Dolly's War

by Dorothy Scannell

  Our furniture looked like doll’s toys in this lovely old house and it was difficult to keep warm unless one crouched over the fire – we couldn’t afford two fires. But we were happy there; ‘An Englishman’s home is his castle,’ was true for us.

  Chapter 5

  Pregnant Pause

  With the birth of my first child only weeks away I began to feel very excited, although coupled with the excitement was the fear that because of the previous restless months, fierce dogs, strange landladies and constant upheaval, my baby might have suffered, for Mother had said when hearing of my pregnancy, ‘Now, Dolly, relax and think peaceful thoughts, put a beautiful picture over your bed.’ She was pleased when she knew everything for baby’s needs had been procured, but some people thought it was tempting providence to buy the pram or cot beforehand.

  In one way I had been deceitful where the authorities had been concerned but as I deceived them on behalf of my unborn child I stilled my conscience. I had booked in at the maternity wing of Queen Mary’s hospital at Stratford when I lived at Forest Gate as it was necessary to make reservations in the very early stages of pregnancy, and it would have been too late to have booked up at a maternity hospital when we moved to Ilford.

  We had persuaded my parents to move into the upstairs flat we had left at Forest Gate. This needed all our persuasion for although my mother wanted to move into the same house with Marjorie, my father at first was adamant about leaving dear old Poplar and his friends. Finally when he discovered that at the end of the road was the Clapton football-ground, he fell in with our plans. So I was able, although with such honest parents so respectful of authority I was always a little apprehensive of their acting-a-lie ability, to tutor my mother and father into confirming I was still resident there when the health visitor called to check my residence qualifications for the local hospital. I tried to dismiss my worries by thinking that my father’s ‘talking with his hands’ act would so mystify any health visitor she might even have felt sorry for me for having such an eccentric parent living with me, and the authorities must have assumed I was still at Forest Gate for the great day came without any prior notification that my bed had been cancelled.

  It was only when the great day did arrive, and at the time I was so sure that within a few hours our family would be three in number, that I realised that I should have to journey from Goodmayes to Stratford for the happy event. Chas was late home and I knew I would begrudge him even a few minutes for food. Excitedly I told him my news. Coolly, as though he had been a top gynaecologist all his life, he listened to my ‘symptoms’, then announced, ‘Yes, it is following the correct pattern but I assure you it will be many, many hours yet before things become urgent, as it is your first child.’ Then, to my horror he continued, ‘I have a death claim to pay, the money is urgently needed, that’s why I am late, I have been to the bank. Just rest quietly and I will be back in an hour or so and I promise you we will go immediately.’ Off he went on his errand of mercy and ‘quietly’ I rested all alone, knowing deep down that he was right about my symptoms, but hoping that he wasn’t. Dramatically morbid I wanted him to return to find a collapsed wife, a newly born infant, a sort of ‘touch and go affair’. The fact that he hadn’t stopped one moment for a meal and had nothing to eat or drink all day stemmed not my feelings that he put duty above me.

  I sat in my darkening lounge. Men in other houses in that road – one or two even possessed maids – would be home from business and having dinner with their families. I was a stranger to them. How could I burst in in the middle of entree, soup, or even hors d’oeuvres and announce I was about to give birth? It just wasn’t done, that sort of thing. Finally I heard the sound of running feet. A breathless Chas burst in, grabbed my little case which had been packed for weeks and we clambered on to a very shaky 86 bus to Stratford. I was sure I would be accepted as an imminent case; Chas would be remorseful and friends and relations would listen wide-eyed with many ‘Oh Dolly’s’ at my ‘casual’ tale of near disaster. But the Sister in charge listened aloofly to my urgent story, then to my horror she did a ‘Chas’ on me and to my husband’s great relief she said in the tones of a very kind teacher to a fractious child, ‘My dear, FIRST babies take AGES to be born, you will be unable to get a wink of sleep here. [Sleep!] Go home and have a LOVELY night’s rest and come and see me in the morning.’ I was so desolate that she and Chas had ganged up against me. Sister patted Chas on the back with a look which said, ‘Good man.’ In my panic and frustration at being sent home I almost blurted out the confidential news that I lived, ineligibly, out of the district. My mother used to say accusingly to me when I was young, ‘Good liars, Dolly, need to possess extra good memories,’ and I used to feel very injured that of all her children I was singled out for this platitude.

