Dolly's War

by Dorothy Scannell

  Chapter 14

  Happy Ending

  In the years after my son’s birth Chas found no fault with his life. He liked his job in the docks. Thursday was still card night at Rob’s, week-ends gardening and football, and we managed on his wages (only just). Never over-ambitious, he was always more intent on conscientiously carrying out the job on hand. No war now, the years, for him, stretched away peacefully in the foreseeable future. Family crises were usually solved by the time he arrived back on the scene.

  On the other hand I was restless. I didn’t know why. I didn’t know what I wanted. I told myself I was happy caring for my children, indeed I wouldn’t let anyone else look after them, and was always ill at ease when they were away from me. Mother suggested I take a night off now and then and visit the cinema, but I couldn’t concentrate on the film. Suppose they woke up and I wasn’t there. So that when events occurred which could have been tragedies, but which were by a miracle averted, I couldn’t relax, and although my ‘Thank God’ was fervent, I couldn’t forget and would go over and over the occurrence in my mind. Thus, when friends and relatives hinted that I was a little over-protective of my children I felt utterly enraged. I felt that some parents were fortunate their children arrived home safely after they, so it seemed to me, carelessly dismissed them from their sight. Thus I felt it unfair that three near-disasters should have happened to my children. I had no ambition for them, only ever wishing for them a ‘normal’ contented life, which was an anomaly, since I was never content and subconsciously was jealous of and resented my husband’s contented acceptance of his lot.

  One Saturday afternoon I went happily up to Mother’s flat, to join my visiting sisters. The men were away at football, Susan was safely at tea with her little friend near by. William, then about two, was playing in the back garden. He was a child happy in isolation, always digging and inspecting holes. He was never any bother. The garden door, a large heavy one, was bolted, the front door as well. He couldn’t reach the bolts. No harm could come to him.

  The family left just after an early tea and I went to call my son in. There was no sign of him. I just couldn’t believe it. The man next door was digging a very large hole in his garden. ‘Have you seen William?’ I asked, a little worried, but not too frightened at that stage for Susan might have come in and taken him to play, though I knew this was hardly likely. ‘No,’ said my neighbour, shortly. I thought he looked strangely serious. I dashed to my neighbour’s house. Of course, Susan and her friends hadn’t seen William. The doors were still bolted, he couldn’t possibly have left the back garden. The man next door had now filled in his large hole and was raking it over. ‘Are you sure you haven’t seen William?’ I pleaded vainly. ‘He’s missing.’ Still the man just said, ‘No.’

  My mother called from the window, ‘I’ve seen Charlie and he’s running off to the Park, he thinks William has wandered off there.’ I knew he couldn’t have wandered off, I knew he couldn’t have left the garden, and with my throat dry and parched and a feeling of utter desolation creeping over me I decided to go the Police Station. I don’t know why I opened the garden door and looked down the garden again. Had I not searched it thoroughly and called my son’s name so many times? In the growing dusk two white spots caught my eye. Two white spots on top of the poultry-bin. What were they? I tore down the garden and head downwards in the bin was my son, his face not quite buried in the corn. How he reached the top of the bin had yet to be worked out. I had yet to go over in my mind the ‘ifs’ that had either saved his life or taken him from us. The lid had remained open a couple of inches because of the depth of corn remaining in the bin. I yelled to Mother and carried the little limp figure into the house. His face was wet, his eyes closed, but he was still breathing. Mother bathed his face and put some milk on to warm whilst Father rubbed his grandson’s hand and said, ‘Come on, old chap, wake up.’ At last William opened his eyes and said to me, ‘I kept calling for you.’ And where was I, upstairs chattering away without a care in the world!

