Dolly's War (20 page)

I shot on at speed (suddenly an efficient cyclist) over a white-fenced bridge, through a field and into a haystack where I fell off the bicycle, bruised, shaken and breathless. A panting Marjorie and Pat soon caught me up and Marjorie conducted a hurried conclave. ‘Do you think we should tell the police what we have seen?' she asked. Pat and I looked blankly at Marjorie. ‘Suppose a little Brownie should come round the corner?' she continued. What had fairies to do with it? We looked more stupid at Marjorie's continued questions, and impatiently she explained it was the night for the Brownies and Guides to meet, and some of them walked home past the Old Mill. ‘What we have seen,' said Marjorie dramatically, really not knowing what we had witnessed, I knew, ‘would not be suitable for a Brownie.' ‘Nor even a Brown Owl,' I added. ‘It's no laughing matter, Dee,' complained Marjorie. ‘Well,' I said, ‘we've come to no harm and we have accidentally punished the unrighteous. What on earth would you say to the village sergeant, especially as those three are dusting and drying themselves off somewhere far away from here?'

We wheeled our bicycles home, Marjorie a little disapproving because I was amused at the thought of the village sergeant taking down, in his broad Suffolk accent, her statement of ‘love in the raw'.

My parents-in-law had been baby-sitting for us and when my father-in-law asked how I had got on, I said, ‘I may have performed the first ever circumcision by bicycle.' ‘What a disgusting thing to say,' said Marjorie, and I whispered to Alfred that I'd tell him all about our two-wheeled adventure later. He had such a sense of humour and I often popped in to tell him anything amusing for life was a little quiet for him in the country, and as his eye-sight was failing he could hardly see to read the paper or a magazine. I knew he'd be in hysterics listening to the story of my ride.

But my pa-in-law was not destined to hear this tale of rustic passion for now it seemed that we were winning the war I decided it could manage very nicely without me. We would go back to London, Susan and I and prepare our home for one returning hero.

I could have had a ceremonious good-bye with my friends at the hospital, a party, exchanges of addresses, ‘Don't forget, Towser, if you're ever in the little old U.S. of A,' sort of thing, but I remembered an expression of my father's regarding such occasions, ‘Don't prolong the agony,' and I agreed with his unsentimental attitude to good-byes. It took the sting out of nostalgia. But I did have a farewell lunch with Maudie.

‘My trouble,' said Maudie, analytically and unemotionally, ‘My trouble has always been that I am unable to say “no”, not because I don't want to say “no”, but because, when I was a kid I was taught to say “yes” all the time. “It's rude to refuse, it's bad-mannered to say ‘no',” they'd say, and now I just don't know how to. With my whisky distributor,' she said mysteriously, ‘I didn't want to. I didn't like it, yet it was all because I didn't like to say “no”, and look at the trouble it could have led to. I wonder,' went on Maudie, miles away in a philosophical pasture-land of unreality, ‘what a judge in a court would say if you said, “I just didn't like to refuse.” It's the same with other things, and I've had another lucky escape there. Did I ever tell you about Ellen?'

Ellen, apparently, was an ex-colleague of Maudie's. She had come down to the country with her three small boys. A lovely-looking girl, she was good-natured and easy-going. She had been married quite young having been ‘seduced' at a party when both she and a fellow guest were in that dangerous state of not being drunk exactly, but in that beautiful limbo land between, where everything is just that bit rosier than reality. Her chap had ‘done the right thing by her' and married her, but they were totally unsuited and very unhappy. Maudie met Ellen at a war-time factory in Colchester where Ellen had met the man of her dreams, a young G.I., of comfortable parents, single and handsome. They were madly in love and wished to get married. Ellen told Maudie her divorce was through and Maudie was a witness at Ellen's wedding, blessed by permission of the American authorities. They left for the U.S. immediately after the wedding, where the bridegroom was to take up an important military post. Maudie said she thought everything was in order, why it had to be, the authorities were very careful of their young men away from home.

