Dolly's War (7 page)

Sadly, however, I went down with sunstroke and got ticked off by the doctor, but since I had spent the holiday wrapped up like a cocoon out of the sun as my red hair made me prone to sunstroke, I thought him extremely unfair.

On our return from Jersey, Rob's firm offered him a grocery business, on which they had been losing money, and Rob, feeling he and Olive could make something of this opportunity, accepted, and soon after our return they left Forest Gate. They worked, indeed slaved, in this business and the following Christmas we went to stay with them. On the Christmas tree was an envelope addressed to ‘Charlie and Dorothy'. It was a gift to us of their half of the house at Forest Gate!

My youngest sister, Marjorie, my mother's tenth and youngest child, was now to be married to her Alfred. They had been busy searching for a flat so that although we were sad when Chas's family moved, it meant there was. an empty flat for Marjorie at Forest Gate. Everything went so smoothly for her wedding that I was a little envious and she looked so pretty too in her white classical gown with four bridesmaids in diaphanous spring green. I wore a dark purple suit with a grey crepe-de-Chine blouse which had stitched collars and cuffs and in a Jewish hat shop in the Mile End Road they made me a little grey hat the same colour as the blouse. They really were clever those Jewish hat-designers, for not having a ‘hat-face' I had never possessed a hat which looked even passable, but this one really did do something for me. Enhancement was too mild a word for this miracle, and the grey with the purple suited my auburn colouring. I knew I looked really stunning for on my arrival at the church my fashion-plate sister, Amy, eyed me up and down and announced, ‘The suit's too small for you, Dolly, but I will buy it from you.' In a warm sisterly mood I said, half-believing that my figure ‘showed' too much, ‘Thanks, I'll let you have it,' which I did, but with her dark skin somehow it never really looked anything again but an ordinary suit. But it was my own fault for not believing the rest of the family when they said, ‘Dolly, you look marvellous.'

The reception was held in the Institute of All Saints Church and we had dancing and games and Marjorie's wedding was voted ‘the wedding' of the family. Certainly I enjoyed it much better than any of the other weddings we had had, including my own. Secretly I wished Marjorie a smoother honeymoon than I had experienced and she came back brown and happy but confided in me that her honeymoon night was a little frightening for she thought she had been ‘wounded' and her panic scared her bridegroom so much he lit his pipe to try to keep calm, but somehow got the bowl of the pipe upside down and set fire to the bedroom carpet.

Since the disaster of my own honeymoon we had decided that birth control was not for us, we were not clever enough to manage this scientific non-arrival paraphernalia, and had philosophically decided to let nature take its course. Well nature had decided to laugh at us for no babies wanted to be parented by Chas and Dorothy. I was a little miserable about this for I began to look at all the lovely babies in their prams and wonder what ours would be like if ever we were fortunate enough to manage such a miracle. At the same time I felt that I wouldn't like my baby's father to be a waiter and work for such long and arduous hours. I tackled Chas about this and he said of course he would like another job, but was terrified of being unemployed and in any case jobs were still difficult to obtain in the late 1930s. I thought he had no adventure in his soul and although I nagged him about it constantly it did no good. Therefore I began to scheme for the future, and decided if jobs were scarce in shipping, for which Chas had the necessary qualifications, I must think further afield for another ‘respectable' job. One evening the Prudential agent called with the District Manager canvassing for business and I enquired as to the prospects of an agent's position. ‘Oh,' said the District Manager, looking at Chas's occupation on the new endowment form, ‘waiter'. ‘Our agents have to have a good education, a smart appearance, be clever with figures, and be able to sell insurance and advise people about savings.' Because he had touched my pride on the raw, over-sensitive I assumed that a waiter was not considered a man of education. I wrote to the Prudential, in my best handwriting, and signed the letter ‘Charles W. Scannell'. I said nothing to Chas for I knew it would worry him, and then
THE FORMS
came. I filled them in with beautiful printing and writing, telling a few white lies as to education and I believe I made him a supervisor at his restaurant. A week later came an epistle inviting Chas to an interview and a written examination. If he was accepted, then a stringent medical examination would follow.

