Dolly's Mixture

by Dorothy Scannell

  I had to change trains at Andover and enquired the platform of a porter, a fair young man, clean and smart in his uniform. ‘You want the up line, me dear,’ he said. I’ll take you over.’ (What a kind young man!) He took my case and I followed him down a slope through a tunnel. As we got into the tunnel he put down the case. I waited, thinking he wanted to rest, although I had carried the case without much effort, but I knew he had carried lots of cases. Suddenly he put his arms around me and began kissing me passionately. I stood like a statue, too shocked to move; then, hearing footsteps, he said, ‘That was luvly, me dear luv, will’ee be comin’ agin next yeere?’ Like a zombie I followed him to the proper up line. He touched his cap and went back down the tunnel. From my vantage point I could see across the station and watched while this amorous porter picked up another young lady’s case and again entered the tunnel. I suppose I could have shouted to warn her, but obviously it was all right this trip, for they emerged from the tunnel with the girl happy and smiling. She actually waved goodbye to the porter! Until that incident I had believed all country boys to be shy and innocent. It was obviously the other way round, for boys of our town acquaintance would not have dared embark on such a terrible act. I realised I should have reported him, but I was so ashamed I would not have told even my sisters. In any case, with Mother and them one was always guilty and never proved innocent. It would have been, ‘A man would not do such a dreadful thing without encouragement, Dolly.’ ‘Passive resistance, Dolly!’

  Chapter 18

  The Daily Round

  There is nothing cold or formal about a corner grocery shop and ours was no exception. I was always ‘Mrs Ess’ to the customers, but Chas was Chas, or Charlie. What I recall mainly is the essential honesty and kindliness of our customers; there was nothing automatic in our shop, it was a place for human relationships. Even our till didn’t work, although that was the only faulty thing in the shop. It was a large, heavy, brass-topped affair and possessed a ding-a-ling a fireman would have been proud of. We had thought of acquiring a new, silent, streamlined model but the old man from whom we purchased the business thought we would be tempting providence to change the till, for it had been a part of the shop from time immemorial. ‘The customers love to hear the till ring, it gives them confidence,’ he had said. We could not feed it with the little rolls of white paper it was designed for because it added up any number it thought of, and not necessarily the figures which had been rung up; therefore we wrote our bills by hand and did our additions mentally, just ringing the till to obtain change.

  Chas had always been abnormally speedy with figures and, although I had brainwashed myself into thinking I was hopeless, when I was at last forced to tackle bills it gave us both a shock that I could add up quickly and accurately, with the best. In any case the cost of a new till was terrifying.

  We were adopted by Ellen, our most faithful customer. She was a lady, getting on agewise, who had sadly been born with a cleft palate – well, we assumed it was that. The first time she came into our shop she was nervous and hung back. I almost had to coax her to give her order and, when she did, she shouted it so loudly and it was such gibberish that I was helpless, for I didn’t want to hurt her feelings by letting her know I couldn’t understand the tiniest bit of what she had said. Cowardly as always, I held up a finger so as to say, ‘Just a moment,’ (I don’t know why I assumed she was deaf also, possibly because she shouted) and called Chas. By a fluke he understood what she wanted at her first time of asking, and he was therefore her friend for life, and Charlie to her. She seemed to think me a very daring lady, a comedienne, and watched me as a little child, eager for me to make her laugh. Sometimes when we were busy and Chas had reason to complain of something or other, I would make a face behind his back just to make our Ellen laugh. She was known, affectionately, to the shopkeepers (but not to her) as ‘Nellie-no-roof’. Having adopted us she made a rod for our backs, really, for, instead of coming in for her shopping once or twice a week, she came in many times daily for individual articles, shouting her requirements as she entered, however full the shop was.

