Dolly's War by Dorothy Scannell

round my shoulders and remarked that she was so impatient she couldn’t wait until ‘our lovely baby’ was born. She was sure she would take over from me for she adored babies so. Amy glared at her and remarked to me when the landlady had made her exit, ‘Don’t let her talk to you like that, Dolly,’ but even Amy thought the woman kind at heart and just worried about a gas escape. She added, ‘You are a bit absent-minded, Dolly.’ At this I burst into tears and Amy, fury subsiding, put her arms round me (she had a bit of a job for I was enormous and she tiny) and said, ‘There, there, Dolly, you’ll be fine when your baby is here.’
    I became mortally afraid to stay alone in the house with my landlady in the winter evenings and as soon as Chas had gone I left too, spending the evenings wandering around the cold dark roads. One winter’s night with the snow thick on the ground, I needed a lavatory urgently. I crept on to a building-site, feeling like the naughty cat of my young sister’s childhood, and just as I was in the act of crouching, out from the watchman’s hut tore an Alsatian dog. I must have been the fastest pregnant harrier ever and gasping for breath arrived back trembling on the front doorstep of ‘our’ house, aching all over. The key would not unlock the door. The landlady must have put the bolt on yet she knew I was out. I waited in agony for the ‘man from the Pru’. He was cross to find me out in such conditions, mine and the weather, but his key turned like magic.
    I began to experience such physical irritation as I had never known before, and one day, in desperation, while my landlady was out, I threw myself into a boiling bath, and with a coarse brush and strong carbolic soap I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed. It was sheer heaven – until an hour later when my flesh began to swell and swell and swell and from tummy to knees I was like a skinned balloon. When poor Chas arrived home he almost burst into tears at my inflated state and he helped me so tenderly down the road to see the doctor who lived on the corner. What a sight we were, me so enormous, shuffling with legs a yard apart, poor Chas so slim and worried-looking. The ladies in that road never spoke or even nodded to me, but one lady, peering from behind her stiff starched lace curtains, was so curious as to our strange progress down the road that she actually opened her window and called out, ‘Was it an accident?’ Game to the last I answered brightly, ‘Oh no, we wanted this baby.’ Slam went the window. ‘Why do you say such things?’ said Chas to me gently but reproachfully.
    The old doctor rubbed his head when he sighted my self-inflicted injuries and announced that in all his medical experience he’d never come across such a case. He diagnosed baby was blocking something. I’d eaten too many sweets because I had given up smoking and now he wondered if I hadn’t chosen the bigger of two evils, the sweets, of course, not the baby. However he was very kind and said I was fortunate to be living with that charming Mrs... You too, I thought, yet I knew I was right in my fear of the dear woman.
    The local insurance office to which Charles was attached was to hold a dinner dance and the new agent must attend with his lady and meet the other agents and their wives. I had no decent dress, indeed no dress which would fit, but Chas insisted I go with him and finally I took the sleeves out of a blue winter dress and wore it as a pinafore-dress with a white blouse. I never made up, but I thought that on such an elegant occasion I really should and when I presented myself to Chas (with just a dusting of powder and a little lipstick) he was furious and thought I looked like a Jezebel. (Do they get pregnant, I wondered?) So off must come the lipstick, at least. He put my new lipstick down the lavatory and off we went, he slim and elegant in his