Dolly's Mixture (14 page)

When Ethel arrived she bravely went up to the bathroom. She said, ‘Oh Dorothy, you really ought to go up and look. Min is still waiting for the rat which is sitting behind a fire guard looking so pretty, with its little pink paws across its chest.' ‘Pretty!' I decided I needed a man and I dashed across the road to fetch Alfred, Marjorie's husband. He arrived, looking like the Great White Hunter, carrying a sack, a hammer and a huge flat shovel; but of course our rat had already gone to his little ratty heaven.

When Ethel saw him he was at his last gasp, having been suitably dispatched by Min. Our praying rat's prayers had been in vain. The subsidence in the road had caused the rats to try to find new quarters and there was quite an influx of these horrid creatures. Fortunately our little catty v.c., Min, would not allow them to become squatters and, thanks to her, we received clearance from the authorities.

The authorities! How they can hold one's future in their official grasp. I thought I could see daylight at the end of the long tunnel; I thought our building was safe, until the arrival of the Official. He was not a local man and represented a different authority, possibly something to do with Highways or the like. His main interest was the public safety of our premises. Retired from his job for some time, he had been recalled because of the emergency. A hand-some man in his youth, no doubt, well dressed, public-school type, a baritone voice of which he was inordinately proud, he had the manner of a Shakespearean actor. Possibly I was extra charming or ingratiating to him because I knew he held the fate of our livelihood in his grasp. Although he had come to look at the premises, I wondered if he had mistaken my bosom for my foundations, for that was where his eyes continually rested. It was true I wore thick, chunky woollies, for it was Chas's opinion that a food shop is better without heating and, with the door wide open in a welcoming manner, I covered my chest like an arctic explorer. But, without doubt, the Official was a ‘bosom' and not a ‘leg' man.

My actor called often and at unusual hours. Early-closing day and evenings, sometimes. He called one Thursday afternoon and I suggested I make tea. I thought I could better face his report on the building with a cup of tea to sustain me for what I knew would be bad news. He followed me into the kitchen and, as I went to put the kettle on, grabbed my hand and said, ‘You know, my dear, I could do you no harm at my age, but you do something to me, you are so
alive
.' So it's up to me, I thought. Could I sacrifice myself for the sake of my structure? By the look in his eyes and the pressure of his hand I knew what he wanted the outcome to be. Then I felt that my thoughts as to my structure were so witty that (and comics are not supposed to laugh at their own jokes) I collapsed with laughter, and I said to my would-be harmless lover, ‘You have never tasted my ham, [I cooked them myself] have you? Come downstairs and I'll cut some for you.' A surprised surveyor left bearing a little parcel. It was possibly the most rewarding refusal he had ever received.

The next day workmen appeared on the instructions of my rejected suitor. They were to dig deep into the cellars to expose my foundations. I knew it was the end of our business and that evening, so that the children would not know, I sat on the cellar stairs to weep. After the exposure would come the demolition. There was a knocking at the door and, wiping my eyes, I greeted my butcher. ‘What are you piping your eyes for, Dorofee?' Out it all poured and, when I had finished, no sympathy from him but, ‘What's a matter wiv you, Dorofee, I never fought you was the sort of woman to give in to them -blankety-blanks.' ‘But what can I do? Obviously they are right, the building has suffered in the subsidence.' ‘Look here,' he said, ‘make a fight of it. Let me send my man to you. He's an expert and if it's possible to keep the building,
he'll
keep it for you. It'll cost yer, but what's that compared to what
can
happen?' The butcher's man arrived, a quiet, elderly, dignified man, a building not a bosom surveyor, this. It was as though he wielded some secret power over everyone, for speedily the cellar foundations were covered, new floors laid (the insurance company turned up trumps and paid for the floors, although they weren't legally bound to). Order was restored. Our building was safe, thanks to my dear friend the butcher, and it didn't ‘cost yer', for the surveyor's fees were fair and reasonable.

At long last, all ship-shape and Bristol fashion, we were looking forward to Chas's homecoming. We still did not have a peaceful home for him to return to, for night and day the pneumatic drillers were at work with their hissing and thudding power motor. That I managed to sleep at nights at all, mystified me, but sleep I did, though I worried about Chas's reactions after the quiet of the countryside.