  Now that an expert had forecast my child’s birth as ‘ages’ away I felt somewhat guilty at my harsh thoughts about the father of my child. He was the last person to put either of us in danger. He looked pale, and exhausted. In my unthinking panic I had dragged him off without food and he’d been trudging the streets all day. If the boot had been on the other foot I would have been victorious but he tenderly took my hand. As a forgiveness present for him and to ease my guilty feelings I said to the ‘no doubt about it Sister’, ‘That’s just what my husband said.’ ‘Good man, good man,’ said a relieved Sister obviously having made up her mind I had been going to insist on ‘squatting’ in the waiting-room. She and her buddy took me in charge and I was marched off to the exit.

  We walked from Stratford to Forest Gate where a worried mother made us a delicious supper, gently chiding Chas, not only because of the shaky bus from Goodmayes (it seemed years ago) but because of our night hike in my condition. She gave us her bed and went off to sleep in my father’s room. I heard my father say, with a squeaky giggle ‘What’s this in aid of, me old gooseberry?’ They had had separate rooms for years. She couldn’t sleep and neither could I even though my father and Chas were sleeping peacefully. Mother kept putting her head round our bedroom door raising her eyebrows in a sort of query. At last she decided all signs pointed to Queen Mary’s and at five a.m. Chas took me to meet the dawn.

  I was admitted immediately and handed over to a young probationer nurse for a bath and a shave. The blade was blunt, my young nurse was extremely nervous of the shaving session and to Sister’s horror and annoyance I was cut about a bit. ‘Oh,’ I dismissed my wounds airily, ‘It’s nothing, Sister, really,’ adding, ‘I didn’t feel a thing.’ ‘Well,’ said Sister, ‘I can see we have a model mother here,’ then patting my shoulder, she went on with her years of experience of character assessment, ‘I knew you were going to be no bother.’ That same night she must have regretted these words, for without the benefit of anaesthetic I thought the end of the world had come. I had always been told by my teachers and parents that I had a vivid imagination, but what I had imagined was a hundred times more peaceful than the real thing. Doctor was there, in his dressing-gown, with a midwife and a ‘learner’ nurse. Sister kept dashing into the room from somewhere exhorting me to ‘cease my dreadful noise’. At every entry of hers I apologised profusely, it wouldn’t happen again I assured her, but no sooner had the door swung on her retreating back than my good intentions were drowned in that valley of torture. ‘Take no notice of her,’ said the doctor (not of course in Sister’s presence). ‘Just hang on to the cord of my dressing-gown, you’re doing fine,’ but when I did as he invited he remonstrated, ‘Hey, steady on.’ Then an elderly doctor brought into the room what appeared to be a large tea-strainer, minus its handle. This was lined with white lint and very gently and kindly he said to me, ‘Now as soon as you feel...’ I guessed the end of the sentence and like a drowning man I buried my head in the tea-strainer and breathed magic ozone. In the quiet and sudden armistice the young doctor said triumphantly,

  ‘Don’t you want to see your pretty little daughter?’ and I turned my aching neck to see, sitting upright on the midwife’s lap, a
little crumpled being. The baby, I didn’t feel as though she were mine, was very wet-looking. ‘This is the sort of baby I like to see,’ said the midwife, but I didn’t ask what she meant for I was waiting for that FLOOD of mother-love which everyone assured me would permeate my being at the sight of my first born. And I waited, and waited and waited, but nothing came except a feeling of scalding pain. A nurse, giving me tea from a cup with a spout, was so intent on gazing at my baby that she hadn’t realised she was sticking the spout down the neck of my gown!

