Pledges Made to the Lord

 

God is definitely a useful entity no matter who he or she might be and in whatever form either or both of them might choose to reside.   Voltaire must have realised that long before the rest of us when he stated that if God didn’t already exist it would be necessary to invent Him - or these days perhaps Her as well. 

Although I don’t consider I have had a particularly close relationship with religion over the years, I certainly do not dismiss the idea of the existence of a higher power.  You could say that although God is not an altogether tangible idea for me, He always lurks reassuringly in the background of my life and for me He will always be male.  OK, call me old fashioned!    When you grow up with the idea of an all-knowing, all-seeing Deity that in itself acts very much as a comfort blanket.   You are aware that as a mere human you are fallible and when faced with difficult, painful situations if a solution can be conjured up with just a modicum of faith and an old-fashioned prayer or two it’s hard not to take advantage of this generosity.    I am almost embarrassed to recall the occasions when I have frantically bargained with the edge of that comfort blanket, attempting to offer deals to the Almighty concerning how often I will attend Mass if only a seemingly insurmountable problem can be solved.  Well that’s the way things go in the dusty corners of the life of a lapsed Catholic, Faith is never entirely eclipsed by Reason.

Although absolute belief has often been somewhat lacking in my life I’ve always had a great fondness for churches, not those vast cathedrals where God is pitted in serious competition with architecture, but small intimate places where the decades of hope and prayer can almost be heard to be hovering.   How easing of mind and spirit it is to sit within holy spaces for a time whether as a Believer or a Non-Believer, and most especially in a Catholic space where a candle can be lit to send a prayer hurtling into the ether.    Perhaps that’s what Nietzsche meant when he spoke of caves in which a dead God’s shadow might for ages be evident.  

Back in 1950 God was definitely all around us and whilst my father was alive he insisted that I should go to Mass on a regular basis.   At one time he always accompanied me but in the months before his death I definitely recall him leaving me at the rather forbidding doors of The Church of Our Lady of The Assumption and saying he was off to see a man about a dog and I was to walk home alone.   I didn’t mind particularly because I was used to walking alone and when he was not present I could forgo adding to the collection plate and spend the two pennies on bubble gum instead.   The church itself was not a welcoming place in any way at all.   It had been built by someone called Giles Gilbert Scott in 1914, entirely in brown brick which I thought to be most unattractive.  It was said that during the blitz the German Air Force used the tower as a guide towards London, knowing that when they could reference it they were well on the way to their principal target.   

On those Sundays when I was abandoned at the church door My mother would invariably ask, tight-lipped, where my father was when I got back home, slightly nauseous from incense and bubblegum.  When I told her about the man and the dog she would bang saucepans on the stove and hum `We’ll Meet Again’ rather too loudly.   On those days he was always late for Sunday dinner and when he did arrive we sat in silence.   It was years later that I realised that his regular absences probably involved the Fancy Women he was unable to tear himself away from.  

I was never totally at ease in that church on The Hill and much preferred the ancient parish church around the corner, by the old village green, St Botolph’s. It dated from the 14^th century and had a splendid carved oak screen which at school we were told was the oldest in Kent.   Back then the Sunday services were well attended and the hymns regularly sung were inspiring so there were times when I switched my attendance from Giles Gilbert Scott’s monstrosity and felt guilty as a result.    This desertion of what my father rather hypocritically viewed as the One True Church would have horrified him but fortunately he was never to become aware of it.  

Despite his attempts to maintain his reputation in the eyes of God by making a great deal of fuss about where I went to Mass, strangely he made little comment on the Sunday School I attended in the afternoons in the building on Dover Road that eventually became the United Reformed Church.   It was run by a group of enthusiastic unmarried women who were intent upon bringing sunshine into the lives of underprivileged children.   Consequently it was always an hour and a half of unadulterated fun consisting of singing, dancing, clapping, listening to stories, drinking orange juice and fighting over ginger biscuits.   From time to time outings were arranged to places like Whipsnade Zoo and Southend-on-sea where the best behaved children would be conveyed in what we called charabancs and would end up not behaving very well at all and being told they were forbidden to apply next time.   

