Mother Knew Best

by Dorothy Scannell

  I could hardly contain myself whilst waiting to tell him all my lovely plans for the future and I sat at the sitting-room window in the dark waiting his return. The clock on the mantel-shelf ticked loudly. Midnight passed and still no Charles. Finally, at two a.m., when I was dizzy gazing at the stars, I saw him turn into the road. He had worked later than usual, had missed the train and had walked some of the way. I sat in silence while he ate his supper for my mother always said, ‘Let a man eat his meal first before you talk to him after a hard day.’ While he was in the bathroom I went to bed and put on my honeymoon nightie. I could hear his noisy ablutions; he was like a drowning man when he rinsed his face, for he took in great gasping breaths as he splashed water over it—so much water that it ran down his elbows in rivers, and he seemed to scrub up like a surgeon.

  He never glanced at me as he got into bed and switched off the light. ‘Say Worcestershire,’ I said to him, taking his hand. He flung my hand aside and shouted, ‘Now look here, I’ve had a real sod of a day, I’ve just got to get some sleep, save your stupid games for some other time.’ I should have taken his advice but I was so anxious to know if my intuition was right that I babbled on about the boy in Chrisp Street and the boy on the coal-cart. He didn’t seem a bit thrilled to know he was the boy I had always remembered but just remarked that it was typical of me to remind him of the saddest day of his life when his brother was injured in the raid and his school-friends were killed. Thinking to cheer him up, I said didn’t he think it was strange we had met at all, that I was able to join his tennis club when I couldn’t play tennis. He switched on the bedside light (such a luxury we had thought). In its pink glow with my lovely nightie on I knew with my smile of love I must look a picture of blushing willingness. He raised himself on one elbow and leaned over me, ready, I thought, to take me in his arms and say passionately, ‘Darling you are right, it was meant to be.’ Suddenly and belligerently he said, as though he was speaking to an idiot, ‘As secretary of that club I knew we were short of funds, I let you join only because we needed the money.’ And he turned his back on me and put out the light.

  About The Author

  Dorothy Scannell was born in the East End of London in 1911, one of ten children. At the age of 63, when she was already a grandmother, she wrote her first book Mother Knew Best, an evocative and entertaining memoir of her working-class childhood in east London between World Wars One and Two. The book’s success prompted two further memoirs, Dolly’s War and Dolly’s Mixture, as well as a series of novels.

  After marrying Chas, Dorothy had two children and two grand-children. She died, aged 96, in 2008.

  Also by Dorothy Scannell

  Dolly’s War

  Dolly’s Mixture

  Dorothy Scannell

  Dolly’s War

  A MEMOIR FROM THE HOME FRONT

  On a narrow wooden armchair-bed was lying our hostess. Her nightdress was up round her neck. The organist, on his knees, in the nude, was deep in prayer, his face bent in reverence over his bride’s prostrate form.

  Ever so slowly the organist raised his horrified eyes to ours. My sister, extremely slow to take in the delicacy of any situation, murmured, half to herself, ‘That’s funny, I could have sworn he was clean-shaven.’

  Dolly Scannell, the author of East End classic memoir Mother Knew Best, has now established her home front, wife to the embattled Chas, and proud keeper of her own house. Life is still full of small but piquant joys, sorrows and bizarre happenstances – like Dolly’s need to take her household rubbish back to her mother for fear of her new landlord. Before long she’s a mum as well, but then comes the war and her cheerful wit and unquenchable spirit are needed more than ever.

  Gas masks, ration books, GI’s (over-sexed, etc), a chaotic Jewish wedding, husband Chas in the Army, while Dolly takes on his insurance selling door-to-door, encounters a murderous landlady and spends time evacuated from her beloved London to Wales and Suffolk – before being restored to her beloved and enormous family, her mother still matriach of all. A treasure, recalled and retold by the author at her inimitable best!

  ‘The author of Mother Knew Best in hilarious vein’ Yorkshire Post

  ‘You have to laugh with Dolly Scannell. Somehow that Cockney flow of funny tales shakes you up into laughter’ Evening Standard

  Chapter 1

  A Load of Old Rubbish

  ‘I haven’t patience with you, Dolly,’ said my mother. Her patience sorely tried because, visiting her a few weeks after my marriage, I had announced that I was bored, nothing exciting or interesting seemed to be happening. She knew she would have no solution for Dolly’s discontent so she issued a statement which was guaranteed to pull me together, once and for all. ‘Has you make your bed so you must lie on it.’ She said this in tones of drama. ‘It’s As you make your bed, Mum, not Has.’ ‘Yes,’ she agreed, ‘Has you make your bed.’ My father looked up from his book. ‘Cheer up, Dolly,’ he said. ‘The first forty years are the worst, so you’ve only got thirty-nine years and eleven months to go.’