I wandered about all the evening searching for suitable words with which to break the news to my darling, but when he came in I blurted it all out. He was horrified at what I had done, he made me feel I had forged Bank of England documents, but at last I convinced him that what mattered was the fact that even if he'd had no education he was still as knowledgeable as many a more educated man and he did know how quick with figures he was. A more determined character than he, I used threats as to what I would do if he didn't attend for the interview and examination. Finally he went, looking a little under the weather. I hadn't told him all the lies I had written on the form for he just would not have gone for the interview, and I kept my fingers crossed that my answers to the questions on the forms would not be challenged. I felt worried for Chas and also myself. He would come home like a raging lion if a pertinent question was asked, for my husband was of that rare breed of husband – he was physically unable to tell a lie, even a little white one, indeed he couldn't even embroider a joke, everything had to be the absolute truth for an untruth would almost choke him. I suppose that is why he rarely told a joke, for who wants to listen to a funny story related almost as a vicar announces a hymn.

Always the eternal optimist I was sure he would pass the interview and written examination and be sent on in the afternoon to the medical officer. Although he was one hundred per cent fit, at that time an exceptionally thin man was medically suspect, and I thought I would help him through the physical examination. I filled his pockets with bags of pennies and said he could absent-mindedly put his overcoat over his arm when stepping on the scales.

All day long I wandered from room to room. The house was quiet for Marjorie had gone back to work after her marriage, and finally when dusk was falling in came ‘The man from the Pru' for he had passed the interview, written examination and medical examination with flying colours. Well, perhaps it isn't quite true to say he had passed the medical with flying colours for the doctor had discovered my ruse with the coppers, but he said to Chas, ‘Give my good wishes to your dear wife and tell her you are quite healthy, for a skeleton,' and then he had added, wearily, ‘What does it matter, the war will be on us soon and we might all be gone.' With these cheerful words he passed my husband A.1.

Everyone was delighted that Chas, now a Prudential agent, was released from his slavery of waiting on other people. He soon became such a conscientious and successful agent that it was a mystery to me how he ever worked as a waiter in the first place. How soon I forgot the depression of the thirties, the dole queues, men with better qualifications than his, unemployed, I even forgot how pleased we were that through being a waiter he was able to support a wife, for he would have remained an ‘ancient' junior had he stayed with the firm he started to work for on leaving school because promotion there went to ‘friends' of the management.

Chas was slight and short and hardly reached up to the office counter when he first began his city career and was very proud that one of his jobs, the one with such power, was the drawing of the
BLUE
line across the page of the staff signing in book. This blue line was drawn across the page at 9.15 a.m. and every morning Chas, a real little Hitler, would eagerly watch the clock and at the precise second, like the sword of Damocles, inevitably and irrevocably draw the thin blue line. It mattered not that through the glass doors a tearful typist or an irate clerk could be seen approaching. Chas drew his blue line with delight. Then he handed out the late excuse slips – ‘I was... late this morning because...' and the excuses were ingenious and varied, with the exception of the late slip which an old stalwart of the firm received every morning during the two years Chas wielded power over tempus fugit. Come rain or shine, summer, spring or fall, the old stalwart's excuse was the same, a grand thumb to the nose gesture to authority – ... because of
FOG
. Chas is so ashamed of himself and his conscience troubles him now when he recalls his joyful period as guardian of the time-keeping book.

Chas's insurance round was at Dagenham, rows and rows of identical houses, long roads of sameness. He was extremely popular with those friendly people, not because he was a jolly sort of caller, but because there was nothing he would not do for them, he was trusted and respected. I knew he would make an excellent agent but later on when I took over his round during the war even I was surprised at the esteem in which he was held and touched by the way he had helped people far beyond the line of duty.