Then I smelt gas. One official from the Gas Board arrived. ‘No madam, definitely not gas.' After the third official arrived with the same conclusions, I gave up. It was obvious that they thought the road subsidence and the pneumatic drillers had made me over anxious. Yet the smell was continually in my nostrils. Only mine. Finally, one Thursday afternoon I phoned the Gas Board, pretending I was a visitor taking over in Mrs Scannell's absence. Would they come to look at the pipes? I could smell gas. This time an elderly man came, without equipment. He went all round the cellar sniffing at the pipes. He had been in gas all his life, he could detect it at one sniff, second nature to him.
No gas
. ‘I bet you wouldn't be brave enough to put a piece of lighted paper round the pipes,' I dared him. Humouring a child, he did this very thing, laughing because I had dashed upstairs before the paper was lit. Across the room shot a sheet of flame. ‘Christ Almighty,' said the old man as he turned the gas off at the mains. He came tottering up the stairs and, with eyebrows singed, said to me, ‘Madam, I have to report a gas leak in your cellar. Please keep the mains turned off.' He then said he would do a repair for me if I had the wherewithal. So Dolly brought plaster, scissors, a ladder, and became his mate while he mended the leak. A week later I received a bill from the Gas Board for ‘mending a gas pipe which was leaking'!

While Chas was away from the shop at our time of flood, pestilence and disaster, I really had no time to think of anything except survival. Yet, over the years, my mind did go back to the last words Miss Wilkie, my old head-mistress, uttered to me. ‘Your great failing, Chegwidden, is that you
will
act and speak before you even
begin
to think. I tremble at the thought as to how you will get on in the outside world unless you endeavour to overcome this problem of spontaneity.' The trouble, here, was that I usually thought of this dear lady's words
after
an act of impetuosity.

Thus it was at the funeral of a very dear and close friend. Had Chas not been indisposed, he would have attended the last rites – indeed, I had a hard job to persuade him not to get permission from his doctor for a day off. He didn't like it when I said (because he looked so ill and so thin), ‘You wouldn't be a very cheerful mourner.' Of course, that was wrong; if mourners have to be suitably sad (for it is indeed a solemn occasion) he would have fitted the part admirably. I suppose I was trying to say that the sight of Chas would distress further the wife of his dear friend.

So
I
had to attend. We had been a trio of friends originally, the friendship beginning when Chas had been a waiter in the bad old days. Ivor and Joe were waiters too, like Chas grasping at any employment. Ivor was married to Moo (Muriel) and Joe to Ive (Ivy). Ivor and Moo were a gentle pair and had spent their childhood together, sitting side by side at their little village school. Joe and Ive were Cockneys, Joe a small, opinionated man, Ive his constant and adoring worshipper. Her conversation consisted of, ‘My Joe says', ‘My Joe thinks', and ‘I'll see what Joe says'. She was sure that every Joe utterance was a pearl of wisdom and secretly Ive was very sorry for Chas, for my differences of opinion with
my
beloved were sometimes on the fierce side.

At one time we lived within walking distance of one another and at the beginning of the war the three men were called up together and spent their basic training time at the same army camp. But although the war eventually separated us and altered our careers, over the years Chas had still kept in touch. Ivor was, by trade, a carpenter and Joe a french polisher, and they were now joint owners of a successful business. Chas and I were the only ones with children. Ivor and Moo appeared to be as gently happy as they had been the whole of their close lives, and I supposed Ive and Joe were just as content to be childless, for Ive would say, ‘My Joe says children are a mixed blessing,' or she would listen to items Joe would read from the newspaper, all as to the dreadful doings of the young, and then quote them in such a way as to make one feel she and Joe (well, her Joe, really) had been geniuses in not producing.

Now Ivor was dead. He died, as he had lived, quietly and peacefully. He hadn't been ill. He had gone to bed tired and sleepy and Moo said, ‘Dolly, he just slipped away with his usual happy smile.' I hoped I, too, could slip away after the funeral. I couldn't bear the afterwards when people seemed ravenous for food and drink and the proceedings became a happy social gathering. I supposed food and drink and gossip stilled one's feelings of remorse and fear, but I usually felt more miserable at that point. There was usually one mourner who, recovered from weeping, asked for ‘a keepsake, a memento of the departed'. I wondered if the memento-mourner was hoping for the gold watch, and what would be the reaction if an unusual, intimate belonging of the deceased was proffered.

