Dolly's War (12 page)

Of course I was at work and there was the difficult task first thing in the morning of igniting the kitchen monster before even a kettle could be boiled. Of all the family Amy had the most modern home, yet she didn't mind the hard work and inconvenience. It was the old lady's commanding manner which finally wore down Amy's patience and caused her fiery nature to erupt.

The old lady had one fidgety habit. Her front doorstep must always be pristinely pure in its snowy whiteness, never must a human footfall despoil its virgin appearance, and rather than tempt providence we had, all of us, always used the back entrance down a long stone passage, through the wood-cellar and into the kitchen. When we emerged out of this darkness into light I would notice that the pupils on Susan's eyes were enormous. However, one morning when Amy was rushed off her feet, the stove bad tempered and smoky, the children dashing about to be in time for school, me getting ready for work, there came a haughty muttering from the old lady in the hall. ‘Someone' had trodden on the freshly cleaned doorstep. The old lady's continued ill-timed complaints were the tinder sparks which lit the furious fire which followed. A noisy argument broke out between her and Amy which, continuing into the lounge, became a fierce and frightening row. I listened at the door. How could I go in and try to pour oil on troubled water? Amy would naturally expect me to be on her side and I could understand this. But the old lady was ‘eightyish'; how could two younger women be against her? It was her house, her step which had been despoiled, and she had been exceptionally kind to the children. I didn't know which way to turn and when I heard the old lady say to Amy, ‘You are so different from your sister. I could have lived with her peaceably,' I knew this would be the final straw and I went upstairs to pack. Amy came upstairs, still flushed and said to me, ‘You are a hypocrite, Dolly. The old lady says if we are not out by the morning she will call the police.'

Five refugees left, at dawn, the following day. It was cold with a biting Welsh mist. I had been so modern in my care of Susan she had never worn a bonnet and I vaguely remember worrying because her forehead had a sort of mauve tinge.

Amy and I were silent until we had to change trains. There had been some trouble on the line and the platform was crowded with women, children, prams and babies. Standing near us was a lady, clad in furs, and carrying a small dog. They seemed, both of them, to be sniffing in a superior manner. It was obvious she would not get a seat for herself and her companion on the next train due in and she said in a haughty manner, ‘Just look at them all, it's typical of the lower classes, they run at the first sign of danger.' ‘Yes,' I agreed. ‘To you we may be the great unwashed, but if the working man, our husbands and sons, were not so bravely fighting Hitler, you wouldn't be standing on an English station worrying about getting a seat for that sniffing creature.' Poor little doggie, he'd done no one any harm, he wasn't even responsible for his haughty mistress. But my outburst pleased Amy mightily and she half forgave me my cowardice in Wales.

My eldest sister Agnes was with Chas to meet us at Paddington. They looked pale and tired but were delighted to see us again. Agnes took Susan on her lap and was so intent on listening to Amy's excited news that she really wasn't concentrating on holding baby and Susan had somehow fallen forward in the crook of Agnes's arm and looked helpless and dribbling. Chas inspected her worriedly and enquired, ‘Is she all right mentally?'

This infuriated Amy and she said to Chas, ‘Well, that's a kind remark to greet your wife with.' I knew then that she and I were friends again, but I understood my husband. Had there been anything wrong with his daughter that I hadn't discovered, he wanted to bring it to my notice so that anything amiss might be put right with the appropriate and speedy treatment. He really does possess the critical eye. He couldn't know then that he had nothing to fear in that direction. Susan was to become exceptionally bright and top of the school.

At home, what a sight met my eyes. The house smelt musty and damp, and seemed to be filled to capacity with strange bits of shabby furniture. Chas, unable to stand the loneliness of the large house without Susan and me, had gone to live with my eldest sister Agnes who had a house near by, and sure I was away for the duration of the war, had allowed people to store their bits and pieces, free of charge, in our large rooms, the men being in the forces and the women and children evacuated. In this way they were able to relinquish their houses without worrying about their furniture for they would have been unable to pay rent on the houses whilst their men were away and they had to support themselves and their children in the country. To add to the dismal appearance of the house the curtains were hanging in tatters. Chas, always careless I felt where lighted matches were concerned, had blown a match ‘out' and dropped it into the waste-paper-basket, and the curtains being cheap muslin were alight in a matter of seconds.

