Henrietta's War Page 12

  I said how sorry I was, and passed on, and that was the beginning of the row, though it looks harmless enough so far, doesn’t it?

  Next day was Sunday, and Faith arrived at Lady B’s after church, and immediately began a moan because her cook wanted to be a W.A.A.F.5

  I said, casually, that Mrs Savernack’s Gladys was leaving, and poor Mr Savernack couldn’t sleep. Faith hurried away soon afterwards with a determined look on her face, and I remember saying to Lady B that I hoped she’d set about acquiring Gladys in a tactful manner. A cloud a good deal smaller than a man’s hand; but still, a cloud.

  Faith set about acquiring Gladys in the most tactless way possible. She went to the Savernacks’ house that evening through the tradesmen’s entrance, and tapped on the kitchen window. Gladys, who is an extremely nervous woman at the best of times, and who has lived in dread of escaped Dartmoor convicts ever since she came to Devon, set up a shrill screaming. In rushed Mrs Savernack, to find Gladys with her apron over her head and Faith half-way through the kitchen window saying, ‘Double your wages and a portable wireless.’

  ‘What is this?’ thundered Mrs Savernack.

  ‘Double your wages and a portable wireless’

  ‘Oh,’ said Faith, who ought to have been confused, but wasn’t, ‘Henrietta said something about Mr Savernack’s headaches because Gladys was leaving.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Henrietta,’ said Faith, who could so easily have said she’d heard a rumour about Gladys at the Bee. Mrs Savernack seized her by the arm and rushed her, as the Red Queen rushed Alice, down the road to our house.

  Charles was out, and Lady B and I were spending a quiet evening together – at least, that had been the idea. We were enjoying a cosy chat on carnation cuttings, when the door burst open and Mrs Savernack rushed in, dragging Faith behind her.

  ‘How dare you betray the sacred trust placed in you as a Doctor’s Wife?’ she said in a voice choked with rage.

  ‘What have I done, Mrs Savernack?’ I cried, starting to my feet, for my wifely conscience is never clear.

  ‘You told Faith that Gladys was leaving.’

  ‘I don’t see what that has to do with Charles,’ said Lady B.

  ‘I suppose you’ll say Henry’s headaches are nothing to do with Charles?’ said Mrs Savernack, rounding on her.

  ‘Of course, if I’d known Henrietta was betraying a trust – ’ said Faith, throwing me to the lions.

  ‘Henrietta is always most discreet,’ said Lady B.

  ‘She’d have a better chance if you didn’t spoil her so,’ said Mrs Savernack.

  By this time we were all so angry there was no drawing back. Faith and Mrs Savernack, who in some strange way had become allies, told Lady B and me exactly what they thought of us, and we did the same. I always stammer when I’m angry, and a lot of my best bits were lost, but Lady B got in some good ones. I don’t remember all that was said, and perhaps it is just as well, but I distinctly remember Lady B telling Mrs Savernack she was fat, insensitive and noisy, and somebody told me I was conceited and artificial, and my vagueness was a pose.

  At the end of five minutes we were all white with rage and mortification, and nobody heard the telephone. Then Charles came in to say Mr Savernack had rung up to say that Gladys felt she couldn’t leave the dogs, and had decided to stay after all.

  Mrs Savernack and Faith went off quite jauntily, arm in arm, but Lady B and I had to be given whisky to stop our legs shaking. Charles laughed a lot when we told him about the row. He said it was better than saying things behind each other’s backs, anyway.

  Always your affectionate Childhood’s Friend,

  HENRIETTA

  September 10, 1941

  MY DEAR ROBERT

  When I was shopping in the street the other day, I suddenly caught sight of myself in a glass, and, my word, Robert, it gave me a shock – two strained and popping eyes crowned by a worried frown, nose slightly unpowdered, deep lines, as the beauty specialist would say, running from nose to chin, and lips so tightly compressed that it was impossible to say whether they had been decently coloured that morning or not.

  ‘Good heavens!’ I cried aloud. ‘This is terrible!’

  ‘What is?’ said Mrs Savernack, who was just coming out of the butcher’s.

  ‘My face,’ I said.

  ‘Is it?’ said Mrs Savernack, without looking at me, and added passionately: ‘I do think Thompson is unfair with his suet.’

