Dolly's Mixture

by Dorothy Scannell

  He went on to a military college at the insistence of his mother, but when he failed all his exams she wrote him never to return home again; she had given him every chance in life, she wanted nothing more to do with him. With the little money he had he rented a flat, intending to get a job of some sort, but he became ill with ’flu and then, apathy and loneliness setting in, he just had no will to fight. After all, what was there, who was there, to fight for?

  Although Ade was lonely she had had fourteen years of being wanted, she wasn’t lonely through rejection, and she was a fighter by nature as well. So Benny and Ade, two unlikely friends, became just that. Benny finally left the hospital and took a couple of rooms nearby, and on Ade’s day off she enjoyed herself ‘being mother’ and cleaned, scrubbed, polished and cooked a lovely evening meal for them both. Benny had obtained a job as a City messenger for a large corporation. ‘I was quite safe with Benny, he never kissed me or nothing, we were like a couple of kids.’ In one way, it wasn’t surprising they should eventually marry. It was then Ade discovered Benny was impotent. ‘He wasn’t queer nor nothing, Dolly – now I’m older I realise it was the fault of his upbringing, his bleeding old cow of a mother and his bastard of a father.’

  So if, now that Ade and Benny were ‘past it all’, they had never lived as man and wife, what about Ade’s boys? Johnny was the result of a brief encounter with a young airman before the Second World War. He, too, had been ‘signed on’ by unsympathetic parents, was terrified of flying (‘I don’t half meet ’em, Dolly, don’t I?’), and he and Ade, having imbibed a little too much, went to bed. The next morning he wept when he discovered Ade had been a virgin. When she confessed to Benny, he too wept, for he had failed her. ‘There was I, Dolly, surrounded by weeping men when I should have been the one who was howling. For one thing, I never enjoyed it and for another, I soon found I was pregnant.’ However, when Johnny was born Benny was over the moon with delight. The baby, it seemed, was the most precious thing he could have possessed. His surname was on the birth certificate. And what a name. He possessed four posh Christian names (Benny, that is) and a double-barrelled surname. Johnny was a lovely child, strangely enough he was something like Benny to look at, and for five years they really were an ideal family. Then Ade went to a party. Benny was quite content to stay at home with Johnny. History repeated itself, except that this time her lover was a large, jolly man who made her laugh. ‘Fancy “giving up the ghost” because someone could tell a good joke, and he was cross-eyed, too – well, I tell a lie, he had a sort of cast in one eye.’

  Ade confessed to Benny again but this time he said, ‘Well, it’s done now Ade, there’s no point in crying over spilt milk,’ which Ade said would have been funny if it hadn’t been so bloody true, for the large, jolly, cast-eyed man turned out to be a milkman. So the milkman’s twins also received a father with a surname, ‘definitely not a milkman’s moniker’, stated Ade. Benny again assumed the role of a loving father and the three boys were adored by them both. ‘But it put me off sex for good,’ said Ade, ‘since I didn’t enjoy it neither time, and look what I got for it, two “go’s” and three sons, do you think it’s a record?’ ‘I suppose I am one of those fertile women you read of.’

  ‘Did you ever try to trace Benny’s parents, they must have had money?’ ‘No, I wouldn’t want to and neither would Benny; he’s forgotten that part of his life entirely, although he says he’s glad it happened, for otherwise he would not have me and the boys. He’s got everything he wants from life, and more.’ ‘Anyway, Dolly, people who can just cast off their children and not even wonder what has happened to them are not people to me, I wouldn’t want nothing of them.’

  I don’t suppose Benny ever knew of Ade’s disclosures to me; certainly she never asked me to promise to keep her secrets. There was no need. I told no one. I sometimes felt ashamed of my boredom and discontent with things, for, compared with Ade’s, my life had been continually rosy. She loved to hear my tales of my family, the Chegwiddens, and in recounting them to her I found I enjoyed the incidents better the second time around. She would have given anything to have had a daughter but she added, ‘The only man caller we have at the house is the coalman and I’d have had to bath him first!’ Since we’d such a lot of smoky coal lately and her fires seemed to burn brightly always, I enquired what sort of fuel was her favourite. ‘Nutty slack, Dolly.’ ‘Whatever do you two girls find to laugh at in the park?’ – we always returned Anne in this mood – ‘Well, you gotta laugh, haven’t you, Harry?’ Which, of course, was no answer. How could we say that two middle-aged ladies behaved like a couple of kids?