Then the blow fell. Although we had paid our rent regularly the agents had not paid the rates which were included in our rent and we were summoned by the council. I thought they'd have plenty to distrain upon in our house, but I realised we couldn't go on living as we were. The council were very helpful regarding all our problems and offered us a council-house at Dagenham as so many people were dashing off into the country to avoid the raids.

The new residence had a very large garden which had been badly neglected. Chas decided he'd still have time to dig for victory before he was called up and attacked the forest of weeds the very day we moved in. As the furniture-van departed came a knocking at the door, and as I opened it a sallow-faced dark-haired woman marched straight into the house. She went from room to room downstairs and I followed her helplessly. Suddenly she said, in a tone of incredulity, ‘Ain't you got no pianner?' 

‘No,' I stammered apologetically. ‘Ain't you even got a china cabinet?' ‘No,' I said. ‘Oh,' she said, in tones of utter disbelief, ‘I said to my husband, by the looks of her, they'll be bound to have a piano and a china cupboard.' I felt quite ashamed to have let this neighbour down, and I couldn't think how my appearance could have deceived her into thinking I was musical, and as for the china cabinet, there was definitely nothing porcelain about me.

Chas's garden positively flourished and the man next door (husband of the disappointed lady) was disgusted. He would gaze at his garden, which, according to him, he worked at ceaselessly but which looked like the Sahara with a bit of green showing here and there. He would complain of his bad luck and be quite insulting about Chas's ‘good luck', but finally he achieved a small success with some broad beans. Now, as every gardener knows, broad beans are a magnet for black fly and his were literally crawling with the creatures. We were in the garden one day when he called to us, ‘You see what luck I have, no one else gets black fly but me.' Chas was about to tell him what to do towards a cure (and why he had black fly), when I stopped him for I knew the man would not take any advice kindly. ‘I know what I'll do,' he said victoriously. ‘I'll do something to kill the buggers once and for all, they'll never come in my garden again.' Chas was very interested, always eager for any new tips about vegetable growing and pest control. As the man re-emerged from his house carrying two kettles of bubbling, boiling water, I knew what he planned to do. I fled into the house, but Chas, either disbelieving, or transfixed, I don't know which, stayed, watching the approaching Jonah as though paralysed. The man went from plant to plant pouring boiling water on to them. As he reached the last plant he turned round triumphantly to view the millions of dead black insects, but the beans were already doing their dying swan act and the man jumped up and down in his garden in fearful rage. He knew I was watching for I couldn't get back from the window quickly enough and he shouted, ‘You don't get my bloody luck, do you? It's not fair, it's not fair,' and away he went indoors where we could hear a fearful row going on between him and his wife. She was sure we were to blame. After all, what can you say about people who look as though they possess a ‘pianner' and don't?

But I know how easy it is to put failures down to ‘bad luck' for I thought I had sheer bad luck when cooking. Chas was for ever on about his mother's steak and kidney puddings. Although I was scared of ever trying to make one, I thought perhaps as he was soon to leave us that if I tried my best, he would remember his wife's delicious pudding and even boast about it in times of stress on the battlefields. It would be a warm and tasty reminder of me. I took great trouble and care, not telling Chas for I wanted it to be a surprise. He sat at the dining-room table, looking all welcoming for he had remarked when coming in, ‘What is that lovely smell?' I turned the pudding out on to my best oval dish and surrounded it with all the vegetables. Then singing out ‘Tarah, tarah', or some such piping tune, I entered the dining-room and his eyes lit up. ‘Gosh,' he said, ‘that looks marvellous.' Confidence overwhelming me I swung the dish round in the manner of a professional chef, my heel caught on the carpet and the whole dish shot up in the air. I screamed with distress, then in the commotion which followed I wondered vaguely why the pudding had bounced instead of smashing to pieces. Chas looked a little puzzled too as we rescued it. He cut it with a large carving-knife and then I thought he would stab me, he was so annoyed. The pudding was just solid, no gravy or meat, the crust had turned the pudding into a large solid dumpling filled with little streaks of brown substance.

