If I refer to the ‘streptococci lady’, Amy knows immediately to whom I am referring. It’s a sort of code between us. We had a very smart friend who used long words to impress us, though sometimes it took a little while to puzzle out what she meant. A dear relative of hers suffered a ‘celestial’ condition. We thought he had passed on but found he had a cholesterol condition of the blood: and after her first holiday abroad she informed us that she was in ‘perjury’ with sunburn. Purgatory?
However, I was so grateful to Amy for the benefit of her advice as an experienced shop assistant and her reassurance that no one would be likely to ask me for something of which I had no knowledge. She was wrong. My first customer, a foreign lady speaking broken English, requested ‘pumpernickel’. Fortunately Chas returned while I was directing the lady to Amy’s chemist shop. Having served abroad he was knowledgeable as to ‘black bread’.
Chapter 6
False Alarm
Up with the lark were the Scannells. At this early hour Chas was at his happiest, most patient and his noisiest, whereas I was at my lowest ebb. I had to be reintroduced to the world in a gentle manner or my ominous silence turned into snappy moroseness. Only duty coaxed me to perform at all. Chas will say that, except for times of enforced separation, he has always brought his wife her first delicious cup of morning tea, and that he loves to perform this service for her. He does not add that sometimes he crashes the tray by my bedside with the words, ‘This is the fifth cup of tea, don’t you dare let this one get cold,’ and he turns on the radio, hums, coughs, crashes, talks and generally bangs about, with no consideration whatever for those still wishing to be peaceful.
He would be down in the shop just after 7 a.m. preparing for the grand opening; then, this done, he would come upstairs to breakfast and a silent wife. At 8 a.m. the shop would be open, or before eight o’clock if from within could be seen a woman without, agitatedly wanting something for breakfast for her family waiting expectantly at home. One morning at breakfast Chas asked that I should get down to the shop a bit sharpish as he had an order to deliver at 8.30 to a factory. He went off downstairs and within minutes came a dreadful screaming from him, ‘Fire! Fire! Fire!’ In my dilatory mood and dressing-gown, I opened the kitchen door, yelled in return, ‘Stop playing about, Chas,’ and slammed the door with a mighty bang to confirm my non-participation in fun and games, however warm the invitation.
Chas continued to yell for me and finally, in a burst of temper, I thrust William out of the upstairs kitchen door, saying ‘You’d better get off to school, and on the way tell Dad I shall be down in ten minutes, and say, “Mum says, don’t keep shouting.”’ To my annoyance William returned immediately and I was about to snap, ‘Well, what is it now?’ but he said quickly, ‘The passage is filled with smoke, mum. Dad is still screaming for you, and there’s a terrible smell of burning and a crackling noise.’ I dragged William down the stairs and thrust him out through the front door into the street. Then, coughing and choking, I made my way to the back room, shouting for Chas. He was beating furiously with a dark blanket at the shelves, which were red and smouldering. On the shelves the packets of tea had already burned into mounds of smelly substance. When the last flame had been beaten out, Chas turned to me. He looked like a crazy sweep. He dragged me through the passage to the garden where there appeared to be the remains of a large bonfire. He grabbed my shoulder in a furious rage and choked, ‘When I call fire next time, you bloody well come running.’ ‘What’s this then, a practice run?’ I asked. I thought he would hit me. I knew I deserved it. I should have known Chas better than to assume he would play practical jokes about anything so serious. I should have known he would never cry wolf.
He had returned to the shop after breakfast to find the container into which we threw our used bags and paper blazing. His first thoughts were of me and he became frantic as the fire worsened and no Dolly appeared – indeed, did not intend to appear. He was unable to reach the phone because of the flames. He could not run next door to the butcher’s to phone, for he would not leave the blaze while his obstinate Joan of Arc was upstairs. Because of me he had carried a large, blazing, cardboard container through the passage into the garden, burning his arms and hands, and had then gone back to attack the burning shelves. To look at the damage it was impossible to believe that one man could have stemmed the blaze. The shop remained closed for the day because of the thick smoke which hung like a pall everywhere.
