Dolly's War

by Dorothy Scannell

  I sat confidently in the chair but at the first jab of the needle I let out a terrific yell, startling my electric ‘mum’ and waking the dog who crawled towards me and placed his large hot head in my lap. ‘Oh, God,’ I thought, ‘he’s been trained to restrain clients like me, the cowardly ones.’ I apologised profusely to the lady operator, said I hadn’t been expecting any sensation, I would now know what was coming and would not yell out again. Famous last words, but true, well almost, in my case, for instead of yelling I slowly retreated downwards on the swivel-chair. At one time we were both almost supine. ‘Oh my aching back,’ said the lady. ‘You really must sit upright, or we’ll both be on the floor.’ She did add that my roots were tenacious, it was the type I was. I sat upright as she said something to her dog and then she said, ‘I’ve never known him to take to anybody like he has taken to you.’ At this compliment the dog climbed the chair and laid full length on top of me, his head resting on my chest. He was hot, heavy, and a bit smelly but I was too weak with hunger and thirst and perhaps too terrified to request his removal. I placed an arm on top of him and he snuggled down to sleep happily. Tears were running down my face as the hairs round my mouth were treated. The half-hour seemed like years and my good intentions flown out of the window, I flinched, and more easily now because of my heavy load, slowly sunk back-wards. Suddenly there was a terrific crash, chair, Dolly, Dog, and Torturer floundered about on the floor. The dog barked furiously at me, the fire wobbled dangerously and my lady rose painfully and switched the fire off. She brushed herself down and said wearily, ‘I don’t know whether you would like to make another appointment, providing I can fit you in. I am so much in demand these days.’ For the sake of appearances I made an appointment for two months ahead knowing I would not keep it.

  I said good-bye to Dog who now growled at me, and went to find Vicki. The canteen was closing and I said to Vicki, ‘Why didn’t you tell me it was so painful?’ ‘I daren’t, dear,’ she said, ‘because if you’d known you would not have had your session.’ The depressing thing about it all was the fact that it wasn’t one miraculous session as the advert suggested (perhaps we hadn’t read it thoroughly) for Vicki, very bravely, attended for almost two years. I never went again, for Chas had said about my furry face, ‘I assure you, it never bothers me.’ I arrived home frozen, blotchy, and bad-tempered, and the next day my face was swollen and I was beginning a nasty cold. I felt nature was so unfair. My sisters had no such bother. I blamed Mother for allowing my brothers to play barbers with me as their sole customer in the days of our childhood.

  *

  Now it was time for my son to commence school. Actually it was over time. The schools were so overcrowded that he had to wait until well after his fifth birthday, then he had an additional two-months’ delay because of the fear of infection in connection with Susan’s polio. I had no fears for him. He was so adult in his speech, so exceptionally knowledgeable on subjects other children of his age could understand. Modestly, oh so modestly, I thought, ‘He will race ahead, he will be no problem.’

  Happily we left to enrol him on his first day. It seemed like bedlam in the little classroom, crying children and mothers loth to leave, ‘prolonging the agony’, my father would have said. ‘Welcome to our school, William,’ said the teacher, on hearing his name. ‘Is it always like this?’ he asked the teacher. ‘No, thank goodness,’ she said with a laugh. ‘Oh, that’s a relief,’ said my William, ‘for the noise is already giving me a headache.’ She looked surprised at his manner of speaking and gave him a little squeeze. Happily I left, it was obvious he and his teacher were going to be friends.

