Mother Knew Best

by Dorothy Scannell

  My brother Charlie was only fifteen, and as soon as Father had left for the war he went out and joined up, although Mother cried and pleaded with him not to go. Mother always said her prayers and they were answered. Charlie was sent to the very district in France where my father’s battalion were stationed. By another stroke of fate a Sergeant in my father’s mess was in the Office when the new recruits were being checked in. He saw my father and said, ‘Chick, there’s a young boy with red curly hair who has just arrived from home. Christ, they’re sending them out young now, this one doesn’t look as if he’s had his napkins off long; you wouldn’t believe it, he’s got the same name as you, Chegwidden.’ Off my father went to the office but Charlie had been sent on and my father in a frantic state told the officer he thought the new recruit was his son, if so he was only just fifteen. The officer, a kindly man, traced Charlie who, much aggrieved, was sent back to his mum with some wounded. He bided his time impatiently and at the earliest age possible he joined the Royal Navy.

  Only Mother cried when her men went, so it seemed strange that Amy should sob so when Arthur went off to France. It seemed impossible to pacify her, and all the more mysterious that she should act this way for she and Arthur were always at loggerheads. Her tears, alas, were not for Arthur but for what he took with him. Arthur always used to frighten us when we had anything new, for he was a tryer-on. It was an extremely rare event to own something precious of our very own and whatever was shown to him he just had to try it on after inspecting it minutely and we always clamoured for it back. Someone had given Amy a bracelet made out of elephant’s hair. It was the first piece of jewellery she had ever owned and it meant the world to her. For one thing everyone knew that an elephant’s hair bracelet was lucky and to us luck was everything. Arthur, dressed in his uniform and ready to leave, tried on this precious bangle and couldn’t get it off. Finally he left for the front wearing the only thing Amy treasured. ‘Never mind,’ said Mother, thinking to stem Amy’s tears, ‘Perhaps your lucky bracelet will be the means of keeping him safe for us.’ More tears from Amy, for the safety of the bracelet was her main concern and she was frantic when she thought that if Arthur were killed a little German girl might wear her bracelet. The period when Arthur was in hospital at Salonika must have been a worrying time for my sister.

  Arthur became great friends with another young soldier and the two of them went all over France cutting wires so that the Germans would not know what our boys were doing. His friend was decorated, but Father said that as there were only so many decorations for so many battalions it didn’t mean that Arthur was any less brave, and we all agreed. I knew that not even the decorated friend would cut his wires so beautifully and neatly as Arthur. He did everything so perfectly.

  Not far from our house was a very nice baker’s shop which people called the German bakers. They had been in Poplar for years and made the best bread in the district. Such a clean shop my mother thought and she cried when the shop was attacked by people during the war. It was said we should feel worried because of our name, which made me very angry, but was all right in the end because Dad and Arthur were Tommies and Charlie a Jack Tar.

  The night of the Silvertown explosion remains vividly with me. One Friday evening Winnie and Amy were at Guides, Agnes had gone to live at Forest Hill at her fiancé’s home as it was safer than Poplar, and Leonard was with David at the boys’ club in the church institute. Mother was singing my favourite ‘They played in a beautiful garden, those children of high degree’ and she had just reached the saddest and loveliest part where the little crippled boy gazes through the wrought iron gates at the beautiful rich girl, when everything went scarlet. There was a terrific bang which went right through my ears, the windows broke and scattered glass all over us. Mother quickly dressed us and we went out into the Grove where it seemed everyone had gathered. Children were screaming and Mother thought the safest place for us that night, for we expected more explosions, was the crypt of All Saints. As we went round into the main road David was running towards us laughing and crying and he appeared to be quite demented. A ‘Lady’ lived in the corner house next to the estate agents which her husband owned, and she said she would give David some milk, which made me jealous, and put him to bed in her basement. Although it transpired that poor David had been blown across the hall of the institute and down the stairs by the explosion, I had no sympathy for him, for I knew ‘boys don’t cry’ and I felt he was having rich treatment considering the fuss he was making.

