Dolly's War (17 page)

The Court assumed its previous severity but I wondered if I imagined the wink from one of the brass hats. Possibly I did for I was now in a state of hysteria, trying to control my giggles.

The hut were convulsed when I acted out the case for them on my return. I completely forgot I had been sworn to secrecy and they were convinced that ‘Towser' had stage-managed Gertie's entry. A few weeks later I saw the prisoner at a Saturday night dance. ‘Oh, they didn't shoot you then,' I said. ‘Gee, ma'am,' he said, ‘For being absent without leave?' Of course, A. Wall was AWOL (absent without leave) and the poor dear had simply been tempted by a lady he met in Colchester.

We had marvellous lunches at the American hospital. No shortage of food there. Steaks, fruit etc., all beautifully cooked. The typists used to lunch in the officers' restaurant, although we had a table of our own. Music played, mostly classical, and Eileen, another girl there, taught me a lot about classical music so that I began to have a great appreciation for it. The first piece of music she ‘explained' to me was Fingal's Cave, and ever after, although it sounded the same, it had a different meaning for me and I could follow the various changes of theme.

I had never been a large eater and now with all this rich food, which appeared richer because of our sparse rations, I suppose I should have tucked in and enjoyed my lunch-time as the other girls did. My thoughts, however, were on Marjorie and the children. What would they be having for lunch in the cottage in the village? How could I possibly eat and be merry? Then, too, the Americans had pineapple with their steaks. To me that was two meals, so I began to bring with me linen serviettes from home. I'd place my steak in one serviette and my fruit in another, and eat what was left on my plate, such as vegetables etc. The other girls thought this a good idea, but as there seemed so much food on the serving-tables they not only ate their portion but took extra to take home to their children. There was, too, on the top table, always a huge mound of oranges and the girls would casually take one as they left although really they were for diners who didn't want the dessert on the menu. However, as my father would have said, ‘Someone always gets too greedy' – the kitchen staff were having to cook more and requisition for more because of the Mother Hubbards and so the lunches became chargeable instead of free and we had to be served individually from a hatch instead of helping ourselves. Of course the single girls then took a dim view of mother-love!

As a secretary to an American officer a jeep would call for me each morning and the driver would salute me when I opened the door at his knock. As Marjorie and I also had transport to and from hospital dances the local villagers, I am sure, thought we were fast ‘Lunnon' women, especially as we had the army personnel home to tea. For one thing they were so generous with their food. They would come loaded up with things for the children, but we only ever invited the men and boys who were homesick for their mums and wives and children, whatever anyone else liked to suspect. We were lonely for our menfolk too and the visitors would play with the children and then when they were in bed play cards with us and have a really homely time. In any case Marjorie always saw the red light, if I may put it that way, before I did and the amorous ones were definitely not asked again.

My in-laws had moved down to a cottage not far from us so Susan still had grandparents who entertained her and Marjorie's ma-in-law and sister-in-law, both bombed out from London, lived next door, so we were a large happy family and hardly in a position to become Lilli Marlenes. One day we were walking home with two of my office colleagues who were coming to tea with us when we saw my lovely ma-in-law. She smiled and I waved and I said to my companion, ‘That's my mother-in-law.' ‘Jeeze,' he gulped, ‘where I come from any ma-in-law would have dashed straight into the house and come out shooting.' ‘But she knows me,' I said. ‘That's as maybe,' he replied. ‘But the mothers-in-law we have back home would have shot first and asked questions afterwards!' I thought he must have come from primitive territory.

Marjorie's small son Richard was now able to start school and through the influence of the Major she began to work in the PX store at the hospital. She could have had an exciting time socially because she was very attractive and there were so many American males dying to be ‘comforted', but the brain-washing we had received from my mother from an early age as to the way ‘decent' women conduct their lives, had made Marjorie as nun-like as I tried to be. What with working all day, looking after the children, the household chores, and writing to Chas at night, I had neither the inclination nor the energy to cope with an amorous interlude, but I often wondered, whether, had I lived on my own during the war, I would have refused all the wonderful ‘opportunities' which endlessly presented themselves.

