Our Spoons Came from Woolworths

by Barbara Comyns

  14

  The summer came and passed. Sometimes we were happy and spent days in the sun on the Heath. Sandro was very little trouble. He ate and slept and played with his toes until I bought him a rattle, then he played with that. I fed him myself, so he hardly cost anything to keep. He was still rather small, but very healthy. His hair was a golden red and very curly and his skin was brown, and his eyes a very dark brown.

  We had very little money that summer, but Charles did sell a few designs for book jackets and I went on sitting for artists. Usually they did not want me to pose with the baby, so I had to leave him behind with Charles and rush back at lunch-time to feed him. Charles learnt how to change nappies and did not seem to resent him quite so much. Sometimes he even seemed to be amused by him. But just when I began to feel more hopeful that in time Charles would grow really fond of Sandro something happened which upset and hurt me dreadfully. He got in touch with one of his father’s unmarried sisters and asked her to find particulars of how to have Sandro put in a home for children whose parents could not afford to keep them. The aunt wrote me a long letter saying she would gladly see to all the arrangements and I must give up my baby for Charles’s sake. I could earn much more if I was not tied to a baby and I must not get lazy. It was not fair to expect Charles at his age to support a wife and child. The letter was such a shock. I’d saved it up till I’d finished breakfast, because I so seldom received a letter and thought it might be something nice. When I opened and read it, I couldn’t help thinking of Charles and his family as monsters who wanted to take my baby away and I felt I could never trust Charles again.

  I had an appointment to sit that morning to an elderly artist who loved to paint girls in kimonos and dressing gowns slightly open in front, but I dared not leave Sandro in Charles’s care in case he was gone when I returned, so I ran out to the nearest telephone box and said I would be unable to come for a few days. Charles was in bed when I showed him his aunt’s letter. He was rather scared lying in bed with me standing over him storming away. He said: ‘Babies have no feelings and would be just as happy in an orphanage as anywhere else.’ On the other hand, he would be much happier if the baby was out of the way, so to send him to a ‘home’ was much the most reasonable thing to do. I just hated Charles then. I told him I wasn’t going to work any more, but stay at home and guard Sandro, but he said that was quite unnecessary, because if I felt about the matter so strongly he would write and tell his aunt. There was nothing to make such a fuss about. . .

  For three days I stayed at home and we had no money, and after the first day, no food and no shillings to put in the gas meter, so we couldn’t even make a cup of tea, and, what Charles minded most, no cigarettes. We hardly spoke to each other, and by the third day he had grown quite humble and sad. Maybe it was hunger made him get that way, but whatever it was, I felt I could trust Sandro with him, so I walked down to the elderly painter of girls in dressing gowns and told him I’d be able to sit for him the next day and would he lend me fourpence-half-penny. I bought a loaf with this on the way home; it was hot and new, and I pulled bits of crust off and ate them on the way. When I got home we cut the remains of the loaf in half and we ate it and felt all heavy afterwards.

  Then the autumn came and I got quite a lot of employment in Art Schools and Sandro had grown so pretty some advertising studios photographed him for advertisements for patent foods which he had never had. They paid a guinea for each photograph. I only got seven-and-six a morning for being an artist’s model. One school that gave me a lot of work was chiefly patronised by very well-to-do girls. In the rest-times the model was expected to sit in a tiny cell, smaller than a lavatory, so that she could not contaminate the young ladies. The walls of the cell were covered in rude remarks the models had written in pencil about the students and school. Sometimes the girls would ask me to pose at their homes on Sunday. They lived in places like Roehampton and Richmond and the fares were expensive. It was too far to come home for lunch, so they used to provide that. I had to eat it all by myself in the morning-room and I used to think how horrible amateur artists were compared to real ones.

  With all these sittings (that sounds rather like a hen) we did fairly well the first half of the winter; at least we had enough to pay for our food and rent, which was the main thing, and sometimes we had some over for coal, too. Then Christmas came and we decided it was too complicated to travel with a baby and it would be nice to have a Christmas at home.

