Harlow Writers
the friendly writers' workshop
JENNY KNIGHTS
... first published work in the St. Johns’ Parish Magazine, Harvest Festival Edition, circa 1965. Before embarking on a career in literature she decided to gain more life experience. In order to do so she has worked as a shop assistant, secretary, civil servant, market researcher and most recently at Harlow College where her duties included learning support and clearing up after a Guide dog.
She has scribbled in secret for the last half century and has been a member of the Harlow Writers’ Workshop for the past three years.
Her literary influences include Emily Dickinson, Stevie Smith and Wendy Cope.
The Coronation Tablecloth
It's 1977. Johnny Rotten is snarling that there’s no future and I, a disaffected teenager soon to leave school, agree with him. Prime Minister James Callaghan is wrestling with the trade unions, the economy has taken a dive and a general election can’t be far off. Yet despite increasing interest rates and middle-class moral outrage at a punk band spitting out that Her Majesty ”aint no human being” Britain is in a celebratory mood. Queen Elizabeth II has been on the throne for a quarter of a century and street parties are in order. My family choose not to go to one.
Instead, in suburban north London my very proper mother rinses her Old Country Roses china and invites her friends from the surrounding houses round for afternoon tea to mark the Silver Jubilee. On the cake stand sandwiches and fondant fancies sit on doilies, serviettes are on hand in case of crumbs or spilt milk. Tea leaves, steeped for just the right length of time are poured through a stainless-steel tea strainer and sugar tongs utilised to drop cubed sugar into brimming cups. And then, of course there is the tray cloth, cutwork linen. My mother embroidered this in 1953, the year of Queen Elizabeth’s Coronation. In each corner lustrous green and red, yellow and purple threads portray the floral emblems of the four nations of the UK. And now it’s being given an airing for the neighbours to see.
I used to laugh at my mother’s fancy ways, the shibboleths that marked us out as being “nice” people. I read John Betjeman’s poem How to get on in Society and recognised the people he lampooned. Both my grandfathers had been manual workers at the Royal Small Arms Factory in Enfield Lock. I fondly imagined myself to be working class, but my parents were so aspirationally middle class we ate our Saturday evening treat, battered cod from the chippie, with fish knives.
Looking back it was as though my family were deliberately giving me something to rebel against. It was an idea of Britain, safe and white, victorious in war no longer having an empire, but leading the Commonwealth united under our own dear Queen. Hurrah for the Silver Jubilee!
It was easy to sneer on that day of national celebration. I muttered something about “a fascist regime” then retreated to my bedroom and turned the radio up- really loud before my father could tell me, yet again, that I knew nothing about extreme right-wing ideologies.
Lying on my bed I read NME because boys thought it was it was cool to know about bands. Not too much of course, not more than they did. Then I flicked through Jackie magazine gleaning helpful tips about what to wear with high waisted trousers and information from the magazine’s agony aunts Cathy and Claire, as to when was the right time to have that first kiss with your boyfriend - should I ever have such a thing.
It’s September 2022. Queen Elizabeth II is dead. My mother and I are watching the State Funeral together on television. Afterwards we drink tea from the same red-flowered, gold-edged china cups she used forty-five years ago. She owns mugs but hardly ever uses them – mugs are for the plumber and the window cleaner.
Later we talk about whether the UK should rein in the Windsors or abolish the monarchy altogether. Mum’s all for keeping with tradition. “Just look at the mess other countries get in when they elect their heads of state” she says, and on that point I am with her. Our conversation turns to the forthcoming coronation of Charles III - the pageantry versus the expense. You can guess which side each of us is on. Eventually she says “Well, it’s happening so I’d better get on and finish that tablecloth”.
I laugh. It’s a family joke the “linen supper cloth” marketed by Woman Magazine. A companion piece to the tray cloth bought in kit form in 1953. It would have been ideal for a Coronation tea party in 1953, but has never been finished. I didn’t know she still had it, but waste not want not, it’s obviously hidden away somewhere. I look at my mother’s arthritic hands and wonder if she will be able to complete such a large embroidery project by the date of King Charles’ Coronation. I say nothing.
Eight months later we watch the big event on TV together. I grit my teeth, but Mum likes the spectacle, the music. Sipping tea from the Old Country Roses cups we both marvel at the MP Penny Mordaunt’s capacity to wield the Sword of State. Based solely on the Leader of the House’s solemn tenacity we agree that she would make a good candidate for Prime Minister. Well, at least she’d make a better job of it than the last several incumbents. The topic of the Coronation tablecloth doesn’t arise.
It's February 2024. My mother died just before Christmas and it has fallen to me to empty her home. During the course of my parents’ marriage they moved house three times. After my father’s death sixteen years ago she moved again, downsizing significantly on that occasion.