  Such a load of guilt was too much for me to bear and immediately I transferred the whole of it on to Chas’s shoulders. He was to blame. He should never have left the bin-lid open. I had never wanted the wretched chickens. I was just longing for his return when all my torments could be unloaded on to him. I knew I would attack him when he returned from the Park. He looked so white and shaken, so helpless and so worried when he appeared, that at long last I burst into tears. ‘Now, now,’ said Mother. ‘All’s well, that ends well.’ Once she had started on these trite sayings she thought of many more applicable proverbs, her last one being, ‘Accidents will happen in the best of regulated families.’ She unearthed a box half full of Christmas crackers and we wore paper hats for a celebration tea. The doorbell rang. Wearing my paper hat I opened it to the man next door. ‘Did you find your son?’ he enquired solicitously. ‘Yes, thank you,’ I replied. ‘He was in the chicken-bin.’ He walked away looking dazed and I knew I should have to explain to his wife one day what had happened, otherwise they’d think me a mental case. ‘Who was calling?’ asked Chas. ‘Oh, Mr...’ I replied. ‘He wanted to know if we’d found William, and was there any way in which he could help.’ ‘He’s a very nice man,’ said Chas. ‘Isn’t he,’ I agreed, ‘I’ve always thought so!’

  Before I had recovered from that terrible afternoon, Susan failed to return home from school. More searching took place and I was fortunate enough to find someone who knew she’d gone home with one of the ‘bigger’ girls from her school. I went to the girl’s house. ‘Oh, no,’ said the mother. ‘She hasn’t been here.’ She then turned to her daughter, a girl older than Susan and rather hefty-looking, and said, ‘You don’t know where Susan is, do you, have you seen her this evening?’ ‘No, I haven’t,’ replied the girl. Something in the girl’s eyes stopped me from leaving quickly and I glanced round at her as I went down the path. Did she look at the garden shed? ‘What do you keep in your shed?’ I asked the mother. ‘You surely don’t think she’s in there,’ was her indignant answer. Just to show me I was crazy she unlocked the shed, and there was a frightened Susan crouching in the corner. The girl had decided to ‘kidnap’ her. I was furious with the girl, furious with the mother for saying, ‘She was only playing,’ furious with Susan for her timidity, and furious with myself for ever longing to be a mother. ‘I expect you’ll have more worries to face yet,’ said my mother cheerfully. ‘You hold too many post-mortems,’ added my father.

  Of course my mother was right, there were many worrying days ahead. Somehow I could cope with illness, even at the most awful time when Susan contracted polio I kept my nerve and unswerving faith in our marvellous doctor. When a child is ill there is so much one can do but when a child is ‘missing’ then there is the despair of utter helplessness. I was always so careful to ask child visitors, ‘Did their mother know where they were?’ ‘What time were they supposed to be at home?’ Chas or I would take them safely home. I always hoped other parents would do the same for me, but alas, this was not always so. When Susan was eleven and at grammar-school, a schoolfriend’s father called at the school by car, and collected his daughter and her friends for an impromptu party at his house, some miles away from our district. Children are unpredictable and Susan probably thought she would be home in a couple of hours, but the party went on until ten p.m. and then the father just bade the girls good-night with no enquiry as to whether they had their bus-fare, or whatever. Susan arrived home at 11.30 p.m. having had to walk a couple of miles through a seedy district. By this time I had alerted the police and was almost in a state of collapse, and the father who had thrown the party just shrugged his shoulders.

  I often thought it might be a good idea to shuffle babies up at birth, or to exchange them, so that one could lovingly take care of a child without the awful tugging of the heart-strings. A child would perhaps be free then from a parent too dedicated or too emotional. Little knocks, or hurts, or slights, which appear to upset one’s offspring mightily at t
he time, are often forgotten by them very quickly, but a mother sometimes remembers them and perhaps worries about them for many a day. My children were rather serious characters. Susan seemed to have no bother with her homework and I was never asked to assist, which was a relief for I had left school at fourteen, I had passed no examinations, she was much brighter than I had ever been. Her favourite subject was English and she was a writer of interesting essays. A special essay was to be written for some occasion or other. Susan spent one evening on it, writing speedily and took it to school, without suggesting I read it. The next day she returned home, in tears, and passed the essay to me. In red ink across the bottom of the page the teacher had written, ‘Well done, Mother’!

