Dolly's War (3 page)

I opened the door to a dirty, grey-looking man with clothes torn, face cut and smeared with dried blood and a hand wrapped around with several stained handkerchiefs. ‘You poor darling, I cried. ‘Was there a train crash?' And this is where Charlie went wrong. Had the positions been reversed that question from him would have been the opening for me to come out with a dramatic excuse. But no, everlastingly honest he had to blurt out the whole story to me.

It had been his day off (since his days off were different each week I hadn't been suspicious, in any case I would never have dreamt my husband could be so heinously deceptive), and he had been so eager to see a special football-match that he had queued up all the morning to get in. When nearing his goal and the ticket-office the crowd had rushed the gate, he was swept off his feet and his hand was thrust through a window. He bravely sat through the match (he said he wasn't well enough to leave the ground at that stage!) and then on the stairs of the railway-station on the way home the crowd had surged forward again. Once more he was lifted off his feet and this time his clothes were torn and his head cut on a broken window. I listened stony-faced to his pitiful story. He was obviously expecting tea and sympathy from me, but my day had been ruined, all my efforts had been for nothing. He was telling me, in effect, that he preferred to spend his free time at a football-match rather than have a rare romantic interlude with me his loving bride. I was choking with fury, misery, self-pity and murderous intent, but pleased the story was told he continued more cheerfully, ‘Oh, what a marvellous smell and I see that dinner is ready,' gazing at the beautiful table-cloth and flowers. ‘Could you get me some water to bathe my hands and face, perhaps you could put some disinfectant in it.' I fetched the water, wondering why although I could cheerfully have stabbed him I still didn't want his wounds to become septic!

The next night he arrived home with a sheaf of beautiful tea-roses. Now these were out of season and I knew they must have cost the earth. I was already regretting the expense of the previous day, and instead of placating me Chas's extravagant gesture made me angrier still. ‘However much did they cost?' I asked. This put him in a flaming mood. ‘What does it matter what they cost, they're for you!' he yelled. Already regretting my enquiry I said, ‘Well, if we want to save up it is stupid of you to waste money on expensive flowers.' He snatched the lovely roses from me and saying, ‘I will never buy you flowers again,' dashed to the bathroom. I followed him and there he was, bashing their heads up and down on the lavatory-seat. Some days later I learnt from the wife of another waiter that an American visitor had given the roses to Chas because he had always served him so well in the restaurant and they were for ‘his dear wife'. Perversely I was more furious than ever that Chas hadn't spent the earth on the flowers for me!

Before then I hadn't been aware that I had married a man with a temper, but just after the battle of the roses I was to witness it again. It was the week of the coronation of King George VI so his restaurant would not only be extra busy but have special customers from abroad. It would be a week for rich tips and Chas wanted to look specially smart and immaculate. He wore stiff white shirts with special little slits for the studs and there was a monster at our laundry who was employed just to watch for these special slits and extend them further to the edge of the shirt so that the studs would fall out and the shirt pop open at inconvenient moments, perhaps just as Chas was bending solicitously over a customer. It was my job to inspect these shirts fresh from the laundry so that there would always be one undamaged and ready for Chas to wear. Every day he reminded me of the Coronation and every day I said, ‘Don't worry, I wouldn't dream of not checking your dress shirts,' but during the week of the Coronation I collected some marvellous books from the library, and books have ever been to me what alcohol is to the addict.

So I lied when I said I had checked his shirts for the great occasion, thinking of course that I would check them before
der Tag
. I didn't check them that fateful week and on that important morning the laundry slasher had really gone to town like a frustrated Jack the Ripper and every shirt was ruined. ‘You said you had looked at them,' screamed my husband agitatedly pacing the room in his long johns. ‘You've got nothing to do all day and yet you are too lazy to do even one small thing for me.' I could have cried with guilt but I still would not admit that I had forgotten about the shirts. ‘The ones I looked at are in your wardrobe,' I said mysteriously thinking that surely in his wardrobe there would be a couple of non-slashed stiff shirts. He was then, I knew, very sorry that he had accused me falsely and he tore round the bedroom whilst I stood paralysed, praying for salvation. He re-appeared like a man berserk, his teeth clenched and trembling with rage, for the time was getting on and he would be given the worst part of the floor of the restaurant if he was late, a long walk from the kitchens, the part where customers were popping in and out all the time. There was not one shirt in the house which had not been mutilated by my unseen enemy. Chas threw them all in a pile on the rug. ‘Admit it, admit it, you are lying, you never looked at the shirts.' ‘I must have looked at the wrong ones,' I said stupidly.

