The Silver Fox

 

          When I was a very little girl my grandmother had a black jacket with a flamboyant fur collar that she said was a Silver Fox.  She said her Edgar had treated her to it after a particularly gratifying day at the races back in 1930 or thereabouts.   She always wore it when she was going somewhere special and sometimes even on a trip to Gravesend market if she was intending to make more than one purchase from Strongy.    It was some years before I quite realized that the collar had started life on an animal and was a relative of the red fox reputed to live in the adjacent countryside.  Back then it was an animal we rarely caught sight of and Mr Clarke at school said that was because it was naturally shy and fearful of human beings.   When I first saw the Keeshond puppy I was to become owner of I was immediately reminded of the Silver Fox collar.

More recently I was astonished to discover that these days a Keeshond puppy might set you back several thousand dollars.  I imagine the price depends a great deal on the breeding but even so when put alongside what my father paid for the puppy he acquired a few days before Christmas in nineteen-fifty it seems extortionate.   He handed over very nearly five pounds for our puppy at a time when that sum represented a week’s wages.   It was my Christmas present and a very special one indeed and by rights should have arrived at the bottom of my bed early on the morning of the twenty-fifth but that was impossible because the breeder made it quite clear that she wasn’t prepared to be all things to all people.   So it was take it or leave it on the twenty-first and we took it.   My mother rapidly established the fact that I certainly would not be getting anything else for Christmas so not to expect anything and not to make a fuss when my brother opened his presents.  I promised faithfully that I would be as good as gold but of course by the time the twenty-fifth arrived and the puppy had been with us for several days the promise was hard to keep.   Anticipating this my father gave me a copy of Treasure Island which I pretended to find thrilling as I glared furiously across the room at my brother exclaiming over a toy truck and a junior printing set.   Why, I wondered, could I not also have a printing set?   

However, the puppy was quite delightful, a ball of silver-grey silky fluff and more than ready to be a friend heaven-sent but having said that he did not come without problems.   The first was the question of his name which I felt I should choose as he was supposedly my dog.  I chose Trixie and when my father said that was unacceptable as it was a female name I simply changed it to Tricksie because I was planning to teach him a lot of tricks.   My father said dogs were unable to spell and his own choice was Rex and when I hysterically sobbed that he was now accustomed to Trixie/Tricksie I was told I could ease him gently and without emotional trauma into the new name via the diminutive of Rexie.   I very much disliked the name Rexie.    The second stumbling block was that because he had grown up in The Medway Home for Orphan boys my father was totally familiar with harsh treatment and when the poor animal failed to get the hang of toilet training in the first week of his tenure he at once dealt out to him what appeared to me to be savage beatings with a rolled up newspaper.     My reaction was perhaps predictable whereupon it was patiently explained to me that Rexie knew right from wrong because his age of nearly four months placed him somewhere between that of a boy of fourteen or even fifteen.   And would you, I was asked, allow such a boy to deliberately soil your kitchen floor on a daily basis?    When my grandmother visited on New Year’s Day she said she’d no more put up with a dog piddling all over the place than she would a child and that was a fact.   But then she didn’t hold with dogs because it wasn’t as if they were cats and could keep down the mice was it?   My father, who was not altogether accustomed to my grandmother agreeing with him about anything, stood up a little straighter and said it was a well-known fact that some dogs were good ratters to which she retorted that her tomcat Mick was as good a ratter as any you’d find anywhere and what’s more had never piddled in the house in all the years she’d had him.  Moreover, he was put outside each night and didn’t howl like a baby when that happened.  She certainly didn’t hold with animals being kept inside all night.   My mother told her that the problem was that a lot of money had been handed over for the dog on account of it having a Pedigree and as everyone knew animals with Pedigrees could be delicate.   At that Old Nan said something like delicate her arse and banged her fist on the table.  

It would be fair to say that Rexie, who rapidly became simply Rex was not a total success with any of us even me at first and looking back I can only feel sorry for him.   My father had hankered after a gun dog, preferably a black Labrador that he might call Betsy, and take out on the marshes with him to catch rabbits.   As he did not own a gun and had never dared raise the idea of ownership of such a weapon with my mother it was difficult to see quite how this dream could ever be fulfilled.  My brother was more interested in birds than in dogs and my mother was largely uninterested in pets of any kind.  At the age of ten I was of course quite obsessed with the idea of animal ownership and thought I might at some future stage explore the notion of working in a zoo because the more unusual and exotic an animal was declared to be, the more I wanted to somehow connect with it. 

