Our shop was called Roy’s High Class Fruiterer and Greengrocer. My father obtained his stock not only from wholesalers but also from private growers and Jean and I often used to accompany him when he drove into the countryside to buy produce from market gardeners. In those early days, when he was fired with enthusiasm, he would even drive all the way to Penzance to meet the ferry, The Scillonian, which brought passengers and produce from the Isles of Scilly to the mainland. Sometimes, elderly gentlemen would call into the shop with vegetables of prize-winning quality they’d grown themselves and, with modest pride, offer them for sale. Occasionally, they brought flowers and I can remember once opening a box in which, carefully wrapped in tissue paper, were the most beautiful ranunculus flowers, themselves not unlike tissue paper, in an array of the loveliest rainbow colours. In Cornwall, when I was a girl, fields and fields of brightly coloured anemones were a common sight and when they were in season, our shop was full of the bunched, tightly budded flowers. They are seldom seen these days and probably never will again be grown in the same profusion because they were attacked by a devastating virus and growers replaced them with daffodils. My father sometimes acquired stock cheaply because it was not fresh and often, when a customer came into the shop asking for a lettuce, he’d say:
‘Hang on a moment - I’ve got some growing out the back so I’ll just go and cut you one.’
In the yard he had a bucket of water in which he kept a supply of none-too-fresh lettuces and, having selected one which wasn’t too far gone, he’d pull off the browning outer leaves and cut a slice from the stem. Then he’d take the lettuce to the customer and say:
‘You can always tell when a lettuce is freshly picked because the stem is nice and white, like this one.’
He had nicknames, most of which were very silly, for all his regular customers. For instance, there was Fur-Cuffs, a woman who wore a fur-trimmed coat; then there was Flop-Out, whose décolleté , however inclement the weather, displayed an ample bosom; Slimcea, whom he named after the low-calorie bread, was a woman of enormous proportions while Promiscuous had an inordinate number of children of dubious paternity. Nut-Case, an ageing widow, was in the habit of donning her best finery on fine, Sunday afternoons and, with erect back and swinging arms, would stride around Castle Drive - monkey parading, my father called it. She favoured full skirts in bold prints of loud colours and fitted, white blouses worn with a wide belt. She was very tall and with her dyed black hair, painted red lips, rouged cheeks and mannish gait she looked so much like a not-very-successful transvestite that passing motorists used to stare in astonishment. There was also The Ginger Tart, a divorceé who had once propositioned him when he’d been to her house to deliver her order of fruit and vegetables. She was wearing a loose robe which, when he stepped into the hall, she opened to reveal the fact that she was totally naked underneath.
‘What do you think of this?’ she asked him.
If my mother had ever found out about that encounter, there is no telling what might have happened.
When the shop was well-stocked it looked fresh, bright and colourful; if, however, my father was hard-up and couldn’t afford new stock it looked dingy and depressing. There was quite a lot of space to fill so he thought it would be a good opportunity to indulge one of his interests and keep tropical fish. The tanks were large but he couldn’t afford to buy all his fish at once and so Jean and I were sent every so often to buy them in twos or threes from the aquarium on Falmouth’s Customs House Quay. He wasn’t allowed to go there himself because my mother had accused him of taking too much interest in the woman - that tart with half Timothy White’s on her face - who sold the fish. When he had the cash to purchase new specimens he’d say to us:
‘Go and get us a Siamese fighting fish, will you?’ or:
‘Get us half a dozen guppies and a couple of kissing gouramis, will you?’
He was very fond of his fish and on one occasion, when he hadn’t been able to afford to pay the electricity bill and our supply was consequently disconnected, he sat huddled in a corner of the shop, head in hands and brow deeply furrowed, racking his brains to try to think of a way to fiddle the meter and restore the electricity before the water in the tanks started to cool.
‘Go away and leave me alone!’ he’d groan if anyone tried to speak to him.
In the shop he kept a barrel of vinegar which he used both for the pickling of onions and for selling to customers. Later, he obtained another, identical barrel but this one contained sweet sherry from which he regularly fortified himself with a surreptitious nip. He told my mother that the second barrel was full of vinegar, too, and, curiously, she believed him; in fact, I don’t think she ever discovered his secret although he lived in perpetual terror that she might unwittingly serve a customer with sherry instead of vinegar. He would sit in his corner sipping sherry and peeling shallots with the same grimy penknife he used for removing dirt from his fingernails and cutting lettuces: Roy’s pickled onions were very popular with the customers and at Christmas the shelves groaned under the weight of all the jars he had filled. Once, during a particularly acrimonious argument, my mother hurled one of the jars of onions at him; it was a particularly large jar and as it broke, onions and vinegar flew in all directions. It took many weeks for the smell to disappear. During slack periods he would sit reading from one of the volumes of the complete works of Dickens which he kept in the back of the shop and he often bemused customers by quoting passages or referring to characters from the novels. He had a subtle sense of humour but, like the literary quotations, his jokes went over the heads of most of his clientele.
Not infrequently, representatives of insurance firms or other, similar concerns would come into the shop trying to sell him policies and he always had difficulty turning them down. He was even persuaded to suscribe to a funeral expenses fund ( he called it his ‘coffin money’ ) which was collected every month by a shifty-looking old man who bore a disturbing resemblance to Fagin. He was also unable to resist buying goods, particularly watches, from itinerant traders. Indeed, word must have spread far and wide because, before very long, he was invaded on a regular basis by swarthy, mysterious-looking men speaking in rapid, unintelligible, alien tongues, selling an assortment of dubious merchandise. Whenever charity collectors ( he called them ‘tin rattlers’ ) came through the door he would groan and, if he could, make a hasty disappearance.
My mother accepted her share of the work involved in the running of the shop with very poor grace. The Cornish dislike those who boast almost as much as they dislike those who criticise and since she was in the habit of doing both, it was inevitable that she would make enemies. Once, a woman came into the shop when she was serving and asked for a turnip. When she replied that they didn’t have any, the customer could hardly believe it because in Cornwall the turnip - or, to be exact, swede - is an essential ingredient of the pasty and so to a Cornish person a greengrocer’s without turnips is as scandalous as a pub with no beer. My mother quelled the poor woman’s protests with one of her crushing retorts:
‘Where I come from,’ she said, coldly, ‘they feed them to the cattle.’
Amongst my father’s regular customers was a Cockney couple, both of whom were very much of the ‘you don’t want to do it like that!’ ilk, and since my mother disliked intensely anyone she considered a ‘know-all’, she made no pretence of concealing her contempt for them. However, being Londoners, they were impervious to her derogatory remarks and withering scorn and seemed to enjoy taunting her. The subject of shoe sizes came up one day and, staring pointedly at my mother’s feet, the woman said:
‘In my day, if you took more than a size two you were considered a clumsy cow.’
At this, my mother, who was a size five, could only seethe with tight-lipped fury.
Because the shop was ‘open all hours’ my parents took their meals in shifts. My mother would have hers first then stomp into the shop with an ungracious:
‘Do you want this or not?’
That signified that his was on the table. He suffered badly from indigestion and would often send Jean or me to the chemist’s for slippery elm or other, old-fashioned remedies: he knew he would get little sympathy from our mother so he never consulted her. It was shortly after we moved into the house in Killigrew Road that they finally stopped sharing a bed and although she blamed it on his snoring, I think the truth was that she just couldn’t stand him being near her any more. In winter, in order to warm his bed, he made himself a most bizarre and dangerous contraption. He obtained from the chemist’s a large, flat, lozenge-shaped tin that had once contained the vile-tasting Hack’s lozenges which, in those days, tended to be favoured by heavy smokers for the relief of their coughs. The tin was just wide enough to accommodate a low-watt light bulb and this homemade bed-warmer produced such a great deal of heat that every night the smell of scorching sheets would pervade the house and on several occasions the bed nearly went up in flames.
As well as mice, my sister and I had acquired a pair of rabbits. Very soon, they had babies which were so enchanting that we promptly went to buy another pair of a different variety. These, too, very soon produced young and before long we found, like the mice, that we had a great many rabbits. There were black ones, white ones, brown-eared ones and mixed ones and because we didn’t have enough hutches to contain them all, we let them loose in the garden where, as free-range rabbits, they existed very happily. Often, our father used to open the door at the back of the shop and call:
‘Come on! Come on!’
and the rabbits would come hopping down the steps into the yard for tit-bits. One day, a cutomer saw one of them actually inside the shop.
‘Mr. Walker!’ she shrieked, ‘There’s a rabbit in the shop!’
Their mating habits were nocturnal and their favoured place for this very noisy operation was in the back yard directly under the window of our father’s bedroom. Fed up with disturbed nights, he devised a means of frightening them away. Using a long piece of string, he joined together a number of empty tin cans which he hung out of the window. When he got into bed at night, he attatched the end of the string to his big toe so that when the rabbits began their mating activities all he had to do was wriggle his foot and the rattling of the cans would scare them away. When the rabbits began to make burrows in the garden and our mother found herself disappearing down holes every time she hung out the washing, she declared that enough was enough and the rabbits would have to go. Regretfully, Jean and I had no choice but to give all of them away to our friends.
After the initial burst of enthusiasm, my father lost interest in the shop and although he kept it going for a number of years, he was always in debt and bailiffs called on a regular basis. He could not afford to tax or insure his car so that when he went anywhere it had to be by way of what he called his ‘anti-fuzz route’ which included most of the back streets of Falmouth. Every Saturday, my mother did a weekly shop and he would work himself up into a state bordering on panic if the takings were down and he thought he might not be able to give her the housekeeping money. When she was ready to go out, she would fling open the door which separated the living quarters from the shop and demand:
‘I want my money!’
If he wasn’t able to give her the full amount, she would repeat:
‘I want my money! I’ve got to have my money!’
and even though he pulled open the drawers of the till to prove to her that they were empty, still she would insist:
‘! want my money!’
A bitter row would ensue but, eventually, she’d storm out of the shop with whatever he was able to give her and with dark threats as to what would happen if he didn’t come up with the rest by the time she got back.
Before my mother would venture out of the house, a complicated, almost ritualistic, procedure had to be carried out beforehand. Firstly, she would perform a ‘strip wash’ which involved removing all her upper garments and sponging herself down at the kitchen sink. Why she never used the bathroom for this operation, Jean and I could never understand and, strangely, my earliest memory of my mother is of her standing at the kitchen sink stripped to the waist. The second stage of the preparation was the putting on of her newly-acquired rubber girdle, for which she needed the assistance of Jean and me. This was not an easy undertaking because the girdle was extremely tight and the rubber inflexible. Jean would attempt to pull up one side and I the other while simultaneously pushing in bits of bulging flesh. It was very difficult to avoid laughing but we daren’t because she would take offence and say:
‘What’s so bloody funny?’
When at last, after much struggling, broken fingernails and suppressed mirth on our part, the girdle had been fitted, she would go upstairs to sit in front of the dressing table to attend to her face. This would begin with a vigorous patting of the cheeks with the palms of her hands; no doubt she’d read somewhere that doing this was good for the circulation but to us it looked painful, rather like a form of self-chastisement. Next, she would perform extraordinary contortions of the face which involved pursing the lips and stretching the chin as far forward as they would go, like some weird species of deep-sea fish filtering plankton. More face-patting followed, only this time for the application of Nivea cream and powder. Lastly, she would apply a dark red lipstick. We had come to learn that the dark red lipstick was a good sign because it meant that she was in one of her better moods; if, however, she appeared at any time wearing lipstick of a pink shade it meant that she was in a bad mood and we had all better watch out.
Jean and I had come to dread Saturday afternoons because our mother always demanded that one of us should accompany her to help with the shopping. She was so convinced that she was being overcharged that, at the supermarket checkout, queues of impatient customers would form while she insisted on going through every single item on the bill. We would have no choice but to stand and wait, cringing with embarrassment, while she argued. There were a few shops she wouldn’t go to because she’d had a row there and a few more where she was on the point of having a row and we hoped, fervently, that there wouldn’t be an eruption while we were with her. She was always on the lookout for a bargain so, when all the shopping apart from bread and cakes had been purchased, we had to hang about until almost closing time because there was a particular baker who often reduced the price of any remaining stock. She was very fond of cakes but suffered from an allergy to almond essence and this required Jean or me to act as tasters before she could eat any kind of purchased confectionery. If, by any chance, she happened to eat even the smallest morsel of anything containing that flavouring her face would immediately start to swell in a manner which was most alarming and it would remain in that state for several hours; those were the few occasions when we actually felt sorry for her.
The stress of living with my mother for all those years, financial worries and the fact that he was a heavy smoker, took their toll on my father’s health and as well as digestion problems, he also suffered from bouts of bronchitis which were so bad that he would be confined to bed for several days. My mother was not at all sympathetic and complained that not only did she have to mind the shop but also she had to keep running up and down the stairs all day after him. I felt very sorry for him at these times and I was concerned because he was obviously very ill.
‘It’s his own fault,’ my mother would say, ‘smoking that stinking shag all the time.’
He rolled his own cigarettes and ‘stinking shag’ is how she referred to the tobacco he used. Jean and I thought she had a nerve to criticise his smoking habit when she, herself, smoked just as much as he did. He was hardly ever able to relax. He was seldom allowed to go to the pub and if he did, it was usually in the company of Uncle Cliff who favoured dingy establishments in the vicinity of the docks. One of these was a hotel, overlooking the Customs House Quay, which was run by a rather dour old gentleman who had a compulsive habit of pursing his lips and pushing his chin forward in a manner similar to the curious facial contortions which our mother performed as part of her beauty routine. He had a black cat called Tinker who used to sit on the bar and to whom he was devoted; if he made conversation, it was nearly always about what tinker had been getting up to. The lavatory was situated at the end of a dark corridor and was so old that it must have been antique; it had a wide, wooden seat and a long chain which you had to pull several times to make it flush. The guest accommodation was above the bar and the clientele more often than not included adulterous couples. In those days, extra-marital affairs were considered far more scandalous than they are today and a good many boarding establishments tended to be suspicious of couples whom they suspected were not married or conducting affairs. Such was the reputation of this decidedly insalubrious place that it was not uncommon for the proprietor, while he was running the bar, to receive telephone calls from angry husbands or wives trying to locate the whereabouts of their erring spouses.
There was another equally gloomy bar in which Uncle Cliff and Auntie Frances, our parents, Jean and I once saw in the new year; apart from ourselves, the only other patrons were some foreign sailors who spent the entire evening staring, much to my discomfiture, at me. At midnight, they got up from their seats, came over to where we were sitting and each one kissed me solemnly on the cheek. I blushed so much that I think it must have taken some considerable time for my complexion to return to its normal hue. To honour the arrival of a new year, the landlord passed around plates of haggis. Jean turned pale at the sight of it but I took a cautious bite and declared that it was disgusting and smelt of old socks; our mother said, in her opinion, it was off.
The only times my father was able to relax were when my mother went out for the evening. Some time after we’d settled into the house in Killigrew Road she discovered that they held bingo sessions in he crypt of the Catholic Church just down the road and soon became addicted. This gave him the opportunity to settle down in front of the television with his sherry in the knowledge that he had at least a couple of hours respite. Jean and I were usually in our rooms and every so often we would hear him bellowing at the screen. He could not abide female singers in any shape of form and the sound of a woman’s voice in song was torture to his ears. If he was watching a programme and one happened to put in an unwonted appearance he would consider it a monstrous outrage.
‘They’ve worked one in!’ he’d wail. ‘They’ve gone and worked one in!’
On Sunday afternoons he was obliged to take our mother for a drive so that she could ‘get some air.’ She spoke as though she lived in some polluted inner city and we thought it very strange that she should consider herself deprived of ‘air’ considering that we lived in such a clean environment. We generally ended up in the car park of Castle Drive overlooking Falmouth Bay and although she said it was because she liked to look at the view, she seemed to prefer glaring at the other people sitting in their cars.
‘Some people don’t know how to park!’ she’d mouth at them.
In the evening, we were in the habit of visiting Auntie Frances and Uncle Cliff for a game of cards. Jean would sit happily drawing horses and chatting to Auntie while I joined in the rounds of whist or nap. The cards were very old and greasy from so much handling and our mother said that the reason Uncle Cliff refused to play with new ones was because he was an old cheat and that they were all marked. Nevertheless, those evenings, despite the choking atmosphere of cigarette smoke, were enjoyable and at least our father was able to forget his worries for a short while.
He had always enjoyed driving and loved cars, particularly Jaguars; his dream was to win the pools and buy an E-type. During the fifties he’d owned a number of different cars including an Armstrong Siddeley saloon which, I remember, had running boards and another, rather handsome car, a Riley, which I think it must have been quite unusual because it was frequently admired by car enthusiasts; he also became the proud owner of a racy, red, convertible Jaguar which once lost a wheel while we were driving down a hill in Falmouth and, later, another Jaguar, a big, powerful, beast of a thing in which he once touched one hundred miles per hour ( not many cars could do that in those days ). At one time, he’d belonged to the Automobile Association during the days when A.A. mechanics drove around on motor bikes, saluting members; Jean and I always felt very important when our car was acknowledged in this manner. One winter’s evening he showed off by driving on to the beach at Gunwalloe, a deserted and inhospitable place, and promptly became stuck in the sand. After several, futile attempts to reverse the car he realised that there was no alternative but to walk to the nearest farm to see if a tractor was available which would be the only means of towing the car off the beach. Outside, a fierce gale was blowing and driving rain was pelting the windscreen; worse than that, the tide was coming in, fast. Jean, our mother and I were too terrified to remain in the car watching the great, foaming waves rolling in and breaking on the beach, only a few feet from where we were sitting, so we decided it would be better to face the elements and try to seek shelter somewhere. I ran to a telephone kiosk and shut myself in there while they sought refuge in the public conveniences; apart from the church, there appeared to be no other buildings in that bleak and lonely place. After what seemed an eternity, a tractor turned up and with an expertise born of experience ( many a foolhardy motorist had got into the same predicament ) attatched a rope and towed the car away from the incoming tide in the nick of time.