Now, more furious that he had a non-admitting wife than that he had no shirt, in his temper, he began to jump up and down, up and down on them. Relieved that he wasn't jumping up and down on me in his rage, the sight of this long-johned creature with a popping open stiff shirt and a bow tie drunkenly round his neck, started me laughing hysterically. I thought, this is why murder is committed but even though I thought each laugh would surely be my last I just couldn't stop and suddenly Chas too realised the ridiculousness of the situation and collapsed with laughter. He put a muffler round his neck and dashed off to buy a new shirt in the Strand but as he left the house in hysterics he decided to come back and tell me he was still annoyed with me. I kissed him fondly good-bye. This seemed to annoy him and he said, ‘That's enough of that.'

But I felt I had worse worries than slit shirts. There was the problem of my rubbish. In those days of modern sanitation and regular refuse collections, how could I possibly worry about this, yet sometimes I wished I had been living in good King Charles's golden days where I could just have thrown everything out of the window. To get to my new silver dustbin I had to go through the kitchen of my landlord's flat, which I hated. My demoniac-looking landlord was on shift-work, so that even had I waited until his wife was out shopping before passing through their kitchen-cum-living-room to the garden,
HE
might have been there.

I spent hours on the stairs with my little bucket waiting for them both to be out of the house at the same time. On Chas's day off I would try to persuade him to empty the rubbish, making the excuse that I had hurt my wrist or foot. He always refused because he thought me crazy to be so inhibited and felt that the more journeys I made into the hinterland the more used I would become to entering the premises of comparative strangers. At last, as the rubbish piled up I decided I would take it down after midnight when all below would be sleeping. This was quite a job and a slow process for I had to feel my way inch by silent inch in the dark in stockinged feet. On a wet night I would have to retrace my steps and erase any muddy footprints with a dry cloth. However, all seemed to go well and I became a past master, or rather mistress, of the art of feeling my way around in the dark, but as so often happens I became over-confident.

I was on my way back from the dustbin run one night after a successful trip. I had only the passage to negotiate and then there was the blessed safety of the stairs when, with a blinding flash, on went all the lights. My heart leapt at the sudden and unexpected illumination. Facing me in the passage was an astonished Mephistopheles, clad only in a very, very short white shirt or shift-like garment. His daring apparel, on top of his unexpected appearance, paralysed my body for a moment yet my brain and pulses raced. For a moment he, too, was silently still. His nether portions were so white and so enormous he seemed to me like a half-veiled statue. I felt like a shocked lady mayoress who had pulled the cord on the unexpected. The statue came to life before the lady mayoress did and with a lightning movement Mephi's hands grabbed the ends of his shirt turning it into a leotard. This caused him to shrink from a colossus to a hunchback, as he had to crouch to secure the leotard's permanency.

‘I hope I didn't wake you up,' I said brightly as I squeezed past him, scraping his bent knees on my swinging bucket. ‘I just popped out to the dustbin,' and I sauntered casually up the stairs. Once inside my own quarters my nonchalance deserted me. I leant my banging head against the inside of my kitchen door. I heard voices. I just had to know what ‘
HE
' was saying to his now wide awake wife. ‘There's something bloody fishy about them two upstairs,' he was saying angrily. ‘I don't believe he is a waiter, and have
you
ever heard of anyone going to the dustbin in the dark after midnight?' I wondered if he would challenge my Chas, due in at any moment, but a door closed and the downstairs lights went out. Recovering myself, I became indignant with my landlord. Surely he could not be a nice man to go to bed so scantily attired? Why my darling wouldn't even get into bed unless the top button of his pyjamas was fastened high round his neck. I wished I had been quicker-brained. I could have pretended I was sleep-walking.

Finally I hit on a solution to my problem. When I visited Mother as I did two or three times a week I took a suitcase filled with refuse. My mother was mystified, but my father simply said, ‘Dolly's always been afraid of her own shadow.' I prayed that if ever I did bump into my landlord on the way out, the catches on my suitcase would not let me down.

Soon after, Chas and I went to our first wedding as married people. It was a Jewish wedding and I was very much looking forward to it. I always felt thoroughly at home and enjoyed myself with friends of that faith. I admired their energy, and was fascinated by their way of speaking, their arguments, their persuasiveness and their sense of humour. The bridegroom was a shy gentle young man called Sidney. I had met him at the Toynbee Hall drama group and Norma, another goy like me, and I, had kept in touch with Sidney and his friends from time to time. He had a friend Harry, a tall beautiful young man with a vivid and attractive personality. All the girls were crazy about him he was so magnetic. Harry was to be best man. Sidney worked with his father and uncles in a workshop where the naked light-bulbs shone down on the seamstresses seated at long wooden tables. He designed dresses and could also machine and sew with the best of the girls. I thought him fantastic for I had a long struggle even to thread a needle and couldn't sew without stabbing my forefinger every time. He wore a tape-measure like a garter of honour. Harry, his handsome friend, was nicknamed ‘Harry the Horse' by his compatriots and I thought he was probably a racing man interested in the turf.

