Henrietta's War Read online

  We have had a week of lovely warm weather.

  Charles and I revelled in it, and so did the birds, who started a little tentative singing at dawn, as thrilling as strawberries on Christmas Day, but much sadder. It made me think of spring, and that reminded me that I hadn’t planted bulbs in pots, so after breakfast I rushed off to buy some.

  ‘What! Buying bulbs now?’ said Mrs Savernack with relish. ‘Mine are up at least half an inch!’

  I wish I were the sort of woman who remembers to plant bulbs in time. I wish I were the sort of woman who Shops Early, knows how to look up trains, and Accounts for Every Penny. I wish I were the sort of woman who sets one day aside every week for the linen cupboard, remembers people’s names, never wastes the soap, and sends her luggage in advance.

  I am not, but I am always your affectionate Childhood’s Friend,

  HENRIETTA

  December 20, 1939

  MY DEAR ROBERT

  Digging for Freedom is not nearly as romantic as it sounds. Ever since the war, Charles and I have been worrying about a patch of No-Man’s-Land at the bottom of our garden. Every time we looked at it, we felt we were betraying the Empire.

  Not that Charles looked at it much. His gardening consists in refusing to talk to the gardener, and, occasionally, very occasionally, when the sun is really warm, taking his before-Sunday-lunch sherry down the garden path and saying: ‘Is that an apple-tree or a pear-tree?’; and ‘There seem to be a lot of weeds’; and ‘Of course, I’d like to do some gardening myself, but a doctor has to think of his hands;’ and finally, ‘It would be much cheaper to lay it all down in asphalt.’ Then he goes indoors to roast beef with a self-satisfied expression on his face as of one who has spent the morning close to Mother Earth.

  I, on the other hand, take what is called an Interest in the garden. I shout at the gardener, for he is very deaf, standing for hours in a cold wind; but as he never takes any notice of what I say, I can only conclude that he doesn’t hear me. I wake in the night and Worry about the Weeds and next morning attack them in a frenzy, and spend most of the afternoon trying to get my hands clean. I ask for cuttings from my friends, and sometimes steal them, and go out into the woods and stagger home with leaf-mould in a sack.

  But there are times when I agree with Charles about the asphalt.

  When the war started, practically everybody, in the most laudable way, rushed off and began doing the thing they hated most. Faith forced her way into the Cottage Hospital, and stayed there for nearly a fortnight, doing ward-maid’s work; Mrs Savernack bought a book called Brush Up Your French; and Lady B, not to be outdone, bought a book called Brush Up Your German, which some people thought rather unpatriotic. Practically everybody who owned a car began driving somebody else’s and Colonel Simpkins, as a protest against ‘all this tomfoolery’, took lessons in ballroom dancing.

  I, of course, immediately felt it was my duty to Dig, and announced my intention to the gardener in a penetrating shriek.

  Took lessons in ballroom dancing

  ‘Yu can dig ’un up if yu wants,’ he said in a pitying way, and went on pruning the roses.

  So as I had a free day on Monday, I put on a pair of Charles’s shorts, took a spade in hand, and started.

  The gardener was outraged at the sight of my legs, and spent quite half an hour peering at me in shocked surprise from behind the gooseberry bushes. Then he emerged and stood beside me for another half-hour watching my efforts with a superior smile. After that he went and sat in the greenhouse and had some tea out of a Thermos flask.

  Bindweed is a crawling plant which has its roots in Australia.

  I dug grimly for two hours, and then, quite suddenly, somebody plunged a dagger into the middle of my back. At least, that is what it felt like. I tried to straighten myself, but a scream of pain burst from my lips, and sweat broke out on my forehead. So, in a bent position, my chin bumping against my knees, I shuffled back to the house. The gardener, who was now eating a large slice of plum cake, was moved to laughter as I went by.

  Charles, who like all doctors, dislikes Illness in the Home, said it served me right for digging, half naked, in an east wind, and ordered a Day in Bed.