‘My Joe insists on being a pall-bearer,' said Ive proudly. Since he was short I hoped the other pall-bearers would not be tall men. Because I came from a large family it surprised me to see that Ivor and Moo had no close relatives, for Moo had asked that Ive and Dolly walk with her through the churchyard. Arm in arm, three sad ladies followed the pall-bearers, the clergyman, reading from his prayer-book, leading the way. Vaguely I thought that Joe must have done something to his shoes, for the shining coffin had just the slightest slope in his direction. There were two men on either side; Joe was at the rear end.

We walked slowly in the direction of two freshly dug graves, and I remembered, before we left the house, someone had remarked that the hearse was late, we'd miss our turn. At the time I thought this a very strange remark but through the trees I could see another funeral procession waiting its turn. I looked at Moo, so quiet and dignified that I was proud of her and glad, too, that she had Ive and Joe nearby as friends. Ive, possibly wanting to support her friend in every way she could, suddenly remarked (as a sort of, Never mind, look on the bright side, piece of encouragement), ‘My Joe said he hopes he will go as quickly as Ivor went.' Joe could not possibly have heard Ive's words, but his head turned slightly towards us, his eyes rolled up and he went down like a log.

Ive knew, as I did, that her Joe had gone and the next few minutes were like a silent film. The pall-bearers, not expecting one of their members to opt out, staggered man-fully across the churchyard, struggling to keep their precious and now heavier burden from reaching
terra firma
before the appointed time. The ground was uneven with tufts of grass and uncared-for graves. As they tried to regain their balance they neared one of the newly dug graves and a mourner cried out, ‘That's the wrong one,' just as though we were on a ramble and our leaders had taken the wrong turning.

I suddenly realised that the noise in my ears was that of Ive wailing loudly. She was like a demented creature. I put my arms round her and led her away from where a doctor was trying artificial respiration on Joe but we both saw him shake his head. Ive was now in such an emotional state that I was worried for her sanity and I, clutching at straws, said, ‘Just think, Ive, your Joe got his wish.' This was obviously not the right thing to say, but I was not normal then, either. Neither was I prepared for Ive's reaction. She stopped screaming at once and shouted at me, ‘What do
you
know of true love? Marriage is just a game to you; you don't have the slightest idea how Moo and I feel.
We
would give anything to be buried with our husbands.'

At this further tempting providence remark I really did cross my fingers. Of course I was not invited to Joe's funeral and I heard nothing from Moo and Ive for a whole year, when, to my great surprise, I received two letters from Australia. Moo and Ive had sold their business and gone on a cruise, where they had met two widowers, brothers, married them and started a new life ‘down under'. I was amused at Ive's letter, for several times came the statement, ‘My Bill says'. When I wrote to wish them every happiness I forbore to say to Ive that, even though I had no desire to go with my beloved at his passing, neither could I entertain another in his place.

But, since that day, I am unable to watch on TV the funerals of royalty, the military or the famous. I just could not bear the thought that other pall-bearers might be left in the lurch, and have to do that terrible battling, struggle and gallop across a parade ground, watched by millions.

It would, of course, be wrong to say that I was a little ray of sunshine during Chas's illness and our other troubles, yet it wasn't all gloom. Although Ade was working overtime – frantically, as though there was no time left in the world – to amass a nest-egg for her Johnny, she still gave me one whole evening each week. Her Guild evening. Obviously I was unable to spare a moment of time outside the shop except for hospital visiting, but it was good of her to opt out also. ‘The Lord will understand, Dolly.'

We did go to a party for a Roman Catholic foundation, for Ade's twins had become betrothed to two sisters, nurses at a nearby hospital. (Ade was over the moon that two of her boys should have been lucky enough to capture ideal partners.) It was a different affair from our Church Guild. It was jollier, for a start. A new priest, a fair, angelic-looking boy called Quentin, had recently been inducted. He came late to the party, having been detained elsewhere. He was, I suppose, in mufti. ‘I do apologise, friends, for being without my collar.' ‘Never mind, Quentin,' called our Ade, ‘so long as you've got your trousers on!'