Dolly's War (27 page)

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 anxiety 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 lavender, 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

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.

Mother Knew Best

Dolly's Mixture

The Guild's guest speaker told us of his great joy when, walking one day, he espied a lady who possessed an unusual knocker. He offered her £3 for this collector's item and she was thrilled to be able to unscrew it on the spot for him. He said he happily left a knockerless lady holding in her hand his three £1 notes. Did we think he had robbed the lady?

It's the 1950's, and Dolly and her husband Chas are now Grocers and Provision Merchants. Owning a shop was a childhood dream of Dolly's, though it wouldn't have happened had Dolly's rice puddings been a little better. And it is at this relatively advanced age, amid the continuing adventures and misadventures of Dolly's eccentric and hilarious family, Dolly finds a best friend for the first time in her life.

‘You have to laugh with Dolly Scannell. Somehow that Cockney flow of funny tales shakes you up into laughter.'
Evening Standard

‘Lean! Madam, did you say
lean
?' cried my husband, Chas, in life or death tones to the small but belligerent woman facing him across the counter of our North London Grocery and Provision Store. His voice took on an almost high-pitched note as he gazed first in admiration at the bacon rashers displayed on the greaseproof paper, then in incredulous disbelief at the little customer who had examined them with distaste and had, to my husband's shocked amazement, demanded, ‘Ain't you got somethink lean?', thus insulting what my dear Chas was sure were ‘lean Danish back rashers of the finest quality'.

Like a golfer teeing off at the last vital hole in a championship match, the woman took a firmer stance on the lino-covered floor. This movement appeared to go through her body to her head which began to fidget in unison with her feet. Simultaneously with her ‘action stations' stance came her battle cry, ‘My Jack can't eat nothink fat!' Chas inspected the bacon again and, certain in this instance that the customer was not always right, he began patiently and kindly, a tutoring session as to the qualities which should be sought in prime rashers. I knew the little woman would be an unwilling pupil at this seminar, her mind and ears closed to Chas's tutorial; she was sure that in our back room reposed the perfect rashers she sought for her spouse and she was determined to leave the premises victor in this battle. It was, in a way, an affectionate tussle of wills, for neither Chas nor the customer bore any antagonism to the other. At my husband's remark, ‘Bacon's not
supposed
to be all
lean
,' I realised, if he did not, the stalemate had been reached and I went into the back room of the shop where lived our slicing machine. This bright-red monster with its large, round, shining steel blade, sharper than a Samurai sword, never failed to terrify me. When I used it Chas criticised my operating technique, for I arched my body backwards, terrified that the blade would roll out of its sockets towards me. Still clamped in this machine was the side of bacon from which Chas had cut his ‘prime' rashers for little Mrs Jack Spratt, and I cut half a dozen more, arranging them like a fan on the greaseproof paper instead of in a neat, symmetrical pile as Chas had done with his offending package.

I returned to the shop and with a sweeping gesture said to the customer, ‘What about something like this for your hubby, dear?' ‘Ah,' said the woman joyfully, ‘that's more like it.' Then, turning to Chas, she said reproachfully, ‘Why couldn't
you
show me something like this?' adding, ‘Mrs Scannell
always
knows what I want.' I dared not meet my husband's eyes. If he proved to the customer the rashers were identical he would be advertising his wife's dishonesty and the customer's gullibility; if he weighed them up with a smile and sold them he would be advertising his inability to give the lady what she wanted in the first place. With a look of hate for me he wrapped the bacon, knowing full well that the little woman would return at a later date to announce that ‘the bacon Mrs S. chose for her husband was much enjoyed by him.' ‘I suppose you think you're very clever,' said Chas to me, a trifle bitterly, when the customer had gone.