  Oh, but Robert! – what luxury is a day in bed, even with lumbago! To appreciate it to the full it is a good plan to wake up several times during the night and say to yourself: ‘I haven’t got to get up to-morrow morning.’

  But perhaps the most exquisite moment of all is when you sink back on your pillows and listen to everybody else getting up. It is madness to spoil this enchanted hour by getting up yourself to brush your teeth. You must lie where you are, relaxed, happy, and dirty, calling weakly for your letters, the morning papers, and another hot-water bottle.

  To have visitors during a Day in Bed is a grave error. It means getting out to do your hair, make up your face, and have your bed made. A little talk on the telephone with some sympathetic friend who is really interested in your symptoms is the only social intercourse that should be allowed. A good deal of pleasure can be derived from asking for your fountain-pen and notepaper, and then not writing any letters . . .

  Lady B who just dropped in – a welcome visitor at any time – says she got so angry with Lord Haw-Haw the other night that she took off her shoe and threw it at the wireless, and broke a valuable vase. Now she has adopted a different technique. Before going to bed she sits down and writes a letter to Hitler, telling him just exactly what she thinks of him. She says it has never failed to give her a good night’s sleep. I think her great-grandchildren will enjoy those letters, don’t you?

  Always your affectionate Childhood’s Friend,

  HENRIETTA

  December 27, 1939

  MY DEAR ROBERT

  You know the way Faith has of suddenly producing celebrities out of a hat? Her latest is a Conductor of singing, not trams – and the whole village has become vocal-conscious.

  Snatches of song are heard on all sides. Yesterday the plumber spent two and a half hours in our bathroom, which is particularly good for sound, singing Mi-Mi-Mi-Mi-Mi on a top G instead of mending the tap in the basin, and the gardener has started Bay-Bee-Bar-Bo-Boo in an arpeggio, to lighten his hours of inactivity in the greenhouse.

  It all started with carols at the vicarage. The Vicar, who pounced on Faith’s Conductor like a hungry lion, gave him to understand that there was a great deal of suppressed musical talent in the village which only needed encouragement.

  The encouragement turned out to be the Conductor, Faith, Lady B and myself. The vicarage drawing-room was cleared for action, and the Savernacks’ chauffeur was there, and the post-mistress, both looking rather self-conscious but nobody else.

  The Vicar pounced on Faith’s Conductor

  Faith, who had somehow managed to make herself look like a choir-boy, turned on her best social manner and kept up a flow of bright chatter, but after a time even her spirits began to flag, and the Vicar hurried out into the highways and byways to compel somebody to come in.

  The Conductor, in the meantime, thought we had better make a start, so he handed us each a copy of a carol and said we should come in after he had counted four.

  He counted four, and the only thing that happened was a shattering boom from Lady B which shook the vases on the mantelpiece.

  ‘Come, come, now!’ said the Conductor, who was behaving with such kindness and patience that I began to be afraid he might be snatched up to heaven, ‘We can do better than that. Everybody must sing. Everybody. Open your mouths wide, as though you were yawning. One, two, three, four – ’

  Everybody yawned, so we had to start again; but this time we really did sing, including the Conductor himself – and immediately the door flew open and about twelve excited villagers, who had apparently been lurking in the bushes outside, burst into the room. Almost immediately afterwards the Vicar returned with two more, and the Conductor began sorting us out.

  ‘What do you sing?’ he said to an enormous young man whose head was bobb
ing about just below the chandelier.

  ‘Treble,’ squeaked the young man, and the Conductor reeled as under a blow.

  ‘And you?’ he said to a small, rosy-cheeked boy.

  ‘Bass,’ he boomed, in a voice that rivalled Lady B’s.

  We sang and sang. Just behind me was a tenor who fluted loudly and firmly throughout the evening on one note. The Conductor, who must have been in torment, continued patient and smiling, begging us to yawn and wait for the beat. Everybody got very hot and excited and forgot all about the War, the Income Tax, Rationing, and the fact that we must shortly endanger our lives creeping home in stygian darkness. At the end cakes and tea were handed round, and it became apparent what the one-note tenor had really come for.