My sister was fond of her father and had a much better relationship with him than I’d ever had. By now, she was a pupil at Clare Terrace School and, under the strict regime of Miss Prince and pressure from our mother to pass the eleven-plus, was suffering the same anxieties as I had. But at least, out of school hours, she had a means of escape because, to Jean, there existed on earth only one thing of importance: the horse. She lived, breathed and had her being in horses and every moment of her spare time was taken up with activities involving them. In our hall, secured to the banisters at the bottom of the stairs, the makeshift saddle she’d made and on which she would spend hours astride, became a permanent fixture. She persuaded our parents to let her have riding lessons and was promised that if she passed her scholarship they would buy her a pony of her own. Our father had a supplier, a local farmer, who owned an old dobbin and for ten shillings he’d allow Jean to ride it. I thought this was an outrageous waste of money and the farmer an old crook. Our Sunday afternoon family outings would, at Jean’s insistence, involve driving into the countryside outside Falmouth laden with bags of fruit and vegetables which were so past their freshness that there was no way they could be sold in order to feed three horses she considered were neglected. Considering the amount of time they took ambling up to the gate and the disinterest with which they regarded our offerings I didn’t think they could be as neglected as she would have had us believe. We had to park by the gate of the field in which they lived and sit patiently in the car while she called:
‘Misty! Fir-cone! Jenny!’
It seemed to me that she knew the name of every single horse within a five-mile radius of Falmouth and her obsession was beginning to get on my nerves.At weekends, I hardly saw anything of her because she was accustomed to getting up very early in the mornings in order to walk the not inconsiderable distance to the riding stables where she had her lessons. On the way, she would often stop opposite a certain house to observe the curious behaviour of a man who was in the habit of standing in an upstairs window and masturbating. One day, she was accompanied by a friend who, being considerably more enlightened than Jean, realised what was happening and promptly called the police from the nearest call-box. My sister thought it was hilarious when the policewoman who interviewed them asked:
‘Did you see his privates?’ In matters of sex, she was as ignorant as I had been at that age but through spending so much time at the stables in the company of boys as well as girls and through witnessing the frequent couplings of a variety of farm animals, she soon acquired a knowledge which was far more comprehensive than mine.
Although our next-door-neighbours were quiet, pleasant people it soon became apparent that my mother had conceived totally unwarranted feelings of jealousy towards the woman and was biding her time for the opportunity to pick a quarrel. This actually happened after Mr. and Mrs. Thomas, as they were called, built a bathroom extension in which there was a window overlooking our back yard. Since the window was of frosted glass no-one could look out of it but this mattered little to her and she railed against the couple with all the ferocity of which she was capable. She had no sense of humour whatsoever and the only things which made her laugh were other people’s misfortunes. She made up silly words to popular tunes and would expect us to laugh with her while she cackled with glee over her own wit. She made a point of looking down into next door’s garden while Mrs Thomas was hanging out her washing.
‘Don’t throw your falsies away!’ she’d sing in reference to the padded bras which our neighbour wore.
Poor Mrs. Thomas’ wardrobe suffered a good deal of criticism. It was quite undeserved because she was, in fact, a smartly dressed woman and when, one winter, she appeared in a rather nice new coat, my mother could barely contain her envy.
‘Hasn’t that woman got anything else to wear?’ she asked, after the coat had had a few airings.
Mrs. Thomas’ coat became a good distraction ploy because if, at any time, Jean and I suspected that we were about to suffer maternal ire, before she had the chance to open her mouth we’d say something like:
‘We’ve just seen Mrs. Thomas down town and guess what! She was wearing that coat again.’
It was a cunning stratagem that always worked. Our neighbour was not the only person of whom she was jealous. She made catty remarks about various customers who visited the shop and harboured dark suspicions about women to whom she thought our father was paying what she considered undue attention. Jealousy is the worst kind of emotion because it festers in the mind and eats away at the soul; gradually and irretrievably, as her obsessions became worse, it altered her appearance. Because her eyes were so often narrowed with suspicion, her brow became creased and furrowed; her compressed lips pulled down the corners of her mouth, thrusting her chin forward and causing deep scowl lines on either side of her face. It is no wonder that the very thought of our mother’s glowering countenance was enough to strike fear into our hearts.
Not only was she a very jealous woman, she was also inordinately superstitious. We were accustomed to seeing her throwing spilt salt over her shoulder, touching wood or un-crossing knives; once, we’d brought home some may blossom that we’d picked and when she screamed at us to get it out of the house, we thought she was joking and did the same thing again a few days later; this time, her reaction to what we regarded as mere playful fun was so violent that we were left dismayed and puzzled. On another occasion, I came home with a peacock feather I’d been given; it was one of the loveliest things I’d ever seen and I was very proud of it but when my mother saw it she shrieked:
‘Get it out! Get it out at once! It’s unlucky!’
The house in Killigrew Road had a long, narrow garden and every morning she would walk up the path to the back gate, open it, peer into the lane and glare ferociously at the world in general. When she had satisfied herself that everything was as it should be, she would make her way back down the path touching, at intervals, the wooden fence which divided our garden from next door’s. After a while, it became evident that the touching of wood was not so much a habit as a compulsion which grew worse with the passing of time.
Ethel, Harry and Judy continued to holiday in Falmouth almost every summer but after we’d moved to Killigrew Road and there wasn’t room to accommodate them, they had to rent a caravan on the outskirts of the town. My mother had knitted identical, Fair Isle sweaters for my father and Harry and it amused them both to wear them simultaneously. They thought that it was hilarious when in the shop one day, clad in their sweaters, a customer remarked:
‘You can tell you two are brothers!’
No two men ever looked so unalike.
To Jean, Ethel’s visits were not welcome and mealtimes in her presence were a purgatory which she would have given anything to avoid.
‘If I were you, Ivy, I’d make her eat that,’ Ethel would remark as my sister pushed to one side most of what was on her plate.
I used to enjoy accompanying Ethel and Harry when they motored around the county visiting all the most popular places but Jean would have nothing to do with them and would escape to her riding school at the earliest opportunity.
One of my father’s suppliers lived in a manor house, on the Lizard peninsula, which had recently been converted into a country club. We accepted his invitation to visit it and so one evening, not knowing quite what to expect, we drove out there. It was a rather beautiful old building with many oak beams, latticed windows and wooden panels. In the bar, in keeping with the atmosphere of quiet dignity, the clientele conversed in low tones and was of a class which my mother considered superior and more worthy of her presence. Definitely not like the sort of low company you found in ordinary pubs and later, in the shop, she took pleasure in telling customers that she and her husband had been invited, by its owner, to a very exclusive country club. There were quite a few, similar establishments in and around Falmouth and she persuaded him that it would be good for business to be seen in such places. Jean and I enjoyed these excursions and I took pains over my appearance because there were sometimes boys of my age with whom I could flirt. On one occasion, a boy asked me if I’d like to dance and, although I would have liked to accept, I couldn’t because I’d broken a bone in my foot and my leg was encased in plaster up to the knee. The boy would not accept my refusal to dance and pulled me up from my chair; when he saw my leg, which had been out of sight under the table, he was mortified with embarrassment and, stammering apologies, scuttled off. He had seemed a nice boy and I cursed my broken foot for putting to an end what could have been an interesting encounter. Once, at another country club, I glanced up and met the eye of a boy on the other side of the room. Immediately, I looked away and pretended to be disinterested but, every so often, I gave a sly look in his direction and saw that he was still staring at me. Assuming an air of nonchalence, I got up and sauntered into the garden, knowing that he would follow me: sure enough, he did.
‘I saw you looking everywhere in the room except at me,’ he said, reproachfully. ‘I wanted to meet you because you’ve got green paint on your hand and that means you must be an interesting person.’
This was a novel approach and I was impressed. This boy had an air of maturity that I hadn’t yet come across in other boys of his age and I was deeply disappointed when he said he was holidaying in the area and he and his family were due to return home the following day. He asked me about myself and after we’d chatted for a while, he suddenly caught me by the shoulders and kissed me. Since there can be no setting more conducive to romance than a Cornish garden on a beautiful evening with the rhododendrons all in bloom and the singing of blackbirds filling the air, I was unable to resist. This was my dream of romance come true! But the next moment, it was rudely shattered with the sudden materialisation of Jean who had been sent to find out where I’d got to and to tell me to hurry up because we were about to go. I had no choice but to make my excuses and leave. It was only when we were in the car on our way home that I realised I hadn’t even asked the boy his name.
Every year, with the approach of autumn, my father would buy several boxes of small, green grapes which, said the wholesaler, were from a region of Spain called Almeria. When you bit into the firm flesh, the juice from the grapes would explode on to the tongue with a delicious burst of sweetness and I think Jean and I must have surreptitiously consumed between us as many grapes as were actually sold. Not for a moment did I ever imagine that one day I‘d come to know very well that mountainous and arid province of Spain from where those grapes came. At Christmas, the shop was filled seasonal stock and the smell of tangerines, oranges and grapefruits would reach every corner of the house. This was the one time of the year that it looked really nice; there were boxes of chestnuts, big hands of bananas suspended from butchers’ hooks, bunches of celery, sacks and sacks of Brussels sprouts, bags of mixed nuts and mountains of apples and pears. Because he had the reputation of being open all hours, customers would think nothing of knocking him up on Christmas Day for something they’d forgotton. He regularly made up a hamper containing a generous selection of fruit and vegetables on behalf of a neighbouring pub for their weekly raffle and on one occasion, a disgruntled woman came into the shop brandishing an apple; she said that it was in the hamper she’d won in the raffle and demanded a replacement because it was going rotten.
Soft fruits were widely grown locally and in summer the shop would be filled with punnets of raspberries, redcurrants, blackcurrants, gooseberries and, of course, strawberries. If the weather was warm the fruit deteriorated quickly and so we had to help our mother with the fiddly task of stripping the small berries from the stalks and topping and tailing the gooseberries so that they could be made into puddings or jam. She regularly cooked beetroots to sell in the shop and since we both enjoyed peeling off the skins when they had cooled we used to fight over who should have the pleasure. When apples were cheap and plentiful, we made toffee apples for the shop but, again, I think we probably ate more than we sold. In those pre - Common Market days, there were many productive orchards in Cornwall and lots of the varieties of apples which were grown then probably no longer exist today. Every one of these apples had its own, characteristic smell, taste and colour and even the names - Cornish Gillyflower, St. Edmund’s Russet, Beauty of Bath, for example - seemed to conjure up images of the kind of picturesque, rural England which those of my generation remember with nostalgia. Nowadays, the only variety of cooking apple seems to be the Bramley; in our shop there were several, such as Early Victoria, Rev. W. Wilks and Crawley Beauty. My father was a daydreamer and one of his most frequent reveries involved his being chosen to take part in a television or radio quiz programme in which one of the questions would be to name a specific number of English varieties of apple. He would also confound the other contestants by being able to name the world’s largest rodent and giving the correct answer to the question:
‘What is the square root of minus one?’
My mother was infuriated by his daydreaming and told him that he was useless and had no go in him. She railed at him continually but it had no effect other than to make him even more detached. The shop ticked over but the financial situation was not improving and I realised, for the first time, just how hard-up my family was. Guiltily, I reflected that I could have been less
unwilling when I’d been asked to lend a hand in the shop during busy periods. I was in the habit of entering the house via the shop and there had been several occasions when, as I’d barged past without even acknowledging him, he’d called out after me:
‘Make us a cup of tea, will you?’
And I’d replied:
‘Make it yourself!’
I was filled with contrition. Perhaps if I’d helped in the shop more often he’d have been able to organise himself a little better and our money troubles would not have been so serious. I knew that he had problems with the bank because he was under an obligation to pay in a certain amount each week; Jean and I usually did this for him and it was a chore we disliked very much because of the way we were treated by the supercilious bank clerk who dealt with us. He would take the cash and the paying-in book without a word and regard us, unsmilingly, over his spectacles as if we were the lowest form of life. The thought of my family being subjected to this humiliation filled me with such resentment that I resolved to turn over a new leaf and do something to try to help the business to improve. Inspired with sudden zeal to render myself useful, I decided that I would spend, in future, all my free time cleaning the shop, dressing the windows so that they always looked nice and helping to serve customers. Such was my optimism that I was certain, before very long, our troubles would be over.
Margaret Merry lives in Spain if you are looking to buy a property in Spain please visit http://www.cheappropertyspain.net
Wednesday 30 May 2007
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Teenage Romance
To my mother, the ultimate in elegant attire was the combination of a red, V-necked jumper and a white, pleated skirt. It looked, she said, rich. As far as I was concerned, the pleated skirt was the most hideous garment ever to be invented and only the very tall and the very slender could get away with wearing it. Once, to my extreme dismay, she bought a length of cream serge and commissioned a dressmaker to run up a skirt which, as I had feared, had the effect of shortening my legs while making the rest of me look as wide as a house. When it was washed, all the pleats would fall out and have to be pressed back in again in what was a tedious and time-consuming operation. There are no words to describe my loathing of that cream serge skirt and I was very thankful when, after successive washings, it shrank. But such was her determination that I should have one, she kept a continual eye out whenever she went shopping and eventually, to my disgust, found one. This new skirt, at least, was permanently pleated and because the material was lighter, it didn’t hang from the hips in such a bunched-up, unflattering way. She knitted a jumper, in a rather pleasant shade of orangy-red and when I tried it on, together with the skirt, I admitted, grudgingly, that the effect wasn’t too bad.
Wearing the new jumper and skirt, I decided to walk to Gillian’s house to seek her much-valued opinion and as I stepped outside, who should I see standing in next door’s garden, chatting to Miss Richards and Mrs. Andrews and looking, with his wind-ruffled hair, so utterly, so heart-breakingly handsome that I could have fallen at his feet in adoration, but Mr. Sherwood. I flushed a vivid red and to hide my confusion pretended to examine one of the Anemone japonicas which grew in profusion inside our small front garden.
‘Don’t they grow up quickly these days,’ remarked Miss Richards, looking at me approvingly.
My heart swelled from sheer joy. For the first time, Mr. Sherwood had seen me out of my silly, childish school uniform and Miss Richards thought I looked grown up! I flew to Gillian’s on wings of ecstasy.
In the fifties, teenage fashion had not yet come into its own. We tended to wear more or less what our elders wore and it was not really until the sixties and the advent of the miniskirt that we were finally able to dress differently from our parents. I had bought myself a basic pattern comprising a fitted bodice and gathered skirt from which I made several dresses; I varied them by changing the length of the sleeves or altering the neckline and I trimmed them with ric-rac braid or broderie anglaise lace. I loved fashion drawing and was inspired by famous designers, such as Dior, who favoured long, wide skirts and tightly fitted bodices with impossibly tiny waists. Dress pattern sizes differed from those of today; busts were smaller then, as were waistlines. To achieve the tiny waist you had to wear a wide, elastic belt around your middle and it was so uncomfortable and constricting that breathing was almost impossible. Petticoats - or underskirts as the Cornish called them - were always worn under the full skirts and when a fabric called paper nylon came on the scene, it was de rigueur to wear a petticoat made from it so that your skirt would stick out more. After a couple of washes, this fabric would become limp so that you had to rinse it in a sugar solution in order to restore the crispness. I can also recall buying lengths of imitation whalebone from Woolworth’s which were sold specifically for making into hoops to be incorporated into petticoats. The more you could get your skirt to stick out, the better!
My mother’s guests one summer included a family who had a son a couple of years or so older than I was and it very soon became apparent that he fancied me. Although he had no physical defects as such, his mannerisms and habits seemed to deviate from the normal behaviour of boys of his age and it was almost as though he were an ageing man inhabiting a young man’s body. Normally, I was highly flattered if I suspected that a boy liked me and would encourage him unashamedly but this boy, David, made my flesh creep. At mealtimes I had to assist my mother by waiting on the guests and one evening, when I was helping to clear the tables after dinner, he came up to me and whispered:
‘I can tell you like me because you always make sure I get a bigger portion than anyone else.’
I flamed with indignation. It wasn’t true! And anyway, my mother dished the food on to the plates, not I. I decided that I definitely didn’t like this boy and determined to keep out of his way. When their holiday came to its end and the family was preparing to depart, to my consternation he asked if he could be allowed to stay on for a few days. No sooner had they departed, than David approached my mother to ask if he could take me to the cinema. What a cheek not to have asked me first! I thought that she might have refused consent on account of the fact that he was older than I was, but she merely told him to ask me. I faced a dilemma: I was nervous of this boy and I didn’t want to go out with him yet my mother seemed almost to approve of him. If I turned him down, would he take my refusal as mere girlish shyness and continue to pester me? He seemed very keen, so it was highly likely. Perhaps it was better to go out with him and get it over and done with. After all, I only had to keep my distance and he couldn’t get up to much in the cinema. So I agreed.
I felt very self-conscious walking into the cinema with a boy. He paid for the tickets but to my disappointment didn’t offer to buy any sweets; I was so nervous and unsure of myself that I needed some sort of distraction to give myself countenance. After we’d settled ourselves in our seats and I’d squeezed myself into the furthest corner of mine, I tried to concentrate on the screen. David was making gulping noises every time he swallowed and after a while it really began to get on my nerves; also, I could hear him shifting about, gradually edging closer to me. Glancing sideways, I saw with alarm that his arm was stretched across the back of my seat and that his hand was almost touching my shoulder. I cringed as the inevitable happened and he put his arm around me; his breathing was loud and the gulping noises worse than ever. He smelt of onions and I suspected that he’d been scoffing a pasty, as I’d seen him doing before, from the nearby Cornish Pasty Shop. No wonder he hadn’t wanted any sweets! He tried to draw me towards him but I shrank away.