  ‘You know, Dolly, we’ve known each other for nine years and we’ve certainly been through something together – well, you and Chas have.’ Ade was reminiscing on one of her weekly visits to Epping. ‘Yes, it makes a normal life seem very flat, doesn’t it?’ ‘Well, I don’t know, Dolly, I have to go into hospital.’ This was a bombshell. I had been so wrapped up in my affairs I hadn’t known Ade was ill, or even felt poorly.

  ‘Whatever for, Ade?’ ‘Oh, nothing much, I’ve got to have a check-up because I’m getting fat in the tummy.’ She laughed. ‘People will begin to think things about me before long.’ ‘Well, I’ll come and visit you often.’ ‘You don’t have to, Dolly, you’ve got enough to do, but it would be nice, you’d cheer me up.’ Ade had never been into hospital before – well, not for an illness. She’d been taken to hospital at the time of the twins’ birth, which had turned a bit tricky towards the end.

  She’d laugh about that and had enjoyed being with other women in the same condition. She was feeding her twins one day when Benny came to visit. Johnny was with him, together with a boy friend of the same age. Ade was always on the large side and Johnny’s little friend stared in amazement at the two babes sucking fiercely and noisily. ‘Cor, have they got to eat all that, Mrs Ade?’ ‘Don’t be silly, Trevor,’ said a knowledgeable Johnny. ‘They’re my mum’s milk-churns.’

  But this time Ade’s ward was filled with women in less joyful conditions. She was great fun when I visited her, for she’d just given her fellow patients nicknames. In the bed opposite was Submarine Sarah. This elderly lady (‘poor soul’s losing her marbles, but she’s so happy with it’) would sit bolt upright, gaze searchingly around the ward, call out, ‘Down periscope,’ and down she would disappear into the depths of the ocean (underneath her bedclothes). Some minutes later, watched by a hysterical Ade, up would come Sarah with her hair twisted into prongs. Ade said she thought Sarah had changed herself into a sea mine.

  The ward Sister was an elegant lady, aloof and unapproachable. She even had a disdainful sniff and Ade said she had her favourites among the posh patients, even though she was kind to all members of the ward. This didn’t worry Ade, she didn’t want to be singled out for a Sisterly chat.

  In the next bed was another elderly lady, a tiny, sweet old thing. She had lived with her husband in an old people’s home and every Friday the nurses from the home brought the old husband to see his wife. He too was very tiny, with a long, white beard and gold-rimmed spectacles. Ade called him ‘Sexy Sidney’, for when he reached the doors of the ward the two nurses had difficulty in restraining him. He began to utter delighted squeaks between calls of ‘My lovely Lily’ and he literally left the ground in his running haste to reach his wife’s bedside, for the two young nurses had to gallop with him. In his hand he always carried a tiny bunch of screwed-up flowers. The nurses would lift him at the bedside so that he could kiss his wife, which he did with great gusto and sighs of love. Ade would cry, ‘Go on, boy, enjoy yourself,’ and the nurses would have to tear a reluctant visitor away to return him to the home.

  At one time when the nurses were endeavouring to get Sidney back to the door again he caught sight of Ade’s smiling face and tried to make a rush to her bedside. ‘I dived underneath the bedclothes,’ said Ade. ‘I didn’t want to stand proxy for the lovely Lillian.’

  Ade’s ward, a surgical one, was always
extra busy, and one Saturday the surgeons really had to work overtime, it seemed. As Submarine Sarah rose from the depths she espied another ‘operation’ going through the ward. The trolley, with patient, was wheeled by the white-hatted, white-suited orderly, a nurse at the side with bottles and tubes, blue-frocked Sister bringing up the rear. ‘Cor, haven’t there been a lot of weddings today. That bride doesn’t look very happy, but who would with that chief bridesmaid at the back; I wouldn’t fancy her for myself.’