  However, I was responsible for the next tragic happening. She was a very poor needlewoman. ‘She takes after you,’ said my mother. ‘You always sewed with a red-hot needle and burning thread.’ The needlework mistress had given the girls a sampler to work. First of all they must embroider their names across the top of the special material. Susan’s progress was slow and the mistress suggested she bring it home to work on it in the evenings at a spare moment. For the first time in her school career she elicited my help and I was determined to rise to the occasion. By the time I had finished, the material contained large holes where I had sewn and unpicked many times. Susan was in tears, Chas furious with me for ruining the sampler, Mother looked at me as though I was a criminal and my poor father rubbed his bald head helplessly. ‘Pretend you’ve forgotten it at the next lesson,’ I instructed Susan cravenly. I would buy some more material and I knew Amy would willingly assist us. She just hated to see children despondent. I journeyed far and wide but could find no identical material and in the end Susan went to school with the holey sampler. ‘Oh dear,’ sighed the needlework mistress. ‘Couldn’t you have asked your mother to help you?’ I was glad Susan admitted it was all her mother’s work, for the mistress laughed and arranged for Susan to take Latin instead. She probably thought she would be fighting a losing battle against heredity. (I had been wandering about all day worrying.)

  But not all her school troubles dissolved so easily. At the end of the first year, examinations were held. They were told these examinations would be run on the same lines as the G.C.E. This would give them experience for the future. A different form-mistress attended as adjudicator while the examinations were in progress. Having completed her papers, Susan sitting in the front row sat waiting for the bell to ring. Glancing round she saw that some of her friends in the back row, having also finished, were reading library-books. Her satchel was by her feet and from this she took her library-book. Suddenly the adjudicator rose from her seat and approached Susan. ‘What on earth do you think you are doing, girl?’ she demanded. (She had only to examine the book and she would have discovered it had no bearing at all on the examinations.) ‘Do you not know this is dishonest?’ Picking up Susan’s papers she said, ‘Your papers will be cancelled, your marks nil, and no doubt what you have done will be mentioned on your school report.’

  Susan contained herself until she arrived home and as I opened the door she burst into tears. ‘I wouldn’t have that,’ said the other mothers, for the girls had told of Susan’s ordeal. ‘Lots of them were reading, and I am sure they would all say so.’ In the end, because I was not brave enough to face her tutor I wrote of our distress at the happening. I received a cool reply. Rules were rules, and this experience would help Susan at the real G.C.E., which was right, but I did need a bit of understanding. It was shortly after this that Susan contracted polio, and while she was in hospital I was told that her headmistress was very disappointed Susan’s mother hadn’t even let her know of Susan’s progress! I wrote to no one fearing I might infect someone.

  If the headmistress thought Susan a problem child, me, an over-fond mother, one could hardly blame her considering all the circumstances, and bearing in mind the fact that she didn’t know me. Evidence against Susan, albeit circumstantial, seemed to be building up.

  Susan recovered from polio and returned to school. It had been snowing and icy cold and some of the girls had made a slide in the playground. The headmistress, naturally, was angry that her girls should have partaken in such a dangerous pastime and the edict went out ‘Any girl sliding...’ On her first morning back, because of a visit to the doctor’s for a clearance certificate, Susan was a little late and crossing the playground slipped on this ice and hurt her arm. She kept this injury to herself, I don’t really know how, for on arrival home she was in such pain we went straight to the hospital. Her arm had been broken and was put in plaster. Because of the icy conditions of the road the doctor thought she would be safer at home until the weather eased. I telephoned the headmistress who said, ‘Well, I am so sorry, but I did warn the girls of the danger of sliding on this ice.’ I tried to explain that Susan had not been disobedient, but I knew it was useless.