‘You’re not very friendly, are you?’ he whispered.
We remained in that uncomfortable position until the end of the film, of which I have absolutely no recollection, and was, for once, glad that I was under orders to come straight home afterwards. He tried to hold my hand as we made our way back to Clare Terrace but I kept both hands fastenened firmly on my bag and was silent and unresponsive. If I had disliked David before, I disliked him more than ever now. At last, his stay came to an end and I was so relieved that I was almost friendly to him when he came to say good-bye. He asked if he could write to me and I replied, airily, that he could if he wanted to. After all, I didn’t have to reply, did I? But he must have taken this as encouragement because, without warning, he suddenly leant towards me, put his hands on my shoulders and bent down to kiss me. At the last moment, I turned my face and his wet kiss landed on my cheek. With that, I scuttled off to the safety of my room while he, crestfallen, walked away. Afterwards, he did write to me but I never replied.
That summer, I was going to Brixham to stay with my cousin Stephanie and I was full of excitement at the prospect. My mother had bought me a new dress and an outfit consisting of a pair of white shorts and a long, sleeveless top which was made from cotton printed with horizontal stripes of red and yellow. This outfit flattered my figure and made me look taller and I was gratified when, the first time I wore it, boys looked at me and workmen whistled. But for the train journey, my mother insisted that I wore my school summer uniform. Travelling alone, I would be much safer like that, she said. Our summer uniform consisted of a very plain, shirtwaisted, cotton dress which, worn with the regulation white ankle-socks, made me look ridiculously childish and the thought of having to be met by my cousin attired in such a manner filled me with dismay. I raged and pleaded alternately, but she wouldn’t relent. When we reached Falmouth Station on the afternoon of my departure and she bought my ticket, I realised that it wasn’t concern for my safety that had made her insist on my wearing my school dress but the fact that it made me look young enough to pass for a child and thus travel half-fare. I was mortified.
Auntie Lal and Stephanie were waiting for me at Newton Abbot Station and the first thing my cousin said was:
‘Is that your school uniform?’
I replied, shamefacedly, that it was and Auntie Lal said my mother was very sensible to make me wear it. You never knew what sort of dirty old men were hanging around on trains these days. I was consumed with envy when I saw Stephanie because she had achieved, with seemingly very little effort, the much sought-after Brigitte Bardot look; She had the blonde fringe, the pout, everything. Compared to me, she looked sophisticated and mature. We were awkward with each other at first but by the time we had reached Brixham, the old sense of comradeship had returned and we began to make plans for our time together. The next morning, I put on my new shorts and top but Auntie Lal told Stephanie she wasn’t allowed to wear hers and that she must put on a nice skirt instead. We set off down the street but we hadn’t gone very far when my cousin said:
‘Hang on a sec - I’ve just got to pop in here for a moment.’
With that, she dived into the bus station and disappeared into the ladies’. A few minutes later she emerged and my jaw dropped from sheer astonishment. Gone was the ‘nice skirt’ and in its place were the briefest white shorts I had ever seen. They accentuated her long, suntanned legs in a manner which was unashamedly provocative and if this effect were not enough to make everyone stare, she had knotted her modest blouse in such a way that that her brown midriff was completely exposed. Also, she had accentuated the luscious pout with a generous application of pale pink lipstick and outlined her eyes with smoky black kohl. The transformation was startling and I was both shocked and envious; if only I were as daring!
‘What would your mum say?’ I gasped.
‘Oh, she won’t find out. She never does. She’s been paying for me to have elocution lessons for ages and she’s no idea that I’ve never been - not even once. She sends me off looking all sweet and demure but she doesn’t know I always keep a change of clothes in my bag.’
Stephanie asked me if I’d ever been kissed by a boy and I had to confess that no, I hadn’t. I told her that a boy had tried to but that he was creepy and I hadn’t fancied him.
‘Oh well,’ she said, nonchalantly, ‘not to worry. We’ll soon pick up some decent boys.’
I was alarmed yet, at the same time, thrilled. What would my mother say, I wondered, with a slight stab of anxiety. Still, she was miles away and she wouldn’t know what I was getting up to here in Brixham. We found some decent boys very quickly, just as Stephanie had predicted. They were both on holiday in the area with their families and after the briefest of introductions and the minimum of preamble we found ourselves lying in the arms of our respective swains on a grassy slope overlooking the beach. Mine was a rather good-looking boy, tall and fair-haired, and I didn’t protest when he began to kiss me. The kisses were very dry and not at all ecstatic and I suspected that he was as inexperienced as I was. All the same, we whiled away a very pleasant morning.
‘Aren’t we going to see them again?’ I asked my cousin as we made our way back to the town.
‘Not bloody likely!’ she exclaimed. ‘There are loads of boys to meet yet. We don’t want to get stuck with those drips.’
I was rather sorry because I had quite liked my drip.
My time in Brixham flew by in a delightful succession of flirtations with numerous boys. One afternoon, we were walking along a country lane when we heard a fire-engine speeding towards us. As it rounded a bend and the driver spotted us, the vehicle screeched to a halt and the firemen who had been hanging on to sides leapt down into the road and we all spent a very pleasant five minutes or so sitting on the grass verge chatting and flirting outrageously. We were rather sorry when they said they’d better go because they had a fire to put out. When we told Auntie Lal about our escapade with the firemen she was outraged and said it was a disgrace: the Fire Service was paid to put out fires, not go pestering young girls. She’d a good mind to ring the Fire Station and lodge a complaint.
Whenever we took ourselves to the beach we would often see a very handsome youth, in the company of an older man, sunbathing at the water’s edge. There was an air of mystery about the couple and so we decided that he must be a foreign prince and the older man his bodyguard. We took to following them and spying on them from the clifftop and although we did our utmost to attract the attention of the handsome youth, he took no notice of us at all. We invented romantic stories about him and the more he ignored us, the more our ardour increased. The bodyguard was very attentive and doubtless discouraged his charge from associating with strangers: he was, after all, of noble birth and it would be unseemly for him to fraternize with any old riff-raff. So we had to be content with worshipping from a distance. A more enlightened observer would have taken it for granted that the couple was, of course, gay, but we, in our youthful ignorance, knew nothing of such things.
We didn’t quite know what to do with ourselves when it rained and we were confined to the house. Once, Auntie Lal gave us some ironing to do and she was horrified when she discovered that I’d ironed Uncle Albie’s handkerchiefs into triangles instead of squares. Since we weren’t to be trusted with the ironing, she told us to stay in the kitchen while she went to the shops so that we could keep an eye on the oven in which were baking two fatless sponges she’d knocked up. When they were done, we had instuctions to take them out of the oven, let them cool for a few seconds, then remove them carefully from their tins. They’d be nicely cooled by the time she returned, she said, and then we could help interlay the sponges with a filling of clotted cream. The attention we devoted to the supervision of the baking of Auntie Lal’s sponges was commendable. They were removed from the oven, light and risen to perfection, at the optimum moment. With the utmost care, we prised them cleanly from their respective tins and placed them on a wire rack to cool. When Auntie Lal still hadn’t returned, and seeing that the sponges were now completely cold, we decided to surprise her by doing the filling and final presentation ourselves. Slowly and meticulously we spooned an even, but extravagant, layer of cream onto the bottom sponge then carefully placed the other on top; lastly, in what was a most professional-looking finishing touch, we sieved a dusting of icing sugar over it.
It looked mouth-wateringly, tantalizingly delectable.
‘Well,’ remarked Stephanie, with her usual sagacity, ‘since we’re going to have it for tea, it wouldn’t do any harm to cut a couple of thin slices just to see if it’s all right.’
The sponge tasted as divine as it looked. Devonshire clotted cream is not so rich or sickly as Cornish cream and the combination of this with the light, melting texture of Auntie Lal’s fatless sponge was sheer perfection. After we’d consumed with unladylike rapidity the first two pieces, Stephanie said we may as well help ourselves to another couple. After all, it wouldn’t make much difference now that we’d already cut into the sponge. By the time we’d finished our third slices, the sponge was considerably attenuated.
‘Well,’ said Stephanie, philosophically, as she cheerfully cut two more slices, ‘may as well be hanged for sheep as for lambs!’
When Auntie Lal returned home and saw on the plate the last, remaining sliver of cream sponge, Stephanie received the full force of her wrath and we were sent upstairs in disgrace.
One sunny afternoon, we were lying on a grassy clifftop watching the mysterious foreign prince and his devoted bodyguard on the beach below when we saw a boy sitting not very far away from us looking in our direction. I took out my handbag mirror to check my face ( I had become very vain ) and Stephanie said:
‘Go on! I dare you - shine the mirror into his face!’
Obediently, I caught the sun in the mirror and flashed it into the eyes of the boy. He smiled, got up and came over to us. He was a very nice boy and both of us took an immediate fancy to him. He told us that his name was Norman and that he lived in Wales. After chatting for a while, we decided to go for a walk along the cliffs; at that point, neither Stephanie or I knew which one of us Norman fancied. We came to a stile and while I was attempting to scramble over it, I stubbed by big toe and it began to bleed. With great gallantry, Norman suddenly scooped me up in his arms and lifted me over the stile. Stephanie was annoyed and whispered that I’d done it on purpose. That evening, the three of us sat on a seat overlooking the sea and Norman began kissing me.
‘Put some effort into it, can’t you!’ chided Stephanie, the experienced.
I put some effort into it and found, to my surprise, that I rather enjoyed being kissed by Norman.
We were late home that night and Stephanie’s older brother, Tony, had been sent out to see where we’d got to. Because it was dark, we didn’t see him until he was almost upon us and when we did, I quickly extricated myself from Norman’s arm, which was around my waist, and told him to run, quickly.
‘Who was that?’ demanded Tony, looking very big and menacing as he loomed out of the shadows.
‘Him?’ said Stephanie, innocently, ‘Oh, that’s only Norman.’
‘Norman!’ bellowed Tony, after the fleeing figure. ‘I’ll give him bloody Norman!’
When we got home, Tony told his mother that we’d been hanging about with some boy called Norman.
‘Boys called Norman are common!’ declared Auntie Lal, disapprovingly, and sent us straight to bed.
I never saw him again. My holiday in Brixham was coming to its end and a couple of days later I resigned myself to the ignominy of having to put on my school dress in front of my cousin and caught the train back to Falmouth.
I’d only been home for a very short while when the neighbour’s nephew, Nigel, who had just arrived on his annual visit, knocked on our door. I could tell from his look of surprise that he thought I’d matured a great deal in the last year and I was gratified. He asked me if I’d like to go out but I decided to play hard-to-get and said I’d think about it. Firstly, I had to go round to Jenny’s to tell her all about my holiday. Her parents had sold their house in Penryn and they now lived not very far from Clare Terrace. When I reached Jenny’s house, I found Wendy there, too. I told the girls about my escapades and I think they weren’t inclined to believe me until, glancing out of the window, they saw Nigel who, predictably, had followed me.
‘Who’s that?’ asked Jenny, surprised.
‘Oh, nobody much,’ I replied, airily. ‘Just some boy.’
Jenny told me later that after I’d gone, Wendy had said, wistfully:
‘You and I will never get boyfriends.’
To which Jenny had muttered, under her breath: ‘You speak for yourself!’
Nigel grew daily more keen and wherever I went, there he was, too. It was all very flattering and I didn’t exactly discourage him then, one evening, his ardour overcame him and he pinned me against the side wall of our house and began to kiss me. At that moment, Fred from Fred’s Stores happened to be passing and the next time my mother went into his shop he remarked:
‘I see your daughter’s started propping up walls now.’
I was reprimanded in no uncertain terms for my indecorous behaviour and warned not to be seen carrying on like that again. Fred, I decided, was a mean old sneak and I determined never to patronize his shop again. Meanwhile, Nigel grew more ardent and began to pester me so much that it got on my nerves; there were, after all, things I wanted to get on with and he was taking up too much of my precious time.
‘Would you do something for me?’ he asked one day.
‘What?’ I replied, cautiously; there was something about the tone of his voice that put me instantly on my guard.
‘This!’ he said, thrusting an open pocket dictionary into my hand. I stared at it, perplexed.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I want you do do that word there with me.’
I looked at the word he was pointing at. Intercourse it said.
I was shocked at his audacity. As if I would contemplate doing such a thing! There was not a single girl of my acquaintance who didn’t know that the worst thing you could do was to have sexual relations with a boy. If you did, you were ruined for life and no decent boy would ever touch you afterwards. My mother referred to it as ‘denying the man you marry of his natural right’. Even more of a deterrent was the risk of pregnancy; the very word struck fear in our hearts and if, by some terrible and vengeful act of fate, the unthinkable should happen, there would be no way out but suicide. Besides, if a boy really liked you, he would respect you and not jeopardize your reputation by making such demands. And what a curious way to proposition a girl! Was that how it was done, with the aid of a pocket dictionary? I hardly thought so and after my anger and indignation had abated, I realised that, despite his bragging, his arrogant strut and his air of assurance, poor Nigel had had, most probably, no experience with girls at all; before me, he’d most likely never even kissed a girl. I felt nothing for him now, except contempt, and determined that he was an acquaintance not worthy of further cultivation: in other words, I gave him the boot.
It was apparent by the end of that summer that my mother’s enthusiasm for the bed, breakfast and evening meal business had begun to wane because, I think, she was finding that it involved too much work. Throughout her marriage, apart from her brief spell of service as a Wren during the War, she had never had any kind of employment and, indeed, was very scathing of mothers who went out to work. She maintained that it was very bad for a child to come home to an empty house and boasted that she’d always been there for Jean and me. This was not strictly true; most afternoons, she took to her bed and was often still asleep when we came home from school. As we grew older and more aware, my sister and I began to wonder what our mother did all day. She had never been houseproud and the amount of time she devoted to housework was by no means excessive. She had developed a routine which seemed very strange to us because it was so unlike the behaviour of our friends’ mothers. She would go to bed in the small hours after having spent the evening reading or knitting and get up very late, always in a foul temper, and spend a long time over her breakfast. She had the Daily Telegraph delivered each morning and after she’d read it she would settle down to what she considered the serious business of doing the crossword. The Daily Telegraph was sacred and woe betide anyone who dared lay a finger on it before she’d looked at it; once, in my youthful innocence, I committed the irredeemable sin of filling in the crossword with nonsense words and was punished with what I considered to be most unwarranted severity. When she went out, it was generally to the shops or the library; due to her voracious appetite for reading, she got through several books a week. She had no friends and Auntie Frances was the only person she ever visited.
Our parents had moved house so many times during our lives that Jean and I weren’t at all surprised when they put Clare House on the market and went off on frequent property-hunting forays. We found these excursions boring and time-wasting because our mother always wanted to view impressive-looking dwellings which were obviously way beyond our modest means. I think she did this purely to boast and justify her much-uttered words:
‘We nearly bought that house!’
Although we were used both to the inability of our parents to settle anywhere for any length of time and our mother’s impractical money-making schemes, when they announced that they were going to buy a shop and start a greengrocery business we were astonished. A shop! Well, that would be a novelty. But what about our mother? We couldn’t imagine her being a shopkeeper. For a start, you had to be friendly and polite to people and she’d be bound to fall out with someone or other before very long. And what about our father? He’d never had any experience in retail trade and as for keeping accounts and paying bills we knew from the frequent rows concerning the subject that he was absolutely hopeless. Even though we thought they were quite mad, it might be fun, just the same, to own a shop.
While we were in the throes of packing up prior to the move, Jean and I discovered in one of the inner attics a bag containing bundles of letters tied up with ribbon. Intrigued, I pulled an envelope from one of the bundles and took out the letter which was inside it.
‘It’s a love letter from him to her!’ I exclaimed as I ran my eye down the page of neat handwriting.
Gleefully, we tipped the bag on to the floor and began to riffle through the contents.
‘Look at this! He actually wrote her a poem!’
Convulsed with giggles, I read out the lines of verse to my sister:
One night as I stood by my window
My thoughts flew over to you
To where my true love lay sleeping
I wished I could be there, too.
‘Blimey!’ I marvelled. ‘Can you believe he actually wrote that to her?’
When I read out the final lines, which alluded to the reprimand of a passing bird bearing witness to the lover’s yearning, we both collapsed with laughter:
Naughty to wish you were with your love
When your love is tucked up in bed!
It semed to us quite incredible that there had once been a time when our parents had loved each other. Neither of us had ever seen them exchange an affectionate gesture or a kind word and over the years the sheer force of our mother’s jealous rage had demolished and cowed our father to the extent that we didn’t expect him to regard her with anything other than bitterness. She continued to hurl at him accusations concerning the affair of Judy in the woodshed and the incident seemed, in her mind, to have festered with the passing of time so that the allegations were now nothing less than fantastic. He had been in the habit of popping into a nearby pub every now and again but that modest pleasure was brought to an abrupt cessation when she became convinced that he was carrying on with the barmaid. He was accused, too, of ogling a woman who was often seen sashaying around the neighbourhood in very brief shorts. She had strikingly red hair of extraordinary length; it hung down her back well below her waist , covering the shorts and giving the startling impression, from behind, that she had nothing on. It was a spectacle enough to make anyone - man or woman - look twice.
Our new home was in Killigrew Road, a long, steep, busy thoroughfare which carries traffic from the centre of Falmouth to the main road. There were several shops in the vicinity: a chemist’s, a couple of butchers, a post office, general stores and a funny, old-fashioned draper’s which displayed in its windows underwear which looked, to Jean and me, as if it belonged to some bygone age. Whenever Ethel came to Falmouth she would make a bee-line for that shop because it was, according to her, the only retailer in the entire country which still had in stock the long, elasticated at the knee, pink, satin bloomers she had always worn; similarly, she had managed to find the only hairdressser in the whole of London who knew how to do the marcel waves, long gone out of fashion, which she had always favoured.