My mother was very pleased that Chas and I were beginning to rise in the world, class-wise, or at least she felt we had taken our first few faltering steps towards the life of a ‘tradesman' and his consort. She had never really been 100% for my marriage with Chas for, although she liked him, because of his lack of flesh she was quite convinced my life would be one of attendance on an invalid and her unspoken belief was, I was sure, ‘Dolly will soon get fed up with that.' She seemed to me to be always watching my husband with a look of maternal sympathy, feeling that should he ever be confined to a wheel-chair it would not be long before the said wheel-chair and its delicate contents would either be under a bus or over a cliff provided that my invalid, as a non-earner, would ever have been able to get to the sea. She adjured him to ‘wrap up well and keep well shod' in the treacherous winter weather we seemed to experience then, although she thought the outdoor life might set him up if Dolly kept him well fed with good home-cooking. The trouble here was finance, for now that Chas was a white-collared ‘gentleman caller' this commodity was an intensely scarce one. His basic weekly wage was £3, our last £50 capital was deposited as a sort of indemnity, and Chas had to contract a life insurance with the company, so that after weekly deductions and rent of 22s. 6d. per week, there was about thirty shillings left for all other necessities, including food.

In addition to this ‘struggle', possibly because I had completely forgotten my intense desire for a baby, I became pregnant. This meant the procuring of baby clothes, cot and pram. It was, of course, the immediate future which was a bit desperate money-wise, in the long term the prospects were rosy for not only would there be commission on new business but there were half-yearly, or yearly, lump sum payments for the handling of national health insurance. I loved writing the cards which I did in my best writing and printing, watched over by the eagle eye of Chas, ever confident, as he thought me scatter-brained, that I would either lose a reference card, or put one in the wrong file.

The problem with keeping one's head above water knowing that solvency was just around the corner, was that one's stock of clothes and appurtenances always wanted renewing when the lump sums did come; therefore, like a vicious circle, we would again be waiting for the next ‘windfall'. We had never had many clothes being of a saving nature. True, this had enabled us to supply the £50 deposit needed for the job and prior to that the deposit for the house at Forest Gate but at one time during my pregnancy I was walking about with cardboard in the soles of my ‘holey' shoes which brought back the memory of my school-friend Lizzie who was once so excited at finding ‘a luverly bit of cardboard for me shoes, look Dolly, it ain't even cracked'. I don't know whether my family would have rallied round had they known of our temporary set-back. They really all had a hard job to keep their heads above water, as most people had in the thirties, and in any case we had always been a most independent family and had told no one of our money troubles. Chas's father knew of our plight and wanted so much to help but he had scrimped and saved and gone without to amass the small amount necessary for a deposit on Chas's sister Netta's house when, with a small baby, she was without accommodation. Chas felt we really couldn't borrow the money which Netta was paying back to her father weekly, although his dear father was pressing him to do so. No, independence was the watchword of all us young-marrieds and teenagers in those far-off days. Chas's brother Phil, always so generous and always the dandy where clothes were concerned, presented Chas with a pearl-grey suit, which we had dyed dark brown but tragedy stalked there, for nursing a friend's baby one day, the baby had an ‘accident' and the lovely dark brown suit became pearl-grey again round the crutch.

To make matters worse we had to leave Forest Gate and live nearer Chas's agency at Dagenham and since the area was a mixture of new-town council-houses, for which we weren't eligible, and estates of newly-built private houses, it was difficult to get accommodation. Oh, those various ‘stays' in odd furnished rooms, washing up on the table, cooking over a gas-ring or fire. I was getting larger and unhappier each day and frantic that we wouldn't get settled before our baby was born. At last our luck turned and one of the other Pru gentlemen found us a lovely flat in a lovely road at Ilford. He informed us that the owner-occupier was a widow, a most charming woman, an absolute darling, so the fact that we had to share her bathroom and kitchen would be no problem at all. Well, he was so right, she was a real charmer, an absolute angel to everyone, including Chas, especially Chas, but within minutes of our occupancy I felt ‘someone walking over my grave' for when this charmer gazed at me with her glittering eyes, so dark they looked black, I knew that she hated me with a deadly hatred. Some deep native instinct from time immemorial gave me a feeling of cold and sickly fear.