Bev Allen's Blog - Posts Tagged "biographical"
Stories of my Grandmothers
One of my grandmothers was tiny and round; she had the most beautiful soft skin, blue eyes and silver hair.
The other one was tall and soldid, her eyes were brown and her hair was dyed a determined, unrelenting black.
One smelt of Pond's cold cream and the other of Woodbines untipped cigarettes.
I loved them dearly.
They were around the time the old Queen died, not necessarily welcome aditions to families long on kids and very, very short on money. Later they married into families long on kids, but perhapos not quite as short on money.
The result was, of course, a fund of stories of their own lives and going back to their mothers and grandmothers.
I've taken elements of these stories and writen a series of flash fiction tales from them. Some liberties have been taken with time etc., but there is a nugget of truth in each one.
I'll share some of them over the next few months. Here's the first
Florence Lester 1904 to 1907
On bitter February afternoons in the days before central heating, the only place to be really warm was Gran’s back room where the fire hadn’t been allowed to go out since November.
I’d sit and watch the flames play over the coals and eventually tuck my heat mottled legs up under me. The cat curled up the grate would open one baleful eye and glared at me, but he never moved even though the smell of burning fur sometimes scented the air as a spark landed on him.
As a favoured grandchild my comfort was enhanced by treats like crumpets to toast and lavish butter upon, or hot chocolate steaming in thick pottery mugs or, if all else failed, bags of toffee made pliable and yielding by the heat.
A piece I had dropped on the rug had acquired a generous coat of cat hair, so I’d lobbed it into the back of the fire where it melted on the hot coals, adding the smell of burnt sugar to the ever present tang of Gran’s Woodbines.
After a while she flicked the long tail of grey ash off the end of her cigarette and said,
“It smelled like when Florrie died.”
Turning away from my fire inspired day dreams I smiled up at her, thinking she must be as mazed by the heat as I was
“Florrie isn’t dead,” I said. “You spoke to her on the phone last week.”
She shook her head,
“Not that Florrie. My other sister Florence.”
“You had two sisters called Florence?”
She nodded, lighting another of the untipped cigarettes she would smoke all her long life.
“I remember her lying by the fire wrapped in a blanket. Mam had given her a sugar lollipop and every now and then she’d try and lift it to her mouth.”
Gran smiled, “I never took my eyes off it, just in case. I was about four and that jealous.”
I thought of the little she’d let me know about her childhood in the dirty mill town during the years before The Great War.
“Wasn’t there one for you?”
“No,” Gran said. “I don’t know how Mam found the penny for it, not with my father and the drink.”
She drew on her cigarette.
“It seemed such a waste to me,” she said. “She’d give it a little lick, but she wasn’t enjoying it the way I would’ve. Eventually she dropped it and I was there like a shot, little guts that I was, but Mam shouted “No” before I could get it in my gob and put it on the fire.”
Our eyes met and we both knew in that moment long dead Mam had saved this daughter’s life.
The toffee on the fire charred black.
“I don’t remember what happened after that,” Gran said. “She just wasn’t there anymore. And then, later, another Florrie came along.”
She gazed once more into the flames.
“Poor little soul. I’m the only one left alive who remembers her”
And just for a moment on that cold February afternoon, the small sister whose brief existence had made scarcely a dent in the passage of my Gran’s long life, lived again in the smell of sugar burning on a coal fire.
[c]Bev Allen 2011
The other one was tall and soldid, her eyes were brown and her hair was dyed a determined, unrelenting black.
One smelt of Pond's cold cream and the other of Woodbines untipped cigarettes.
I loved them dearly.
They were around the time the old Queen died, not necessarily welcome aditions to families long on kids and very, very short on money. Later they married into families long on kids, but perhapos not quite as short on money.
The result was, of course, a fund of stories of their own lives and going back to their mothers and grandmothers.
I've taken elements of these stories and writen a series of flash fiction tales from them. Some liberties have been taken with time etc., but there is a nugget of truth in each one.
I'll share some of them over the next few months. Here's the first
Florence Lester 1904 to 1907
On bitter February afternoons in the days before central heating, the only place to be really warm was Gran’s back room where the fire hadn’t been allowed to go out since November.