  Some neighbours and I had arranged to take it in turns to collect the children and I was anxiously waiting at the gate for him at lunch-time. A sad-faced mother handed me my son with a note from his teacher. William’s face was white, his eye swollen and his forehead bruised. The note just asked me to call that afternoon if possible. William announced he had a bad headache and putting him to bed I left Mother on guard whilst I went to see his teacher. The teacher was terribly sorry about William’s injury, but we both agreed it was ‘just one of those things’, a misunderstanding. All types of children make up a school as all types of adults make up life, and the large tough leader, or bully type, boy in William’s class had said to him at play-time, ‘Coming to play wiv us?’ This invitation was really an honour and perhaps might have made a difference to my son’s school life if he had said, ‘Not ’arf.’ But always a gentle child he had observed rather rough treatment being meted out by the giver of this invitation, and my son had said, ‘I would like to play if you will avoid physical violence.’ It was the last three words of this sentence which caused the breakdown in schoolboy relationships, for immediately on the defensive the large tough boy had replied, ‘You ain’t bleeding well calling me names,’ and wham, had landed a punch on my son’s unready face. Even this blow would have not caused the injuries he sustained, but unprepared, unsuspecting and off balance he had fallen and caught his face and head on the cement piers which supported the school playground wall and railings. The teacher seemed relieved when I agreed no one was to blame, and I hoped it wasn’t the first of many misunderstandings. She was a dedicated teacher, with a deep love for all children, and I remember her with gratitude.

  Great excitement pervaded the household when our first television-set was installed. 1950! What an achievement and what a popular family we became. I loved every minute of our film-shows. Children in the afternoon, adults in the evening. During the school holidays the children would inspect the TV programmes and after lunch I would place the chairs in a row, make lemonade and cakes, and quiet reigned for two hours. William had to have a seat on the back row near the kitchen door for something about the printed words on the screen seemed to worry him and he would dash off into the kitchen until the words had faded from the screen. Since his ‘visits off’ were many, if he sat in the front row there were yells and groans from the other children, ‘Don’t keep going across the screen, William.’ ‘Mum, look at him now, he keeps getting his head in the way.’

  Every evening, promptly at 7 p.m. my parents would appear and take their seats. One evening when Chas was late home and I was feeling irritable at his overcooked meal, I unkindly tutted at my parents’ extra-prompt arrival. Immediately my mother said, ‘Come, Walter, we are going back upstairs.’ My father who was in the middle of choosing his seat said, ‘What is the matter, has the set broken down, can’t they get the man to repair it?’ ‘Come, Dad,’ Mother said more firmly. ‘I will explain upstairs.’ He followed her looking puzzled and getting a bit cross at her slow explanation. I heard her say, ‘We do not go where we are not wanted,’ and I felt a real cat. I felt too guilty to face my mother and before he started his meal Chas ran upstairs. I heard him say, ‘You know what Dorothy is like sometimes, she doesn’t mean it.’

  My father needed no further coaxing, he was downstairs in a flash and I gave him a quick résumé of what had gone before in order that he could follow the programme. A few minutes later Mother appeared with a sort of Queen Victoria look on her face and Chas whispered to me, ‘Whatever do you want to upset your mother for?’ I don’t really know, perhaps I was bored by the interminable cowboy films my father loved, they all seemed the same to me. The goodies, the baddies, the sheriff, the posse, the hangings, the lynchings, the coming of the railroad, the Indians. Eventually as my father could never get enough of such films the rest of us soon found other things to do in the evening. I would sit upstairs with Mother with my book or knitting. Sometimes when I went downstairs at bedtime I would find Father asleep in the chair. I would turn the set off, wake him up and try to convince him that the sheriff had really got his man and the lynching had been foiled by the posse. Sometimes I don’t think he believed me and he looked forward to the next time in the hope the film would be repeated.

  My mother was somewhat worried by my bouts of sudden irritability even though she realised they were often caused by my an
xiety over my children’s lack of appetite. She felt their non-eating and non-drinking habits would ‘right themselves in the end’ if I kept calm about it all and pretended ‘not to notice’. After all, she had been through this when I was a child, and I had reached ‘maturity’. But I was the only one out of her ten with no desire for food and drink.

