Then we had an unexpected visit from sister Winifred and her husband. My mother lived with them in Berkshire, where they ran a village post office and stores – well, Win did, for her husband had a job as well. They had heard of Chas’s indisposition and thought that, if he could convalesce in the quiet of the country, he would recover more quickly with his worries out of sight and out of mind. It was typical of Win to offer a helping hand and I knew my mother would be pleased to help to look after ‘Dolly’s Chas’. Chas said Winifred was absolutely wonderful, not only in her caring of him but also in the way of her caring. She did not pressure him in any way but quietly saw that he had the nourishing food and the drinks he needed. Mother, on the other hand, amused Chas for, although just as solicitous, she tried to help his recovery along with little helpful remarks and advice. ‘Don’t worry about Dolly, Charlie,’ she would say as she brought him his morning Horlicks, ‘she will always muddle through’; ‘muddle’, of course, being the very word which would alarm an invalid like mine.
I know Chas would have recovered eventually in Berkshire if he hadn’t been so concerned for me, but he was too conscientious where I was involved and he returned to the shop. After a few days he was back to his pre-Berkshire condition and he was admitted to hospital. All my life I have had faith in hospitals and I was certain Chas would soon be on the road to recovery, but the weeks went by and he appeared to become more ill. He had always been thin, now he became thinner and I began to feel desperate. Yet he worried about the elderly patients in his ward. Always a compassionate man, Chas beseeched me to buy some bedsocks for one old man, and asked me to spend some of my visiting time with the old patients who had no visitors while I was there. At one visiting time Chas was almost in tears when one of his old gentlemen friends went down to the theatre for a major operation. Chas’s bed was just inside the ward, next to the wash basin, and it was here during the night that the doctors would wash their hands and discuss their patients; problems which were only worried over by an eavesdropping and sleepless Chas.
At last, because there seemed nothing else they could do for him, Chas was dispatched under his own steam to a seaside nursing home to convalesce. The air would give him an appetite. Recovery was round the corner. How he got to the nursing home on his own I’ll never know, particularly as he left hospital in a state of shock. In the bed opposite to Chas was a young patient, a man with a marvellous physique. Chas was sitting, slowly getting dressed, gathering strength for his departure when, as if in a dream, he saw the young man jump out of bed, climb on to a locker, smash a window, and start to climb out. They were on the third floor of the hospital. Chas threw himself across the ward and hung on to the man’s legs until help was brought. I did not say so at the time, for he was too ill to appreciate my black humour, but I did think he was mad to attempt such bravery. He was so thin I thought he had been lucky not to go out of the window on the heels of the suicidal patient. Hardly a pleasant ‘Bon voyage’ for my darling (his departure to the convalescent home I am referring to, naturally).
The sea air failed to bring back the roses to Chas’s cheeks, the doctor at the nursing home insisted he was not well enough for convalescence, and Chas was sent home. He remained in our flat upstairs, getting no better. It was stalemate. Then my doctor came to see us one evening. He suggested Chas went to a nerve hospital in Surrey where he would receive expert and individual treatment. Chas, by now too ill to care, went willingly.
The months dragged on and our shop remained open, goodness knows how. At long last I was invited to see the specialist at Chas’s hospital. Ethel said she would stay and clean the bacon machine for me so that I would have time to attend to my appearance. If Chas saw me well-groomed and elegant it would reassure him that everything in the garden was lovely.
At two o’clock one early-closing day I set off for the beautiful Surrey countryside. I was so tired it was difficult to keep awake on the train and I just forced my eyes open, fearful I would miss the race-goers’ station, Epsom. I felt I was dressed more for a visit to the track than for going to a hospital to discover I knew not what. Brown and yellow striped suit, yellow overcoat -a proper little ray of sunshine.
