Dolly's War (28 page)

By becoming a ‘shop lady' I had fulfilled a childhood dream. When we were young and living in the East End of London before the First World War, my friends and I had spent hours ‘playing shops' and I wondered why my grandchildren and their friends were not enamoured of the game. Perhaps supermarkets and chain stores do not possess the magic of those small, dark, lovely smelling shops of the Poplar of the 1900s. For us, as children, the next best thing to having shopkeepers for parents was to possess a friend who lived in a shop. One was then the envy of one's companions. I was doubly fortunate, for two of my friends lived in shops; thus I was accepted by a higher class of person than my father's job as a plumber for the council would justify, for we looked upon shopkeepers as extremely rich people.

One of my friends lived in a ‘general' where everything from paraffin to toffee apples was sold, and the other lived at a corn chandler's, and this shop I was sure was the loveliest smelling place on earth. The corn chandler was a handsome man with curling moustaches and a brown overall. His wife, an elegant lady, wore her thick, brown hair piled round the top of her head in large, shiny, sausage rolls. Her long, slim neck was encased in a boned lace circlet and her muslin blouses were tucked from neck to waist, where a stiff velvet band imprisoned the blouse tidily into her long flowing skirt.

The shop was long and dark with a scrubbed wooden floor, permanently dusty, yet with what my mother would have described as clean dust, for it would have been impossible to sell corn, chaff, hay, dried flowers, herbs and straw without this residue. Underneath the counter were wooden bins containing the stock, together with pewter scoops and cans with brass handles for measuring. Sometimes my friend's parents would let me scoop up a measure for a customer, or fill a bag with straw or sweet-smelling hay for customers' rabbits and horses.

I was always glad that my brothers walked past the corn chandler's in a respectable manner, for my friend's mother had said she was very pleased her daughter had such a nice little friend in Dolly Chegwidden. It was almost impossible to believe that she was one of ten children, she was so well ‘kept' and nicely behaved. It would have been dreadful if David or Cecil, the most mischievous of my brothers, had shouted into the shop, ‘Have you any rabbits' eggs today?' and gone into hysterics at their wit, which they were quite likely to do.

Chas and I had become owners of our present emporium more by accident than design. Originally Chas had come to North London to help his brother Rob who owned a busy store. Rob's wife Olive also worked in the shop. She had managed to run the shop during the war years when Rob was a soldier and now she was anxious, after working full time for so many years, to become a housewife again and for Chas to replace her. After Chas arrived, however, the shop became busier than ever and Rob decided that the only thing to do was for him to retire too, and to sell the business. We could not afford to buy it and were faced with not only finding a job for Chas but also somewhere to live as we had let our house at Forest Gate (where we had lived during the war) to move over the shop. It was while we were sorting out these problems that I settled our future by accident. By such strange quirks of fate are our lives determined. If Chas had liked my rice puddings we would not have become Mr-and-Mrs-Grocer-on-the-corner.

Chas always insisted my rice puddings were either too liquid or too solid and had permanently relieved me of attempting his favourite pudding by daringly purchasing a tin of Ambrosia Creamed Rice, at that time an innovation. His brother Rob, although a marvellous grocer, was sometimes conservative in his buying and at the time would not have canned rice on his shelves. He felt such ready-prepared food might prove the ruination of the housewife. I had, therefore, either to go further afield in my ambrosian search or practise rice-pudding making. In our road was a seedy, run-down grocer's, which had obviously seen better days, owned by an elderly man who had been an accountant. His wife having become ill, the accountant, no grocer, was soldiering on alone. One day I espied in the window the tins of my husband's delight, Ambrosia Creamed Rice, and thus began a strange friendship between Dolly and the old shopkeeper.

I would take tea with him in the back room of the shop where a permanently smoking fire had blackened all the walls. I always offered to wash the crockery and make the tea as in this way I was able to sneak in my own tea cloth.
His
tea cloths my mother would have described as ‘black as the ace of spades'. The old boy had a peculiar way of speaking. Commencing slowly and deliberately, he would pause, stand up, take a deep breath and out would pop an enormously long tongue rolled up like a stuffed vine leaf. He would poke this in and out rapidly, just like an ant eater's tongue, then, the storm over, would sit down and resume the conversation. We were rarely interrupted as he had very few customers, so he used to show me his expensive, leather-bound ledgers with beautiful, script-like entries worthy of a multiple store.

