Our Spoons Came from Woolworths

by Barbara Comyns

  Charles went in first and I followed feeling pretty scared. Eva kissed Charles and then me, so I knew it was meant to be a friendly visit. I couldn’t help feeling glad I’d smudged her lipstick when she kissed me, I knew she would feel pretty mad when she arrived home and saw her face. I started muttering about the place being untidy and that I would have made a cake if I’d known they were coming, but she said it did not matter as she had imagined it much worse, but she had had to hunt everywhere for the teaspoons. I could imagine her going through the dresser drawers, looking at all my shabby clothes and holding them up for her relations to see.

  She said she admired the flat very much, but thought the hard chairs rather uncomfortable and she couldn’t understand how we could sleep on such a small divan and why didn’t we have a charwoman. Then Edmund, the husband of Stiff-black-hat, said he was sure Eva would be able to give me some useful hints on economical housekeeping. As Eva was quite famous for her extravagance in dress and home, I was rather interested to hear what she would have to say. She cleared her throat once or twice, and said something about poor people should eat a lot of herrings, as they were most nutritious, also she had heard poor people ate heaps of sheep’s heads and she went on to ask if I ever cooked them. I said I would rather be dead than cook or eat a sheep’s head; I’d seen them in butchers’ shops with awful eyes and bits of wool sticking to their skulls. After that helpful hints for the poor were forgotten, because Charles told her about our visit to Paul. She was most interested, because she wanted to know how he was situated for money, because she needed her allowance increasing. Charles and I both assured her he was living in the most abject poverty and his house was understaffed and his car just falling to bits, so she began to worry in case her allowance was cut.

  Then Edmund started asking Charles about his prospects. Had he a job in view? Had he sold any paintings? Had he any prospects at all? So Charles had to pretend things were much better than they were, and he talked very brightly and rather unconvincingly about his future. As a matter of fact Edmund had business troubles of his own; I couldn’t help wishing Charles would ask him a few questions about his financial position.

  At last Stiff-black-hat, who had not spoken all this time, said it was time to go and dress for dinner. Eva was staying with them for the night. All this time she had been sitting on the unpaid-for divan, looking around with cold blue eyes, her thin white lips tightly pressed together. I had no relations with the exception of a sister and brother. They had all died for one reason or another, but I felt Charles had enough for us both.

  There was a great searching about the room for Eva’s belongings. Then the kitten was found asleep on her coat and there had to be a great brushing to get the hairs off, but at last they left and it felt as if there had been a great wind which had suddenly ceased.

  After this first visit Eva and I had a kind of truce; she continued to criticise and talk at me, but as she did the same to everyone she knew, even Charles, I couldn’t object too much. Although most of Charles’s relations came from Wiltshire they used to come to London very frequently. They all talked and asked questions about our financial position and took the line of ‘I hope you are looking after dear Charles properly’, or ‘What a lucky girl you are to have married into our family.’ In those days I was too timid to say much, but I used to resent it all the more and sometimes, after they left, I would be nervy and resentful with Charles. Also they would keep suggesting impractical ways we could earn extra money. They sent cuttings from the Daily Mail about how I could make sweets or gloves at home and make a fortune, or complicated rackets for Charles to sell note-cases to our friends on commission. As none of our friends had any notes, he wouldn’t have done very well from it.

  Except when his relations came fussing around Charles was quite happy just painting away, and as long as I earned two pounds a week and there were a few cheques in the drawer he hadn’t a care in the world. He was very loving and gentle with me. One day we went to the sea for the day with James and a huge wave knocked me down when we were bathing. He was dreadfully distressed and kept asking if I was all right. I liked him to be concerned for me, because it was a very long time since anyone had been. I’d been living alone in bed-sitting-rooms since I was seventeen and it had been rather a hard life and lonely sometimes, too.

