Dolly's War

by Dorothy Scannell

  On the other side of me was a pretty girl whose baby had died at birth and I wept silently for her. At feeding-time she would pretend she was asleep and I thought it was brutal to keep her in a ward with all the other victorious mothers. It may have been therapy to harden her up to face the outside world but we all felt such sorrow for her.

  Towards the end of the first week trouble struck our ward. Whether the virus, or germ, was brought in by a soldier on leave I do not know, but mothers and babies went down with a type of gastro-enteritis or dysentery. The ward was closed to visitors, disinfected, and we all felt on an island since we were not allowed to fraternise round each other’s beds and the ones who had contracted this miserable disease were placed in further isolation at one end of the ward. The sisters and nurses worked day and night and when I contracted it I felt like dying for the pain caused one to faint away. Finally I recovered and was allowed to take my baby home which surprised some of the mothers, for the hospital had decided to keep the babies for a time in an isolated nursery. Sister had said to me, ‘Your baby will be all right,’ and since she gave no other explanation the other girls thought I must have some influence they didn’t know about. But he progressed well and was an easy baby to care for.

  VJ-Day had come, the war was over, my husband was safe home again, I had a son and a daughter, a house with a garden, a husband with a job he liked. What more can a woman desire?

  Chapter 13

  Chicken-feed

  Food was still rationed at the time of my son’s birth and other goods were difficult to obtain. Perambulators, for instance. However I advertised and for eighteen pounds, which my parents thought was an unheard sum of money, I purchased a secondhand pram. It was a huge affair, a Rolls-Royce amongst prams, navy blue with a sort of rail running round the bodywork. It was the same make as the royal prams! ‘Your mother never felt the need of a bassinet with the ten of you,’ said my father! His disgust at the price of this pram never abated, he just couldn’t forget it.

  But Mother did have a little wicker-work affair for the last four of her children. I think Sister Kathleen from Poplar All Saints Church acquired it for Mother. It was a dangerous twofold contraption which would close like a concertina, literally trapping the occupant, if it was pushed down the stairs or pavement too quickly. Amy told us of the time she and my brother Len were in charge of Marjorie, the then occupant of this wicker trap. Adjured by Mother to walk slowly, never run, when taking Marjorie for a walk they completely ignored her advice and chasing out of Tunnel Gardens one day, late home for dinner, they upturned the bassinet throwing little Marjorie on to her head on the pavement. Passers-by picked Marjorie up and extracted from Len and Amy the solemn promise that they would ‘tell their mother what had happened’ for their little sister must be taken to the doctor, it was such a nasty blow on the child’s head. Of course they didn’t tell Mother and when Amy related this episode, with glee, at our weekly get-togethers Marjorie said, ‘No wonder I’m supposed to be the simple one of the family, I see the reason why, now.’ ‘Whatever makes you think such a thing?’ replied Amy. ‘As a matter of fact I was thinking only the other day, it was Dolly of course, Len and I were taking out in the little wicker bass. We didn’t mind taking her out because she was always smiling, whereas you were such a miserable child.’ ‘So that’s my reward for trying to spread a little sunshine around,’ I said to Amy feeling furious I had been denied the medication I certainly must have needed after such a fall.

  Mother, now getting old, was so very anxious to take my son out in this beautiful perambulator. Amy had embroidered a beautiful white cover for it and Mother was keen to be the object of admiring eyes. She was so looking forward to saying, ‘This is my youngest grandchild, William,’ for she liked the name. I had wanted Nicholas but Chas hated it saying it would become ‘old Nick’. Then I plumped for Dominic, Miles, or Rupert, but finally gave in and settled for William.

  I dressed William in his best white woollies, polished the perambulator till it shone, then I had to dash away to collect some washing from the garden for a neighbour had called to say my line had broken. When I returned, Mother had left for her walk around the houses. I sat at the sitting-room window awaiting her return and became hysterical at what I saw, and I called my father. He too began to laugh and then he said, ‘Don’t tell your mother for God’s sake, she felt such a grand lady pushings the posh perambulator.’ Hanging over the front of the rail which went round the body of the pram were Mother’s pink Twilfit corsets. They looked enormous and the lace laces dangled almost to the pavement. They must have somehow got caught on the rail when Mother was taking some laundry upstairs, and Father hadn’t noticed them when he was pushing the pram outside the house ready for Mother’s take-off. She’d had a lovely walk and everyone ‘had been so happy’ to see her. I managed to slip them off the pram when I opened the door to her. She would have been so humiliated to discover them and I had to warn different people who had noticed them, not to mention the corsets to my mother. One stupid woman said she thought Mother was going for a walk to ‘air them off’.

