Dolly's Mixture Read Online Free PDF

most, a queue of people and a small boy squeezing his way through to a flat without a welcoming mum. Perhaps the dear lady realised she was losing her battle with me, for she became impatient again and said sharply, ‘The customers are of no importance. [I could visualise Chas’s face at that moment.] Cannot I make you realise that you , of all people [why me, I wondered], have been given a rare gift, an unusual happening in this life, a child who is an intellectual individualist!’ She then brought her big guns into play with the words, ‘ would give my ears to possess a son like yours.’ I wondered why she had chosen her ears to suggest a bargain which could never be clinched, and I returned sadly home. ‘Surely you told the doctor how busy we are?’ said Chas.
    When I visited my son’s school to tell the head the result of my visit to hospital, I felt she was not impressed by modern methods of child diagnosis, for she said, ‘He will not conform. He must conform to stay at my school.’ Apparently William’s non-conformity was displayed in his peculiarity with margins. I was shown my son’s exercise book. He reduced the number of words on each line so that the margin went, like half a pyramid, from the top left-hand corner, where it was narrow, to the bottom right-hand corner, where it was wide and there was a space the whole width of the page.
    It is natural that parents should desire to do the best for their offspring; my mother’s wish in life had been that we emulated her and became happy and content in the ‘way of life in which it has pleased our Lord to call us’. On the other hand, although my father insisted that parents should, with regard to their children, ‘love ’em and leave ’em alone’, he always reiterated firmly and loudly when we were talking of our dreams and ambitions for the future, ‘You must get it down on paper .’ In other words, certificates of examinations passed were the only passport to success for we children from the working class. This was the proof needed to open the gates to a different life. And there was only one way to do it, through school and evening classes, for sometimes our parents at Poplar had been at their wits’ ends to supply us with the bare necessities of life; private tuition or coaching was for people from another world.
    For Chas and me, now on the threshold of becoming successful traders, the opportunity was arising for us to provide better help for our children. Susan’s life seemed set fair. William, I felt, needed all our help to get educationally. on course. Chas bought a typewriter, thinking William might like to learn to type and bash out his thoughts that way; there we made a rod for my back, for on early-closing days William would station me at the typewriter and walk up and down the room dictating at a furious speed on all subjects under the sun. He educated his mum, really, and woe betide me if I couldn’t keep pace with him. He’d ‘tut’ testily, repeat his last few sentences without hesitation and off we’d go again. But as Chas repeated, like a magic incantation, ‘He seems happy enough,’ our busy life continued. However, William did complain when, later on, I insisted he wore ‘regulation’ garb to school – flannel suits, grey, and square-toed shoes – when all his companions were wearing narrower trousers and winkle-picker shoes. When it was too late for me to change my mind (I regretted my obstinacy with regard to his schoolboy clothing), he said he was grateful to me because ‘All my friends who wore pointed-toed shoes now have pointed feet!’ He was honest and kind and, because he had a reputation for being a wit, it was all too easy, busy as we were, to blind ourselves and assume he would be all right when he got out into the world. Although sometimes I was a bit apprehensive of his outspoken manner being