was a difficult task for a beginner, for books were entered in catalogues under code numbers, long numbers they seemed to me. Hundreds of corresponding numbers were displayed behind the glass windows on the library walls. There were never enough catalogues and much time was spent in waiting one’s turn for a catalogue. Then having chosen a book the glass windows would have to be searched for the number. If the number was blue, one was in luck, but if red, the book was out, and back to the catalogue which of course someone else had then, always such a slow person it seemed to me. At first I did not understand the catalogues, and my reading consisted of Mistress of the Upper Sixth, Fifth Form at St…, Terror of the School, until I discovered different authors. I left my normal world and lived in a world of fantasy. I was deaf to all other sounds and Mother sometimes got cross because I would not put my book down for one moment. We had possessed one dog-eared book that all the family had read and cried over. Froggie’s Little Brother.

  Froggie and his little brother were orphans living in a garret. Froggie had scoured the streets for a crust of bread. His little brother was dying and one knew it wouldn’t be long before Froggie, too, breathed his last. He found a stale crust of bread in the gutter and was feeding it to his little brother to save his life, when out of the wainscotting came their only friend in life, a mouse; this friend too was starving and with great emotion Froggie’s little brother said, ‘Feed the mouse.’ One knew as the mouse was eating this rich repast, Froggie’s little brother would gasp his last, followed by a slow dying Froggie. At this point my sobs became uncontrollable. Mother thought she had got used to this torture with my eight brothers and sisters, but my broken heart was one to beat all others and one day she snatched the book from me and fed it to the copper fire fearing I would make myself ill.

  Now Mother would be unable to treat the library books in this fashion, for defilement was not allowed and a punishable offence. We read at school, of course, but this was not a real pleasure, for all reading was aloud and as we read paragraphs in turn one had to keep pace with the slowest reader. Many times I tried to dash on secretly, but I could never keep the place in the book with my finger and was always being called out to read; being so many pages ahead, I was unable to discover where the previous girl had left off, to the anger of the teacher. I used to pray they would have examinations in silent reading.

  I was very worried about the library fines; if I incurred them, no one at home would pay them and I dreaded what I would do and of course in addition I would be expelled from the library. I read my books on a clean piece of rag and always washed my hands first. One day I rested my book on the scullery table while I went to the shops for Mother. When I returned, the precious book had been knocked down by the side of the parrot’s cage and the parrot had devoured a third of the thick cover all down the longest edge of the book. It was a tragedy. I should have taken care of it. I went to the library a broken woman. It was impossible to hide the damage but I still had to go on, for they might send an inspector, I thought, if the book became overdue. Amy had asked me to get her a book, any romance would do. I did not know the young assistant was sweet on Amy and I asked him for a book on love. He asked if it was for Amy and I said, Yes, and I handed him my half-eaten book and he said he was sorry it had been given to me like that! I thought a miracle had happened. I wasn’t expelled and I wasn’t fined. When I told Amy I had asked for her book on love and the assistant had said she would enjoy the one on love he had specially chosen for me, Amy said, ‘Oh, Dolly, whatever made you mention that word to him?’ I couldn’t see what I had done wrong, but I was glad I had used that word and I forgave the parrot.

  I would start reading my book as I left the library. One day there was a terrific wind behind me and an almighty noise as though all the wooden shutters had fallen down from all the shops, and something slid down my back and I stumbled forward. A man came up and told me to run home to Mother quickly. A woman had jumped from the top of a high building as I passed and missed me by a fraction of an inch. A miracle, everyone told Mother. I said I thought the woman should have looked before she leapt and she would have seen me walking underneath. Mother said, ‘Poor distracted woman, if she had looked, perhaps she wouldn’t have jumped.’ I felt sick.

  Twice after that I walked under the heads of cart-horses while reading, and the order went out from home that I must not read while walking in the street. Ever after I ran all the way home.

  All my sisters had best friends at this time, and I longed for one too. One of Amy’s ‘sisters under the skin’ affairs was with a girl called Pearl Hillside. To start with what a beautiful name, Pearl, that glowing, gleaming gem, like cool, clear water, and Hillside, that never ending rise of beautiful green slopes and snowy peaks.

  Pearl Hillside lived with her mother who was a widow. Her father had died it was said, with the consumption and Mother didn’t really like Amy going to play at Pearl’s house because of the terrible galloping germs that would surely be lurking there, but Amy, always obdurate, often escaped to this lovely place. Pearl’s uncle was an estate agent, as I remember, and they lived on one of the floors above the ‘shop,’ a sort of grace and favour residence. I believe they had a lodger and Amy and Pearl had to play quietly in the afternoons because Pearl’s mother and the lodger were resting, contemplating the mountain and Mahomet, perhaps. The mother must have been tired for she cleaned the offices there. She was beautifully dressed in the latest fashion and she dressed Pearl in the same elegant way. Amy worshipped all this. Pearl’s mother at one time wore widow’s weeds, the smartest weeds ever seen in any pond. The flowing black veil, gloves, jet beads, black silk stockings, tight-waisted gown, beautiful black-buttoned boots, were something to behold, es
pecially when she was followed by Pearl, also elegantly and adultly attired in this sombre colour, but of course it wasn’t sombre, it was really startling.