  I walked slowly up the street, and noticed that every woman with a shopping basket had the Shopping Face. The contrast between them and the visitors, who were living in hotels or had landladies to do the shopping for them, and had only come out to buy picture postcards, was almost frightening. Then I saw Lady B sailing down the street like a stately galleon. Her face was calm and placid as well as being nicely made-up. In her hand she carried an enormous basket which was full to overflowing.

  I dashed across the road and seized her by the hand. ‘Darling Lady B!’ I said. ‘How do you do it?’

  ‘Do what, Henrietta?’

  ‘Look so calm and lovely in the middle of this battlefield.’

  ‘Thank goodness there’s

  ‘I don’t always feel calm,’ said Lady B. ‘But when I begin to want to scream I do this.’ She took me by the arm and led me through the little alley-way which runs beside the ironmonger’s to the sea. ‘I stand here,’ said Lady B, ‘and look at the sea, and then I take six deep breaths and say, “Thank goodness there’s enough of something.” Then I go back and finish my shopping.’

  The sea was looking very lovely that morning a deep indigo on – the horizon, fading to grey – and there was obviously a great deal of it. Fortified, I returned to the grocer’s and waited my turn in the queue.

  After I had given my order, Mr Green leant across the counter and whispered, ‘I’ve got a quarter of sultanas here if you’d care for them.’

  ‘Mr Green!’ I said, and sat down suddenly on a chair, for my legs had given way beneath me.

  By the time I got home I felt so exhilarated by the thought of Home-Made Cake for Bill and Linnet’s next visit that I decided to put the energy to some use and started on the windows.

  The strips of material which I had pasted on so carefully a year ago were now covered in leprous spots and it was a relief to get rid of them. I was engaged upon this pleasing task when I saw Lady B coming up the garden path, and I dropped a little strip of wet linen on her.

  ‘God bless my soul!’ said Lady B. ‘I suppose that was you, Henrietta. Can I come up?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said.

  ‘I’m glad you’re taking that stuff off,’ said Lady B, arriving slightly out of breath in my bedroom. ‘Are you going to paste net all over the glass?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘I am not. This winter is going to be quite depressing enough without having to live in a perpetual twilight as well.’

  ‘I couldn’t agree with you more,’ said Lady B, settling herself comfortably on my bed.

  I lifted the corner of a linen strip with my finger-nail and pulled. It came away with a delicious tearing sound. ‘Fascinating!’ said Lady B.

  ‘I always imagined myself doing this while the bells were pealing for victory,’ I said.

  ‘There’s still the black-out to tear down,’ said Lady B. ‘That will be most enjoyable.’

  ‘When I pasted these strips on,’ I said as I polished the glass with a duster, ‘I was in a blue funk. I couldn’t settle to anything, I was so frightened. But in some peculiar way, pasting strips of old table-cloths all over the windows steadied me. I felt much better after I’d done it.’

  ‘I believe all those pasting instructions by the B.B.C. were nothing but a sedative to housewives,’ said Lady B. ‘There are times when I think our Government understands us better than we think it does.’

  ‘It’s funny how much less frightened one is now, because, of course, there’s just as much reason to be frightened, if not more.’

  ‘
We are given Strength,’ said Lady B serenely. ‘But come along, Henrietta. Stuff those rags in the waste-paper basket. I expect the kettle’s boiling.’

  Always your affectionate Childhood’s Friend,

  HENRIETTA

  November 5, 1941

  MY DEAR ROBERT

  Yesterday there was a loud rat-a-tat-tat at the front door, and I rushed downstairs thinking it was a telegram. It wasn’t a telegram, but a large, heavy, exciting-looking parcel.

  ‘Here you are,’ said the postman, beaming like Father Christmas, ‘one-and-a-penny to pay.’

  ‘My goodness!’ I said. ‘How exciting! What do you think it is?’

  ‘Something good, by the look of it,’ said the postman.

  I carried the parcel into the kitchen, and Evensong and I turned it over, shook it, smelt it, pressed it and examined the labels.

  ‘Funny-looking stamps, aren’t they?’ said Evensong.

  ‘They’re Australian stamps. Look, that’s a lyre-bird. Isn’t it pretty?’

  ‘How do you know it’s a lyre-bird?’ said Evensong, who doubts my intelligence.

  ‘I used to live in Australia once.’