To my surprised delight Chas met me at the station. I was so glad I had taken extra trouble with my appearance, for I knew, without a word from him, that he was delighted with this elegant wife. With his walking-stick he looked the country squire. ‘How are the children?’ ‘Fine.’ ‘How is the shop?’ ‘Fine.’ ‘How are you?’ ‘Fine.’ Everything was fine for me that day, the weather was lovely, the countryside was beautiful, Chas was better, our dark days behind us. I really could have sung for joy, if I’d had a singing voice, that is. We held hands on the way to the hospital. I was so happy I couldn’t stop my face from smiling, I was like a child, and, absolutely beaming, I went into the specialist’s room alone, at his request.
He sat by a desk at the window, his back to the door, a small, serious man, I had been led to believe, but as he turned to greet me he looked absolutely startled, then across his face spread a broad grin. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘what a surprise!’ I looked puzzled at this and then he said, ‘Do you know, you’ve just made me realise that I cannot remember the last time I saw a smiling face, and I never expected to discover that Charles had a wife like you. It is lovely, lovely to meet you.’ I wondered how Chas had described me and I felt a bit guilty. So many patients at that hospital were there because of domestic unhappiness, trouble and worry, and this was a line of investigation sometimes followed in the initial stages of examination. I told the specialist it was my opinion that Chas was a man who lived to work, and at the time of his influenza, because he was unable to do so, he worried about me overworking and his enforced idleness had thus become an overwhelming problem. He agreed I could be right and then he asked, ‘How do you think Charles is looking?’ I said I was surprised at the great improvement in him but thought he looked a little ‘yellow’. I didn’t know until Chas told me some weeks later that I couldn’t have said a more damaging thing. He was now on a new wonder drug, it’s only danger to the patient being jaundice if the treatment went wrong. Extensive tests were carried out. Everything was in order, and I convinced myself it must have been the reflection of my yellow outfit as Chas bent to kiss me.
Chas was a little peeved with me, for, when the specialist informed me that I.Q. tests carried out at the hospital proved my husband to possess an abnormally high I.Q., and the specialist had asked me what I thought of the I.Q. result, I had replied, ‘Good gracious, you have surprised me!’ ‘But you never read a book,’ I explained to Chas. ‘What the hell has that got to do with it?’ he wanted to know.
I returned to the shop on cloud nine. Even though I had been warned it would be many months yet before Chas would be quite well, I knew I could face anything. I had something to look forward to. I thought everyone would be delighted to know what an intelligent chappie I had married. My sisters just said ‘H’m’ wonderingly. Susan was sure I was having a dig at her for leaving school. William appeared not to have heard, but some weeks later, at Chas’s first trial weekend at home again, my son introduced his father to a friend with the words, ‘This is my father, the cleverest man in the nut house.’ I was shocked and would have given William a mighty thump for what I thought was a sick joke, but it afforded Chas so much amusement that I knew he was getting better.
While I was on top of the world a further blow fell. The specialist had gone back to square one in Chas’s diagnosis after our interview and discovered that Chas’s illness had indeed been caused by physical disability. Chas was suffering from a cyst in his lung. He must now be admitted to a chest hospital at Carshalton. Chas, I knew, would get frustrated at this further enforced idleness in bed, and I racked my brains for a solution. One evening I was sitting by his bed and he was complaining of ‘nothing to do’, an occupation I was longing for myself. I said, cleverly, I thought, ‘Well, dear, why not learn to knit?’ for I had always understood that working with one�
��s hands is a sort of therapy in those circumstances. He gazed at me with a look of utter disbelief and he shouted, ‘I don’t want to do any bloody knitting.’ I felt the stares of the other patients and their visitors and gave a light laugh as though Chas and I had been playing a sort of bedside game.