In one way I suppose Marjorie kept me on the straight and narrow. One sergeant in my office received a fabulous cake from home, I think it was a Simnel cake. It was covered with cherries, marzipan, nuts, and angelica. The sight of it was enough to take one's breath away in those days of austerity. The Sergeant said, ‘That's for you, Dorothy, if I can have a cup of coffee with you one day.' ‘Indeed, you'd be very welcome any time,' I said delightedly. I took the cake home and watched the children's faces. The cake was as marvellous inside as it was out. I have never tasted anything like it and Marjorie said, ‘What a generous man he must be, Dolly.'

At ten p.m. the next night came a thunderous banging on the cottage door. We had no bell or knocker. Before the war and before the ‘foreigners' invaded the village no one seemed to lock their doors. I popped my head out of the bedroom window. There was the Simnel cake sergeant and he was shouting, ‘I've come for my cup of coffee, Towser.' I was absolutely terrified. What would the neighbours think? ‘Hush,' I called down in a hoarse whisper, ‘You'll wake the children up.' Still he wouldn't go but kept calling, ‘Towser, Towser, you promised me.' Finally Marjorie called down to him, ‘If you don't go away we'll call the police.' In the end he went off into the darkness and I heard him say, ‘Bloody dames, they're all the same, lead you on, take all you've got and give you nothing.' We lay in bed in the darkness. I was full of remorse that we had eaten the cake, but Marjorie felt me very stupid not to have realised ‘what sort of man' the Sergeant was, which annoyed me and didn't help my ego. Surely I was worth more than a Simnel cake?

The next day as I passed the Sergeant's desk he gave me a look so malevolent that I said, ‘I'm very sorry but you did call rather late at night for coffee, especially in a small country village.' ‘You led me on,' he shouted so viciously, that in front of the listening G.I.s, all agog at the Sergeant's frustrated rage, I felt not only nervous but acutely embarrassed. ‘When I gave you the cake,' he went on chokingly, ‘you said, any time it would be your pleasure.' So he had been deceived by my polite expression. I went hot under the collar, then I became very angry and I said distantly, ‘Well I am very sorry that we have eaten your lovely cake and I am more than sorry we have been talking at cross purposes. I assumed that because of your yearning for coffee so late at night you were some sort of coffee addict.' This seemed to cause great amusement to the rest of the hut and for weeks afterwards one or other of the G.I.s would make some casual remark about coffee. They'd say, ‘Oh, gee, I had a smashing cup of coffee last night,' or they'd being me a box of tea-bags and say, ‘Towser doesn't like coffee' or ‘You know, Towser, if you once tasted coffee die American way, you'd love it;' but of course, never when the Simnel cake sergeant was present for he never got over the shock of its loss.

*

Possibly my father was one of the ‘foreigners' who taught the locals to lock their doors. We had persuaded my parents to come away from the bombing and Mother was so thrilled to be with us again. Our cottage was in a row of identical unnumbered residences. One night my father had been to the local pub. It was pitch black when he came home and he fell into the cottage next door, saying, ‘God, it's bloody dark! Have you gone to bed already, Mother? Never mind I'll find my way up.' Unfortunately in the cottage next door lived an ancient lady, and she was sitting by her fire in the dark when my father burst in. Her screams and yells alerted the neighbours and my father was more terrified than she was for she was mumbling all sorts of terrible things about him. Ever after when she saw him she would point and yell, ‘That's him, bor, that's him.'

It would have been the easiest thing in the world for me to remain, for the whole duration of the war, in my blessed state of chastity – no belt needed where Dolly was concerned – for in my teen-age years, my twenties, and now my thirties, few male heads turned at my approach or passing. For the sake of Marjorie and various girl-friends, unable to attend dances unaccompanied, I had sat for hours on various types of uncomfortable chairs, little gilt affairs, wooden kitchen chairs, and benches. I achieved over the years that pride-saving air of nonchalant aloofness. Indeed the very role of wallflower caused me to take up smoking, for something to occupy my hands, which are ever the most awkward parts of a wallflower's makeup. I sometimes cursed the waste of time, but it would have been tempting providence to take knitting or crochet to a dance. Who knows, there might be one male who saw a lusting luscious siren curled up inside my facade of motherliness?