Initially the Keeshond puppy had seemed exotic which is of course why I had wanted him so much but he rapidly became less glamorous and more fearful as he struggled to understand what exactly it was that he was doing wrong on the kitchen floor, and on several occasions in my bed when I smuggled him upstairs from time to time.   It would be true to say that my mother’s fury did not abate for some considerable time when she discovered the mishaps in the bed for which both of us were punished.  At one stage I even considered running away from home and hiding with Rex in Cobham Woods where we would live off blackberries and cobnuts and mushrooms and it wouldn’t matter where he chose to make his lavatory.  When I failed to persuade Molly from number 31 to at least consider the idea of coming with me together with her dog Rover, I did give a little thought to the fact that a woodland life might be lonely but imagined that it would be possible to perhaps be befriended by a family of foxes or badgers.  Although I had never seen a badger except in an Enid Blyton wildlife book, very occasionally when walking back to York Road in the half light of a summer evening a rustle on the side of the lane might cause my father to whisper that it was a fox and we would stand still hardly daring to breathe in order to catch a better glimpse of it.   And then I would return home in great excitement to acquaint my brother of our brush with nature and announce that he should have been there.  When put alongside the manner in which these animals have now invaded towns and cities and brazenly parade streets tipping over dustbins to search out the very best leftovers McDonald’s can offer, the behavioural change can only be described as astonishing.   In Islington according to my daughter the family of foxes residing in her garden have even learned the judicious use of pedestrian crossings so perhaps it is never wise to make assumptions as to how the world is likely to change in the space of little more than half a century. 

Back in 1950   I found myself wondering about foxes a great deal and asked my father if they could be tamed, silver ones in particular.   He said not as far as he was aware and anyway there were no silver ones in England which response did not please me at all.   I had already decided to transform and remodel Rex the Keeshond with the unpredictable bladder to become Riga The Silver Fox and it would have been helpful if at least one or two could be found occasionally in Cobham woods.   I am now no longer sure where the name Riga came from but it sounded the right kind of name for the animal I had in mind.  

The first person I apprised of the dog’s altered identity was June Dawson who lived at the Buckingham Road corner of Shepherd Street when I met her pushing her little brother Christopher towards Trokes’ shop.   She stopped to tell me she had now read all the Secret Seven books in the local library and ask how many I’d read so I told her that I finished them all years ago which was of course quite untrue.   She then asked me how dear little Rex was and I said she now had to call him by his real name which was Riga.  I was slightly annoyed when this instruction did not seem to unduly faze her or cause her to ask why but overall I started to feel a little more cheerful.   

I began to tell everyone, well everyone under the age of twelve or thirteen to be more precise, that my exotic Christmas gift of a Keeshond puppy called Rex had been simply a cover story.  I had not been at liberty to reveal the truth about his identity before now. He was not a domesticated animal at all but in fact a Silver Fox and the original information had been a necessary stratagem - a ploy because he was part of a secret special breeding programme to produce tame foxes for the world market.     I had been specifically chosen as part of the Trial but they must not tell any adult because it was still very much Top Secret.  All the girls seemed quite accepting of this information and little Marjorie Ditchburn hopped excitedly from one leg to the other and said I was just so lucky, even observing that it was a great pity she couldn’t tell her Mum because she was sure she would find it very interesting news.   A number of the boys on the other hand were harder to convince and Peter Jackson said he was going to ask Mr Clarke first thing on Monday morning when he got to school because if there was such a thing as a special breeding programme he would know about it for sure.   I now can’t remember whether he carried out this threat but at the time I was quite worried that he might. 

Oddly enough many years later I learned from Google that at the time I had been inventing this most unlikely tale a Russian scientist called Dmitri Belyaev was conducting a long-term experiment to study the process of domestication in dogs.  I don’t know what his findings were but it appears that instead of using wolves, he chose to use silver foxes.  I do so wish I had known this at the time!

An Apology to Siegfried Sassoon .........

 

Does it matter, a child out of hell?

Perfection can’t always be found

And nobody knows us that well

So evidence thin on the ground

But what of that infinite hate, that blame for the trouble and strife

Laid at the feet of the parents, who permitted an imperfect life.

 

Does it matter the shame of it all?

The disgrace of a dissolute son

The explaining once more why he doesn’t appear.

But is duty a tad overdone?

Does it matter ignoring the dying?  Should they simply accept their own lapse?

Did their parenting need a sharp overhaul, a shake-up, a reboot perhaps?

 

Do they matter, those dreams from the past?

Of the infant whose love turned to hate,

An affection that just failed to last

Was it him, was it them, was it fate?

What was it that led to such loathing, that led to this great disconnect?

The ripping apart of filial bonds, devotion now dormant, now wrecked.

 

Do they matter, these feelings of rage?

This urge to annihilate now?

Is revenge for the torment of illness and age

Within guidelines that norms should allow?