I’d sit and watch the flames play over the coals and eventually tuck my heat mottled legs up under me. The cat curled up the grate would open one baleful eye and glared at me, but he never moved even though the smell of burning fur sometimes scented the air as a spark landed on him.
As a favoured grandchild my comfort was enhanced by treats like crumpets to toast and lavish butter upon, or hot chocolate steaming in thick pottery mugs or, if all else failed, bags of toffee made pliable and yielding by the heat.
A piece I had dropped on the rug had acquired a generous coat of cat hair, so I’d lobbed it into the back of the fire where it melted on the hot coals, adding the smell of burnt sugar to the ever present tang of Gran’s Woodbines.
After a while she flicked the long tail of grey ash off the end of her cigarette and said,
“It smelled like when Florrie died.”
Turning away from my fire inspired day dreams I smiled up at her, thinking she must be as mazed by the heat as I was
“Florrie isn’t dead,” I said. “You spoke to her on the phone last week.”
She shook her head,
“Not that Florrie. My other sister Florence.”
“You had two sisters called Florence?”
She nodded, lighting another of the untipped cigarettes she would smoke all her long life.
“I remember her lying by the fire wrapped in a blanket. Mam had given her a sugar lollipop and every now and then she’d try and lift it to her mouth.”
Gran smiled, “I never took my eyes off it, just in case. I was about four and that jealous.”
I thought of the little she’d let me know about her childhood in the dirty mill town during the years before The Great War.
“Wasn’t there one for you?”
“No,” Gran said. “I don’t know how Mam found the penny for it, not with my father and the drink.”
She drew on her cigarette.
“It seemed such a waste to me,” she said. “She’d give it a little lick, but she wasn’t enjoying it the way I would’ve. Eventually she dropped it and I was there like a shot, little guts that I was, but Mam shouted “No” before I could get it in my gob and put it on the fire.”
Our eyes met and we both knew in that moment long dead Mam had saved this daughter’s life.
The toffee on the fire charred black.
“I don’t remember what happened after that,” Gran said. “She just wasn’t there anymore. And then, later, another Florrie came along.”
She gazed once more into the flames.
“Poor little soul. I’m the only one left alive who remembers her”
And just for a moment on that cold February afternoon, the small sister whose brief existence had made scarcely a dent in the passage of my Gran’s long life, lived again in the smell of sugar burning on a coal fire.
[c]Bev Allen 2011
The Golden Fishes
I knew this web site thing was going far, far to well. The bloody thing won't let me post anything new on the blog.
So, my darlings, you get the new story first and anyone who looks there will have to wait until I work out the mechanics.
This is a story of a time long ago. The past, as they say, is a different country.
The Golden Fish
They were going to fetch the golden fish. Three golden fishes that would live in the rain butt until the old pond could be cleaned out ready for them.
The rain butt was by the back door in the shadow of the house; a cool damp place full of mystery and delight. If she stood on tip toe she could gaze down into its green depths and wonder what was at the bottom. Sometimes she would reach in and trail her fingers in the water, feeling the cool softness of rainwater, so different from the harsh, lime ridden liquid that gushed from the taps and turned the inside of the kettle white.
Green feathers grew from the sides of the butt, trailing like wisps of emerald cloud. If she tried to lift them out they just became soft green slime on her fingers, only deep in the water did they hold their magical beauty.
There were other wonders in the moss underneath, a toad lived there, as brown and wet as the wood. She had only seen it a couple of times, but today she bent down to whisper the news of fish as gold as his eyes.
The fish had been living in the pond of a big house that was being knocked down and they had been left to die She could not understand how anyone could allow something so wondrous and precious to die.
But they were now going to be saved.
She could hardly breathe with excitement and there was a wriggling feeling in her tummy, because there was more; He was going to collect them today and He said she could go with Him to help.
The joy and the excitement meant she forgot to be wary, forgot to look for the signs, instead she had waited eagerly while He found car keys and retrieve lighter and cigarettes from the table by His chair.
The car smelt as it always did of Him, a mix of after shave and cigarettes and the added smell of old leather baking in the morning sun. The heat burnt her bare legs as she climbed in beside Him.