Although we were able to take possession of the house, the shop below was occupied by a tenant and there were still a few weks to go before the lease expired. Jean and I were highly amused when we discovered that our new home was, in fact, the town’s registry office!
I had recently acquired a small, rather antiquated, accordion and when a newly married couple emerged from below I would hang out of the upstairs window and give a wheezy rendering of Here Comes the Bride. Passers-by would look up in astonishment and I don’t think my musical abilities were very much appreciated by the newly-weds.
In fact, it was the accordion which brought about the abrupt termination of my adoration of Mr. Sherwood. We were learning German carols and I’d taken it to school so that I could accompany the class in a rendering of Tannenbaüm . Although I had devoted much time to practicing the tune, I was so nervous when I stood up before the class and began to play that I kept running out of air and instead of a pleasing melody, the only sounds I was able to produce were painfully stringent discords. The girls could barely contain their laughter and as I struggled to regain control of my accordion, I heard a distinct titter from Mr. Sherwood who was sitting at his desk directly behind me. He was laughing at me! Overcome by confusion and shame, my cheeks aflame, I returned to my desk.
‘Well done, Margaret! Thank you very much.’
Mr. Sherwood was hardly able to disguise the laughter in his voice and it was at that moment that my idol came crashing down. I sought revenge and found it by giving him a new name: Das Ding ( the Thing ) and drawing malicious caricatures of him and cartoon strips depicting ludicrous adventures in which he was the protagonist. Later, I gave them to Penny and she still has them, to this day.
That Christmas, my social diary was full and because I had been invited to so many parties, my mother gave in to my pleadings and bought me a new dress. It was made of a soft woollen fabric in a flattering shade of dark olive green and I thought it quite the best dress I had ever owned. At the first of the parties a boy I hadn’t met before attached himself to me and stayed by my side for the duration. When he sat down, he pulled me on to his lap and I blushed both with pleasure and bashfulness. My new conquest, John, was tall and dark and I thought that he was very nice-looking but when it was time to go home he didn’t try to kiss me, as I’d hoped, or asked if I would go out with him, as I’d expected. I was disappointed but quickly put him out of my mind because Stephanie was coming with her parents to stay with us for Christmas and I was too excited to think about anything else.
When I saw my cousin it was evident that she now made no attempt to conceal from her mother the fact that she wore make-up. I looked at her black-rimmed eyes with envy and promptly ran to the chemist’s at the top of Killigrew Road to buy a black eye pencil so that I could achieve the same effect.
‘Take that muck off your eyes at once!’ ordered my mother. ‘It makes you look common!’
On Christmas Eve an envelope addressed to me was delivered and when I opened it I found that it was a Christmas card from John.
‘You’ll have to send him one in return,’ said Stephanie, after I’d told her about our meeting at the party. ‘He obviously expects you to otherwise he wouldn’t have written his address.’
I set about drawing and painting a card and when I’d found an envelope, my cousin and I went off to deliver it.
‘Don’t just put it through the letterbox,’ she commanded, ‘ring the doorbell and hand it to him personally!’
‘But what if he’s not in?’
‘Just do it!’
To my relief and pleasure, John himself opened the door and, blushing, I handed him the card. He seemed flattered and impressed that I’d taken the trouble to draw him a card and I wasn’t too surprised when he asked me if I’d like to go out with him. Christmas Day that year was one of the best I’d ever spent because not only had I the company of my cousin but also a date with a boy I really liked to look forward to. Stephanie and I had an intimate discussion about boys that evening as we sat over the remains of the turkey ( intended for lunch the following day ) and recklessly pulled off big chunks of breast.
On my first date with John, we walked around Falmouth, hand-in-hand. When he saw me home, my mother was lurking in the door waiting for me and so I assumed that was the reason he didn’t kiss me goodnight.
‘I hope you’re behaving yourself with that boy!’ she said as I came through the door.
At school the next day, a girl from my class told me I had better watch out because John had been going out with another girl before he met me and she wasn’t too happy about our liaison. I knew the girl in question but I’d never had a great deal to do with her as she was an odd sort of girl, one of those who aren’t terribly popular. She was quite nice-looking, tall with a well-developed figure, but she went about wearing an enigmatic smile which had the effect of half-closing her eyelids, giving her the appearance of a somnolent owl. When I bumped into her in the playground, I asked her if she minded me going out with her ex-boyfriend and although she said no, she had finished with him, I could sense that she did mind and when she asked me what I thought of him I decided that it would be unwise to let her know that I liked him and instead told her that I thought he was a bit of a drip. She wasted no time imparting to John this information so that the next time I saw him, he was full of sulks and I had to convince him that although I had called him a drip, I hadn’t meant it. Our dates consisted of nothing more exciting than strolling around Falmouth hand-in-hand and still there were no good-night kisses; I was beginning to think that John was a bit strange and I rather regretted spurning the attentions of another boy, with the unusual name of Gibson, whom I liked. He was a little younger than I was but he had impeccable manners and certainly knew how to treat a girl. Once, he invited me to tea at a rather smart establishment in Falmouth to which I’d never been. He bought me a cake which, with the exception of Auntie Lal’s divine Devon cream sponge, was quite the most exquisite piece of confectionery I’d ever tasted, consisting of layers of the lightest, melt-in-the-mouth pastry, real cream and pineapple. If only John would take me out to tea!
One chilly, damp evening, after our usual, aimless stroll around Falmouth, we ended up sitting in a shelter on the seafront. John had his arm around me and I sensed from the quickening of his breath that he was about to do something he hadn’t had the courage to attempt before. Was he at last going to kiss me? He held me closer and suddenly I felt a fumbling somewhere in the region of my left armpit. The breathing grew louder, the fumbling more urgent and then, as abruptly as it had begun, it ceased. We got up from the seat and made our way home, hardly speaking a word.
The next time I saw John, he seemed to be very distracted about something and when I asked what the matter was he told me he’d received an anonymous letter in which unpleasant things were written about him and various mutual friends and acquaintances; on the other hand, the letter was full of praise for me. I asked to look at it but he only allowed me the briefest glimpse. It was obvious to me that it was the handiwork of his ex-girlfriend but although I told him this, he remained unconvinced and even suggested that I, myself, had sent it. Clearly, the letter had been written to give the impression that I was the author and I was offended that John should consider, even for a moment, that I was capable of doing something so silly and childish. The writer of the letter had not covered her tracks very well and it didn’t require a great deal of detective work to ascertain that the Owl, as I now called her, was the culprit. She lived not very far from Auntie Frances and so I was acquainted with their mutual neighbours. She had always been a strange girl, they told me, who never seemed to have many friends and appeared to prefer the company of children much younger than herself. Not long after this incident I received an anonymous letter myself. The writer, purporting to be male, said that he’d seen me in our shop and that he would like to get to know me and suggested a time and a meeting place. This letter was followed very soon afterwards by another and as I was convinced that they were, yet again, the work of the Owl, I decided to tackle her the next time I saw her. She denied having sent any anonymous letters at all but it was clear to me that she was lying; nevertheless, there were no more letters after that.
I had gone right off John! There was, I told myself, something very strange about him, something decidedly creepy. These sentiments were confirmed the next time I bumped into him on my way home from school when, to my astonishment, he suddenly leant over and snatched my diary from my open satchel. Ignoring my protests of indignation, he turned on his heel and hurried away. What, I wondered, could he possibly want with a pocket diary which contained nothing but silly schoolgirl nonsense and certainly nothing incriminating about him?
I was so outraged by his unwarranted behaviour that I decided, with my friend Gillian for moral support, to go to his house the following afternoon to demand the return of my property; I had the idea that I might tell his mother what had happened if he refused. But he must have seen me coming because, when I rang the doorbell, the door was instantly opened by him and, without a word of explanation or apology, he thrust my diary into my hand.
Our romance having come to an acrimonious end, I determined never to speak to John again. Several years later, when I was in my early twenties and doing a post-graduate teaching year at Bristol, he turned up again, quite out of the blue, when I was at home for the Easter vacation.
‘There’s a young man called John here to see you!’ shouted my father from the shop.
Wondering which of the many Johns of my acquaintance it could be, I left what I was doing and opened the door. When I saw who it was, I could barely contain my astonishment. He had matured a good deal and his manners were charming; he asked if I’d like to go for a drive and since I had nothing better to do, I readily agreed. We went to the north coast, parked on a cliff ledge and chatted. He seemed not to want to know what I’d been up to during the years since we’d last seen each other and wanted to talk only about himself. He was engaged, he told me, and was going to get married when the college course he was attending had ended. He confessed that due to his lack of experience, the physical side of his marriage might suffer; in the same breath he told me that his college would be holding a May ball and asked if I would like to go. I could, he said, spend the night at his place. I replied that I’d think about it although I had no intention of accepting his invitation. After all, I’d been a student at one of the most famous art colleges in London where, in the sixties, everything was happening. I should hardly be interested in travelling all the way from Bristol to attend a student function at some obscure Plymouth college. It was not until later that day it dawned on me what John had been trying to ask me: he wanted someone to relieve him of his virginity before his marriage and he had chosen me. I was so angry and so offended that I wanted to tell him exactly what I thought of him but when I’d calmed down I realised that it would be better to forget about it. Some time later, in passing, I saw him again; I glared at him and he glared back at me. I pitied the poor girl who eventually married him.
Like other girls of my age, my moods fluctuated wildly between periods of soaring elation and unaccountable gloom. My youthful breast surged with passionate yearnings and my head was filled with romantic dreams but, so far, fulfillment had eluded me and I was beginning to fear that I would never meet someone with whom I could have close relationship. I longed for affection and naïvely imagined I would find it if only I could meet the right kind of boy but, to date, all my friendships with members of the opposite sex had ended in disappointment and disillusionment. Was I destined never to find the love of my life?
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Wearing the new jumper and skirt, I decided to walk to Gillian’s house to seek her much-valued opinion and as I stepped outside, who should I see standing in next door’s garden, chatting to Miss Richards and Mrs. Andrews and looking, with his wind-ruffled hair, so utterly, so heart-breakingly handsome that I could have fallen at his feet in adoration, but Mr. Sherwood. I flushed a vivid red and to hide my confusion pretended to examine one of the Anemone japonicas which grew in profusion inside our small front garden.
‘Don’t they grow up quickly these days,’ remarked Miss Richards, looking at me approvingly.
My heart swelled from sheer joy. For the first time, Mr. Sherwood had seen me out of my silly, childish school uniform and Miss Richards thought I looked grown up! I flew to Gillian’s on wings of ecstasy.
In the fifties, teenage fashion had not yet come into its own. We tended to wear more or less what our elders wore and it was not really until the sixties and the advent of the miniskirt that we were finally able to dress differently from our parents. I had bought myself a basic pattern comprising a fitted bodice and gathered skirt from which I made several dresses; I varied them by changing the length of the sleeves or altering the neckline and I trimmed them with ric-rac braid or broderie anglaise lace. I loved fashion drawing and was inspired by famous designers, such as Dior, who favoured long, wide skirts and tightly fitted bodices with impossibly tiny waists. Dress pattern sizes differed from those of today; busts were smaller then, as were waistlines. To achieve the tiny waist you had to wear a wide, elastic belt around your middle and it was so uncomfortable and constricting that breathing was almost impossible. Petticoats - or underskirts as the Cornish called them - were always worn under the full skirts and when a fabric called paper nylon came on the scene, it was de rigueur to wear a petticoat made from it so that your skirt would stick out more. After a couple of washes, this fabric would become limp so that you had to rinse it in a sugar solution in order to restore the crispness. I can also recall buying lengths of imitation whalebone from Woolworth’s which were sold specifically for making into hoops to be incorporated into petticoats. The more you could get your skirt to stick out, the better!
My mother’s guests one summer included a family who had a son a couple of years or so older than I was and it very soon became apparent that he fancied me. Although he had no physical defects as such, his mannerisms and habits seemed to deviate from the normal behaviour of boys of his age and it was almost as though he were an ageing man inhabiting a young man’s body. Normally, I was highly flattered if I suspected that a boy liked me and would encourage him unashamedly but this boy, David, made my flesh creep. At mealtimes I had to assist my mother by waiting on the guests and one evening, when I was helping to clear the tables after dinner, he came up to me and whispered:
‘I can tell you like me because you always make sure I get a bigger portion than anyone else.’
I flamed with indignation. It wasn’t true! And anyway, my mother dished the food on to the plates, not I. I decided that I definitely didn’t like this boy and determined to keep out of his way. When their holiday came to its end and the family was preparing to depart, to my consternation he asked if he could be allowed to stay on for a few days. No sooner had they departed, than David approached my mother to ask if he could take me to the cinema. What a cheek not to have asked me first! I thought that she might have refused consent on account of the fact that he was older than I was, but she merely told him to ask me. I faced a dilemma: I was nervous of this boy and I didn’t want to go out with him yet my mother seemed almost to approve of him. If I turned him down, would he take my refusal as mere girlish shyness and continue to pester me? He seemed very keen, so it was highly likely. Perhaps it was better to go out with him and get it over and done with. After all, I only had to keep my distance and he couldn’t get up to much in the cinema. So I agreed.
I felt very self-conscious walking into the cinema with a boy. He paid for the tickets but to my disappointment didn’t offer to buy any sweets; I was so nervous and unsure of myself that I needed some sort of distraction to give myself countenance. After we’d settled ourselves in our seats and I’d squeezed myself into the furthest corner of mine, I tried to concentrate on the screen. David was making gulping noises every time he swallowed and after a while it really began to get on my nerves; also, I could hear him shifting about, gradually edging closer to me. Glancing sideways, I saw with alarm that his arm was stretched across the back of my seat and that his hand was almost touching my shoulder. I cringed as the inevitable happened and he put his arm around me; his breathing was loud and the gulping noises worse than ever. He smelt of onions and I suspected that he’d been scoffing a pasty, as I’d seen him doing before, from the nearby Cornish Pasty Shop. No wonder he hadn’t wanted any sweets! He tried to draw me towards him but I shrank away.
‘You’re not very friendly, are you?’ he whispered.
We remained in that uncomfortable position until the end of the film, of which I have absolutely no recollection, and was, for once, glad that I was under orders to come straight home afterwards. He tried to hold my hand as we made our way back to Clare Terrace but I kept both hands fastenened firmly on my bag and was silent and unresponsive. If I had disliked David before, I disliked him more than ever now. At last, his stay came to an end and I was so relieved that I was almost friendly to him when he came to say good-bye. He asked if he could write to me and I replied, airily, that he could if he wanted to. After all, I didn’t have to reply, did I? But he must have taken this as encouragement because, without warning, he suddenly leant towards me, put his hands on my shoulders and bent down to kiss me. At the last moment, I turned my face and his wet kiss landed on my cheek. With that, I scuttled off to the safety of my room while he, crestfallen, walked away. Afterwards, he did write to me but I never replied.
That summer, I was going to Brixham to stay with my cousin Stephanie and I was full of excitement at the prospect. My mother had bought me a new dress and an outfit consisting of a pair of white shorts and a long, sleeveless top which was made from cotton printed with horizontal stripes of red and yellow. This outfit flattered my figure and made me look taller and I was gratified when, the first time I wore it, boys looked at me and workmen whistled. But for the train journey, my mother insisted that I wore my school summer uniform. Travelling alone, I would be much safer like that, she said. Our summer uniform consisted of a very plain, shirtwaisted, cotton dress which, worn with the regulation white ankle-socks, made me look ridiculously childish and the thought of having to be met by my cousin attired in such a manner filled me with dismay. I raged and pleaded alternately, but she wouldn’t relent. When we reached Falmouth Station on the afternoon of my departure and she bought my ticket, I realised that it wasn’t concern for my safety that had made her insist on my wearing my school dress but the fact that it made me look young enough to pass for a child and thus travel half-fare. I was mortified.
Auntie Lal and Stephanie were waiting for me at Newton Abbot Station and the first thing my cousin said was:
‘Is that your school uniform?’
I replied, shamefacedly, that it was and Auntie Lal said my mother was very sensible to make me wear it. You never knew what sort of dirty old men were hanging around on trains these days. I was consumed with envy when I saw Stephanie because she had achieved, with seemingly very little effort, the much sought-after Brigitte Bardot look; She had the blonde fringe, the pout, everything. Compared to me, she looked sophisticated and mature. We were awkward with each other at first but by the time we had reached Brixham, the old sense of comradeship had returned and we began to make plans for our time together. The next morning, I put on my new shorts and top but Auntie Lal told Stephanie she wasn’t allowed to wear hers and that she must put on a nice skirt instead. We set off down the street but we hadn’t gone very far when my cousin said:
‘Hang on a sec - I’ve just got to pop in here for a moment.’
With that, she dived into the bus station and disappeared into the ladies’. A few minutes later she emerged and my jaw dropped from sheer astonishment. Gone was the ‘nice skirt’ and in its place were the briefest white shorts I had ever seen. They accentuated her long, suntanned legs in a manner which was unashamedly provocative and if this effect were not enough to make everyone stare, she had knotted her modest blouse in such a way that that her brown midriff was completely exposed. Also, she had accentuated the luscious pout with a generous application of pale pink lipstick and outlined her eyes with smoky black kohl. The transformation was startling and I was both shocked and envious; if only I were as daring!
‘What would your mum say?’ I gasped.
‘Oh, she won’t find out. She never does. She’s been paying for me to have elocution lessons for ages and she’s no idea that I’ve never been - not even once. She sends me off looking all sweet and demure but she doesn’t know I always keep a change of clothes in my bag.’
Stephanie asked me if I’d ever been kissed by a boy and I had to confess that no, I hadn’t. I told her that a boy had tried to but that he was creepy and I hadn’t fancied him.
‘Oh well,’ she said, nonchalantly, ‘not to worry. We’ll soon pick up some decent boys.’