One day I arrived at my friend's shop to find him lying on the floor in the back room, his hand bleeding profusely. He had sliced it on the bacon machine and had fainted. I telephoned for an ambulance and took charge of the shop while he was at the hospital. He was back in his shop the next day but, with great emotion, suggested that Chas and I purchase his business. I knew local traders had been badgering him for a long time to sell to them but he didn't really need the money and he just loved to come to the shop every day. There was no point in mentioning this offer to Chas, for we had no money. Our house at Forest Gate was let on a low rent; no one would buy it with a sitting tenant. But, like a jig-saw completed by an invisible hand, the same evening, right out of the blue, we received a telephone call from the agents who collected our rent. ‘Would we contemplate selling our house? One of their clients had taken a fancy to it. The price offered was the price suggested by the old accountant and, before we really had time to think deeply about what we were doing, the matter was settled; Dolly and Chas were Grocers and Provision Merchants.

We prayed we would be able to hold our heads above water and survive the scarcity of customers; asking for a miracle, I thought. Still, at least the initial peace and quiet would give me time to spring clean the premises, for we would be living over the shop. Water was laid to the ground floor only and the whole place was incredibly filthy, but the rooms were large and there was a garden for the two children, even though it was then a rubbish dump. The upstairs rooms were crammed to capacity with pieces of old, broken furniture, carpets and junk, one room filled entirely with wrapping paper, bags and balls of string. During the war years the old man had instituted his own severe economy drive, wrapping his customers' eggs, etc., in pieces of old newspaper, yet at the same time, on the principle that stock is as good as money, he had not cancelled his regular order for greaseproof paper and sugar-bags. This was an unexpected bonus for us, for, packed in their original coverings and cartons, they were clean and usable.

I did not look forward to dealing with ration books, for although the Second World War had been over for eight years rationing was still in force. The books contained tiny sections which had to be cancelled or the coupons cut out. I could visualise irate and starving customers descending on Chas because Dolly had removed too many, or the wrong week's, coupons. Worse still, I might omit to cancel or remove a certain week's numbered coupon and a customer, if unscrupulous (and who could blame a woman with a growing family?), would receive double rations to the detriment of another customer. How could I face a mother needing rations which I had given to someone else? As so often in my life, I worried myself sick about things which either never transpired or settled themselves peaceably. There was no need for my frantic worry about wrong distribution of rationed goods, for in some mysterious way our old accountant had amassed a supply of goods at his wholesalers': rations which were due to him and which, unlike the bags and string, he had never taken up. I expected to serve skeletal customers, for they must have been kept short for the duration, but we never got to the bottom of this mystery. Everything was above board and the unused rations at the wholesalers' were the legitimate allocation due to our shop. Joy of joys, I thought gladly, it doesn't matter if I do give extra rations (by mistake, of course); but, before I could act the Lady Bountiful, rationing ended. I was furious when I thought of the unused allocation. Chas thought me very stupid. ‘Cannot you get it into your thick head, woman, that we can have
all
we want?' But I still wished the powers-that-be had maintained rationing until we had used up our lovely cache, for I might have got the reputation for generosity. ‘More likely Holloway,' was Chas's caustic comment, his memories of a night spent in a police station at his only ever slip into the world of crime still vivid in his mind. I was sure the profligate had won over the thrifty.

Of course I wanted rationing to end. Here we were in 1953 and, although rationing was not so severe and not too worrying, we still had ration books. Each generation likes to impress on a succeeding one its memories of deprivation. I would say to my children, ‘I had no toys when I was a child.' I don't know that they were duly impressed, indeed my son William was highly amused one day when daughter Susan said sadly to him, ‘I was
seven
before I even
saw
a banana.' Although we chatted and joked in the food queues there was, nevertheless, the wary look around, the hawk-like watching of one's own interests. Once I was in a very long queue at the fishmonger's. The fish had not yet arrived from the market. Suddenly the woman in front of me asked, ‘What fish is expected?' ‘Hake,' I replied. ‘Oh dear,' she said miserably, ‘That's no good to me for I can only cook cod.'