Reprisals surely must follow, it’s natural avenging the dead

It’s normal and honest to feel this disgust, so surely no tears should be shed.

 

THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH

The trip to the circus in December 1950 was announced by Aunt Maud and it had been organized by somebody at Dusseks where Uncle George was working at the time.  He was doing very well there too, my Aunt said, and was definitely well thought of and that was why he had what my cousin June described as First Dibs for tickets.   I didn’t really know what First Dibs actually meant but her general excitement and hopping around on one leg quickly conveyed the idea that it put us in a favourable position.   Aunt Mag was looking quite annoyed that it wasn’t her Harold in line for compliments but on this occasion it wasn’t and that was all there was to it. 

I very much wanted my mother to put our names down for tickets because I had recently read a number of books about circuses and to me that whole sphere of entertainment seemed like an exciting extravaganza to be involved in even if simply as spectators.   But she started off by saying she wasn’t made of money and didn’t really know if we could afford it, especially at such an expensive time of year, just before Christmas.   But the Aunts began to persuade her and at the time I wasn’t altogether sure why they were so persistent although years later I began to realise it was on account of my father being a womanizer.   Not that I knew what that entailed at the time but over time it became clear to me that he was incapable of passing by a pretty face, particularly so if the face belonged to a woman in uniform.  He especially favoured the clippies working out of the Bus Terminus in London Road but neither did he pass by nurses from the hospital in Bath Street if there was the slightest possibility of attracting their attention.  My mother said it was the War that did it to him and this weakness of his led to a great many arguments between them which always ended in my poor mother collapsing in floods of tears.   November 1950 had been particularly difficult for her on account of Dolly the clippie and a trainee nurse called Brenda.   The Aunts, quite sensibly, decided she needed a treat to take her mind off the problem.

 Once she was back on speaking terms with my father she suggested circus tickets not mentioning that her mind needed to be taken off his activities but just that it would be very nice for the children to have the opportunity, etc.   He looked guilty and of course he agreed and that’s how we found ourselves to be the first in our large and dysfunctional family to reserve tickets for Bertram Mills Circus and Menagerie at Olympia that year even though they were very dear.   My father said it wouldn’t be money wasted because the circus was a spectacle all children should experience at least once and he admitted that he’d always had a weakness for such shows since he was a boy.

 It turned out that most of the family would be going, well the women and children at least because the men didn’t seem quite as keen.   There would be Aunt Maud with June and Desmond, Aunt Mag with Margaret and Ann but not Leslie and Young Harold who were to all intents and purposes grown up and past all that really, Aunt Martha with her Pat, Old Nan with Little Violet and Freda but not Freda’s baby Susan because she was too young to appreciate it.  In the end three coaches that we called charabancs were to pick up the Dusseks’ workers and their families from The Jolly Farmers at 5.30 which was a little on the early side but would allow for traffic and Uncle George said that was sensible because the traffic into London could be chronic.

My mother took some cheese and pickle sandwiches and a lemonade bottle of cold tea and I took an Enid Blyton book from the library to read on the journey, The Circus of Adventure, which I had read before.   I had also recently re-read Mr. Galliano’s Circus and Hurrah for the Circus, also courtesy of Enid Blyton.  At this stage I did actually rather prefer Noel Streatfield’s The Circus is Coming because already her characters seemed to me to be just a little more realistic.  I didn’t voice this opinion too loudly, however, for fear of somehow or other being seen as disloyal to Enid Blyton.  Years later, as an adult, I fell upon a book entitled Circus Shoes, also by Noel Streatfield and was disappointed to find it to be simply The Circus Is Coming retitled.  Nevertheless, overall there is no doubt that the books of Noel Streatfield were rather better written than those of Enid Blyton no matter how in love I was with the latter for a number of years.  I sat on the long rear seat of the charabanc between a group of cousins and hugged the book to my chest and felt very, very excited.   Pat pointed out that bringing a book with me at all was stupid and playing I Spy was a much better idea but I ignored her because she thought she knew everything.  

Old Nan was already complaining that back in her day a proper charabanc would have an open top and be pulled by horses and Aunt Martha said well then we’d never get there would we so she for one was glad that the ones Dusseks had booked were modern and thoroughly up to date.  Little Violet said she was desperate to get to Olympia to see the dear little dogs that came from France and could do so many tricks because she’d seen them on Pathe Gazette at the Saturday morning pictures and could hardly believe how clever they were.  From my reading I was bursting with information regarding the exploits of clowns, acrobats, jugglers and trapeze artists so I began to tell her about them but she said if they weren’t animals then she wasn’t interested because it was particularly those dear little dogs she wanted to see.