  5

  After about ten weeks of married life I began to feel rather sick, not of Charles or married life — just sick in myself. At first it was just a whisper of sickness and I began to think I was imagining it, then I thought maybe it was strawberries; they were very cheap that year, there must have been what they call in the newspapers a ‘glut’, we even ate strawberries for breakfast. One Sunday morning the milkman left a pint of cream instead of milk; it was marvellous. We ate everything simply smothered in cream; the kitten had a share, too, but the next day I felt even more sick. Then the whisper became very loud and I became really sick. It was so difficult at work, because I had to keep running to the lavatory. I felt a little better in the evening, but so tired, all I wanted to do was to go to bed. There were big black rings round my eyes.

  The girls I worked with said I should see a doctor; most likely he would have a nice surprise for me. One morning I fainted when I got out of bed. Charles was very scared and said I was to stay in bed. I didn’t like to stay away from the studio in case they found how well they could get on without me and gave me the sack. I hadn’t been working very well lately, but it just seemed like heaven to stay in bed, so I did.

  Charles said he would fetch a doctor. We had noticed a brass plate a little further up the road. Quite soon he returned with a proper doctor, complete with a black bag, a morning coat and pin-striped trousers, but he had a sad face. He talked to us for a little time to put us at our ease, then he sent Charles out while he examined me and asked a few questions. When Charles returned he had a very stiff bunch of maidenhair fern and carnations in his hand. The doctor had reserved his verdict until his return. Then he told us we were going to have a baby; it was going to come in about seven months. Charles’s white pointed face went even more so and I felt frightened, trapped and excited all at once.

  The doctor gave a few hints and words of advice, and said I was to visit him in about a month. Then he had gone and we were left alone, but we were not alone any more. Charles said, ‘Oh dear, what will the family say? How I dislike the idea of being a Daddy and pushing a pram!’ So I said, ‘I don’t want to be a beastly Mummy either; I shall run away.’ Then I remembered if I ran away the baby would come with me wherever I went. It was a most suffocating feeling and I started to cry.

  Charles kissed me then and said it was no use crying about something that was not going to happen for seven months, I might have a miscarriage before then. I was almost more scared of having a miscarriage than having a baby, so I went on crying.

  The next day I went back to work and told the girls what the doctor said had happened to me. They laughed and said they knew that already. They teased me about the baby rather a lot, but were kind really. If only they hadn’t told me such dreadful stories about childbirth. Frightful things seemed to have happened to their mothers and friends. They made it seem almost impossible to have a baby that was not dead or deformed in some way. I began to think mine would at least have a hare-lip. I kept seeing people in the street with them, and everywhere I looked there were hunchbacks and cripples. There were lots of daddy-long-legs about that year, and they kept coming in the flat, from Primrose Hill, I expect. I got an idea that if one touched me the baby would be marked in that place, or if one touched my mouth it would have a hare-lip. I screamed every time I saw one, and I kept jumping up in the night and putting the light on to make sure none had got in the room. I had to sleep with my head under the bedclothes in case one touched my lips when I was asleep. Charles got very angry with me and said I was stupid and hysterical, as no doubt I was. Most fortunately, Matthew — the kitten — began to take a great interest in daddy-long-legs and used to catch them
in his mouth and dash about with all the legs sticking out like a moustache. As he chewed, the legs gradually disappeared. He pounced on each one as soon as it appeared in the flat. I was so grateful to him and let him sleep on the bed as a reward for his service.

  Poor little Matthew! One morning he came part of the way down the hill with me, as usual, and never returned. Charles spent all the day searching for him, and the next morning someone came to say he had been run over. Charles was even more sad than I about this misfortune. We bought a catfish and called it Greedy Min and put it on the mantelpiece by Great Warty, but it wasn’t much of a companion to Charles in the daytime.