  Outside in the yard was a corrugated tin shed on which Amy built a house. She cooked gooseberries over a fire and was proud when they turned out like Mother’s. Pearl didn’t want to do any of these things but Amy was the dominant partner. She just loved Pearl and all the appurtenances of her family and they were left to their own devices a lot for the mother was always off somewhere.

  Amy would squeeze Pearl and hold her hand, just because she thought she possessed such a beautiful friend who loved her and had such an exciting place to live in with these ravishing clothes, but even a worm will turn, and one day the blow fell. Amy received from Pearl her first and last letter. ‘Dear Amy, I cannot be friends with you any more because you are too pashonate.’ Amy was heartbroken, but also very, very puzzled, and so were we all, for neither Amy nor the family knew what Pearl meant by ‘pashonate.’ Anyway Mother was greatly relieved because of the ‘consumption’ which might have galloped into our house. ‘Everything happens for the best,’ she told a weeping Amy. But how can one believe even such a truthful person as one’s mother when the future was black and, for Amy, so flat without the Hillsides?

  Mother had a Jewish friend, Annie, a dark-haired lady who would bring us sheets of hard biscuits with little holes in them. I couldn’t stop eating them but Mother said they would dry up my blood. Mother was very proud of having Annie come to see us. She said if a Jewish person is your friend, you have a friend for life. Therefore I thought I must try to get a Jewish friend. This was difficult for there were no Jewish people living in Poplar, that I knew of. They only had shops or stalls in Chrisp Street. We had one Jewish girl in my class, but there was the problem of her name, which was a pity for she was always so nice to me and would have made a lovely bosom pal. Her name was Selina Lipshitz, but the teacher never even liked to say her name and always called her, very firmly and obviously so we wouldn’t be mistaken, ‘Lipsips.’ So I couldn’t take such a name home if even the teacher couldn’t speak it because it was rude. Therefore I had to look further afield.

  I passed another Jewish girl on my way to school. She looked about my age and I thought this was the answer to my problem, and every day I looked hard at her so that one day we could become friends. Mother said everybody took to us, so I knew it was only a matter of time before this girl I passed took to me. I looked for her every morning and afternoon. One day she was with another girl and as I approached she came over to me and I thought we were going to start our friendship, but she shouted, ‘What do you keep bossing at me for, moggy four-eyes?’ I was terrified. This wasn’t the beginning of a life-long friendship and loyalty on her part, it was the opening for battle. I turned and ran home to Mother and told her all about it, and she said, ‘Well, now Marjorie is growing up, you will have her for a friend.’ So I had Marjorie, but I didn’t tell Mother Marjorie was a sister. How could she be my bosom friend?

  Mother had another friend who used to visit, but I wouldn’t have wanted her for a bosom friend for she was a granny. I don’t know where she came from but we called her Mrs Walker. Like all grannies she wore a flat high hat, like a rounded kettle-holder, tied under her chin with velvet and edged with jet beads, a rusty cape with the same beaded border, a voluminous skirt, elastic-sided boots and she carried a little Dorothy bag. This was a sort of grannie’s uniform. She trembled permanently and my brothers always waited excitedly for her to upset her tea. She would always nod trembling towards Amy and pronounce, ‘Her’s the fairest of them all.’ Since Amy was dark I thought granny Walker was so old she had forgotten the difference between dark and fair, or she was colour blind.

  Mother said sadly that children were children for such a short time, and she would have liked to keep us always young, I felt. But when her sister Annie from Dorset ‘braved the dangers of London, the robbers and cut-throats’ (this amused us), and visited Mother with Cousin Fred, she was proud of her growing-up family, for now only four, two boys and two girls, were not at work, engaged, or married. Mother and Auntie Annie hadn’t seen each other for years and they sat side by side, and held hands. Cousin Fred’s lifelong ambition was to visit Petticoat Lane. Auntie Annie was terrified for him; ‘Thou must not go, Snow.’ Mother laughed when I asked why Cousin Fred was always called Snow. It was ‘thouest know.’ Cousin Fred did visit that resort with his little leather purse. Father said he came back with a bargain pair of checked woollen trousers, discovering on arrival home that these bargains had been made for a man with one wooden leg. I think Father was teasing us. Auntie Annie persuaded Dad to take a holiday with Mother’s brother Arthur who lived in a farmhouse in Romsey in Hampshire, and Mother was as excited as a child. There was much swearing from Father, already regretting his weakness to Auntie Annie in promising such an expedition, and we all set off. Father even took black Nugget polish for his boots, and on Waterloo station the case burst, scattering the contents, more swearing and raging, so that we finally got on to the train with lots of clothes in our arms.