  I decided to bid my parents good-bye, for I was in a restless mood, and Mother, once having made her point, or having thought she had made her point with me, would soon be on the theme of ‘Think of poor... and her lot,’ some other unfortunate member of the family whose present plight Mother assumed would make me feel like Lady Rothschild.

  I walked along East India Dock Road to Morant Street where my husband’s parents lived. Ethel, my mother-in-law, was always understanding. Any trouble of mine she would always insist was ‘that boy’s fault’, ‘that boy’ being my dear husband, Chas. This, of course, made me feel more loving towards him – think what a perfect mother-in-law she was. She, as always, was delighted to see me. I was just in time for supper, sausages and tomatoes. She told me, in her broad Suffolk brogue, of the time she was in service. The Mistress was one day discussing the lower classes, stressing that they were, in her opinion, dirty and unhygienic. This wounded my ma-in-law’s pride – ever a fastidious person – and the next morning, before taking up the breakfast sausages she licked each one all over thoroughly and watched, delightedly, while her employers ate them with relish. ‘Don’t tell Charlie bor, mor,’ she said. ‘He wouldn’t like to know I did anything like that.’ Then I told her about the aristocratic master, a man with an enormous stomach, who would send for his cook every morning to give her the day’s menus as he said it was his only opportunity for intercourse with her. She roared at this although it might have made my mother ‘tut’.

  In some strange way, domestic servants employed by people of high birth, considered themselves superior to domestic servants working for employers in trade and the like even though their wages were the same or lower. The wealth and possessions of the employers seemed hardly to have any connection with this domestic class-consciousness.

  My mother’s employers were not only high born, whereas Ma-in-law’s were in trade, but they treated Mother like the ‘lady and gentleman’ they were. They addressed her as ‘Leah’ and even spoke of her as ‘dear Leah’ when mentioning her name through a third person. They requested a service from her and did not demand it. Ethel’s mistress called her by her surname and then, according to Ethel, pronounced it wrongly purposely to impress on Ethel, her (the mistress’s) superiority of class. Ma-in-law’s surname was Cadge, but in a loud voice the mistress would call ‘Cage’. She ordered things to be done. Ethel did not respect her employer, often engaging in little rebellious acts down in the kitchen to retain her ‘independence’. My mother was proud of her employers. Therefore it went without saying, indeed it was never said, that my mother was more ‘genteel’ than Ma-in-law. Ma-in-law retained her Suffolk brogue while my mother had no trace of her Wiltshire tongue or indeed of the cockney style of speech.

  Sometimes Chas’s younger brother would be home when I visited his mother. I liked that, for he was great fun, a real character. He called his mum, ‘Old Lady’ or ‘Missus’. There were, of course, no bathrooms in th
e little Poplar houses and Philip would stand by the kitchen sink stripped to the waist, but before commencing his ablutions he would don a hat, a straw boater in summer and a bowler-hat in winter. At one time he worked on the grocery counter of a large store. He was especially kind to old ladies and loved to make them laugh. If they were not sure which fish paste to choose he would suggest the latest which had just arrived, ‘Winkle and Whale’. If they wanted something special he would say, ‘Oh, just a moment, madam, I’ll go down in my private lift to the basement.’ He would then press an invisible push-button on his side of the counter, bend his knees and slowly ‘descend’, then after a little while ‘up’ he would rise with the required article which had been just under the counter.

  ‘Coo,’ remarked my elegant sister Amy when Mother told her of my less than ecstatic acceptance of married life, ‘I wish I had my first married months over again, I had a fine time.’ She would, of course; that went without saying. Her self-contained second-floor flat was, thanks to her adoring husband James, newly decorated, her furniture and equipment the best obtainable. It all looked so new and shining Amy never thought any housework need be done. She would rise after James had left for the office and have a leisurely style breakfast while reading the paper, clad in her honeymoon negligee. Then she would bath and make herself all elegant in one of her honeymoon suits and visit friends, go shopping, have a late lunch, then saunter home to get the evening meal. She was brought up sharply from this life of luxury by the woman in the flat below, a fanatically house-proud creature. She was probably jealous of Amy’s way of life and one day stopped her and enquired, ‘Don’t you ever do any housework?’ Amy said to me, really it hadn’t occurred to her, but from then on, to give her her due, she changed her ways.