  One night, a few weeks later, we awoke to find a large ginger cat asleep on the divan, so we let him stay and in the morning he was still there. We called him Ambassador. At first he seemed very old and feeble. He had bald patches and scabs, and sat by the gas fire all day with his head hanging low. His teeth fell out one by one. They used to sound like little bullets as they fell in the dustpan when I swept the carpet. Quite soon he started to change rapidly — beautiful new teeth came and his fur grew dense and his tail all bushy. Then his thin old face became completely round, and he was a cat to be proud of. One disadvantage about him was, he used to bring all his dirty old friends in as soon as our backs were turned, and they smelt rather. Still, we were glad to have a cat again, even one with smelly friends.

  6

  After about three months I forgot about feeling sick, but the baby weighed on my mind quite a lot. Before I married Charles I used to hope I would have masses of children. I thought it would be nice always to have at least one baby and quite a number of older children all developing in their individual ways, but before we were married Charles told me he never wanted to have any children, and I saw they would not fit in with the kind of life we would lead, so I just hoped none would come to such unsuitable parents — anyway, not for years. I had a kind of idea if you controlled your mind and said ‘I won’t have any babies’ very hard, they most likely wouldn’t come. I thought that was what was meant by birth-control, but by this time I knew that idea was quite wrong.

  Sometimes I would find myself quite looking forward to the baby, and long to see and hold it in my arms, but when I told Charles I felt like this, he was annoyed and made me feel I had betrayed him in some way and had got all sentimental.

  So far even Charles’s mother had not noticed anything wrong with me, and I knew if it escaped her black, sharp eyes I was safe from the rest of his family for some time to come. It was a whole month since I had seen the doctor, so one evening on my way home I called at his house. He had no waiting-room, so I sat in the drawing-room by the fire and talked to his comfortable wife. When the doctor came in he was very pleasant and said he would get me into one of the big hospitals to have the baby and it would cost hardly anything at all. We talked quite a lot, and I told them how my cooking used to taste of soap, but was improving now. The doctor said next time I came he would show me how to cook real Indian curry; he had learnt how to make it when he lived there, so I thought, ‘That is why he looks so yellow and sad.’ I had noticed people who have lived in hot countries for some time often look like that; perhaps it does something to their livers.

  But I never learnt how to make that curry, because the doctor and his wife both committed suicide. The man did it first, by doing something to his arm with a needle, and when his poor wife found him all dead like that, she gassed herself. We felt dreadfully shocked and sad about this and I felt more worried about the baby than ever.

  Then the autumn came and the cheques in the dresser drawer were all gone. There was only a little box with some Spade guineas in it; that’s all that was left. They had been a wedding present and we had hoped we would never have to spend them. Charles was very bright and kept saying something would turn up. He did get a job in a commercial studio, but it only lasted a week. He had to draw brushes — scrubbing ones — all day, and he wasn’t very suitable for drawing brushes, so that wasn’t any good. Then he got two hanging signs for tearooms to paint and earned ten pounds, so we became full of hope again and had supper at Bertorelli’s, and drank sour Barbera to celebrate. I bought some tiny pearl buttons and some fine lace trimming for the baby. It was at about this time that it started moving about inside me and it felt strange and rather delightful. I began to wonder what kind it would be. I knew Charles never liked me to mention it, but it was rather difficult to forget it when it was moving about like that, so I did ask which kind he wanted. He said he wouldn’t mind so much if it was a girl and had long hair. After that I hoped very much it would be a long-haired girl. I decided to call her Willow, which I thought a graceful, romantic kind of name.

  So far we had only taken my sister Ann and James into our confidence about the baby, but I felt the time had almost come when Charles’s family would notice I was getting full of babies, and they wouldn’t be quite so upset about it if we had made a few arrangements about a hospital and pram and things like that, so thought it would be a good idea to ask some of our friends’ advice about these things. Most of our friends were bachelor artists, with the exception of Mrs Amber, and I knew she would suggest me having the baby in some remote Italian village on the top of a mountain or else in a magic stream with silver leaves in my hair. Charles said the most sensible person to ask was Francis. He was a young portrait painter who had had more experience than we had and liked to give us advice on all kinds of subjects, and it was usually quite good advice.