  She would dash from us to Marjorie’s shop, to regale her with the latest exploits of her sister Dolly. Although to my face she called me Mrs Ess, by calling me, to Marjorie, by my family name she somehow felt included in our clan. She never forgot the remark I made on the occasion of one domestic tragedy. We had been expecting royal personages to visit our area. The traffic was stopped and people began to line the route. I had opened an upstairs window to lean out so that I might see when the procession turned into our road. On the table in front of the window was an enormous metal tray. On this I would place all the dirty crockery ready for washing up after the evening meal. One big wash-up saved so many trips up and down stairs with water. Chas rang for me and I dashed down to serve without closing the upstairs window. I must have slightly moved the tray as I leaned out. Faint music could be heard – oh dear, I would miss seeing the famous. Suddenly there was an awful commotion outside the shop, screams and yells and the sound of breaking china. The tray had slipped to the edge of the window and my dirty crockery had crashed down to the pavement. Ellen dashed into the shop accompanied by some of the viewers, all eager to tell me what had happened. Chas was incredulous at my ‘Vive les majesties’. ‘How could you possibly do such a thing?’ he began in sepulchral tones. ‘Well, thank God I hadn’t washed the china first,’ I said fervently.

  The next day Ellen drew Chas’s sister Netta into our family. We had experienced a freak storm, hail stones were piled feet high outside the shop. Netta was having her roof repaired and her lounge was flooded. In a panic she began to bale out but completely forgot the passers by, and, as Ellen came round the corner on her hourly visit to us, she was greeted by yells and screams from people on their way to work, all soaked with water by a determined hand from an upstairs window. There was no escaping Ellen, for our counter ran the length of the shop, leaving the storeroom and side doors exposed to all. If we escaped into the storeroom Ellen would simply follow. It was easier for Marjorie if she wanted to be off to see to more important things, for the counter in their shop ran width-ways, and entrance was granted by invitation only, through a flap in the counter. The magic, push-button opener was on their side of it.

  Marjorie had been adopted by a widow of about sixty. This strange-looking lady, who took snuff, had for the past ten years been determined to remarry. She had got many men almost to the point of proposing, or she thought she had, but at the eleventh hour she would say they didn’t measure up to her ‘late’. Since her ‘late’ was a weedy, meek and mild, tiny man, this was perhaps a salve to her pride. The truth was that her intended did not realise they were so categorised until the last moment, and all, to date, had been able to escape.

  Marjorie had to get lunch at a certain time because Richard came home at noon. One day I had something of importance to tell her and I dashed to her shop to find our widow waiting anxiously to tell Marjorie about the latest escapee in her love life. Alfred looked so secretive when I enquired for my sister, I thought, Oh, something is going on, something happening they don’t wish Dolly to know about, and, since my life to them was an open book, I felt quite hurt. Then I peered through a crack in the storeroom door, and there was Marjorie, on her tummy, trying to leave the shop snake-wise so that she wouldn’t be caught by the widow.

  Finally, our Ellen managed to trap a husband. She’d met him at the hospital, a tall, thin man, deaf, and extremely short sighted. He frequented Marjorie’s shop and she had to be constantly on the alert. This poor old man had a permanent dew-drop on the end of his nose and Marjorie was anxious this should not splash on her goods. She followed the dew-drop with a white cloth in her hand, pretending at moments of bombing that she was dusting, or tidying the sweets.

  Christmas began exceptionally early for us shopkeepers, for certain manufacturers offered extra discount to those willing to accept delivery before December. So that, weeks and weeks before the festi
ve season, our rooms and passages became smaller and narrower, storerooms chock-a-block, and cases everywhere. It was then I wished I’d had room for a distant relative to visit, a lady who cleaned so conscientiously that nothing was missed when she was around. There were dark mutterings amongst the Cheggie clan when she went to stay with one or other of them, for she would offer to ‘do’ out their cupboards, after first dusting all wainscotting. When I said I couldn’t understand their criticism they opined that the lady only ‘did’ the cupboards, or wanted to (for I heard of no one who took her up on this offer), so that she could enquire, ‘Do you want this any more, if not, may I have it?’

  I thought this would be an ideal way of getting rid of items I didn’t need and which cluttered up the wardrobes and cupboards, and I would be overcome with joy to have the lady say what she was reputed to say when staying as a guest anywhere, ‘Shall I dust your skirting-boards, Dolly?’ Because of my obstinate refusal to criticise this lady, one sister remarked, ‘Well, she’d meet her Waterloo with your cupboards, Dolly, she’d faint dead away.’ With delight, I assumed.

