Dolly's Mixture (24 page)

Fortunately the old lady moved to the seaside, for she would have suffered apoplexy had she seen what happened to her ‘lovely' bungalow. New rooms, altered rooms – it really was impossible to equate the new residence with the old. Then, in the now thirty-foot lounge, Amy achieved her great desire. Wrought-iron. This beautiful piece of craftsmanship, made to Amy's design, went the whole width of the room, having a door, or, rather, a gate, in the middle, and at the side exotic plants climbed up the wrought-iron. The room was all white, even to the curtains. Amy had embroidered these in petit point with a bright Spanish design. The Spanish-type chandeliers and fireplace, a specially made refectory table, etc. – it really was superb. When Chas and I went to dinner there, just before Chas arrived – he was coming straight from the office – Jim fetched a duster and attacked the wrought-iron with it. This infuriated Amy who had dusted it thoroughly half an hour before. ‘Well,' said Jim, laughing, ‘you know how particular Charlie is.' Chas arrived, gazed round the room in admiration, and Amy looked pleased – that is, until Chas said, ‘The trouble with wrought-iron, or, rather, such an expanse of it, is that you will need to be extra sure when dusting you don't miss a flower or a leaf,' and, to my horror, he ran a finger round a delicate flower and held up a finger covered in dust. An annoyed Amy went off into the kitchen, an ashamed Dolly followed. Both Chas and Jim were laughing. ‘I think Charlie is very rude,' said Amy. We were silent on the way home until Chas got his come-uppance. While we were passing the pond he slipped into a ditch and fell up to his knees in smelly mud. His remarks as to the residents of Theydon Bois, who fought to keep their village unlighted, were a little on the choice side.

Ade and I saw each other often after the move and I still went back to shop with her in North London from time to time. Ridley Road market was our usual venue, we could find what we wanted there, just as fashionable and more reasonable than in the West End. Having Ade with me I was not so likely to be dragged into a dress shop at the first invitation of the assistant, for in those days the owner or one of his assistants walked the street outside the shop welcoming in the unwary. I would try on a coat or garment (after having inspected the windows in the whole area and having, with Ade's expert guidance, chosen the right shop) and, if it was something I really wanted, Ade would inspect it thoroughly again, as though it was nothing much, and then ask the price. When given this information Ade would stagger back as though she'd been informed of a disaster and couldn't believe it, and then began a period of fierce bargaining. Ade knew all this embarrassed me but eventually, if the price was right, I left the shop with a good buy. Sometimes the manager would say, ‘Take it, I'm losing money on it, I'll never be able to stay in business at this rate. Do me a favour, dear, don't come in my shop again.' But it was Ade they admired. I was just ‘one of those who come over London Bridge every minute'. Ade often had invitations to be an assistant in one of the smart fashion shops, but I knew her well enough to know she couldn't be hard or businesslike the other way round.

We had great fun with the stallholders, too. If she thought someone was trying to put one over on her she'd say, ‘I've not left me white stick at the Home, you know,' or ‘So'se your Aunt Fanny.' She was not mean in any way but she worked too hard to throw money away. Susan and Harry admired her enormously and she felt so at home with them. She made Susan laugh, which was something I was never able to do – well, sometimes I achieved a little giggle from her. And baby Anne adored Ade, which surprised me, for I always thought one had to speak very quietly to babies. For a large woman, however, Ade was very gentle in her handling of Anne, although she couldn't alter her normal tone of voice, but Anne seemed to like this. Ade was thrilled about this but said, ‘I expect she thinks I'm the sister of that giant teddy-bear she likes so much.'

On Sunday afternoons Ade's boys and Benny would do the washing up, and, when we were at the shop, William and Chas would do the same for me – well, almost the same. They would never put anything away again, and as I went down the stairs I could hear Chas shouting to William (who had leaped away somewhere in the middle of wiping up), ‘What's the good of a job half done?' and then William's ‘Well, dad, it only leaves half for someone else to do,' as he returned, laughing, to finish the job. Chas was so noisy in his ministrations that it was heaven when Ade and I got established on our bench in the park, baby Anne now asleep.

