Dolly's War (14 page)

In the evenings I went back to my ‘round' dressed up like a model (people didn't recognise me out of my Churchillian boiler-suit and head scarf) to canvass for new business. Various ‘gentleman' friends accompanied me, usually old stalwarts of the company, expert sellers of insurance. I would go through my ‘register' beforehand to make a list of people who would, or could, or should, be given the ‘opportunity' of purchasing ‘extra cover'. People treated our visits as a call of honoured guests. I was popular, the children liked me, and I used to spend my time amusing the children while my companion ‘did his turn', for selling bored and somewhat embarrassed me. The old stalwarts all had one line which was theirs and theirs alone. When it looked as though the people weren't quite sure whether to take out insurance or not, one representative would always say, ‘Well, of course, Madam, you know your purse better than I.' Another would say, ‘The choice is yours, Madam, I never persuade a lady against her will' (knowing this one, I thought, ‘give him half a chance'), ‘I can only advise.'

The tales these old stalwarts told me of years and years ago would shock many an insurance man of today. I wondered how they ever got round when they were young men, or ever had the strength to go home, and I wondered where the rounds had been in the 1920s, for there were no ladies on my round, starving for love, as apparently they had been in ‘the good old days' of my canvasser friends. They all seemed disappointed when I went straight home after a canvassing session. I used to think, how conceited is the male, he may be old, toothless, bald, trembly (well, that's natural) and yet he always has the unfailing belief in his appeal to the opposite sex, however attractive and young the female might be.

It was lovely when I called at the houses where people had their books and correct money at the ready. Lots of women, myself included, have to turn their homes inside out searching for that elusive purse. One Monday morning I called at a house, where, without fail, business was concluded swiftly, nevertheless cheerfully, in a matter of seconds. This bright Monday morning I rat-a-tatted. Instead of the immediate opening of the door came a frantic scream from the occupant. ‘Just a minute, Mrs S., I'm seeing to a snake.' Then before the words had sunk in came terrific thuds, crashes and cries from my client. Had she had a breakdown through the long separation from her husband? I wondered. Were the raids too much for her, or worse still, was she being attacked by a German spy or parachutist? I must fetch help I decided, but just as I reached the garden gate, the door opened and my name was called. The house was always immaculate, a band-box of a place. The young wife always bright and well groomed. She had cleaned the whole house that morning and was brushing the last bottom stair when she heard a swishing noise above her head. Looking up, to her horror, on the top stair was a snake, and it was weaving to and fro, just as snakes did on the films.

She had dashed into the garden for a spade and returned with it just as I knocked on her door. She was afraid that had she opened the door the snake might come out at me, or it might have crawled somewhere else in her house. She had, for her peace of mind, to know where the snake was. She had attacked the snake, killed it and before opening the door to me, had thrown it out on a heap of coal in her back garden. ‘Would you have a cup of tea with me?' she said. ‘I feel trembly now.' After our tea she asked if I would like to see the snake. ‘If it's really dead,' was my brave reply. We went into the garden just as the cat next door slunk away. He had eaten the snake with the exception of its head and this lay evil and malevolent looking, even without its body. It was a kind of blackish yellow. It was a mystery where it had come from; in her clean house there was nowhere to hide, unless it had been coiled up somewhere on a warm boiler in the loft. My client did not think she was brave at all for she said, ‘There was nothing else I could do.' I could have thought of another alternative.

I had become friendly with the Superintendent and his wife and she suggested, while Chas was away and Susan with Marjorie, that I move in with them. In this way her husband would assist me with my accounts – I was sometimes short and had to put money in at the time of my audits. No doubt I was doing what Chas had warned me I would, chatting away, entering the premiums in the books and sometimes dashing off absent-mindedly without taking the cash. The wife would see that I had regular meals and they worried about me being in an empty house during the air-raids, for the Beadles had been given accommodation by the council. The Superintendent's next-door neighbour was an engineer and between them they had built an underground shelter in the garden. It was made of stone, deep, deep down, with electric light, air-conditioning and facilities for preparing a meal. The raids seemed so distant in this shelter, safe as houses the engineer opined, but I hated every minute in it. To me it was a mausoleum, and I was happier out in the open doing my rounds, which made my friends very cross.

