Dolly's War

by Dorothy Scannell

  Finally I hit on a solution to my problem. When I visited Mother as I did two or three times a week I took a suitcase filled with refuse. My mother was mystified, but my father simply said, ‘Dolly’s always been afraid of her own shadow.’ I prayed that if ever I did bump into my landlord on the way out, the catches on my suitcase would not let me down.

  Chapter 2

  Smashing Holiday

  Soon after, Chas and I went to our first wedding as married people. It was a Jewish wedding and I was very much looking forward to it. I always felt thoroughly at home and enjoyed myself with friends of that faith. I admired their energy, and was fascinated by their way of speaking, their arguments, their persuasiveness and their sense of humour. The bridegroom was a shy gentle young man called Sidney. I had met him at the Toynbee Hall drama group and Norma, another goy like me, and I, had kept in touch with Sidney and his friends from time to time. He had a friend Harry, a tall beautiful young man with a vivid and attractive personality. All the girls were crazy about him he was so magnetic. Harry was to be best man. Sidney worked with his father and uncles in a workshop where the naked light-bulbs shone down on the seamstresses seated at long wooden tables. He designed dresses and could also machine and sew with the best of the girls. I thought him fantastic for I had a long struggle even to thread a needle and couldn’t sew without stabbing my forefinger every time. He wore a tape-measure like a garter of honour. Harry, his handsome friend, was nicknamed ‘Harry the Horse’ by his compatriots and I thought he was probably a racing man interested in the turf.

  Norma and I just loved the synagogue wedding, the bride so richly beautiful in a fabulous gown designed by Sidney. They dashed their wine-glasses to the floor and it was like a Hollywood movie. Norma, her husband John, and Chas and I were looking forward to the reception which we assumed would take place in a swanky hotel. Therefore it was four shocked Christians who alighted from the wedding car outside a shabby terraced house in a narrow street somewhere at the back of Spitalfields. All along the street women were sitting on wooden chairs to view the procession and I avoided Chas’s surprised eyes as we entered the ‘hotel’. Norma whispered to me that she needed to ‘go’ and I accompanied her through a passage, dingily decorated with brownish varnished wallpaper. We had to walk carefully as the floor was covered with rope mats, some square, some round, some oval, and our high heels caught in the mats proper and the edgings. We went out into a tiny back yard and were very glad we were together for round the walls of the yard were about twenty men, all wearing hats, all holding large tumblers of beer. The door of the yard lavatory had been removed and was resting against a wall in a dangerous position. Outside the lavatory, which was in full view of the ‘audience’, seated on a low stool was the fattest lady I had ever seen. She was surrounded by scraggy-looking chickens, all featherless and therefore dead,, but otherwise intact, and she had the task of cleaning and dressing these birds under a stream of running water.

  Norma and I fled back into the house. ‘I shall burst,’ said Norma. ‘Perhaps when we’ve had a drink we’ll be braver,’ I suggested. ‘I know what,’ said Norma. ‘When they call us for the meal we’ll dash back quickly then.’ ‘But if that woman’s got to clean those chickens and then cook them it’ll be hours,’ I wailed. We swallowed several glasses of wine and both felt absolutely marvellous, so marvellous in fact that we brazenly followed two beautifully gowned, furred and jewelled matrons back to the yard. At the sight of these ladies the privy counsellors disappeared and crammed themselves into the passage leaving the yard to us four ladies. The fat lady had disappeared with her factory belt of chickens leaving only a few feathers and bloodstains on the concrete to remind us she had ever been in residence there, and from a small kitchen at the side of the lavatory came the delicious smell of cooking.