  If I were the Minister for Propaganda, Robert – and I often feel it is a pity I am not – I would make everybody sing every day, provided, of course, that enough saint-like Conductors could be found to go round.

  The other piece of fun this week was a most enjoyable rehearsal of an air-raid warning.

  We were told that it would take place at 9.30 a.m. At 9.29½ a beaming young policeman poked his head out of the little bit of police-station window which is not covered, and spread a sheet of newspaper on the sandbags. On this he tenderly laid the siren, pressed a knob, and immediately the air was filled with what we have been taught to call an intermittent warbling note.

  The result was electrical. You would have thought that siren was a herald of good tidings instead of possible death and destruction. Delighted faces appeared at every window. People in the streets were wreathed in smiles and some were doubled up with laughter. Quite a little crowd gathered in front of the police station, where the young policeman, flushed with success, changed the key, like a cinema organist with the floods on him.

  Old Mrs Candy, who has been in bed for four years, appeared at the front door in her dressing-gown and was given an ovation.

  I haven’t seen this place so gay since the Coronation.

  Always your affectionate Childhood’s Friend,

  HENRIETTA

  January 24, 1940

  MY DEAR ROBERT

  Faith took it into her head to be vaccinated last week. She has a theory that the Germans are going to drop germs on us in the spring, and wants to Be Prepared. She says that the Germans are going to fly at a great height over England and release thousands of minute parachutes laden with bacilli. The parachutes will disintegrate in descent, so that we won’t know anything has happened to us until we begin breaking out in spots!

  Faith says her vaccination was a great disappointment to her. She makes no bones about her infatuation for Charles, but admits that his reactions are disappointing.

  She says she went to the surgery in the evening because the light in Charles’s consulting room is more becoming then. This pleased me very much, because I arranged that lighting with no little care. Doctors are gradually being laughed out of having nothing but last year’s seed catalogue for their patients to read in waiting-rooms, but I still think they are inclined to overlook the fact that a woman who feels she is looking her best is much easier to deal with than one who feels she is looking her worst.

  Faith says she sat down on a low stool in front of the fire and pulled her skirt up and her stocking down. In fact, she took her stocking right off, because she thinks that a stocking hanging over the edge of a shoe looks sordid.

  Whatever else you may have forgotten, Robert, I am sure you have not forgotten Faith’s legs. She says it was a pretty sight, and I am prepared to believe her.

  ‘Now, where do you want to be vaccinated?’

  Charles, in the meantime, could be heard in the next room, madly scrubbing his hands. Then he came in with a knife in one hand and a small tube of cow-pox in the other. Faith says he was looking wildly attractive in a white coat, and she stretched out her foot to the fire and waggled her toes.

  Charles came forward with his kind, encouraging smile and said: ‘Now, where do you want to be vaccinated? Arm or leg?’ Faith says she could have hit him. In the middle of the operation, when she said she felt faint, he said: ‘Don’t be so silly, Faith. Of course you don’t.’

  Poor Faith! I had to comfort her by telling her how Charles forgot our wedding day on Monday. As a matter of fact, I forgot myself until lunch-time, but that is between you and me . . .

  I have been rather bad about the war lately. This time the feelings of waste and desolation have taken the form of extreme irritability with Mrs Savernack, whom I suspect of enjoying the war because she can sit on committees and boss everybody about as much as she likes, as well as practising those small economies so dear to her heart.

  Yesterday, when I was changing my book at the library, she told me, firmly and loudly, that this war was a Crusade. I said I seemed to have heard that before somewhere, about twenty years ago.

  ‘Oh, that war,’ she said. ‘That was quite different.’

  When I asked her why, she said that, for one thing, the last war had been entirely unnecessary.

  Having dismissed the sacrifice of a few million young lives as a sort of boyish prank, she bought a box of rubber bands and left the shop.