My tears did not soften Chas's disappointment or heighten his enjoyment of the bread and cheese he was forced to eat. Chas said what annoyed him as much as his disappointment was the fact that I remarked on discovering the solidity of the pudding, ‘Well, dear, you wouldn't have been able to eat it if it had been perfectly made, for it would have been smashed on the floor and all the lovely gravy and meat would have been wasted.' Anyway I did give him my ration of cheese.

Most days Chas would arrive home round about late lunchtime, having completed the collection part of his duties, and even though money was extremely tight I would try to give him one real meal in the middle of the day, though I never attempted steak and kidney pudding again. It was possible to get a chop (of a sort) for 6d. and with this I would cook all the vegetables he grew, plus a Yorkshire pudding, so that a small chop with cauliflower, white sauce, carrots, onions etc., and a ‘high-rise' Yorkshire pudding would look a meal fit for a king, plus a sweet of some sort to follow. Amy lived not far away in a new semi-detached house she and James were purchasing, at Goodmayes. Her son Rodney was at school and her small daughter Angela not yet of school age. Compared to the rest of the family Amy was the affluent one, always such a wizard with her needle, and material and other accessories being reasonably priced in that area in those days, she always looked like a picture from Vogue. Sometimes she would make frocks for Angela and herself of identical material and pattern so that they could have been taken for fashion models of ‘mother and daughter'. Amy also possessed a close friend of the same age, also not hard up, also with the same flair for clothes and possessing an attractive slim figure, as our Amy did. They were, to put it mildly, something to be seen and marvelled at, especially by my ‘piano-divining' neighbour.

The trouble with possessing these talents and acquisitions is there is not much point in hiding their lights under a bushel, and housework completed at lunchtime, Amy, with small daughter, and friend would call on ‘Dolly' each afternoon to share a dish of tea, and of course, my baby was naturally an attraction. I would hope Chas had finished his midday meal so that I could at least wash up and tidy the kitchen before these two ‘ladies' arrived. I always felt like a fat slovenly matron in their company, ashamed of the pile of baby washing waiting for ironing, and my old maternity frock gathered round me with a belt to give it a few fashionable gathers.

One day they arrived before I had time to wash the dinner things for Chas had been late home. The kitchen seemed full to capacity with dirty saucepans, dishes, a rice-pudding dish soaking because of the hard brown bits round the edges, a large Yorkshire pudding tin, also soaking on another table, piles of clothes from the line, ready for folding, me untidy, hot, not belted up properly in my afternoon fashion. ‘Mother and daughter' and friend swept through the kitchen to go into the garden to say ‘hallo' to Susan in her pram. They looked absolutely fantastic, with white silk, blue spotted frocks, smart straw hats with matching bands, navy blue accessories and they carried dainty shopping baskets. Amy gazed around the kitchen with a look of utter distaste. I knew how she felt for it is very depressing to call for a cup of tea and a chat to find one's hostess ‘unprepared' to say the least of it. Irritation overcame her and she said indignantly to me, ‘Why do you make yourself such a lot of work, Dolly, giving Chas such a meal each day?' Then she added, gazing at the Yorkshire pudding tin with its overflowing contents of cold, pudding-spotted water, ‘And Yorkshire pudding too,' just as though it was caviar!

She then swept out into the garden. Behind me stood little Angela and Amy's silent friend, the friend trying to look as though the clouds were not rising up on my domestic horizon. Bravely, I waited until Amy was out of earshot, or I thought she was, and then I said, ‘Well, some people would eat...' (Over the years my descriptive word, which I admit was unforgivably vulgar, has altered in our memories. To me the word becomes milder and more acceptable, to Amy the word becomes more vulgar and more unacceptable.) Perhaps I was braver, or more hurt than I thought, for Amy heard my remark and assumed I was hinting that (because her sweet husband never minded, or complained about any dish set before him) she was not conscientious or interested in what she supplied at her table. Her eyes flashed, she looked so furious I trembled inwardly. She came back into the kitchen, said, ‘Come, Angela' (my little niece looked so disappointed for she loved to be with Auntie Dolly), and swept out of the house. Her friend was trapped between me and the kitchen door for the kitchen was a long oblong affair. Her friend was not brave enough to say good-bye to me, and hanging her head in embarrassment she scuttled after Amy.