My father had quite unexpectedly revealed after a pint at The Queen’s Head a day or two before that as a boy he had himself at one time hankered after a career in the circus.   Bertram Mills had built up quite a reputation he told me, and had been born in Paddington, London and was the son of an undertaker, Halford Mills.   The family owned land in Hertfordshire where the circus horses were sent to rest when they weren’t performing in the ring.   Just after the First World War they had financed circus visits each year for the orphan boys of the Medway Children’s Homes and he was able to attend on two occasions.  The first time he went the Royal Family had been there and everybody sang God Save The King and cheered.   On the second occasion the boys were given a special tour of the menagerie before the show by the Mills sons themselves, Bernard and Cyril and there had been a fish and chip supper before returning to Chatham.   That had been an outing hard to beat and had made a great impression upon him.  He had never forgotten getting up close to the horses, elephants and tigers.   If he wasn’t wrong those two lads now ran the business entirely alone because he had read somewhere that the great Bertram had died in 1938.    I asked him if he had wanted to be a trapeze artiste or perhaps a rider in the troupe of Liberty Horses but he shook his head vigorously and said he had not fancied being a performer at all but simply wanted to look after the elephants.   I said little but thought to myself that being a bareback rider on the horses would have appealed to me a great deal more, though if it was possible riding atop of an elephant would have been a dream come true too.

 When we got to Olympia we didn’t get a tour of the menagerie because our tickets did not include that which was disappointing.   Also no matter how much I pleaded my mother refused to buy a programme because half a crown was daylight robbery no matter which way you looked at it.  Aunt Maud also refused to make the purchase for her June and Desmond and Aunt Martha’s Pat said virtuously that she didn’t want one anyway because they cost an arm and a leg and were a complete waste of money.  Nobody believed that she really thought that of course.  Little Violet didn’t even ask because living with Old Nan for years had taught her to ask for very little.   Aunt Mag rather ostentatiously announced well daylight robbery or not she was going to get one for her girls because it wasn’t every day you went to a circus was it?   I looked enviously in Ann’s direction as she flicked through the pages and heard Old Nan observe to my mother that she was spoilt rotten that one and no mistake so I began to feel just a little better.  

The programme had a dramatic front cover featuring the elephants and their handlers and within listed all the acts we were about to see in the order we would see them with a lot more photographs and biographical details of the performers.    Ann kindly let me look through it for a few minutes until it was firmly removed from me by my aunt.  I began to feel quite depressed again until I realized that our group was to be almost the first  allowed into the Big Top and seated on the benches high up in the stadium before others.  We were able to observe as the seating below us gradually filled and while we waited for the show to begin two clowns entertained us with a variety of antics.   I was only vaguely amused by them, waiting impatiently for the entrance of the liberty horses which in the books I had read always opened the show.    I was almost bursting with excitement as the circus music began, refrains that I seemed to know so well yet didn’t know at all, heralding the entrance of the ringmaster with his whip, also a totally recognizable figure in red jacket, tall hat and blue and white striped jodhpurs.    I was still clutching the library book so tightly that the cover had become clammy so I decided to sit on it instead, nicely levering myself just a little higher.

The show began in earnest just after seven pm and over the next hour and three quarters all the performance items I had been reading about paraded before us in the ring below.   There were liberty horses with their daring riders, acrobats whose exploits were so amazing it was hard to believe they were human, jugglers and tightrope walkers, trapeze artists and unicyclists, a team of little white dogs wearing costumes which delighted Little Violet with their tricks.  There were terrifying fire eaters and lions jumping through hoops and described as the kings of the jungle.   But to me the performance that became ultimately of greatest interest were the elephants, swaying majestically around the ring, through the well trodden sawdust and looking like the real kings.   How I envied the young girls astride them in their sparkly costumes looking so glamourous and mysterious.  How I longed to be one of them.   I was almost in tears when the time came for the final parade because it had all been so exhilarating I was fearful that nothing in the future could ever live up to it.   It was hard to leave that magical place.

When I noticed that Ann had abandoned her programme that had cost an arm and a leg on the seating adjacent to The Circus of Adventure library book that was also very nearly left behind, I had no hesitation in picking it up and folding it to fit within the pages of the book.   Of course it didn’t quite fit right but I thought it was a chance worth taking because it was unlikely anyone would notice.   I knew I had no intention of returning it to my young cousin unless I had to.   On the return charabanc journey to The Jolly Farmers I pretended to be asleep whilst Aunt Mag berated Ann for her carelessness and said that would be the last time she would get a programme and not to expect one at the Pantomime in January.   My mother observed to Old Nan that it was easy come easy go with that child and no mistake and she was never going to learn the value of money if Mag had her way. 

