Free Dolly's War by Dorothy Scannell Page A

gesture to authority – ... because of FOG . Chas is so ashamed of himself and his conscience troubles him now when he recalls his joyful period as guardian of the time-keeping book.
    Chas’s insurance round was at Dagenham, rows and rows of identical houses, long roads of sameness. He was extremely popular with those friendly people, not because he was a jolly sort of caller, but because there was nothing he would not do for them, he was trusted and respected. I knew he would make an excellent agent but later on when I took over his round during the war even I was surprised at the esteem in which he was held and touched by the way he had helped people far beyond the line of duty.
    My mother was very pleased that Chas and I were beginning to rise in the world, class-wise, or at least she felt we had taken our first few faltering steps towards the life of a ‘tradesman’ and his consort. She had never really been 100% for my marriage with Chas for, although she liked him, because of his lack of flesh she was quite convinced my life would be one of attendance on an invalid and her unspoken belief was, I was sure, ‘Dolly will soon get fed up with that.’ She seemed to me to be always watching my husband with a look of maternal sympathy, feeling that should he ever be confined to a wheel-chair it would not be long before the said wheel-chair and its delicate contents would either be under a bus or over a cliff provided that my invalid, as a non-earner, would ever have been able to get to the sea. She adjured him to ‘wrap up well and keep well shod’ in the treacherous winter weather we seemed to experience then, although she thought the outdoor life might set him up if Dolly kept him well fed with good home-cooking. The trouble here was finance, for now that Chas was a white-collared ‘gentleman caller’ this commodity was an intensely scarce one. His basic weekly wage was £3, our last £50 capital was deposited as a sort of indemnity, and Chas had to contract a life insurance with the company, so that after weekly deductions and rent of 22s. 6d. per week, there was about thirty shillings left for all other necessities, including food.
    In addition to this ‘struggle’, possibly because I had completely forgotten my intense desire for a baby, I became pregnant. This meant the procuring of baby clothes, cot and pram. It was, of course, the immediate future which was a bit desperate money-wise, in the long term the prospects were rosy for not only would there be commission on new business but there were half-yearly, or yearly, lump sum payments for the handling of national health insurance. I loved writing the cards which I did in my best writing and printing, watched over by the eagle eye of Chas, ever confident, as he thought me scatter-brained, that I would either lose a reference card, or put one in the wrong file.
    The problem with keeping one’s head above water knowing that solvency was just around the corner, was that one’s stock of clothes and appurtenances always wanted renewing when the lump sums did come; therefore, like a vicious circle, we would again be waiting for the next ‘windfall’. We had never had many clothes being of a saving nature. True, this had enabled us to supply the £50 deposit needed for the job and prior to that the deposit for the house at Forest Gate but at one time during my pregnancy I was walking about with cardboard in the soles of my ‘holey’ shoes which brought back the memory of my school-friend Lizzie who was once so excited at finding ‘a luverly bit of cardboard for me shoes, look Dolly, it ain’t even cracked’. I don’t know whether my family would have rallied round had they known of our temporary set-back. They really all had a hard job to keep their heads above water, as most people had in the thirties, and in any case we had always been a most independent family and had told no one of