Open Writing

When we were children, I remember how we used to await the arrival of our mother’s new corset as if it were the Apocalypse or a Royal jubilee. It was something far more momentous than a birthday celebration. In those far-off days, very little seemed to arrive by post, or indeed by any other means. Today’s vast greetings cards industry had not been born, and you can imagine that if there actually was a package to be delivered, curtains would indeed have been twitching.

The arrival of my mother’s new corset would be anticipated for days in advance. How it came to be there, in a brown paper parcel, I have no idea, or where it came from, or how it was conjured up. We had no thick, glossy catalogue to look through, nor a telephone to make an order on, and my sister and I heard no discussion or conversation with our father or aunt that mentioned ‘new corset’.

In any case, the choice of undergarments was simply not discussed in our house. I was going to say “in those days”, but as a child I didn’t know what went on in other people’s homes, only in my own. Those were the days of the liberty bodice (oh, those rubber buttons!) and warm interlock vests, and, no, you didn’t dare to argue about wearing them.

But, back to the corset - the new corset. There were butterflies in my stomach and my small heart pounded when my mother opened the door, thanked the postman and took delivery of this large brown package. She would carefully untie the string, so that it could be used again, and slip a knife under the blob of sealing wax. Ah, sealing wax, how I loved sealing wax. My father kept sticks of it in his desk drawer, and sometimes he would let me ‘blob’ a drop of the melting magic on to a special business envelope. I could have performed that service all day long. It wasn‘t the same, seeing it cold and hard, ensuring the safety of my mother’s corset, but when she slid the knife under it, it was as though a magic spell had been broken.

With the paper edges released from the sealing wax, I would hover and watch and be allowed to witness the final unwrapping of this strange pink carapace, slotted through with whalebone strips and threaded with laces. Sometimes the whalebone would give way to steel rods, according to the brand name, or how much restraint my mother was planning to inflict on her body.

I never saw my mother in the flesh, of course: one didn’t in those days. But when the new corset was finally revealed, free from the tissue paper and unhooked, she would disappear for a time and reappear wearing only vest and bloomers, and we would have to assist in the placing of the corset round her back and sides. (A similar exercise these days is the lagging of your hot-water tank.)

This done, the all-important, make-or-break hooking up of right to left could take place in front of the tummy.

This was the nub: if Mother has miscalculated the distance between breast and thigh - if all the hooks could NOT be fastened because of a bulge here or there, then, alas, the disappointment, the chagrin, as the whole process went into reverse. There would be another attempt, a lot of breath holding and heaving and tugging of laces. Then the awful realisation that it wasn’t going to fit and would have to be parcelled up and sent back. (That would be a joy in itself: to use the same string, but have a new blob of sealing wax would be enough excitement for a whole day.)

I remember occasions when everything was perfect. Mother would preen in front of the mirror, a smile of satisfaction on her face because it fitted like a glove. She would put on again her trademark silky flowered dress, soft and pretty and smelling of April violets. No-one could guess the clever engineering underneath. We all said “yes, it’s lovely, you look fine - lovely and slim”, and secretly thought that she looked much the same as before. We were happy for her: a new corset, it seems, can impart a wonderful sense of well-being and a great surge of confidence. It would last for quite a while.

But the day would come, we knew, when the poundings in the washtub and the squeezings through the mangle would take their toll. The corset would lose its strength, pink would become a sort of grey, and it would be time to order a new one. Shall it be the same size? Shall it come from the same unnamed and distant place? Who knows? When it comes, the excitement will be just the same, and my tummy will be full of butterflies again. There is no excitement quite like the arrival of a new corset.