  So visiting dear Ade wasn’t like any ordinary hospital visiting. She was always so bright, surely she could not be really ill? Indeed, she never mentioned what was wrong with her, except to say, ‘If you ask me, Dolly, they all seem mystified.’ One day Ade, in company with other unusual cases, was taken to a teaching hospital for ‘diagnoses’ by medical students during an examination. She was looking forward to it, it was a change of surroundings in one way. The patients, men and women, had a marvellous lunch, and were then delegated to separate becurtained cubicles. Here they waited throughout the afternoon, visited at intervals by the medical examiner and a collection of examinees. Ade said they were all sizes, colours and shapes. Each examinee made his own personal examination and then had discourse with the examiner.

  Ade, because of her own boys, wished secretly that all would pass the examination. She said she wished she’d known what she was supposed to have been suffering from, for she would have tried to give the young men a hint. I wondered how she would do this with her fog-horn voice. Certainly with scant knowledge of medical terms she could hardly mime anything. She laughed when I said that, had she tried, she might have been the cause of a young man’s failure.

  Anyway, towards the end of the afternoon, after the novelty had worn off, when one Chinese examinee had asked her in a kindly fashion, ‘Have you ever been abroad?’ she retorted, ‘No, and I don’t know as I need to, now, for I’ve had the bleeding United Nations feeling me tits all day.’ Both examiners and students collapsed in hysterics.

  Ade’s boys and Benny came every visiting day without fail, and we were all looking forward to the day when she would be coming home. And then it was decided she should have a small operation – well, that was what Ade told us. I saw her the afternoon before this ‘small’ operation and she said to me, ‘Thanks for everything, Dolly. Will you tell my boys tomorrow night I don’t want any nonsense from them, life is for living, not moaning about the past.’ I didn’t query her strange remark, but as I left to go she grabbed my hand and kissed me goodbye, the first time I had seen Ade emotional. ‘Well, everyone feels strange at their first operation,’ I told myself, going down in the lift, but all evening and night, and the next day, Ade was ‘with me’.

  When I arrived at the hospital on the evening after Ade’s operation, the curtains were drawn round her bed. ‘I’ll come back tomorrow,’ I said to the Sister, who was standing at the table inside the ward. ‘No, don’t leave,’ said Sister. ‘Just pop in and kiss her hallo, she’d like that, but don’t stay more than a moment.’ Sister drew back the curtains for me, came in, went over to look at Ade, who, I was sure, was asleep. Benny and Ade’s boys were standing round the bed, but a little way from it. I thought they looked utterly lost. It was so quiet. Sister beckoned me forward and then she went out. I kissed Ade on the forehead. She looked suddenly small and very pale, but she opened her eyes, smiled and said, ‘Oh, Dolly.’ Then she saw the boys and said, ‘Boys.’ As they came to the bed I turned to leave and I heard Ade’s further whisper – at last I knew she could whisper – ‘And Benny boy, too.’ I saw Ben join Ade’s boys as I went out through the curtains. Sister was looking at her watch as I neared the exit. ‘Go into my office,’ she said. ‘Nurse is bringing tea.’ Then I saw Sister go back to Ade’s bed.

  I didn’t want tea, I wanted to get away, but I did as Sister had told me; obviously it was the right thing to do. Nurse poured tea as another nurse ushered into the room Ade’s boys and Ben. I dared myself not to cry as I gazed at their faces, but it was no good, suddenly we were all in a bunch, all crying for a lost mother and friend. After a while I took charge. We must drink this tea, for Sister ordered it specially. I knew we would be unable to swallow tea at that moment, and we left the hospital in silence. The twins took my arms and we followed Benny and Johnny. Johnny had his arm round Benny’s shoulders. They came to my coach stop with me, and I kissed them all goodbye. As my coach turned the corner I caught my last glimpse of them. They were walking arm in arm, Ade’s four boys, and as I watched them I saw them again as they were once before, but then they were five and then they had all been laughing.

  I had assumed my life in Epping would have been shared with Ade. With her passing the nine years I had known her seemed to have suddenly gone in a flash. Friendly with all people, I made no other true friend, for it is rare in life that one finds one’s other self. Even with one’s loved ones, husband, son and daughter, mother, father, sisters, brothers, there is always a part of oneself which is the secret place where no one else can enter. If I loved Ade, or she me, I do not know; I only know that she and I ‘knew’ each other. To outsiders, my sisters, for instance, Ade and I were the most unlikely people to have become friends. Her deep, loud voice was the one thing they would have assumed would have ‘put Dolly off’. Common? Yes, I suppose it was, but I had heard it transformed into liquid gold on the night that she sang. Ade insisted she could only sing when she’d ‘had a couple’. Obviously she had never listened to herself.

