WHEN I was new to the dark ways of this world, as pale as milk but as curious as a little bird in an orchard, my maternal grandmother slept long and deep in an upstairs room of our tall, cold house, which was visited by the coughing winds of the night.
She was a lady of high manners and even higher morals, with a glint of old Ireland still in her smile. Although straight-backed with lips that could purse with disapproval at the drop of a scone-crumb, she liked a good gossip – always under God’s ordinance, of course. Her dearest possession was a brown volume called A Girl’s Book of Piety, which rested on the bedside table by a nice cup of delicately sugared tea.
The Holy Sisters in a convent had given it to her. “Dearest Maggie, with sincere affection and earnest prayers that she may ever abide under the protection of Mary Immaculate,” they wrote.
It was strange, I used to think, that she never rose from her plumped pillows, but in the late afternoons we would visit her and switch on the television set in front of the bed. It had a little screen, big twiddly knobs, a crackling webbed speaker and was otherwise kept behind the doors of a wooden cabinet. One day, before my gaze fell on the TV, I noticed that a white pot of shame was gleaming under her bed. It was very much the same as the one under my own bed, but mine had become an object of fun, used for nocturnal wee-wees. We called it “the jerry” in tribute to the style of helmet worn by German soldiers.
On spotting this jerry’s porcelain shine in my eyes, my mother promptly pulled down the counterpane, so that it could no longer be seen. For, in those days, ladies of noble character did not need such items. They might make very occasional visits to the smallest room in the house to powder their noses or to water the flowers, but they never, as it were . . . Heaven forbid! That was for other people. My mother lived well into her nineties and never, as far as I know, went to the lavatory. It must have been the most enduring case of constipation in medical history.
Anyway, one day I noticed that Granny had left her room. “Where has she gone?” I asked my mother, whose eyes clouded, as she looked away to the window, from which you could see across the garden to the grey stone steeple of the old church, piercing the sky. “She has gone on a little holiday,” said my mother, finally, before stepping out of the light. The door closed quietly behind her. Well, Granny must have enjoyed that little holiday in Cleethorpes or Skegness because she never came back, and if she did return home tomorrow she would be 126.
Euphemisms were prevalent then among people of a certain cut. In God’s grand Creation, we may have evolved alongside the animals, but we were different. The centre of these euphemisms was the smallest room in the house. I remember sitting in it, enthroned indeed, reading a good book while, in moments of tension, squeezing the rubber ball at the end of the chain, which had to be pulled, so that no evidence would be left of your ever having been there.
We still talk about “pulling the chain”, though modern loos are fitted with a handle that has to be pressed downwards. But have you noticed how often they don’t work? Loo handles and the locks on lavatory doors are the most mischievous items in the modern home. Imagine now that you have been sitting in the lounge of a new friend for half an hour, twisting your legs and grimacing. Finally you work up the courage to say, “Eh-hem, don’t you know, how’s your father? Is it, um, upstairs?”
“Oh you want the loo,” says the host. “It’s the seventh door along after the grandfather clock, but a word of warning: the lock doesn’t work unless you’ve got the knack because the previous owner didn’t hang the door properly. But fear not. Find the creaking floorboard to the left of the wall and leap on it nine times while reciting the Lord’s Prayer in Latin and Bob’s your uncle. You’ll find the loo handle is also a trifle temperamental – twist it sharply in an anti-clockwise direction with one hand and then beat the cistern lid with the other one. That should do it. Sorrreeee!”
LISTEN to David Charters on his podcast at www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk
