Henrietta's War Page 11

  For a long time she has been saying that she couldn’t afford the house, but it was when the old gardener had to give up work, and there wasn’t another to be had, that she decided that it was time to go.

  ‘I’m too old to dig,’ she said, ‘and it isn’t fair to neglect a garden these days.’

  It was just like Lady B to be so plucky and sensible about it, and when I went up to tea one day last week it was a shock to find her sitting on the floor with a child’s doll on her lap and the tears rolling down her cheeks.

  With a child’s doll on her lap

  ‘It was Sarah’s,’ she said in a choked voice while she fumbled about for a handkerchief.

  I passed her mine in silence. Sarah was Lady B’s very precious daughter who died as a V.A.D. in the last war.

  ‘She was a rather plain little girl,’ said Lady B, dabbing at her eyes. ‘Freckly, you know, and with cut knees, but such a darling. This is the doll she loved best. Her name is Hermione.’

  Hermione’s eyes opened with a click and she said ‘Ma-ma.’

  ‘Keep her,’ I said.

  ‘Good gracious, no!’ said Lady B briskly, and she got up off the floor and put Hermione back into her cradle. ‘I’m going to get rid of everything which isn’t really necessary. I shall keep one fork and one spoon and one knife and one chair and one bed, and my life will be simple and idyllic.’

  ‘And what about a table?’

  ‘A table, of course.’

  ‘And what about the evacuee?’

  ‘Don’t be tiresome, Henrietta.’

  ‘It will be nice not to have to bother about weeds,’ I said wistfully.

  ‘It will be heavenly!’ said Lady B with fervour. ‘I shall have a window-box in which I shall dig with my one fork.’ ‘

  I think I shall stop being sorry for you,’ I said.

  ‘I should think so, indeed!’ said Lady B, pouring out the tea. ‘It is the best thing that has happened to me for ages, and you mustn’t take any notice if I get a bit weepy and sentimental; it is the privilege of age.’

  She was quite her old self again.

  ‘I’m not at all sure that I shan’t grow mustard and cress in my window-box.’

  ‘And you could cut it with your one pair of nail-scissors.’

  Lady B smiled happily. ‘The secret of happiness is to adopt this attitude towards possessions,’ she said – and she made a pushing-away gesture with her hands – ‘rather than this,’ and she pulled an imaginary treasure to her bosom. ‘Once you can drop the grabbing habit everything is plain sailing. I’m all right, because my family has been coming down in the world for so many generations that it’s sort of in my blood. It’s the ones on the up-grade who are finding it so difficult to get into reverse. Poor things,’ she added, with deep sympathy.

  ‘You are a philosopher,’ I said, ‘and young men ought to sit at your feet.’

  ‘I can’t imagine anything nicer,’ said Lady B.

  Always your affectionate Childhood’s Friend,

  HENRIETTA

  June 18, 1941

  MY DEAR ROBERT

  The Conductor gave two concerts last week, one here, and one in an outlying village. He has been in bed ever since. Here we had our usual rather sullen audience composed of people who had been bludgeoned into buying tickets and who would rather have been playing bridge. The most exciting moment of the afternoon, as far as I was concerned, was when I came in with a loud fluting note a whole bar too soon, but with great presence of mind I turned and gave Faith, who was standing next to me, a Look, and the Conductor, thinking she was the culprit, smiled indulgently.

  I turned and gave Faith a look

  The concert in the outlying village was much more fun because the Women’s Institute hall was packed with people who all wanted to be there, and were determined to enjoy themselves at all costs. The front seats, which had gone up sixpence this year and were now two shillings, were gratifyingly full of London Visitors, and officers who are billeted in the village. They had come partly because their landladies had sold them tickets, partly because they felt it was the duty of the gentry to uphold Village Effort, but mostly because they hoped it would be like the gramophone record of ‘Our Village Concert’, and that they’d get a good laugh. The back seats came partly to laugh at their friends on the stage, and partly to laugh at the gentry laughing at the village . . .

  Faith was looking divine, as usual. But how long can it last? We were all dreadfully sorry for her the other day when clothes rationing was announced. She came up to our house straight after the broadcast looking white and drawn.

  ‘I’ve given up offering people my whisky, Faith,’ said Charles gently as he led her to the sofa, ‘but I’d like you to have some now.’

  ‘I’d sooner have some sherry,’ said Faith in a choked voice.

  Charles filled a port glass to the brim and handed it to her. ‘You can still buy hats,’ he said tenderly.

  ‘Hats!’ said Faith. ‘Nobody wears a hat in the country!’ and she tossed off her sherry as though it were vodka.

  ‘And you’ve got an awful lot of clothes to go on with,’ I said, and Faith gave me a withering look.

  ‘It wouldn’t matter so much if the make-up wasn’t going off the market,’ she said gloomily. ‘You can get away with no clothes if you’ve got plenty of make-up.’

  ‘I’m sure you can,’ said Charles admiringly as he refilled her glass.

  ‘My grandmother used to tell me that once when she particularly wanted to cut a dash at a dance she made herself some rouge out of red geranium petals and was the Belle of the Ball. In fact, that was the night she hooked grandfather.’

  ‘I suppose she mixed the petals with something?’ said Faith, with deep interest. Then the Conductor came in and Faith, who was starting on her third glass of sherry and cheering up, waved to him and said she had decided to have an evening coat made of patchwork silk.

  ‘Motley’s the only wear,’ said the Conductor. Then he sat down beside her on the sofa and took her hand. ‘I just want you to know,’ he said, ‘that you can have all my coupons.’

  ‘Are they transferable?’ said Faith, who was greatly touched by this sign of devotion.

  ‘Only among families,’ said Charles.

  ‘Well – ’ said the Conductor, with a meaning look.

  Charles saw them to the gate. When he came back he said that if the Conductor didn’t pull it off this time he never would.

  The next morning I met Lady B. ‘My dear,’ she said, ‘Faith has gone stark staring mad.’

  ‘Has she accepted him?’ I asked eagerly.

  ‘Not as far as I know,’ said Lady B. ‘But she’s got her garden cramjam full of the most awful red geraniums.’

  Always your affectionate Childhood’s Friend,

  HENRIETTA

  July 2, 1941

  MY DEAR ROBERT

  One of the prize gardens in these parts was thrown open to the public one day last week. Charles and I both went, Charles because the sixpence a head entrance fee was in aid of the Cottage Hospital, and I because I wanted to see the garden.

  I think it is the loveliest garden I know. To begin with, it is large, but not so large as to make the owner’s house look like a tool shed. Then it has a little stream running along the bottom edge, as all good gardens should have; but best of all, everything in it seems to be growing there because it is the right and proper place for it to grow, and not because some determined person with a spade has made a hole and shoved it in.

  Charles and I wandered round in a depressed way, wondering how we could ever have dared to call the jungle which surrounds our house a garden. Here there were no weeds, no slugs, snails, or greenfly, and everything seemed to be growing healthily and happily in the right shape. Most of the plants were so rare that they had little metal notice boards with long Latin names on them stuck into the ground beside them, and the few we did recognize were new and surprising colours.

  One of the prize gardens was thrown o
pen to the public

  ‘That’s a delphinium, Charles.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Henrietta, it’s pink.’

  ‘All the same, it is a delphinium, Charles.’

  Charles sighed. ‘Let’s go and have a look at the veg,’ he said.

  But if he hoped to see signs of neglect in the vegetable garden he was doomed to disappointment.

  We returned to the flower garden in silence. The owner was walking about with a shooting-stick, a proud and happy man, talking to his guests, advising, explaining, and listening patiently to long, boring stories of other people’s garden troubles.

  ‘I think those azaleas are the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen,’ said a guest in a hushed gardening voice.

  ‘Yes, but look at this little beast,’ said the owner, poking fretfully at a rather less exuberant specimen with his shooting-stick. ‘It came from Mongolia and I can’t get it to settle down.’

  ‘You see, Charles,’ I said wistfully, ‘he isn’t even conceited.’

  Suddenly Charles clutched my arm and pointed with a shaking finger. ‘Look!’ he said. ‘Look, Henrietta!’

  There it was, growing low on the ground, urban, squat, and packed with guile, like the Cambridge people in Rupert Brooke’s poem, and with roots, as well we knew, in Australia.

  ‘Bindweed!’ we shouted, and leaped forward like hounds at a kill.

  The owner came hurrying across what I must call the sward, because grass seems too ordinary a word. ‘I see you are admiring those dwarf lupins,’ he said. ‘People often cry out when they see them.’

  ‘I really must congratulate you on your lovely garden,’ said Charles, who was now in the highest spirits.

  ‘Are you a gardener, Mrs Brown?’ said the owner.

  ‘I am a weeder,’ I said.

  His wife, who had joined the party, leant towards me and said in a low voice, ‘What is your favourite weed?’

  ‘Groundsel,’ I said, without a moment’s hesitation.

  ‘Groundsel is my favourite, too,’ said the owner’s wife. ‘It comes out of the ground very sweetly, doesn’t it?’ and we gave each other a long Look, fraught, as they say, with understanding.

  The owner walked with us to the gate, and we thanked him for his garden, and told him he ought to be a very happy man, because he worked hard all day at the thing he liked doing best in the world, and was making a bit of England more and more beautiful when such a lot of it was being made more and more ugly.

  ‘I like to think of it in that way,’ said the owner.

  Always your affectionate Childhood’s Friend,

  HENRIETTA

  July 30, 1941

  MY DEAR ROBERT

  I wonder if you remember my telling you how Hilary and Pops swept me into their Blood Room in our Cathedral City Hospital and drew a reluctant drop from my ear?

  I have had to pay dearly for this girlish prank, let me tell you, and you can imagine my horror when I got a postcard telling me I was urgently needed to give a blood transfusion at the Cottage Hospital on the following Tuesday.

  Charles was very cross when I told him about it. ‘You shouldn’t let yourself in for this sort of thing, Henrietta,’ he said. ‘You know perfectly well that it’s Evensong’s night out. Supposing you want to lie down or something when you get home? Who’s going to get the dinner?’

  I said I would ask Evensong to change her day, and did people ever die giving their blood?

  At this Charles and the Linnet, who was home for the day, went into shrieks of laughter and said, ‘Not very often.’

  Tuesday found me in a considerable state of nerves. ‘Don’t worry,’ said Charles kindly. ‘Any weakness or discomfort you may feel will be purely psychological, and you may get a glass of beer when it is all over.’

  At 3 p.m. I dressed myself carefully in the quiet clothes suitable to a donor, and crept up to the hospital. The first thing I saw as I walked in at the door was Mrs Savernack lying on a sort of stretcher and apparently dying. As I bent over her and took her hand, I suddenly realized how fond I was of her, and regretted all the unkind things I had said about her in the past.

  Lying on a sort of stretcher

  Mrs Savernack opened her eyes and said, ‘Where’s that cup of tea?’

  ‘Here you are,’ said an exquisite V.A.D., appearing round the corner.

  ‘There’s a lot to be said for the old custom of bloodletting,’ said Mrs Savernack heartily, smacking her lips as she handed back the empty cup. ‘Hullo, Henrietta! What are you goggling at? You don’t mean to say you’re going to try and give some blood?’

  ‘I shall try, and no doubt I shall succeed,’ I said with dignity, for Mrs Savernack’s continual assumption that I am unable to perform any useful duty is annoying, and I stopped regretting all the unkind things I had said about her in the past. As I was led away, I heard her say in a loud whisper, ‘You’ll have trouble with that woman.’

  Determined, after this, to give my very life blood without a murmur, I lay down on a stretcher, bared my arm, and turned away my head. A young R.A.M.C.4 lieutenant appeared and various things were done which I tried not to think about. ‘Keep on clenching and unclenching your hand,’ he said kindly. ‘It prevents that unpleasant bubbling sensation.’

  I clenched and unclenched my hand as hard as I could, for I found the bubbling sensation very unpleasant indeed, and the R.A.M.C. lieutenant said, ‘That’s right – you’re getting along nicely.’ He had golden hair and was so like you, Robert, at the age of twenty-five, that I could hardly take my eyes off him.