  Francis was rather overwhelmed when Charles told him we were expecting a baby, but you could see he was flattered we had asked his advice. He said he would let us know in a few days the best and cheapest way to have babies, and he thought he knew someone who would give us a pram their child had outgrown. Two days later he came to see us and brought his sister with him. She was a large, handsome, efficient kind of girl of about thirty. They had been asking all their friends about having babies and had discovered an old woman of eighty, who was very rich and ugly and kind and abrupt all at the same time. She spent her days fixing up young Jewish mothers in hospitals and doing other good deeds, too, but the maternity part was her most important work. Francis’s sister had spoken to her about me and she had agreed to help, even if I wasn’t a Jewess. Quite soon I went to see her and found she was a little old hunched-back woman with a huge nose and twisted hands. Her house was large, dark and breathless and the furniture massive and sad. There were bead curtains, stuffed birds, ferns and Indian brass objects all creeping about the place, but the old woman was full of vitality. She was like a dark gleaming jewel in a dusty old velvet case. Within a few minutes she had given me a letter to a Dr Wombat of King Edward’s Hospital, and had promised me a cot and some baby clothes and said it was a pity I was not a Jewess and hustled me out.

  I arranged to have a morning off from the studio. Also I told my boss I was expecting a baby, and he said I had better leave at Christmas. I did not like to tell him how much we depended on the money I was earning or he might have thought Charles wasn’t a good artist, but it was rather a blow to know I was leaving at Christmas. I had hoped they would let me stay till the baby came and perhaps let me come back after and leave it in a pram by the railings while I was working.

  I was very frightened when the morning came that I was to visit the hospital, and I walked past several times before I dared go in. It was an enormous red brick building and I kind of felt they would never let me out again when I walked in through the large front door, but I was out very soon because a porter said, ‘You can’t come in here; you must go to the side entrance in the basement.’ So I went down some depressing steps and through a door with OUT PATIENTS on it. I showed an official-looking woman my note and she told me to sit on a bench with a lot of other women who were new patients.

  We had to wait a very long time, so they all started talking to each other. I didn’t like to talk because I felt I was a fraud. They were all so bulging with baby and I hardly showed at all. Quite a number of
them had had children before, and they all seemed to have been in and out of hospital all their lives. They talked very knowingly about how they had routed matrons and sisters, and how they had told the doctors what they thought of them. They were full of complaints about hospital treatment and food, but in spite of all this talk I had the feeling they really rather liked hospitals and were glad to be back again.

  It was very depressing and dreary sitting in that passage. One of the women fainted. I noticed some of them were carrying glasses of what I thought was lemonade, so I asked where I could go to get some, but they all shrieked with laughter at me, so I didn’t dare to speak again.

  After a very long time the official woman came and said we were to go into cubicles and undress. We were allowed to keep our vests on. I went into one of the cubicles which was like a wooden bathing hut. There were three other women there. They all wore big grey corsets, so it took them ages to undress. Some of them rubbed their legs to get the red mark of their garters off. They said the doctors were cross with you if you wore garters. I can’t think why they did wear them, because they had forests of suspenders hanging from the grey corsets. I had no stockings and hardly any underclothes, so it did not take me long to undress and put on one of the pink-cotton dressing gowns that were hanging up for our use — they were very short but clean.

  When I returned to the passage I was given a glass and told to put a specimen in it. I realised what a fool I had made of myself about the lemonade — if I had been dressed I would have left the hospital. After about another hour I did get examined by Dr Wombat. He was young and charming and cheered me up quite a lot. I was fortunate and managed to escape being examined by the students, but on later visits I had quite a lot of this. I noticed the women students were not so gentle as the men and usually hurt rather, but perhaps this is not general. I may have been unlucky in the women students that came my way.