As Chas left with the dirty dishes, Alfred said in a stage whisper to Ethel, ‘What a disappointing meal, whatever was it? I was so sure we’d have a real meal, especially on a Sunday!’ ‘Hush, man,’ said Ethel sharply. ‘That girl has done her best, she has a young baby to look after, you know.’ But he was full of praise for my redcurrant and raspberry tart with thick cream. Chas told his mother he had chosen and prepared the oxtail thinking to delight his father and she said, ‘Lor luv you, bor, years ago he would have been, it’s not stews on Sundays now.’ Not only had Alfred a regular job as a storekeeper, now that all his children were married, he was able to let the upstairs flat in his house thus receiving a weekly rent. If his upstairs tenant had a baby or children, then he was doubly delighted.
The following week-end it was the turn of my parents, who came with Marjorie, now pregnant, and her Alfred. Chas, quite disinterested in the Sunday lunch this time, left all culinary arrangements to me and took charge of Susan. At the first peal of the doorbell I rushed to let my folks in, hardly recognising Marjorie. Someone, possibly Mother, had advised her, that because of her condition, warm, sensible clothes should be worn. She had been in her interesting condition for a few weeks only, yet there she stood like a refugee from Lapland, clad in Mother’s famous kangaroo coat that my sister Winifred had sent her from Australia. Grey woollen stockings, flat heeled ward-maid’s shoes and a matronly ‘toque’ completed her outfit. Much to Mother’s indignation I became hysterical, although my unrestrained laughter finally infected her as well as for the first time she really ‘sighted’ Marjorie. Marjorie could see no humour in the situation and was politely aloof, at the same time a little hurt. Dolly was now a fully fledged mother, and having experienced this expectant condition such a short time ago, surely a sisterly, sympathetic squeeze of the hand was not too much to expect. I was sorry I had laughed at Marjorie’s maternity outfit and was almost calm and compassionate to the ‘little’ mother-to-be, when my father, who had been sitting on a hall chair slowly rose, saying in broken English, ‘You give my bear bread my bear he dance for you.’ He then pivoted slowly around singing in a grunting tone, ‘Ronnie ronnie ron ronnie ron ron ron.’ His impromptu mime of the dancing bears of his childhood was so expertly executed, so delightfully comical, his face so dazedly yet wickedly bear-like, I had to dash off to the kitchen to restrain a further bout of laughter. The dance finished I heard my father’s high pitched giggle and Mother’s reproving, ‘What has got into you, Walter, you’ve always said how nice I always looked in that coat.’ Obviously through the years my father had thought the coat a comical affair but if it had pleased Mother it really hadn’t worried him what she wore, as long as she was decently covered.
My folks were to spend the night with us and all went well until the next morning. After an Arctic night all the pipes became frozen. Father attended to these, so eager to put the sanitation right for us that he worked on them in his best Sunday suit. He thoroughly enjoyed his week-end much to his surprise. He had not wanted to visit us, preferring to stay at home, home being the only place in which he really felt relaxed. His homemade barrel arm-chair, his library-books, his pipe, he preferred these simple things. He did not need people or social occasions, but he was happy at my house for that week-end for he felt he had been useful to us. The icy weather, however, vindicated Marjorie’s furry covering.
Apart from our parents we did not receive many visits from the rest of the family. They were scattered far and wide across the country and fares had to be reckoned with for few people had cars. Agnes and Amy, however, lived within a few minutes’ walk of our house and I saw them often. Agnes was going through a rough period for her husband, Arthur, had lost his job in the City because of the depression and as he was over fifty – and unemployment was still a problem in the thirties – he’d had successive casual work, odd jobs for odd days, until finally he obtained a job as a baker’s roundsman. He was not really strong enough to be a human horse, the bakers’ vans in those days had shafts, but he was pleased to take any job, and this one he tackled with great courage. Soaked to the skin on cold wet winter days he still had a cheery word and smile for his customers and was very popular with them. I passed him while shopping one day, when a woman called out from an upstairs window, it was absolutely teeming with rain. He had already called at this house and she said, ‘I forgot to ask you, baker, have you a small brown one?’ His cheerful reply was so naughty but so comical the customer was in hysterics. Here was a man, well read, a wizard with figures, a cultured man, yet he was making the best of things in those depressing days, and he was only one of many men forced to live like that. Agnes always had a ready smile for me and never moaned about her luck. She used to take pupils for shorthand but they were neighbours’ children and she only charged one shilling for one evening’s tuition.