I was alarmed yet, at the same time, thrilled. What would my mother say, I wondered, with a slight stab of anxiety. Still, she was miles away and she wouldn’t know what I was getting up to here in Brixham. We found some decent boys very quickly, just as Stephanie had predicted. They were both on holiday in the area with their families and after the briefest of introductions and the minimum of preamble we found ourselves lying in the arms of our respective swains on a grassy slope overlooking the beach. Mine was a rather good-looking boy, tall and fair-haired, and I didn’t protest when he began to kiss me. The kisses were very dry and not at all ecstatic and I suspected that he was as inexperienced as I was. All the same, we whiled away a very pleasant morning.
‘Aren’t we going to see them again?’ I asked my cousin as we made our way back to the town.
‘Not bloody likely!’ she exclaimed. ‘There are loads of boys to meet yet. We don’t want to get stuck with those drips.’
I was rather sorry because I had quite liked my drip.
My time in Brixham flew by in a delightful succession of flirtations with numerous boys. One afternoon, we were walking along a country lane when we heard a fire-engine speeding towards us. As it rounded a bend and the driver spotted us, the vehicle screeched to a halt and the firemen who had been hanging on to sides leapt down into the road and we all spent a very pleasant five minutes or so sitting on the grass verge chatting and flirting outrageously. We were rather sorry when they said they’d better go because they had a fire to put out. When we told Auntie Lal about our escapade with the firemen she was outraged and said it was a disgrace: the Fire Service was paid to put out fires, not go pestering young girls. She’d a good mind to ring the Fire Station and lodge a complaint.
Whenever we took ourselves to the beach we would often see a very handsome youth, in the company of an older man, sunbathing at the water’s edge. There was an air of mystery about the couple and so we decided that he must be a foreign prince and the older man his bodyguard. We took to following them and spying on them from the clifftop and although we did our utmost to attract the attention of the handsome youth, he took no notice of us at all. We invented romantic stories about him and the more he ignored us, the more our ardour increased. The bodyguard was very attentive and doubtless discouraged his charge from associating with strangers: he was, after all, of noble birth and it would be unseemly for him to fraternize with any old riff-raff. So we had to be content with worshipping from a distance. A more enlightened observer would have taken it for granted that the couple was, of course, gay, but we, in our youthful ignorance, knew nothing of such things.
We didn’t quite know what to do with ourselves when it rained and we were confined to the house. Once, Auntie Lal gave us some ironing to do and she was horrified when she discovered that I’d ironed Uncle Albie’s handkerchiefs into triangles instead of squares. Since we weren’t to be trusted with the ironing, she told us to stay in the kitchen while she went to the shops so that we could keep an eye on the oven in which were baking two fatless sponges she’d knocked up. When they were done, we had instuctions to take them out of the oven, let them cool for a few seconds, then remove them carefully from their tins. They’d be nicely cooled by the time she returned, she said, and then we could help interlay the sponges with a filling of clotted cream. The attention we devoted to the supervision of the baking of Auntie Lal’s sponges was commendable. They were removed from the oven, light and risen to perfection, at the optimum moment. With the utmost care, we prised them cleanly from their respective tins and placed them on a wire rack to cool. When Auntie Lal still hadn’t returned, and seeing that the sponges were now completely cold, we decided to surprise her by doing the filling and final presentation ourselves. Slowly and meticulously we spooned an even, but extravagant, layer of cream onto the bottom sponge then carefully placed the other on top; lastly, in what was a most professional-looking finishing touch, we sieved a dusting of icing sugar over it.
It looked mouth-wateringly, tantalizingly delectable.
‘Well,’ remarked Stephanie, with her usual sagacity, ‘since we’re going to have it for tea, it wouldn’t do any harm to cut a couple of thin slices just to see if it’s all right.’
The sponge tasted as divine as it looked. Devonshire clotted cream is not so rich or sickly as Cornish cream and the combination of this with the light, melting texture of Auntie Lal’s fatless sponge was sheer perfection. After we’d consumed with unladylike rapidity the first two pieces, Stephanie said we may as well help ourselves to another couple. After all, it wouldn’t make much difference now that we’d already cut into the sponge. By the time we’d finished our third slices, the sponge was considerably attenuated.
‘Well,’ said Stephanie, philosophically, as she cheerfully cut two more slices, ‘may as well be hanged for sheep as for lambs!’
When Auntie Lal returned home and saw on the plate the last, remaining sliver of cream sponge, Stephanie received the full force of her wrath and we were sent upstairs in disgrace.
One sunny afternoon, we were lying on a grassy clifftop watching the mysterious foreign prince and his devoted bodyguard on the beach below when we saw a boy sitting not very far away from us looking in our direction. I took out my handbag mirror to check my face ( I had become very vain ) and Stephanie said:
‘Go on! I dare you - shine the mirror into his face!’
Obediently, I caught the sun in the mirror and flashed it into the eyes of the boy. He smiled, got up and came over to us. He was a very nice boy and both of us took an immediate fancy to him. He told us that his name was Norman and that he lived in Wales. After chatting for a while, we decided to go for a walk along the cliffs; at that point, neither Stephanie or I knew which one of us Norman fancied. We came to a stile and while I was attempting to scramble over it, I stubbed by big toe and it began to bleed. With great gallantry, Norman suddenly scooped me up in his arms and lifted me over the stile. Stephanie was annoyed and whispered that I’d done it on purpose. That evening, the three of us sat on a seat overlooking the sea and Norman began kissing me.
‘Put some effort into it, can’t you!’ chided Stephanie, the experienced.
I put some effort into it and found, to my surprise, that I rather enjoyed being kissed by Norman.
We were late home that night and Stephanie’s older brother, Tony, had been sent out to see where we’d got to. Because it was dark, we didn’t see him until he was almost upon us and when we did, I quickly extricated myself from Norman’s arm, which was around my waist, and told him to run, quickly.
‘Who was that?’ demanded Tony, looking very big and menacing as he loomed out of the shadows.
‘Him?’ said Stephanie, innocently, ‘Oh, that’s only Norman.’
‘Norman!’ bellowed Tony, after the fleeing figure. ‘I’ll give him bloody Norman!’
When we got home, Tony told his mother that we’d been hanging about with some boy called Norman.
‘Boys called Norman are common!’ declared Auntie Lal, disapprovingly, and sent us straight to bed.
I never saw him again. My holiday in Brixham was coming to its end and a couple of days later I resigned myself to the ignominy of having to put on my school dress in front of my cousin and caught the train back to Falmouth.
I’d only been home for a very short while when the neighbour’s nephew, Nigel, who had just arrived on his annual visit, knocked on our door. I could tell from his look of surprise that he thought I’d matured a great deal in the last year and I was gratified. He asked me if I’d like to go out but I decided to play hard-to-get and said I’d think about it. Firstly, I had to go round to Jenny’s to tell her all about my holiday. Her parents had sold their house in Penryn and they now lived not very far from Clare Terrace. When I reached Jenny’s house, I found Wendy there, too. I told the girls about my escapades and I think they weren’t inclined to believe me until, glancing out of the window, they saw Nigel who, predictably, had followed me.
‘Who’s that?’ asked Jenny, surprised.
‘Oh, nobody much,’ I replied, airily. ‘Just some boy.’
Jenny told me later that after I’d gone, Wendy had said, wistfully:
‘You and I will never get boyfriends.’
To which Jenny had muttered, under her breath: ‘You speak for yourself!’
Nigel grew daily more keen and wherever I went, there he was, too. It was all very flattering and I didn’t exactly discourage him then, one evening, his ardour overcame him and he pinned me against the side wall of our house and began to kiss me. At that moment, Fred from Fred’s Stores happened to be passing and the next time my mother went into his shop he remarked:
‘I see your daughter’s started propping up walls now.’
I was reprimanded in no uncertain terms for my indecorous behaviour and warned not to be seen carrying on like that again. Fred, I decided, was a mean old sneak and I determined never to patronize his shop again. Meanwhile, Nigel grew more ardent and began to pester me so much that it got on my nerves; there were, after all, things I wanted to get on with and he was taking up too much of my precious time.
‘Would you do something for me?’ he asked one day.
‘What?’ I replied, cautiously; there was something about the tone of his voice that put me instantly on my guard.
‘This!’ he said, thrusting an open pocket dictionary into my hand. I stared at it, perplexed.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I want you do do that word there with me.’
I looked at the word he was pointing at. Intercourse it said.
I was shocked at his audacity. As if I would contemplate doing such a thing! There was not a single girl of my acquaintance who didn’t know that the worst thing you could do was to have sexual relations with a boy. If you did, you were ruined for life and no decent boy would ever touch you afterwards. My mother referred to it as ‘denying the man you marry of his natural right’. Even more of a deterrent was the risk of pregnancy; the very word struck fear in our hearts and if, by some terrible and vengeful act of fate, the unthinkable should happen, there would be no way out but suicide. Besides, if a boy really liked you, he would respect you and not jeopardize your reputation by making such demands. And what a curious way to proposition a girl! Was that how it was done, with the aid of a pocket dictionary? I hardly thought so and after my anger and indignation had abated, I realised that, despite his bragging, his arrogant strut and his air of assurance, poor Nigel had had, most probably, no experience with girls at all; before me, he’d most likely never even kissed a girl. I felt nothing for him now, except contempt, and determined that he was an acquaintance not worthy of further cultivation: in other words, I gave him the boot.
It was apparent by the end of that summer that my mother’s enthusiasm for the bed, breakfast and evening meal business had begun to wane because, I think, she was finding that it involved too much work. Throughout her marriage, apart from her brief spell of service as a Wren during the War, she had never had any kind of employment and, indeed, was very scathing of mothers who went out to work. She maintained that it was very bad for a child to come home to an empty house and boasted that she’d always been there for Jean and me. This was not strictly true; most afternoons, she took to her bed and was often still asleep when we came home from school. As we grew older and more aware, my sister and I began to wonder what our mother did all day. She had never been houseproud and the amount of time she devoted to housework was by no means excessive. She had developed a routine which seemed very strange to us because it was so unlike the behaviour of our friends’ mothers. She would go to bed in the small hours after having spent the evening reading or knitting and get up very late, always in a foul temper, and spend a long time over her breakfast. She had the Daily Telegraph delivered each morning and after she’d read it she would settle down to what she considered the serious business of doing the crossword. The Daily Telegraph was sacred and woe betide anyone who dared lay a finger on it before she’d looked at it; once, in my youthful innocence, I committed the irredeemable sin of filling in the crossword with nonsense words and was punished with what I considered to be most unwarranted severity. When she went out, it was generally to the shops or the library; due to her voracious appetite for reading, she got through several books a week. She had no friends and Auntie Frances was the only person she ever visited.
Our parents had moved house so many times during our lives that Jean and I weren’t at all surprised when they put Clare House on the market and went off on frequent property-hunting forays. We found these excursions boring and time-wasting because our mother always wanted to view impressive-looking dwellings which were obviously way beyond our modest means. I think she did this purely to boast and justify her much-uttered words:
‘We nearly bought that house!’
Although we were used both to the inability of our parents to settle anywhere for any length of time and our mother’s impractical money-making schemes, when they announced that they were going to buy a shop and start a greengrocery business we were astonished. A shop! Well, that would be a novelty. But what about our mother? We couldn’t imagine her being a shopkeeper. For a start, you had to be friendly and polite to people and she’d be bound to fall out with someone or other before very long. And what about our father? He’d never had any experience in retail trade and as for keeping accounts and paying bills we knew from the frequent rows concerning the subject that he was absolutely hopeless. Even though we thought they were quite mad, it might be fun, just the same, to own a shop.
While we were in the throes of packing up prior to the move, Jean and I discovered in one of the inner attics a bag containing bundles of letters tied up with ribbon. Intrigued, I pulled an envelope from one of the bundles and took out the letter which was inside it.
‘It’s a love letter from him to her!’ I exclaimed as I ran my eye down the page of neat handwriting.
Gleefully, we tipped the bag on to the floor and began to riffle through the contents.
‘Look at this! He actually wrote her a poem!’
Convulsed with giggles, I read out the lines of verse to my sister:
One night as I stood by my window
My thoughts flew over to you
To where my true love lay sleeping
I wished I could be there, too.
‘Blimey!’ I marvelled. ‘Can you believe he actually wrote that to her?’
When I read out the final lines, which alluded to the reprimand of a passing bird bearing witness to the lover’s yearning, we both collapsed with laughter:
Naughty to wish you were with your love
When your love is tucked up in bed!
It semed to us quite incredible that there had once been a time when our parents had loved each other. Neither of us had ever seen them exchange an affectionate gesture or a kind word and over the years the sheer force of our mother’s jealous rage had demolished and cowed our father to the extent that we didn’t expect him to regard her with anything other than bitterness. She continued to hurl at him accusations concerning the affair of Judy in the woodshed and the incident seemed, in her mind, to have festered with the passing of time so that the allegations were now nothing less than fantastic. He had been in the habit of popping into a nearby pub every now and again but that modest pleasure was brought to an abrupt cessation when she became convinced that he was carrying on with the barmaid. He was accused, too, of ogling a woman who was often seen sashaying around the neighbourhood in very brief shorts. She had strikingly red hair of extraordinary length; it hung down her back well below her waist , covering the shorts and giving the startling impression, from behind, that she had nothing on. It was a spectacle enough to make anyone - man or woman - look twice.
Our new home was in Killigrew Road, a long, steep, busy thoroughfare which carries traffic from the centre of Falmouth to the main road. There were several shops in the vicinity: a chemist’s, a couple of butchers, a post office, general stores and a funny, old-fashioned draper’s which displayed in its windows underwear which looked, to Jean and me, as if it belonged to some bygone age. Whenever Ethel came to Falmouth she would make a bee-line for that shop because it was, according to her, the only retailer in the entire country which still had in stock the long, elasticated at the knee, pink, satin bloomers she had always worn; similarly, she had managed to find the only hairdressser in the whole of London who knew how to do the marcel waves, long gone out of fashion, which she had always favoured.
Although we were able to take possession of the house, the shop below was occupied by a tenant and there were still a few weks to go before the lease expired. Jean and I were highly amused when we discovered that our new home was, in fact, the town’s registry office!
I had recently acquired a small, rather antiquated, accordion and when a newly married couple emerged from below I would hang out of the upstairs window and give a wheezy rendering of Here Comes the Bride. Passers-by would look up in astonishment and I don’t think my musical abilities were very much appreciated by the newly-weds.
In fact, it was the accordion which brought about the abrupt termination of my adoration of Mr. Sherwood. We were learning German carols and I’d taken it to school so that I could accompany the class in a rendering of Tannenbaüm . Although I had devoted much time to practicing the tune, I was so nervous when I stood up before the class and began to play that I kept running out of air and instead of a pleasing melody, the only sounds I was able to produce were painfully stringent discords. The girls could barely contain their laughter and as I struggled to regain control of my accordion, I heard a distinct titter from Mr. Sherwood who was sitting at his desk directly behind me. He was laughing at me! Overcome by confusion and shame, my cheeks aflame, I returned to my desk.
‘Well done, Margaret! Thank you very much.’
Mr. Sherwood was hardly able to disguise the laughter in his voice and it was at that moment that my idol came crashing down. I sought revenge and found it by giving him a new name: Das Ding ( the Thing ) and drawing malicious caricatures of him and cartoon strips depicting ludicrous adventures in which he was the protagonist. Later, I gave them to Penny and she still has them, to this day.
That Christmas, my social diary was full and because I had been invited to so many parties, my mother gave in to my pleadings and bought me a new dress. It was made of a soft woollen fabric in a flattering shade of dark olive green and I thought it quite the best dress I had ever owned. At the first of the parties a boy I hadn’t met before attached himself to me and stayed by my side for the duration. When he sat down, he pulled me on to his lap and I blushed both with pleasure and bashfulness. My new conquest, John, was tall and dark and I thought that he was very nice-looking but when it was time to go home he didn’t try to kiss me, as I’d hoped, or asked if I would go out with him, as I’d expected. I was disappointed but quickly put him out of my mind because Stephanie was coming with her parents to stay with us for Christmas and I was too excited to think about anything else.
When I saw my cousin it was evident that she now made no attempt to conceal from her mother the fact that she wore make-up. I looked at her black-rimmed eyes with envy and promptly ran to the chemist’s at the top of Killigrew Road to buy a black eye pencil so that I could achieve the same effect.
‘Take that muck off your eyes at once!’ ordered my mother. ‘It makes you look common!’
On Christmas Eve an envelope addressed to me was delivered and when I opened it I found that it was a Christmas card from John.
‘You’ll have to send him one in return,’ said Stephanie, after I’d told her about our meeting at the party. ‘He obviously expects you to otherwise he wouldn’t have written his address.’
I set about drawing and painting a card and when I’d found an envelope, my cousin and I went off to deliver it.
‘Don’t just put it through the letterbox,’ she commanded, ‘ring the doorbell and hand it to him personally!’
‘But what if he’s not in?’
‘Just do it!’
To my relief and pleasure, John himself opened the door and, blushing, I handed him the card. He seemed flattered and impressed that I’d taken the trouble to draw him a card and I wasn’t too surprised when he asked me if I’d like to go out with him. Christmas Day that year was one of the best I’d ever spent because not only had I the company of my cousin but also a date with a boy I really liked to look forward to. Stephanie and I had an intimate discussion about boys that evening as we sat over the remains of the turkey ( intended for lunch the following day ) and recklessly pulled off big chunks of breast.
On my first date with John, we walked around Falmouth, hand-in-hand. When he saw me home, my mother was lurking in the door waiting for me and so I assumed that was the reason he didn’t kiss me goodnight.
‘I hope you’re behaving yourself with that boy!’ she said as I came through the door.
