Dolly's War

by Dorothy Scannell

  I wandered about all the evening searching for suitable words with which to break the news to my darling, but when he came in I blurted it all out. He was horrified at what I had done, he made me feel I had forged Bank of England documents, but at last I convinced him that what mattered was the fact that even if he’d had no education he was still as knowledgeable as many a more educated man and he did know how quick with figures he was. A more determined character than he, I used threats as to what I would do if he didn’t attend for the interview and examination. Finally he went, looking a little under the weather. I hadn’t told him all the lies I had written on the form for he just would not have gone for the interview, and I kept my fingers crossed that my answers to the questions on the forms would not be challenged. I felt worried for Chas and also myself. He would come home like a raging lion if a pertinent question was asked, for my husband was of that rare breed of husband – he was physically unable to tell a lie, even a little white one, indeed he couldn’t even embroider a joke, everything had to be the absolute truth for an untruth would almost choke him. I suppose that is why he rarely told a joke, for who wants to listen to a funny story related almost as a vicar announces a hymn.

  Always the eternal optimist I was sure he would pass the interview and written examination and be sent on in the afternoon to the medical officer. Although he was one hundred per cent fit, at that time an exceptionally thin man was medically suspect, and I thought I would help him through the physical examination. I filled his pockets with bags of pennies and said he could absent-mindedly put his overcoat over his arm when stepping on the scales.

  All day long I wandered from room to room. The house was quiet for Marjorie had gone back to work after her marriage, and finally when dusk was falling in came ‘The man from the Pru’ for he had passed the interview, written examination and medical examination with flying colours. Well, perhaps it isn’t quite true to say he had passed the medical with flying colours for the doctor had discovered my ruse with the coppers, but he said to Chas, ‘Give my good wishes to your dear wife and tell her you are quite healthy, for a skeleton,’ and then he had added, wearily, ‘What does it matter, the war will be on us soon and we might all be gone.’ With these cheerful words he passed my husband A.1.

  Everyone was delighted that Chas, now a Prudential agent, was released from his slavery of waiting on other people. He soon became such a conscientious and successful agent that it was a mystery to me how he ever worked as a waiter in the first place. How soon I forgot the depression of the thirties, the dole queues, men with better qualifications than his, unemployed, I even forgot how pleased we were that through being a waiter he was able to support a wife, for he would have remained an ‘ancient’ junior had he stayed with the firm he started to work for on leaving school because promotion there went to ‘friends’ of the management.

  Chas was slight and short and hardly reached up to the office counter when he first began his city career and was very proud that one of his jobs, the one with such power, was the drawing of the BLUE line across the page of the staff signing in book. This blue line was drawn across the page at 9.15 a.m. and every morning Chas, a real little Hitler, would eagerly watch the clock and at the precise second, like the sword of Damocles, inevitably and irrevocably draw the thin blue line. It mattered not that through the glass doors a tearful typist or an irate clerk could be seen approaching. Chas drew his blue line with delight. Then he handed out the late excuse slips – ‘I was... late this morning because...’ and the excuses were ingenious and varied, with the exception of the late slip which an old stalwart of the firm received every morning during the two years Chas wielded power over tempus fugit. Come rain or shine, summer, spring or fall, the old stalwart’s excuse was the same, a grand thumb to the nose gesture to authority – ... because of FOG. Chas is so ashamed of himself and his conscience troubles him now when he recalls his joyful period as guardian of the time-keeping book.

  Chas’s insurance round was at Dagenham, rows and rows of identical houses, long roads of sameness. He was extremely popular with those friendly people, not because he was a jolly sort of caller, but because there was nothing he would not do for them, he was trusted and respected. I knew he would make an excellent agent but later on when I took over his round during the war even I was surprised at the esteem in which he was held and touched by the way he had helped people far beyond the line of duty.

  My mother was very pleased that Chas and I were beginning to rise in the world, class-wise, or at least she felt we had taken our first few faltering steps towards the life of a ‘tradesman’ and his consort. She had never really been 100% for my marriage with Chas for, although she liked him, because of his lack of flesh she was quite convinced my life would be one of attendance on an invalid and her unspoken belief was, I was sure, ‘Dolly will soon get fed up with that.’ She seemed to me to be always watching my husband with a look of maternal sympathy, feeling that should he ever be confined to a wheel-chair it would not be long before the said wheel-chair and its delicate contents would either be under a bus or over a cliff provided that my invalid, as a non-earner, would ever have been able to get to the sea. She adjured him to ‘wrap up well and keep well shod’ in the treacherous winter weather we seemed to experience then, although she thought the outdoor life might set him up if Dolly kept him well fed with good home-cooking. The trouble here was finance, for now that Chas was a white-collared ‘gentleman caller’ this commodity was an intensely scarce one. His basic weekly wage was £3, our last £50 capital was deposited as a sort of indemnity, and Chas had to contract a life insurance with the company, so that after weekly deductions and rent of 22s. 6d. per week, there was about thirty shillings left for all other necessities, including food.