  It was the loveliest holiday I had ever had, and I preferred the country to the sea. We had been to Folkestone when I was younger for Father had gone to an army camp there. We had rooms with a Mrs Fawcett. Mother gave her money for food each day but was sure that this landlady bought margarine and charged for butter. Mother detested margarine. The beach was all stones which hurt my feet and I got sunstroke and spent my holiday painfully in bed with bright red curtains in the tiny bedroom through which the sun continually poured.

  It was different at Uncle Arthur’s. He was a very kind and gentle man, who watched Mother with brotherly affection, delighting in her laughter. His wife was a very strong man/woman, with men’s laceless boots. She was silent, but jolly, and bathed us all in the barn, with much laughter, in an enormous round wooden tub. She didn’t pat us when she dried us, as Mother did, but rubbed us down with great vigour. She brushed my hair with long hard strokes and my head seemed to go back to my waist. I think she was used to grooming the horses on the farm, and she loved brushing my hair so much I thought she would never stop, and I would never get my head upright again. She asked me if I would like to live on the farm with her and Uncle Arthur for always, but I said, not without my mother, and she tickled me until I gasped for breath. She was a strong loving woman.

  Mother took us along the hedgerows and knew the names of every flower, bird and tree. She saw wild strawberries where we couldn’t and said we had ‘town eyes.’ She was like a girl she was so happy. My dad spent the holiday in his best suit, flushed, tottery and happy, although one tragedy marred the lovely holiday. We had found a tiny bird with its wing broken and feeling so miserable decided to put it in with the chickens, sure that they would mother it until it could fly again. Carefully we opened the door to the chickens’ run, tenderly we placed the little bird inside, and the chickens came screaming and half-flying to tear this little bird to pieces in front of our terrified eyes. The chickens were like eagles with their wild screams, threshing talons and beaks. Our screams brought Mother running and she cried, and said why didn’t we wait and ask her about the little bird. Sadly she said it was nature’s way, the law of the jungle, and Father said, ‘Big fleas have little fleas.’ We didn’t know what he meant and thought secretly it was the country cider making him say strange things.

  The following year Winnie became engaged, and as her fiancé was at sea most of the time, she was preparing her bottom drawer and couldn’t mix with other young men; it was a time to be faithful; her ring with the diamonds was a constant reminder she was ‘spoken for.’ It was a lovely time for Marjorie and me, for Winnie took us out every week-end. We went to Greenwich where we saw Queen Elizabeth’s bath and she (Winnie, not Queen Elizabeth), rolled down the hills with us and we thought of the time when Mother had taken us all out on picnics there, and we tried to read the 24-hour clock and watch the red ball go up on the observatory. Mother used
to take an enormous cold rice pudding in her enamel pie-dish. Sometimes Mother had taken us to Victoria Park; that was quite an expedition for we would have to go by train from Poplar station. It was only one station away, but it was a real exciting train journey. We would argue about which was the best carriage, and finally all pile in, and when the guard waved his green flag we would all sing.

  Winnie took us further afield, to London, and to Richmond where lived a cousin Trudy. She owned a Tea Shoppe with little bottle-glass windows and I was upset when Winnie refused Trudy’s offer of a nice meal. I thought grown-ups were strange in their refusals of such lovely things and I was tired and had a blister on my foot. I lost my little Sunday handbag and Winnie said, ‘Don’t cry, I will take you to Scotland Yard where all lost things are sent.’ First of all she took me to a man’s shop near Scotland Yard and bought me a little round beaver hat, just like the bank manager’s daughters wore, and so the policeman called me miss when I told him what my little bag contained. ‘One piece of rag, ironed by mother to look like a hankie, two texts, one of the baby Jesus and one of the three wise men, a farthing, and a spare gob.’ This last was a perfect round stone I had found and so was an extra to my set of ‘bonce and gobs.’

  We went to Wales to meet Winnie’s future in-laws. They lived in a village about eighteen miles from Cardiff and kept an inn. The inn had a yard attached to it where the farmers from the hills brought their cattle, horses, and pigs to sell on Mondays, and the inn was full of smoke and red-faced men talking a foreign language and laughing very loudly. I was too young to go into the bars but I could see them from the kitchen, and on Mondays there was a constant stream of tottering red-faced foreigners staggering to the men’s lavatory. Further down the passage inside a shed in the garden was the ladies’ lavatory for it had two black holes in a white scrubbed box and a smaller hole in a lower box. I was horrified at this. I thought a family of Welsh people would descend on me en masse, for there was no lock on the door. At home it was considered not the thing if one member of the family should hurry another up even in an emergency. I was frightened of the black bottomless pit and was sure some monster would come up from the depths and either bite my bottom or attach itself to my nether portions. Mother laughed when I told her of my distaste for country lavatories, for someone she knew in her childhood days fixed his family lavatory on his vegetable garden to fertilise the crops. This was the end for me and I wondered why the man and his family weren’t poisoned when they ate vegetables.