Maudie had signed all sorts of forms and affidavits for the two lovers and was shocked and worried when she discovered (after the wedding) that the decree nisi wasn't nicely ‘nisi', but ‘pending'. ‘I always read what I sign now,' said Maudie, ‘and I would advise you to do the same, Dolly.' ‘What happened to Ellen in the end, did you ever hear?' ‘Yes,' said Maudie, ‘I had some marvellous photos from them after the war when everything was in order, and they sent me a gold locket as a thank-you present. They are still as happy, and have twin daughters, now, her home looks like a Spanish hacienda, her in-laws think the world of her, and she had another ‘wedding' in a cathedral out there. Every time I look at the locket though,' went on Maudie, ‘I can see myself carted off to prison, it doesn't really do to trust even your best friend.'

Maudie herself took a down-to-earth view of life. Before the war she had been a normal wife and mother, happy in her marriage, loved and loving. I thought her honest because she had no furtive, prim, or narrow attitudes towards sharing her bed, and openly admitted she needed a ‘sleeping' partner to keep her a happy and contented mother to her two children. I knew that after the war if her husband returned they would resume a contented married life, the past would probably never arise, for Maudie always ‘kept her head'. There would be no surprise offspring to greet her demobbed husband, and each resident knew that she was waiting for her husband. What she offered them was a temporary haven and I believe she made life bearable for the pilots on their dangerous nightly missions over enemy territory.

She was kind and generous, helpful to those in trouble and had a great sense of humour. She told me of her first hilarious adventure into the realms of ‘unfaithfulness'. She had been working for some months for a scientific and technical officer, a very serious man who checked and counter-checked facts and figures and who performed all his duties ‘according to plan' never deviating from the printed instructions, leaving nothing to chance. He was a tall man with a fine physique, and Maudie said all the girls in her department were crazy about him because in addition to his god-like appearance he was aloof therefore appearing ‘hard to get'. One evening, having worked late, and alone with this pragmatic Adonis, over coffee the conversation turned to the realms of married love and how, having once experienced this normality of life, the wartime absence of the physical side of love could be harmful from a point of view of frustration alone. Before long Maudie and her colleague had agreed that the resumption of normality was overdue for both of them and what better time and place than the present. ‘I will go and fetch the necessary equipment and I have a lovely book. Perhaps you would like to prepare yourself while I am away,' said the scientific officer, and left the Nissen hut. Maudie didn't know quite what to do to prepare herself. Suppose she took her frock off and someone from the Camp came in? No, she could always ‘prepare' herself at the height of passion, although she doubted any passion would arise somehow. She wondered why she still stayed, possibly because the next bus that could take her home wasn't due for an hour. The book her lover would produce she imagined would be a book of poetry. How touching; she would never have associated him with such tender sentimentality.

Her lover-to-be reappeared. He was wearing a dressing-gown underneath which Maudie could glimpse swimming-trunks. How clever! Of course he would appear to any outsider to be on his way to the shower. But he also had two pillows and a blanket, a bottle of whisky, two glasses, a book, and what Maudie thought was the strangest thing of all, a small metal cash-box with a key in the lock. He spread the blanket on the floor, placed the pillows side by side and motioned Maudie to take her place on this ‘couch'. She was now having great difficulty in keeping her face straight. The officer poured a minute amount of whisky in each glass saying he thought it would help them to relax. It was hardly a teaspoonful. Fortunately Maudie didn't like whisky but it crossed her mind, even though she would have been suspicious had it been a large tot, that here was a mean man. He put the glasses on the table, the book by his side, and then methodically ‘opened the box'. ‘Oh, God,' thought Maudie, ‘surely he is not going to ask me what I charge?' But out of the cash-box he extracted a sheath, which he placed by his side on the blanket, then locked the cash-box again and placed it tidily by the side of the glasses. ‘Now for Browning,' giggled Maudie to herself as her passionate friend opened the book. He began to read, half to himself, a sort of manual on ‘how it should be done'. Maudie suddenly felt a long way off and the next ten minutes were like an unfeeling dream; she could have gone to sleep and felt she wouldn't have been missed, for even his kiss was like placing blotting-paper on blotting-paper.

