Gwenda Keary — my mum
Gwenda suffered a stroke and died on September 13th 2007, just as she was resigning herself to life in a retirement home. She would have hated it.
Gwenda Schettini
1920-2007
The following account is extracted from an early draft of The Novice.
Before she married, Mum's dream was to go on stage, in spite of her father's insistence that she keep her respectable position as a Post Office clerk, and that's exactly what she did. She was still a teenager when she joined Bertram Mills Circus as a Millimetre Girl, or acrobatic dancer.
During her first week, as the circus was taking to the road one morning, one of the other performers asked, “Would you care to join me? I’m driving a car for somebody.”
“Oh? Who?”
“Shit-teeny. He’s got two.”
Gwenda asked: “Two cars? Who on Earth is this Shit-teeny?” She giggled at the mangled name.
“You’ll find out soon enough. If by some miracle you don’t notice him, I’ll point him out to you.”
“Oh, all right.” Gwenda’s curiosity was piqued.
They got into the large Peugeot and drove on the quiet, narrow roads through the old English countryside. Every so often they passed one of the circus’s ponderous steam traction engines which had set out the previous night, dragging its enormous load at two or three miles an hour. It was a warm day and Gwenda felt languorous, delighted to be away from her hateful, sensible job at the Post Office, doing instead what she’d always wanted. She’d even secured her father’s begrudged blessing for her dreamed-of life as a dancer. The circus was her family now. She leaned back, looked at the blue sky and enjoyed the ride. All she could hear was the quiet purring of the staid motor car and the wind.
The silence was shattered by the roar of a huge engine and the raucous blare of triple horns.
“What on Earth …,” she began in alarm. A beige and chrome Horsch flew past. In the passenger seat sat a huge Saint Bernard dog, its white coat rippling, it’s eyes narrowed against the wind. The driver wore a leather flying helmet, straps unfastened and jangling. With one elbow on the door and a cigarette holder gripped in his teeth, his lips were parted in a furious, smiling grimace.
The Millimetre Girl in 1937
Gwenda Keary, age nineteen
Her friend shouted over the racket. “That,” he said, “is Shit-teeny.”
“Good God,” said Gwenda. “What a show-off!”
Nevertheless, Shit-teeny turned out to be a charmer. Mussolini joined Hitler, the Metropolitan Police rounded up all the Italian men and Pascal, as he called himself, convinced Mum to look after his business interests and to visit him in internment. A year later, they satisfied the authorities that he posed no threat and he started up a restaurant in Kensington with Ciccio, a fellow internee. Gwenda married Pascal in the middle of the war and produced Yolanda, my sister.
By the time I arrived she’d grown used to the transformation of her handsome courtier into a demanding Calabrian taskmaster. Only occasionally did his romantic nature rise above the fray of the workday routine. In addition to looking after the house and rearing three children, and then an unexpected fourth, Mum was expected to turn on cue into a charming hostess in the restaurant. She worked continuously, but not tirelessly. Many’s the evening I saw her shaken out of a brief catnap by the shrill ringing of the telephone and Dad’s curt summons to the dining room. Carefully replacing the receiver before mumbling her protests, she donned makeup, evening clothes and high heels and reluctantly left us children to our own devices. Apart from the occasional and risky protest provoked by one of his more extreme affronts, she saw few choices. She blames her frequent absences, among other things, for my disturbed childhood and unorthodox life.
For more stories about Gwenda, Bertram Mills Circus and Shit-teeny, read Stephen Schettini’s The Novice.