Norma and I just loved the synagogue wedding, the bride so richly beautiful in a fabulous gown designed by Sidney. They dashed their wine-glasses to the floor and it was like a Hollywood movie. Norma, her husband John, and Chas and I were looking forward to the reception which we assumed would take place in a swanky hotel. Therefore it was four shocked Christians who alighted from the wedding car outside a shabby terraced house in a narrow street somewhere at the back of Spitalfields. All along the street women were sitting on wooden chairs to view the procession and I avoided Chas's surprised eyes as we entered the ‘hotel'. Norma whispered to me that she needed to ‘go' and I accompanied her through a passage, dingily decorated with brownish varnished wallpaper. We had to walk carefully as the floor was covered with rope mats, some square, some round, some oval, and our high heels caught in the mats proper and the edgings. We went out into a tiny back yard and were very glad we were together for round the walls of the yard were about twenty men, all wearing hats, all holding large tumblers of beer. The door of the yard lavatory had been removed and was resting against a wall in a dangerous position. Outside the lavatory, which was in full view of the ‘audience', seated on a low stool was the fattest lady I had ever seen. She was surrounded by scraggy-looking chickens, all featherless and therefore dead,, but otherwise intact, and she had the task of cleaning and dressing these birds under a stream of running water.

Norma and I fled back into the house. ‘I shall burst,' said Norma. ‘Perhaps when we've had a drink we'll be braver,' I suggested. ‘I know what,' said Norma. ‘When they call us for the meal we'll dash back quickly then.' ‘But if that woman's got to clean those chickens and then cook them it'll be hours,' I wailed. We swallowed several glasses of wine and both felt absolutely marvellous, so marvellous in fact that we brazenly followed two beautifully gowned, furred and jewelled matrons back to the yard. At the sight of these ladies the privy counsellors disappeared and crammed themselves into the passage leaving the yard to us four ladies. The fat lady had disappeared with her factory belt of chickens leaving only a few feathers and bloodstains on the concrete to remind us she had ever been in residence there, and from a small kitchen at the side of the lavatory came the delicious smell of cooking.

At last we sat down to the wedding breakfast. One of the upper bedrooms had been emptied of all normal furniture and we sat on benches at long tables. Norma and I were literally starving as we'd eaten nothing that day, and were both a little excited having imbibed our wine on empty stomachs. Our two husbands were very quiet and very sober; they were simply longing for a nice cup of tea, which they obviously would not be getting. The meal commenced and in front of me was placed a soup bowl filled with bright yellow liquid, and lying to the side of this bright shining pond was a small round pink object. At my surprised stare Norma said, ‘It's lock-chen, with one meat ball.' I had always detested stews, clear soup and the like since I was a small child so I waited eagerly for the next course, although Chas drank his yellow stream and ate his meat ball even if he did this as though it would bite him at any moment. Came the next course, the same liquid but instead of a meat ball there was a slice of chicken breast. So delighted was I to see something I was able to eat that before all the dishes had been passed round I had gobbled down my lovely white breast and as the man on my left turned round to speak to a friend sitting on the table behind ours, intoxicated by the wine and my hunger, I rudely speared the breast from his bowl and swallowed it before he turned round. Norma was in hysterics, her husband looked astonished, whilst Chas, sitting opposite me, gazed at his penguin wife with a look of anger and hate mixed with reproachful sadness. I suppose I thought the man whose breast I had stolen would be too good-mannered to mention that something was missing, but he was no gentleman, and quite an argument ensued between him and the servers. Suddenly this breastless man turned round and said belligerently to me, ‘Did you pinch my breast?' I was now so terrified I became cold sober, and my sweet Chas who normally thought that if I suffered for my own impetuous actions I would gradually reform and become a normal human being, quietly changed dishes with the man who had been robbed. At first it seemed the man would not accept the transfer even though Chas insisted his first little pink ball had ‘filled him up'. Finally when the man realised that the servers would be bringing no more chicken, he ate Chas's portion. But he did this with his arm round his plate protecting his portion from me. I was so relieved that the matter had been settled, that I was full of love for my husband, but when I thanked him afterwards and apologised for my stupidity and ill-mannered behaviour he said he hadn't done it out of love or compassion for me. He could see that the man had been drinking and was on the verge of becoming violent and likely to attack me. Chas would therefore have been forced to protect me and he was apprehensive for himself for the robbed man apparently was an all-in wrestler. ‘I suppose that's why he was so hungry,' I said.