  When we reached the crypt it was full of old women mothers and children. Behind us stacked in rows were a lot of wooden coffins and the old women kept cackling jokes about these coffins and I couldn’t understand how they could laugh about anything so awful. Amy appeared wearing a sort of arm-band and carrying a jug of water. She had her ministering angel look on her face but she never came to us with water for we were only family.

  There was a red pail which was put out for people to wee-wee in and I refused to do this. I was much too refined and modest a child, I knew, to do such a terrible thing in public. For one thing the noise the pail made when it was being filled was very loud so that even at Mother’s coaxing that she would hide me with her skirts, I still refused. If people didn’t see me I knew they would hear me.

  The vicar came in carrying what looked like a large white enamel aeroplane, apparently it was part of an aerial torpedo which he said had just missed our lovely church and we all said a prayer of thanks because God had saved his house from destruction. We prayed for our brave boys at the front and then when news came that the night’s explosion was at Woolwich Arsenal we prayed for the dead, dying and injured.

  I hated the crypt with its coffins, its old women and its grey mouldy atmosphere. It had a real feeling of death and Mother said, “Very well, then, we won’t come again, we will stay in our own little house and God will look after us.’ I think she was worried because I wouldn’t wee-wee in the crypt. From then on, if the raids were still frightening, at least home was the best place to be if one is in danger or afraid. We would snuggle up on the pot board, tell stories and listen to Big Bertha the immense gun on Blackwall Point and the answering boom from her sister Annie across the river. Mother would have to get Winnie’s supper ready before we took cover for she was always late, having gone to evening classes. She would have her supper underneath the kitchen table. It was dark but we knew when Winnie had reached the rice pudding stage for when she was the last one in hers was left in the large enamel pie-dish, and we could hear her scraping and scraping to try to eat all the lovely sweet sugary brown bits which got baked on the side of the dish. Amy hated this scraping noise but it made no difference to Winnie. Scrape she would as long as she wanted to. Not a fragment must be left.

  The older girls spent a lot of their time queuing at the shops for food. The rumour would spread, ‘They’ve got potatoes down Chrisp Street,’ and they would be off like firemen sliding down poles. Hours later they would return like victors until Mother examined their buy and pronounced, ‘Why, these are no bigger than peas. How am I to feed my hungry family?’

  Food became a bigger problem later on for Father was reported missing, so his allowance was stopped by the War Office immediately. After all, if there was no father working or fighting, Mother couldn’t expect wages. Mother was so worried about Father being missing that she got in touch with the Prince of Wales relief organisation. I don’t know whether they gave food tickets, but they were very kind and traced Father for Mother. One of his men had taken Father’s disc by mistake and was found killed in the trenches. I thought Mother cried at strange things.

  One day an aunt sent her a whole 10s. postal order and Mother cried. Our country aunts began to send Mother trunks of old clothes, and night and day she would make clothes for all of us, sitting on the pot board, or on her bed. She made shirts for the little boys out of the tails of uncle’s old ones, little trousers out of big ones, frocks, petticoats and pinafores, and her needle would flash in a
nd out. She pinned the material to her knee and I was always worried she would sew through her knee as well.

  Winifred was a tower of strength during the war because she was never afraid. A girl guide, she decided to get ready, to ‘be prepared,’ and she stressed this necessity to Amy who was in happy agreement. Winnie made what she called gunny bags, which were to hold all their treasured possessions. These bags would be tied round their waists at night after they had donned all the clothes they possessed. They had a difficult time climbing into bed each night so fully clothed were they, and much giggling and screaming went on before they finally achieved a horizontal position by rolling each other over. It was uncomfortable to sleep like that but if Winnie thought by being prepared she was doing the Germans one in the eye, that was all the encouragement she needed. Getting ready for work in the morning was a backward process. Winnie had been reading the Hound of the Baskervilles and one night she was reciting ‘No moon, no stars, no Jupiter or Mars,’ when the house shook with an almighty bang and two enormous girls fell down the stairs to the kitchen. It was the first night Big Bertha had fired a salvo.