It was only a short drive to the place, but for her it seemed to go on and on. She bounced up and down in her seat, looking for landmarks and chattering about all she saw and asking how much longer.
He answered her without impatience and she slipped further into the caress of unpreparedness.
She watched in an agony of anxiety as the golden fishes were netted out of their rumble polluted pond, huge and lustrous, nearly as big as her little fat arms.
Back in the car they swam round and round in the huge bucket she gripped tightly between her feet, the light through the windscreen glinted on their scales and the clear cold water flashed shades of deep orange and golden glowing yellow.
Her eyes feasted on them and she chatted on and on about how pretty they were and she missed the fingers beginning to drum on the wheel and the cigarette smoked in quick, snatched bursts.
She asked how long it would be to get home and He replied soon because He wanted to watch the rugger.
Words delighted her, and would for the rest of her life, and here was a new one. She asked what it meant and He explained in a few, brief words.
Watching the fish swim around and around she began to experiment, the smooth elegant dance of the fish filling the place caution lived.
“Lugger?” she offered Him on a tentative note.
“It’s a sort of boat”.
“Tugger?”
“There’s no such word.”
She should have caught the tone, should have known to keep watch, but her senses were bemused by the beauty before her and, because she was only five and because her name began with B, she said.
“Bugger.”
His left hand came down on her bare thighs leaving a mark the colour of poppies. It came down again and again and again. And all the time He never once took His eyes from the road ahead and He never looked at her sobbing salt tears onto the golden fishes.
She wept with the pain and she wept because she had once again spoilt everything. She was always spoiling everything and making Him annoyed so He had to slap her. She tried so hard, but again and again she made a mistake.
She wept again because she was as stupid as Daddy said her she was.
Mummy looked a question at Him as they came through the door and He snapped,
“Now she’s swearing for Christ’s sake! How much longer are we going to have to put up with her behaviour?”
He slammed the living room door behind Him and soon there was the sound of the television.
In the days to follow, the golden fishes swim their circuits in the rain butt and she watched them down in the green depths. Sometimes they seemed to disappear and she wondered what it would be like to be invisible. Perhaps you were safe where no-one could see or hear you.
She watched them again when they went to live in the pond and would came to the surface from their weed forest hideaways in search of food, but they never again had the power to fill her with delight.
They died one winter when ice cracked the bottom of the pond and all the water drained away before anyone noticed.
© Bev Allen 2013
So, my darlings, you get the new story first and anyone who looks there will have to wait until I work out the mechanics.
This is a story of a time long ago. The past, as they say, is a different country.
The Golden Fish
They were going to fetch the golden fish. Three golden fishes that would live in the rain butt until the old pond could be cleaned out ready for them.
The rain butt was by the back door in the shadow of the house; a cool damp place full of mystery and delight. If she stood on tip toe she could gaze down into its green depths and wonder what was at the bottom. Sometimes she would reach in and trail her fingers in the water, feeling the cool softness of rainwater, so different from the harsh, lime ridden liquid that gushed from the taps and turned the inside of the kettle white.
Green feathers grew from the sides of the butt, trailing like wisps of emerald cloud. If she tried to lift them out they just became soft green slime on her fingers, only deep in the water did they hold their magical beauty.
There were other wonders in the moss underneath, a toad lived there, as brown and wet as the wood. She had only seen it a couple of times, but today she bent down to whisper the news of fish as gold as his eyes.
The fish had been living in the pond of a big house that was being knocked down and they had been left to die She could not understand how anyone could allow something so wondrous and precious to die.
But they were now going to be saved.
She could hardly breathe with excitement and there was a wriggling feeling in her tummy, because there was more; He was going to collect them today and He said she could go with Him to help.
The joy and the excitement meant she forgot to be wary, forgot to look for the signs, instead she had waited eagerly while He found car keys and retrieve lighter and cigarettes from the table by His chair.
The car smelt as it always did of Him, a mix of after shave and cigarettes and the added smell of old leather baking in the morning sun. The heat burnt her bare legs as she climbed in beside Him.
It was only a short drive to the place, but for her it seemed to go on and on. She bounced up and down in her seat, looking for landmarks and chattering about all she saw and asking how much longer.