  At last we sat down to the wedding breakfast. One of the upper bedrooms had been emptied of all normal furniture and we sat on benches at long tables. Norma and I were literally starving as we’d eaten nothing that day, and were both a little excited having imbibed our wine on empty stomachs. Our two husbands were very quiet and very sober; they were simply longing for a nice cup of tea, which they obviously would not be getting. The meal commenced and in front of me was placed a soup bowl filled with bright yellow liquid, and lying to the side of this bright shining pond was a small round pink object. At my surprised stare Norma said, ‘It’s lock-chen, with one meat ball.’ I had always detested stews, clear soup and the like since I was a small child so I waited eagerly for the next course, although Chas drank his yellow stream and ate his meat ball even if he did this as though it would bite him at any moment. Came the next course, the same liquid but instead of a meat ball there was a slice of chicken breast. So delighted was I to see something I was able to eat that before all the dishes had been passed round I had gobbled down my lovely white breast and as the man on my left turned round to speak to a friend sitting on the table behind ours, intoxicated by the wine and my hunger, I rudely speared the breast from his bowl and swallowed it before he turned round. Norma was in hysterics, her husband looked astonished, whilst Chas, sitting opposite me, gazed at his penguin wife with a look of anger and hate mixed with reproachful sadness. I suppose I thought the man whose breast I had stolen would be too good-mannered to mention that something was missing, but he was no gentleman, and quite an argument ensued between him and the servers. Suddenly this breastless man turned round and said belligerently to me, ‘Did you pinch my breast?’ I was now so terrified I became cold sober, and my sweet Chas who normally thought that if I suffered for my own impetuous actions I would gradually reform and become a normal human being, quietly changed dishes with the man who had been robbed. At first it seemed the man would not accept the transfer even though Chas insisted his first little pink ball had ‘filled him up’. Finally when the man realised that the servers would be bringing no more chicken, he ate Chas’s portion. But he did this with his arm round his plate protecting his portion from me. I was so relieved that the matter had been settled, that I was full of love for my husband, but when I thanked him afterwards and apologised for my stupidity and ill-mannered behaviour he said he hadn’t done it out of love or compassion for me. He could see that the man had been drinking and was on the verge of becoming violent and likely to attack me. Chas would therefore have been forced to protect me and he was apprehensive for himself for the robbed man apparently was an all-in wrestler. ‘I suppose that’s why he was so hungry,’ I said.

  After the meal we adjourned to a small room downstairs where the drinks soon flowed freely. Chas and Norma’s husband were having a whispered consultation in the passage having come to the conclusion that they would be wise to collect their merry wives and depart. We said our good-byes and departed for Lyons Corner House for a nice meal. Chas, now safe, had forgiven me, and Norma and John were hysterical when they thought of the wrestler’s face when he realised his breast was missing.

  In the cloakroom I mentioned how attractive Harry the Horse was and wondered vaguely why he hadn’t been snapped up in marriage. Norma lowered her voice. I was still a bit befuddled but eventually gathered from her non-medical language that poor Harry was a non-starter from a marriage point of view because of the abnormal size of his ‘wedding regalia’, hence his nickname.

  *

  Life seemed so quiet now that I was married and when Chas was away working, that I would sometimes sit in my large polish-smelling flat and try to remember the last time I had laughed at anything. It came as a shock to me to realise that I missed my previous life in a large family so much, for I had been sure that all mod. cons, nice furniture and anything I liked to eat would be the ideal existence. I was ashamed of myself for being such a scatter-brained creature that I needed spontaneous laughter to speed the days along, and although I knew the time had come for me to grow up and realise my responsibilities, that life was a serious business, I still had the urge to run back home to Mum and Dad and argue and laugh with the Cheggies again.
I admitted to myself that I was a simple creature born of a simple family, but perhaps because of our childlike characters we had made a poor life into a rich one and I felt to the beatitudes should have been added, ‘Blessed are the simple.’ When I went home again and some of the Cheggies were visiting, without fail something would happen which would fill the old house with merriment.

  One day when I arrived in Poplar, my sisters Amy, Marjorie and Agnes were already there with two of my brothers, David and Leonard, six out of Mother’s ten offspring. They were sitting quietly in the kitchen with Mother, whilst Father was standing to attention in military fashion facing a severe-looking man. This man, holding a sheaf of papers in his hand was obviously a business executive and Marjorie whispered to me that he was ‘seeing to Dad’s pension’. The man looked round the shabby kitchen and across his face crept a look of disdainful condescension. ‘I am given to understand your name is “Chegwidden”,’ he said. He stressed this as though being a member of the poorer fraternity my father’s name should have been Smith, Brown, or White, or perhaps he should have been just a number. I think my father felt this man’s superior attitude, possibly it hurt his pride as some of his ‘children’ were watching, and, though he was only a small man, he drew himself up to his full height and announced in the tones of the upper classes, ‘Actually, Sir, my name is Walter Chenoweth-Chegwidden.’ The man looked astounded, my mother’s head seemed to nod from side to side with ancestral pride in her husband’s revelation of his true family name, and she seemed to draw herself up too. I whispered to Amy, ‘That’s right, Mr Micawber, you tell him,’ and the whole six of us fell into the scullery and exploded into great gusts of laughter at my father’s comical stance and utterance, Mother’s pride, and the deflation of the form-filling official. David always had a laugh like thunder, Marjorie like a goat and the man in the kitchen must have thought he’d entered a mad house. But of course the family name was Chenoweth-Chegwidden, the Chenoweth (pronounced Sheenarth by my ‘swanking’ father) had been dropped after my father’s birth because of some disagreement Grandfather had had with that branch of the family in Cornwall.

