Henrietta's War Page 13

  Linda was greeted rapturously at the front door by Emerson, and asked to see her aunts. We were shown into a room which had three original Landseers on the walls, and a mantelpiece draped with velvet. When Linda explained what she had come for, Aunts Julia and Lucy were on to it like lightning. It was easy to see from which side of the family Linda has inherited her dramatic talents.

  ‘Will Emerson be all right?’ said Linda.

  ‘We will coach her in her part,’ said Aunt Lucy.

  The next morning we arrived in good time at the Salvage Headquarters. Linda was wearing a new hat, and the young men from the Evening Banner were practically speechless with excitement.

  ‘This is my assistant, Mrs Brown,’ said Linda, pointing at me. ‘She accompanies me everywhere, for there are some streets in my district where No Woman Would Care To Go Alone.’

  The Salvage City Father, who adores Linda and would never ask her to visit a Street Where No Woman Cares To Go Alone, besides having spent the best years of his life eliminating such streets from the borough, looked a little bleak at this, but sportingly said nothing.

  The other young man took photographs of Linda –

  (a) arriving at the office;

  (b) sitting at her desk; and

  (c) talking to the City Father.

  After that we set out in a taxi.

  ‘I always choose my house by the window-curtains,’ said Linda as we drove into the aunts’ square.

  ‘There’s a good one,’ said the reporter pointing.

  ‘No, I think this one,’ said Linda firmly, and the taxi drew up at her aunts’ door.

  Emerson answered the door, wearing spectacles and with her cap a little crooked. ‘I am the Salvage Adviser,’ said Linda. ‘Is your mistress at home?’

  ‘I doubt whether they’ll see you,’ said Emerson, in a strange, unnatural voice.

  Arriving at the office

  ‘Oh, please,’ said Linda, with the smile that used to bring the gallery cheering to its feet. It was on this occasion noted, in shorthand, by the reporter in his little book.

  We were shown into the drawing-room. Emerson retreated hastily, and there was a noise like a sneeze as she shut the door. Aunt Julia was sitting in a high-backed chair, doing tatting, and Aunt Lucy was playing ‘The Last Rose of Summer’ on the piano, which was very out of tune.

  ‘I am the Salvage Adviser,’ said Linda, in a rather shaky voice. ‘Is there any salvage you can let me have to help Old England in her hour of need?’

  Aunts Julia and Lucy rose to their feet and stood side by side in dignified silence. Then Aunt Julia spoke. ‘My dear,’ she said, ‘my sister and I are in very reduced circumstances.’

  ‘Nearly all our possessions,’ said Aunt Lucy sadly, looking round the overcrowded room, ‘have come under the auctioneer’s hammer to pay our debts.’

  ‘But England’s call has never gone unheeded in this house,’ said Aunt Julia, and she went to a corner-cabinet and took out a pair of handsome Sheffield-plate candlesticks which she handed to Linda. ‘They were given to our father by Disraeli,’ she said simply.

  Then Aunt Lucy went to the writing-desk and unlocked a drawer. She took out a little bundle of letters tied with pink ribbon. ‘Please take them,’ she said, and pressed them into Linda’s hands.

  The other young man took a lot of photographs, and we were asked to partake of gooseberry wine. This was served by Emerson in long-stemmed glasses and the other young man took yet another photograph. I don’t know what the gooseberry wine was, but there was a lot of gin in it, and we parted hilariously on the steps of the Salvage Office.

  ‘You’re a grand showman, Miss Linda Larcombe,’ said the reporter, and I rather think there was a twinkle in his eye.

  We took the candlesticks and the little bundle of letters back after tea. ‘Darlings, you were magnificent,’ said Linda, kissing them warmly, ‘and what did you do to the piano?’

  ‘I unscrewed some of those knobs inside with the pliers,’ said Aunt Julia.

  ‘And are those really love-letters, Aunt Lucy?’

  Aunt Lucy smiled. ‘There are six volumes of your grandfather’s sermons waiting for your salvage if you like to call for them in the morning,’ she said.

  Always your affectionate Childhood’s Friend,

  HENRIETTA

  December 31, 1941

  MY DEAR ROBERT

  Neither Bill nor the Linnet got home for Christmas this year, and Lady B, who always dines with us on Christmas Day, was in bed with a cold, poor darling, so Charles and I decided to give Evensong the night off, and have a quiet cottage pie. On Christmas morning I gave Charles a pair of sock-suspenders, and he gave me a pair of nail-scissors. We thanked each other gravely, and went to our respective tasks as usual. Matins had given herself the morning off, and people are always iller than usual on Christmas Day. Charles rushed in for lunch, and rushed out again twenty minutes later with a set expression on his face.

  In the afternoon I went to see Lady B, who wouldn’t let me into her room because of germs. So I went back home, lit the fire in the drawing-room, did the black-out all over the house and sat down with my knitting. At six o’clock there was a lot of scuffling and scrunching on the path outside, and some children began singing carols. We get a lot of carols here, most of them squeaked hurriedly through the letter-box, but these were real carols, sung by a lot of children with a grown-up in charge.