They were kind to me although I realised they couldn't know how I felt with my family scattered. I had never been interested in my appearance so far as elegant costume, or coiffure, was concerned and the Superintendent's wife decided I could look a striking woman if I took an interest. She was a very smart woman and decided to take me in hand. Each week we visited her hair stylist who said I would need many visits to bring my hair into line with the style he planned for me, Pompadour. My thick tresses were shorn and then thinned gradually. I was led like a lamb to the slaughter. My precious clothing coupons were squandered on a tailored suit, silk shirt, and top coat. My warm woollen vests and pants were discarded and replaced by silk panties and very soon I had the added job of repulsing the advances of older men who couldn't be called up. Now a bird of paradise and no longer in the uniform of a mourning wife, they seemed to think me fair game. The more attractive they seemed to think me the more I hated and detested them, how dare they seek my company when my husband was away at the war, especially as they knew him and liked him. I spent every moment I could in Suffolk with Marjorie and Susan, and now, her baby Richard. When I made my first visit to Marjorie after my transformation she burst into tears. She said, ‘Oh, Dolly, I didn't recognise you when you came down the road, you looked like a mannequin, you haven't gone away from us, have you?' I certainly felt another person with my new plumage and loss of weight through the miles I had walked.

However, salvation came in the form of the local doctor, a down-to-earth matter-of-fact Scotsman. Flimsy silk knickers were definitely not the right garb for outdoor work in the depths of winter and I became ill with cystitis. My hostess came to the surgery with me and so heard the doctor say, ‘With your job, lassie, what you need is plenty of porridge and warm trews.'

But in any case my stay at this lovely modern house was nearing its end. My benefactors possessed an elegant collie, a gentleman of a dog, beautifully trained and beautiful to look at with his lovely long fur and glowing eyes. I made friends with him, no fear of dogs now, so that when they went away for the weekend I was quite happy to be alone with Mac. One Saturday we had had a couple of air-raids, but the ‘all clear' having sounded, I was tired, so went to bed. Suddenly I was awoken by a noisy barking and found Mac tugging at my bedclothes. I thought he had gone berserk for he began dragging at the sleeve of my pyjamas. I began to feel quite nervous and decided to go downstairs. Mac bounced down after me and as we reached the bottom stair there was a terrific explosion. It seemed as though there was a huge typhoon which was making the house collapse and something wet ran down my face. Then came a fierce knocking at the door and an air-raid warden enquired if I was O.K. A land-mine had come down in the next road. When the rescue squad looked at my bed they said Mac should receive a medal, for where my head would have been was a rafter from the roof, and embedded in my pillow, an enormous nail.

I wrote to Chas, glossing over the details, but hinting that perhaps it would be better for me to relinquish my job and go to Suffolk with Marjorie, for with both of us at the front line, more or less, Susan might become an orphan. My stiff upper lip decision deceived him because he took my light-hearted letter literally and advised me to ‘be his brave soldier girl and stick it out'. This of course was guaranteed to put me in a catty mood, to say the least of it, especially as I took his cheerful letters literally – I thought they had fun on a winter's night on a Dartmoor searchlight site. I could not know they tried to sleep in freezing winter darkness in unlighted tents, oozing with mud, sometimes with only one blanket per man! Later, when Chas became troop clerk he obtained a nine-inch wide wooden couch to sleep on. One of the forms issued, ‘Soldier, for the use of', on which they sat at meal-times. Of course, it was only a ‘single' bed.

I began to become envious of his life and feel Susan and I were hard done by, especially after I'd read about one amusing day he'd had. On one occasion on manoeuvres, he was dressed up as a curate and accompanied by an ATS girl in civvies, the object being to spy out the land and observe ‘the enemy' without being discovered. During their exercises, whilst trying to hide from the enemy, they were forced to lie together in a hedge, and cover themselves with leaves. (I was a little suspicious of this babes in the wood part.) So well were they hidden that members of the ‘enemy' came and urinated upon them and Chas said, ‘Do you know after that terrible experience we still never moved? Well, we wouldn't have done if they were really the enemy, would we?' I think he and his lady companion were ‘highly commended'.