  Although my parents were always pleased to see me I had the feeling they were disappointed in me in that I needed to visit them so much and never wanted to pursue other social outlets. No other member of the family returned home so often as Dolly and I suppose Mother knew in her heart it was a case of having to forcibly wean me from her, otherwise I would return home for good. It wasn’t that she wanted to be done with a troublesome daughter for Mum, Dad and I would be merry all the time we were together, it was that she believed they still came first in my heart and she was somehow watching Chas’s interests. Sometimes when I called therefore, she would say they were going to a cinema, or to visit a relation, and I felt they wanted to go alone, without me.

  Mother’s gentle rejection of me took effect and I decided to go back to work. I obtained a temporary job as a shorthand-typist in the city and very quickly became close friends with the, to me, prim elderly dried-up spinster who had been secretary at the firm since the day she left school. Her name was Felicity and we were opposites in every way. She called me Dolly Dragonfly for she said I was always darting about mentally. She had some trouble with her gums and it was during the time that she was toothless and waiting for her gums to harden so that she could wear false teeth that she became engaged to the organist at her local church in Sussex. She continued to work after marriage and when her husband obtained a job as music master in London they found a flat in Chelsea. They invited Marjorie and me for the week-end, saying that as the flat possessed only one bedroom, Marjorie and I could have this and they would ‘manage’ in the dining-room.

  We had a very nice Saturday, if a little prim and proper, for after all they were regular church-goers and all their friends were pillars of the church whereas Marjorie and I, although still believers, no longer attended church and had fallen by the way-side if not from grace. We thought in some way they were trying to reclaim us for God. At ten o’clock on Saturday night we went to bed in the bridal bedroom. How hospitable were our friends, how unselfish. These thoughts were confirmed on Sunday morning for our bride and groom appeared with two heavily laden trays, one for Marjorie and one for me; and a Sunday paper each! We both had a small pot of tea with the accompanying sugar bowl, milk and hot water, thin bread and butter and biscuits. ‘Aren’t they kind!’ said Marjorie. ‘Let’s give them a surprise, let’s tear through this lot, we needn’t eat it all, then dash out and help with the housework and cooking.’ In a flash we had gulped down a cup of tea, swallowed one slice of bread and butter, and without even opening the papers we were on our way to the dining-room.

  I went first carrying my tray, but as I pushed the dining-room door it jammed on something. I put my head round the half-open door to see what was stopping it. A sight so shocking met my eyes that at first the full impact of what I had witnessed did not sink in. All I knew was that I must stop Marjorie who was pushing hard behind me saying, ‘What’s holding you up, Dolly?’ ‘Back, back,’ I whispered hoarsely to Marjorie, but she seemed unable to grasp the urgency in my tone and struggled to look over my shoulder. On a narrow wooden armchair-bed was lying our hostess. Her nightdress was up round her neck. The organist, on his knees, in the nude, was deep in prayer, his face bent in reverence over his bride’s prostrate form. It only needed a dog laid at her marble feet to have provided a perfect subject for a brass-rubbing. Ever so slowly the organist raised his horrified eyes to ours. Marjorie, extremely slow to take in the delicacy of any situation, murmured, half to herself, ‘That’s funny, I could have sworn he was clean-shaven.’ Suddenly the statue let out a blood-curdling scream which galvanised us into activity. We ran back into the bedroom and slammed the door. Marjorie seemed to want to have a post mortem on the proceedings. Hardly the time or place I felt. I knew we could never face our host and hostess again. Why, oh why, hadn’t we stayed in the bedroom and read the News of the World, which now seemed like the Woman’s Home Chat in the light of our experience. As Marjorie said indignantly to me, ‘Your friends were married, Dolly. I assumed they were respectable!’ I never returned to Felicity’s office again.