  In addition to this ‘struggle’, possibly because I had completely forgotten my intense desire for a baby, I became pregnant. This meant the procuring of baby clothes, cot and pram. It was, of course, the immediate future which was a bit desperate money-wise, in the long term the prospects were rosy for not only would there be commission on new business but there were half-yearly, or yearly, lump sum payments for the handling of national health insurance. I loved writing the cards which I did in my best writing and printing, watched over by the eagle eye of Chas, ever confident, as he thought me scatter-brained, that I would either lose a reference card, or put one in the wrong file.

  The problem with keeping one’s head above water knowing that solvency was just around the corner, was that one’s stock of clothes and appurtenances always wanted renewing when the lump sums did come; therefore, like a vicious circle, we would again be waiting for the next ‘windfall’. We had never had many clothes being of a saving nature. True, this had enabled us to supply the £50 deposit needed for the job and prior to that the deposit for the house at Forest Gate but at one time during my pregnancy I was walking about with cardboard in the soles of my ‘holey’ shoes which brought back the memory of my school-friend Lizzie who was once so excited at finding ‘a luverly bit of cardboard for me shoes, look Dolly, it ain’t even cracked’. I don’t know whether my family would have rallied round had they known of our temporary set-back. They really all had a hard job to keep their heads above water, as most people had in the thirties, and in any case we had always been a most independent family and had told no one of our money troubles. Chas’s father knew of our plight and wanted so much to help but he had scrimped and saved and gone without to amass the small amount necessary for a deposit on Chas’s sister Netta’s house when, with a small baby, she was without accommodation. Chas felt we really couldn’t borrow the money which Netta was paying back to her father weekly, although his dear father was pressing him to do so. No, independence was the watchword of all us young-marrieds and teenagers in those far-off days. Chas’s brother Phil, always so generous and always the dandy where clothes were concerned, presented Chas with a pearl-grey suit, which we had dyed dark brown but tragedy stalked there, for nursing a friend’s baby one d
ay, the baby had an ‘accident’ and the lovely dark brown suit became pearl-grey again round the crutch.

  To make matters worse we had to leave Forest Gate and live nearer Chas’s agency at Dagenham and since the area was a mixture of new-town council-houses, for which we weren’t eligible, and estates of newly-built private houses, it was difficult to get accommodation. Oh, those various ‘stays’ in odd furnished rooms, washing up on the table, cooking over a gas-ring or fire. I was getting larger and unhappier each day and frantic that we wouldn’t get settled before our baby was born. At last our luck turned and one of the other Pru gentlemen found us a lovely flat in a lovely road at Ilford. He informed us that the owner-occupier was a widow, a most charming woman, an absolute darling, so the fact that we had to share her bathroom and kitchen would be no problem at all. Well, he was so right, she was a real charmer, an absolute angel to everyone, including Chas, especially Chas, but within minutes of our occupancy I felt ‘someone walking over my grave’ for when this charmer gazed at me with her glittering eyes, so dark they looked black, I knew that she hated me with a deadly hatred. Some deep native instinct from time immemorial gave me a feeling of cold and sickly fear.

  It is always difficult to be in the minority of one. Later on when this lady behaved so malignantly to me when I was alone, any reports on her behaviour to Chas or my family were taken as strange imaginings and a peculiarity of my condition. ‘Oh, you’re not used to living with strangers,’ my family would say. ‘Just do all you can to please Mrs...’ From Chas it would be, ‘You do let your imagination run riot with you,’ and he would add, ‘I find her exceptionally charming and helpful.’ I was so afraid of this woman in the lonely evenings when Chas was out canvassing I used to imagine that she wanted me gone in some way, thus leaving Chas as a lodger in her house in her sole charge. She did such odd things, which in my condition, took on a sinister aspect. My sitting-room, at the back of the house on the ground floor, had curtains which didn’t quite meet and this witch of a woman would stand outside in the garden and peer through the chinks at me. She once had a strange old man with her and I dashed to the window and held the curtains tight across the gap, my heart pounding, my stomach turning over. One evening I smelt gas and went into the kitchen which was next door to my sitting-room. All the taps on the gas stove were turned on and as I turned them off and opened the window I heard an upstairs door close quietly.

  The next day, when Amy was visiting me (she had a council-house near by) and my tormentor was unaware of her presence, she burst into my sitting-room, red and shouting, ‘Oh, you stupid woman, you left the gas-taps on last evening, do you want to kill me in my bed?’ Then seeing Amy she apologised for being irritable but explained the thought of gas worried her and she would get the gas men in. Perhaps she had been hasty, perhaps there was some fault with the stove. Then she approached me, put her arms round my shoulders and remarked that she was so impatient she couldn’t wait until ‘our lovely baby’ was born. She was sure she would take over from me for she adored babies so. Amy glared at her and remarked to me when the landlady had made her exit, ‘Don’t let her talk to you like that, Dolly,’ but even Amy thought the woman kind at heart and just worried about a gas escape. She added, ‘You are a bit absent-minded, Dolly.’ At this I burst into tears and Amy, fury subsiding, put her arms round me (she had a bit of a job for I was enormous and she tiny) and said, ‘There, there, Dolly, you’ll be fine when your baby is here.’