  It was lovely living with my parents, for in that way I saw my brothers and sisters and their children when they came to visit Granny and Grandad. My brother Len always kept us amused. He had risen to the rank of major in the army, no mean feat for a boy from the East End. He’d been on the raids to the places where it was suspected the Germans were working on ‘heavy water’ which was connected with the dreaded atom bomb, and he had a fund of anecdotes. At his final interview with the brass hats on the occasion of his promotion one of the interviewers was a crusty old colonel. ‘Speak up,’ said the colonel, ‘I can’t hear you.’ Up spake Len. ‘Don’t shout,’ said the crusty colonel. ‘I’m not deaf.’ He had to give an impromptu lecture on ‘places abroad I have seen’. Fortunately he’d been in the Navy and he spoke for fifteen minutes on ‘... miles up the Orinoco’ which apparently had the assembled company enthralled. My father was so proud of Len. Len laughed at the ‘visiting’ card, or ‘menu’ Chas had brought home from abroad. It stated, ‘One egg and chips, ten shillings.’ ‘Cor, that was pricey,’ said a laughing Len, then Chas turned the card over and on the back was printed, ‘And two saucy girls will dance to you.’ ‘Were they good dancers?’ asked Marjorie.

  Chas’s family visited us too, but without the fund of amusing anecdotes my family had a store of. Robin had not ‘enjoyed’ the army, an intellectual type, I knew soldiering would not be his cup of tea. I think he was left very much to his own devices, for, as he told me with a laugh, ‘route marches were not for me’. I often wondered if it was not a ploy of his so that he could return to his books in the quiet of his hut. At one time he was stationed abroad within a few miles of Chas, and decided to visit him on his day off. They went to a camp show but Robin was unable to sit with Chas as Chas was a sergeant and Rob a private. I thought this stupid but Chas said ‘discipline’ had to be maintained. I think he’d got the wrong word, for Rob wasn’t the type to start a revolt. He was once in charge of the switchboard. It was a dark and stormy night with the rain lashing down. The Sergeant phoned instructions to Robin from the other side of the camp, quite a way away and Rob replied, ‘Righteo, Old Boy.’ Minutes later a soaked and furious Sergeant appeared in the switchboard room shouting at Rob, ‘Understand, Private, I am not your Old Boy.’ Rob and his wife Olive ran a grocery store in North London. They worked like slaves and had very little time off, but on Thursdays Rob had his men friends in for cards, always a must with Chas and his family, all great card-players. Chas was always late home on these Thursday nights but I always sat up for him. I liked to welcome him home again and in any case I enjoyed the quiet of the house when my family were safe and asleep. I liked a late night myself, for I hated going to bed whereas Chas was always weary before 10 p.m. But on this fateful night he was later than usual and midnight came and went and there were still no footsteps on the path. I heard a noise upstairs and crept up to investigate. Mother was rubbing
my father’s shoulder. She was in a temper at my father requesting such a service at such an hour. ‘Why didn’t he mention earlier that he had a touch of rheumatism?’ she said irritably. ‘Rub it well in,’ my father was saying. ‘Rub it well in.’

  I went downstairs to renew my vigil, amused at my father’s expression which had cropped up several times in my life. A friend of my brother’s had told him of the M.O. they had when he had been in the army. A really nice chap, obviously an aristocrat out of the top drawer, and yet he tried hard to speak to the chaps in their own language. It was a London regiment so many of the fellows were down-to-earth cockney lads. They were to be sent abroad and the M.O. was very worried that because it was the first time so many of them had been to foreign climes they would not fully comprehend the dreadful dangers of disease were they to associate with ‘ladies of the town’. He began the lecture by advising the chaps to have nothing to do with ladies they didn’t know; in that way they would return home as pure as they were when they left their native shore. Realising this sound advice had very possibly fallen on many deaf ears, he began his lecture proper. He produced a tube of ointment and squeezing the tube he displayed to the assembled audience its contents. A vivid blue woad. He then proceeded to inform ‘you chaps’ that if they found it impossible to go through the war abroad without ‘a little affection’ then they could obtain this indigo dye magic salve from their M.O. It must be applied to the er... er... The M.O. obviously thought if he used the medical terminology for the appropriate parts of the male anatomy, the chaps would not fully comprehend, and so conscientious was he and so anxious that his men should remain F.F.I. (the army term for ‘free from infection’) that with great embarrassment he said, in pseudo cockney tones, ‘Rub it well in, rub it well in, round the er... cock... and er... balls some minutes before the er... get together.’ There was great amusement amongst the chaps as one would imagine and the ribald remarks which followed, about Indian warriors, etc., and the air was blue with risque jokes. I thought it a pity the colour was blue and wondered why the army could not have made it colourless.