I had little understanding of how much the Sunday School in Dover Road had to do with God at least not the God I was familiar with.  There were a lot of Bible stories and good Catholic families did not seem to be all that conversant with the Bible so there was not a great deal of encouragement for children in particular to read it.  At least that was my understanding.  Years passed before I realised that there was in fact an acceptable RC version called the Douay-Rheims Bible which contained 73 rather than 66 books.     My time at St Botolph’s had ensured that I was to become fond of and more at ease with the King James version and viewed it in much the same way as my favourite poems.   I placed preferred verses such as `consider the lilies of the field’ or `bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you’ alongside `The Forsaken Merman’ or `The Lady of Shalott’ without too much consideration as to the possible message being conveyed.   In the everyday life that was lived completely outside of the beauty of the written word I would never for one moment have considered blessing those that cursed me.  This was possibly because I was far too influenced by the vengeful attitudes of my mother and aunts spurred on by my pitiless grandmother.    It would be rare in our family to consider forgiving your enemy.   Instead the various ways of hitting back hard enough to ensure the wrong done to you would not be repeated would be considered.

Nevertheless, despite our shortcomings we considered ourselves as staunchly devout as others.   This was despite the fact that Aunt Martha who almost always attended Sunday Mass on a regular basis after Uncle Paddy was killed, was frequently heard to say that God was definitely love, but it was best to get it in writing.    This mini homily was lifted directly from the wisdom of Gypsy Rose Lee who apparently came from a similarly pious but dysfunctional family headed by a matriarch, Rose Hovick who held astonishingly similar attitudes to Old Nan Constant.   This included a long history of forging birth certificates for each of her daughters making them older when it was necessary to evade varying state labour laws and younger for reduced or free train fares.   The girls were largely unsure in later years what their true years of birth were.   My mother and her sisters ended up in a strikingly comparable position because of my grandmother’s inability to come clean with The Authorities when it came to the birth dates of her many children.   In Old Nan’s case the reasons included the necessity to be available at all times for itinerant field work.

Surfacing from this diverse and shaky religious vortex as a young teenager in March 1954 I was more than eager to sign up for the first Billy Graham evangelistic meeting in London.   I don’t remember who suggested the trip to me but I do know that it was totally free, including the charabanc ride so my mother was more than happy for me to attend.   All I had to do was take a packed supper which I dutifully did, cheese sandwiches and an apple.

Billy Graham came to the country with much fanfare having been vaulted into the national spotlight with unprecedented publicity.   I knew little about him but I was more than eager to be Saved by making a Commitment to Christ that evening at Harringay Arena.    Beholding Billy in action, beseeching us to welcome The Lord, thumping Bibles until they fell to pieces and looking indescribably handsome as he did so, was mesmerising, hypnotic, enthralling.  And when those prepared to Commit to Christ were called to come forward I was one of the first to oblige, only too anxious to become part of Billy’s world if not the Lord’s.  On the journey home a large number of my fellow passengers congratulated me on my courage and said I would never regret the pledge I made to Christ that day.   I was already having some doubts though. 

A week or so later my mother received an important looking letter from the Crusade Team via their UK associates discussing the fact that I was a child and would need her support to progress with my Commitment.    She was quite affronted that I could what she described as `go in for such a thing’ without her approval and even more slighted when I appeared in a photograph in one of the Sunday newspapers standing alongside a group of teddy boys who all looked very dapper indeed in their drape jackets and drainpipe trousers.  They had also made a Commitment that evening and looked scarcely older than me so I couldn’t help wondering if their mothers had received similar communications.

I was to rapidly relinquish the idea of allowing Christ into my life a la Billy Graham which was a great relief to my mother who was anxious as to what her role in the idea might be.   Aunt Mag had told her it was bound to blow over given time as most of my more doolally ideas did and she would do well to remember that I was fanciful.  And Old Nan made sure that next time I was in her company in Crayford High Street she did some blatant shoplifting of haberdashery items telling me that God helps them that help themselves and adding that she didn’t hold with too much religion anyway.    I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to make of that and so I said nothing.   Billy Graham meanwhile,  exciting and handsome as he most certainly was fell into the recesses of memory.  However, over the years I have often wondered if any of that group of Teddy Boys managed to maintain the pledge made to the Lord that day at Harringay.   I suspect not.

Rainbow Pixie Bonnets .....

 Some people knit to reduce stress.   I know that to be true because I was one of them before my problem of painful wrists became so great that I had to give it up.   There were few things I looked forward to more than sinking before a batch of TV soaps with a half-completed garment in a moderately complicated pattern each evening leaving others to stack the dishwasher.   For years it seemed to me to be quite the best part of the day; well, allowing for exaggeration of course.

I didn’t mind too much what it was I was currently creating just as long as it was complex enough to require a modicum of attention whilst I followed the latest frolics and capers of those peopling Coronation Street at the time.   Sadly none of my children appreciated the sweaters I keenly offered to make them and I had wisely learned to make adequate enquiries before embarking upon a surprise project.   They would agree, however, to the very occasional scarf.   Throughout their university years I made a great many scarves though sadly many of them were promptly lost by the recipients and rarely found again. Suffice to say I was eventually reduced to knitting squares for blankets, enhanced by the practice of ever more convoluted stitch patterns.   Well that’s what happens if you have no grandchildren.  We ended up with a large number of blankets and would doubtless have even more if the arthritis had not put a stop to it.

