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

ones left and Chas felt it a good opportunity to stay in civvies as company for Rob. I refused to go as a witch or Dick Whittington and Olive casually chose my rejected Dick. We all told her she was wasting her time but she just smiled.
    It was a marvellous party with many fabulous costumes and ‘Ghandi’ was there, mystifying everyone. All the evening before the parade people were trying to guess the identity of the little dark man who looked so much like Ghandi. It was uncanny. Several people, after many drinks, insisted it was Ghandi himself. We assumed Olive had thought better of going in for the parade for just before it started she was missing, but towards the end of the march past came Dick Whittington and his cat. A real live cat was following Olive at her heels, he never left her, and the applause was so great she won first prize. She told us her secret afterwards. She had obtained a fish which she wrapped up in her Dick Whittington bundle, shown it to the hotel cat, then kept her bundle on the stick within a few feet of his nose.
    Little Geoffrey won the prize for guessing the mystery man, much to the mystery guest’s annoyance. Rob had gone upstairs and as Geoffrey had been awake had brought him down to see the parade. On catching sight of Ghandi, Geoffrey had yelled, ‘Hallo, Mr Pyjama Man.’ Mr Pyjama Man was Geoffrey’s name for one of the guests to whom he had taken a fancy. He would say good morning to this young man and his wife and had given him this nickname because of his club blazer which was pale and striped. The young man had shaved his head and his wife, an actress, had made him up professionally and had absented herself from the ballroom so that she wouldn’t be seen husbandless which might have given the game away. She was annoyed too, because she had been boasting that as an experienced actress, with make-up, she could disguise anyone.
    The following week, Olive, fired by her success as Dick, went as a pirate, with bare legs and feet, torn tight breeches, scarred face (with amateur make-up) and a knife between her teeth. With her slim boyish figure, her agility with such marvellous piratical leaps, no one guessed her identity. This was really heaping coals of fire on the heads of Mr Pyjama Man and his wife who for the rest of our stay were a little cool and distant, although little Geoffrey seemed not to notice and always bade them a cheery ‘Good morning’. The trouble was that he was absolutely fascinated, having discovered that Ghandi was toothless and was always requesting his friend to ‘do it again and have just gums’.
    Sadly, however, I went down with sunstroke and got ticked off by the doctor, but since I had spent the holiday wrapped up like a cocoon out of the sun as my red hair made me prone to sunstroke, I thought him extremely unfair.
    On our return from Jersey, Rob’s firm offered him a grocery business, on which they had been losing money, and Rob, feeling he and Olive could make something of this opportunity, accepted, and soon after our return they left Forest Gate. They worked, indeed slaved, in this business and the following Christmas we went to stay with them. On the Christmas tree was an envelope addressed to ‘Charlie and Dorothy’. It was a gift to us of their half of the house at Forest Gate!

Chapter 4
Just the Job
    My youngest sister, Marjorie, my mother’s tenth and youngest child, was now to be married to her Alfred. They had been busy searching for a flat so that although we were sad when Chas’s family moved, it meant there was. an empty flat for Marjorie at Forest Gate. Everything went so smoothly for her wedding that I was a little envious and she looked so pretty too in her white classical gown with four bridesmaids in diaphanous spring green. I wore a dark purple suit with a grey crepe-de-Chine blouse which had stitched collars and cuffs and in a Jewish hat shop in the Mile End Road they made me a