There was definitely TB in my mother’s family. It was a fact that nobody was inclined to dispute. My grandmother herself was largely hale and hearty apart from an enduring addiction to alcohol which at times ruptured what might have otherwise been cordial relations with her extended family. As for my grandfather, he had wisely abandoned all alcoholic treats after Baby Arthur met an early demise when accidentally suffocated by his inebriated parents at the age of seven weeks. So it was a Bad Heart that eventually shortened Edgar Constant’s life just before the outbreak of war when it was rumoured that the threat of his only live son’s Call Up papers hadn’t made life any easier for him but Old Nan lived stubbornly on until Christmas Eve 1965. At the very moment she eventually succumbed following a late night walk down to The Jolly Farmers at Crayford to buy a half bottle of gin my nephew Merlin was being born twenty miles up-river in St Bartholemew’s Hospital, Smithfield to his excited teenage parents, my brother Bernard and his wife Janice.
When war finally broke out in spite of all the worry and concern about Edgar Constant Junior being called up to serve his country in the event no papers actually arrived because he numbered among the several Constant children whose birth had never been registered in the first place. Old Nan was apt to be forgetful concerning such formalities if seasonal field work was uppermost in her mind and in August 1912 it had been hop-picking which was of course more important than the registration of a child’s birth. This lapse meant that young Edgar was in the fullness of time free to give his entire attention to the wartime Black Market not to mention become of enormous comfort to several local women who missed the company of their serving husbands. Should his presence in the byways and bars of Crayford and Erith cause undue comment his mother and sisters stalwartly maintained that Poor Young Edgar had more than done his bit having been a hero of Dunkirk in 1940 which was of course quite untrue.
The scourge of TB that had plucked several Constant daughters from life in the 1930s continued to plague the family into the next decade taking two more aunts shortly after they gave birth leaving Poor Little Violet and Poor Little Doris motherless. Violet preceded her cousin by several months and being the first grandchild found in such a position was embraced into the maternal breast of my grandmother who said she would take on her upbringing as long as her father chipped in with some readies from time to time. He, only too delighted to rid himself of the burden of a small baby, agreed immediately. Later when fate saw Little Doris in the same position my grandmother was reluctant to again enter into the same arrangement. She wasn’t as young as she used to be and although Little Violet, bless her heart, never gave her a day’s worry, taking on another baby was out of the question. There would have to be a roster. Well, she didn’t quite put it like that but the rest of the family became quite aware of the expectations.
So in 1942 cousin Doris began what was to become a regular passage through the families of her various relatives usually remaining for several weeks before being passed on. Fortunately she was of a calm and placid nature and endured being treated as an unwanted human parcel with fortitude, growing from a small baby who rarely cried to a resilient pre-schooler who seldom required any special attention with what seemed like grim determination just as long as she was occasionally taken to feed ducks. Over time it became clear that of all her cousins she got on with Aunt Mag’s Margaret a great deal better than the rest of us. Margaret was several years older than me and the clutch of Crayford cousins and had been a schoolgirl for a number of years, what’s more she also had the added advantage of child care experience in the form of caring for her own baby sister Ann. She became especially good at amusing Doris, never tiring of ministering to her fondness for ducks by taking her down to the creek to feed them and watching carefully that she did not stumble into the brackish water in her somewhat controlled excitement. Doris came to love her dearly and when she caught sight of her, her large blue eyes would light up which certainly did not happen when she came across me because as my mother was wont to point out, she and I simply did not get on.
My dead aunt had been what my mother called a Good knitter and a Fair Hand at crochet and once she became sick during her pregnancy she took the opportunity of improving these skills. I came to realise that my dislike of Doris was partly because she came equipped with at least half a dozen silk dresses trimmed with angora of which I was very jealous. To add insult to injury she was a rather beautiful child and the aunts were fond of comparing her to Shirley Temple, even wondering if she might grow to develop similar performing skills as the famous child star. Her appearance was constantly commented upon, in particular her astonishingly extravagant and golden curls that framed her face and fell gently around her neck making her resemble a Botticelli angel. The sum total of the attention she generated did nothing to endear her to me and I certainly did not look forward to her visits when for what seemed like an interminable length of time she shared my bedroom and my mother’s attention. Even worse because she was younger than me she also shared my pushchair and I definitely felt that her turns when we walked to Gravesend and back were longer than mine.
Walking around the market on Saturdays with Doris being pushed and me having to hold on to the side of the handle and not get lost resulted in rapid affirmation of my antipathy towards my unfortunate cousin. We could scarcely go a few yards it seemed before women of all ages would comment on the blonde tresses, the sapphire blue eyes, the long lashes and the dimples and the object of all this attention would gaze into each approving face, pink lips slightly apart, cheeks dimple indented and a coy smile upon her face. Some of the admirers would also look me up and down and make comment that for sisters we were not in any way alike were we? One woman enthusing over Doris, briefly glanced at me before saying that I was quite plain wasn’t I? My mother simply laughed and said that Poor Little Doris was her dead sister’s girl and that as for Jean, well you could never get her hair to curl no matter how hard you tried. Later she said she’d been a rude cow. That day, while some shrimps were being bought for tea I took the opportunity of pinching my greatly admired cousin on her plump little left leg and then got annoyed when instead of volubly complaining she simply gazed at me forlornly whilst the doll-like eyes half filled with tears.