He answered her without impatience and she slipped further into the caress of unpreparedness.
She watched in an agony of anxiety as the golden fishes were netted out of their rumble polluted pond, huge and lustrous, nearly as big as her little fat arms.
Back in the car they swam round and round in the huge bucket she gripped tightly between her feet, the light through the windscreen glinted on their scales and the clear cold water flashed shades of deep orange and golden glowing yellow.
Her eyes feasted on them and she chatted on and on about how pretty they were and she missed the fingers beginning to drum on the wheel and the cigarette smoked in quick, snatched bursts.
She asked how long it would be to get home and He replied soon because He wanted to watch the rugger.
Words delighted her, and would for the rest of her life, and here was a new one. She asked what it meant and He explained in a few, brief words.
Watching the fish swim around and around she began to experiment, the smooth elegant dance of the fish filling the place caution lived.
“Lugger?” she offered Him on a tentative note.
“It’s a sort of boat”.
“Tugger?”
“There’s no such word.”
She should have caught the tone, should have known to keep watch, but her senses were bemused by the beauty before her and, because she was only five and because her name began with B, she said.
“Bugger.”
His left hand came down on her bare thighs leaving a mark the colour of poppies. It came down again and again and again. And all the time He never once took His eyes from the road ahead and He never looked at her sobbing salt tears onto the golden fishes.
She wept with the pain and she wept because she had once again spoilt everything. She was always spoiling everything and making Him annoyed so He had to slap her. She tried so hard, but again and again she made a mistake.
She wept again because she was as stupid as Daddy said her she was.
Mummy looked a question at Him as they came through the door and He snapped,
“Now she’s swearing for Christ’s sake! How much longer are we going to have to put up with her behaviour?”
He slammed the living room door behind Him and soon there was the sound of the television.
In the days to follow, the golden fishes swim their circuits in the rain butt and she watched them down in the green depths. Sometimes they seemed to disappear and she wondered what it would be like to be invisible. Perhaps you were safe where no-one could see or hear you.
She watched them again when they went to live in the pond and would came to the surface from their weed forest hideaways in search of food, but they never again had the power to fill her with delight.
They died one winter when ice cracked the bottom of the pond and all the water drained away before anyone noticed.
© Bev Allen 2013
Going Home
I've been a bit busy, so just a very short story this time.
Going Home
The wind ripped the handkerchief she had been waving from her fingers and carried off high above the liner’s bows.
Despite the cold she could not bring herself to go below, she stood by the rail and watched the shore slipped further and further away as the evening tide carrying them out. She knew when she came on deck tomorrow green waters would have turned to blue and the land would be a memory.
She had always promised herself she would go home, go back to her mother and all her brothers and sisters. Every part of her had ached for the familiar faces and familiar places of home.
Eventually she could bear the aching need no longer and she had packed her case and fled back to the land of her birth.
Once there, softly and quietly the familiar had wrapped itself about her. Remembered sights and smells and sounds had woven in and out of her senses, drawing her back to the places she had left when she had begun her great adventure.
She had come home and home had welcomed her with open arms, but now she was leaving them again, crossing back over the great ocean.
As the light finally faded and she could no longer see the dark shadow of the land, her thoughts turned to the wooden cabin by the lake.
The fruit harvest would over and soon the trees would blaze with the colours of autumn, heralding the promise of the long white winter to come.
He would be there, waiting.
When she left, she believed she was going back to where she belonged, but now the ship was carrying her back to him and to the land she knew she would forever more call home.
(My Aunt Jean went to Canada in the 1920s. She always said you have to go back before you really know where you belong).
© Bev Allen
Going Home
The wind ripped the handkerchief she had been waving from her fingers and carried off high above the liner’s bows.
Despite the cold she could not bring herself to go below, she stood by the rail and watched the shore slipped further and further away as the evening tide carrying them out. She knew when she came on deck tomorrow green waters would have turned to blue and the land would be a memory.
She had always promised herself she would go home, go back to her mother and all her brothers and sisters. Every part of her had ached for the familiar faces and familiar places of home.
Eventually she could bear the aching need no longer and she had packed her case and fled back to the land of her birth.