From my vantage point of sick visitor Chas was, therefore, a ‘difficult’ patient, for although he needed an occupation to keep him from becoming nervously bored, he refused most of the activities offered to him. An operation for varicose veins, necessitating stitches from ankle to groin, or vice versa, did not help. He formed the opinion that Sister-in-charge was a severe and strict lady, a martinet. On his first day out of bed after the operation, bent double by the pull of the stitches, he shuffled bravely round his bed preparatory to attempting a constitutional down the ward, proud of his determination. No one had insisted he get up from his sick bed, it had been his own strength of character which impelled him. He wouldn’t wait for the helping arm of a nurse or orderly, self-help was second nature to him. At that moment Sister appeared at the ward entrance. ‘Mr Scannell!’ she shouted in stentorian tones. The whole ward gazed at Chas. He prepared to say, ‘Sister, I don’t need help, I must try.’ Before he was able to utter his brave protestations Sister clapped her hands. ‘Come, come, Mr Scanned, there is no need for ad that fuss! Straighten up, man, head up, shoulders back, quick march, one two, one two, one two.’ In great pain and misery he prepared to carry out the order. ‘That’s more like it,’ said Sister. ‘Now don’t let me catch you bending again.’ I giggled when Chas told me – wed, they had almost sawn his legs off already. ‘You’re like Sister,’ he moaned. ‘She couldn’t possibly know how I was feeling!’ He did become an upright occupant of the ward and one visiting time he told me he had been invited into the linen room to help check the linen. ‘Oh, lovely,’ I said, knowing he needed an occupation. ‘You like to be kept busy.’ ‘Not that sort of busy,’ he said darkly. I looked puzzled and he said, impatiently, ‘It’s no good explaining to you, you’re not a woman of the world.’ I gazed at the ravishing nurse who had issued the invitation; I gazed at my husband, then at the other patients. Nice enough chaps, but none delectable at the moment with their splints and wounds. Perhaps Chas was making a joke and it had fallen on deaf ears. I couldn’t press for an explanation, it makes the joker appear unfunny. I said, ‘Perhaps it came under “extra curricular activities”.’ ‘What are you on about now?’ asked my veinless spouse.
Chapter 12
Flood, Pestilence and Plague
It never rains but it pours. One winter’s night I was ready for bed when I realised I had left my nightie downstairs. We did not have heating upstairs and I would place our night clothes by the fire to warm, thus making us better prepared to face the mausoleums of the bedrooms. I was too weary to go downstairs again and in a drawer I unearthed a very large winceyette nightdress of my mother’s, which I had always been intending to return to her. When I put it on this lovely gown I could even wrap my feet in it.
It was hardly light when I was woken by the ringing of the telephone. Who on earth was calling at this hour? It was the butcher’s wife and she wanted to know whether I had any water in my cellar. Hardly awake, I assured her I had not, and went back to bed, half asleep. Suddenly I realised what she had been asking and, grabbing a shop overall, I put this on over my voluminous tent and went downstairs. Black water was lapping right up to the middle of the stairs, and cases and bottles were floating about on this dark pond. Before I had time to collect my thoughts there came a hammering on the shop door. I grabbed a piece of string, tied my tent up round my waist under my overall, and staggered to the door.
Outside was a Fire Officer. He gazed at me rather strangely (of course, I looked pregnant with my bundled-up waist) and informed me that the road outside my shop had subsided during the night. His men had come to bale the water out of my cellar. I looked at the road outside. There was an enormous bomb crater, and the shop next door looked all wonky with broken windows, just like the house that Jack built. The firemen knocked a large hole in front of our shop and sucked up the water, frothy now, with burst detergent packets. I was pleased my shop still looked straight and upright, pleased too that I had such an insurance-minded husband; it was only a question of filling in forms, I was sure. I was glad about this, for I’d just had all the extra Christmas goods delivered.
But it wasn’t just a question of filling in forms, for I didn’t know until then that there are all sorts of water. For instance, there is water that is domestic, and water that is not. There is water created by an Act of God, and there are unnatural floods. Internecine warfare developed between the Water Board and the Council, each blaming the other for the disaster -or so I was told. I was too busy trying to get out of the morass to go to the meetings. It was a case of, Which came first? The chicken or the egg? Did the sewer spring a leak, thus making the road collapse, or did the road collapse, thus bursting the sewer? Was it the sewer, and not domestic water, or was it the mains which supplied the domestic water in the first place? In the end we shopkeepers began to feel like the enemy. Had we walked in our sleep, crept out and bashed the road up? Were we criminals? Well, if we weren’t, we were still punished. How could I buy new stock having just paid a whacking cheque for my Christmas stock, which was awash? Well, I thought, water can’t get through tins, at least I can wash and dry them. This I did, feeling like the painters on the Forth Bridge who spend their lives painting from one end to the other, then starting all over again.