I produced the programme at school a few days later  and the other children were interested because at that stage apart from me, only Peter Jackson had been to the circus and that one was called Chipperfields he told us.   However, when I told Jacqueline Haskell and Betty Haddon at playtime that one of my uncles owned the circus and just as soon as I was old enough I was going to leave home and work for him they simply didn’t believe me and threatened to tell Mr Clarke that I was a liar.   When I unwisely added that in fact one of the girls astride an elephant on the front cover of the programme was me because I was already in part time training they just laughed and I wished I hadn’t said it.    I kept the programme at home under my mattress for a long time because I quite intended to run away to join a circus just as soon as the opportunity presented itself.   It never did though.  

Boy Mad ....

In 1955 we girls of Wombwell Hall were definitely aware that we were fortunate in that we were the recipients of a far superior education than that of our contemporaries left behind in the district’s various secondary modern schools.  Not that our good fortune could be compared with that of the grammar school girls of course but we couldn’t have everything and some might say that it was simply being possessed of a fraction more intelligence than expected that placed us where we now were.  In my case I am quite certain it was because I was able to spell entrepreneur and residual when called upon to do so in my interview with Miss Fuller.  Regardless of the various reasons why, by the time we reached our fifteenth birthdays some of us had become too pre-occupied with other matters to fully comprehend precisely how educationally privileged we actually were.

 

The other matters concerned Boys and a few of our number were accused by our elders of being Boy Mad.   I wasn’t entirely sure what being Boy Mad actually entailed but I knew it probably applied to me.  Acquiring boyfriends had become of prime importance to a fair proportion of us in Form 2SC and I was one of them though not one of the favoured few who were actually Going Steady.  In any case I tried hard to hide the fact that I was Boy Mad because it seemed to be a vaguely indecent state and one that had mothers and aunts shaking their heads and wondering what the world was coming to.  Nevertheless at the time it appeared to me that everyone had a steady boyfriend except me and I reasoned that I was probably too fat and too unattractive to ever acquire one.   Although it was definitely true that back in those days relationships between the sexes seemed to take off and were accepted rather earlier than would be the case today, they were by no means the norm for everyone.  But the norm of the situation is only something I have been able to clearly see with hindsight and at the time the only norm in my book was that of my closest Wombwell Hall companions.  And they were the ones reveling in much envied Relationships.

 

At our previous school, Colyer Road Secondary for Girls it had been Marjorie Bullen who had ended up being the prime trendsetter and authority on male/female affiliations.  Her rapid progress through these rites of passage was truly astonishing.   Despite being forced to abandon one Steady when she was taken to New Zealand for a new life by her parents, once there in a brand new co-educational and apparently very progressive school in Auckland she had almost immediately become engaged to a handsome lad with tribal affiliations to the Ngati Whatua and they had all but set a wedding date.   All this we learned from letters sent to her close friend Sandra Maxwell who had deftly moved into her place as prime style guru and influencer where the opposite sex was concerned.    In fact it was Sandra who informed us that neither New Zealand nor the fiancé had ultimately worked out which meant that Marjorie was quite rapidly back in Gravesend and about to wed a local boy and indeed shortly to become a mother.   She was looking forward to the event, she said, and in fact if things went as planned Sandra might be invited to be godmother.  We were duly impressed, at least some of us were but from others, the ones who were decidedly less Boy Mad there was a shocked and edgy silence.

 

Sandra stared at us through the silence slightly aggressively.  She was an outstandingly attractive girl with soulful dark eyes and an abundance of curls framing her face.   Even the staff were known to comment on her good looks.   Pat Haslam said it was easy for girls like her to get boyfriends but not quite as easy when you were destined to always look more Average.  I had to agree with her although later when Pat finally revealed her own Boy Mad streak by rebelling against her family and running away with a visiting GI she had somehow or other met in a local tea shop, it seemed to me that she wasn’t doing too badly herself.  I appeared to be permanently on a long waiting list where males were concerned.   I had for two terms desperately wondered what it would be like to be kissed which was something that happened to Sandra every Friday and Saturday and more besides if the hints she sometimes nonchalantly dropped were to be believed.  My situation was that I feared I would die an Old Maid.

 

I joined the group that clustered around Sandra each Monday morning, poised to hang on to every word she uttered on the topic of teenage sex circa 1955. She seemed to be able to acquire one Steady after another effortlessly and what’s more they were more than anxious to do her bidding particularly when it came to buying her gifts.  Pauline Pritchard and Pamela Lennox said that it had to be borne in mind that her particular source of boyfriends came from the Sea School and all those boys were desperate for girls to go steady with.  But they voiced this opinion a little nervously and definitely not within Sandra’s earshot.

