Free Dolly's War by Dorothy Scannell Page B

our money troubles. Chas’s father knew of our plight and wanted so much to help but he had scrimped and saved and gone without to amass the small amount necessary for a deposit on Chas’s sister Netta’s house when, with a small baby, she was without accommodation. Chas felt we really couldn’t borrow the money which Netta was paying back to her father weekly, although his dear father was pressing him to do so. No, independence was the watchword of all us young-marrieds and teenagers in those far-off days. Chas’s brother Phil, always so generous and always the dandy where clothes were concerned, presented Chas with a pearl-grey suit, which we had dyed dark brown but tragedy stalked there, for nursing a friend’s baby one day, the baby had an ‘accident’ and the lovely dark brown suit became pearl-grey again round the crutch.
    To make matters worse we had to leave Forest Gate and live nearer Chas’s agency at Dagenham and since the area was a mixture of new-town council-houses, for which we weren’t eligible, and estates of newly-built private houses, it was difficult to get accommodation. Oh, those various ‘stays’ in odd furnished rooms, washing up on the table, cooking over a gas-ring or fire. I was getting larger and unhappier each day and frantic that we wouldn’t get settled before our baby was born. At last our luck turned and one of the other Pru gentlemen found us a lovely flat in a lovely road at Ilford. He informed us that the owner-occupier was a widow, a most charming woman, an absolute darling, so the fact that we had to share her bathroom and kitchen would be no problem at all. Well, he was so right, she was a real charmer, an absolute angel to everyone, including Chas, especially Chas, but within minutes of our occupancy I felt ‘someone walking over my grave’ for when this charmer gazed at me with her glittering eyes, so dark they looked black, I knew that she hated me with a deadly hatred. Some deep native instinct from time immemorial gave me a feeling of cold and sickly fear.
    It is always difficult to be in the minority of one. Later on when this lady behaved so malignantly to me when I was alone, any reports on her behaviour to Chas or my family were taken as strange imaginings and a peculiarity of my condition. ‘Oh, you’re not used to living with strangers,’ my family would say. ‘Just do all you can to please Mrs...’ From Chas it would be, ‘You do let your imagination run riot with you,’ and he would add, ‘I find her exceptionally charming and helpful.’ I was so afraid of this woman in the lonely evenings when Chas was out canvassing I used to imagine that she wanted me gone in some way, thus leaving Chas as a lodger in her house in her sole charge. She did such odd things, which in my condition, took on a sinister aspect. My sitting-room, at the back of the house on the ground floor, had curtains which didn’t quite meet and this witch of a woman would stand outside in the garden and peer through the chinks at me. She once had a strange old man with her and I dashed to the window and held the curtains tight across the gap, my heart pounding, my stomach turning over. One evening I smelt gas and went into the kitchen which was next door to my sitting-room. All the taps on the gas stove were turned on and as I turned them off and opened the window I heard an upstairs door close quietly.
    The next day, when Amy was visiting me (she had a council-house near by) and my tormentor was unaware of her presence, she burst into my sitting-room, red and shouting, ‘Oh, you stupid woman, you left the gas-taps on last evening, do you want to kill me in my bed?’ Then seeing Amy she apologised for being irritable but explained the thought of gas worried her and she would get the gas men in. Perhaps she had been hasty, perhaps there was some fault with the stove. Then she approached me, put her arms