Giving up knitting completely was more depressing than you might imagine especially since I had, over the years, amassed a great deal of knitting paraphernalia - a range of needles, both steel and bone together with up-to-the-minute stitch holders and a pile of attention-grabbing patterns.  Coronation Street was never the same thereafter.   My hands itched to be occupied but the resulting agony simply wasn’t worth any attempt and although I was repeatedly advised that a cortisone injection, though definitely itself not without pain, may well do the trick, being of a cowardly nature it was always put on the nearest back burner.

It was around this time of craftwork withdrawal pains that I at long last began to see how it was that my mother had taken so tirelessly to knitting.   She freely admitted to having been what she called a Worryguts all her life and she had long come to the conclusion that was the reason behind her habit of nail biting.   By the time skeins of wool were readily available in the shops of Gravesend once again after several years’ absence her pastime of choice was regularly creating what she called Jerseys primarily for me and once my brother was born, a variety of babywear in the pale colours of the time.   My father elected not to be dressed by her and looked nervous each time she mentioned the subject.   Even when I was still a young child I seemed to realise that her work lacked a certain finesse.  She was able to completely overlook the minutia of dropped stitches and the transposition of plain and purl rows.   To her these were minor matters amounting to pointless trivia.   Furthermore, upon completion each garment was assembled more and more carelessly and with ever bigger stitching.  She appeared to become increasingly impatient the closer she came to the ultimate conclusion of the latest undertaking .  

This undue haste was alarming to watch and the resulting garments became even more distressing to wear.   I began to dread the start of each new item even when it involved a more exciting than usual trip to the market to allow me to choose the yarn.   In fact I didn’t hesitate to choose the newly launched Rainbow yarn, bursting as it was with a startling array of tints and hues simply because I thought she might refuse and for some reason the purchase could be delayed for a while.   To my astonishment she immediately agreed to my choice and my heart sank because I was beginning to feel more and more ashamed of the lack of skill and general sloppiness of her handiwork.   Later, overhearing her tell my Aunt Mag that her Jean had chosen some lovely colourful yarn for her new jersey and it was as clear as daylight she should always be allowed to do the choosing, I felt embarrassed by my own priggishness and lack of family loyalty.   

Her progress with any new project was invariably rapid but she was more keen than usual to make a start with the Rainbow yarn.  By the time I got home from school next day the skeins had already been rolled into balls with the help of an upturned kitchen chair and I was not called upon to hold them aloft until my arms ached.      

It seemed no time at all until my class teacher Mrs Allen commented on the newly completed and vibrantly colourful garment I was wearing for the very first time and wanted to know who had made it for me.   Ever conscious of the slapdash nature of the work, I put on my sweetest voice and breathlessly told her that mostly it was made by my mother but I had helped out and I was responsible for the sewing together of it in its entirety.   After all, surely a child of only eight would be expected to make mistakes.  She nodded knowingly and said that she rather thought I might have done some of the work but overall I had done a commendable job - although the stitching could have been neater.  It must feel good, she added, to be wearing something I had helped to make myself.   I nodded with false enthusiasm.

 It was then I began to realise that I should pay serious attention to diverting my mother from knitting to some other less troubling pastime.     For a while I managed to steer her away from child size garments via toy size ones by complaining that neither my doll nor my teddy bear had anything decent to wear.  To my satisfaction she immediately obliged by making a start on a whole new wardrobe for each of them, telling me this was an excellent way of using up wool scraps.   Although the resultant apparel was quicker to appear than I had anticipated, I found little to fault it and in any case I was old enough to realise that neither toy was going to be too distressed if the stitching could have been improved.   I then persuaded my younger cousins Ann and Little Violet to demand clothing for their dolls.   Ann, who had inherited hers from her older sister along with a dolls’ pram with proper springs, said it had never had clothes and was quite accustomed to managing without them and declined.  Later I wondered if, though only five, she was already aware of the downside side of her aunt’s work.  Little Violet on the other hand showed an immediate interest which was probably because she reacted warmly on every occasion anyone paid her attention.   My aunts all said this was because she was a poor motherless little soul and my own mother agreed, adding that the dear little mite didn’t ask for much in life.   I privately thought that living as she did with our fearsome grandmother asking for anything would have been a fruitless exercise.  