  People suddenly became very kind. Even Charles’s family sent some packing-cases full of exciting provisions, and an American artist I had sat for sent a huge turkey and five separate shillings to pay for the cooking. A registered letter came addressed to me, and when I opened it there was five pounds inside. It didn’t say who it was from, but it quite made our Christmas. So with all these nice things happening we had a lovely Christmas. We had no visitors. Ann was staying with my brother and Francis and James had gone to their families. I cooked the dinner very nicely, and we had crackers and all the proper Christmas things. Sandro sat at the table in his new high chair, which Francis and his sister had given him, and we even had wine — Paul had sent a bottle. There was a tree for Sandro, simply covered in coloured glass balls, and toys, too. He already had a stocking full that morning. He couldn’t quite make out what they were, but thought they were very funny and kept laughing. He loved the crackers and the candles when we lit them on the tree. That was the best Christmas we ever had.

  After Christmas things became grim again. No more book jackets came Charles’s way and my model work was irregular and poorly paid, and the expenses were heavier now Sandro was weaned. We seldom had a fire and the light got cut off because we had not paid the bill, so we bought a little lamp for two-shillings-and-elevenpence and it gave quite a pretty light. We went to the electric light people and asked for the money we had given for a deposit back. It was nice to think they owed us money instead of it being the other way round. They gave us back the deposit money less what we owed them and it paid for our food for a week. These days we lived on vegetable soup and bread. Sandro had milk and an occasional egg as well.

  Eva came to stay once during this bad patch, fortunately before we had the light cut off. Charles pawned an old-fashioned necklace of my mother’s — it was the only piece of jewellery I had. It was worth losing it to hide the fact of the bad state we were in, but what I hated about pawning things was we never got them out again.

  This was the first visit Eva had paid us since Sandro was born, and she was full of advice on how to bring him up. Apparently her children had completely given up nappies at six months, and had cut most of their teeth and were walking about at that age, so Sandro at nearly a year seemed very backward in comparison. She brought him a white crêpe-de-Chine suit with tiny frills. It was very grand, but when I washed it I couldn’t get the frills to go back properly and she was disgusted when she saw it on her next visit. After that, when she gave me expensive clothes, I only let him wear them when she was there, so they showed hardly any signs of wear.

  Sandro was rather backward walking, but he used to shoot about the floor on his bottom, propelling himself with his feet, and when he was put on his pot he used to skate about on that. He found this such a successful way of following me around, it was difficult to get him interested in walking. I used to worry in case he always went about like that. Otherwise, he was not backward at all and was very forward with talking and took a lively interest in everything we did, and almost never cried.

  15

  As the year went on our poverty got worse and worse. Charles just painted away and didn’t notice unless there was no money for cigarettes. Then he would borrow a few shillings from Francis to buy some and he would be happy again. I was out working so much he had to look after Sandro nearly every day, but he was more reconciled to him now. If it was fine he would load the pram with painting materials and go up to the Heath for the day; if he worked at home he would give Sandro an old canvas, a brush and some
paint, and he would sit down and paint very carefully until the canvas was quite covered and give no trouble at all.

  When it was his first birthday I made a sponge cake with white icing and one candle in the middle. I had saved a few shillings and bought some cheap toys, too. Among them was a very large celluloid goldfish and he promptly ate the tail off when it was given to him on his birthday morning. The other toys I saved until the birthday tea.

  For some reason this first birthday meant an awful lot to me. I was longing to see Sandro’s delight in the cake and toys. When he was excited he would whistle through his two front teeth — he only had four. Unfortunately, I was sitting in a school that day so had to rush off after breakfast. If it had not been a school I was working for I would have cancelled it, because I had been so looking forward to this day. As it was I put the birthday tea and toys all ready on a tray and told Charles on no account was he to start before I returned at about four-thirty.