  I hated cases of pickles everywhere, for one thing because my father had made me extra nervous of broken glass, for he had a great dread of this. When milk was first delivered in bottles he was almost frantic, and every morning the bottles were examined by him before Mother was allowed to use the milk. He told tales of murders committed with broken glass and made Mother quite irritable. She said, ‘I cannot understand you, Walter. All these years you have been warning of the danger of uncovered food and milk from churns. Now, when things are more hygienic, you are still not satisfied.’ I suppose he would have liked milk delivered in skin containers.

  About a month before Christmas Chas and his friend George would dress the window. I always kept out of their way, for they built pyramids of the glass jars of pickles. Pyramids as tall as the windows. I thought this mad and was always expecting a heavy lorry, or a curious child, to have the lot crashing and tumbling down. They both enjoyed this dangerous pastime, except for the interludes when William would arrive and get dangerously near the operations, or pass one of his caustic comments. Then Chas would scream up the stairs, ‘Dorothy, can’t you keep him out of the way?’

  The jars twinkled and shone in the window, all polished so conscientiously by Chas and George, and they caused quite a sensation to the passers by. Ade one day requested the large jar of gherkins at the bottom of the middle pyramid. This was only for fun but one lady, hearing this, said excitedly, ‘If she can choose her jar, then can I have mine from the bottom? They look so much nicer.’ William was a tease. He would arrive home from school and pretend to place his hand near the pyramids, whereupon Chas would yell, ‘Get away from the pickles,’ and the customers would sort of bunch up together at the other end of the counter. I was much relieved when the last jar was sold and surprised that never, never did we have a broken jar.

  William, an individualist, was, unfortunately for me, a traditionalist where Christmas was concerned. Chas and I would have been content to laze the holiday away – the clearing up of the shop, the domestic chores, would have seemed a rest-cure with the shop doors locked to the public for three whole days. The large stores and multiples closed early on the Christmas Eve afternoon and this made Scannells’ busier than ever in the late afternoon, for it seemed so many households had forgotten important Christmas items. It was usually 7 p.m. before we crawled slowly up the stairs.

  ‘Let’s have a family Christmas now Dad’s home,’ William had said, ‘like the ones you had when you were my age.’ My maternal conscience, abnormally large, pricked me when I remembered the trouble our mothers, Chas’s and mine, had gone to so that the family could remember for ever their childhood yuletides. Well, I would make the effort, for once. I decided to invite Amy and Jimmy; they were both marvellous guests, Jimmy co-operative in the games, Amy discovering new games and throwing herself heart, mind and body into them. ‘A marvellous idea of William’s,’ said Marjorie. ‘I’ve got a good idea. Let’s have Christmas Day with you, Amy and Jimmy can sleep here, and then we’ll have another Christmas dinner and fun at our place on Boxing Day. It’ll be lovely, just a walk across the road, no worry about travelling home by transport in the early hours.’

  Suddenly everyone was imbued with the spirit of Christmas. ‘I’ll make a real Christmas cake,’ said Susan (she had had a marvellous cookery mistress at school), ‘we don’t want anything shop bought.’ I felt guilty. Marjorie, in spite of being so busy, still made her mincemeat, puddings etc., whereas I just threw on to the stairs, so that they didn’t get sold at Christmas, boxes of mince pies, a couple of puddings, nuts already shelled.

  I phoned Amy. ‘Oh, Dolly, how lovely, we shall enjoy it. I’ve got a marvellous book of Christmas games, I’ll bring plenty of paper and pencils’ (and peep at the answers beforehand, I thought). I dismissed my unsisterly thoughts, for I knew, of all people, she would make a Christmas for William and, indeed, for us all. ‘We must have turkey, mum, it’s traditional,’ said William. ‘You know I don’t really like turkey,’ moaned Chas, ‘I can’t eat the brown meat.’ He gave me a look which insinuated that, when we had such a bird, I always forced the legs on him. ‘Well, all right,’ agreed Chas, ‘I don’t mind if it’s a hen bird. Let me talk to the butcher.’ The butcher laughed as he delivered a large bird to us, ‘specially for Charlie who tells me he likes large, white, breasts’.

