Dolly's War

by Dorothy Scannell

  Chas, sure I was mortally wounded, leapt from his car to come to his dying wife and tore his shin from ankle to knee on a piece of broken metal on his racer. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the blood pouring down and realised more than ever that I should have to act out my part. Since I’m no actress this would have been difficult, but the cider had made me sleepy and I closed my eyes while some strong young men, with Chas holding my hand, assisted me to a van which took us back to camp, me to bed, and Chas to the first-aid post. I had to lie in bed for a couple of hours then make a fragile appearance in the evening. ‘How brave she is,’ said Lil. The owner of the racetrack thought I was a wonderful girl for I assured him I was ‘fine’ when he called, very worried that he would have to pay compensation, for he assumed the accelerator had stuck or been faulty in some way. Poor man, his race-track was out of order for a whole week and the strange thing about the whole affair, in retrospect, was the fact that Chas insisted there were no monkeys there!

  Chapter 3

  To Dorothy — a House

  It was back to Greenwich and a calmer life, I hoped, after our racing holiday. I think Chas hoped so too and we were both looking forward to the following week-end when we were to entertain my in-laws to Sunday lunch. They were all lovely people and we got on famously, so as the day drew near Chas and I were quite excited. He had the day off and helped me with the preparations. Just as my parents were opposite personalities, so were Chas’s mum and dad. As a very young girl, almost a child, she had worked in a weaving-shed in her Suffolk village where the young people had a rough time with the overseer, a grim-faced woman, who would lash out at them with a piece of wood from the spinning Jenny. After her friend’s teeth were knocked out by this woman, my mother-in-law, Ethel, not being adept at the spinning of the delicate silk thread, decided she would be better off in domestic service. Ethel was a woman who was never still, or so it seemed to me, never pausing in her cooking, cleaning and polishing. She cleaned her windows throughout the house inside and outside every week and I was very surprised when I saw her ironing her dusters as carefully as though they were delicate articles of lingerie. She laughed at my astonished stare and said, ‘I hope you won’t be such a fusspot as I have been all my life,’ whereupon I confessed to her that I ironed only the collars, fronts and cuffs of her son’s off-duty shirts. She thought me very clever and said I would have more time for getting on with life, that cleaning etc. is not living. She told me I would have to work on Charlie as he was over-conscientious like her and if I didn’t watch him he would ‘work himself’ to death, which, of course, was really what my dear ma-in-law did, being unable to relax. Perhaps the mothers of those days had been brought up in too hard a school.

  Alfred, my father-in-law, was as introvert as his wife was extrovert. He was so shy that he resented any intrusion of strangers into his family, and for weeks and weeks he ignored me. when I first went to his house, indeed he almost sat with his back to me, but once having been accepted by him I had a friend for life. Characterwise I think he was the most marvellous man I have ever met, for his life read like a Greek tragedy, yet never once was he embittered by his suffering, always ready to help those less fortunate than himself. He was passionately fond of children and after Christmas dinner at his house he would collect from each guest money for Dr Barnardo’s children’s homes at Stepney, then he would put in more than he could really afford and walk with it in rain or snow to the orphans’ home. He had been orphaned at an early age, the memories of his mother, Miranda, so faint in his mind that he felt he had to keep recalling them in case he should lose them in the mists of time. He always thought that he had been born in Cork but that his stepfather and stepmother had brought him to London at an early age. He was blind in one eye through – what he always said was an accident – being struck by a piece of coal thrown by his stepbrother. Before he reached his teens he was living alone in one room somewhere near the Strand and would get up at dawn to go to Covent Garden where he would buy a load of celery, clean it and trundle it across London Bridge to sell. He could neither read nor write and he bought an exercise-book, pen and ink (his most cherished possessions), and he taught himself to read and write, his head bent to the paper, the garret room lit only by a candle.

