My mother later explained to me that while my grandparents immediately “took a fancy” to me, my father never did. He was called up to serve in the navy, leaving my mother pregnant with me. I was born while he was away at sea and he learned of my birth only through letters. In his letters to my mother he refers to her pregnancy as “your trouble” almost as though it were some kind of illness which did not concern him. When he was discharged from the navy in 1945 I was almost a year old. My mother says that he missed “all my baby ways” and therefore some of the experience of my growing up.
When I was seven years old my sister Elaine was born. In between my mother had given birth to a still born boy. She was diagnosed with what were then called “pregnancy heart problems”. So after she fell pregnant with my sister, my parents were advised to have no more children. I can recall being told the news that I was to have a new little sister, and saying that I didn’t want one. I am told by relatives, but do not recall, my reaction when my mother returned from the hospital with my new baby sister. “Fancy wasting your money on that. You could have got a good dog!”
Looking back I was, of course, very jealous because I had, in lower class parlance, “got my nose pushed out” by the new arrival. My sister was a very pretty child, even as a toddler. She resembled the infant Princess Anne with white blond curly hair. It was little wonder that she grew up to be the favoured child. Strangely enough my grandmother never really took to her in quite the same was she did with me, and my two first cousins. Feeling left out I spent more and more of my time at grandma’s house. I enjoyed playing alone with my dolls, making up plays and stories. This is what I mostly remember from my early years just after my sister was born.
I was told that I was often jealous and badly behaved. Little attention was paid to child psychology in those days, and certainly not in the class to which my parents belonged. So there was no attempt to make an older child feel loved and included when a new one came around. It is a chastening thing to suddenly discover that you are not the favoured child. The immediate reaction is, whats wrong with me? Why can I not be what my parents want?
And you spend then a large part of your life attempting to answer those questions.
In the years following the Second World War there was little in the way of disposable income for the average working family. In “respectable” working class households it was not the accepted thing for women to work. Their role was to stay at home to keep house, and look after the family budget. Every Friday when my father came home from work he would take out his wage packet. He was paid in cash as all working men were at that time. He would remove what he called his “beer” money and hand the rest to my mother. My father liked to visit the local pub two or three times a week as was the custom. However he never drank to excess and I can never recall seeing him drunk. It was simply a relief from the grind of interminable factory work.
My mother would sit at the kitchen table and count out the money into little piles. So much for the rent, the electricity meter, coal, and so on. What remained was for food and “extras” and we had to manage on that. I can recall one incident when I asked for money for sweets and my mother exploded that she had “only two shillings” in her purse to last until my father got paid. That evening my parents had a furious argument about money (or rather the lack of it) and my mother hit my father with her purse.
So I grew up in a home with very little cash and many arguments on the subject of money. When I was ten years old my mother sent me to school with cardboard in the soles of my shoes because they had holes in them. She said there was no money to buy me new ones. When I visited my grandmother that Sunday I asked “Can I dry my socks on your fire guard nana, because my feet are wet?” “Why are your feet wet child?” “Because there are holes in my shoes!”.
The following morning grandma took me into the shopping centre and bought me a pair of Clarks lace up shoes. They were not elegant, but they were good quality and sturdy.
When I was eleven years old I began what was then called “junior” school. When I asked about a school uniform there was, unsurprisingly, no money for that. Instead my mother took me to what was then called “Paddy’s Market” and bought me two second hand RAF skirts. They were almost down to my ankles and I felt ashamed. Once again my grandmother came to the rescue when I showed her what my mother expected me to go to school in. “You cant go to a new school like that child, you’ll be laughed at!” She said. She tool me into Walton Vale shopping centre where she bought me two new school skirts, two white blouses, and six pairs of plain white ankle socks. I was admonished to look after them, and I did.
My sister and I never got on even when she was small. Realising her power as the favoured child, she lost no opportunity to snitch on me for every real and imagined misdemeanour. It was a good day when I did not go to bed with a beating.
I was top of my class in French and at 14, I had the opportunity to go with the school to Paris for two weeks. There were no cheap package tours in those days. Only rich people had the opportunity to travel abroad. The headmaster offered my parents a bursary to pay my expenses. But it required my fathers signature on the consent form. My mother had spoken at length with the headmaster, who had made some convincing arguments. It would be an opportunity for me to broaden my outlook, experience another culture, and practice my French. It would also be a useful experience to put down on application forms when I was seeking work. My father said it would "Give me unrealistic ideas above my class" and put the consent form behind the clock while he thought it over. Behind the clock functioned as the nearest he understood to a filing cabinet.