  I was then delivered to a ward containing three other ‘radiant’ mums. I could see why my baby might have been described as ‘pretty’ for the three occupants, already in residence, of the little swing cots on the ends of the beds, were all boys, all very tiny, all with black coconut thatch hair. They seemed yellowish with rather large mouths, whereas my baby was an 8 lb. girl, with a plump face, a tiny mouth and a little bit of down for hair. Still the surge of mother-love did not come. Instead in came a nurse bearing aloft on a tray three mugs of hot cascara. ‘Oh,’ she said brightly, ‘I didn’t know there were four mothers here, I’ll fetch another cup,’ as though she was bringing sherry to celebrate my arrival. I was unaware that the other mums had been in that ward for nearly a week and were troubled with constipation, and thinking it was all in the day’s work, obediently drank the obnoxious fluid.

  That evening, the first visiting-time for me, should have been radiant with Chas holding my hand and both of us gazing at our daughter with love and pride. What a time of horror! Mother came with Chas and tutted testily when he announced our daughter was ‘Just like his mum.’ Now his mum was lovely, but not physically so. Then the cascara decided to make its move. The visiting-time was only half an hour and I had already been regaled by the other mums with the story of the dreadful woman who had previously occupied my bed. She always required attention during visiting hours and no extra time had been granted to the other dads for the time they were turfed out of the ward. So I just would not allow Chas or Mum to find a nurse. They must have loved me very much for between them they raked up five men’s handkerchiefs and three paper-bags and by exercising considerable ingenuity I was able to keep going until almost the end of the visiting time. Sister was cross with nurse for giving me the cascara so soon after baby’s birth. Nurse stared at me as though I had been stupid to drink it, and my baby cried and cried and cried. In sympathy perhaps. In the end she was taken away from the little flowered cot at the end of my bed and relegated to the linen-cupboard and when I thought of her crying and lonely I too wept into my pillow.

  I was looking forward to feeding my daughter. I felt she was crying because she was hungry. I had watched the other mums expertly feed their babies, sliding their large dark brown nipples into their babies’ mouths, their breasts huge with milk. Then seen them wind a satisfied and drunken babe. Now I had very tiny nipples which still remained pink, but as my baby had a small mouth I thought nature had matched us up. Until feedingtime that was. It was a superhuman effort to get my baby to open her mouth, then when she did, after a day or two I was bleeding, cracked and sore, and, horror upon horrors, a little piece of nipple was missing. Had she swallowed it? And still she cried and cried and cried. Sister pushed baby’s head hard on to me, grumbling when I flinched and in the end Matron said, ‘Get your husband to bring you some golden eye ointment.’ My father, worried by Mother’s tales of a starving child and a maimed and weeping mother, went straight to the chemist for this magic salve and thinking I had the name wrong because the word ‘poison’ was printed on the tube, decided to wrap it in a note of extra CAUTION. This he intended to leave at the porter’s lodge but someone insisted he bring it up to the ward. When he was ushered in it was feeding-time. He was always shy with the opposite sex and I knew he felt his manliness would embarrass the bare-breasted mums. He did a ballet exercise when nurse approached, for he was ever fearful of getting in the way of authority, and nurse was forced to join in this exercise for neither could make up their mind as to which way the other intended to prance. Finally he gave me the package with a hoarse whisper, ‘Poison, Dolly, poison, be careful.’

  The word ‘poison’ panicked me as much as it did my father and I waited matron’s next morning visit to the ward. She would walk through with an aluminium flour-dredger in her hand, scrape back the clothes on the hanging cots and shake powder all over the babies’ umbilical parts. As she left the ward the mothers would crawl down to the ends of the beds, re-arrange the cot clothes and give a glance of hatred towards a receding matron. This morning, trying to appear a competent and unpanicked mother, I said casually to Matron, ‘The golden eye ointment is stamped poison, Matron.’ She ignored the pathetic plea in my eyes and announced briskly, ‘Rub it well in, rub it W-E-L-L in’, just like a military command. But I never used it, terrified I would kill my child.

  One day when baby was brought in from the linen-cupboard for her abortive feeding I noticed one of her eyes was closed and inflamed. ‘Nurse,’ I called. ‘Oh,’ said nurse, ‘that’s sticky eye.’ Chas, of course, looked this up in the encyclopaedia and discovered it could be a congenital disease. So we had an ancestor somewhere responsible for our baby’s trouble. Again a weeping mother, again a cross matron. It wasn’t the terrible thing we had thought. The baby had been in a draught and poor nurse was castigated for using this expression. I felt very guilty about this for she was so kind to me.