 

The National Sea Training College is apparently still located in Gravesend and has been since 1918.  It trained boys aged 15 to 16 to join the Merchant Navy and over time more than 70,000 were trained there.  It became known as the best sea training school in the world.  At its inception it occupied what was then still called the Commercial Hotel even though it had become a Sailors’ Home as long ago as 1886.   Within its walls sailors of all nationalities could be sure of lodgings between discharge from one voyage and signing on for another.    In time the old building was demolished and the school itself extended, eventually moving to new premises on Chalk Marshes in 1967.

 

Back in 1955, the school was vibrant with a full roll of young men more than anxious to cultivate the affections of the girls of Wombwell Hall during their regular sorties into town which some of them referred to as shore leave.  Later we found these were just normal breaks as most of them had not yet embraced enough nautical knowledge to be allowed to go to sea anyway.   What they were allowed to do several times weekly was venture into the town centre, looking very smart in their uniforms and eliciting admiring comments from the girls, at least those like us still young enough to be impressed by them.

 

There was undoubtedly truth in the assertion that Sandra who had not been without a Steady since the age of thirteen had deftly garnered most of her admirers from the Sea School and Joyce Williams said that was because the best bus into town from where she lived stopped almost outside the building in which it was housed so it was in fact a completely straightforward process for her.   If she had to first get a bus from Istead Rise for instance she might find it more difficult.   Sally Warnett gloomily offered that her mother wouldn’t countenance the idea of a boyfriend in the first place, let alone one from the Sea School because everybody knew they were only After One Thing.   There was a slightly embarrassed silence then and we all looked at Sandra who said well none of them would be getting that One Thing from her and that was a fact.    We were definitely aware that the One Thing under discussion led to the kind of situation Marjorie Bullen had found herself in.

 

We were all sitting in the science lab when this conversation took place and Miss Norman was as usual running late for the next period.   Anne Cogger who was Form Captain that year pointed out sensibly that those who took their homework seriously now they were fifteen years old would realise that it might be wiser to put this before boyfriends.  Joyce sitting beside me whispered that Anne with her weight problem was never going to be a hit with men anyway so she should shut up and furthermore if she had to rely on a bus that only ran every hour she would realise that finding enough time for anything, including homework, was difficult.   It was evident that Joyce was at the time overly concerned with bus timetables.   I was quiet because I had definite worries about my own weight and I had taken to walking to and from school rather than taking the bus and rather shamefully spending the resultant funds on a variety of sweet treats such as Polo Mints and Spangles.   Even I could see further thinking was needed.

 

It was Sandra herself who finally made the suggestion that I join her regular venture into town in search of Sea School Boys the following Friday.  I was thrilled.   Liam from Belfast had now been dumped, she said, and she needed to find a replacement as soon as possible so she wouldn’t pine for him.   She added that his regular letters from far flung places on the globe during his last trip, which had in actual fact been his first trip, had been by far the best of all her Steadies and he had been the only one whose pearl ear rings had been real pearls, well cultured ones at least.  She thought there was a definite possibility his Mum and Dad might be quite posh.   I had no idea of the difference between pearls or the likelihood of his parents’ poshness so I remained as quiet as possible. 

 

So it was with Sandra’s help and make up borrowed from my cousin Pat that I met up with Donald from South Shields that Friday.  The positive thing about him was that he was male and seemed interested in me.  The negative thing was that he suffered from serious acne and had an inability to speak any form of English that I could understand.   His friend Derek from South London who did not have acne and spoke in what I felt were more melodic and accentless tones was purloined from beneath my very nose by Sandra.   I didn’t feel that this was the most advantageous start and I could see why Donald was not going to be first on any girl’s wish list no matter how long they had waited for a first kiss.   I nervously studied his lips.

 

I did try hard to communicate with him but he seemed to find me as difficult as I found him and finally told me it was because of my cockney accent and we should just have a Snog instead and after that things went from bad to worse.   I began to realise that finding a Steady perhaps required more effort and energy than I was prepared to put into the task and I viewed Sandra with a new respect.  Despite Anne Cogger’s dire predictions regarding homework Sandra seemed to be able to get on top of hers with no trouble, mastering New Era Short Forms ahead of the rest of us and, if Miss Wood was to be believed, always positioning her vowels correctly.   I became all too aware that would not apply in my case.   Even before Donald had decided to embark upon what was to be my much anticipated very first kiss, I had come to the firm conclusion that he had to Go.  There was simply no room in my life for a Steady with acne and an attitude problem.  I was in no mood to easily forgive him for the accusation concerning the cockney accent.