When it was all over, and she only knew this was so when the officer poured her another minute nip of the liquid which she always understood was guaranteed to ‘put fire into the belly', he put his arm round her and said, ‘Now comes what I always think is the best part of love-making.' (‘God, is there more?' thought Maudie.) But no, the best part was ‘the chat' on the occurrence after the occurrence, according to her lover. Maudie was silent and for the first time believed what a friend had told her some years ago. This friend apparently could sleep anywhere and had told Maudie that once she had ‘dropped off' at the passionate heights of her husband's love-making. She had awoken, with a start, to find herself alone in bed and thought, ‘Now, something was happening, what was it?' Realising what a terrible thing she had done, what an insult to a dear lover, she had gone in search of her husband and then upset him further by bursting into peals of laughter. He was sitting in his pyjamas by the dying embers of the sitting-room fire, moodily smoking his pipe, but he had put on his bowler-hat, to keep warm!

Both Susan and I were excited at going home. She gave a great sigh as the train drew into Liverpool Street and it seemed as though she had been holding her breath for this moment. I gave her a hug which evoked a blush and a smile. She was a quiet thoughtful child, one of those children who are ‘no bother'. My only worry was her extremely poor appetite and dislike of milk.

My old mum and dad were at the gate of the house at Forest Gate waiting excitedly to greet us. Dad led Susan into our dining-room which was shining from Mother's exertions. In the middle of the floor was a blackboard and easel and chalked on the blackboard in Dad's best printing were the words, ‘Welcome home, Susie.'

Susan was soon away to play in the road with her old friends. It seemed strange that they had been separated all over England for so many, many months, yet they all knew each other instantly and within a few moments it was as though they had never been separated.

VE-Day was announced and the war in the Far East seemed a long way away since none of the men in our road had been in that theatre. Great bustle and activity took place as the wives began a gigantic spring-cleaning and first-aid repairs to their war-scarred houses. A street party was organised and we expected Chas home on leave at about this time. He was now on the borders of Yugoslavia and Italy with the Venezia Guilia Police Force, very busy as usual (he was a magnet for work) requisitioning hotels for the army. He would take an inventory of one hundred rooms, in record time, entirely by himself.

I eked out my meat rations in order to get Chas a nice piece of meat for the day of his arrival home. I don't know why I made sacrifices for this meal really, for whilst in the Police Force he had had the services of a marvellous Chinese cook who one day placed before him sixteen grilled kidneys, and this at breakfast time! But he would be hungry after a long journey and as we had been separated for three years a meal would help to overcome our initial shyness with each other. I was quite convinced we would be painfully ill at ease for the first few days after his homecoming.

About an hour before he was due to arrive I fetched Susan in from a lovely game she was having with her friends. She took a dim view of this, after all she had never known her daddy really. She was quite content with the adults she already possessed. At last, both mother and daughter looking like models from a magazine, we sat quietly waiting. And we waited, and waited and waited. Finally, assuming Chas would not be arriving that day we both changed into our ‘everyday' clothes. Susan rushed back, with great glee, to her friends, and I went upstairs to sit with my parents. All my excited anticipation had dissolved and I felt suddenly irritable.

Susan and her friends had knocked several times for all those things children like to keep worrying one for, possibly they keep returning to see if Mother is still there, so that irritable at a further knocking I rushed down to the door saying bad-temperedly, ‘Well, and what is it now?' and there was Chas. We gazed at each other for a minute without speaking and then he said, ‘I've knocked several times, you know.' This remark after the time Susan and I had spent dressed up waiting for this very knocking! He then continued, ‘Is that dirty-looking child in the green coat out there, mine?' ‘Susan is wearing a green coat,' I said. ‘But she can hardly be dirty.' I felt furious that neither of us had retained our model garments. Susan came in as we went into the dining-room (Chas and I had not yet greeted each other with even a kiss). Chas and his daughter eyed each other like protagonists. ‘Here's your lovely Daddy at last, darling!' I said brightly, anxious to erase the previous moments of his arrival and start afresh with a real welcome. Fortunately she allowed him to kiss her and I helped Chas off with his pack, suddenly in a dither, not knowing whether to talk to him first or march Susan off to the bathroom for it appeared by the look of her she had been playing ‘mud pies'.