In the park on those Sunday afternoons of yesteryear I became Ade's confidante. Although her mother had had other children, Ade had been the only one to survive and consequently she had been the apple of her parents' eyes. Her father, a driver of a brewer's dray, was in regular work; Ade said she inherited her voice and physique from him. Her mother, a thin, delicate, little woman tired out through constant pregnancies and a hard childhood, gave up the struggle when Ade was fourteen, after her father's sudden death. Ade said he suffered a heart attack whilst driving the dray.

The local vicar obtained a post for Ade in an institution-cum-hospital. Her mother had been a seamstress and Ade was trained by the hospital authorities in the same trade. She said stitching the unbleached sheets and hospital mattress-covers was as bad as she imagined it would be to stitch mail-bags in a prison. However, she had a little room of her own, one day off a week, and a certain amount of pocket money; the small amount over was banked for her by the hospital authorities. ‘At least, Dolly, I was safe from the dangers of the outside world, although lonely, for the other seamstresses were older women, some of whom had been in an institution all their lives.'

It was in the hospital grounds she first met Benny, her husband. A slim, fair, delicate-looking young man, he'd been discovered, broke and ill, in a Hampstead flat. Possibly because they were both alone in the world they became friends, although Ade said in every way they were entirely opposite personalities. Benny had come from an upper-middle-class family, the only son of divorced parents. His mother, a sophisticated lady, led the life of a socialite, his father was abroad somewhere. Neither of them wanted him and he spent his early life with a procession of nannies until he languished in a minor public school, which was a time of terror for him.

He went on to a military college at the insistence of his mother, but when he failed all his exams she wrote him never to return home again; she had given him every chance in life, she wanted nothing more to do with him. With the little money he had he rented a flat, intending to get a job of some sort, but he became ill with 'flu and then, apathy and loneliness setting in, he just had no will to fight. After all, what was there, who was there, to fight for?

Although Ade was lonely she had had fourteen years of being wanted, she wasn't lonely through rejection, and she was a fighter by nature as well. So Benny and Ade, two unlikely friends, became just that. Benny finally left the hospital and took a couple of rooms nearby, and on Ade's day off she enjoyed herself ‘being mother' and cleaned, scrubbed, polished and cooked a lovely evening meal for them both. Benny had obtained a job as a City messenger for a large corporation. ‘I was quite safe with Benny, he never kissed me or nothing, we were like a couple of kids.' In one way, it wasn't surprising they should eventually marry. It was then Ade discovered Benny was impotent. ‘He wasn't queer nor nothing, Dolly – now I'm older I realise it was the fault of his upbringing, his bleeding old cow of a mother and his bastard of a father.'

So if, now that Ade and Benny were ‘past it all', they had never lived as man and wife, what about Ade's boys? Johnny was the result of a brief encounter with a young airman before the Second World War. He, too, had been ‘signed on' by unsympathetic parents, was terrified of flying (‘I don't half meet 'em, Dolly, don't I?'), and he and Ade, having imbibed a little too much, went to bed. The next morning he wept when he discovered Ade had been a virgin. When she confessed to Benny, he too wept, for he had failed her. ‘There was I, Dolly, surrounded by weeping men when I should have been the one who was howling. For one thing, I never enjoyed it and for another, I soon found I was pregnant.' However, when Johnny was born Benny was over the moon with delight. The baby, it seemed, was the most precious thing he could have possessed. His surname was on the birth certificate. And what a name. He possessed four posh Christian names (Benny, that is) and a double-barrelled surname. Johnny was a lovely child, strangely enough he was something like Benny to look at, and for five years they really were an ideal family. Then Ade went to a party. Benny was quite content to stay at home with Johnny. History repeated itself, except that this time her lover was a large, jolly man who made her laugh. ‘Fancy “giving up the ghost” because someone could tell a good joke, and he was cross-eyed, too – well, I tell a lie, he had a sort of cast in one eye.'

Ade confessed to Benny again but this time he said, ‘Well, it's done now Ade, there's no point in crying over spilt milk,' which Ade said would have been funny if it hadn't been so bloody true, for the large, jolly, cast-eyed man turned out to be a milkman. So the milkman's twins also received a father with a surname, ‘definitely not a milkman's moniker', stated Ade. Benny again assumed the role of a loving father and the three boys were adored by them both. ‘But it put me off sex for good,' said Ade, ‘since I didn't enjoy it neither time, and look what I got for it, two “go's” and three sons, do you think it's a record?' ‘I suppose I am one of those fertile women you read of.'