At school the next day, a girl from my class told me I had better watch out because John had been going out with another girl before he met me and she wasn’t too happy about our liaison. I knew the girl in question but I’d never had a great deal to do with her as she was an odd sort of girl, one of those who aren’t terribly popular. She was quite nice-looking, tall with a well-developed figure, but she went about wearing an enigmatic smile which had the effect of half-closing her eyelids, giving her the appearance of a somnolent owl. When I bumped into her in the playground, I asked her if she minded me going out with her ex-boyfriend and although she said no, she had finished with him, I could sense that she did mind and when she asked me what I thought of him I decided that it would be unwise to let her know that I liked him and instead told her that I thought he was a bit of a drip. She wasted no time imparting to John this information so that the next time I saw him, he was full of sulks and I had to convince him that although I had called him a drip, I hadn’t meant it. Our dates consisted of nothing more exciting than strolling around Falmouth hand-in-hand and still there were no good-night kisses; I was beginning to think that John was a bit strange and I rather regretted spurning the attentions of another boy, with the unusual name of Gibson, whom I liked. He was a little younger than I was but he had impeccable manners and certainly knew how to treat a girl. Once, he invited me to tea at a rather smart establishment in Falmouth to which I’d never been. He bought me a cake which, with the exception of Auntie Lal’s divine Devon cream sponge, was quite the most exquisite piece of confectionery I’d ever tasted, consisting of layers of the lightest, melt-in-the-mouth pastry, real cream and pineapple. If only John would take me out to tea!
One chilly, damp evening, after our usual, aimless stroll around Falmouth, we ended up sitting in a shelter on the seafront. John had his arm around me and I sensed from the quickening of his breath that he was about to do something he hadn’t had the courage to attempt before. Was he at last going to kiss me? He held me closer and suddenly I felt a fumbling somewhere in the region of my left armpit. The breathing grew louder, the fumbling more urgent and then, as abruptly as it had begun, it ceased. We got up from the seat and made our way home, hardly speaking a word.
The next time I saw John, he seemed to be very distracted about something and when I asked what the matter was he told me he’d received an anonymous letter in which unpleasant things were written about him and various mutual friends and acquaintances; on the other hand, the letter was full of praise for me. I asked to look at it but he only allowed me the briefest glimpse. It was obvious to me that it was the handiwork of his ex-girlfriend but although I told him this, he remained unconvinced and even suggested that I, myself, had sent it. Clearly, the letter had been written to give the impression that I was the author and I was offended that John should consider, even for a moment, that I was capable of doing something so silly and childish. The writer of the letter had not covered her tracks very well and it didn’t require a great deal of detective work to ascertain that the Owl, as I now called her, was the culprit. She lived not very far from Auntie Frances and so I was acquainted with their mutual neighbours. She had always been a strange girl, they told me, who never seemed to have many friends and appeared to prefer the company of children much younger than herself. Not long after this incident I received an anonymous letter myself. The writer, purporting to be male, said that he’d seen me in our shop and that he would like to get to know me and suggested a time and a meeting place. This letter was followed very soon afterwards by another and as I was convinced that they were, yet again, the work of the Owl, I decided to tackle her the next time I saw her. She denied having sent any anonymous letters at all but it was clear to me that she was lying; nevertheless, there were no more letters after that.
I had gone right off John! There was, I told myself, something very strange about him, something decidedly creepy. These sentiments were confirmed the next time I bumped into him on my way home from school when, to my astonishment, he suddenly leant over and snatched my diary from my open satchel. Ignoring my protests of indignation, he turned on his heel and hurried away. What, I wondered, could he possibly want with a pocket diary which contained nothing but silly schoolgirl nonsense and certainly nothing incriminating about him?
I was so outraged by his unwarranted behaviour that I decided, with my friend Gillian for moral support, to go to his house the following afternoon to demand the return of my property; I had the idea that I might tell his mother what had happened if he refused. But he must have seen me coming because, when I rang the doorbell, the door was instantly opened by him and, without a word of explanation or apology, he thrust my diary into my hand.
Our romance having come to an acrimonious end, I determined never to speak to John again. Several years later, when I was in my early twenties and doing a post-graduate teaching year at Bristol, he turned up again, quite out of the blue, when I was at home for the Easter vacation.
‘There’s a young man called John here to see you!’ shouted my father from the shop.
Wondering which of the many Johns of my acquaintance it could be, I left what I was doing and opened the door. When I saw who it was, I could barely contain my astonishment. He had matured a good deal and his manners were charming; he asked if I’d like to go for a drive and since I had nothing better to do, I readily agreed. We went to the north coast, parked on a cliff ledge and chatted. He seemed not to want to know what I’d been up to during the years since we’d last seen each other and wanted to talk only about himself. He was engaged, he told me, and was going to get married when the college course he was attending had ended. He confessed that due to his lack of experience, the physical side of his marriage might suffer; in the same breath he told me that his college would be holding a May ball and asked if I would like to go. I could, he said, spend the night at his place. I replied that I’d think about it although I had no intention of accepting his invitation. After all, I’d been a student at one of the most famous art colleges in London where, in the sixties, everything was happening. I should hardly be interested in travelling all the way from Bristol to attend a student function at some obscure Plymouth college. It was not until later that day it dawned on me what John had been trying to ask me: he wanted someone to relieve him of his virginity before his marriage and he had chosen me. I was so angry and so offended that I wanted to tell him exactly what I thought of him but when I’d calmed down I realised that it would be better to forget about it. Some time later, in passing, I saw him again; I glared at him and he glared back at me. I pitied the poor girl who eventually married him.
Like other girls of my age, my moods fluctuated wildly between periods of soaring elation and unaccountable gloom. My youthful breast surged with passionate yearnings and my head was filled with romantic dreams but, so far, fulfillment had eluded me and I was beginning to fear that I would never meet someone with whom I could have close relationship. I longed for affection and naïvely imagined I would find it if only I could meet the right kind of boy but, to date, all my friendships with members of the opposite sex had ended in disappointment and disillusionment. Was I destined never to find the love of my life?
Margaret Merry lives in Spain if you are looking to buy a property in Spain please visit http://www.cheappropertyspain.net
CHAPTER TWELVE: Growing Pains
Between the ages of thirteen and fifteen I underwent, like the rest of my school friends, all the usual emotional confusion and hormonal havoc caused by the sudden physical changes which were taking place in our developing bodies. Firstly, there was the momentous occasion of the first period followed, not long afterwards, by the significant acquisition of the first bra. I had been pestering my mother for one for some time, even though I was in possession of nothing more spectacular than a pair of bee-stings. I was envious of the more well-developed girls in my class who were already proudly sporting their first bras and I bemoaned the unfairness of it with Jenny, whose mother was being as unreasonable as mine. Then I had a brilliant idea. Why didn’t we make our own? We both enjoyed sewing and it couldn’t be that difficult to construct one. Fired with enthusiasm, I set about designing my prototype. I found a piece of plain, white fabric and from it I cut two circles. The next stage was to mould the circles into cups and this proved to be far more difficult than I had envisaged. At last, after much stitching and shaping of one of the circles, I achieved a result which was not perfect, but passable: the biggest problem was trying to construct the second circle of fabric into a form which matched the first. This turned out to be a task beyond my capabilities with the result that, in size, my two cups differed wildly. Undaunted, I proceeded with the next stage, which was to make the side pieces. This was comparatively easy. Attatching the cups to the side pieces was, however, more of a challenge and I had not even begun to think of how I was going to fasten the finished garment. But I soldiered on and, with the aid of a piece of waistband elastic and some seam tape for straps, finished my bra. Quivering with excitement, I stripped off my clothes, fitted the bra around my chest and examined myself in the mirror. Although the reflection which stared back at me was in reality that of a flat-chested little girl wearing something which resembled a pair of lop-sided water-wings, I imagined myself as a mature young woman modelling a glamorous undergarment. I was very pleased with the result of my labours and I couldn’t wait to take my bra to school the next day so that I could show Jenny.
After all, I didn’t have to wait too long for the purchase of my first, proper bra. My anguish came to an end on the day my mother took me to a dingy little shop at the far end of the town where they had a selection of reasonably priced underwear. The assistant was so patronising that I was too embarrassed to accept her offer of trying on a bra for size and settled for the first thing which my mother deemed suitable. It was of white satin moulded into two, conical shapes by means of a great many rows of circular stitching and although it did nothing as far as figure enhancement was concerned, at least I would be able to join the ranks of those superior, much envied, bra-wearing members of my class.
Next to her first bra, a girl’s second most important acquisition was her first suspender belt and nylons. I had come to loathe the childish, white ankle socks which we were obliged to wear as part of our school uniform and I longed to show off my legs; they were the only part of my body with which I could find no fault. Besides, girls who wore stockings looked so grown up. In the fifties, nylons were expensive and you learned to take care of them. If you had a ladder which wasn’t too bad, you could take the stocking to the Scotch Wool Shop in Falmouth where they would mend it for you; even so, it was fairly expensive to have this done. I had my first pair of stockings in time for the school’s Christmas party and I felt very superior when I looked around and saw that there were a few girls in my class still wearing ankle socks.
A boy had begun to take an interest me. He had spotted me out walking one day and had followed me home. After that, he hung about waiting for me and followed me whenever I went out of the house. He certainly wasn’t shy; he introduced himself as Roger Jackett and asked if I’d like to go out with him. He was a decidedly unprepossessing boy, with not a single nice feature to commend him and, if that were not bad enough, had a very broad Cornish accent. I thought he was decidedly common and was terrified that my mother might see him and think I was encouraging him. To my extreme vexation my sister realised what was going on and made jokes about him.
‘Your boyfriend’s ugly!’ she taunted.
‘He’s not my boyfriend!’
‘Yes he is. You love him!’
‘Shut up! I do not! ‘
‘Yes you do!’
‘I can’t even stand him, so there!’
‘Well, I’m going to tell Mum.’
‘You say anything and I’ll kill you.’
And so it went on. I managed to avoid him by changing my routine but one afternoon, while I was out with my friend Jean, I saw him in the distance hurrying towards us with a broad grin on his silly face. I was filled with dismay; what would my refined and sophisticated friend think of my having anything, no matter how remote, to do with an awful boy like that? I looked around in desperation for some means of avoiding the encounter but he was bearing down on us, rapidly. The only thing I could do was to ignore him and pretend I didn’t know him. But, with characteristic persistence, and quite undaunted by the look I gave him which should have sunk him into the very earth, he followed us all the way home. I was humiliated, ashamed and so angry that the next time I saw him I told him to clear off and leave me alone: eventually, he took the hint.
It was not very long after this that I encountered my first flasher. Whenever I was visiting Auntie Frances, I used to take a short cut through a wooded area known as The Dell. It was a lonely place, frequented by dog-walkers and courting couples who took advantage of the seats which were placed at intervals along the path. I was returning home from Auntie’s one afternoon, by way of the Dell, when a youth stepped out from the undergrowth, startling me so much that I jumped.
‘Do you want to play with this?’ he asked.
I gave him the briefest of glances and saw that his fly was undone and that he was holding something pink and protruding in his hand. A familiar stab of fear shot through my body. Instinct warned me not to make eye contact and I looked away, quickly. With my heart hammering inside my chest, I walked on as though I hadn’t heard him and although I didn’t turn my head to look, I knew he was following me.
‘Where do you live?’ he asked, coming up behind me.
If only someone would come along! Why was there not a soul about that afternoon? I continued on my way, my eyes averted, resisting the temptation to run.
‘Over there.’ I said, pointing to the nearest house and making as though I were going in that direction. The house had a garden with a gate opening on to the footpath and I think he believed me when I told him that I lived there because, just as silently and suddenly as he’d appeared, he vanished. With that, I began to run as fast as I could and didn’t stop until I’d reached our house: I never went alone to the Dell again.
During the summer holidays, the nephew of one of our neighbours in Clare Terrace used to come to stay with her every year for a fortnight. His name was Nigel and he was a few months older than I was and although we had ignored each other previously, now he began to take an interest in me. Unlike poor Roger Jackett, he was not unattractive as such; it was just that, with his round, babyish face and fair hair which had a way of forming itself into a quiff on his forehead, he bore a most unfortunate resemblance to Hergé’s Tintin and every time I saw him I had to quell the urge not to laugh. We went for walks together and he told me how brilliant he was at school, how wealthy his parents were and how much he excelled at sport; I might have believed some of his accounts of his remarkable achievements but when he told me that one of his uncles was Billy Smart, the famous circus owner, I realised that everything he’d been telling me was invention and that in reality he was just another ordinary, rather immature boy. All the same, I agreed to accompany him on a ferry trip to Flushing, across the water from Falmouth, if my mother allowed me.
Although I had made it obvious that I was sceptical about all things he’d told me, it didn’t prevent him from continuing with his improbable boasting all the way to Flushing and back. Clearly, he was hoping to impress me but did he really imagine I was so stupid that I was going to believe such wild stories? Billy Smart indeed! When we boarded the ferry for the return journey, he perched himself on a railing, put his feet on the seat below and assumed a nonchalant attitude which he no doubt imagined was very cool and sophisticated. When the ferryman went up to him and ordered him to take his feet off the seat I was deeply embarrassed and tried to look as though I wasn’t with him.
Later that afternoon, my mother came into my bedroom and shut the door behind her. That meant trouble.
‘Have you been behaving yourself with that boy?’ she demanded.
I looked at her, blankly. Had she heard about Nigel getting told off for putting his feet on the seat? I’d had nothing to do with it and hadn’t, as far as I could recall, misbehaved in any way whatsoever.
‘You know what I mean!’
But I didn’t know what she meant. From her expression, I could tell that it was something distasteful, and I flushed. The following day, when Nigel called to ask if I was going out, my mother insisted that my sister went, too.
That summer, my mother was busy with guests and as a result my shell ornament enterprise was very successful. As well as bed-and-breakfast, she also did evening meals and I was called upon to help with the preparation and cooking. I don’t know what the guests must have thought of the food my mother served up; her cooking had certainly not improved over the years. The only thing that was ever praised was the Yorkshire pudding, the mixing and baking of which I had sole responsibility. When it came to food, she had absolutely no imagination and regarded anything new or unfamiliar with deep suspicion. She relied a lot upon roast dinners because she found these required less work; however, she had no idea how to cook a joint properly. She would smother the meat with a thick coating of lard, shove it into a roasting tin and leave it in the oven for so long that when it was finally taken out it was only a fraction of its original size. Even fatty pieces of pork were plastered with lard and everything - beef, pork or lamb - was served with mint sauce and thin gravy made with nothing more than an Oxo cube and water.
Sometimes she would bake pies made from gritty minced beef boiled up with onions and an Oxo cube. She would line a large plate with pastry, add the cooked mince and then cover it with more pastry and if she was feeling particularly daring, she would vary the pie by using sausage meat instead of mince. Fish was always fried - again in lard - and chips cooked in beef dripping. She shunned cooking oil and could not be persuaded even to try it. I was always astonished when guests returned the following year. During the winter months we had lodgers - students from the art school - in the attics. When they were out of the house, my mother would go through all their possessions. One day, she found a bank statement belonging to one young man and was surprised to discover that he was very well off. She kept talking about it and I was terrified that she would be found out. I was appalled that she could do such a thing; no-one had the right to go through people’s personal effects. Later, I discovered that she was an expert in steaming open envelopes and that there was not a letter delivered to the house that was not intercepted by her.
It was while we were living in Clare House that she suffered a miscarriage. One morning, my father didn’t go to work and my mother stayed in bed. A district nurse came to the house and there was much toing and froing with bowls of water, towels and sheets. The bedroom door remained closed and I could hear them conversing in low voices. When she had recovered, my mother told me that she had been going to have a baby but it had died before it was due to be born. It would have been a little boy, she said. She had always wanted a son and the loss of this one must have been a great sorrow. It occurred to me then that this had not been the first time she had lost a baby: I recalled previous incidents when we had been visited by district nurses and there had been much activity with bowls of water, towels and sheets and hushed conversations behind closed bedroom doors. Some years later, after I had been told by a specialist that I should consider very seriously whether or not I should have children because of the risk of passing on my brittle bones, I realised that all the miscarriages that my mother had had were almost certainly due to the condition. It is most probable that her final miscarriage was caused by the baby suffering a major trauma, such as a broken neck; it is not unusual for this to happen if you are affected with brittle bone disease.
I have sometimes discussed with my sister what would have happened if our brother had survived. Doubtless, he would have suffered a great many fratures and because of the seriousness of his condition been confined to a wheelchair. Our mother would have made us feel that it was our duty, not hers, to look after him and as an adult he would have been such a great burden and a responsibility that our lives would have taken very different courses.
At school, in art, we were learning how to make marionettes, beginning with the heads. Firstly, we moulded the heads from pieces of plasticine and after we had greased them, we applied little strips of tissue paper and glue in several layers. When they had dried, we made incisions around the sides of the heads and carefully prised the two pieces apart. When they had been separated from the plasticine, we had to join the heads together again and finally, when they were dry, we had to paint them. This was the most exciting stage of the operation because now the heads were beginning to look like real puppets. We had chosen what characters we were going to make and I, being so mad on ballet, wanted to do Anna Pavlova dressed in her Dying Swan costume. However, Mrs. Andrews said that this was a very hackneyed subject and why didn’t I chose a costume from a less well-known ballet. I was disappointed because I had been looking forward to making her tutu of white net and decorating it with feathers. I decided that I would make my own Dying Swan at home.