 

I don’t recall exactly how I managed to extricate myself from his determined embrace outside the station downline entrance that evening but somehow or other I did and made a bolt for the 480 bus stop making some kind of remark about last buses.   It was a great relief to fling myself onto it and I sat at the back, still aware of his breath against my cheek.  I neurotically began wiping away all traces of that most unpleasant close encounter with his inflamed lips, with a grubby tissue, fervently wishing it had never happened.

 

At school on Monday Sandra wanted to know where I had disappeared to all of a sudden.   Donald, she told me, had been very upset because he had been of the opinion that I was keen to Go Steady.  Her Derek had turned out to be just what she was looking for.   I shrugged, tried to look offhand and said I’d decided to concentrate more on homework than on boys for the time being.

 

Anne Cogger, overhearing this exchange nodded approvingly and sat next to me in New Era Speed Practice.   I asked her if she thought I had a cockney accent and she said no, definitely not.   I thought I might have less to do with Sandra in future. 

Rods for Backs......

Unexpectedly coming across a photograph on-line of my maternal grandmother, Margaret Constant apparently taken not too long before her death, got me thinking about her again.  My brother and I always knew her as Old Nan and we were definitely intimidated by her of that there was no doubt.   Not surprising perhaps because so was our mother and most of her sisters and it would be true to say that Margaret Constant was not a woman you could easily warm to.   She always sat ramrod straight despite decades as an itinerant field worker, hair scraped from her face and she was rarely seen to smile.   The on-line photo was a perfect depiction of this.

 Because she had many children, over time she accumulated a great many grandchildren and largely her family lived around and about her in Crayford and Dartford, just a few absconding to Thameside towns and villages further afield such as Swanscombe, Greenhithe and Northfleet.   It would be true to say that whatever passed as filial love between her and her offspring caused most of them to vie for her attention and goodwill for the duration of her life.  Not easily loved she definitely inspired a certain amount of respect and deference.

 Although she would routinely hold a new baby in her arms and examine it closely, often asking questions or passing comments on its appearance, as we grew older I can never remember sitting on her knee or being the recipient of a loving hug from her.   I don’t think she ever gave any of us a grandmotherly kiss.   It could be that she was simply reflecting the emotional relationship that once existed between working class children and their parents and grandparents.    It would be true to say that over the past 120 years this has undergone a major change.   Formality has given way to informality, authoritarianism to libertarianism and distance to closeness.  Perhaps this trend has been particularly evident in families like ours, situated as we were at the very bottom of the heap because the working classes definitely did not escape the accepted norms of the times, in fact their very situation often accentuated the trends.  

 During the first decade of the twentieth century childhood could be a traumatic time for all levels of society rich and poor.   But poor housing, and lack of healthcare meant that many children were extremely unhealthy and could expect to experience more serious illnesses than most in their earliest years.  At the turn of the century the worst infant mortality figure ever was recorded with a third of all working class infants dying before their first birthday.  Of those who survived babyhood one in four would not do so beyond the age of five. The killers included whooping cough, diphtheria, scarlet fever and measles, all conditions we immunize against today.   And now growing numbers of us feel free to be outraged at the very idea of immunization and might even join pressure groups with voices loud enough to object to the idea of such an assault on an innocent child.

 It’s all too easy to forget that where population density was high, overcrowding rife and poor sanitary conditions endemic, infant death became a fact of life.    Where children survived many continued to suffer from dental decay, ear and eye infections, rickets, ringworm, headlice, pneumonia, bronchitis and general under nourishment.    In 1901 a survey in York found that on average the boys of working class families were nearly four inches shorter than those from upper class families and weighed eleven pounds less.  As recently as the 1960s an evening spent in an East End pub might confirm that the locals when reaching adult status seemed still to be smaller of stature than their counterparts from Public Schools.  

 A hundred years ago survival itself was difficult for children but so was their relationship with their parents.  Overcrowding  demanded discipline and obedience was of prime importance, to be fiercely encouraged in the young.  Questioning superiors, particularly parents for whatever reason was often punished.   The acceptance of these attitudes undoubtedly led to a general lack of affection.

 The manner in which children referred to their parents captures the transformation of attitudes over time – they were Mother and Father in 1900, were likely to become Ma and Pa by 1910 and somehow in the middle of the 1920s became Mum and Dad where for most they have stayed ever since.  The more avant garde had by 1960 almost dismissed what was beginning to be seen as the rather twee Mummy and Daddy and had given way to the use of first names only, a trend that horrified my mother who said that only over her dead body would she be known as Nell by her children.