Before his permanency as a baker’s roundsman the Labour Exchange had provided Arthur with an odd week’s work, here and there. At one time he was employed on the incinerator at a local hospital, and then Amy’s Jimmy managed to get him a job on a ship which had been in the Docks for some time and it looked as though this ship would be static for many months more. Arthur was a sort of odd job ‘boy’ among the skeleton caretaker crew. However, after only two weeks on this ship, suddenly sailing orders were received. Arthur was offered a permanent job at £1 13s. 4d. a month, impossible of course, with a wife and three little children.
The ship was sailing from Tilbury and on the afternoon of the sailing the Bosun asked Arthur if he would be kind enough to take his pet dog home to his wife in North London. Quite a journey, but the wife, the Bosun assured Arthur, would be overjoyed to receive her husband’s most treasured possession. It was a dreadful journey in pouring rain, buses and trains, and long waits in between. On one bus the poor animal was sick and Arthur was turned off the bus. The thought of a nice meal and warm welcome from the Bosun’s wife, kept him going and finally he arrived at the house in North London. The door opened at his ring and a large bad-tempered looking woman appeared. Arthur, wet, cold and tired (he had another rotten journey from there to his home at Dagenham, to face yet) waited for the woman to recognise her husband’s dog, but after Arthur finished his tale of the Bosun’s love-token the woman screamed, ‘You can take the bloody dog off, I’m not looking after that bloody thing for that miserable bugger.’ She slammed the door shut, and Arthur realised, through the Bosun’s wife’s choice of definitive words, that there was no point in ringing again. He wandered round the North London roads. What could he do about the dog? He couldn’t take it home, Agnes and the children were barely existing, they couldn’t manage to feed a dog. If he took it to the Police Station there would be forms to fill in and perhaps they wouldn’t take the dog. He found himself back at the railway station. The lost property and cloakroom was open. He gazed through the steamy windows and saw a blazing coke fire. Sitting by the fire was a porter, a jolly looking man, and at the counter was an elderly clerk. These men were both laughing at some joke they were having. Arthur was drawn like a magnet to this human warmth and he entered with his hound. The counter was high and as he stood there, the dog went round the counter to the fire and lay down in front of it. ‘Oh, you poor old dear,’ said the jolly porter. ‘And where did you come from? Why you’re all wet.’ ‘Is he yours?’ asked the clerk of Arthur. ‘No,’ said Arthur, to his eternal shame. ‘He must have run in when I opened the door,’ praying that the dog would not turn round, recognise him and come back. ‘Poor thing!’ said the clerk. ‘Give him a rub down, Joe,’ he said to the porter, ‘and I’ll find something for him to eat.’ Arthur asked a simple enquiry of the clerk, and left the station quickly. He often wondered what happened to the dog, easing his conscience that at least he had left the poor unwanted animal in kindly hands.
He arrived home in the dark, to find Agnes and the three children asleep on makeshift beds in the sitting-room. They all had ’flu and thinking Arthur was still employed on the boat Agnes had brought the childre
n down into the room with a fire. ‘I thought you were at Tilbury,’ she said. ‘Oh, no,’ said Arthur, ‘I’ve been to see a Bosun’s wife about a dog.’ Agnes thought he too, was starting ’flu.
Things were more comfortable for Amy because her James had a good regular job. They were buying a new house and Amy had furnished this tastefully with cushions, curtains and furnishings beautifully embroidered by her. Amy was born a liberated woman. She used to take my breath away at her instant reactions. I just loved to spend the day with her and sit by at bath-time when her son was a baby. She was bathing him one evening, preparatory to his evening meal. He was a large, strong, healthy babe, he seemed to make Amy look so tiny. He was yelling for his feed and Amy was valiantly trying to bath him properly although his struggles were strong for a baby. As his crying got more frantic, Jim, who had been pacing up and down worried that his son was crying, suddenly stopped his pacing, and said to Amy, ‘Are you sure, Cheggie dear, you are not getting soap into his eyes?’ Up jumped a flushed and furious Amy, smack went a wet soapy flannel across Jim’s face. ‘He hasn’t any soap in his eyes but I’m sure you have soap in yours now.’ Jim left the room. Amy having finished the bath torture, was feeding a quiet happy babe at her breast. On her face was a look of ecstasy.