  It was now two a.m. and I was more than ever worried. Something dreadful must have happened to Chas. There was a sudden loud knocking and a continuous ring on the front doorbell. Immediately my worry changed from relief to ‘How inconsiderate he is to make such a noise at this time of night. He must know my parents and the children are asleep.’ I dashed to the door ready to attack him in a hoarse whisper, but as I opened the door a light almost blinded me. There stood a policeman, dressed in despatch-rider’s clothes, bearing on his head a huge amp, like a miner’s light. ‘Is Charles William Scannell resident here?’ he asked severely. ‘He was,’ I stammered. ‘May I have his present address then?’ he said, taking out a notebook. ‘Oh, he still lives here, but where is he now, has there been an accident, please tell me, I’m not silly.’ ‘Just a moment, Madam,’ he said, waving his hand for ‘hush’. ‘Let us get the facts straight first. Is he, or is he not, living at this address?’ ‘Yes, he is, but tonight he is in North London.’ Now frantic I said, ‘He’s dead, isn’t he, you are afraid to tell me, but I must know what has happened.’ Realising that he must come clean with an hysterical female he said, ‘Madam, your husband is in good hands at Leman Street Police Station.’ He paused, then he said, ‘Now may I know what took your husband to North London?’ ‘I think he went by bus,’ I said. ‘Yes, of course he went by bus, the trains don’t go there.’ He was now more muddled up than ever and was sure that not only had they apprehended a criminal but had discovered a nest of criminals possibly. Why else was this woman being so evasive, for it was obvious he thought I was. I was getting more worried than ever, what was Chas doing in a Police station? ‘I can tell you one thing,’ I cried. ‘Whatever he’s done, he’s innocent.’ And then followed my testimonial to Chas’s character. He was nothing more or less than a saint before I had finished my speech. ‘Well,’ said the policeman, ‘try not to worry.’ Then when he saw my tragic face he knew what an impossible request he had made, and he said, ‘Physically he is fine, no doubt you will be informed of what is happening in the morning.’

  I sat up all night going over and over in my mind what could possibly have happened, I almost collapsed by the fire thinking of his undergoing a sort of third degree. Of course it was a case of mistaken identity. Should I try to telephone? But who would I ring? The police obviously would have closed lips. I couldn’t bother Rob and Olive, they probably knew nothing about it. The policeman’s loud knocking had surprisingly not woken the household. I would fight for Chas. He would have the best lawyers in the country. I fetched my Post Office Savings Book – 11s. 9d. Of course, I had spent my all on the house. I couldn’t think what lawyer I could get for eleven and nine-pence.

  In the morning an unshaven, worried and tired Chas arrived home and part of the sorry story was revealed. Rob, who was a registered dealer in chicken corn, was overstocked with it. No one in North London seemed to want it and it was a nuisance in his busy shop. That evening he had said to Chas, ‘Look, this will soon be off the ration, would you like to take some home with you?’ Ah, thought Chas, if I have corn I can buy some more chickens. In addition to a sack of corn he gave Chas half a pound of butter and a quarter of tea. Rob and Olive and their charming son Geoffrey had been to lunch with us the previous Sunday and had brought no rations. ‘I can’t go to the bother of going down into the shop again tonight,’ Rob had said, not wanting the bother of weighing up two ounces of this and four ounces of that, so that although the half a pound of butter and the quarter of tea was more than they had eaten, or drunk, the quantities made up for the other rations consumed.