The reason behind Little Violet’s interest was because her father, on one of his rare flying visits, had very recently turned up at the house in Iron Mill Lane, Crayford, armed with a Walking-Talking Shirley Temple doll. It was not a new doll but one that had been grown out of and cast aside by his very new and far too-young-for-him wife who had never met Little Violet and was far too terrified of the thought of Old Nan to attempt to do so.    The recipient of the doll was unconcerned that it was a pre-loved Shirley Temple and simply delighted to own it because her life with our grandmother was not one in which toys of any kind played a big part.    Although Shirley Temple was already dressed in a red satin party dress it was agreed that she would greatly benefit from a mini jersey in the same rainbow wool as the one I now wore several days each week.   My mother seemed to whip one up almost overnight to the delight of her small niece and then upon a whim added a rather jaunty matching hat.   The distinctly more careful stitching on the garments made for the dolls did not escape my notice and I began to think that our York Road knitter did a much better job overall with smaller projects.   It was then that I had the brilliant idea of diverting her from jerseys into the general direction of headgear.

I suggested that as winter was approaching fast I would really like a hat of some kind to wear to school.   I had visions of a rather pretty intricate Dutch bonnet constructed from felt as worn by a number of girls attending St Botolph’s.    But sadly my hat was going to have to be of the knitted variety of course and so the dream faded fast.   What was produced in no time at all, from Rainbow yarn was what my mother called a Pixie Bonnet.     It had a pointed hood and long ties to form a bow under the chin.  She was quite delighted with it and called my father to look and he dutifully said that I definitely looked like a pixie.   Furthermore when examined closely the final stitching was moderately neat but even more importantly my mother decided overnight that headgear was her forte and I cannot remember being presented with another jersey for a number of years.

I cringed a little when I was sent to school in matching Rainbow jersey and bonnet especially when my mother commented that it was a pity I couldn’t wear the bonnet in the classroom as the outfit was so pretty.  Her views were definitely not those expressed by my classroom colleagues.  Barbara Scutts, in a new Dutch felt creation to welcome in a new winter was the first to observe that we must have a big store of that Rainbow wool at our house.   When she overheard me telling Beryl Stuart who had voiced half- hearted approval of the matching items that the hat was a pixie bonnet she chortled loudly and said I looked more like a goblin in it to her.   Jennifer Berryman appraised me quietly for a moment or two and then said in her opinion I looked more like her grandma’s garden gnome.   By the time Billy Elliot heralded the opinion of the male members of the class with some comment concerning the characters from Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs I had firmly resolved that the hat would have to go.   On the way home I unhesitatingly tossed it over a garden fence in Springhead Road and then ran as fast as I could to the corner of York Road before nonchalantly slowing down for the last thirty seconds of the journey.  

Strangely its absence was not noticed for a day or two and it took a particularly cold and frosty morning to urge my mother to search for it among the coats and scarves at the bottom of the stairs, growing more and more exasperated when it wasn’t found.   It was a crying shame she said because it looked so lovely with the jersey and it was a great pity I couldn’t be trusted to take more care of my clothes.   It wasn’t too long, however, before a replacement was provided, and I was told I was very lucky as there had been barely enough wool left and in fact the ties had of necessity been dispensed with and replaced with a button under the chin.  

It was several weeks before the alarming afternoon of the replacement yarn supply.   I arrived home from school to find my mother red cheeked and excited saying she had only just that minute got home herself from Gravesend and that earlier in the day she’d heard from Mary Newberry that they had a further batch of Rainbow yarn at the stall in the market so she’d raced hell for leather over there to make sure she got some.  My heart sank and I felt prickling at the back of my eyes when I contemplated the number of pixie bonnets that might come forth from the skeins she triumphantly scattered on the kitchen table. To ensure a bonnetless few days the button-under-the-chin version would have to be lost as soon as possible, which of course it was.

In effect its replacement took less than a week to emerge and when it did it was with an even more pronounced point of the hood and even longer ties for beneath the chin.   My poor mother was enormously pleased with it, so much so that I was instructed to wear it the very next day which I did with a very heavy heart.

The onslaught of scorn and derision concerning which particular kind of mythical character from a Blytonesque world of enchantment I was now emulating was something I of course expected but I didn’t imagine it to cause quite as much amusement as it did.  I was somewhat surprised when imps, brownies and leprechauns were added to the list of faery folk rumoured to be populating our kitchen fireside and my frantically knitting mother’s imagination.    Billy Elliot who was much better read than the rest of us even suggested we might be housing a Hobbit but none of us really understood what that actually was. The end result of all this was that the replacement Rainbow pixie bonnet did not last into a second wearing but instead was discarded over the wall of yet a further Springhead Road garden.   When its absence was noticed a more in-depth enquiry was launched than that which had followed the previous disappearances.   After all did I really imagine that my mother had nothing to do except create pixie bonnets for me?