Once there, softly and quietly the familiar had wrapped itself about her. Remembered sights and smells and sounds had woven in and out of her senses, drawing her back to the places she had left when she had begun her great adventure.
She had come home and home had welcomed her with open arms, but now she was leaving them again, crossing back over the great ocean.
As the light finally faded and she could no longer see the dark shadow of the land, her thoughts turned to the wooden cabin by the lake.
The fruit harvest would over and soon the trees would blaze with the colours of autumn, heralding the promise of the long white winter to come.
He would be there, waiting.
When she left, she believed she was going back to where she belonged, but now the ship was carrying her back to him and to the land she knew she would forever more call home.
(My Aunt Jean went to Canada in the 1920s. She always said you have to go back before you really know where you belong).
© Bev Allen
Curls
A tale of childhood. And my gran.
Curls
I was nearly seven when my brother was born. Everyone was apparently enchanted by this event, but I reserved judgement.
I am probably still doing so.
For reasons which escaped me at the time, it was felt necessary to commemorate his first birthday with a joint portrait of the two of us. As far as I could see this would involve me in holding the little horror so he did not get near enough to the photographer to destroy his camera or any other expensive kit within range.
Having my photograph taken was one of my least favourite things; it still is. Some fool waving a lens and urging me to “smile” always makes me freeze. I have no idea how to smile on demand and I end up either simpering, smirking or looking as if I have lost my grip on sanity. However, my mother in pursuit of immortality her children, was unstoppable and she was enthusiastically supported by both my grandmothers.
My small round gran was a needlewoman of consummate skill and she made me a dress of white fabric with lemon polka dots all over it. It was pretty and it fitted perfectly and I hated it, T-shirt and shorts being my idea of haute couture.
She also made the horror a matching outfit in white and lemon. That was also very pretty and he looked nice in it, until he got down on the floor and turned it two shades of grey, but that was later.
My other large and lean gran was not going to be left out of this. She bought new shoes for both of us, but this was not enough; these would not be seen in the picture, so her mind turned to a subject very dear to her heart - my hair.
(By the way, the horror was nearly bald at the time and, ironically, time and age have returned him to this state, but I digress…)
Nature had endowed me with thick shiny brown hair so straight Romans could have used it to plan a road. No ribbon stayed in it for more than five minutes; nor did any slide, gripe or other embellishment and this was a source of much frustration to Gran.
She had left school to work in the Nottingham lace mills when she was only twelve. It took her two years to save enough money for her train fare to London where she found work as a nursery maid in a very smart house, the sort of house where a Victorian Nanny still ruled and little girls had ringlets. For my gran ringlets remained her ideal juene fille coiffure.
My hair was too short for them, but not for curls and she was determined I would have curls for the portrait.
I might have been safe if my Mother had not also yearned for curls. She had spent a lot of time and money on trying to get my hair to obey, but without any success. Now here was gran with the light of battle in her eyes and the promise of curls which would last. Mother was inclined to be cynical, but was unable to resist the allure of a daughter with a head full of fat rolls of shining hair.
Gran saw the cynicism and was challenged. Armed with all Nanny had taught her, I was going to be photographed with stunning hair and she was the one who was going to make it happen.
Had I been older, wiser or swifter on my feet, I would have found an escape route and possibly passage on a boat to somewhere safer, like a war zone, but I was trapped by two experienced women with a mission.
The day before the photo session Gran descended on us after dinner. It was not her usual time for visiting and I suddenly had the same feeling I am sure a trapped rabbit has just before the fox opens it’s jaws. My pudding spoon had only just made its last happy journey from the bowl to my face when she hauled me out of my chair and off to the bathroom.
“Your hair needs to be wet,” she told me.
She did not actually drown me, she had after all been an experienced nursery maid, but she made lavish use of a very large jug, copious amounts of the sort of shampoo which leaves you with eyes redder than a London bus and she was not one to molly coddle with warm water when cold worked just as well.
I protested, wailed and did a fair bit of crying and pleading, but she was deaf to it all. When I finally emerged, dripping, from the bathroom I found my mother hovering outside; I gave her a look I hoped would have her wracked with guilt for the rest of her life.