We got on so well together at this stage (not being under the same roof) that I often wondered if she regretted not taking me out when I was a little girl. Although I had been a plain thin child, as tall as Amy at 13, and Marjorie her constant companion was small with flaxen curls and large brown eyes, I would have made a better decoy duck for Amy, for that was what Marjorie really was, although she may not have known it. I would have been of more use, for although more naive than the other girls, I did possess a certain guile, a shrewdness for summing up situations, which Marjorie never did – always artless and open, always scrupulously honest. I would have known the opportune moment for Amy to turn round on her promenade along the main road so that she would ‘accidentally’ bump into the man (or men) of her choice, whereas Marjorie had to be continually questioned by Amy – ‘Are they turning round, are they looking back?’ One day one of Amy’s admirers was pacing up and down the Grove, not yet on the important enough guest list for him to be able to call at the house. Marjorie went out to play, naturally this young man knew she was ‘Amy’s sweet little baby sister’! ‘Is Amy coming, is she ready?’ asked this so eager young man (all Amy’s young men were so eager for her company). ‘Oh, no,’ replied honest Marjorie. ‘She’s still fast asleep in bed!’ We did, on rare occasions, get a little benefit from Amy’s male associations, for one young man, bidding her a sad adieu when he was going to the seaside with his family was asked by Amy to ‘bring her back a stick of rock’. She was only joking but an enormous parcel arrived, the young man had ordered a special stick to be made. It was so enormous the postman could hardly carry it!
Amy’s James thought us a callous family on the whole. If I was ill in bed, Mother would do her best to spare me all the time she could out of her busy life, but no one visited from the rest of the family, they just rushed up with a meal for the invalid, bashed it down on a chair by the bed and were off immediately to their more worthwhile pursuits. James said one day, ‘I can’t understand it, if my brother or sisters were in bed sick, why the rest of us would take it in turns to sit with the invalid, and we would save our pocket money, if only to be able to take a bag of acid-drops to him.’ Now Jimmy was not yet married to Amy, therefore he was not a ‘fully paid-up member’ of the clan. It was all right for us to criticise the family, indeed we did it all the time (it was one of our favourite pastimes!), but at criticism of each other from an outside source, we immediately ‘closed ranks’. ‘Well,’ said Amy tartly (probably knowing Jim was right, but he came of a gentle, close family), ‘Acid-drops are a perfect invalid diet, of course.’
I was surprised, one day, to see Amy’s friend, Helen, shopping alone. Amy, apparently, was in bed, very poorly with a sore throat. I arranged to call at Amy’s house early the next morning and Helen said she would let Amy know. I let myself in the back door of Amy’s house the following day and called, ‘Cooee, Amy, it’s Dolly,’ as I went up the stairs. The bedroom door was flung open and a sobbing hysterical Amy appeared. ‘I told her she wasn’t my sister, you are my sister, Dolly,’ she wept. Tucked up in bed she tried to tell me what had upset her. She felt so ill she was longing for me to arrive when the door-bell sounded. She was sure it was me and had gone down the stairs to open the door and say, ‘Oh, Dolly, thank you for coming,’ but no sister Dolly smiling there. Instead, according to Amy, there stood an enormous woman. Amy, apparently had burst into tears and cried, ‘Oh, I thought you were my sister,’ and this large female personage had cried dramatically, ‘I am your sister, I have come to bring you to Jesus.’ Amy, terrified (probably not ready for such a journey), had slammed the door. I calmed Amy down and assumed she was delirious, for when the doctor called he pronounced that she had ‘quinsy’. The next day, however, I was at home expecting Agnes to call. The bell rang and I tore to the door. No Agnes, but a very large female. ‘I was expecting my sister,’ I said, looking down the road to see if Agnes was coming. ‘I am your sister,’ commenced the large lady. ‘Ho, ho,’ I thought, this must be Amy’s caller, possibly an only child gone peculiar with longing for a sister. ‘You should be more careful going round the roads frightening people,’ I said to her. ‘Who could be frightened of the Lord?’ she said dramatically. ‘God is Love.’ At last the penny dropped; of course, she was a Jehovah’s Witness. Feeling sorry that I had accused her of being a frightener I asked her in for a cup of tea. Agnes arrived and I left the two ‘sisters’ together chatting amicably. At that time Agnes was interested in spiritualism, so if the J.W. hadn’t obtained two converts, at least she had had an interesting half-hour.