I had never been without male companionship before marriage, but mainly because Marjorie and friends, always inundated with invitations to dance, brought their partners back to introduce them to me and make a social group for the evening. By a bit of sharp repartee I often gained a male companion but lost a girl-friend. I doubt if my husband would now admit it, but at the time of our meeting he was enamoured of a beautiful creature.

I always had a way with children, and they never failed to gravitate towards me, so perhaps it was the small boy in most men which finally made them admirers. But it was all so unsatisfactory and I longed for that startled look of joy from a man when he first set eyes on me. However it was too late in life for me to expect love at first sight so it was quite easy to live the life of a nun whilst Chas was away. I was safe by nature! When the matrons of the village gossiped about the ‘goings on' between ‘women who should know better' and the British Tommy, or American G.I., I remained silent. I would have been a hypocrite to join in the castigation, for I was not sure at that time that I would have been quite so upright should the right G.I. affirm his intentions. It would have been difficult to break loose living as I did with Marjorie, always the noblest Roman of them all, and with Chas's relations surrounding us.

One day I was taking the children blackberrying when I met an old schoolfriend. Her husband, too, was in the forces abroad, she had been bombed out from London and was staying in a cottage in a nearby village. Her children, two boys, were older than my daughter and they had cycled over to our village for a picnic. The years forgotten, we chatted excitedly and she persuaded me to come the following Saturday to the weekly dance which was held at the nearby American airfield. She would ask the driver of the transport vehicle to come through our village and pick me up and then bring me home at the end of the evening. She assured me I would ‘have the time of my life', for she added, ‘You were always such a lad, Dolly Chegwidden.' I was surprised at her description of me, for in my memory I was always intensely serious and proper at school.

Marjorie said she would baby-sit for me, and I began to prepare excitedly for this grand occasion. The great day came and I waited like a bird of paradise in my unusual plumage. I had raked out a forgotten evening dress, ankle-length, sleeveless, low-necked black velvet, which I had been steaming all the afternoon, making the kitchen like a Turkish bath. Fortunately Marjorie had gone visiting and I just had time to dry the windows and open the doors before she arrived home. I had dyed some white satin shoes black, they were still a bit smelly with the strong dye, and Marjorie sniffed distastefully, but this didn't really perturb me for she always has gone around smelling smells other people are unaware of. My elbow-length gloves were pristinely white and Marjorie, in a moment of sisterly love, fetched her little gold stole for me.

The children were asleep when the ‘transport' came. My first shock. It was the largest lorry I had ever seen, simply enormous. It had stopped outside our cottage and the driver, in American uniform, knocked on our cottage door. There was no time to draw back now, and the object of curious eyes, it seemed to me all the lace-curtains in the village were twitching, I followed the driver to the back of the lorry. There, to my utter horror, was a very long ladder for me to climb. Another G.I. was in the lorry at the top of the ladder and I negotiated these rungs and climbed into the darkness with his help. The vehicle was crammed full with giggling, screaming girls, but the noise ceased at my entry as though someone had turned off a switch. Here was Dame Nellie Melba in person. All the other girls were clad informally. Little cotton frocks or jumpers and skirts, flat-heeled or wedge-soled shoes. There was no sign of my friend. What a fool I had been, I felt like a prize cow amongst a herd of cattle. I thought perhaps I could find a place at the dance where I could hide myself until the lorry returned later that night. I might even be able to get transport home right away. I was furious that I hadn't made some excuse when the lorry called, but it had been so high that I couldn't see the type of load it was transporting.

We arrived at the air-base, an enormous place with rows and rows of barracks, but no sign of planes; I supposed they were in another part of the 'drome. Like a guard of honour lined up, we were met by happy smiling servicemen, and most of the girls were soon pounced on and led off to the dance floor. I could hear the strains of music in the distance, and never never had I seen so many men before. The driver called out, ‘Leaving at midnight, ladies,' and drove away. I was left alone. I had five hours to wait. I have never had any sense of direction and I thought I should be afraid to leave the spot where the lorry had left us for I might have been unable to find it again in the dark. I realised suddenly that the girls on the lorry had assumed I was an ‘entertainer' for they used to have visiting singers and such like at the camp dances.