  After the day’s work I hurried home so fast I lost a little red cap I had been posing in, and the students were annoyed the next day when I arrived without it. They had to change all their paintings. But the cap was sacrificed in vain, because when I reached home there was no Sandro or Charles. I waited and waited until it was five o’clock, then six o’clock, then seven o’clock. By this time I was quite sure there had been a frightful accident. I even braved the landlady and went down and asked if anything awful had happened, and she said it very likely had but she hadn’t heard about it yet.

  Just as I had climbed the three flights of stairs, I heard Charles come in, so I rushed down again and there was Sandro asleep in the pram under a mountain of painting materials. I carried him upstairs. He was so sleepy he only woke up for a cup of milk and stayed asleep all the time I was undressing him, so it was no good having a birthday tea now. When I returned to the living-room, Charles had propped his painting up against the wall and was standing looking at it most intently. He was eating something, and when I looked closer it was the birthday cake; it was all cut and spoilt and Sandro had never seen it. The painting was of the beautiful church in Church Row, Old Hampstead. I’d always loved that church, but now I felt I hated it, and for months every time I passed that way, I wouldn’t look at it.

  After the birthday disappointment I became more and more discontented with our way of living. I disliked the flat and the depressing road we lived in. I felt we were getting like it. We had lost most of our friends now and we never went to a theatre, film or party. It was over a year since we had been out at all, even to tea. I could see how dreary our life was compared to the students in the schools I sat in. Sometimes the artists I sat for asked me to come to a party, but I never could, because of leaving Sandro at night. I couldn’t expect Charles to look after him while I went out enjoying myself. Charles had got in such a rut he hardly knew he was alive. He never sold any paintings, because no one ever saw them. A few weeks after they were painted he reversed the canvas and painted on the other side, then if there was no money to buy a new canvas, he would scrape the last painting off and start a new one. All this seemed to have no beginning or end.

  While I was posing I would try to make new plans to improve our lives. I came to the conclusion that the first thing we must do was move, move to a more accessible flat where Charles could have a proper studio and where we could entertain a little. I tried to save some money towards this move, but it was quite impossible, although I felt that if once I found a suitable flat the money would appear.

  I did not tell Charles my plans. I thought he would be frightened of a new move because he had had all the work of the last one. Also he was in such a dreary kind of haze these days he would not like the idea of being disturbed. Ann did not go to her office on Saturday morning, so she used to come to the house agents with me. We both adored going into empty houses and flats. There were often odds and ends left from the last tenants. From just a few things one could picture exactly the kind of people they were. Some of the places the agents sent us to were simply frightful and others could have been nice, but were covered in dark brown paint and had stained glass windows. I think there must be far more dark brown paint and stained glass in West Hampstead than in any other place in the world.

  On the fourth Saturday morning of our hunt we discovered quite a suitable flat on the hall floor of a large, rather battered house in Abbey Road. There were two simply enormous rooms and a tiny kitchen and hall. The bathroom and lavatory were down the passage in the main hall and had to be shared with two other flats; but to make up for this there was a house telephone. The telephone decided me and we went back to the agents and said we would have the flat, and I borrowed a pound from Ann to leave as a deposit. The rent was six pounds a month in advance.

  When I broke the news to Charles that we were moving he was most dismayed. He said he couldn’t bear the idea and didn’t want to lose the view from the bedroom window, but I kept enticing him with the beautiful large room he would have to paint in, so he consented to come and see the flat, and when he did, he also saw the possibilities it held and agreed to have it. So we wrote to his father and said for practical business reasons we must move to a more convenient house and could he let us have twelve pounds for the first month’s rent and expense of moving. The letter must have been a good one, because the money came by return, so we gave the landlady a week’s notice and away we went. I was full of hope, as usual.

