Of course there were times when I would stay home, and Mother would make tea and fry bread in beef dripping, which I relished, and for an hour she would read to me, for she was an excellent reader, and I would discover the delight of Mother’s company and would realize I had a better time staying home than going to the McCarthys’.
And now as I entered the room, she turned and looked reproachfully at me. I was shocked at her appearance; she was thin and haggard and her eyes had the look of someone in torment. An ineffable sadness came over me, and I was torn between an urge to stay home and keep her company, and a desire to get away from the wretchedness of it all. She looked at me apathetically. ‘Why don’t you run along to the McCarthys’?’ she said.
I was on the verge of tears. ‘Because I want to stay with you.’
She turned and looked vacantly out of the window. ‘You run along to the McCarthys’ and get your dinner – there’s nothing here for you.’
I felt a reproach in her tone, but I closed my mind to it. ‘I’ll go if you want me to,’ I said weakly.
She smiled wanly and stroked my head. ‘Yes, yes, you run along.’ And although I pleaded with her to let me stay, she insisted on my going. So I went with a feeling of guilt, leaving her sitting in that miserable garret alone, little realizing that within the next few days a terrible fate awaited her.
one
I WAS born on 16 April 1889, at eight O’clock at night, in East Lane, Walworth. Soon after, we moved to West Square, St George’s Road, Lambeth. According to Mother my world was a happy one. Our circumstances were moderately comfortable; we lived in three tastefully furnished rooms. One of my early recollections was that each night before Mother went to the theatre Sydney and I were lovingly tucked up in a comfortable bed and left in the care of the housemaid. In my world of three and a half years, all things were possible; if Sydney, who was four years older than I, could perform legerdemain and swallow a coin and make it come out through the back of his head, I could do the same; so I swallowed a halfpenny and Mother was obliged to send for a doctor.
Every night, after she came home from the theatre, it was her custom to leave delicacies on the table for Sydney and me to find in the morning – a slice of Neapolitan cake or candies – with the understanding that we were not to make a noise in the morning, as she usually slept late.
Mother was a soubrette on the variety stage, a mignonne in her late twenties, with fair complexion, violet-blue eyes and long light-brown hair that she could sit upon. Sydney and I adored our mother. Though she was not an exceptional beauty, we thought her divine-looking. Those who knew her told me in later years that she was dainty and attractive and had compelling charm. She took pride in dressing us up for Sunday excursions, Sydney in an Eton suit with long trousers and me in a blue velvet one with blue gloves to match. Such occasions were orgies of smugness, as we ambled along the Kennington Road.
London was sedate in those days. The tempo was sedate; even the horse-drawn tram-cars along Westminster Bridge Road went at a sedate pace and turned sedately on a revolving table at the terminal near the bridge. In Mother’s prosperous days we also lived in Westminster Bridge Road. Its atmosphere was gay and friendly with attractive shops, restaurants and music halls. The fruit-shop on the corner facing the Bridge was a galaxy of colour, with its neatly arranged pyramids of oranges, apples, pears and bananas outside, in contrast to the solemn grey Houses of Parliament directly across the river.
This was the London of my childhood, of my moods and awakenings: memories of Lambeth in the spring; of trivial incidents and things; of riding with Mother on top of a horse-bus trying to touch passing lilac-trees – of the many coloured bus tickets, orange, blue, pink and green, that bestrewed the pavement where the trams and buses stopped – of rubicund flower-girls at the corner of Westminster Bridge, making gay boutonnières, their adroit fingers manipulating tinsel and quivering fern – of the humid odour of freshly watered roses that affected me with a vague sadness – of melancholy Sundays and pale-faced parents and their children escorting toy windmills and coloured balloons over Westminster Bridge; and the maternal penny steamers that softly lowered their funnels as they glided under it. From such trivia I believe my soul was born.
Then objects in our sitting-room that affected my senses: Mother’s life-size painting of Nell Gwyn, which I disliked; the long-necked decanters on our sideboard, which depressed me, and the small round music-box with its enamelled surface depicting angels on clouds, which both pleased and baffled me. But my sixpenny toy chair bought from the gypsies I loved because it gave me an inordinate sense of possession.
Memories of epic moments: a visit to the Royal Aquarium,* viewing its side-shows with Mother, watching ‘She’, the live head of a lady smiling in flames, the sixpenny lucky dip, Mother lifting me up to a large sawdust barrel to pick a surprise packet which contained a candy whistle which would not blow and