  Although Amy and I were often, as Mother said, ‘at logger-heads’ with one another, yet we were never bored in each other’s company, which was a compliment to me in one way, for Amy could not bear to be bored and would not suffer fools gladly. She often said she had to be dominant because she was the middle one of the family and therefore the only one without status. Since I was the ninth child out of ten I couldn’t think what status I possessed but I envied her the doing of things ‘her way’ and was always mystified that the men in her life came back for more, never leaving her, as I felt they would be justified in doing by her treatment of them. James played football for a Millwall team and also the Stepney Templars before they were married. Amy used to watch but was never one hundred per cent pleased by spectatorship.

  One Saturday the team travelled to Orpington in Kent for a match. Amy said they played the inmates of a mental-home! She was bored to tears and after the match Jim said, to placate her, ‘Let’s take a walk round the lovely Kent countryside.’ Amy, knowing this would lead to courtship love-making, was too bored and now too bad-tempered for this, and while Jim was in the dressing-room changing she made her way to the station and returned home to Poplar. Dusk was falling when an agitated James arrived at our house in Grove Villas. He had been searching worriedly for Amy and was nearly frantic. He went up the main steps of the house and knocked. Amy appeared from the basement, and Jim, in his frantic state of mind and the gathering darkness, mistook her for my youngest sister Marjorie. ‘Is Amy home yet, Marjorie?’ he enquired. ‘No,’ said Amy in Marjorie’s voice. ‘Oh, God,’ said a nearly crazy Jim, and tore off, much to Amy’s satisfaction. I told Mother, who was in the scullery, and I was dispatched immediately after Jim. ‘Poor chap,’ said Mother. When they met it was Jim who was profuse with apologies. Small wonder that I envied my Jezebel of a sister.

  Life, therefore, could not be peaceful with Amy, and one Christmas through her ‘equality’ with men something terrible happened in our house. My mother had been busy all day with the Christmas preparations. She was tired out and Amy was assisting her. I was in the corner of the kitchen, my head stuck in a book. My father was very late home and Mother, having cooked his tea, sirloin steak, had placed it in the oven beside the kitchen fire. Finally a tottery father appeared having celebrated the holy eve with his men friends. He sat down to this dried up looking steak, took one mouthful and throwing it on the fire said, ‘What do you mean, Mother, by offering me tough steak, I could sole my bloody boots with it.’

  Mother would probably have poured oil on troubled waters, but Amy, knowing how Mother had worked to the point of exhaustion for us all, said to my father, ‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Dad, coming home and complaining when Mother has been slaving away for you all day.’ Whether it was the word ‘you’, whether it was a daughter’s criticism, whether in his befuddled mind he couldn’t face the fact that what Amy had said was true, I don’t know, but he got up from the table and approaching Amy in a menacing manner, he hissed, ‘You cheeky little cat,’ at the same time stretching out his hands as though to place them round her neck. Mother all this time was standing by the floured pastry-board smiling gently in an embarrassed way. Amy, now Sarah Bernhardt in her glory, threw up her head and seemed to place her neck into Father’s outstretched hands. ‘Go on then,’ she said in deep dramatic tones. ‘Murder me, murder me.’ My father suddenly lowered his hands and said disgustedly, ‘Pff, you silly little cake.’ As he lowered his hands, Amy, reluctant to abandon the dramatic scene, pushed her face forward and my father’s thumb caught her eye. Mother now advanced round the table and said, ‘Walter, I am ashamed of you, your own daughter. How can I live with a man like that?’ Again my father’s befuddled pride rose strong in him. ‘If you wish to go, then go,’ he shouted at my mother. She had done it now, the ball was in her court, for the sake of her pride she had to go (and of course she didn’t want to). ‘Come, Marjorie,’ she said, and she, Amy and Marjorie swept from the room.