I said to my hero, ‘What did you beat the flames out with?’ ‘Anything I could find,’ he said, ‘and luckily my new overcoat was still downstairs.’ (I had forgotten to take this upstairs after collecting it from the tailor’s the night before.) ‘Fancy using a lovely new overcoat,’ I moaned. ‘What’s the bleeding good of a lovely new overcoat if I’d been burned to death?’ shouted an angry Chas. ‘I’ve often thought what silly things you say at times, but your behaviour during this crisis has been sheer stupidity and even I would not have believed you capable of such idiocy.’ He never forgave me for assuming he would play a practical joke by calling ‘Fire,’ and once, when guests were complimenting me on something or other, Chas said, ‘What would you think of a woman who, when warned of fire on the floor below her, shouts an insulting remark at the warning and slams the door to safety?’ ‘Oh,’ said one of the guests, ‘she was probably simple.’ Chas never looked at me or gave me away. He is hoping that one day I will at last admit I can at times behave with crass stupidity. Until now I never have.
To take my mind off the depressing results of the fire Ade suggested we go to a bingo session. She was collecting her weekly order from us. ‘Bingo! Surely that’s a bit boring, no brain power needed there.’ ‘Hark at Lady Einstein,’ said Ade. ‘What do you want after a hard day in the shop, someone to set you big mathematical problems?’ I had never even thought about going to this type of social affair but when Ade remarked that the top prize was one thousand pounds I began to dream of what I would do with such a sum, for I was sure I would win. Ade and Ben had been invited to an evening bingo session by their new neighbours, a middle-aged childless couple, ‘very refaned,’ said Ade.
Apparently these neighbours had always been extremely lucky at this game of chance and, being such refined folks, had really fallen for Benny and his snooty way of talking. Since he was difficult to approach they were endeavouring to get to him through Ade, the ‘hail fellow, well met’. The new neighbours amused Ade, for she was sure they assumed that Benny had come down in the world through his marriage to her, the aristocratic son falling for the housemaid. They had been most impressed, when inviting Ade and Benny to the Bingo session, to discover that Benny and Johnny were going to the Proms. Benny had tried to introduce Ade to the more serious side of music but she had found it ‘bloody boring’. He had started off by taking the whole family to La Bohème , but Mimi had been, according to Ade, a ‘typical scrubber’ with enormous arms, so that when ‘Your tiny hand is frozen’ was sung the twins were in hysterics. Ade and the twins opted out. ‘I don’t mind a nice brass band,’ said Ade.
‘We will pick up Mrs S. in our car,’ said Ade’s new lady neighbour, and at seven o’clock one winter’s evening the limousine purred to a stop outside our shop. At first sight I thought it was the car/van from the gown factory down the road, for it was square, black and very high up in the air but there were bits of material hanging across the windows, so apparently it was an ordinary car. Ade was sitting in state in the back, her eyes twinkling. As though I was a younger sister, she knew in advance, somehow, my innermost thoughts. Suddenly I realised that, to anyone who liked large women, Ade would have been beautiful. Her eyes were large, a sort of greeny-hazel, her complexion fair; she had a straight nose, nicely shaped mouth, good teeth and lovely, glossy, red-chestnut hair.
Ade introduced me to Mr and Mrs —. The man possessed a military moustache and was wearing pheasant-shooting clothes; a sporty cap and muffler, Burberry and thick, brown, country brogues. His ensemble was completed by a pa
ir of bright-yellow string gloves. Mrs was a fussy little woman in a blue Harris tweed suit, a felt hat with a coloured feather in the brim and a yellowish, grassy-looking fur round her shoulders. This was a complete animal with pointed nose and big, brown, glassy eyes, his mouth gripping one of his ‘arms’. It was flattened like a kipper and the back view was of the tiny hind legs and tail. The eyes made me shudder.