  ‘God Rest You Merrie Gentlemen’, they sang in their clear, sweet voices, and very nearly in tune. After that, we had ‘Once in Royal David’s City’, and ‘No-well, No-well’. A very small child came in with the collecting-box, and deeply moved by their performance, I gave, as they say, generously. When Charles came home he found me sitting in the dark, blowing my nose.

  ‘You’re not getting a cold, are you?’ he said, rather crossly, as he switched on the lights. ‘Hullo!’ he said, peering at me closely, ‘what’s going on here?’

  ‘It was the carols,’ I muttered.

  ‘But carols oughtn’t to make you sad.’

  ‘Well, these did. There is so little, so very little peace and good will in the world just now, Charles.’

  Charles patted me kindly on the shoulder. ‘Not the international sort, perhaps. Plenty of individual good will,’ he said. ‘And now go and put that cottage pie in the oven, I’m hungry.’

  When I got back, I found Charles surrounded by a great many strange bottles. He handed me a glass of pale amber-coloured liquid. ‘Drink that,’ he said. ‘It’ll get you where you live.’

  I took a sip. ‘Charles!’ I said. ‘What ever is it made of ?’

  ‘Remnants,’ said Charles, with an airy wave of the hand towards the imposing array of bottles on the piano. ‘How does it taste?’

  ‘Potent, but nice.’

  ‘Good. Have another.’

  ‘Thank you, Charles.’

  ‘You know, Henrietta,’ said Charles, as he refilled his glass and mine, ‘even if we can buy the ingredients, we shall never be able to have this drink again, because I can’t remember how I made it. It is gone for ever, like the Lost Chord. “It may be that only in heav’n . . . ” ’

  ‘Damn Hitler!’ I said loudly.

  ‘Hear, hear!’ said Charles. ‘And the Japs.’

  ‘And Musso, and Laval.’

  ‘And God bless the King.’

  ‘The King!’

  ‘And the Queen.’

  ‘Wait a minute, old girl, while I fill up my glass. Now then. And the Queen, God bless her! And the little Princesses.’

  ‘Absent friends, Charles.’

  ‘Absent friends, coupled with the names of Bill and Linnet Brown,’ said Charles.

  ‘And the Americans.’

  ‘Your glass is empty, Henrietta. May I give you a little more?’

  ‘Thank you, Charles. Just a drop. I find your mixture delicious, but a trifle strong.’

  ‘There you are. Now, where were we?’

  ‘The Americans.’

&nb
sp; ‘Good luck to them.’

  ‘And the Choles and Pecks.’

  Charles gave me a keen look. ‘The Poles and Czechs, and all our other allies,’ he said firmly, and brought our toasting to a timely end.

  ‘I feel better,’ I said.

  ‘That was the idea,’ said Charles modestly.

  ‘A Merry Christmas, Charles.’

  ‘The same to you, Henrietta.’

  We went in to dinner arm-in-arm, and Charles said it was the most delicious cottage pie he had ever had.

  Always your affectionate Childhood’s Friend,

  HENRIETTA

  ‘And the Choles and Pecks’

  A Note on the Author

  Joyce Dennys was born 14th August 1883 in India. She came from a military family and her father was a professional soldier in the Indian Army. The Dennys family relocated to England in 1886. Dennys enjoyed drawing lessons throughout her schooling and later enrolled at Exeter Art School. While studying at Exeter, she took part in the war effort and worked as a member of the Voluntary Aid Detachment after passing her Red Cross exams. Dennys designed a recruitment poster to encourage women to sign up. She later wrote and illustrated the VAD alphabet while on duty on a ward and this was published by John Lane.

  In 1919 Dennys married Tom Evans, a young doctor, and moved to Australia. While living in New South Wales, Dennys’s work was constantly in print and exhibited in many galleries. In 1922 Joyce became a mother and moved back to England. Her drawing took second place to the domestic and social duties of a doctor’s wife and mother and she became increasingly frustrated, trying to work whenever she could. She voiced her frustrations through the character of Henrietta, a heroine she created for an article for Sketch. The article took the form of Henrietta’s letters to her childhood friend Robert, fighting at the front. The article was such a success that Dennys was asked for more, and her letters became a regular feature of Sketch until the end of the war. Henrietta was to become so important to Dennys that she once remarked, ‘When I stopped doing the piece after the war, I felt quite lost. Henrietta was part of me. I never quite knew where I ended and she began.’ These letters were later compiled to form Henrietta’s War, first published by Andre Deutsch in 1985. Joyce Dennys died in 1991.

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  Footnote

  1 British Expeditionary Force

  2 Air-Raid Precautions

  3 Auxiliary Territorial Service

  4 Royal Army Medical Corps

  5 Women’s Auxiliary Air Force

  6 Women’s Voluntary Service

  7Auxiliary Fire Service

  8 ‘Evensong’ was one of Henrietta’s two dailies. The other was ‘Matins’. They did not like each other and, as one can guess from their names, it was hoped that their paths would seldom cross.

  First published in 1985 by Andre Deutsch Ltd

  Published by Bloomsbury Publishing PLC 2011

  Copyright © Joyce Dennys

  This electronic edition published 2011 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  The right of Joyce Dennys to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

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  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978 1 4088 0870 2

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