  Still paralysed in my chair by the fire I heard the upstairs front door close. My mother and sisters had not glanced at me, no invitation had been forthcoming to join them and I was left with this strange father. I could have gone with them without an invitation I knew, but to do so I would have had to pass my father and I was too frightened to do that. He turned to me and gazing hard at me said, ‘And what do you intend to do, Dolly?’ Discretion being the better part of valour (I was glad Amy couldn’t hear me), I said, ‘I’ll stay with you, Dad,’ feeling all the time a cowardly hypocrite. My declaration of loyal daughterly love did not seem to make him weep with fatherly tenderness or remorse, or perhaps it was because of my promise to stay that he said, ‘Well, I’m now going out to drown myself!’ He left by the basement door. Before I could collect my thoughts the door opened again, ‘In drink,’ added my father and slammed the door.

  I was now alone in the house. There was no one to help me. None of my brothers and sisters was at home. David was at sea as also were Cecil and Charlie. Winifred was in Australia and Agnes, Arthur and Leonard were all married and away. I felt very lonely and very frightened. Suddenly to add to my fears I thought about the oncoming night. Suppose my father did not come back (suddenly I wished that he would), and a burglar broke in. Just as I was torturing myself with awful thoughts the kitchen door began to open slowly. ‘Oh, dear,’ I thought, a burglar must have been lying in wait. Perhaps he had followed my tottery father home and heard all that went on. Suddenly round the door came three faces, Mother’s, Marjorie’s and Amy’s. All beaming, except that Amy’s eye was very inflamed, all happy again. There was a knock on the door. It was Amy’s James. Sarah Bernhardt once more, Amy flung herself into Jim’s arms. This unusually warm welcome seemed to please him mightily. ‘Oh, Jim,’ she said, ‘my father has tried to murder me,’ copious sobs from Amy. Jim, pleased for any excuse to be close to his darling, hugged her tight. Glancing at us three and seeing our happy smiles he knew that all was well really.

  My mother seemed to have enjoyed the evening in some strange fashion and slept in our room that night to let my father think she had gone. The next morning Christmas dinner was well on the way when a father with a hangover appeared downstairs. We all assumed that the demon drink woul
d have given him an attack of amnesia, or at least remorse, but when he saw my mother wearing a paper hat and happily preparing the meal he said, ‘I understood you had left me.’ ‘Well,’ said my mother sheepishly, ‘I’ve come back.’ With a hint of dignity my father said, ‘I’ll allow it this time, but on any future occasion if you decide to leave let it be understood I shall expect you to be gone for good.’

  I was glad Amy wasn’t there for she would not like to have seen my father the moral victor. When at family gatherings over the years Amy says, ‘Do you remember that Christmas when Dad tried to murder me?’ the whole family, the rest of them having heard our story, clamp down on Amy. To make matters worse for her, James always had a soft spot for and admired my father greatly, so short of being a corpse Amy has not a leg to stand on.

  I had returned from my own honeymoon just a few days before my return visit to my mother and as my old friend Edna’s new house at Blackheath was a short bus-ride away from our new flat at Greenwich, on the spur of the moment I had decided to pop in to see her. Edna, possibly wanting to hear all about my honeymoon, had insisted at my wedding that she and Bill, her husband, would always be delighted to see my Chas and me. She and I were friends from my church-going days and I understood her husband had been a member of a Blackheath church choir. She was a sweet, simple, sentimental sort of creature and lived in an Elinor Glyn type of fantasy world. She was an avid reader of the daily primrose thoughts of certain newspaper ladies. Half of her tripped the light fantastic amongst the fragrant printed nothings she devoured daily, the other half of her romantic self clothed in satin, lay in imaginary abandonment on a leopard-skin rug. She had confided in me, in whispered tones, details of her honeymoon, and had just reached the exciting part where she was lying virginally on the pillows, clad in an exotic peach negligee. ‘Bill came into the room,’ went on Edna, eyes dreamily half-closed, re-living what had obviously been for her a heavenly experience. ‘And when he saw me in my beautiful nightdress, he fell on his knees by the side of the bed and began to pray.’ I was so surprised at this religious turn of events in what had promised to be a story of purple passion, that I was about to ask, ‘What on earth could he have prayed for?’ when a frantic male voice from above suddenly screamed, ‘What have you done with my bloody vest?’ ‘Oh dear,’ sighed Edna. ‘He’s probably slinging everything all over the bedroom. Before we were married,’ she continued, ‘I never dreamt Bill had this impatient streak in him.’ The door of the small sitting-room burst open and a tousled red-faced man burst in, stopping short at the sight of me. ‘I might as well go and sit in the car,’ he said. ‘There’s more room in that.’