‘Did you ever try to trace Benny's parents, they must have had money?' ‘No, I wouldn't want to and neither would Benny; he's forgotten that part of his life entirely, although he says he's glad it happened, for otherwise he would not have me and the boys. He's got everything he wants from life, and more.' ‘Anyway, Dolly, people who can just cast off their children and not even wonder what has happened to them are not people to me, I wouldn't want nothing of them.'

I don't suppose Benny ever knew of Ade's disclosures to me; certainly she never asked me to promise to keep her secrets. There was no need. I told no one. I sometimes felt ashamed of my boredom and discontent with things, for, compared with Ade's, my life had been continually rosy. She loved to hear my tales of my family, the Chegwiddens, and in recounting them to her I found I enjoyed the incidents better the second time around. She would have given anything to have had a daughter but she added, ‘The only man caller we have at the house is the coalman and I'd have had to bath him first!' Since we'd such a lot of smoky coal lately and her fires seemed to burn brightly always, I enquired what sort of fuel was her favourite. ‘Nutty slack, Dolly.' ‘Whatever do you two girls find to laugh at in the park?' – we always returned Anne in this mood – ‘Well, you gotta laugh, haven't you, Harry?' Which, of course, was no answer. How could we say that two middle-aged ladies behaved like a couple of kids?

‘You know, Dolly, we've known each other for nine years and we've certainly been through something together – well, you and Chas have.' Ade was reminiscing on one of her weekly visits to Epping. ‘Yes, it makes a normal life seem very flat, doesn't it?' ‘Well, I don't know, Dolly, I have to go into hospital.' This was a bombshell. I had been so wrapped up in my affairs I hadn't known Ade was ill, or even felt poorly.

‘Whatever for, Ade?' ‘Oh, nothing much, I've got to have a check-up because I'm getting fat in the tummy.' She laughed. ‘People will begin to think things about me before long.' ‘Well, I'll come and visit you often.' ‘You don't have to, Dolly, you've got enough to do, but it would be nice, you'd cheer me up.' Ade had never been into hospital before – well, not for an illness. She'd been taken to hospital at the time of the twins' birth, which had turned a bit tricky towards the end.

She'd laugh about that and had enjoyed being with other women in the same condition. She was feeding her twins one day when Benny came to visit. Johnny was with him, together with a boy friend of the same age. Ade was always on the large side and Johnny's little friend stared in amazement at the two babes sucking fiercely and noisily. ‘Cor, have they got to eat all that, Mrs Ade?' ‘Don't be silly, Trevor,' said a knowledgeable Johnny. ‘They're my mum's milk-churns.'

But this time Ade's ward was filled with women in less joyful conditions. She was great fun when I visited her, for she'd just given her fellow patients nicknames. In the bed opposite was Submarine Sarah. This elderly lady (‘poor soul's losing her marbles, but she's so happy with it') would sit bolt upright, gaze searchingly around the ward, call out, ‘Down periscope,' and down she would disappear into the depths of the ocean (underneath her bedclothes). Some minutes later, watched by a hysterical Ade, up would come Sarah with her hair twisted into prongs. Ade said she thought Sarah had changed herself into a sea mine.

The ward Sister was an elegant lady, aloof and unapproachable. She even had a disdainful sniff and Ade said she had her favourites among the posh patients, even though she was kind to all members of the ward. This didn't worry Ade, she didn't want to be singled out for a Sisterly chat.

In the next bed was another elderly lady, a tiny, sweet old thing. She had lived with her husband in an old people's home and every Friday the nurses from the home brought the old husband to see his wife. He too was very tiny, with a long, white beard and gold-rimmed spectacles. Ade called him ‘Sexy Sidney', for when he reached the doors of the ward the two nurses had difficulty in restraining him. He began to utter delighted squeaks between calls of ‘My lovely Lily' and he literally left the ground in his running haste to reach his wife's bedside, for the two young nurses had to gallop with him. In his hand he always carried a tiny bunch of screwed-up flowers. The nurses would lift him at the bedside so that he could kiss his wife, which he did with great gusto and sighs of love. Ade would cry, ‘Go on, boy, enjoy yourself,' and the nurses would have to tear a reluctant visitor away to return him to the home.