Marge Askinforit

by Barry Pain

All change, please. The next item on the programme will be a succinct account of my ebullient girlhood.

I cannot say that I loved the Warren, my ancestral home. The neighbours called it the Warren, but I can’t think why. The Post Office said it was No. 4, Catley Mews, Kentish Town, and dear papa—who always had the mot juste—sometimes said that it was hell.

We were a high-spirited family with clean-cut personalities, penetrating voices, short tempers, high nervous tension, and small feet. Don’t you wish you were like that?

All the same, there were only the four rooms over the stable. At times there were fifteen or sixteen of us at home, and also the lodger—I shall speak of him presently. And when you have five personal quarrels, baby, the family wash, a sewing-machine, three mouth-organs, fried bacon, and a serious political argument occurring simultaneously in a restricted establishment, something has to go. As a rule, dear papa went. He would make for Regent’s Park, and find repose in the old-world calm of the parrot-house at the Zoo.

But there is always room on the top—it is a conviction on which I have ever acted. When I felt too cramped and stifled in the atmosphere of the Warren, I would climb out on the roof. There, with nothing on but my nightgown, tennis shoes, and the moonlight, I would dance frenetically. The tiles would break loose beneath my gossamer tread and, accompanied by sections of gutter, go poppity-swish into the street below and hit all manner of funny things. I fancy that some of the funny things complained. I know the police called, and I seem to remember rather a nasty letter from the landlord’s agent. I had a long interview with mamma on the subject. She pointed out that if I slipped and fell I should probably make a nasty dent in the pavement, and with many tears I promised to relinquish the practice.

I used to ride on the Heath when I had the opportunity, but I cannot pretend that I was up to the standard of the G.E. I do not think I ever rode up a staircase. I certainly never threw my horse down on the marble floor of the hall of the Warren. There were several reasons for this. Firstly, the Warren had not got a hall, and if it had had a hall, the hall would not have had a marble floor. Secondly, the horses I rode were likely to be wanted again, being in fact the ponies that unsuspecting tradesmen stabled at Catley Mews. Bogey Nutter looked after them, and I could always do what I liked with Bogey. He was perhaps the most profuse proposer I ever met. At one time he always proposed to me once a day and twice on Bank holidays. I was such a dashing, attractive creature, what?

As to my education, a good deal depends on what is meant by education. The kind that was ladled out at the County Council establishment made little effect upon me. But I was pretty quick at figures, and knew that an investment of half-a-crown at eleven to eight should bring me in a profit of three-and five—provided that the horse won and the man at the fishmonger’s round the corner paid up. My brother Lemberg had the same talent. If he bought a packet of fags and paid with a ten-shilling note, he could always negotiate the change so that he made ninepence for himself and had the cigarettes thrown in. His only mistake was in trying to do it twice at the same shop, but the scar over his right eye hardly shows now. A sharp-cornered tobacco-tin was not the thing to have hit him with anyhow.

For autobiographical purposes always treat a deficiency as if it were a gift. The G.E. was apparently a duffer at arithmetic, but she tells you so in a way that makes you admire her for it. All the same I wish I had been one of those factory-girls that she used to reclaim in their dinner-hour; I am fundamentally honest, but I never could miss a chance when it was thrown at me.

My education in dancing was irregular, as that greasy Italian did not wheel his piano round every week. However I acquired sufficient proficiency to attract attention, and that is the great thing in life. The Italian offered me twopence a day to go on his round with him and dance while he turned the handle. I told Signor Hokey-pokey what I thought of the offer, and I have some talent for language, if not for languages. So, as he could not get me, he did the next best thing and bought a monkey.

I was by far the most spiritual of the family. But my brother Minoru attended chapel regularly, until they stopped collecting the offertory in open plates and substituted locked boxes with a slot in them. He found another chapel that seemed more promising, but he attended it only once. I shall always consider that the policeman was needlessly rough with him, for Minoru said distinctly that he would go quietly.