  ‘Don’t give me that awful sage and onion stuffing, it gives me terrible indigestion. My mother used to make her own stuffing, it was lovely, why can’t you do it?’ Chas was being awkward, for, although I’d made up my mind for this real Christmas, I had been scheming the easiest way to it, ‘Chestnut stuffing is traditional,’ this from William again. ‘Oh, I’d like that, but I don’t suppose your mother could do it.’ ‘Why do you go about letting everyone think I’m helpless?’ I reprimanded Chas. ‘If you want chestnut stuffing, you shall have chestnut stuffing. Don’t say anything to Marjorie, let it come as a surprise.’ ‘Well, make sure the turkey is cooked just right, follow the instructions in the cookery book.’ In addition to the instructions in my cook book, the week before Christmas, our old-tyme family Christmas that was to be, Chas presented me with ‘turkey cooking times’ cuttings from newspapers, and yelled for me every time a TV cook appeared on the screen to inform the ignorant public with correct oven temperatures, and I got thoroughly fed up with talking turkey. Susan’s cake, already in a special tin in the sideboard, was a perfect creation, and I felt proud that my daughter could achieve such a miracle. I bought an expensive, specially designed frill to put round it when it had pride of place on the Christmas tea table.

  I was a bit perturbed when our Christmas greengrocery order arrived. There seemed endless bags of chestnuts. ‘Oh, there’s a lot of waste, and you need a lot of chestnuts for stuffing,’ the greengrocer assured me. He also said, proudly, ‘These are the real English ones.’ ‘Don’t worry, mum,’ said William, ‘I’ll help you peel them.’ We sat round the kitchen table at 9 p.m. on Christmas Eve. William started on the first chestnut. ‘Cor, it’s ever so tough to cut, mum.’ We had the shop boning knives, the ones with the short, sharp, sloping blades, razor-like points at the end. The English chestnuts were smaller than the foreign ones, and their skins clung to them tightly; there was no little air-mound underneath the shiny brown skins, in which one could stab first, then lift up. William tried again; out came a spurt of blood. I put a plaster on his finger. He retired from the operation. The table was covered with chestnuts waiting for surgery. ‘I’m tired,’ said Chas, coming in from the lounge. ‘I’ve done the books, I’ll just have some hot milk and go to bed, then I shall be fresh for tomorrow.’ ‘You can’t beat English nuts,’ he called out as he went upstairs. ‘You won’t have a bad one among them, I guarantee.’

  At midnight I was still struggling with the chestnuts. Such a small pile in the saucepan, for, once I’d got the outer coat off, there was still a furry sort of brown skin ins
ide which Chas had instructed ‘will all have to come off’. I wanted to throw the lot away, but I couldn’t, I didn’t even have the excuse that they were all bad. If only Chas and William hadn’t known about the nuts, I could pop downstairs for a packet of you-know-what, have a nice cup of coffee and go to bed. At 3 a.m. I decided the chestnuts were good enough. I already had plasters on two cut fingers. I put them on to boil, the chestnuts that is. If I pounded them that night, any brown bits would be mixed in and Chas would be unable to inspect them. I cleared away the debris; the chestnuts seemed to be taking an unconscionable time to get soft and I decided, suddenly wide awake, I would be the first to celebrate the festive season. I would have a drink. I went to the sideboard and poured myself a large sherry. I saw the tin holding Susan’s beautiful cake. It would cheer me up to have another peep at it. I drank the sherry and poured a second one. Then I lifted the lid of the cake tin. Oh, it was lovely, I knew it contained nuts and cherries, the marzipan was real, made with ground almonds. Such a pity, I thought, that people really don’t appreciate lovely Christmas cake at tea time on Christmas Day, they are all too full up with turkey, pudding and nuts.

  Some evil spirit was abroad that Christmas Eve. It must have been something more than the demon drink. I cut a slice of the lovely cake and sat by the fire with my third sherry. I’d eaten half the slice, from the bottom, before I realised what a monstrous act I was committing. I trimmed off the part where I had bitten, filled half the gap in the big cake with paper shavings, and placed my half-eaten slice on top. I gently squeezed the icing together. If I put the cake on the Christmas table and cut a slice quickly, ready for someone to take, no one would ever know. There was a bit of an indent in the large cake, but I must be sure I was the one to present it to the admiring audience.