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

the West Kents for they would have known his age, and he couldn’t go with the Territorials for they knew it too. But I thought the Royal Fusiliers sounded lovely, like a bugle. He laid all the pipes in the trenches in France for the Pioneer Corps, and spent his fiftieth birthday at Ypres.
    I thought, early on in the war, that the front was like a barrier at a railway station: the Huns would be waiting at this white barrier (it was always white in my imagination), and when my father arrived with his grey tool chest and his men, then battle would commence.
    My brother Arthur, who was seventeen, followed my father to France very quickly, and as he was a gentleman in civvy street so he looked immaculate in his uniform. I was not concerned that two of the men in the family had gone, for lots of fathers and brothers were going to the front and I felt it had something to do with that terrible picture that was everywhere—on the railway wall, on the church railings, the bank, and ever so many on the police station walls. I knew it was a picture of Kitchener because my older brothers and sisters would play battles, but I hated the picture, for Kitchener had fierce yellow eyes which followed me all along the road. I used to walk backwards and in a circle and the eyes still looked straight at me. I touched the picture once and was surprised not to feel his pointing finger, for until I touched the poster I was sure his clenched hand and large stiff forefinger were sticking out from the hoarding and walls.
    My father had a bearskin which had to be returned to his old regiment as he was now in a new regiment, but one day the older girls were playing battles and jumping up from the trenches caught the bearskin alight on the gas mantle. Someone was despatched to the shops for a new inverted gas mantle before darkness fell while Mother vainly tried to repair the bearskin. She tried everything, even horsehair from her mattress but the shiny black hairs on the bearskin now had mangy patches, and I remember it hanging on her bedroom door like a diseased cat or a cat that had been in a fight, for the cats in the Grove were always fighting and mangy.
    My brother Charlie was only fifteen, and as soon as Father had left for the war he went out and joined up, although Mother cried and pleaded with him not to go. Mother always said her prayers and they were answered. Charlie was sent to the very district in France where my father’s battalion were stationed. By another stroke of fate a Sergeant in my father’s mess was in the Office when the new recruits were being checked in. He saw my father and said, ‘Chick, there’s a young boy with red curly hair who has just arrived from home. Christ, they’re sending them out young now, this one doesn’t look as if he’s had his napkins off long; you wouldn’t believe it, he’s got the same name as you, Chegwidden.’ Off my father went to the office but Charlie had been sent on and my father in a frantic state told the officer he thought the new recruit was his son, if so he was only just fifteen. The officer, a kindly man, traced Charlie who, much aggrieved, was sent back to his mum with some wounded. He bided his time impatiently and at the earliest age possible he joined the Royal Navy.
    Only Mother cried when her men went, so it seemed strange that Amy should sob so when Arthur went off to France. It seemed impossible to pacify her, and all the more mysterious that she should act this way for she and Arthur were always at loggerheads. Her tears, alas, were not for Arthur but for what he took with him. Arthur always used to frighten us when we had anything new, for he was a tryer-on. It was an extremely rare event to own something precious of our very own and whatever was shown to him he just had to try it on after inspecting it minutely and we always clamoured for it back. Someone had given Amy a bracelet made out of elephant’s hair. It was the first