  Ill luck dogged him. He worked in the kitchens of a restaurant under a glass roof which one day caved in. He flung his hands up to protect his head and the tendons were lacerated. Until he could work again he lived almost entirely on dry bread. Eventually he obtained a job in the docks, a regular job, a plum in those days, and he married a music-teacher. Within two years he had a son and a daughter. He adored his children, his wife was a gentle creature, as he was, and he felt he had come through his dark days into perpetual sunlight. But his wife died suddenly of a heart-attack when his children were both under two years of age. Eventually he married my lovely ma-in-law, and was doing quite well at work when a further blow fell.

  I felt what happened has to be looked at in the context of his previous life, for he was an honest man, a proud man, a man to help anyone in trouble, but because of his days of near starvation he could not bear to waste even a stale crumb. One day when leaving the docks he saw, in the gutter, a few potatoes which really had ‘fallen off a lorry’. To him this was wasted food and he retrieved these and put them in his pocket. He was searched at the gate and lost his job. Of course his wife was furious, why her relations in Suffolk sent them potatoes by the sack load, but of course no one who has not starved could possibly know how he felt. But in those days stealing was stealing even though the next lorry would have run over the wretched spuds.

  Then followed a dreadful time for the family. He was too proud to go on relief, which was the only possible course in those days, and in the end the children were sent from school to a building opposite St Frideswide’s church in Poplar where they were given free meals. My husband said it was the first time he had seen an individual steak and kidney pudding in its own tiny basin, and this miniature creation so amazed him that he wanted to take it home to his mother for he knew she would be surprised as he was. Eventually the engineer Chas’s mum worked for obtained a job as a storekeeper for my disgraced father-in-law, and again, just when the family were on their feet more or less, a ship’s rope caught Alfred on his blind eye and he was knocked off the quay. The bones in his feet were broken and he spent many months in Poplar hospital. Chas, then a boy, went to collect him on his discharge, his feet still in plaster, and Chas said it was the only time he had seen his father cry. At Blackwall Tunnel it was always a mad rush for buses and they had to wait ages to get one. Once the crowd had even knocked his father down when he was on crutches.

  Chas’s father was very frugal with himself, he would finish up the dry crusts and only ever treated himself to a weekly half-pint of beer when things were going well. This would last him all day on Sundays when he would sup it from a small wineglass. One cigarette would last him all day too, and as they were a cardplaying family, if ever he won, he would pour a fresh wine-glass of beer and treat himself to a few puffs of a Woodbine. Yet his wife was on the extravagant side and he was so pleased for his wife and children to have what they desired.

  She had been a country girl and could not bear to see her house without flowers. She would take great care of them. I have even seen the last faded one, not quite dead, cherished in an egg-cup. My mother loved flowers too, but to my father these were an unnecessary extravagance. If Mother was ever in funds and purchased some mimosa or daffodils, when the temptation to pass them by was too great, we would be very cross with my father for when he came in to meals and Mother was gazing fondly at the bright promise of spring on the table he would say, ‘What I want to see on the table is something with steam rising from it.’

  I think my own father looked down on Alfred, my father-in-law, not only because he stayed at home and helped his wife in the house, never going to a club with MEN as my father did, but also because of his restrained drinking habits. My father told Alf
red that he had brewed some good strong beer himself once but that he discontinued its manufacture because the family didn’t appreciate his efforts at economy. When I told Chas’s father of the home-brewed affair he couldn’t stop laughing and said he was glad he was no drinker. He thought my father a wonderful man and said he was a real ‘character’.

  When I hear Kipling’s words ‘If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster’, I see my father again standing in that little East End kitchen rubbing the balding top of his head, like a small boy, bewildered, sad, puzzled and then amused at the result of the failure of another of his ‘do-it-yourself’ projects. The ‘law of averages’, an expression my father was very fond of quoting, never applied to my father’s experiments. They were all, without exception, disasters. To Mother’s great relief I think the home-brewed beer project was my father’s swan-song. At that time in my hectic pre-marital career I worked in an office in Moorgate. The staff were all middle-class (to me, blue-blooded), but in this office I was exceptionally popular. It was a charity which ran a boarding-school for the sons and daughters of impoverished clergy and the like.

