Dolly's Mixture by Dorothy Scannell Read Free Book Online Page A

unlike Chas, I couldn’t live a life of just work and sleep, I always went up to bed an hour or so later than he did. I loved that quiet time before midnight, it was a sort of refresher course for me. But, however quiet I was when I finally went to bed, Chas would wake up and was always complaining about it. We therefore decided to purchase single divan beds – the bedroom was very large. But what to do with the double bed, that was the problem.
    It would have to go, even though we’d had it such a short time. It had no stories to tell, unlike the girls’ double bed at Poplar, once shared by four sisters (definitely not room for the fifth), then three, then two, then the baby, Marjorie, alone in vast state. That bed had been our library, story place, sick bed, gymnasium, a strong, iron bed with brass knobs which unscrewed. The wrought-iron ends contained birds and ivy leaves. I suppose I became a woman in that large double bed, even though at the time I thought I had met with a terrible accident, such was the ignorance of our lives. We lived in close proximity with one another, yet I did not know this same accident had befallen my older sisters at the mete and proper hour. At the time I shared the bed with sisters Majorie and Amy. Winifred was in Australia and Agnes, married, at Brixton (‘Clapham, really,’ said Mother).
    Marjorie and I had no real intercourse with Amy; her life was lived to the full; she was a decade older than Marjorie and six years older than me. Marjorie often let Amy down in public, for Marjorie always possessed a childlike honesty. I blushed for her, but she was proud of her truthfulness. When James, one of Amy’s boy friends, came to tea for the first time, Marjorie, busily fussing about helping Mother to get the tea, said to James in a motherly tone, ‘My, my, we are having a feast today!’ She then climbed up to a cupboard above James’s head, not thinking to ask him to move – she seemed fascinated by his presence, somehow, and was acting the part of mother and prime provider – and dropped a quart jug filled with milk on the unsuspecting boy friend. The milk trickled, or, rather, poured down the new, blue serge suit he was wearing to impress his girl friend’s family. As Marjorie and I later prepared for bed, her departing words to Amy, now holding the hand of her dampish-looking boy friend, were, ‘And tonight, Amy, will you be careful not to fidget, you took all the coat off Dolly and me last night!’
    I did not tell Marjorie of the accident which had befallen me in the double bed, for Mother informed me I was ‘now a woman’ and must keep my own counsel about such things. At times when my womanhood asserted itself I must take great care not to put my feet into cold water, and above all – this was of paramount importance – I must keep away from boys . This latter directive positively terrified me, for boys were everywhere in my young life at Poplar. The streets, our playground, permanently possessed these sections of humanity now dangerous to Dolly. At these dreadful times in my life I took to crossing the road to avoid the football-playing boys, which necessitated a diagonal and lengthy route between two points. I seemed to spend my time crossing from one side to another, for I was also afraid of dogs. At womanly times my bosom was somewhat painful, too, and so I not only crossed the road but I also crossed my hands across my offending portions. Amy saw me once (I was also a Sunday School teacher) and she announced to the family that she was afraid ‘Dolly was becoming a religious fanatic, for she walks about like the pictures of the saints’.
    When Marjorie, the youngest, left the isolation of the double bed to get married, Mother had no problems. She gave the double bed to the rag man. It was on Empire Day and she was amused because the rag man insisted on presenting her with a little Union Jack ‘because