Until now I believed she had donated many things to charity prior to that last move. It amazes me to find so much ephemera efficiently squirrelled away in every corner of her bungalow. I discover egg cups, in the shape of the home of the Old Woman who lived in a shoe, postcards, souvenir matchbooks, brochures from long-forgotten tourist attractions. A small Paddington bear nestles inside the Old Country Roses cereal bowls. Everything spins me back to childhood. Album after album of photographs remind me of fun times and terrible fashion and hairstyle choices made decades ago. And, on the backs of pictures that had hung on the walls for years I find she has written reminders for me. “Purchased by grandad at Alum Bay, Isle of Wight 1935”. I remember the tale about that pre-war trip, but soon it becomes evident that there are other stories to discover too, stories concealed in the oddments that she kept.
Her wardrobe bulges with clothes and crafting materials. Knitting needles and wool compete for space with the baby-blue Singer sewing machine. Tapestry frames and kits, wadding for cushions, buttons and zips obscure yards of unused Laura Ashley fabric. It’s “vintage” now. I send her clothes to a charity shop and fill another eight bags with handicraft materials. These I will donate to a local needlework group – it is “an embarrassment of riches” as mum would have said
.
At the bottom of the heap in the wardrobe I find the Coronation tray cloths. Beneath them there’s the unfinished tablecloth and a stash of envelopes containing folded, yellowing paper. I hesitate to pry further, but when I do look inside there are no love letters, just pages torn from magazines. Sitting down to read them I realise they tell the story of her hopes and dreams. And the expectations of society reflected in what womens’ magazines chose to print.
Two of the envelopes are franked. The first is dated April 1947. I calculate that my mother would have just turned fifteen when she started subscribing to the offers in Woman Magazine. Within the year she was to leave grammar school. She was a bright girl - a keen student learning Latin, French and Spanish but she had no prospect of further education. The sixth child of a gun factory production supervisor couldn’t dream of university in a Britain still reeling from the effects of the Second World War.
Instead my mother found work as a hospital receptionist just at the moment that the National Health Service came into being. Sometimes in later life she talked about the entitled attitudes of the consultants, the variety of patients and their ailments. Sometimes she spoke of how things had changed since her family had been obliged to pay a few pence per week into the factory medical scheme when she was a child. Sometimes - but not often.
I continue to delve through the paperwork. In one envelope a carefully folded two page spread offers magazine readers a blouse pattern and suggests putting colour on it with gay peasant embroidery. I can imagine my mother diligently making this garment to wear to work; buying the rayon, cutting then machining the pieces together. Later she must have turned her hand to chain stitch, satin stitch, and spreading lazy daisies across the bodice in order to make the blouse as lovely and luxurious as the magazine suggests.
Quite what the doctors, nurses and patients at Chase Farm Hospital made of this outfit is a mystery to me.
Another envelope is postmarked August 1948. Inside I find sheets of tissue paper ordered from a magazine when my mum was sixteen. They are printed with the words Everywoman lingerie transfers; blue outlines to be ironed on to fabric and used as a template for embroidery. The accompanying magazine article reads For her and her home – exquisite little motifs to adorn a bride’s lingerie and house linen. Beneath the text bluebirds swoop over stylised images of poppies, bluebells and daisies. Domestic bliss is clearly the reward for hours spent embroidering undergarments and pillowcases.
I don’t know if my mother had even met my father at the time – they married in 1956 – but it is very clear that after the grinding austerity of wartime my mother wanted “nice things” and - like thousands of other hopeful young women – she was prepared to spend many hours making them for her trousseau and her marital home in the hope that she would indeed marry one day.
Finally I uncover the sheet outlining the offer of a charming Irish Linen tray cloth. Nothing could be more appropriate to this gayest of Coronation years than garlands of the flower emblems of the British Isles! Only 1/9d post free or because you’ll probably want a matching pair 3/3d for two. A few months later the magazine offered the same design on a beautiful supper cloth for only 7/6d, and, of course, my mother bought it.
As I fold the cuttings back up I read the reverse of each page torn from the magazines.
A romantic serial, The House of Moreys by Phyllis Bentley bears the lengthy byline On those wild romantic moors Eleanor had embarked upon a strange adventure fraught with all the perils of the unknown. A daft bit of escapism, but other sheets bring sterner messages including handy tips for improving the shape of one’s calves including solutions for bowlegs and knock knees. The article ends with the cheery message Whatever your leg problem, don’t despair – be patient, persevere with treatment, spend as much of your pin money as you can afford for the treatment you need … The phrase pin money made me smile but there was something darker here too. It seemed every reader had legs in need of improvement, that girls and women were being told to be ashamed of their physique. A skinny child raised on war-time rations would grow into a woman who could be conned into thinking a thorough skin scrub with a lathered nail brush would alleviate whatever the perceived problem turned out to be.
