Read Online Mother Knew Best by Dorothy Scannell - Free Book Online

sat down too at the top of the table behind her huge brown teapot. She would say, ‘Don’t talk to any strange men, and come in when the church bell rings.’ The church bell chimed for the hours but we knew she meant the evensong bell at 7:30 and without fail at the first evensong peal we would be away home as Mother had told us to.
    We took with us pieces of rope for skipping, but sometimes one girl would have an enormous thick tarred length of rope which stretched right across the road, then it was a mass effort, boys as well. The boys looked very awkward and could not skip like the girls. ‘Allee in together girls, never mind the weather girls,’ we would chant. The first one in under the heavy swinging rope had to be very durable with extra strong legs for it was some time before everybody was in and skipping, and if your legs turned weak the rope would give them a nasty bruise. The two children turning the heavy rope had to be Amazons too and woe betide them if they let the rope droop and so caused us to be out through no fault of our own.
    Sometimes we would have a grotto season. Someone would build the first grotto and then on every street comer a grotto would arise. The older girls, Winifred and Amy did quite well out of their grottos, Winnie calm and business-like, Amy small and artistic. Marjorie and I were afraid to participate in our friends’ grottos for Mother was against what she thought was begging. ‘Nothing but charity,’ she would say, ‘Never let anyone know you are poor. There is nothing to be ashamed of in being poor, it’s the pleading of poverty which is so shaming.’ Winifred and Amy were more daring—how they hid their ill-gotten gains I don’t know. In the end, of course, they were found out.
    The grottos were a work of love and squirrel-like searching for stones, flowers, leaves, broken ornaments, texts and pictures from magazines. I once saw a little blue egg on a grotto yet the only birds I ever saw, all the time I lived in Poplar, were sparrows. Perhaps in my ignorance I thought all birds were sparrows. Winnie and Amy would place their grotto near a public house—clever Winnie, for they might catch a reeling man whose thriftiness was befuddled by an extra pint. Winnie was found out because a man gave her a lot of money for one kiss. This monstrous act was reported to Mother who promptly bankrupted the grotto business. After this, how could us younger ones start up in business? We felt the older ones had all the fun when they were young.
    My best friend in Bath Street was Ivy White. She had an older brother called soppy Joe. He was quite elderly and always wore a blue serge suit and a bowler hat. He had a very big head with bloodshot eyes not placed quite straight in his head and he ambled about in a slow running way. Ivy told me her brother was silly because as a baby he had eaten a whole bar of carbolic soap by mistake. I thought this must be true because very daringly I licked a bar of carbolic soap at home. So terrible was this one light lick that I knew if a baby ate a whole bar it would send him silly. Why, it would even send a grown man silly, although of course a grown man was more sensible than a little baby.
    My friendship with Ivy began to wane on the day of the outing. I had no choice, for she had made me feel different from the other girls and spoilt everything. The poor children of Poplar were to be taken for a day’s outing to the country by a welfare organisation. We were to obtain our tickets beforehand at a nearby vicarage. Ivy was horrified when I joined the queue for my ticket. ‘Why, Dolly Chegwidden,’ she said loudly, ‘you can’t come on the outing, you’re rich.’ This statement coming from my friend, a girl I thought the same as I was, shocked me and I ran home to Mother in tears, expecting her to deny Ivy’s accusation. But worse was to come, for Mother looked pleased and said,