A pleasing interval of ten days or so followed before the next piece of headgear appeared at the end of my bed like an unwelcome Christmas gift.   To add insult to injury it came with a large safety pin with which it could be pinned to my jersey to avoid any chance of it falling off into the gutters of Springhead Road or The Hill as I wended my way to school.   I pointed out that it would be impossible for me to manage the unpinning once I arrived at school and I was advised that I should ask my teacher for help, the implication being that I was by now much too irresponsible to be treated like a normal eight-year-old.   The thought of asking Mrs Allen for help with something as mundane as a hat having reached the great age of eight and a half was horrifying.   It certainly prevented me from discarding Rainbow bonnet number four for the time being.

The teasing and name calling regarding wayside faery folk that would be more at home within the pages of an encyclopaedia of mythology continued, however because that was the way of children of the time.  This was especially so when the victim was likely to be reduced to tears which of course I was.   Complaining to anyone seen to be in authority would have been unacceptable and largely ineffective and so it was not at any stage considered.     My feelings of fury, however, became ever more acute – with the persecutors themselves, with the blissfully unaware Mrs Allen and most of all with my mother and her habit of high-speed knitting.  

The problem needed a more advanced and cutting-edge solution so having investigated just how many skeins of Rainbow yarn actually remained in the bag at the bottom of the kitchen cupboard I decided they should be the first to go before I tackled the problem of the surviving bonnet itself.    I was far too frightened to discard the yarn in the dustbin; in those days the contents of bins would seem quite foreign to us now.  Rainbow yarn would draw unwelcome attention immediately and the dustmen themselves, though my mother always claimed they were dozy buggers, might even retrieve it and return it to the household.   Instead I waited until a shopping trip to the Co-op was taken together with my small brother in his pushchair.  I then took the opportunity of running as fast as possible to the nearby railway bridge just before the four pm express to London was due to thunder through.   Cautiously climbing onto the bridge wall and being as careful as possible I hurled the hated yarn with all my strength into the path of the engine, all three skeins of it.   To my great satisfaction it was carried atop of the enormous machine immediately in the direction of the city.  

Despite my immediate gratification the problem of the remaining bonnet and its hated safety pin endured of course and although I realised once it did a disappearing act an enquiry akin to the Holy Inquisition would be launched, my desire to rid myself of it was so great I was unable to allow too much time to elapse before it followed its predecessors into the front gardens of Springhead Road.   

The ensuing investigation was like a mini nuclear blast.   My mother found it very hard to believe that she had been mistaken as to the skeins of Rainbow wool remaining at the bottom of the cupboard and was reluctant to believe that my toddler brother had somehow or other disposed of them.   Furthermore my ongoing carelessness with clothing was astonishing.  She’d a good mind to beat me senseless.   I should just wait for my father to get home because he was bound to beat me – mark her words and no mistake.   I was quite unable to be trusted. 

In the end nobody beat me.   My joyous punishment was to be that she would never, ever waste her time making hats of any description for me again – never! Not even if I went down on bended knee!

A Mortifying Moment

 

There was definitely a shortage of elastic after the war although according to most of the women in the local community the situation had eased a little.   Elastic is not something that most five-year-olds give much attention to and I did not differ from others in this respect.   In fact I had not given it a moment’s consideration until the humiliating incident in my first week of school.  It might even have been my second week of school because by the time it happened I had quite given up crying bitterly for my mother and was beginning to enjoy the novelty of playing with the lumps of modelling clay known as plasticene, an activity that was entirely new to me.  The plasticene itself had no doubt started life in an array of bright colours but over time had deteriorated to a grey sludge-brown and my mother suspected it harboured both TB and scabies and furthermore had been handled since the year dot by hordes of children and you never knew where their fingers had been.   This was not a favourable summing up of the activity but nevertheless as it was not available in any shape or form at our house I was delighted to play with it.  

In those days at St Botolph’s Primary School we sat in double desks with lids that opened to reveal storage spaces for books, pencils and the afore-described lumps of modelling clay that we usually used immediately after the dinner break.   Each afternoon Miss Honour our glamorous young teacher with long blonde hair and red finger nails, instructed us to retrieve our balls of plasticene and carefully make for her what our mothers had given us for our dinner.    I set to with enthusiasm, making a range of cuisine items that may or may not have been on the dinner menu that week at 28 York Road.   Georgie Freeman my desk mate and younger brother of my best friend Molly from 31 York Road produced obscure grey blobs that he told me and also Miss Honour were shredded wheat with milk.   I reflected with a certain degree of envy that such exciting dinners would never be allowed at number 28.   My ever-critical mother, on the other hand was less than complimentary and said it was a crying shame and that her sister Mag was much the same, dishing up bread and milk day after day never mind that those boys of hers were all but fully grown.   I was of course equally envious of my cousins and their daily doses of bread and milk, most especially when made with delicious condensed milk from a tin rather than the boring variety we had in bottles.