One afternoon my parents returned from one of their regular visits to the auction rooms and told me that there was a puppet theatre amongst the lots currently on view. I threw down what I was doing, plunged out of the house, raced around the corner and along the next terrace to where the salerooms were situated and dived into the entrance. There were crowds of people examining the lots on view and I had to push my way through them. I looked around eagerly for the puppet theatre but all I could see where armchairs, tables and other boring items of furniture; and then I spotted it! I could not prevent myelf from gasping out loud with delight. I looked at it in awe. In reality, it was nothing more than a screen consisting of three hinged panels with a rectangular hole cut out of the centre one for the stage but in my imagination it was Covent Garden, Sadlers Wells and the Bolshoi all rolled into one. It was romance, fantasy and wonder incarnate. I had to have it. If I didn’t, my life would have no purpose. What if someone else bought it? It wouldn’t be fair; it would be wasted on some other person. It was destined for me. But how much would I have to pay for it? I had only a few shillings to my name. Reluctantly, with a last, yearning look at the puppet theatre, I left the salerooms and went home to tackle my parents.
‘Please will you get it for me?’
‘Well, only if it doesn’t go for too much.’
‘How much do you think it will go for?’
‘It’s hard to say. It depends on how many other people are interested in it.’
‘Do you think many people will be after it?’
‘Well, it’s not very likely but you never know. It only takes one other interested party to push up the bidding.’
‘How much will you bid for it, then?’
‘We’ll have to wait and see.’
‘Yes, but how much? ‘
So it went on, and for the whole of the following week I pestered my parents relentlessly. There was nothing else - nothing - that I wanted in the whole world other than that puppet theatre. If I didn’t get it, I would die.
On the afternoon of the sale I couldn’t concentrate on my work at school and kept looking at the clock. How slowly time seemed to passing! What were my parents doing right now? Perhaps the bidding had begun for the theatre. Perhaps, at that precise moment, someone else was putting up their hand. No! it was unthinkable: the theatre was going to be mine. It had to be. At last, it was time to go home and I flew back to Clare Terrace. Had it ever taken so long to get from school to home? I was running as fast as I could yet getting nowhere. After an interminable age, I reached our front gate, hurled myself through it, flung open the porch door and charged into the house.
‘Did you get it?’
There was an agonising pause; my mother was tormenting me.
‘Yes,’ she laughed, when she saw I could bear the suspense no longer.
‘Oh! Where is it?’
I had to see it to prove to myself that it wasn’t a dream.
‘Your dad’s picking it up this evening.’
For the next few weeks every spare moment I had was devoted to my puppet theatre. I made curtains for it and painted scenery. I was going to produce my own version of Swan Lake and was working on the leading ballerina. I had a bit of a setback because our dog, Bosun, got hold of the head I had moulded for her and chewed it to pieces and I had to make another. Her arms, legs and torso were constructed from stockinette padded with kapock and articulated with small strips of leather. I had no idea how to attatch the strings and make the rods because we hadn’t reached that stage in our puppet making at school but that minor detail didn’t deter me. I sewed a tutu from white net and adorned it with silver sequins and the smallest white feathers I could find and made tiny pointe shoes from a scrap of pink satin. When she was finished, I thought she looked beautiful. My puppet theatre was the most cherished thing I had ever owned and throughout those weeks my happiness knew no bounds.
Despite the trials of early adolescence I was still able to concentrate on my school work and enjoy my favourite lessons. My end-of-term reports were good and I was awarded school prizes which were handed out as book tokens on speech days. My school friends and I exchanged confidences and discussed boys. Jenny had fallen in love with Tommy Steele and invited me to her house because she wanted me to watch with her a television performance he was giving.
‘Then we can both swoon together!’ she declared, happily.
I didn’t know what to reply to that. Tommy Steele didn’t appeal to me and, besides, with those teeth he was a dental disaster. I had to tell Jenny that I wasn’t keen on him. She was incredulous.
‘Well, then - who do you like?’ she asked.
‘Nobody, really.’
‘But you must like somebody, otherwise you’re not normal!’
I was too embarrassed to tell her that I did, in fact, have a secret passion. I had seen in Falmouth a poster advertising a forthcoming piano concert. On the poster was a photograph of the profile of a handsome young man who was the very personification of the romantic hero. His name was Peter Katin and I could not wait for the day of the performance so that I could see him in the flesh. When I bought my ticket I asked if I might possibly be allowed to have one of the posters after the concert and not only did they say I might but also asked me if I would like it autographed. My friend Penny was very envious because she had romantic notions similar to my own. In fact, she had a big crush on a roadsweeper, of all people, because she said he looked aristocratic. Perhaps she thought he was some Russian prince in disguise.
But it was not long before Peter Katin was displaced as the object of my admiration and embodiment of the romantic ideal. A new master had come to the school to teach German and from the very first moment I saw him, I conceived an ardent passion. He was called Mr. Sherwood and he was tall, dark and strikingly good-looking. He had about him a glamour that you did not associate with schoolmasters; in fact, he was so handsome that he could have been a film star. I was helplessly smitten. I looked forward to German lessons more than any other and worked so hard to please Mr. Sherwood that I picked up the language quickly and in tests and for homework achieved the highest marks. I desperately wanted him to notice me, to favour me over the other girls. In class, I drew surreptitious sketches of him and at home translated these into as lifelike a portrait as I was capable. I pinned it on to the wall of my bedroom so that I could gaze at it and imagine myself in all sorts of romantic situations with him in which I would not be a mere, silly schoolgirl but an alluring, beautiful young woman..........
At long last, my mother agreed to let me have my hair styled. An appointment was duly made and I set off full of excitement because I was convinced that I was about to undergo a transformation from schoolgirl to fashionable young woman that would be so miraculous no-one would recognise me afterwards. But my mother called me back.
‘Here,’ she said, ‘give this note to the hairdresser!’
Dismayed, I waited until I was out of sight of our house then I read what she had written.
‘Please do Margaret’s hair nicely,’ said the note, ‘and I will recommend you to the High School.’
I seethed with silent indignation. Who did she think she was? At my school she had no influence, no authority whatsoever yet her note conveyed the impression that, at the very least, she was Head of the Board of Governers. It was preposterous! Besides, the hairdresser was, no doubt, fully qualified and experienced and would be highly offended by such a slight on her competence. I had no intention of handing over her ridiculous note and looked around for a litter bin in which to throw it. Then I stopped in my tracks. The first thing my mother would be sure to ask when I returned home would be:
‘Did you give the hairdresser my note?’
I would have to lie and she would read the guilt on my face, as she always did. She would be livid. I agonised over whether to face acute embarrassment at the hairdressers’ or maternal wrath. I was still agonising by the time I reached my destination and, at the very last minute, decided I had no choice but to deliver the wretched note. The hairdresser’s face was expressionless as she unfolded the piece of paper and ran her eye over it. She sat me down in a cubicle, closed the curtains, excused herself, and disappeared. I heard her whispering to someone and a woman’s voice replied:
‘How ridiculous!’
My cheeks burned with shame and humiliation and I knew beyond all doubt that I would never forgive my mother for spoiling an occasion to which I’d been looking forward for so long.
As it turned out, I didn’t very much like my new hairstyle. It was too stiff and formal and when I returned home, the first thing I did was to give it a vigorous brushing. Afterwards, with a little practice, I soon found that I was able to wash and set it myself into a style which was much more pleasing. Compared to today’s vast range of haircare products, those of the post-war period and the following fifties were decidedly primitive. As a child, I used to hate having my hair washed. Shampoo was bought in big, paper sachets and as it came in powdered form, you had to dissolve it first in warm water. I had to sit on a chair with my head over the kitchen sink and a flannel over my eyes while my mother tipped the jug over my hair. Despite the flannel, the shampoo always got into my eyes and stung unbearably and the shampoo was so alkaline that it was necessary to neutralize it with a final rinse of vinegar. Gradually, though, products improved and a much wider choice became available. I used to buy shampoo in individual, transparent sachets and setting lotion in individual phials which were so highly coloured and perfumed it is hardly surprising that I regularly suffered from scalp irritation.
To complement my new hairstyle, I wanted to experiment with make-up. My mother said I was too young to start plastering my face with all that muck but if I really wanted to, I could try a hint of mascara. So I bought myself a compact of Rimmel’s black mascara which was in the form of a little block, together with a brush. You spat on to the mascara, worked it up to a paste with the brush then applied it to your lashes. It was a very uhygienic procedure and it’s a wonder I didn’t end up with chronic conjunctivitis. Fluttering my newly blackened eyes I went in search of my sister.
‘Can you see anything different about me?’
‘No,’ said Jean, after a brief glance.
‘Look at my eyes! Can’t you see anything?’
‘No.’
‘My eyelashes! Look at my eyelashes!’
Jean was getting fed up by now. She looked at my eyes but it was obvious that she could see nothing remarkable about them.
‘I’ve got mascara on. Can’t you see?’
‘Oh, yes, I can see the difference now,’ she lied.
Later, I bought myself a lipstick from Woolworth’s and applied it liberally.
‘Go upstairs and take some of that lipstick off!’ demanded my mother as I was on my way out. I went upstairs, waited a few moments, then went down again, my lipstick untouched.
‘That’s better!’ she said, approvingly.
I was not content with the lipstick and the mascara and decided that there were many more essential items of feminine adornment which I had to have. For these, though, I required money and so I would have to think of ways of earning some. People always admired the hand-painted greetings cards which I gave them so I thought it might be a good idea to try to sell some of my designs. I took a selection to a gift shop in Falmouth and they said that they would be delighted to try to sell them for me. They even gave me some embossed photograph mounts which, folded over, made very professional-looking cards. I was so proud when I saw my handiwork displayed in the shop window. I also hit upon the idea of selling home-made sweets, another skill I had acquired. Without considering the cost of ingredients, to which I helped myself from the kitchen cupboard, or the electricity, I made coconut ice, fudge and toffee. It looked and tasted so good that I consumed a good deal of it before selling the rest to my school friends. I’m always reminded of that coconut ice when, in early spring, I see the almond trees cascading down the mountainside in a glorious display of pink and white blossom outside my kitchen door here in Spain.
Once, my mother had given the remains of a steamed marmalade pudding which I’d made to Fred ( I think she rather fancied him ) of Fred’s Stores and he was so impressed that he asked me if I’d make him puddings on a regular basis; he said he’d supply the ingredients, of course. He also paid me generously and that helped to swell my modest funds considerably. Fred had acquired a boxer dog, called Peter, which used to roam all over Falmouth, getting himself and Fred into trouble. One Christmas, Fred accidentally shut him into the storeroom above the shop where he consumed the better part of the season’s stock of chocolate and was, in consequence, very ill indeed.
It was while we were living at Clare Terrace that a telegram arrived one day for my father and because he was at work, my mother opened it. To receive a telegram was an event which rarely happened in our household, so Jean and I were agog. But not a word was said: she merely popped the message into the pocket of her apron and carried on as though nothing had happened. When my father came home for lunch and stepped into the hall, she announced:
‘Your father’s dead.’
Just like that, as though she might have said:
‘The electricity bill arrived today,’ or ‘The carving knife needs sharpening.’
Jean and I were stunned. We had been fond of our grandfather and it seemed hardly any time at all since he’d stayed with us; we’d walked with him all over Falmouth and he’d stopped to stare at the sea and say, as he always did:
‘If you lived in London, you’d pay five pounds just to look at that view.’
My mother’s early morning bad moods were now so bad that Jean and I were in the habit, during weekends and school holidays, of sneaking out of the house before she got up and not returning until it was safe to assume she’d had her breakfast and was in a less volatile frame of mind. Neither of us could bear to watch her consume her breakfast which often consisted of a watery boiled egg over which she’d slurp noisily. She’d look up, see our undisguised expressions of disgust and say:
‘If you don’t like it, sod off!’
So we sodded off.
It was during our early morning wanderings that we would often, in the vicinity of Gyllingvase Beach, encounter a very distinguished-looking and immaculately dressed gentleman who, whenever he met us, would take off his hat and wish us a good morning. Since he was obviously a person of high status and importance, we were highly flattered. We wondered who he could be but it was not until some considerable time later that we discovered our elderly gentleman was, in fact, Howard Spring, the famous novelist.
Although I had absolutely no interest in history whatsoever, I was pleased when Miss Bates suggested that I choose, as the subject of the project we were to be doing in the holidays pertaining to the Tudor period, sport and entertainment. My imagination was fired and I set about scouring the history section in Falmouth Library for ideas and information. Dancing was a popular activity, it seemed, and I spent hours drawing and painting a court dancer wearing an elaborate costume which consisted of a piece of real silk glued on to the paper and decorated with lace and tiny beads. When the project was handed in it earned me a shool prize, many house points and a good deal of praise. Mr. Duggan, the music master, commissioned me to draw a picture using the same technique with which I’d done my Tudor dancer. He was very pleased with it and gave me a book token as payment. On my report at the end of term he wrote:
‘The delicacy of Margaret’s appliqué work is a reflection of herself.’
I glowed with a quiet pride but my mother made a scathing remark about my lack of progress and poor report in maths and my self-esteem was, as usual, shattered.
Margaret Merry lives in Spain if you are looking to buy a property in Spain please visit http://www.cheappropertyspain.net
After all, I didn’t have to wait too long for the purchase of my first, proper bra. My anguish came to an end on the day my mother took me to a dingy little shop at the far end of the town where they had a selection of reasonably priced underwear. The assistant was so patronising that I was too embarrassed to accept her offer of trying on a bra for size and settled for the first thing which my mother deemed suitable. It was of white satin moulded into two, conical shapes by means of a great many rows of circular stitching and although it did nothing as far as figure enhancement was concerned, at least I would be able to join the ranks of those superior, much envied, bra-wearing members of my class.
Next to her first bra, a girl’s second most important acquisition was her first suspender belt and nylons. I had come to loathe the childish, white ankle socks which we were obliged to wear as part of our school uniform and I longed to show off my legs; they were the only part of my body with which I could find no fault. Besides, girls who wore stockings looked so grown up. In the fifties, nylons were expensive and you learned to take care of them. If you had a ladder which wasn’t too bad, you could take the stocking to the Scotch Wool Shop in Falmouth where they would mend it for you; even so, it was fairly expensive to have this done. I had my first pair of stockings in time for the school’s Christmas party and I felt very superior when I looked around and saw that there were a few girls in my class still wearing ankle socks.
A boy had begun to take an interest me. He had spotted me out walking one day and had followed me home. After that, he hung about waiting for me and followed me whenever I went out of the house. He certainly wasn’t shy; he introduced himself as Roger Jackett and asked if I’d like to go out with him. He was a decidedly unprepossessing boy, with not a single nice feature to commend him and, if that were not bad enough, had a very broad Cornish accent. I thought he was decidedly common and was terrified that my mother might see him and think I was encouraging him. To my extreme vexation my sister realised what was going on and made jokes about him.
‘Your boyfriend’s ugly!’ she taunted.
‘He’s not my boyfriend!’
‘Yes he is. You love him!’
‘Shut up! I do not! ‘
‘Yes you do!’
‘I can’t even stand him, so there!’
‘Well, I’m going to tell Mum.’
‘You say anything and I’ll kill you.’
And so it went on. I managed to avoid him by changing my routine but one afternoon, while I was out with my friend Jean, I saw him in the distance hurrying towards us with a broad grin on his silly face. I was filled with dismay; what would my refined and sophisticated friend think of my having anything, no matter how remote, to do with an awful boy like that? I looked around in desperation for some means of avoiding the encounter but he was bearing down on us, rapidly. The only thing I could do was to ignore him and pretend I didn’t know him. But, with characteristic persistence, and quite undaunted by the look I gave him which should have sunk him into the very earth, he followed us all the way home. I was humiliated, ashamed and so angry that the next time I saw him I told him to clear off and leave me alone: eventually, he took the hint.
It was not very long after this that I encountered my first flasher. Whenever I was visiting Auntie Frances, I used to take a short cut through a wooded area known as The Dell. It was a lonely place, frequented by dog-walkers and courting couples who took advantage of the seats which were placed at intervals along the path. I was returning home from Auntie’s one afternoon, by way of the Dell, when a youth stepped out from the undergrowth, startling me so much that I jumped.
‘Do you want to play with this?’ he asked.
I gave him the briefest of glances and saw that his fly was undone and that he was holding something pink and protruding in his hand. A familiar stab of fear shot through my body. Instinct warned me not to make eye contact and I looked away, quickly. With my heart hammering inside my chest, I walked on as though I hadn’t heard him and although I didn’t turn my head to look, I knew he was following me.
‘Where do you live?’ he asked, coming up behind me.
If only someone would come along! Why was there not a soul about that afternoon? I continued on my way, my eyes averted, resisting the temptation to run.
‘Over there.’ I said, pointing to the nearest house and making as though I were going in that direction. The house had a garden with a gate opening on to the footpath and I think he believed me when I told him that I lived there because, just as silently and suddenly as he’d appeared, he vanished. With that, I began to run as fast as I could and didn’t stop until I’d reached our house: I never went alone to the Dell again.
During the summer holidays, the nephew of one of our neighbours in Clare Terrace used to come to stay with her every year for a fortnight. His name was Nigel and he was a few months older than I was and although we had ignored each other previously, now he began to take an interest in me. Unlike poor Roger Jackett, he was not unattractive as such; it was just that, with his round, babyish face and fair hair which had a way of forming itself into a quiff on his forehead, he bore a most unfortunate resemblance to Hergé’s Tintin and every time I saw him I had to quell the urge not to laugh. We went for walks together and he told me how brilliant he was at school, how wealthy his parents were and how much he excelled at sport; I might have believed some of his accounts of his remarkable achievements but when he told me that one of his uncles was Billy Smart, the famous circus owner, I realised that everything he’d been telling me was invention and that in reality he was just another ordinary, rather immature boy. All the same, I agreed to accompany him on a ferry trip to Flushing, across the water from Falmouth, if my mother allowed me.