What followed was worse. Gran produced a bag full to the brim with long strips of fabric torn from an old sheet.
“Curling rags,” she told my mother in triumph. “Nothing works better, not even the hot tongs.”
My eyes met Mother’s at the words “hot tongs” and she mouthed “no tongs” at me. I was not sure if this meant Gran was tongless or that Mother was anti-tong, but either would do.
Now, for those of you without a grandmother like mine, here is how you rag hair. I have to say, I used the technique myself during my Pre-Raphaelite phase ( do not ask) , but for the happily ignorant… you take two strips of fabric and one section of wet hair and you plait ( Americans say “braid” ) them together, making sure you firmly knot the fabric at both ends so they do not come undone. Once your whole head is a delicious mass of fabric/hair ropes, you leave the whole to dry naturally, preferably overnight.
By the time Gran had finished, my head was covered in a mass of short stubby lumps and a very large number of knots.
“She will have to sleep in the rags,” Gran said. “And don’t take them out until just before you leave.”
The next morning, after a sleepless night spent trying to find a place on my pillow where a knot was not digging into me, I was in a very militant mood and determined to make sure every picture was ruined by frowning and, hopefully, dropping the horror on his head!
My brother was bedecked in his new outfit and then caged in the pushchair in the hope he would stay clean for a while and I was threatened, bribed and blackmailed into my dress.
Then came THE MOMENT.
As I sat, scuffing my new shoes against the chair leg, Mother began to unfetter my hair. As the rags fell to the ground her smile grew wider and the light of love shorn in her eyes. She did a tiny bit of titivating with a brush and then presented me with a mirror.
“There!” she said, in triumph. “Gran will be so pleased.”
I saw something I had never seen before ( or since), myself with a head full of shining, curling ringlets. They were not very long, but they clustered charmingly around my head and for once I looked exactly like the sort of little girl who loves her baby brother and plays with dollies and whose white ankle socks as still white at the end of the day.
A total and complete fake of course, but it was not completely revolting and I thought I could bear it for a short while.
As I gazed at this fiction I noticed something. It was very slight at first, but it was there and I could not keep the smirk from my face and I grinned up at my mother.
She looked, looked again and then said.
“Run!”
And we ran all the way to the studio.
I’ve still got the pictures. Me smiling at the camera, holding the horror and pointing to something which is making him laugh with delight. Our clothes look beautiful, even in old black and white photos and…if you look very closely, you can just about make out a slight wave in my smooth, shining hair.
(c)Bev Allen 2013
Curls
I was nearly seven when my brother was born. Everyone was apparently enchanted by this event, but I reserved judgement.
I am probably still doing so.
For reasons which escaped me at the time, it was felt necessary to commemorate his first birthday with a joint portrait of the two of us. As far as I could see this would involve me in holding the little horror so he did not get near enough to the photographer to destroy his camera or any other expensive kit within range.
Having my photograph taken was one of my least favourite things; it still is. Some fool waving a lens and urging me to “smile” always makes me freeze. I have no idea how to smile on demand and I end up either simpering, smirking or looking as if I have lost my grip on sanity. However, my mother in pursuit of immortality her children, was unstoppable and she was enthusiastically supported by both my grandmothers.
My small round gran was a needlewoman of consummate skill and she made me a dress of white fabric with lemon polka dots all over it. It was pretty and it fitted perfectly and I hated it, T-shirt and shorts being my idea of haute couture.
She also made the horror a matching outfit in white and lemon. That was also very pretty and he looked nice in it, until he got down on the floor and turned it two shades of grey, but that was later.
My other large and lean gran was not going to be left out of this. She bought new shoes for both of us, but this was not enough; these would not be seen in the picture, so her mind turned to a subject very dear to her heart - my hair.
(By the way, the horror was nearly bald at the time and, ironically, time and age have returned him to this state, but I digress…)
Nature had endowed me with thick shiny brown hair so straight Romans could have used it to plan a road. No ribbon stayed in it for more than five minutes; nor did any slide, gripe or other embellishment and this was a source of much frustration to Gran.