  ‘Well, I never!’ said Evensong, staring at me.

  Inside the wrappings was a sealed tin. Evensong, who wields a pretty tin-opener, soon dealt with that. Inside the tin were packages.

  ‘Sugar!’ said Evensong, with a glad shout.

  ‘Sultanas!’

  ‘Marmalade!’

  ‘Tea!’ – ‘Tongue!’ – ‘Asparagus tips!’ – ‘Cheese!’

  ‘Butter-scotch!’ ‘Oh, Evensong! A little tin of honey!’

  Evensong and I stared at each other in silence across the kitchen-table. ‘I shall make plum duff for dinner tonight,’ said Evensong, in a dreamy voice.

  ‘Sultanas! Marmalade!’

  After Evensong had extracted a generous portion of sultanas and sugar, we arranged the packages on a tray, which I carried about with me from room to room. When Faith rang up later I told her what had happened, and the news spread like wildfire. By seven o’clock quite a lot of people had been in to feast their eyes, and Evensong began to be nervous, and said she thought we ought to keep it all under lock and key.

  ‘Anything happened?’ said Charles, as he hung his hat up in the hall.

  ‘Cornucopia has happened, Charles.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  I held up the tray which I was carrying into the drawing-room for the evening. Charles, his eyes bulging out of his head, approached on tiptoe and touched each package with his finger, as though he doubted its reality. ‘Where did they come from?’ he whispered.

  ‘Australia. Here’s the card. It isn’t anybody we know.’

  Charles looked at me with a new respect. ‘Somebody must have read one of your mouldy little stories,’ he said in an astonished voice.

  We had plum duff for dinner, real plum duff, as only an unhampered Evensong can make it, thick with sultanas, and sweet. Afterwards Charles called for the last half-decanter of port. After he had poured out a glass for himself and for me, he stood up.

  ‘I feel I cannot allow this occasion to pass without proposing a toast,’ he said, in his best public-dinner manner. ‘I ask you to drink to the Commonwealth of Australia, and to our Benefactress who lives there, and who must assuredly be one of the kindest people in the world.’

  ‘The Commonwealth of Australia, and our Benefactress!’ I said, and we drained our glasses to the dregs.

  Always your affectionate Childhood’s Friend,

  HENRIETTA

  November 19, 1941

  MY DEAR ROBERT

  I am in London! Every year when autumn comes, and the bathing-dresses have been washed and put away, and the roof umbrella stowed in the cellar, and the cushions in the linen cupboard, I begin to long for London. I didn’t go up at all last year, and this year the craving became so intense that at last I rushed to the telephone and rang up Linda Dixon and asked her if she could have me to stay for two days, and that I’d bring a rabbit. Linda, who is the most welcoming person in the world, said it was just what she was longing for, and the rabbit wasn’t necessary.

  I was so pleased and excited I could only stammer and stutter down the telephone, but as soon as I had put the receiver back I began to have doubts. Suppose a bomb were to drop on Charles in my absence? Suppose a bomb were to drop on me in London? Charles and I hold strong views about being blown up together if we have to be blown up at all, and I had a vivid mental picture of Charles and the children in deep mourning, and Charles saying: ‘She would go. I couldn’t stop her. Your poor mother always had a craving for pleasure and excitement,’ and an even worse one of me returning to find our house a smoking ruin surrounded by Charles’s weeping patients.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ said Charles after dinner. ‘You seem very gloomy.’

  ‘I’m going to London to-morrow.’

  ‘I thought you wanted to go to London,’ said Charles. ‘You’ve been saying nothing else for a fortnight.’

  ‘Well, now I’m going I sort of don’t want to.’

  Charles gave me a patient look. ‘You always go on like this,’ he said.

  ‘Who’s going to take Perry for his walkies?’

  ‘Not me,’ said Charles firmly, and opened The Times.

  I woke up next morning with a heart like lead. Why, oh, why, had I deliberately let myself in for this agony? There was the telephone beside my bed. I lay and looked at it for a bit, and then picked up the receiver and asked for ‘Trunks’.

  ‘Linda, I’m not coming.’

  ‘But why, darling?’

  ‘Well, I just feel I can’t.’

  ‘Now, Henrietta,’ said Linda firmly, ‘I know exactly how you feel, but you must fight against it. We shall expect you for tea.’ Then she rang off.

  As soon as I got out my suitcase Perry went and sat in it, looking at me very piteously. Charles said, ‘Good-bye, old girl. Don’t get run over in the black-out, you’re such a fool in traffic.’ Matins flung her arms round my neck and said, ‘Oh, Madam, Madam, take care of yourself !’ The man in the bank said, ‘London? I hope we shall see you safely back, Mrs Brown.’ Faith said, ‘You’ll have an awful journey,’ and the Conductor said, ‘London will make you cry.’

  When I got to the station it was a shock to find that the twelve o’clock train now starts at twelve-thirty. Things are not what they were in the Old Country, Robert. But it gave me time to go back and fetch my earrings, which I had left on the mantelpiece. Matins, who thought I was my own ghost, uttered a loud shriek when she saw me, and dropped the dustpan and brush; and Perry, poor darling little Perry, who, like Mr Priestley, has his own ideas about Time, thought two days had passed, and gave me an ecstatic welcome.

  It was almost worse getting off the second time, but I dragged myself away, and met Mrs Savernack in the road outside. ‘You look very togged-up, Henrietta,’ she said disapprovingly.

  ‘I’m going to London, Mrs Savernack.’

  ‘But we are asked not to travel.’

  ‘I am going on business,’ I said primly, looking down my nose, and left her staring.

  This triumph over Mrs Savernack, my only one so far, did a lot to cheer me, and as I nearly missed my train and had to run from the top of the hill, there was no time for any more heart-burnings. Of course, directly I got in the train I began to enjoy myself, and, contrary to Faith’s gloomy forebodings, I got a corner seat.

  I nearly missed the train

  As we slid into the suburbs, excitement clutched at my heart in the old way, but I found myself wondering whether I would get the same welcome as I used to. In the old days, London used to say, ‘Here are the Autumn Visitors, give them a welcome,’ and as you stepped out of the train, Waterloo Station bowed and smiled; but that was before the war. What was London going to say this time? Would she say, ‘You are not a Londoner. Go back to the country where you belong, and don’t come here to stare at my wounds’? I turned my eyes away from
the devastation outside Waterloo, and fixed them on my book.

  But London is just the same, Robert. As I drove away in my taxi, the autumn sunshine was on Westminster Bridge, and the tops of the houses loomed out of a faint grey mist, and there were dahlias in the park. Just the same, and unbelievably lovely. There are Gaps, of course, but even we in the West have Gaps, and after the first gasp of surprise and horror, one gets used to them. ‘Here I am,’ says London, ‘knocked about a bit, but still here, and ready to give a welcome to a Country Cousin.’

  When I was at Waterloo yesterday, Robert, I looked for you under the clock, and almost thought I could see you standing there. Where, like the Pale Hands somebody loved, are you now?

  Always your affectionate Childhood’s Friend,

  HENRIETTA

  December 3, 1941

  MY DEAR ROBERT

  Here I am, home again. Three days in London is not enough, but I must tell you of the exciting morning I had with Linda before I left.

  Linda is a Salvage Adviser to a borough. When I said, ‘How grand that sounds!’ she turned those marvellous eyes on me and said simply, ‘It is grand.’ I really believe she is prouder of being a Salvage Adviser than she was of being the best Juliet ever seen on the English stage. Her job, as far as I can make out, is to go round to all the houses in the borough crying, ‘Bring out your dead!’ and then people rush out into the street with their old family teapots, or tear up the railings in the front garden, and Linda takes them away in a wheelbarrow. At least, that is what she told me, but one mustn’t expect the unvarnished truth from people with imaginations.

  Well, of course the Press soon got wind of these activities and came tearing round to the Salvage Headquarters, baying like hounds. Linda told me she really did want to be an anonymous salvager, but as the matter was taken out of her hands she determined to give the Evening Banner, which was the paper which got the first refusal, so to speak, a run for its money.

  That evening we went round to see Linda’s two old great-aunts, Julia and Lucy, who live in a museum-piece house in a romantic square which is on Linda’s salvage beat. Linda’s aunts are the sort of regal and delightful old ladies of whom people say, ‘They were intimate friends of Edward the Seventh, and he always went to tea there on Sunday afternoons.’ They have a parlour-maid called Emerson who has been with them for fifty years – and now you know exactly the sort of house it is.