Just as I finished my mammoth task the Public Health Inspector called. He said it was not domestic water. My stock must be taken away and destroyed! There seemed to be a charge for this. I had already commiserated with the baker next door, he of the crooked building. His shop was now condemned, and the estimate for demolition was enormous. In my delirious state I felt it was like kicking a man when he was down.
We needed new stock, new floors to the basement, and we lived with smelly ooze beneath us. There was only one bright chink in my firmament. Chas did not know of the disaster, and would not know. We would not tell him. Why, he was miles away in the country. One evening I received a telephone call from him. Sternly he said, ‘I believe you have something to tell me?’ ‘No, nothing, dear, everything is normal here, nothing of interest has happened, nothing unusual has occurred.’ He was very cross with me. One of his hospital friends had been home for the weekend and, passing the end of our road, had been curious to discover why there was a traffic diversion. Our dark secret was out. Chas asked about the stock and I told him it had all been condemned. ‘You have the certificate of condemnation?’ I had no idea there was such a thing and, in any case, what use would it be? But my man of precision had to have things just so, and he got in touch with the powers that be.
Shortly afterwards a lorry arrived at my premises. It was filled with mounds of washed-out-looking tins. In view of the great loss I had suffered it had been decided to decontaminate my stock and return it to me. I had just about recovered from the loss of my stock and my laundry operations on it, and I received this mountainous reward with mixed feelings. How could I sort out this haystack? Who would buy tins bearing washed-out labels? Not me, for one.
William was leaving for school one morning soon after when he called up to me, ‘Mother, there’s a ruddy great rat in the passage, would you care for me to dispose of it for you?’ Early morning has never been my best time spiritually and, in a fearful temper, rushing to get ready to open the shop, I shouted, ‘Now look here, William, this is no time for one of your silly jokes. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, knowing what I have to do with Daddy away in hospital,’ etc. etc., all sob stuff, guaranteed to make my son feel what a wonderful mother he had and how unkind he was. Utter silence. I peered over the banisters. There, at William’s feet, was an enormous rat, fortunately lying supine. I screamed and fled back into the kitchen. William (I shall be eternally grateful to a small boy) calmly placed it in the dustbin and went off to
school.
Susan, in the kitchen with me, kissed me goodbye and opened the kitchen door to go to work. She slammed it shut, emitting an ear-splitting scream. ‘There’s a rat crawling up the wall outside the door.’ ‘Stay in the kitchen with me, please, Sue.’ ‘I can’t do that, mum, or I shall be late for work’ (shades of Chas!). All my conscientious feelings as to work and my feelings of motherly protection had vanished in craven fear of the rat. Nothing would get me to make my exit. I hadn’t thought what would happen if I stayed in the kitchen all day. Susan, brave as her father, left for work; Dolly, the coward, made sure she opened the door just wide enough for Susan to squeeze out. I tried to pull myself together, knowing my weaker nature would win. Then I heard screams and cries from outside. Min, the fearless cat, had arrived. It was no use, I had to open the shop, I had no alternative, and as I left the kitchen Min was chasing the rat into the bathroom. I slammed the bathroom door and tottered tremblingly into the shop.
When Ethel arrived she bravely went up to the bathroom. She said, ‘Oh Dorothy, you really ought to go up and look. Min is still waiting for the rat which is sitting behind a fire guard looking so pretty, with its little pink paws across its chest.’ ‘Pretty!’ I decided I needed a man and I dashed across the road to fetch Alfred, Marjorie’s husband. He arrived, looking like the Great White Hunter, carrying a sack, a hammer and a huge flat shovel; but of course our rat had already gone to his little ratty heaven.
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