  One of the typists whose father was in the stockbroking business invited me to her home in Hampstead for the week-end. I had tried to refuse gracefully but Mother persuaded me to go. It was Mother’s one aim in life that out of all her girls ‘Dolly’ should marry a tradesman. I never knew quite what she meant by a ‘tradesman’ and I don’t think she did either. However, a real leather attache case was borrowed from somewhere, I saved hard for silk underclothes, a nightdress and a ‘ball’ gown. It was the first time I had acquired silk underclothes and they were the most beautiful things I had ever possessed. The vest and cami-knickers were in eau-de-Nil crepe de Chine edged with coffee-coloured lace. I must have made an indelible impression in these luxurious garments for my younger sister Marjorie still quotes that the sight of me in these cami-knickers at the dress rehearsal was the most beautiful sight she has ever seen. The trouble was that despite that compliment I didn’t possess a face to match my figure and since I could not walk about in the City of London clad only in my cami-knickers I was still a ‘nice homely girl’ because I possessed such a matronly face.

  However, with great pride, Mother packed my week-end case and I can see, even now, her work-worn fingers gently stroking the elegant silk in its tissue-paper. Mother had to pack the case on Thursday evening because she was visiting the miniature village at Beaconsfield with the Mothers’ Union on Friday, and as I had to be up early on Saturday morning she was afraid ‘slap-dash Dolly’ would forget something as I had to bathe and shampoo my hair on Friday evening. My case was closed, but left unlocked on the kitchen dresser, awaiting my ascent into society.

  Friday was a Borough holiday, so my father, a plumber with the local council, had the day off. This perturbed no one at the time although, with hindsight, it should have done, and when I left for the office on that fateful Thursday he was up, washed and shaved, with an excited look in his eyes and prancing almost boyishly on his feet. He seemed anxious for us to depart, me to work, Mother to the church to meet her friends and the coach. Father actually stood at the gate waving us off, a thing I had never known him do before, and the love-light shone in Mother’s eyes. ‘Not many men would be so unselfish as to wish their wives a happy day when they have to be alone all day and prepare their own meals,’ she said proudly. I was surprised at Father’s eagerness for Mother to enjoy the outing but I felt stirrings of guilt at my suspicious thoughts as I watched her greet some other poor old mums, all as excited as children. I forgot my apprehension about the week-end and also my suspicions of my father’s reformed behaviour and sat on the tram thinking only of my green silk cami-knickers and my ‘chiffon’ lisle stockings. The stockings had cost the exorbitant sum of 1s. 3d. In my mind I was Lady Dorothy.

  Eight hours later my ‘eau-de-Nil’ dreams were shattered. I arrived home to find the kitchen in a turmoil and Mother flushed and terribly worried. Father was flushed too but as excited as he had been in the morning, almost delirious, and talking in half-sentences. Mother said, ‘I’m sorry, Dolly, I’ve got them soaking in cold salt water in the kitchen sink.’ In the bowl in the sink was a sort of wadge of brown material with, here and there, a green spot, like little pieces of specked apple. I gazed at these bright green spots and the penny dropped! This brown wet mass was my society undies. Apparently Mother had arrived home soaked through because of a freak storm (comforted by the thought of a welcoming father and a singing kettle), to find the kitchen in a dreadful mess with a tottery and victorious father waving his hands round the kitchen at assorted sized bottles of strange-smelling brown liquid. Someone had given him an ancient recipe for home-made beer and Father said it was ‘true elixir’. Mother looking at the soggy brown material on the table had asked, ‘Whatever did you strain it through?’ ‘Oh,’ said Father, ‘I was lucky there, in the case on the dresser I found something that was “just the job”.’