  To make matters worse Chas always thoroughly enjoyed his food, although his enjoyment was never complete unless he found something to criticise at meal-times. Possibly he felt I was concentrating on the children more than I did on him. He even used to remark that the tea I made for him was ‘never twice alike’ and resented my reply that to have made hundreds of pots of tea, and each one different, was quite an achievement. One Sunday morning at breakfast he was complaining that I hadn’t cut the rinds off his bacon, even though it was cooked exactly as he liked. My mind and eyes were on the children. I had made theirs look so appetising with my prettiest plates, but they were not attempting to commence their breakfast. As I got up to get another plate from the sideboard, Chas was still complaining and as I passed him, I tapped him ‘lightly’ on the head with the plate and said, ‘Oh, do stop complaining, for goodness sake!’ Obviously I didn’t know my own strength, for the plate broke over his head and as the pieces fell about his shoulders I beat a hasty retreat to the kitchen. ‘Look out, Mum,’ yelled Susan, and I glanced over my shoulder to see Chas, with a look of fiendish hate on his face and my beautiful cut-glass bowl in his hand. I ducked and the bowl hit the back door with a mighty crash. The bowl crashed into a thousand fragments on to the kitchen floor. At eye level on the thick wooden back door, where the glass bowl had made its impact, was a hollow tunnel. It had taken a piece of the door clean away.

  As Chas gazed at it, his face white and worried, I felt suddenly sorry for him. We both knew ‘what might have been’ and then my thoughts were for the children. What effect would it have on them? What dreadful parents they had, they might remember it all their lives. I went back into the dining-room. Susan, pleased I wasn’t coaxing her to eat, was reading a book. Little William was kneeling on a chair at the table with a look of excitement and delight on his face. In front of him he had lined up a vinegar bottle, a bottle of sauce, the cruet and a vase of flowers. ‘More ammoonition, Mum,’ he said to me in a tone of great happiness. Although, fortunately it hadn’t affected the children, I knew then, that although Chas and I could argue happily until the cows came home, I must never ever lay my hands on his person again, however lightly, for both our sakes!

  *

  In 1952 my father’s health began to fail. Perhaps his brain began to deteriorate before this. Chas would come home from football at Upton Park and find my father, a solitary figure, waiting for Clapton to resume play, the match having ended at least half an hour before. ‘I can’t understand why they only play for such a short time these days, they used to play until full time.’ Gradually he became thin and finally was confined to bed. He was 90 so I suppose we should have expected it, but it was my first experience of real old age, he’d always been so active and alert. My mother was still spry and nursed him devotedly. My father had never really been close with Chas, indeed he had sometimes been quite unkind to him in little ways and although Chas had always been polite to my father he had never felt that fondness for him that I would have liked.

  Now my father was failing, Chas was extra kind. In some way he began to feel great affection for my father, it was as though my father was his child. It was more than compassion for a helpless creature. Chas would shave and bath my father and give him a manicure. I did the shopping but sometimes on Saturdays Chas would get anything that was required. He would laugh to me at my mother’s funny ways. She would ask perhaps for ‘1 lb of the best runner beans’, etc. which Chas would get. She would inspect these and say to Chas, ‘Were these the best quality?’ ‘Yes, Mum,’ Chas would reply. Mother would then fetch her purse to pay Chas. ‘How much were the beans?’ she would ask. ‘4d. a lb.,’ was Chas’s reply, then Mother would look at the beans again and say, ‘These are definitely not the best ones, I will only pay you 3d. a lb. for it is obvious to me they are the 3d. ones!’ It was obvious Mother would brook no argument and Chas would always be the loser when doing any shopping for her. But he was too fond of her to argue, too grateful for what she had done for us all her life, and he was always amused by his encounters with her. Sometimes if I argued with him he would say, ‘You are getting just like your mother, she always thinks she knows best.’