  *

  Though I never told Chas the real reason for my leaving that firm, as our first holiday together was coming up, he was not unduly curious. As we both missed the large family I had grown up with we decided this time to go to a holiday-camp by the sea, where there would be other young marrieds.

  We soon realised that a camper’s life was not our cup of tea; the bright ‘good morning campers’, the jokes and songs en masse first thing in the morning left us cold and not a little embarrassed. The food, too, left much to be desired and lots of people suffered with tummy trouble. Chas was quite upset that some of the vegetables were dehydrated for to him fresh vegetables were the staff of life. He was also distressed for Lil, the lady in the next hut, sorry, ‘chalet’, to ours for she was becoming a nervous wreck with constipation. Each morning when he saw Lil she would, because of his specialist sympathy (I am sure she thought he was a medical student) shake her head in a negative way and then he would return to me (still lazing in bed, never one of the bright ones early in the morning) and say, ‘It’s ten days today dear, poor Lil,’ so that each morning commenced on a depressing note.

  He was also very cross that I won the treasure-hunt. I had overheard someone explaining the last clue and so reached the treasure first. I felt ashamed too, but having committed the original sin I was not brave enough to make a public confession and salved my conscience by presenting the real winner with my prize of padded coat-hangers from which was suspended a satin lavender-bag, saying I already had too many coat-hangers and lavender-bags. I thereby gained a reputation for overwhelming generosity which annoyed Chas even more.

  After the first few days we did team up with some other jolly young people. Chas won the tennis prize and the table-tennis prize, fairly and squarely, of course. We joined the beach club wh
ere we met every morning for drinks and high-jinks. Chas and I were not real drinkers, he built himself up on Horlicks while I consumed gallons of coffee. One morning, however, I sampled the local home-brewed cider. I’d forgotten my mother’s warning that country cider, to the uninitiated, can be as lethal as spirits and I was feeling in fine fettle, the life and soul of the party. The whole club was in hysterics, with the exception of Chas, still on Horlicks and very worried about me. I loved every moment of this rapturous experience. Someone suggested we visit the nearby town and ‘have a go’ on the miniature Brooklands racing-track. We all contributed to a pool for a prize for the winner.

  Now we had had no experience of cars, indeed I could only ever remember having been in my wedding vehicle, but I assumed the little cars on the track were toys, like a child’s pedal-car. We all selected our racers and I had to try hard to keep my eyes and ears open for the starter’s instructions. ‘Keep your foot on the accelerator until the bell goes,’ he shouted through a megaphone. Down slammed my foot and off I shot. I was leading in no time, for by a miracle I had raced out in front without crashing into my competitors.

  In the centre of the race-track was a miniature rock-garden with a pond, beautiful flowers and exotic trees with chattering monkeys climbing all over them, all this enclosed by strong mesh fencing. The crowd were cheering me on. Never had they seen such driving, the real Brooklands had come to town. I was petrified with terror, too stupid to realise that if I lifted my foot off the pedal I would slow down and come to a halt. The man had said, ‘Keep your foot on,’ and obediently I did. I thought I should be killed, I might even kill a fellow driver, and as I have that sort of weak nature which gives up when the going gets too rough so I began not to care if I was killed, although I did not want to hurt anyone else. Perhaps it was because the effects of the cider were reaching their climax, I don’t know, but I could not wait for the stop bell any longer, I felt it would never ring, and as I negotiated a turn near the rock-garden, wham, with a tearing crash and an almighty flash of electricity (I had no idea the track or fence was wired up to power) I shot straight into the monkey enclosure. For one moment there was a terrible hush; every other car had stopped as though by magic. Then in the silence came the owner’s shout, ‘Jesus Christ Almighty,’ and I knew then what a terrible thing the demon drink was. In my fuddled mind, already feverishly trying to escape from a delicate situation, I realised that I just could not emerge from the car unhurt, as indeed I miraculously was. What wrath would be poured on my head! Why I might even have to work until old age to pay for the damage. So, in my best ‘Lady of the Camellias’ manner I slumped dramatically across the wheel of the car.