 At the time of my mortifying moment concerning elastic we had not yet got to the modelling clay stage of the day so it must have been late morning.   I am reasonably clear about this time frame because I had first become aware of the problem during morning playtime, therefore electing not to take part in Molly’s skipping game even though she was playing with a rope that had proper wooden handles and belonged to her older sister.   To my horror, after paying my usual visit to the girls’ lavatories whether-or-not-I-needed-to-go as instructed by my mother, I was quite unable to make my pink winceyette knickers stay up around my waist.   I spent several minutes frantically attempting to force them to remain in place before abandoning the task and heading speedily towards the relative safety of the wooden bench bestowed upon the school by a previous headmaster.    Barbara Scutts who was already emerging as a bossy and opinionated student immediately told me that the bench was for the use of teachers only and I was going to be in Big Trouble if I did not vacate it but I ignored her and before she could berate me further the end of playtime bell sounded and I was able to escape back to the infants’ classroom desperately trying to keep my wayward undergarment in place.   It was not easy!

            Back in the classroom it was not until we stood up to sing Run Rabbit Run that to my horror the cloud of pink descended once more to my ankles and Georgie standing beside me stopped singing immediately and observed loudly that my knickers were on the floor.   Stepping out of them I hastily raised the desk lid and placed them alongside the lump of modelling clay at which he announced to as many of the class already aware that something untoward was happening, that I had taken my knickers off.   Once the handful of pink was safely out of sight I treated him to as withering a look as I could manage whilst fighting tears and said that he was a liar and would go to hell.   Undeterred Georgie called loudly to Miss Honour, still enthusiastically engaged in playing the piano that I had taken my knickers off and put them in my desk and it was his opinion that I had piddled in them.   This of course attracted the immediate attention of at least a third of the class with Barbara Scutts leaning backwards from her place in the row ahead of us in an attempt to track the actual whereabouts of my underwear.

It took Miss Honour several minutes to stop playing, encourage us to finish the song which proved impossible, and investigate what item of clothing, if any, was actually in my desk and what state it was in.   When she finally did so, she was followed by a procession of interested onlookers, Barbara to the forefront saying my elastic was probably broken and then when she was ignored vociferously enquiring as to whether she was correct.    I visualised throwing my Uncle Harold’s darts at her, the ones I had been expressly forbidden to play with and did but he didn’t find out.  Then I wondered if she realised how deep my hatred of her had become.  

But Miss Honour after holding up the handful of pink and reassuring herself that the item of clothing was not even slightly damp, had magically produced a safety pin from somewhere on her person and regardless of the audience and my clear reluctance to co-operate, was proceeding to assist me back into the offending garment before firmly pinning it to my liberty bodice.   I was to tell my mother that the elastic needed replacing she instructed, otherwise they would keep falling down.  Barbara was making helpful comments about elastic and Georgie was grinning broadly.  Oh how I detested them both!

 I recall nodding miserably, filled with loathing for each and every one of the attentive spectators, wishing endless misfortune upon them and when we were released at dinner time it was of course the very first piece of news I imparted to my mother standing at the school gate, though barely able to speak coherently through the torrents of tears. 

Once at home and whilst I ate my sliced half a sausage with reheated vegetables from the previous day, the elastic was deftly replaced, amid observations that it was still hard to come by and I was to make sure not to treat it too roughly when pulling up and down otherwise I would find myself reduced permanently to using a pin and I wouldn’t like that at all.   I was quite certain this was correct and decided that I would henceforth as far as possible abandon the playtime visit to the girls’ lavatories whether-I-needed-to-go-or-not.   It was more than likely I would be able to manage perfectly well by employing in depth bladder control until elastic became more readily available again.

When I got back to school that afternoon to my relief the mishap was not immediately mentioned and even Barbara Scutts appeared to have forgotten about it.    We settled down to our plasticene session, and Miss Honour said that today we no longer had to make what we had eaten for dinner, we could make whatever we wanted to.   What a treat!   I set to work making my teddy bear, recently transgendered from male to female for some reason now forgotten and renamed Sugar.   