  Of course I cried; Mother, tired out, nearly cried too and as the rest of the family appeared from work Father sunk further into disgrace. But still he had the end results of his zeal which kept him above the water-line of shame. He placed all the bottles carefully and lovingly on a shelf in the coal-cellar, the door of which led into the kitchen, although the cellar was half under the front garden. Every bottle exploded, without exception, but with true poetic justice they did not explode en masse, but one each day. Mother was terrified to go into the cellar until the last one had been blown to infinity.

  I went for my upper class week-end in my ordinary undies and distinguished myself by slipping on the highly polished parquet floor and putting my elbow through a glass pane in my hostess’s china cabinet. I felt miles removed from the elegant young men at the ball in their dinner suits (in any case they couldn’t dance nearly as well as the boys at Poplar Town Hall with their ‘coming rahnd’) and the little cardboard ‘programme’ with its tiny silver-topped pencil and tassel in which my dances were to be reserved was sparsely filled with duty invitations from my office friends’ brothers. I knew then that even my green silk cami-knickers would not have prevented me from being a foreigner in a foreign land and I made up my mind to buy my father an ounce of his favourite tobacco when I returned home. How could I blame him, he could never have seen green silk undies in his life before. His rememberings would only have been flannel or winceyette.

  My mother and my father-in-law really liked each other. He brought out the maternal in my mother and she made a great fuss of him, seeing that he had exactly what he was fond of at mealtimes. They both shared the same gentle traits and an intense love of children. On the momentous day of my in-laws’ first visit to Greenwich, Chas’s parents brought along his elder brother Robin, with his wife Olive and their small son Geoffrey, together with Annetta, Chas’s sister, her husband James and their son, also named James. Now the boys, James and Geoffrey, were two live eels, for ever active, never still, and whilst the adults played cards the boys dashed from room to room and up and down the lino-covered stairs until it was time for them to leave. Everyone kept saying they had spent a really happy day and Chas and I retired to bed pleased with the success of their visit.

  The next morning, on the stairs, was a sealed envelope addressed to ‘The occupant of the upstairs flat’. I was mystified, for as the envelope was unstamped, I couldn’t think from whence it came and how it got on to the stairs. I stood by whilst Chas opened the envelope. ‘Sir,’ it began, ‘Accept one week’s notice to leave the premises, as from today.’ We sat down silently until Chas said, ‘Sir,’ ‘Sir,’ ‘Sir,’ in different tones as though he was practising with a Shakespearean company. This word ‘Sir’ seemed to shock, absorb, and worry Chas more than the ultimatum itself. Apparently Mephistopheles had been unable to sleep on Sunday because of the noise made by Chas’s nephews, yet only the week before Mrs Mephi had said our presence in the the upstairs flat was a delight. As she added, ‘We never hear a sound from you,’ I thought at the ti
me she meant ‘absence’ and not ‘presence’.

  However, Robin came to our speedy assistance, not because dear little Geoffrey had been half the cause of our summary dismissal, but because he was having trouble with rather eccentric neighbours. Rob was buying a house on one of the new estates which seemed to be mushrooming everywhere in 1937. He had become friendly with the people next door but after a time began to miss some article from his house, always a day or so after the visit of these new-found friends. Once it was a solid silver sugar-bowl, the next time, the silver tongs which ‘went’ with the bowl, and then a piece of porcelain from his china-cabinet. He still didn’t suspect his neighbours until one evening he and Olive were invited next door to play cards and lo and behold on the sideboard were Rob’s missing articles. The neighbours seeing the amazed stares of their ‘benefactors’ said, ‘Oh, you are admiring our little bits and pieces. We collect them you know, and we have had these pieces for many years now.’ Rob was speechless and helpless, hardly believing what he had seen and heard, almost hypnotised by the neighbours’ calm manner into believing that by some coincidence the neighbours possessed identical articles to his own and that his had been stolen in some other mysterious fashion. But Olive, more a woman of the world than Rob, began quietly to plot a campaign to recover her treasures.