  I lay on my stretcher and decided that this blood transfusion business was child’s play. It wasn’t hurting, the bubbling sensation had stopped, the sun shone on the lieutenant’s hair, and my V.A.D. sat beside me, a model of efficiency and comfort. Various people lay about on stretchers, looking yellow but quite calm; and, contrary to my expectations, blood was not being splashed all over the walls. Indeed, if you averted your eyes from sinister red bottles rotating in a sort of dignified dance on gramophones beside each bed, you might think the whole thing was nothing more than a cosy, communal siesta.

  ‘All right?’ said the R.A.M.C. lieutenant. How bored he was with blood! I felt so sorry for him.

  I turned my head and took a look at my V.A.D. sitting beside me so neat, sweet and calm, and I glowed with pride in the Old Regiment. ‘I was a V.A.D. in the last war,’ I said, ‘but I never did anything exciting like this.’

  ‘Exciting?’ said the V.A.D. with a sigh.

  I wanted to tell her how splendid I thought she and the other V.A.D.s were when suddenly a sweat broke out on me. I could feel it trickling down inside my shirt. ‘Psychological be blowed, Charles!’ I said to myself. ‘I’m dying.’

  ‘All over,’ said the V.A.D. brightly, and she bent my arm up. ‘Like a cup of tea?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  This seemed to shake her, and she took one of my pillows away, loosened the belt of my cardigan, and held smelling-salts under my nose.

  ‘I think you’d better put some of that blood back,’ I said weakly.

  ‘Keep perfectly still,’ said the lieutenant, who had, presumably, witnessed so many blood-transfusion deaths that he wasn’t going to start getting excited over mine.

  But I didn’t die. After a time I sat up and had some delicious tea out of a thick white mug. Mrs Savernack poked her head round the door. ‘Have any trouble with her?’ she asked hopefully.

  I looked imploringly at my V.A.D. and the lieutenant. They looked at me, and then they looked at each other. ‘None at all,’ they said together and very firmly.

  I hope they both get George Crosses.

  Always your affectionate Childhood’s Friend,

  HENRIETTA

  August 27, 1941

  MY DEAR ROBERT

  Lady B is very indignant about a picture she saw in the paper of Russian women with baskets in one hand and rifles in the other. ‘Why don’t they give us rifles? If every woman in Britain had a rifl
e,’ said Lady B, her eyes glittering wildly, ‘just think what they could do.’

  ‘I’d rather not!’ said Charles, shuddering.

  But I began thinking what a help a rifle would be during morning shopping.

  LADY SHOPPER: Any cornflakes, Mr Green?

  MR GREEN: No cornflakes, Madam.

  LADY SHOPPER: No cornflakes at all, Mr Green?

  MR GREEN: None, Madam.

  LADY SHOPPER:(leaning across the counter and fingering the trigger of her rifle): Are you quite sure there are no cornflakes, Mr Green?

  MR GREEN: Well, Madam, perhaps just one.

  (He dives under the counter and produces the last packet, which he has been keeping for his wife’s cousin.)

  And just think how the Woman Who Took Somebody Else’s Turn in the fish shop would fall, riddled with bullets, just as she was handed her cod steak – and serve her right, too. The more I thought about it the more I agreed with Lady B that it would be a good thing to arm the women of Britain.

  But Faith thought it would be a mistake. She said there were so many rows in the place just now that it would lead to endless blood-feuds and vendettas, and practically nobody would be left alive at the end of the week. She looked at us very meaningly as she said this, and Lady B and I got rather red and shuffled with our feet, because, I must tell you, Robert, that Faith and Lady B and Mrs Savernack and I have been involved in one of the most stupendous rows which has ever taken place. Now it is all over, it is Lady B and I, the two more or less innocent parties, who shuffle, and Mrs Savernack and Faith who do not.

  It came about like this. I happened to meet Mrs Savernack in the street one morning and she told me that Gladys, their cook, who has been with them for ten years, had given notice, and that Mr Savernack was so upset he’d had to go to Charles for something to make him sleep.