Dolly's War by Dorothy Scannell Read Free Book Online

London at an early age. He was blind in one eye through – what he always said was an accident – being struck by a piece of coal thrown by his stepbrother. Before he reached his teens he was living alone in one room somewhere near the Strand and would get up at dawn to go to Covent Garden where he would buy a load of celery, clean it and trundle it across London Bridge to sell. He could neither read nor write and he bought an exercise-book, pen and ink (his most cherished possessions), and he taught himself to read and write, his head bent to the paper, the garret room lit only by a candle.
    Ill luck dogged him. He worked in the kitchens of a restaurant under a glass roof which one day caved in. He flung his hands up to protect his head and the tendons were lacerated. Until he could work again he lived almost entirely on dry bread. Eventually he obtained a job in the docks, a regular job, a plum in those days, and he married a music-teacher. Within two years he had a son and a daughter. He adored his children, his wife was a gentle creature, as he was, and he felt he had come through his dark days into perpetual sunlight. But his wife died suddenly of a heart-attack when his children were both under two years of age. Eventually he married my lovely ma-in-law, and was doing quite well at work when a further blow fell.
    I felt what happened has to be looked at in the context of his previous life, for he was an honest man, a proud man, a man to help anyone in trouble, but because of his days of near starvation he could not bear to waste even a stale crumb. One day when leaving the docks he saw, in the gutter, a few potatoes which really had ‘fallen off a lorry’. To him this was wasted food and he retrieved these and put them in his pocket. He was searched at the gate and lost his job. Of course his wife was furious, why her relations in Suffolk sent them potatoes by the sack load, but of course no one who has not starved could possibly know how he felt. But in those days stealing was stealing even though the next lorry would have run over the wretched spuds.
    Then followed a dreadful time for the family. He was too proud to go on relief, which was the only possible course in those days, and in the end the children were sent from school to a building opposite St Frideswide’s church in Poplar where they were given free meals. My husband said it was the first time he had seen an individual steak and kidney pudding in its own tiny basin, and this miniature creation so amazed him that he wanted to take it home to his mother for he knew she would be surprised as he was. Eventually the engineer Chas’s mum worked for obtained a job as a storekeeper for my disgraced father-in-law, and again, just when the family were on their feet more or less, a ship’s rope caught Alfred on his blind eye and he was knocked off the quay. The bones in his feet were broken and he spent many months in Poplar hospital. Chas, then a boy, went to collect him on his discharge, his feet still in plaster, and Chas said it was the only time he had seen his father cry. At Blackwall Tunnel it was always a mad rush for buses and they had to wait ages to get one. Once the crowd had even knocked his father down when he was on crutches.
    Chas’s father was very frugal with himself, he would finish up the dry crusts and only ever treated himself to a weekly half-pint of beer when things were going well. This would last him all day on Sundays when he would sup it from a small wineglass. One cigarette would last him all day too, and as they were a cardplaying family, if ever he won, he would pour a fresh wine-glass of beer and treat himself to a few puffs of a Woodbine. Yet his wife was on the extravagant side and he was so pleased for his wife and children to have what they desired.
    She had been a country girl and could not bear to see her house without flowers. She would take great care of them. I have even seen the last faded one,