  That night on his way home from cards at Aldgate, Chas encountered a police-car standing at the kerb. The sack being heavy Chas innocently rested it for a moment right by the doors of the car. These immediately opened and a charmingly kind voice (Chas said it was lovely and welcoming), called, ‘Good evening, sir.’ Chas replied, just as politely, ‘Good evening, officer.’ ‘May I ask the contents of your bag?’ enquired the officer. ‘Yes, certainly,’ said Chas (an unknowing lamb to the slaughter). ‘I have some chicken corn, half a pound of butter and a quarter of Reddings tea.’ ‘And,’ continued the voice, still kindly, ‘May I ask you where you got all this from?’ The penny dropped! Chas realised that what he had was on the ration. He had broken the law, but what worried him more, what was worse, his brother had technically broken the law and he would be involved. The first thing in my boy scout’s mind was to protect the innocent. ‘Well,’ said Chas, ‘I am sorry to admit it, officer, but I stole it all.’ The voice lost its warm kindly tone, but still polite it said, ‘In that case, sir, will you come to the station and make a statement?’ I wondered what the policemen would have thought if Chas had said, ‘Well, I’d rather not.’ But of course into the car went Chas. (He said they were very nice and called him Charles all the time. I think he appreciated this politeness.)

  By this time he was, of course, terrified, his head whirling. He had branded himself a thief. Perhaps he wouldn’t be in prison long, but he must try to name some place from which he had stolen the corn, other than his brother’s. Alas for the criminal mentality.

  He made several different statements (I wondered at that stage in Chas’s confession whether my despatch-rider had returned and was describing the criminal’s wife!) but in the end settled for the first one, ‘He had been playing cards at his brother’s and, while his brother wasn’t looking, he had stolen this very large bag of poultry food together with the butter and the tea.’ The police couldn’t seem to get clear from Chas how he left his brother’s premises without his brother being curious as to what was in the sack-like bag which had not been in his possession when he arrived for his social evening. Chas, being an honest citizen got absolutely muddled up, and of course the more worried and muddled he became, the more like the criminal they suspected he was did he appear to his blue-coated kindly-voiced friends. His hand shook as he finally sign
ed away his character and he remained in the Police Station while the law sped to Rob’s shop.

  Rob was furious that the police should wake him up in the middle of the night. He and his wife worked very hard, for their shop was extremely busy and successful. When he learned that Chas had said he’d stolen from his brother, he was even more furious. ‘He’s a b.f.,’ said Rob. ‘It’s typical of him.’ Rob made a statement and said to the departing policemen, ‘I should think you’d be busy enough searching for the big black market boys.’

  In the end the whole police station was laughing, all except poor Chas, of course. At midnight the poultry-food had been taken off the ration because there was such a glut of it, and the half-a-pound of butter had melted in the warmth of the police station, no doubt singed by Chas’s conscience. As for the quarter of a pound of tea, it wasn’t worth the bother, for Rob could prove that on the way to our house the Sunday before he had met a policeman friend and in conversation had said to his wife, ‘Oh, hell, I’ve left our rations on the kitchen table.’

  ‘Now I suppose they have your finger prints,’ I said accusingly. ‘What does that matter?’ replied Chas, and waving his arms dramatically he continued, ‘I am not guilty.’ I was just about to start a long stream of recriminations for my night of torture but his dramatic, ‘I am not guilty!’ recalled to my mind the judge with a reputation for brevity. The criminal in the dock had dramatically waved his arms to the court and called out in heart-breaking tones, ‘As God is my judge I am not guilty.’ Replied the judge, ‘He’s not, I am, you are.’ Therefore I thought I should let well alone, I would always have something to fall back on in any future domestic argument!

  But I couldn’t leave well alone and the more determined I was that Chas shouldn’t keep chickens again, the more determined he became to own these stupid birds. I was fighting a lone battle, for eggs were still rationed and as Mother said so many times (probably coached by my father), ‘Eggs contain enough nutrient for a meal, and with potatoes, we could manage in an emergency,’ and my father insisted that Chas’s eggs looked better and tasted better than the shop eggs with the little lion on them. My mother would come down each day with a new ‘sales’ quote on the subject of our ‘feathered friends’. Her greatest quote, and one which she thought most daring and modern was, ‘If a man is denied his pleasures at home he will seek them away from home, such is the nature of man.’ Rob presented Chas, not only with his large supply of poultry-food, but with a pest-proof bin in which to keep it. This bin was about four feet high, made of heavy metal. It also had a strong hinged lid. And four stiff-legged females took up residence at the bottom of our garden. The only concession made ‘to keep me quiet’ was the promise that these ladies would lead a cloistered existence. No male bird would ever ruffle their feathers. So Daisy, Dora, Elsie and Ethel lived a peaceful life. Whether their nun-like existence was a happy one I neither knew nor cared. I couldn’t even tell them apart.