Alongside me Georgie appeared to be engaged in the creation of a very long worm and I felt with great satisfaction that my model was an enormous improvement on his.    Miss Honour walked between the desks asking us about our models.   Because I was inordinately pleased with my work, thinking it closely resembled Sugar the Bear I beamed with pride when she spoke words of approval and managed to stick my tongue out at Georgie when she turned towards him.   She asked him if he was making a snake.  He said he wasn’t and to my horror added that he was making the broken elastic from my wet knickers.   I felt strongly he should be reprimanded in some way whilst loudly protesting that my knickers had been completely dry but Miss Honour simply ignored us both and began to speak to Barbara about the puppy she was making.  Barbara importantly explained that it was her grandmother’s Scotch terrier and its name was Dougal.

Despite the fact that his sister was my best friend I found it impossible to forgive Georgie for a very long time.  

A Possible Brother

 

            I first became aware of André when he was still under a year old, in a photograph sent by my father from North Africa along with dates and dried bananas in a very fancy box with foreign writing on the sides.    The photo was not just of André but essentially of a group on a beach which later I thought looked like any old beach though I was told it was in a place called Tunisia where the beaches have to be seen to be believed.  My father was seated on the sand and above him the baby was dangled on his shoulders by a young woman, presumably its mother.   

            I was possibly three or four years old at the time and aware that we had been waiting for a parcel and if I was good it would no doubt contain a doll in what I was told would be National Costume.   I had no idea what National Costume might be but the parcel I now write of clearly did not contain a doll of any description, just the strange dried fruit which once I had sampled I rapidly decided I was not keen on at all.     It was clear that the box also contained something my mother was not altogether indifferent to.   Standing by the kitchen table, the dates and bananas displayed before her in all their dehydrated splendour she had plucked the small snapshot from their midst and now held it between the thumb and forefinger of her right hand so that it caught the morning light from the kitchen window.   She was standing unnaturally straight, her left arm across her breast and she slowly shook her head back and forth murmuring something I was not completely able to understand.   It was perfectly clear that whatever message the beach photograph contained she was disturbed by it.    I was more disturbed by the missing doll, long promised but slow to arrive.

            A day or two later my Aunt Mag was invited to examine and appraise the photo over cups of tea in the front room of the house in Iron Mill Lane.   My aunt’s front room wasn’t kept for best the way ours was but occupied and used on a daily basis and my mother said this was because Mag wasn’t much cop at keeping a room special and if that house with its hallway and inside lavatory was hers she would certainly not be letting those boys come and go as they pleased, tramping over all the mats whether it was a Sunday or a birthday or not.   The trouble with Mag was she wasn’t fussy.

            No longer straight of spine my mother now sat hunched over on one of my aunt’s matching easy chairs that rocked slightly if you were heavy enough to negotiate the mechanism which I never was.   She was asking what Mag thought.  Did she think there might be something Between Them?    And did that child resemble anyone?    My aunt took the snapshot over to the bay window where you were able to get an uninterrupted view of the Three Jolly Farmers were it not for the almond tree, and held it up high.   No, she said at last, there was no resemblance whatsoever.    I wondered what it was they were so intent upon discussing and when the photo was placed on what my aunt called her coffee table though she didn’t drink coffee, I picked it up and demanded to know who the people were but they were paying no attention to me at all and my mother was saying that there were times when she felt that getting married had been the worst day’s work she ever did by a long chalk at which my aunt poured more tea and said not to talk such tommy rot.   There were some very good things about Bern.   He was a lovely chap even if he wasn’t a patch on her Harold.   He barely took a drink and didn’t smoke and didn’t use bad language.  What more did Nell want that’s what she’d like to know.   At which my mother muttered something about not being able to trust him and my aunt said well she couldn’t have everything.

            Going home on the 480 bus I learned that it was all very well for Mag to start laying down the law about who might have some good points.  Yes, all very well indeed since her Harold hadn’t been called up and she didn’t know what it was like to be all alone in the blackout never mind the blitz.   What was a woman by herself supposed to do when the warden knocked on the door late at night saying the blackout curtain had chinks in it that’s what she’d like to know?  It was all very well for them that still had men at home with all their health and strength.  Mag didn’t have the first clue as to how it was for others with their husbands miles away and having to bring up kiddies all alone.   Knowing I was one of those kiddies I sat as quietly as possible and tried to be good.  I was accustomed to these diatribes that from time to time emerged when my mother was under stress and realised that no response was expected from me.

            There was not much more comment made about André as far as I can recall for several years, not until Hitler had been well and truly defeated, my father was home again and working at the cement works in Northfleet, and my brother had been born and had already learned to crawl.   I was aware that despite my mother’s disapproval my father kept in touch with a number of the new friends he had made during World War Two, particularly a range of mysterious aunts.   I had already met Aunts Wilhelmina and Philomena and their exotic mother from Greece, who actually came to visit us unexpectedly on one occasion causing mayhem in our household.   Now he spoke frequently about yet another aunt and her mother from Tunisia on whose farm he had convalesced for months recovering from some kind of illness contracted during his time in the desert.   This was the illness that my mother later felt that by rights, once he had died, she should receive a war pension for on the basis that he would never have fallen ill in the first place had it not been for the war.  But that is not strictly part of this story.