  On the day that the North Street infants’ school was hit, Mother had given me some red gooseberries and I was standing at the top of the Grove enjoying a feast. I was biting into each gooseberry saying, ‘Here’s the church, here’s the steeple…’ when I noticed some aeroplanes overhead puffing little clouds of smoke. Then Big Bertha started firing. In spite of the bangs, I went on eating my lovely gooseberries and I was just thinking what a lot of hairs there were on them, when suddenly policemen came running along blowing whistles, stopping trams and carts and turning them all round again. I was just looking to see how many gooseberries I had left when across the road came a galloping coal-cart. The driver had on his back-to-front shovel hat and in the crook of one arm he was carrying a little boy who seemed asleep, but the little boy’s face was covered with something scarlet and so was his shirt. Running behind the cart was a woman in a pinafore and behind her another little fair boy in a white shirt, but it was the fair boy’s face that kept my gaze. He looked so frightened that I thought somebody must be after him. I went home to tell Mother and she cried and I wondered if she knew the frightened little boy. She said I must stay by the front gate in future and later I learned from some other children that seventeen children had been killed while I was eating my gooseberries and ever so many had been injured. Then I realised that the Germans did not stay at the front with my father. It was different at the top of the Grove when we saw the Zeppelin shot down in flames. Everybody danced and cheered.

  At the beginning of the war Winnie was already working in the City and Amy started work during the war. I don’t think they worked very hard because they used to meet during the day, making some excuse about taking messages. One day Amy was hanging about in Fenchurch Street for Winnie, when there was an air raid and a horse’s head was blown off. Of course Amy became hysterical and some City men had taken her down a basement to shelter when a man rushed in and said a young girl had just been killed. Off went Amy again, ‘It’s my sister, it’s my sister,’ she cried. A gentleman decided to escort Amy to Winnie’s office to impart the sad news and when this sympathetic gentleman and a sobbing Amy arrived, Winnie was sitting in the outer office of her firm enjoying a large sticky bun. She was indignant at the fuss and said Amy was a stupid idiot and should get back to work. Poor Amy.

  We would go for walks near the docks on Sunday mornings and wonder where the children were whose houses were cut in half. Once we saw a little kitten mewing and my friend took it home.

  The King and Queen came to Poplar during the war to cheer us up and visit the little children injured at North Street school. They gave presents to the wounded children—one boy of four received a large coarse shirt for a working man, which had no collar. My friend said it would not fit the little boy’s father for he was only a tiny man. It didn’t seem fair to me that the little boy was injured and his father got the present, and suppose his father was in France, he might be killed and not need a working shirt.

  Some friends of ours took shelter in a High Street school during the raids. They would all sleep in the hall of the school having been told it was the safest place in Poplar. Because the school was surrounded by streets of houses there was no room for a playground, and this had been built on top of the school and covered over by wire netting. The experts informed the shelterers that any bomb landing on Dingle Lane school would bounce off the wire netting, and I wondered if it would keep on bouncing until it reached the river.

  By lucky chance Father and Arthur arrived home on leave from France on the same day and it was decided that a family portrait should be taken, not only as a monument to posterity, but as Mother sadly said, ‘It might be the last time the whole family are together.’

  An appointment was made at Whiffen’s the photographers in East India Dock Road for twelve people could not just march in on the off-chance, and a Sunday morning was arranged for this great event. All the girls, and the younger boys, were very excited, the girls rehearsing beautiful poses and romantic smiles ready for the day. Dad and Arthur spent hours on their spit and polish routine while Charlie ignored the whole proceedings.