Ade was already ensconced, wrapped about the knees with a plaid travelling-rug, and the lady, the perfect hostess, greeted me with another rug over her arm for me. ‘Call us Edie and Alby,’ said the lady poshly. ‘Any friend of Benny and Ade is a friend of ours.’ Her voice embarrassed me; it was obvious to me she had ‘risen’ from the area of my childhood, and the overlay of gentility was all so false. It couldn’t be natural to her. She wrapped me about with the travelling-rug – ‘We always keep these in the car’, which was, I supposed, a sort of declaration that she never needed to borrow them for their bed at night. She was, too, one of those worst offenders, the back-seat driver. Another declaration to make us think that she’d been brought up with a car in the family! Thus, with her running commentary – ‘Look to your right – a bicycle coming up on the left – oh my God, did you see that – oh what a madman, such people shouldn’t be allowed on the roads – watch that dog, Alby’ – we arrived at the bingo palace, Alby went to park the car while we queued; I had never seen so many people in a queue before. The building was an old cinema and finally we were seated. It was hot and smelly inside. I was unlucky that my tip-up seat was broken so that I was low to the ground. Ade seemed like a mountain next to me but there was no point in complaining about my broken seat, for all the seats were filled. I just longed for the evening to finish.
The compere arrived and made a few jokes at which everyone screamed and clapped and then, with his little coloured balls shooting up and down, we were off. All evening it seemed that I had only just begun to cover the numbers on my card (some people managed three cards) when someone called ‘Bingo!’ None of our party won that night. Alby and Edie seemed surprised. I wondered if I’d brought them bad luck. We waited outside in the chilly night air while Alby collected the car. ‘We’ll go back through Upper Holloway,’ announced Edie, as though that area was the promised land. I felt I had been a damper on the proceedings and if Edie hadn’t been so ‘refaned’ I would have told Ade of the time when, during the war, I stayed with some people at Hampstead. As the L.N.E.R. train aproached its destination each morning a funny little porter would dash out of his box and scream, ‘I-git-up-er-ollo-waaay’ (Highgate, Upper Holloway), and everyone would smile, even the city gents. But if I couldn’t imitate the little porter’s excited yells then the joke would fall flat and the lady would think me incredibly vulgar, especially if Ade broke into one of her masculine guffaws.
Edie was still assisting in the driving of the family saloon when it happened. We were driving along a wide main road. At a side turning was a stationary grey car, a beautiful car. At the wheel was a handsome black man, chatting to his passenger, another black man. They were laughing and Ade said, ‘Now don’t they look happy.’ Suddenly I felt apprehensive and I said, ‘They’re going to dash out in front of us.’ Edie laughed her refined and affected laugh. ‘Not having a car, Mrs S., you wouldn’t know that Alby has right of way, isn’t that so, Alby?’ ‘Definitely, dear,’ said Alby, driving straight on, a man with a set purpose.
The grey car shot out in front of us at terrific speed. Alby spun his steering wheel and we shot right, across the main road, out of control. Brakes and people screamed as we raced in front of a car, a bus and a lorry. We mounted the pavement and I closed by eyes and thought of Chas, William and Susan, for in front of us was the enormous, plate-glass window of a car showroom. Ade put her arms round me. ‘Christ, thank you, we’ve stopped.’ Edie was chattering now in her normal voice, all refinement gone. ‘We’ve got to thank Alby for being such a wonderful driver, haven’t we?’ I was never sure about this; I thought some praise should go to the drivers we passed on our way to the car showroom. The police arrived but there was really nothing to do, for the happy travellers in the grey car were nowhere to be seen. But there were many lucky winners that first and last time I went to bingo.
I never expected to see Edie and Alby again, for I knew Ade had nothing in common with them, but Edie became president of a local ladies’ circle and Ade felt she had to go on Edie’s first night as president, a sort of ‘thank you’ for our free transport to the bingo hall. So I went to keep Ade company. Edie did very well and it was obvious she would be a much loved president, for she really threw her heart and soul into the position. It was my flippancy and Ade’s reaction to it which spoilt a beautiful friendship between Edie and Ade.
