My memory of this period goes in and out of focus. The outstanding impression was a quagmire of miserable circumstances. I cannot remember where Sydney was; being four years older, he only occasionally entered my consciousness. He was possibly living with Grandfather to relieve Mother’s penury. We seemed to vacillate from one abode to another, eventually ending up in a small garret at 3 Pownall Terrace.
I was well aware of the social stigma of our poverty. Even the poorest of children sat down to a home-cooked Sunday dinner. A roast at home meant respectability, a ritual that distinguished one poor class from another. Those who could not sit down to Sunday dinner at home were of the mendicant class, and we were that. Mother would send me to the nearest coffee-shop to buy a sixpenny dinner (meat and two vegetables). The shame of it – especially on Sunday! I would harry her for not preparing something at home, and she would vainly try to explain that cooking at home would cost twice as much.
However, one lucky Friday, after winning five shillings at horse-racing, Mother, to please me, decided to cook dinner on Sunday. Amongst other delectables she bought a piece of roasting meat that could not make up its mind whether to be beef or a lump of suet. It weighed about five pounds and had a sign stuck in it: ‘For Roasting’.
Mother, having no oven, used the landlady’s and, being too shy to keep going in and out of her kitchen, had haphazardly guessed the time needed to roast it. Consequently, to our dismay, our joint had shrunk to the size of a cricket ball. Nevertheless, in spite of Mother’s averring that our sixpenny dinners were less trouble and more palatable, I enjoyed it and felt the gratification of having lived up to the Joneses.
*
A sudden change came into our lives. Mother met an old friend who had become very prosperous, a flamboyant, good-looking, Junoesque type of woman who had given up the stage to become the mistress of a wealthy old colonel. She lived in the fashionable district of Stockwell; and in her enthusiasm at meeting Mother again, she invited us to stay with her during the summer. As Sydney was away in the country hop-picking, it took little inducement to persuade Mother, who, with the wizardry of her needle, made herself quite presentable, and I, dressed in my Sunday suit, a relic of the Eight Lancashire Lads, looked quite presentable for the occasion.
Thus overnight we were transported to a very sedate corner house in Lansdowne Square, ensconced in the lap of luxury, with a house full of servants, pink and blue bedrooms, chintz curtains and white bear-rugs; moreover, we lived on the fat of the land. How well I remember those large, blue, hothouse grapes that ornamented the sideboard in the dining-room and my feeling of guilt at their mysterious diminishing, looking more skeleton-like each day.
The household staff consisted of four women: the cook and three maids. In addition to Mother and me, there was another guest, a very tense, good-looking young man with a cropped red moustache. He was most charming and gentlemanly, and seemed a permanent fixture in the house – until the grey-whiskered Colonel appeared. Then the handsome young man would disappear.
The Colonel’s visits were sporadic, once or twice a week. While he was there, mystery and omnipresence pervaded the house, and Mother would tell me to keep out of the way and not to be seen. One day I ran into the hall as the Colonel was descending the stairs. He was a tall, stately gentleman in a frock-coat and top hat, a pink face, long grey side-burns and a bald head. He smiled benignly at me and went on his way.
I did not understand what all the hush and fuss was about and why the Colonel’s arrival created such an effect. But he never stayed long, and the young man with the cropped moustache would return, and the house would function normally again.
I grew very fond of the young man with the cropped moustache. We would take long walks together over Clapham Common with the lady’s two beautiful greyhound dogs. Clapham Common had an elegant atmosphere in those days. Even the chemist’s shop, where we occasionally made a purchase, exuded elegance with its familiar admixture of aromatic smells, perfumes, soaps and powders – ever since, the odour of certain chemists’ shops has a pleasant nostalgia. He advised Mother to have me take cold baths every morning to cure my asthma, and possibly they helped; they were most invigorating and I grew to like them.
It is remarkable how easily one adapts oneself to the social graces. How genteel and accustomed one becomes to creature comforts! In less than a week I took everything for granted. What a sense of well-being – going through that morning ritual, exercising the dogs, carrying their new brown leather leashes, then returning to a beautiful house with servants, to await lunch served in elegant style on silver platters.
Our back garden connected with another house whose occupants had as many servants as we had. They were a family of three, a young married couple and their son, who was about my own age and who had a nursery stocked with beautiful toys. I was often invited to play with him and to stay for dinner, and we became very good friends. His father held some important position in a City bank, and his mother was young and quite pretty.
One day I overheard our maid confidentially conversing with the boy’s maid, who was saying that their boy needed a governess. ‘That’s what this one needs,’ said our maid referring to me. I was thrilled to be looked upon as a child of the rich, but I never quite understood why she had elevated me to this status, unless it was to elevate herself by inferring that the people she worked for were