The next day there was some kind of trouble. I forget what it was about. I remember only that my sister snitched on me, yet again. My father ripped up the form, declaring “She’s already got too many fancy ideas without trips to Paris.”
I never forgave my father and told him so, adding “One day I will travel the world and pay for it with my own money.”
I never forgave my sister. I battered her with a hair brush and earned another beating.
Skip forward a few years until the time when I was seventeen. I was now working as a library assistant, and working towards the first of my professional examinations. Whether I realised it or not, I was moving away from a working class lifestyle. When I first began in that profession I was obliged to open a bank account for my salary to be paid in. Realising that I would be earning almost as much as my father, I took steps to ensure that my parents never discovered how much my salary was. On my grandmothers advice I opened an accommodation address in a nearby shop, and all my business correspondence was sent there.
When I began working I took a poll of how much my friends were giving their mothers for their “keep”. The average was two pounds ten shillings. I told my mother she would receive three pounds a week, or twelve pounds a month. No discussion, take it or leave it. I was learning the power of money. She asked to be paid monthly, as she would then have a substantial amount to “buy things”. What she really meant was to buy things for my sister. I had the impression that every pound I gave her for my keep went straight onto my sisters back. Certainly she was never sent to school with holes in her shoes or taken to Paddy’s market.
Unfortunately my mother was unable to budget monthly. Two weeks into the month she would borrow from me and promise to give it back when my father got paid. However there was never anything left out of my father's wages. So I would take it back out of next months “keep” money. One time my mother went through my drawers and discovered I had ten pounds which she accused me of “hiding”. She also looked through my wardrobe and commented on anything new I bought. I told her I was not working to keep my parasite of a sister in fancy clothes.
That was when I began keeping things at my grandmothers house. She took me into her back bedroom and showed me an empty wardrobe and a chest of drawers, assuring me that I could keep anything I wished there and no one would interfere with it. My locker in work always had two or three dresses hanging in it and two pairs of shoes. My grandmothers wardrobe was full of my clothes. I went out to work wearing the same few dresses and changed when I got there. Sometimes I even changed at lunch time. I drew part of my salary out of the bank and kept it in my nana’s dresser. I put sufficient in my bag to last me for fares and lunches for the week. Then I could truthfully say that I had only £x in my purse.
In this way I used money as a weapon against my family.
When my sister reached the age of eleven it was time for her to go to junior school. My mother spent an entire months keep money to buy her two new school skirts, two crisp white blouses and six pairs of white ankle socks, plus other supplies for school. But they were not the plain ordinary socks I had worn for school Oh no, they were not good enough for my princess sister. Hers had a little lacy frill around the tops. They were the kind you wore for parties, not with school uniform. However they were what my sister wanted.
What Elaine wanted, Elaine got.
So she was all nicely kitted out to start school.
Shortly afterwards I arranged to spend Sunday with my friend Elsie at her house and was not expected back until tea time. Unfortunately my friends mother was ill and Elsie had to help take care of her. Feeling that I was in the way, I excused myself and came home. It was just after three o‘clock in the afternoon.
My father had come in from the pub, eaten his lunch, and fallen asleep in his chair. He was snoring loudly. There was no sign of my mother and sister. As the custom was in those days, a quantity of washing had been sorted and left to soak for the next day. Monday was always washing day. There was huge copper of colours. Next to it was a smaller bowl sorted into whites. In among the whites were my sisters frilly topped ankle socks.
The opportunity was too much to resist. I got a dark red piece of clothing and put it in with the whites. Then I slipped silently out of the house, and went to my grandmothers home. When I returned at the expected time my sister was in tears. One of her new school blouses and all her frilly white socks were now pale pink. Of course my mother got the blame, because it was she who sorted out the washing. After all I had been out all day at my friends, had I not?
The following month when she got my keep money my mother replaced the ruined school shirt and socks. This time, however, she insisted upon buying plain white uniform socks, much to my sister’s disgust.
For most of my time at junior school I had uniform that was too small or shabby with wear. It was surprising that I had any friends. But fortunately I did have one friend who was able to look past the shabby clothes.
For an entire two weeks my sister had to go to school wearing pale pink socks, and being laughed at.
That was my revenge.