    The North African aunt was called Dominique and she lived with her son André and her mother, Mrs Rampant on their family farm.  There were several brothers who helped run the farm and had been teenage boys at the time when my father had lived with them recovering from his illness.  The whole family had been distressed when the time finally came for him to leave. These were the people he longed to reconnect with and had forlorn hopes of a family holiday with them.   We would all four of us go to North Africa he said, and stay with the Rampant family and eat olives and oranges and dates and drink wine on summer evenings.   My mother had already made it perfectly clear that hell would freeze over before she would be prepared to visit a French farm in Africa of all places.  Holidays as everybody knew, cost money and spent on farms in Africa were likely to cost an arm and a leg.  And what’s more she was certain that wine would not suit her stomach.    A week in a caravan in Tankerton would be good enough for her and that was a fact and should be good enough for anyone with any sense!   There did not seem a great deal more to be said on the subject and my father tried hard not to say too much.

            Nevertheless, as time passed Aunt Dominique assiduously kept in touch sending regular letters on flimsy airmail paper with news of all the happenings on the farm.   Sometimes small, square black and white photos were enclosed, of her mother relaxing with a glass of wine on what I learned was the terrace, of her brothers hard at work, engaged in some farm activity, and of little André growing older, starting school and one of him holding aloft a certificate for excellence of achievement.  

            At the sight of the photographs my mother would grow tense and pretend that she was disinterested in looking at them, giving them just a cursory glance when they were passed across the kitchen table but later when my father had departed for his two-to-ten shift at Bevans Cement Works she would examine them closely.    Armed with tea and a Nice biscuit, the snapshots would be reclaimed from behind the mantlepiece clock and spread on the table to be minutely scrutinised.   Those depicting André might be taken to the window and held up and there were times when she rocked back and forth a little and stared into the distance.

            If my grandmother came to visit they might be laid out between the teacups so they could both pore over them and the story of my father’s desire to return to Tunisia would be told again.  Old Nan would say that she couldn’t understand that for the life of her and that Bern could be as silly as cats’ lights at times.  Everybody knew that them foreign places were not much chop at all and certainly not worth all the money spent and all the palaver in getting to them in the first place with Lord only knows how many changes of trains and boats.   You couldn’t beat a week in Ramsgate when all was said and done and oh so easily reached by a fast train from London Bridge.  Once when Aunt Dominique sent a photo of herself dressed for a party and looking glamourous Old Nan observed that if she had her way she’d clean that smarmy looking cow rotten.   And then my mother sobbed in silence for several minutes, her shoulders heaving and I asked why she was crying and was told to button my lip so I did.

      The last photograph we received of André was one of him looking older and very smart in the uniform of the school he would be starting soon and where it was hoped he would be able to learn advanced mathematics because that was his strength.   My father would have been pleased because he was undoubtedly the one who gave the photos of this strange French boy from the farm in Tunisia the most attention.   However, it was by then April 1952 and he had already been dead for a number of months and my mother had gained considerable confidence now that she had two part time cleaning jobs.  She no longer held André to the light, but simply glanced at him and said she would have to write to his grandmother to tell her the sad news.   I wondered why she would not write to Aunt Dominique instead but thought better of asking and instead held my hand out for the photo which she passed to me at once before briskly clearing the breakfast cups from the kitchen table. 

            For some inexplicable reason I took it to school with me intending to show it to the other girls whilst elaborating on tales of the farm where all manner of bizarre and mysterious fruits hung from trees all around, most already dried.  I don’t think anyone was particularly interested but because the photo was never missed I kept it and from time to time looked at it and as we both grew older, wondered what had become of André.

            I’m not sure when it was that I began to realise that there was a distinct possibility that he was our half sibling but when my brother in an attempt to get to know more about his father, embarked upon an in depth investigation of our family roots I was quite certain he would be at once intrigued.   It was startling to find that he wasn’t and his obvious disinterest was pronounced.   Although I brought up the topic on several occasions he always managed to divert the flow of conversation.  Now I wish that I had been more insistent on discussion but his indifference made it all too easy to look for the Too Hard basket, leave it for a more opportune time.   Somehow or other the collection of childhood photos of André have disappeared.  Only that first one of him as an infant remains, being dangled on my father’s shoulders on the beach in North Africa.  

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.