Edie opened the meeting with a short talk. ‘People forget that the best things in life can be had merely for the asking. Today, for instance, has been a lovely day, but how many of us have yet thought to thank God for it?’ (Certainly neither Ade nor I had, and I, for one, began to feel guilty.) ‘The best things in life are still free,’ went on an enthusiastic president, ‘and I would like to ask all you ladies a question.’ The ladies looked very interested at this point. ‘What could be lovelier on one’s table than the beautiful sight of one of God’s fragrant flowers from the hedgerows?’ ‘Something with steam rising from it?’ I whispered to Ade, stealing one of my father’s famous remarks. Ade exploded, always unable to laugh silently as I could, and as Edie and the congregation turned to stare at Ade, she whipped from her pocket an enormous white handkerchief, the largest of its kind I have ever seen, and pretended to be sneezing. The noise was like thunder. Because I had been the cause of the contretemps I thought I had better say something by way of an apology or explanation. ‘The thought of the flower the president mentioned has brought on my friend’s hay fever.’ Ade retired to the cloakroom until the ‘hay fever’ had subsided.
A few days later I met Edie on her own. I apologised and explained what had happened. ‘It’s Benny I feel sorry for,’ remarked a sad but understanding lady. ‘He is so noble and never reproaches Ade for her robust behaviour. He certainly must have a difficult task to lie on the bed which he has chosen. Our hearts [she and Alby spoke as one] go out to the poor fellow constantly.’
‘Silly old moo,’ was Ade’s retort when I told her of my apology. ‘She should have heard Benny laugh when I told him of your father’s preference for hot, steamy risings. Why do some people always judge others by the way they talk?’ I didn’t know, but I agreed with Ade that they do. ‘You want to hear Edie on the telephone, Dolly, she really goes to town then. I like to hear her spell words out, for she has no idea she gives herself away. For instance, she says “hache” for “aitch” and “ungyon” for “onion” and “nothink” for “nothing”. Poor old dear,’ said Ade, suddenly sorry for our ladylike acquaintance, ‘she’s had a hard life, I believe, having to scrimp and scrape for every ha’penny and wouldn’t have been able to go in for their house if she’d stopped work and had children.’ It was a sort of affectation that she always called Alby ‘Daddy’. ‘I wonder when she started calling him that, Ade?’ ‘When they were sure they wouldn’t have children, I expect. It was probably a sort of compensation title for him.’ ‘P’raps that’s when she started to lisp so that in one way she became Alby’s, or, rather, Daddy’s girl, as well as his wife.’ ‘The child-bride of the north,’ I remarked, which made Ade snort. ‘My twins always call her Violet Elizabeth, when she’s not there, of course. They had a stupid teacher who once said the twins were Jus’ William and Ginger [one of the boys was red-headed] so ever after that they just acted up to those two heroes, although they didn’t need any excuse to act like grubby urchins, it seemed natural to them. Anyway, I had to read the riot act to them when one mum called on me to say that they wouldn’t allow her boy in their gang. The twins said this boy was such a sneak he should have been head of the rivals, but he was so ambitious he wanted to be number one after my two.’
To make
it up to Edie, alias Violet Elizabeth, I suggested to Ade that Chas would take us out one evening for dinner at a posh restaurant. ‘Oh Gawd, wouldn’t she like that, she’d be in her element, we’d have to get a copy of the menu for her to bring home to show her “colleagues” at work, and I bet she’d say, “Now don’t be nervous, Ade and Dolly, just follow my example and do what I do, I’m used to this sort of thing.”’ Apparently Edie was a waitress in the directors’ dining-room at a large business concern. She had worked at this place since leaving school, the directors still called her ‘missie’. ‘I believe that’s where she gets her clothes, from the directors’ wives. She even lays up the table at home in the same way, even for the baked beans or egg on toast Alby gets when he comes home. And candles, too!’ I wondered how Ade knew all this. ‘Oh, they eat in the window, I can see them from my kitchen.’ Ade went on, ‘I don’t know what she thought of us the night she called for change for her slot meter. I was eating on the kitchen table, Johnny had a tray on the floor in front of the TV, the twins were wandering about after their meal, nibbling the remains of chop bones, and Benny was eating off a tray on the coffee table.
‘I’ll tell you what we’ll do if we go for that meal. We’ll sit Benny next to Edie, for he speaks French, he’ll know exactly what’s on the menu without asking the waiter, and then she can pretend that she and Benny are giving their four retainers an evening out. It’ll mean a lot to her and the rest of us can then enjoy our nosh. Could we find a place with an orchestra so that Edie can ask for a request?’
Dolly's Mixture Page 5