I went to the spiritualist church one Sunday with Agnes, but it didn’t do anything for me. I presumed I was too worldly, but one girl told me her spiritual guide, an Asian named Golden Feather, had helped her financially. This girl’s husband was a spendthrift and Golden Feather, so the girl assured me, had advised her from his spiritual plane, to charge her husband money each time he wished to make love to her. In this way, being of a loving nature, he would not be able to be so much of a spend-thrift, at least not when absent from home. She said it worked very well in the beginning but one night her husband was ‘broke’ and in a weak moment, having such a large ‘kitty’ she lent him the money, thus causing the system to break down, for she told me, ‘Now he is always on the borrow.’ She looked at me vacantly when I said, ‘And what does Golden Feather say now?’
I was always restless, anxious for things to change, never contented with ‘sufficient unto the day’, I decided the flat upstairs (no one ever came to view it) was more attractive than the one downstairs, and without consulting Chas I asked the agent, who called weekly for the rent, if we could change over. He was a small, polite man, for ever announcing proudly to me that ‘he possessed a pigeon pair’. At that time I had no idea what he was talking about, and was surprised some years later to learn that a pigeon pair is a son and daughter.
The agent gave his consent and Chas arrived home one day to find us safely installed upstairs. Although he agreed it looked cosier he was furious I hadn’t forewarned him. He said his heart leapt at the sight of the downstairs curtainless windows. He thought Susan and I had been mysteriously abducted. (With our furniture?) He hadn’t glanced at the upstairs windows. He looked so shaken he had to sit down.
I assured my darling that now I was content and he really believed me (perhaps my mother might have warned him). One morning he was to attend an important meeting at his company’s divisional offices. Susan was awake at dawn and I fed her in the kitchen, loth to wake Chas, always wanting people to forget their worries in blessed sleep. With Susan asleep in her pram in the kitchen I crept back to the bedroom for my clothes. Sudden inspiration came to me as I gazed round the bedroom. It would look much better as a sitti
ng-room. On to the floor I emptied the contents of my immense bevelled wardrobe. Excitedly I dragged the wardrobe, after me, to the door. It was almost on to the landing when the door sprang open. The wretched bevelled door had jammed the wardrobe between bedroom and stair banisters, trapping me on the kitchen side of the flat, and worse still, Chas in the bedroom. The noise of my struggles finally woke him. ‘What the hell is going on?’ he shouted. ‘It’s all right,’ I said, trying to be calm. ‘Just pull the wardrobe your way, its not heavy, I’ve emptied it.’ It was impossible to move it. Chas, the time getting on, was frantic, not only about his attendance at the important meeting, but his morning visit to the bathroom was becoming increasingly urgent.
In the end an irate, unshaven, unrelieved husband left the house by tying two sheets together, making a fireman’s exit. I thought he was very callous to leave me trapped in my nightdress. It took me two hours to work the banister-rail loose and my shiny bevelled wardrobe was permanently indented. Chas had to spend precious money for a shave at the barber’s and wondered if his long delay in visiting a lavatory had not caused permanent damage. ‘When things are going all right, why the hell can’t you let well alone?’ he asked on his return. I was meekly submissive for a few days.
Chapter 6
Evacuees
Susan was about six weeks old when war was declared. As the solemn announcement ended I looked out of the window. The siren went, making an awful noise, and a man ran along the road wearing a gas-mask. Each time he reached a kerb he lifted up his gas-mask to negotiate it. Chas and I had indulged in cross words when collecting baby’s immense mask. He wanted a practice go with her in it but I thought the contraption looked so terrible it might suffocate her when there might never even be a gas raid.
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