  I imagined I would be with my mother and father until their lives ended, but something happened which altered the course of our lives. Robin was getting so very busy in his shop he suggested Chas went into the business with him. I was all for it for I liked being with Rob and Olive. There was an empty flat above their shop. Marjorie and her husband Alfred had purchased a tobacconists and confectioners opposite Rob’s shop. It would be nice to be near them. The snag was that in Rob’s shop there was no spare room for my parents. Chas was anxious to go, the future looked brighter then for a self-employed man. Winifred came to the rescue, as she always had done. She and her husband owned a village stores and post office in Berkshire. A red-brick building with plenty of room. Mother and Father would be welcome there. Mother of course would rather have stayed at Forest Gate, old people don’t like change, but an ambulance was arranged for their journey to Winifred’s, and I waved them good-bye. Mother gave me such a strange look as the driver closed the door and I went back into my house and sobbed. ‘Don’t cry, dear,’ said Chas, ‘you’ll be able to visit your mother.’ He didn’t know my feelings of remorse that I had ‘let Mother down’.

  I was therefore delighted when Winifred invited us for Christmas. Christmas in the country seemed more blessed than Christmas in town, especially as snow was expected. A white Yuletide in Berkshire. It would be something for my children to remember, and preferable to the slushy streets of London. It was sad to know my father had left this world spiritually, for though he was there in that chintz-curtained room he knew no one, and reposed, a silent motionless figure, looking very small in the enormous four-poster bed. Mother, whose baby he had become, insisted he had a smile for her and he received tender care from us all. Father was in no pain. Mother was happy for she was needed.

  The countryside, blanketed with sparkling snow, was breathtakingly beautiful. The children cut holly and mistletoe, excited to find it growing moist and fresh, not lying warm and limp on sale in the florists. We attended midnight service on Christmas Eve in the lovely village church and walked home in a glittering early dawn holding hands. Supper by the log fire, resin bubbling out of the freshly cut logs. We went happily to bed after filling the children’s socks and pillowcases.

  The next day the house was filled with guests. The turkey was, as always, the best we had ever tasted. The pudding allowed itself to be set alight without that damp squibbish struggle. In the evening we played all the Christmas games of our childhood and the house rang with laughter. Suddenly Mother said, ‘Oh, Chas, my dear, what is the matter, what is troubling you?’ We all gazed at my husband. His face was so very mournful. He looked ready for tears. Sadly he said, ‘I was remembering my Christmas in the forces, when I was at Cap Matafou, Algiers.’ He paused to let a large sigh escape while we all listened to hear a tale of utter tragedy. He took a brave deep breath and continued, ‘We were given one tinned meat-pudding for two soldiers, one tinned fruit-pudding for two men, three tangerines apiece, and...’ We waited breathlessly for his last front-line delicacy to be revealed. ‘And,’ continued a mournful Chas, ‘six sheets of toilet-paper instead of three.’ Mass laughter filled the room like thunder, it shook the balloons and the paper lanterns. Explained Chas patiently, the laughter puzzling him in some strange way. ‘The normal issue of toilet paper, was three sheets!’ I could have hugged him with joy for I hadn’t seen my mother laugh so spontaneously since my father became ill.

  Lying in that lovely country bed that night, the sheets smelling sweetly of lave
nder, we held hands drowsy and happy. Chas said, ‘Your family are so strange in many ways. They find amusement at such funny things!’ ‘What else?’ I laughed as I closed my eyes. I dreamt of a giant Ghristmas-card. Not robins, or holly, or a manger scene, but Chas, dressed in the garb of a Puritan, the tall black hat, sombre clothes, and oh, such a downcast face full of mournful reproach. The caption read, ‘God rest ye merry, gentlemen’.

  THE END

  About The Author

  Dorothy Scannell was born in the East End of London in 1911, one of ten children. At the age of 63, when she was already a grandmother, she wrote her first book Mother Knew Best, an evocative and entertaining memoir of her working-class childhood in east London between World Wars One and Two. The book’s success prompted two further memoirs, Dolly’s War and Dolly’s Mixture, as well as a series of novels.

  After marrying Chas, Dorothy had two children and two grand-children. She died, aged 96, in 2008.

  Also by Dorothy Scannell

  Mother Knew Best