More worrying still, an article concerning lovers’ tiffs from 1948 purports to quote from an 1858 love letter from someone called Honoria, addressed to her beloved Robert. Forgive me if I vexed you … I hardly remember what I said or did, but I know it must have been very stupid. The author of the piece, Frank Mansfield, seems to approve of this grovelling apology as a means to reconciliation. He even goes so far as to suggest When he’s moody … don’t look surprised. Your man is merely feeling self-conscious.
Well that’s all right then I think and turn to the last sheet. In the third article in the series Brown Discusses The Other Woman. Third article?! Surely there wasn’t that much to say about infidelity in the late 1940’s?
The author is W J Brown MP. Naturally I Google him. Born in 1894 William Brown was elected as the member for Wolverhampton West in 1929 and sat on the Labour benches. He temporarily defected to Oswald Mosley’s New Party in 1931 and then sat in Parliament as an independent. In the article the politician advises that even if one’s husband is momentarily drawn to the other woman he doesn’t want to break with his wife or break up the home. And unless the wife plays her cards very badly he won’t. Who better than a middle-aged man with Fascist leanings to give marital advice to impressionable young women.
As I tuck the cuttings away again it strikes me that by the age of fifteen my mother was beginning to buy in to the domestic dream sold by these contemporary women’s’ magazines. At that same age I was unsuccessfully trying to be a part-time punk imagining I could change the world by being perpetually negative.
At seventeen I left school and found work in central London. I rejected Jackie magazine in favour of Cosmopolitan. The problems discussed by Irma Kurtz were far racier than anything Cathy and Claire had ever tackled. As a newly minted, post-punk administrative assistant I wanted to look sophisticated, reading the right magazine on the daily commute to work. I didn’t question the ideology it was pedalling. The magazine’s editor Helen Gurley Brown had already declared young women could “have it all” – provided you were thin and sexy and had a high-powered job – and for far too long I believed her. Cosmo’s stance was all a far cry from the life mapped out for girls of my mother’s generation by Woman and similar periodicals. For her, accompanied by one’s husband, life would be romantic, wholesome and full of pretty things, including a brace of attractive, well-behaved children.
My mother never returned to work after the birth of my sister in 1957. I arrived two years later. Mum became a homemaker for the rest of her life, quite happy to be described as “housewife” on her passport. My father wasn’t a tyrant, far from it, but he too was a product of the times. It was a matter of pride to him that he earnt enough to support his family without his wife having to go out work.
I don’t think my mother even thought about a return to paid employment until I was about to leave home. I heard my parents arguing about it once, just once. She failed to convince my father. And what jobs could she apply for? She had little work experience and by then Maggie’s Millions were queuing at the dole offices, looking for non-existent jobs.
Instead my mother stayed at home, grew vegetables, cooked and cleaned, entertained friends to afternoon tea, knitted and embroidered, made cushion covers and lampshades, and cared for us all. For over 25 years she acted as Treasurer for two local women’s organisations. Later, after my father died, she volunteered in a charity shop. A gentle life, but perhaps a tough one to endure when, had she imagined it possible, she could have achieved so much more.
I hung on to my mother’s china and her small stash of magazine clippings for a while, not knowing what was best to do with them. I didn’t want the tea service, but I did not want to lose the memories the red and gold china contained. I rarely use trays or tablecloths. I had no use for the embroidered table linens.
After weeks of procrastination most of the crockery was donated to charity. I kept just one Old Country Roses cup and saucer and a single tray cloth. They will next have an airing on the next day of national celebration and in my imagination mum will be looking on approvingly. The other tray cloth, along with the unfinished tablecloth and magazine pages from eighty years ago, have been accepted by the National Needlework Archive.
I think my mother would be pleased.
For Jill Beale née Crocker 1932-2023
Catkins in January
In the dark dank end of the year
As the solstice drew close
We would walk hand in hand
Kicking leaves
Smelling the leaf mould
Finding mushrooms and fungi
Searching for Christmas holly
Or collecting kindling
Above us wind whirled branches stripped bare
Boles creaking ominously.
I longed to rush home
To the fire and the warmth
But you made me stop
Pointed out the buds
The promise of spring leaves
Summer soon to follow
I hopped from one leg to another
Nodded, pretended to understand
And then today
My own private epiphany
Catkins dancing in the breeze –
Like lambs tails
Miniature garlands
Or the fat legs of that impatient infant
I realised I had been transformed
Unrushed, unhurried,
Observant, optimistic
The adult you had hoped the child could be.
© 2014