  *

  Life continued uneventfully during William’s pre-school days. After lunch I would take him into the nearby park to play, and through these regular visits I became friendly with another mother, a girl of about twenty, whose son of eighteen months, her first child, played happily with William. We would chat about everything under the sun, confiding in each other all manner of things we wouldn’t have told another soul.

  One day I told Vicki that a sister of mine had remarked that I was developing quite a bristly moustache and had the positions been reversed, my sister, rubbing her perfectly bald countenance, had stated ‘she’ would definitely have done something about it. Possibly I had always been a downy chick but I had to admit that of late my face was developing a hirsute appearance. Vicki seemed quite pleased at this. Apparently her husband had taken of late to gazing at her more intently than was his wont and she sadly agreed that her downy skin might, when she was old like me (this made me feel like an old shaggy creature) turn as bristly as mine. But, small words of comfort, it would be worse in her case because she was a brunette, whereas my moustache and beard were gloriously golden!

  Vicki took from her handbag a newspaper cutting which stated ‘superfluous hair removed instantly and permanently with this new and miraculous invention’. In our low state of mind at that moment we decided we would attend at this miracle-worker’s clinic. My mother, very disapproving of the venture, interfering with nature and all that sort of discourse, grudgingly said she would have William for the day. My father inspected my face and said, ‘Don’t worry, gel, it’s simple, just set light to a rolled newspaper and run it over your face every so often. Why,’ he added comfortingly, ‘I knew an old lady once who needed a blow-lamp for her face!’

  On a cold winter’s day with a vicious east wind blowing, we started our adventure. My heart was beating with fright, but as we had Vicki’s extra lively son with us, looking after him at least kept my mind off my forthcoming operation.

  Our destination was some miles away in one of those new towns which were springing up. Everything was different, the roads appeared either unnamed or with such strange names. The bus conductors had no idea, and neither did the various passers-by we enquired of, where this ‘beauty’ parlour was, so that two hours after we should have been ‘done’ and ‘gone’, we finally arrived at the scene of our eventual transformation.

  There was much new building taking place and our ‘surgeon’ was housed temporarily in an old building due for demolition. It had been bought by the Development Corporation and they had installed a temporary canteen. We were gasping for a drink and hungry for something to eat, but decided we would partake of refreshment as new beautiful matrons, not as hairy monsters. We entered a tiny suffocatingly hot room and were surprised to see that our benefactor was not an efficient surgeon in a white coat but a motherly-looking lady in skirt and cardigan. She even possessed the large ‘mum’s’ bosom of my childhood. She was just completing a session on a most beautiful looking blonde which cheered us up enormously for the blonde rose (treatment completed), with a happy smile; it was obviously a true adve
rtisement, painless.

  Vicki’s small son being restless and wanting to dash round the small hot room, I motioned her to take her seat in the swivel-chair. I would amuse the little boy and keep him safe for I felt the small room could be a death-trap for an unwary adult let alone a lively youngster. The small electric-fire was placed in the middle of the floor, the lead having been lengthened, in a most amateurish manner it appeared to me, by many different coloured pieces of wiring and lying, nearly atop of this wobbly-looking fire was an enormous poodle dog. Hitherto I had only seen pretty toy poodles, but this one, black, appeared as large as a labrador. I tried to overcome my nervousness of this dog and restrain my charge at the same time so that I really didn’t pay too much attention to Vicki in the treatment-chair. The motherly lady chatted away to us telling us of all the hairy clients she had cured. One girl even had treatment for a hairy chest! And we gathered that our lady was in much demand by the hospitals. This was all reassuring and presently Vicki, treatment completed, took her small son from me and said she would meet me in the Canteen after my treatment. ‘Did it hurt?’ I whispered to Vicki. She nodded in a negative way. I thought her smile a bit stiff-looking and she seemed to have tears in her eyes. I assumed, as she had smiled, that she was feeling pleased about her treatment, the tears being relief that she would now remain attractive to her fussy husband.