  I became mortally afraid to stay alone in the house with my landlady in the winter evenings and as soon as Chas had gone I left too, spending the evenings wandering around the cold dark roads. One winter’s night with the snow thick on the ground, I needed a lavatory urgently. I crept on to a building-site, feeling like the naughty cat of my young sister’s childhood, and just as I was in the act of crouching, out from the watchman’s hut tore an Alsatian dog. I must have been the fastest pregnant harrier ever and gasping for breath arrived back trembling on the front doorstep of ‘our’ house, aching all over. The key would not unlock the door. The landlady must have put the bolt on yet she knew I was out. I waited in agony for the ‘man from the Pru’. He was cross to find me out in such conditions, mine and the weather, but his key turned like magic.

  I began to experience such physical irritation as I had never known before, and one day, in desperation, while my landlady was out, I threw myself into a boiling bath, and with a coarse brush and strong carbolic soap I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed. It was sheer heaven – until an hour later when my flesh began to swell and swell and swell and from tummy to knees I was like a skinned balloon. When poor Chas arrived home he almost burst into tears at my inflated state and he helped me so tenderly down the road to see the doctor who lived on the corner. What a sight we were, me so enormous, shuffling with legs a yard apart, poor Chas so slim and worried-looking. The ladies in that road never spoke or even nodded to me, but one lady, peering from behind her stiff starched lace curtains, was so curious as to our strange progress down the road that she actually opened her window and called out, ‘Was it an accident?’ Game to the last I answered brightly, ‘Oh no, we wanted this baby.’ Slam went the window. ‘Why do you say such things?’ said Chas to me gently but reproachfully.

  The old doctor rubbed his head when he sighted my self-inflicted injuries and announced that in all his medical experience he’d never come across such a case. He diagnosed baby was blocking something. I’d eaten too many sweets because I had given up smoking and now he wondered if I hadn’t chosen the bigger of two evils, the sweets, of course, not the baby. However he was very kind and said I was fortunate to be living with that charming Mrs... You too, I thought, yet I knew I was right in my fear of the dear woman.

  The local insurance office to which Charles was attached was to hold a dinner dance and the new agent must attend with his lady and meet the other agents and their wives. I had no decent dress, indeed no dress which would fit, but Chas insisted I go with him and finally I took the sleeves out of a blue winter dress and wore it as a pinafore-dress with a white blouse. I never made up, but I thought that on such an elegant occasion I really should and when I presented myself to Chas (with just a dusting of powder and a little lipstick) he was furious and thought I looked like a Jezebel. (Do they get pregnant, I wondered?) So off must come the lipstick, at least. He put my new lipstick down the lavatory and off we went, he slim and elegant in his wedding suit, me large and shiny and, because I’d had my hair cut far too short, looking like an all-in wrestler. (Years later when, a reformed Dorothy, I lived at the home of the Superintendent of the office and his wife because of war-time bombing, he told me he had never forgotten our entrance at the dinner. He thought Chas, a young slim boy, had been trapped by an enormous and elderly woman, although he said it was obvious I was very clever because I won the general knowledge and spelling game they played that night! Chas thought it would have been more diplomatic for me to have lost the game and let someone higher up the strata win. The prize was a make-up kit and ever after Chas never worried whether I made up or not, and I’ve never learned how to.) No one was brave enough to ask me to dance, although I would not have accepted for fear of shaking my baby about. Chas was very much in demand for he was a very good dancer and the agents’ wives all looked so glamorous, beautifully gowned and ‘made up’.

  I knew we just had to get away from the house in which we were living and I spent the days wandering from estate agent to estate agent. Finally, I passed an agents just opening up in Goodmayes. I was their first customer and they had one house to let. This house, an enormous one, had been converted into two flats and we secured the lower one with an enormous garden. No one ever seemed to look at the top flat and it was like living on an island. There were two huge fireplaces in the lounge, our bedroom had been the library, and my mother lent me the money to purchase sixty yards of curtaining. It was very pretty in pale green and pink stripes, but as I could only spend 4½d. per yard it was really only the quality of banda
ge, so that when Chas was away canvassing in the evenings I had to sit in the dark because the lounge was in front of the house and the curtains transparent. The garden was surrounded by a wall which was broken down at the end and whenever I went into the garden to hang out the clothes an enormous German dog would leap over the wall snarling at me. The house had been empty for so long he thought he owned it so Chas had to do what he could to mend the wall, for the dog’s owner, also a foreign lady, simply thought it all rather amusing. At first Chas, not being a do-it-yourself man, built the wall, brick symmetrically above brick, so that it all fell down, but he managed it in the end, although we could never sit in the garden and always had one eye on the wall during brief trips, for the German hound was always trying to struggle over.