Although I had made it obvious that I was sceptical about all things he’d told me, it didn’t prevent him from continuing with his improbable boasting all the way to Flushing and back. Clearly, he was hoping to impress me but did he really imagine I was so stupid that I was going to believe such wild stories? Billy Smart indeed! When we boarded the ferry for the return journey, he perched himself on a railing, put his feet on the seat below and assumed a nonchalant attitude which he no doubt imagined was very cool and sophisticated. When the ferryman went up to him and ordered him to take his feet off the seat I was deeply embarrassed and tried to look as though I wasn’t with him.
Later that afternoon, my mother came into my bedroom and shut the door behind her. That meant trouble.
‘Have you been behaving yourself with that boy?’ she demanded.
I looked at her, blankly. Had she heard about Nigel getting told off for putting his feet on the seat? I’d had nothing to do with it and hadn’t, as far as I could recall, misbehaved in any way whatsoever.
‘You know what I mean!’
But I didn’t know what she meant. From her expression, I could tell that it was something distasteful, and I flushed. The following day, when Nigel called to ask if I was going out, my mother insisted that my sister went, too.
That summer, my mother was busy with guests and as a result my shell ornament enterprise was very successful. As well as bed-and-breakfast, she also did evening meals and I was called upon to help with the preparation and cooking. I don’t know what the guests must have thought of the food my mother served up; her cooking had certainly not improved over the years. The only thing that was ever praised was the Yorkshire pudding, the mixing and baking of which I had sole responsibility. When it came to food, she had absolutely no imagination and regarded anything new or unfamiliar with deep suspicion. She relied a lot upon roast dinners because she found these required less work; however, she had no idea how to cook a joint properly. She would smother the meat with a thick coating of lard, shove it into a roasting tin and leave it in the oven for so long that when it was finally taken out it was only a fraction of its original size. Even fatty pieces of pork were plastered with lard and everything - beef, pork or lamb - was served with mint sauce and thin gravy made with nothing more than an Oxo cube and water.
Sometimes she would bake pies made from gritty minced beef boiled up with onions and an Oxo cube. She would line a large plate with pastry, add the cooked mince and then cover it with more pastry and if she was feeling particularly daring, she would vary the pie by using sausage meat instead of mince. Fish was always fried - again in lard - and chips cooked in beef dripping. She shunned cooking oil and could not be persuaded even to try it. I was always astonished when guests returned the following year. During the winter months we had lodgers - students from the art school - in the attics. When they were out of the house, my mother would go through all their possessions. One day, she found a bank statement belonging to one young man and was surprised to discover that he was very well off. She kept talking about it and I was terrified that she would be found out. I was appalled that she could do such a thing; no-one had the right to go through people’s personal effects. Later, I discovered that she was an expert in steaming open envelopes and that there was not a letter delivered to the house that was not intercepted by her.
It was while we were living in Clare House that she suffered a miscarriage. One morning, my father didn’t go to work and my mother stayed in bed. A district nurse came to the house and there was much toing and froing with bowls of water, towels and sheets. The bedroom door remained closed and I could hear them conversing in low voices. When she had recovered, my mother told me that she had been going to have a baby but it had died before it was due to be born. It would have been a little boy, she said. She had always wanted a son and the loss of this one must have been a great sorrow. It occurred to me then that this had not been the first time she had lost a baby: I recalled previous incidents when we had been visited by district nurses and there had been much activity with bowls of water, towels and sheets and hushed conversations behind closed bedroom doors. Some years later, after I had been told by a specialist that I should consider very seriously whether or not I should have children because of the risk of passing on my brittle bones, I realised that all the miscarriages that my mother had had were almost certainly due to the condition. It is most probable that her final miscarriage was caused by the baby suffering a major trauma, such as a broken neck; it is not unusual for this to happen if you are affected with brittle bone disease.
I have sometimes discussed with my sister what would have happened if our brother had survived. Doubtless, he would have suffered a great many fratures and because of the seriousness of his condition been confined to a wheelchair. Our mother would have made us feel that it was our duty, not hers, to look after him and as an adult he would have been such a great burden and a responsibility that our lives would have taken very different courses.
At school, in art, we were learning how to make marionettes, beginning with the heads. Firstly, we moulded the heads from pieces of plasticine and after we had greased them, we applied little strips of tissue paper and glue in several layers. When they had dried, we made incisions around the sides of the heads and carefully prised the two pieces apart. When they had been separated from the plasticine, we had to join the heads together again and finally, when they were dry, we had to paint them. This was the most exciting stage of the operation because now the heads were beginning to look like real puppets. We had chosen what characters we were going to make and I, being so mad on ballet, wanted to do Anna Pavlova dressed in her Dying Swan costume. However, Mrs. Andrews said that this was a very hackneyed subject and why didn’t I chose a costume from a less well-known ballet. I was disappointed because I had been looking forward to making her tutu of white net and decorating it with feathers. I decided that I would make my own Dying Swan at home.
One afternoon my parents returned from one of their regular visits to the auction rooms and told me that there was a puppet theatre amongst the lots currently on view. I threw down what I was doing, plunged out of the house, raced around the corner and along the next terrace to where the salerooms were situated and dived into the entrance. There were crowds of people examining the lots on view and I had to push my way through them. I looked around eagerly for the puppet theatre but all I could see where armchairs, tables and other boring items of furniture; and then I spotted it! I could not prevent myelf from gasping out loud with delight. I looked at it in awe. In reality, it was nothing more than a screen consisting of three hinged panels with a rectangular hole cut out of the centre one for the stage but in my imagination it was Covent Garden, Sadlers Wells and the Bolshoi all rolled into one. It was romance, fantasy and wonder incarnate. I had to have it. If I didn’t, my life would have no purpose. What if someone else bought it? It wouldn’t be fair; it would be wasted on some other person. It was destined for me. But how much would I have to pay for it? I had only a few shillings to my name. Reluctantly, with a last, yearning look at the puppet theatre, I left the salerooms and went home to tackle my parents.
‘Please will you get it for me?’
‘Well, only if it doesn’t go for too much.’
‘How much do you think it will go for?’
‘It’s hard to say. It depends on how many other people are interested in it.’
‘Do you think many people will be after it?’
‘Well, it’s not very likely but you never know. It only takes one other interested party to push up the bidding.’
‘How much will you bid for it, then?’
‘We’ll have to wait and see.’
‘Yes, but how much? ‘
So it went on, and for the whole of the following week I pestered my parents relentlessly. There was nothing else - nothing - that I wanted in the whole world other than that puppet theatre. If I didn’t get it, I would die.
On the afternoon of the sale I couldn’t concentrate on my work at school and kept looking at the clock. How slowly time seemed to passing! What were my parents doing right now? Perhaps the bidding had begun for the theatre. Perhaps, at that precise moment, someone else was putting up their hand. No! it was unthinkable: the theatre was going to be mine. It had to be. At last, it was time to go home and I flew back to Clare Terrace. Had it ever taken so long to get from school to home? I was running as fast as I could yet getting nowhere. After an interminable age, I reached our front gate, hurled myself through it, flung open the porch door and charged into the house.
‘Did you get it?’
There was an agonising pause; my mother was tormenting me.
‘Yes,’ she laughed, when she saw I could bear the suspense no longer.
‘Oh! Where is it?’
I had to see it to prove to myself that it wasn’t a dream.
‘Your dad’s picking it up this evening.’
For the next few weeks every spare moment I had was devoted to my puppet theatre. I made curtains for it and painted scenery. I was going to produce my own version of Swan Lake and was working on the leading ballerina. I had a bit of a setback because our dog, Bosun, got hold of the head I had moulded for her and chewed it to pieces and I had to make another. Her arms, legs and torso were constructed from stockinette padded with kapock and articulated with small strips of leather. I had no idea how to attatch the strings and make the rods because we hadn’t reached that stage in our puppet making at school but that minor detail didn’t deter me. I sewed a tutu from white net and adorned it with silver sequins and the smallest white feathers I could find and made tiny pointe shoes from a scrap of pink satin. When she was finished, I thought she looked beautiful. My puppet theatre was the most cherished thing I had ever owned and throughout those weeks my happiness knew no bounds.
Despite the trials of early adolescence I was still able to concentrate on my school work and enjoy my favourite lessons. My end-of-term reports were good and I was awarded school prizes which were handed out as book tokens on speech days. My school friends and I exchanged confidences and discussed boys. Jenny had fallen in love with Tommy Steele and invited me to her house because she wanted me to watch with her a television performance he was giving.
‘Then we can both swoon together!’ she declared, happily.
I didn’t know what to reply to that. Tommy Steele didn’t appeal to me and, besides, with those teeth he was a dental disaster. I had to tell Jenny that I wasn’t keen on him. She was incredulous.
‘Well, then - who do you like?’ she asked.
‘Nobody, really.’
‘But you must like somebody, otherwise you’re not normal!’
I was too embarrassed to tell her that I did, in fact, have a secret passion. I had seen in Falmouth a poster advertising a forthcoming piano concert. On the poster was a photograph of the profile of a handsome young man who was the very personification of the romantic hero. His name was Peter Katin and I could not wait for the day of the performance so that I could see him in the flesh. When I bought my ticket I asked if I might possibly be allowed to have one of the posters after the concert and not only did they say I might but also asked me if I would like it autographed. My friend Penny was very envious because she had romantic notions similar to my own. In fact, she had a big crush on a roadsweeper, of all people, because she said he looked aristocratic. Perhaps she thought he was some Russian prince in disguise.
But it was not long before Peter Katin was displaced as the object of my admiration and embodiment of the romantic ideal. A new master had come to the school to teach German and from the very first moment I saw him, I conceived an ardent passion. He was called Mr. Sherwood and he was tall, dark and strikingly good-looking. He had about him a glamour that you did not associate with schoolmasters; in fact, he was so handsome that he could have been a film star. I was helplessly smitten. I looked forward to German lessons more than any other and worked so hard to please Mr. Sherwood that I picked up the language quickly and in tests and for homework achieved the highest marks. I desperately wanted him to notice me, to favour me over the other girls. In class, I drew surreptitious sketches of him and at home translated these into as lifelike a portrait as I was capable. I pinned it on to the wall of my bedroom so that I could gaze at it and imagine myself in all sorts of romantic situations with him in which I would not be a mere, silly schoolgirl but an alluring, beautiful young woman..........
At long last, my mother agreed to let me have my hair styled. An appointment was duly made and I set off full of excitement because I was convinced that I was about to undergo a transformation from schoolgirl to fashionable young woman that would be so miraculous no-one would recognise me afterwards. But my mother called me back.
‘Here,’ she said, ‘give this note to the hairdresser!’
Dismayed, I waited until I was out of sight of our house then I read what she had written.
‘Please do Margaret’s hair nicely,’ said the note, ‘and I will recommend you to the High School.’
I seethed with silent indignation. Who did she think she was? At my school she had no influence, no authority whatsoever yet her note conveyed the impression that, at the very least, she was Head of the Board of Governers. It was preposterous! Besides, the hairdresser was, no doubt, fully qualified and experienced and would be highly offended by such a slight on her competence. I had no intention of handing over her ridiculous note and looked around for a litter bin in which to throw it. Then I stopped in my tracks. The first thing my mother would be sure to ask when I returned home would be:
‘Did you give the hairdresser my note?’
I would have to lie and she would read the guilt on my face, as she always did. She would be livid. I agonised over whether to face acute embarrassment at the hairdressers’ or maternal wrath. I was still agonising by the time I reached my destination and, at the very last minute, decided I had no choice but to deliver the wretched note. The hairdresser’s face was expressionless as she unfolded the piece of paper and ran her eye over it. She sat me down in a cubicle, closed the curtains, excused herself, and disappeared. I heard her whispering to someone and a woman’s voice replied:
‘How ridiculous!’
My cheeks burned with shame and humiliation and I knew beyond all doubt that I would never forgive my mother for spoiling an occasion to which I’d been looking forward for so long.
As it turned out, I didn’t very much like my new hairstyle. It was too stiff and formal and when I returned home, the first thing I did was to give it a vigorous brushing. Afterwards, with a little practice, I soon found that I was able to wash and set it myself into a style which was much more pleasing. Compared to today’s vast range of haircare products, those of the post-war period and the following fifties were decidedly primitive. As a child, I used to hate having my hair washed. Shampoo was bought in big, paper sachets and as it came in powdered form, you had to dissolve it first in warm water. I had to sit on a chair with my head over the kitchen sink and a flannel over my eyes while my mother tipped the jug over my hair. Despite the flannel, the shampoo always got into my eyes and stung unbearably and the shampoo was so alkaline that it was necessary to neutralize it with a final rinse of vinegar. Gradually, though, products improved and a much wider choice became available. I used to buy shampoo in individual, transparent sachets and setting lotion in individual phials which were so highly coloured and perfumed it is hardly surprising that I regularly suffered from scalp irritation.
To complement my new hairstyle, I wanted to experiment with make-up. My mother said I was too young to start plastering my face with all that muck but if I really wanted to, I could try a hint of mascara. So I bought myself a compact of Rimmel’s black mascara which was in the form of a little block, together with a brush. You spat on to the mascara, worked it up to a paste with the brush then applied it to your lashes. It was a very uhygienic procedure and it’s a wonder I didn’t end up with chronic conjunctivitis. Fluttering my newly blackened eyes I went in search of my sister.
‘Can you see anything different about me?’
‘No,’ said Jean, after a brief glance.
‘Look at my eyes! Can’t you see anything?’
‘No.’
‘My eyelashes! Look at my eyelashes!’
Jean was getting fed up by now. She looked at my eyes but it was obvious that she could see nothing remarkable about them.
‘I’ve got mascara on. Can’t you see?’
‘Oh, yes, I can see the difference now,’ she lied.
Later, I bought myself a lipstick from Woolworth’s and applied it liberally.
‘Go upstairs and take some of that lipstick off!’ demanded my mother as I was on my way out. I went upstairs, waited a few moments, then went down again, my lipstick untouched.
‘That’s better!’ she said, approvingly.
I was not content with the lipstick and the mascara and decided that there were many more essential items of feminine adornment which I had to have. For these, though, I required money and so I would have to think of ways of earning some. People always admired the hand-painted greetings cards which I gave them so I thought it might be a good idea to try to sell some of my designs. I took a selection to a gift shop in Falmouth and they said that they would be delighted to try to sell them for me. They even gave me some embossed photograph mounts which, folded over, made very professional-looking cards. I was so proud when I saw my handiwork displayed in the shop window. I also hit upon the idea of selling home-made sweets, another skill I had acquired. Without considering the cost of ingredients, to which I helped myself from the kitchen cupboard, or the electricity, I made coconut ice, fudge and toffee. It looked and tasted so good that I consumed a good deal of it before selling the rest to my school friends. I’m always reminded of that coconut ice when, in early spring, I see the almond trees cascading down the mountainside in a glorious display of pink and white blossom outside my kitchen door here in Spain.
Once, my mother had given the remains of a steamed marmalade pudding which I’d made to Fred ( I think she rather fancied him ) of Fred’s Stores and he was so impressed that he asked me if I’d make him puddings on a regular basis; he said he’d supply the ingredients, of course. He also paid me generously and that helped to swell my modest funds considerably. Fred had acquired a boxer dog, called Peter, which used to roam all over Falmouth, getting himself and Fred into trouble. One Christmas, Fred accidentally shut him into the storeroom above the shop where he consumed the better part of the season’s stock of chocolate and was, in consequence, very ill indeed.
It was while we were living at Clare Terrace that a telegram arrived one day for my father and because he was at work, my mother opened it. To receive a telegram was an event which rarely happened in our household, so Jean and I were agog. But not a word was said: she merely popped the message into the pocket of her apron and carried on as though nothing had happened. When my father came home for lunch and stepped into the hall, she announced:
‘Your father’s dead.’
Just like that, as though she might have said:
‘The electricity bill arrived today,’ or ‘The carving knife needs sharpening.’
Jean and I were stunned. We had been fond of our grandfather and it seemed hardly any time at all since he’d stayed with us; we’d walked with him all over Falmouth and he’d stopped to stare at the sea and say, as he always did:
‘If you lived in London, you’d pay five pounds just to look at that view.’
My mother’s early morning bad moods were now so bad that Jean and I were in the habit, during weekends and school holidays, of sneaking out of the house before she got up and not returning until it was safe to assume she’d had her breakfast and was in a less volatile frame of mind. Neither of us could bear to watch her consume her breakfast which often consisted of a watery boiled egg over which she’d slurp noisily. She’d look up, see our undisguised expressions of disgust and say:
‘If you don’t like it, sod off!’
So we sodded off.
It was during our early morning wanderings that we would often, in the vicinity of Gyllingvase Beach, encounter a very distinguished-looking and immaculately dressed gentleman who, whenever he met us, would take off his hat and wish us a good morning. Since he was obviously a person of high status and importance, we were highly flattered. We wondered who he could be but it was not until some considerable time later that we discovered our elderly gentleman was, in fact, Howard Spring, the famous novelist.
Although I had absolutely no interest in history whatsoever, I was pleased when Miss Bates suggested that I choose, as the subject of the project we were to be doing in the holidays pertaining to the Tudor period, sport and entertainment. My imagination was fired and I set about scouring the history section in Falmouth Library for ideas and information. Dancing was a popular activity, it seemed, and I spent hours drawing and painting a court dancer wearing an elaborate costume which consisted of a piece of real silk glued on to the paper and decorated with lace and tiny beads. When the project was handed in it earned me a shool prize, many house points and a good deal of praise. Mr. Duggan, the music master, commissioned me to draw a picture using the same technique with which I’d done my Tudor dancer. He was very pleased with it and gave me a book token as payment. On my report at the end of term he wrote:
‘The delicacy of Margaret’s appliqué work is a reflection of herself.’
I glowed with a quiet pride but my mother made a scathing remark about my lack of progress and poor report in maths and my self-esteem was, as usual, shattered.
Margaret Merry lives in Spain if you are looking to buy a property in Spain please visit http://www.cheappropertyspain.net
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