He also used to play tennis at the vicarage. One young lady, knowing his fondness for salads brought him lettuces and home-grown tomatoes and in one of his letters he added a postscript to the effect that if I ever had a couple of pounds spare cash lying round he would be very pleased of same. Whether it was his rabbiting on about his high-life in Devon, his humility in the way he asked for the cash, or my annoyance at the ‘brave soldier girl bit', I do not know, but I dashed off a letter to him so vitriolic in its content that I was not surprised at his awful reply-in return. Divorce! Of course I calmed down and poured oil on troubled waters by sending him a whole five pounds! I imagine I begrudged it for I was saving hard for his return. The Prudential were absolutely marvellous to the wives of their serving agents for they made up their soldier's allowance, which was small, so I received full wages for Chas each month. In addition to this my wages were good and I earned lots of commission. We had never been so well off in our lives. Eventually our letters got back to normal.

Then Susan became very ill with whooping-cough and complications and I left the Superintendent's house, went back to my flat at Forest Gate and brought Susan home from the country to be with me. The doctor suggested Chas try to get a few days' compassionate leave and I sent a certificate to Chas but he replied that he couldn't show this to the authorities because he felt as whooping-cough was a contagious disease it wouldn't be fair to his ‘buddies' some of whom had their wives and children in Devon. I still carried on with my job for Chas's sister came over during the day to be with Susan, but one night I was alone with baby in the cellar when she had a convulsion and I felt it was better to chance the bombs and be upstairs with her in the warm for the cold musty cellar couldn't be doing her any good. My parents were in Wales with my sister Winifred but as soon as they heard I was back at Forest Gate with a sick baby they took the next train back, and Susan seemed to recover rapidly.

My father was delighted to be in the front line again and was extremely daring, much to Mother's annoyance and distress. He would just not take cover during the raids. At the time of the incendiary bombs he would be on the prowl all round the house and garden watching for them with his little stirrup-pump. He was so foolhardy and obstinate he wouldn't even wear a tin hat. Because he remained unscathed during the greater part of the war he convinced himself, I think, that he bore a charmed life, so that when he was finally ‘wounded' it was entirely due to his own foolhardiness. Later in the war, at the time of the doodlebugs, he was in his bedroom upstairs. He had the window open and was hanging perilously out watching one of these fiery puffing trains in the sky wondering where and when its engines would ‘cut out'. Mother, worried as to where he was, had noiselessly entered the bedroom. She had a way of gliding very quietly, rather like those long-plaited Russian dancers. She reached Father just as the engines of the doodlebug ceased preparatory to its terrible dive to earth, and saying in loud tones, ‘Whatever are you doing, Walter, hanging out of the window when the doodlebug is ready to drop?' She put her hand on his shoulder. He had been unaware of her approach and started back from the window in fright at her voice and the approaching calamity above him. As he did so Mother's teeth collided with his bald head. Her two front teeth were knocked out and he had a nasty bite in the middle of his crown. ‘Strike me pink, woman, what are you bleeding well creeping about for?' he shouted. But when I arrived home he was laughing about it and I thought my mother looked very comical with her two front teeth missing, even though she may not have felt as jocular as she looked.

Susan became ill again and it was then I decided to stay home and care for her, and in spite of the severe raids, the time she and I spent with my parents at Forest Gate was a really happy one. My father played with Susan for hours and their ‘favourite' game was tea-parties. One wet day I was out queuing for fish, a luxury, for it wasn't on the ration and so no food coupons were needed. It was a long wait, for the queue formed before the fish arrived. Dad said he would take care of Susan while Mother popped next door to visit a sick neighbour. On Mother's return she was horrified to find her dining-room floor swimming with water. ‘Oh, Dad,' she wailed. ‘Why ever did you give Susan water to play with in here?' ‘I never gave Susan any water,' insisted an indignant grandfather, ‘We've just been having a tea-party. I've drunk twenty-four cups of delicious “tea”, the best I have ever tasted, haven't I, Susie?' Mother didn't believe my father, for she knew Susan couldn't reach the taps and she asked Susan to show her where the water came from. Susan took mother's hand, led her to the bathroom and pointed to the lavatory-pan.