 A tough life invariably results in the following generation becoming as emotionally resilient as necessary in order to protect itself.   Perhaps there simply wasn’t room for a great deal of love and understanding.   Certainly Margaret Constant’s children ended up as tough as they needed to be and it took several generations for a tenderness and affection to grow and prosper sufficiently to become the family norm.    There were of course exceptions to this and little pockets of warmth and affection germinated against all odds.   This was the case with Aunt Mag, Margaret Constant’s oldest child who unlike her sisters bucked the trend to grow into a harsh and punitive mother.   Somehow or other she was able to rise above the unforgiving conditions of her upbringing and treat her four children with an excess of indulgence and understanding.

 Her siblings described her as Soft and Aunt Maud observed that she could sometimes be as Soft as Pigshit and Twice as Thick.  Aunt Rose who had been married to Uncle Mervyn long enough to know better than to be unnecessarily profane said she was making a rod for her own back and that was a fact.   My mother tut tutted and commented that Mag would rue the day she didn’t give that Ann of hers more hidings because she certainly needed them if ever a child did.   Mag sensibly ignored such advice and refused to be what she called Too Hard on the kiddies.   In the long run, she maintained, it didn’t pay to treat them harshly.  And in their turn each of them grew up to be adept at making rods for backs and themselves parents to children cushioned by love and as my mother was wont to observe – not a lot of discipline.   

Coping With Terminal Illness

 

I was asked to join a discussion group recently about coping with terminal illness in a close friend or a relative.   I had to think long and hard before I agreed but eventually I did and in any case it was only one meeting, just one afternoon.  It couldn’t be too arduous surely? – and of course in the final analysis it wasn’t because part of me actually did want to take part in order perhaps to talk about how I could have done it better myself.   It’s safe to say we are never satisfied as to our behaviour in times of crisis.

 There were only nine of us in the group which was a relief because I had imagined thirty plus.  The youngest looked in her twenties and the oldest seemed to be me.  There was only one man and the overall mood was much more positive than I had anticipated.   The lone male was clearly more accustomed than the rest of us to discussion groups and started the ball rolling by launching into his mother’s battle with cancer of the breast which had been going on for a number of years.   Support had become second nature to him he said and largely he felt he didn’t do too bad a job because his love for his mother was great.   There were times, however, when he would have liked more help from his siblings who, all being married with young families of their own, had less time and energy for the task than he did. A woman called Mary said we could all claim busy lives and his siblings really had an obligation to lend a hand.

Joanne, whose husband had been ill for several months said that the worst thing for her was the fact that the cocktail of drugs he took had changed his personality to some extent and he no longer had any patience whatsoever for the antics of their two year old son.   In turn the child had become more demanding which meant that her own mother was clearly more reluctant to care for him than she once was.   Until then I had been quite unaware that the situation might have been much more stressful for me than it ultimately was.    Terry’s feeling was that an honest and in depth conversation was needed with the disinclined mother to encourage her to pull her socks up immediately.   Easier said than done of course.   I found myself thinking how much Himself had changed under his drug regime and how hard it had been at times to handle his variation of mood, how guilty I had felt when I knew I wasn’t handling it well.  

 Barbara who looked about sixty was supporting her daughter through a particularly aggressive illness and was to be imminently left with several teenage grandchildren to care for.   She said remaining positive was hard at times but that each member of the family was pulling their weight.   She felt that planning things to look forward to was very important and so she and the children organized coffee dates in pleasant places two or three times each week and their efforts had the desired effect upon the patient.   I recalled how when Sinead was here earlier in the year, she went above and beyond the call of duty to plan treats for her father – I remembered with fondness how much he looked forward to them, in fact how we all looked forward to them.

The afternoon passed strangely pleasantly as we drank tea, shared experiences and passed on tips for surviving what to most of us had initially seemed impossible to survive.   Jody who had been mostly silent spoke rather unexpectedly about surviving against all odds because she was that one in a million survivor.  Diagnosed with terminal cancer some twenty years previously when her baby daughter was barely six months old, against all odds she had lived on to tell her story and yet there was still no rhyme or reason for her endurance.   It had simply been that way.  We each sat quietly, lost in thought.

 Later, walking home after a shared early dinner with the group at The Paddington, I took the long route because the moon was full and the night was mild.   I wanted to reflect upon those things I had learned.   How could I have better coped with my husband’s recent illness?  His own positive attitude had eased the path for all of us – he had faith in modern medicine and expected that he would be cured.

 What made the journey easier than it might have been?   Having two of my children close by, being sure of their support and their love helped immeasurably.   It will always be hard to measure the strength and reassurance their presence crafted.  The four of us faced the ravages of the illness together.

 What made it harder than it needed to be?  The family member who chose from the inception to step away from the problem, take no part in it and pay no heed to his father’s illness, treatment and death.  That made it infinitely harder.