  Mother rose early on the Sunday morning to prepare as much of the dinner as possible, and after breakfast we younger ones were dressed in our Sunday best and asked to sit quietly until the older ones were ready. Cecil kept dashing off at every opportunity and had to be hauled back. In the end Mother had to change the boys’ white blouses for blue jerseys. My frock wouldn’t show the dirt because it was navy blue. Miss Cook, a court dressmaker, who lived next door but one and was very fond of us, had made it for me, and thinking it would please me she had made a bright silk collar for the plain frock. I loved the silky feel of the collar which was striped with all colours of the rainbow.

  There were so many arguments for Mother to settle, so much pouring of oil on troubled waters, she had less free time than anyone for her own preparations. Agnes was in tears. Although she had a new cream tussore frock with a lace collar she also had new shoes, and she thought her frock would be too long and so hide her shoes. When Mother said the oldest ones would be at the back of the photograph, therefore her shoes would not show in any case, her tears flowed so fast she was advised to go and bathe her face. Winnie had won a watch. It was a cheap gun-metal affair but the first watch in the family and she was anxious to show it. Future evidence of her past affluence. Mother suggested that she stood behind Cecil and rested her hand and wrist on his shoulder. In this way not only would the watch be shown but it would also capture sisterly love, especially if Winnie wore a tender expression. Amy had hogged the mirror, not only to try out different hair styles but also different film star expressions. Mother said vanity was a besetting sin which Amy resented, to say the least of it.

  Finally when we had all been inspected and passed muster Charlie was missing and to the family’s disgust he appeared with a silk muffler around his neck. Father ordered him to put on a collar and tie, and when he finally appeared he was wearing a soft collar with his tie. There was no more time for any further delay and we all climbed up the wooden staircase to glorify and amaze the outside world (especially the neighbours). Father carried baby Marjorie, gave Mother his arm and the Sergeant and his Lady sailed down the Grove followed by the motley results of their union. Arthur, that immaculate soldier of the King, looked round at the rest of us, and, who shall blame him, decided he could not face public association with us and marched off alone, in a military manner, to Whiffen’s. Agnes, still sniffing, took my hand, Winnie walked with her hand on Cecil’s shoulder practising the watch position. Amy followed alone, checking that her two ribbon bows were still fluffed out, and David and Leonard didn’t walk but seemed to fall about laughing at nothing.

  As the photographer ushered us into his studio he gave Mother’s hand a squeeze and whispered sympathetically that he was going to produce a wonderful photograph. I suppose he thought th
at, with two members in uniform and one more nearly of fighting age, it was a good-bye gesture. The studio was a dim musty-smelling room, something like a cavern. The walls appeared to be covered with a sort of shiny canvas on which had been painted rustic seats, urns of flowers, and in the centre, a large pink lady with fluffy dark hair, and a very low-necked flowing dress. She wore a rose for modesty at the bottom of her cleavage and, holding a fan, she was glancing up coyly at a young man in scarlet uniform. He had a sword at his side. As the canvas was somewhat cracked with age and bulged from the walls in places, at the entry of such a large number of people, some rushing, a displacement of air took place. The lovers’ expressions changed so comically with the moving canvas that Len, who was really trying to control himself, let out a sort of high strangled squeak, which set half the family off into giggles.

  At last the poor photographer got us all into position and more or less subdued but when he said, ‘Watch the birdie,’ Len said to Dave, ‘Don’t look up,’ and the photographer flew out from under his large black cloth. But all was then still and silent. He said, ‘Now, all smile please,’ but Winnie’s arm bearing the watch had somehow crept right down to Cecil’s hips. From then on it became a silent battle between the photographer and Winnie, she trying to judge the exact moment he would take the photo, he knowing she was doing this and determined to get the better of this obstinate female. All this time Amy had been taking her dramatic poses so that because of the prolonged battle which had been taking place, she had lost the sense of timing she needed to hold the pose long enough. At least the photo was taken when she wasn’t ready, so the photographer had beaten Winnie in the end.