  The other mothers thought us a very strange family, I am sure, for when we were asked for names for our infants, neither Chas nor I had even thought about it. Above my bed was a plaque informing the occupant that the bed had been endowed to the hospital by a Susan Boake, and I thought, ‘Well, thank you, Susan, that shall be my daughter’s name,’ and so she was just Susan. The other mums said it was terrible to give such a pretty baby girl such a plain old-fashioned name when I could have called her ‘Pearl’, ‘Dawn’, etc., but I liked the sound of Susan and for once in my life did not change my mind.

  When I asked Matron why Susan cried so much she said, ‘She is just a bad-tempered baby,’ and it seemed that I had so many reasons to weep that I was happy to go home, though not at all confident in my ability to cope. I would sit in my vast bathroom and tremble at baby’s bath-time, sure I would let my slippery Susan fall underneath the water and drown. And still she cried. At my first visit to the local clinic the doctor said, ‘Why, mother, your baby is completely tongue-tied,’ her tongue apparently was fastened, at its tip, to the ‘floor’ of her mouth by a fine ligament. ‘You must call in your own doctor to free the tongue for your baby.’ The young local doctor came in that very same evening. Chas boiled his equipment. I held Susan, and Chas held my hand while the doctor performed this minor, but frightening to us, operation. ‘Susan,’ laughed the doctor. ‘You gave her the right name for a tongue-tied baby, Thoothan.’ After the deed was done he said, ‘Put her to the breast for comfort, Mother.’ Then he gazed intently at my bosom, gave it an extremely hard squeeze and announced, ‘Good God, woman, you have no milk,’ adding to Chas, ‘Dash down to the chemist and get some dried milk.’ Chas chose Cow and Gate and from that moment on Susan became the loveliest, happiest and sweetest baby I think it was possible to have. I felt so guilty about the early weeks of her life spent half-starving in a linen-cupboard, that I made up my mind to try and think for myself in future.

  At Susan’s christening when she was in the tongue-tied, half-starved state she had cried all the time and at the party afterwards, when both Chas’s family and mine were present, I had forbidden anyone to pick her up for I had been informed by ‘authority’ that babies should only be nursed at feeding-time. I recall the two grannies nearly in tears at what they thought was my harsh attitude and lack of maternal feeling for they gave me severe looks every time I passed them. But neither of them was brave enough to argue with me. I could cry myself now when I remember I wouldn’t allow those two dear grannies to pick up and nurse their little grand-daughter.

  And as for that fe
eling of flooding mother-love. I believe it does not come flooding at all, I believe it comes as the seconds, minutes and hours go by caring for a helpless creature.

  *

  Our vast rooms needed more human habitation than Chas, baby and I could supply and we were happy to have our parents stay some week-ends. Chas’s parents visited first. Now Chas should have been the chef of the family, possibly because he loved cooking, he was the expert, well, more the expert than I was. He had some bee in his bonnet, possibly associated with an early childhood memory, that his father was fond of, even crazy about, oxtail. This puzzled me for I had been to lunch with my in-laws on many many Sundays and it was always the usual roast and I knew if Alfred, my father-in-law, was so crazy about oxtail, Ethel, his wife, would have been happy to prepare it for him.

  But Chas insisted oxtail took over a day to prepare, that was why his busy mother prepared it so infrequently. He would take care of the oxtail main course, I would be the sweet chef. I was happy about this for I had no more desire to cook than I had to spit and polish. I could therefore make various fruit pies and banish myself from the kitchen leaving the ‘galley’ to him. He cooked the oxtail twice so that every vestige of fat could be removed, for oxtail is a very fatty meat. He took hours grating finely the various assorted vegetables.

  The great day came and Ethel, Alfred and Dolly were seated expectantly at the table, snowy white cloth, shining glass. Alfred was hungry and excited, it was such a cold day. Chas entered with our beautiful china serving-bowl, a wedding present, and with all the professional know-how of his waiting years, served us all with his lovingly prepared oxtail. After the hours and hours of cooking I thought it looked only like thick soup, and I thought also that Alfred, like a little boy, looked as though he would burst into tears for I was sure he had been looking forward to roast sirloin.