  But then again, perhaps she did know she possessed a rare gift. All she wanted in life was to be a mum to her boys; she would allow nothing to take her into a life apart from them or Benny. I remember calling on her one day. She was playing a record of Kathleen Ferrier singing, ‘Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring’. It was the first time I had seen Ade with moist eyes. I think we were a mutual admiration society. I admired her, and she me; we gave each other a sort for moral boost. No one had really admired either of us before. Loved us, yes, but I think we had both been ‘taken for granted’. Goodness knows what she admired me for, but I always knew why I admired her. She was down to earth, honest and fearless. Knocked down by life, she would rise again. She would come to the rescue of any defenceless creature, whatever the odds. She was broadminded, generous to a fault, and she laughed at the same things I did. It seemed the most natural thing in the world for the two of us to tell each other our most secret thoughts and dreams. Neither Ade nor I was sentimental. When we met it was just, ‘Hallo Ade,’ ‘Hallo Dolly,’ we never shook hands or kissed each other in greeting. When I kissed her forehead as she lay dying, even then in her eyes was that hint of laughter and the look which said, ‘What’s come over you, Dolly?’

  When Ade was gone, no one knew the sense of loss and utter desolation I felt for so long. I went through a period of thinking it is better to be alone in life and have no ties of family and friends, for, if there is no happiness to lose, then there is no pain at its loss. But nothing lasts for ever, and the desolation does in time give way to the warm memories. They alone remain and I actually find myself giggling at comic times I spent with Ade and I hear her mighty guffaws. I am reminded of her in the strangest ways – I was reading a book one evening and suddenly Ade was with me again.

  In the book, Horatio Bottomley was calling on a well-known peer and enquired of the superior butler if ‘Lord Chol-mon-dee-ley’ was in. ‘His Lordship, Lord Chumley, is not at home,’ replied the snooty butler, stressing the superiority of his household with the correct pronunciation of his master’s name. ‘In that case,’ said our brave Horatio, ‘please inform Lord Chumley that Mr Burnley called.’ Now Ade would have said ‘Cholmondeeley’ and Dolly would have been the superior ‘butler’; then Ade would have countered with a comical remark to which I would have replied, ‘Oh Ade, I wish I’d said that,’ and I could hear Ade saying, echoing what was once said to a famous author, ‘You will, Dolly, you will!’

  I have one photo of Ade. An enlarged snapshot, really. She is sitting on the
grass in Clissold Park, her arm round baby Anne who was then about a year old. Something has amused Ade and, head back, one can almost hear her laughing. Anne, in turn, has been infected by Auntie Ade’s laughter and she is chuckling at Ade. This lovely snap was taken by a passing photographer for his collection, and he was so ‘taken’ by it that he presented me with an enlargement.

  Because of dear Ade’s death the photograph is sad as well as happy and for some years it remained alone on its page in my album. I never wanted to insert any other photo on the opposite blank page until Anne was six years old and was attending a Hertfordshire council infants school. Her teacher decided that her class should attempt a scientific project. This went so well that it came to the notice of the authorities and the children were invited to the Imperial College in Kensington where the ‘Young Scientists of the Year’ annual competition was being held. Obviously the children were ineligible as competitors because of their tender years, but the judges were impressed by the children’s project, the weather.

  I was impressed to learn that the children could discuss such things as the Beaufort scale, etc., and I thought how ignorant I was at my scientific age of sixty, let alone at six years of age. Even the Times newspaper, when reporting on the ‘Young Scientists of the Year’ competition, spoke about Anne’s class; Ade would have thought that tantamount to being ‘mentioned in despatches’. I was presented with a large photograph of Anne standing by the project, the centrepiece of which is a giant windmill made by the children. Anne has her hand on one of the arms of the windmill and this lovely photo I pasted on the blank page opposite the photograph of the two laughing darlings. Ade would have loved this, for across the bottom of the project, in enormous block capitals, ran the magic words of science – WIND IS A FORCE.