All things considered it was true to say that I had no love whatsoever for this particular cousin and the Doris feature that I most abhorred was definitely the Shirley Temple hair and probably that was because during the time I discuss small girls with the look of the American superstar were universally revered. As for Doris herself she seemed largely unaware of how she was regarded which my mother attributed to the fact that her mother, Poor Phyllis, had also been of unblemished character and never was one to blow her own trumpet. In fact Doris was so little trouble to care for that had I been better able to tolerate her presence I think she would have been considered for permanent residence at our place. Her Achilles’ heel was definitely her fondness for ducks and the feeding of them with bits of stale bread and so because she was so good and undemanding, after shopping in the market we would invariably make our way along the riverside until we found a group of eager feeders. Although I was wary of getting too close to their beaks, Doris was never happier than when surrounded by a dozen Mallard or Muscovy distributing sustenance and never seemed to mind them encircling her in what I felt was an ominous fashion. Under normal circumstances all stale bread available was earmarked for the making of bread pudding every second Saturday but when my cousin was with us that routine was cast asunder because Bless Her Little Heart she enjoyed the duck feeding so much. Furthermore, when all was said and done, the Poor Little Mite didn’t have much in life so who could begrudge her that pleasure? Well, I could for one.
I very much begrudged Doris her paltry pleasure, as well as her infant daring as she stood encircled by antagonistic Anseriformes battling for bread without at any stage losing her nerve. The shared life we had to intermittently endure, I felt, would be easier for everyone if Doris was not quite as brave or quite as curly. There was not a lot I could do about her exasperating daring so I gave a great deal of attention to the much admired hair and came to the conclusion that we would have to play a game of hairdressers the very next time she came to stay.
I didn’t have long to wait once Aunt Maud’s Pat came down with Mumps and so withdrew from the care roster. Doris was shunted back to York Road, Northfleet much sooner than anticipated looking more dazzlingly beautiful than ever with pretty pink Bakelite clips, a third birthday gift from her father, pinning her hair back from her ears. Bakelite toys and trinkets had been all the rage prior to the outbreak of war and at some stage I had inherited an unattractive grey swan originally belonging to Margaret that I was allowed to float in the zinc bath with me on Saturday nights in front of the kitchen stove. Doris, not understanding much about swans, believed it to be a duck and we often had disputes over whose turn it was to do the floating. She coveted the swan so much that I had taken to hiding it under my bed just to punish her for her existence. However one Saturday in June 1944 I surprised her with my sudden altruism when I handed it to her to play with and even my mother noted approvingly that I was being very unselfish and she was proud of me. I went further and generously announced that Doris could take it to bed with her because I was a big girl now, having recently had my fourth birthday. Doris warmly thanked me managing to look only a little bit uneasy as she did so.
It was halfway through the following morning when my mother was preoccupied with making the Sunday dinner rice pudding that I suggested the new game which involved removing a pair of nail scissors from the manicure set my mother’s long deceased fiancé Fred had given her then retiring to the end of the yard beside the entrance to the Anderson shelter. Doris followed just a little cautiously, the grey Bakelite swan beneath her right arm. Annoyingly she seemed determined to be more of a paragon of virtue than usual which was possibly because my mother had promised a walk to Springhead to the ducks that afternoon just as long as both of us Behaved. I asked her if she would like to play hairdressers and she shook her head vigorously and held the swan just a little closer so I asked if she would like to keep the Bakelite swan when she left us. Doris nodded twice and turned anxiously towards the back door where she could hear my mother reassuringly banging saucepans and singing Molly Malone. Pulling her towards me I said she could keep the toy and it would be hers for ever just as long as we could now play hairdressers. I added that although we called the swan a swan it was in reality a duck, just a different kind of duck. She looked slightly more interested and as I moved above her with the nail scissors and sliced awkwardly through the uppermost golden ringlet she hugged the swan across her chest and whispered that she wanted very much to keep it because ducks were her favourite things and she loved them more than she loved God. Hissing at her to keep as still as she could I denuded her of what Old Mr Bassant next door had once referred to as her crowning glory as fast as possible. We then both stared at the triangular heap of coiled hair glistening between us in a kind of horrified hypnotised silence. Doris rocked slowly back and forth and although I had expected her to cry I noticed that her eyes were totally dry.
She only began to cry several minutes later when my mother came to investigate why we were being so quiet and good. And then so did I, heaving shuddering sobs as I explained that I had only done what Doris had asked me to do because she wanted to play hairdressers and she was no good with the scissors. Her hair had only suffered I explained because I was the one who was better with the scissors – simply because I was older. The game itself was definitely not my idea. I said nothing about the Bakelite swan and Doris did not argue when later I decided not to let her keep it after all. My mother was so angry that we were not taken to feed the ducks that afternoon after all which of course hurt Doris much more than it hurt me. She had never before known her Dear Little Niece to be so naughty and it was clear she was learning bad ways from somebody. I immediately agreed and suggested that maybe it was Margaret. Doris was still crying and said nothing at all and my mother simply gave me a very strange look.
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