  We had collected quite a lot of odd pieces of painted furniture during the two years we had been married. Whenever people had something they did not want they gave it to us and we painted it to match the rest of our stuff. Everything was a pale greenish blue, the kind of colour some swimming-pools are. So although the rooms were so large they did not look too bare, except for the floors, and we had nothing to put on the bedroom floor at all. For poor people the most difficult thing to provide is floor covering. Everything is so expensive, even lino. I have often wished people could put rushes or sand on their floor in these days. It would have cost pounds to make curtains to fit the large windows, so we just had nothing. Studios seldom have curtains in any case.

  The kitchen was not so nice as I had thought at first. For one thing it was dark, and another bad thing was, when I went to open the window I found it opened into a garage and a great smell of oil and petrol came in, and when they started up cars the smoke and fumes were terrific. But the room Charles was using for a studio seemed wonderful after the pokey little attics we had been living in, and having a large room to paint in seemed to improve his pictures, and they did improve almost straight away. Perhaps it was because he had never been able to walk back from his work and see it from a distance before.

  Having a telephone was a great help in my work. Previously the artists that needed me had to write. Now if they had a few odd hours or a sitter had let them down, they would ’phone and I could be there in half an hour. There was a bus stop just outside the house.

  Francis had a studio quite near and whenever he wanted to try out a new technique in painting he would get me to sit for him. He said I was the only person who sat for him who didn’t get offended if the painting turned out badly. Once one of his windows got broken, so he put an old canvas in its place to keep the draught out. It was an unsuccessful painting of me, and looked so reproachfully at me every time I passed in a 53 bus that I had to ask him to take it down.

  Seeing so much of Francis did Charles good. They would talk about painting together for hours. When we had no money for food he would give us lunch. It was always the same lunch — scrambled eggs, tinned peas and carrots and a lot of coffee. He said he had an account with a grocer’s shop and even if he had no money for several weeks he could still buy food, and by the time the bill had grown rather large some money always turned up.

  We thought that was the best idea we had heard for a long time, so he took us to his grocer and said we wanted an account, and the grocer said we could have one, and it was lovely having an account like that. The grocer even had be
er and when we had no money we would ’phone for some food and a bottle of beer and it was delivered to the door.

  16

  Soon we began to make new friends and were asked to parties, so we arranged with a married couple who lived on the same floor that we would keep an ear on their child when they went out if they would do the same for us. This worked quite well and made a great difference to our lives. Sometimes now Charles sold a painting to one of our new friends. This did not happen very often, but it did Charles so much good.

  One party we went to was given by a drunken Australian artist who had a dank studio in St John’s Wood. We arrived there rather late and nearly everyone was quite drunk and it was all very sordid. I wandered round looking at the sculpture, which wasn’t much good. I’d always longed to model in clay, but could never afford to buy the necessary materials. I discovered a large bin of clay and on a sculptor’s easel some fascinating tools. Hanging from a nail on a door was a dirty towel. I suddenly found myself pulling great lumps of clay out of the bin, and putting it in the towel. When I’d scooped out about half a hundredweight I added some of the tools. When I had made the towel into a bundle, I told Charles what I had done and he agreed to help me carry it home, so we crept out of the door that had had the towel hanging from it, and discovered ourselves in the garden. It was stiff with loving couples, but we managed to reach the road without treading on any. When we got outside we laughed and laughed; the bundle was so heavy, but we managed to get it home, laughing most of the way.

  The next day I started modelling in clay. I had no armature, but made a substitute with some of Sandro’s toys. He was most annoyed about this and became very red in the face and kept muttering to himself and pointing to the bust I was modelling. After this I spent all my spare time modelling. One bust was most successful. I did the nude body and neck from myself, but made up the head because I was too shy to ask anyone I knew to sit. I didn’t like people to watch while I was working. The face was rather Burmese and I left the eye sockets hollow, which sounds gruesome, but, in fact, was most effective. The figure ended at the waist and I kept it wrapped in a nice piece of rubber sheeting. It had to be damped every day. I hoped to find someone who would help me cast it in plaster before it got too hard.