When I remember rationing I remember the worst period, the smallest amounts, the two ounces of butter, the four ounces of margarine or cooking fat, etc., whereas in actual fact it fluctuated. A friend of mine made her pastry with liquid paraffin instead of fat. Unfortunately she told her family how clever she had been and it was a running battle for her to get them to eat her vegetable pies, and a running battle when they did. In one shop a mother gave the cheese ration to a small child in a push-chair. ‘This ain't worth taking home,' she remarked. ‘Good idea,' I thought, ‘I'll do that with my Susan.' She sat in her pram, looked at the cheese, took a cautious suck, spat it out and threw the cheese into the road.

The meat position was grim. At its highest level it was one shilling and twopence per person per week and about twopence halfpenny of this had to be taken in corned beef. Of course offal was unrationed but for us, during the war, it seemed as though animals were bred with an inner vacuum. We did have clothing coupons but these were ample for my family. Clothes bore a ‘utility' label which assured us that they were to a general standard of quality and material. Naturally, luxury garments and material were out for the duration.

When we first took over our shop in 1953 washing-up liquid was unknown. We used soda for washing the crockery and soap for scrubbing floors. I had plenty of practice at this when I moved into the flat over the shop but my spring-cleaning plans went overboard, for we became busy from the day we took over from the old gentleman and, naturally, business took priority over domestic order. At that time my sister Amy worked full time in a chemist's shop and, having two days' leave due, came to help us. Proficient at shop work, she assisted Chas while I completed forty-eight hours' emergency operations on our living quarters, resenting Amy's remark to Chas, ‘If I know Dolly, she'll do it all in twenty-four hours.' Knowing I was worried about serving in a shop, Amy said, ‘Well, Dolly, I do appreciate that grocery work will be very hard, skinning cheeses, boning bacon [I felt like Jack the Ripper when Chas inspected the first side of bacon I ever boned], cleaning the bacon machine [I was glad when I tremblingly did this that I was not a naturist], but at least you will not be asked for intimate articles or for some strange commodity of which you have never heard.' Amy had worked at her chemist's shop for some years and, it being an exceptionally busy one in a large, working-class area, she was a great help and stay to the harassed manager, indeed the backbone of the staff, for though different young lady assistants were employed from time to time, Amy was older and constant. At one time when the manager was to be away he reassured the visiting temporary manager with the words, ‘Don't worry, Amy will be here and she is a veritable tower of strength.' This amused both Amy and the temporary manager, for she was tiny and he was immensely tall. His name was Mr Pickup and Amy said he could appropriately reach goods from the highest shelves for her.

Amy kept us amused at the comical happenings at her chemist's. One day a customer asked one of the young lady assistants for a ‘dutch cap'. ‘Did you want it for doing your housework in, dear?' enquired the bright young thing. Amy was amazed to discover that I was as ignorant of the use of this foreign garment or article of apparel as her young colleague. Many lady customers requiring intimate articles would wait for Amy to serve them. Sometimes they needed the professional advice of the older woman! Two young women waited a long time to talk to Amy on one occasion and at last, in a discreet corner of the shop, one young lady whispered conspiratorially to Amy, ‘Can you help my friend in a confidential way?' ‘I shall be only too happy to advise you,' replied Amy, years of medical experience behind her. ‘Well, my friend is troubled with hot breasts.' This passionate condition was a new one to Doctor Amy and she retired to the dispensing room to seek higher advice from the manager. He was just emerging from the large refrigerator and listened seriously to Amy's unusual problem – well, the customer's really. With a dead-pan face he said to Amy, ‘I have two ice-cold hands at the moment if I can help the young lady out of her trouble!' At least
our
customer's requests were likely to be of a less embarrassing nature!