She had left school to work in the Nottingham lace mills when she was only twelve. It took her two years to save enough money for her train fare to London where she found work as a nursery maid in a very smart house, the sort of house where a Victorian Nanny still ruled and little girls had ringlets. For my gran ringlets remained her ideal juene fille coiffure.
My hair was too short for them, but not for curls and she was determined I would have curls for the portrait.
I might have been safe if my Mother had not also yearned for curls. She had spent a lot of time and money on trying to get my hair to obey, but without any success. Now here was gran with the light of battle in her eyes and the promise of curls which would last. Mother was inclined to be cynical, but was unable to resist the allure of a daughter with a head full of fat rolls of shining hair.
Gran saw the cynicism and was challenged. Armed with all Nanny had taught her, I was going to be photographed with stunning hair and she was the one who was going to make it happen.
Had I been older, wiser or swifter on my feet, I would have found an escape route and possibly passage on a boat to somewhere safer, like a war zone, but I was trapped by two experienced women with a mission.
The day before the photo session Gran descended on us after dinner. It was not her usual time for visiting and I suddenly had the same feeling I am sure a trapped rabbit has just before the fox opens it’s jaws. My pudding spoon had only just made its last happy journey from the bowl to my face when she hauled me out of my chair and off to the bathroom.
“Your hair needs to be wet,” she told me.
She did not actually drown me, she had after all been an experienced nursery maid, but she made lavish use of a very large jug, copious amounts of the sort of shampoo which leaves you with eyes redder than a London bus and she was not one to molly coddle with warm water when cold worked just as well.
I protested, wailed and did a fair bit of crying and pleading, but she was deaf to it all. When I finally emerged, dripping, from the bathroom I found my mother hovering outside; I gave her a look I hoped would have her wracked with guilt for the rest of her life.
What followed was worse. Gran produced a bag full to the brim with long strips of fabric torn from an old sheet.
“Curling rags,” she told my mother in triumph. “Nothing works better, not even the hot tongs.”
My eyes met Mother’s at the words “hot tongs” and she mouthed “no tongs” at me. I was not sure if this meant Gran was tongless or that Mother was anti-tong, but either would do.
Now, for those of you without a grandmother like mine, here is how you rag hair. I have to say, I used the technique myself during my Pre-Raphaelite phase ( do not ask) , but for the happily ignorant… you take two strips of fabric and one section of wet hair and you plait ( Americans say “braid” ) them together, making sure you firmly knot the fabric at both ends so they do not come undone. Once your whole head is a delicious mass of fabric/hair ropes, you leave the whole to dry naturally, preferably overnight.
By the time Gran had finished, my head was covered in a mass of short stubby lumps and a very large number of knots.
“She will have to sleep in the rags,” Gran said. “And don’t take them out until just before you leave.”
The next morning, after a sleepless night spent trying to find a place on my pillow where a knot was not digging into me, I was in a very militant mood and determined to make sure every picture was ruined by frowning and, hopefully, dropping the horror on his head!
My brother was bedecked in his new outfit and then caged in the pushchair in the hope he would stay clean for a while and I was threatened, bribed and blackmailed into my dress.
Then came THE MOMENT.
As I sat, scuffing my new shoes against the chair leg, Mother began to unfetter my hair. As the rags fell to the ground her smile grew wider and the light of love shorn in her eyes. She did a tiny bit of titivating with a brush and then presented me with a mirror.
“There!” she said, in triumph. “Gran will be so pleased.”
I saw something I had never seen before ( or since), myself with a head full of shining, curling ringlets. They were not very long, but they clustered charmingly around my head and for once I looked exactly like the sort of little girl who loves her baby brother and plays with dollies and whose white ankle socks as still white at the end of the day.
A total and complete fake of course, but it was not completely revolting and I thought I could bear it for a short while.
As I gazed at this fiction I noticed something. It was very slight at first, but it was there and I could not keep the smirk from my face and I grinned up at my mother.
She looked, looked again and then said.
“Run!”
And we ran all the way to the studio.
I’ve still got the pictures. Me smiling at the camera, holding the horror and pointing to something which is making him laugh with delight. Our clothes look beautiful, even in old black and white photos and…if you look very closely, you can just about make out a slight wave in my smooth, shining hair.
(c)Bev Allen 2013