  Always your affectionate Childhood’s Friend,

  HENRIETTA

  February 7, 1940

  MY DEAR ROBERT

  Now that we may talk about the weather, I will tell you that it was very cold indeed after Christmas, and in early January. Our Visitors kept on saying, ‘Do you call this Devon?’; and, really, one could hardly blame them. The fact that there were seventy-nine degrees of frost in Russia did little to cheer them, and the burden of their refrain was that they came here because they understood that it was the Riviera of the West.

  It will shake you, Robert, when I tell you that there was skating on the Eel Ponds, but that is a fact. There hasn’t been any skating in this place, so old Widdecombe tells me, since the year you and I had measles and missed it all.

  I went down one afternoon and it was a gay sight. Not that many people were actually skating, because, of course, hardly anybody in this part of the world knows how to, even if they had skates, which they haven’t. But there was a large, admiring, pink-nosed crowd watching. The sun was shining out of a perfectly clear blue sky, and I felt that if only the Visitors could have been told that this was the Switzerland of the West they might feel that they were getting their money’s-worth, and stop grumbling.

  Mrs Savernack, with a grim expression on her face, and wearing a peculiar woollen cap which I feel she must have bought in Switzerland a long time ago, was skating round and round the pond in an efficient way. Every now and then she would suddenly turn and begin going backwards. Each time she did this there was a murmur of applause from the crowds on the bank.

  Faith, looking quite lovely in a yellow jumper, was skimming about with her Conductor, their arms linked together. ‘I didn’t know you could skate so well, Faith,’ I said enviously when they came to rest beside me.

  ‘My dear, I can’t,’ she said with a happy smile. ‘I should fall flat on my face if he let go of me.’

  But shortly afterwards, when the Conductor fell flat on his face, I saw Faith pick him up in the most efficient way, so I fancy she was not quite the novice she would have us believe. Nobody in the world can be as helpless and clinging as Faith when she wants a strong, manly arm all to herself.

  Colonel Simpkins in a corner, his back very straight and his chest stuck out, was doing something clever round an orange. But he had to keep stopping to chase away little boys who wanted to slide. As a matter of fact, I was longing to slide myself, but apparently it is not done on skating ice. After a time, when his back was turned, one of the urchins stole the orange, so that was the end of all his fun, and after an unsuccessful attempt to link up with Mrs Savernack he lost heart, and began taking off his skates.

  I was just beginning to think it would be nice to feel my toes again, when Lady B arrived, looking very trim in a black, pleated skirt.

  ‘
Good Lord! What have we here?’ said Mrs Savernack, and Colonel Simpkins went quietly away and fetched a ladder which had been brought down in case of emergency.

  Lady B was puffing a bit by the time she had laced up her boots, and I trembled for my old friend as I helped her on to the ice.

  Floated away like a big, black bird

  Once there, she took a few faltering steps, and then suddenly she lifted up her arms and floated away like a big, black bird. Everybody gasped. You couldn’t have believed, Robert, that anything so – well – bulky could have been so light and graceful. Faith said it reminded her of those very big, black smuts which float in the air when your chimney is on fire.

  ‘By gad! The woman can skate!’ shouted Colonel Simpkins and he began tugging at his boot-laces.

  Several people who had hitherto been too nervous to venture far from the edge, now struck boldly for the middle of the pond. Somebody arrived with a gramophone, and started the ‘Merry Widow’ waltz, and Colonel Simpkins and Lady B swooped away in each other’s arms, a challenge to Old Father Time, if ever there was one.

  An unfortunate girl who was due at a V.A.D. lecture thrust her skates into my hand, and, before I knew where I was, Faith and the Conductor had laced me up and supported my trembling feet on to the ice, where they each took an arm, and I immediately developed acute pain in the calves of both legs.

  Mrs Phillips came down from the house and asked us all to tea. We made toast and ate it with bloater-paste to disguise the margarine, and Lady B, who was puffed but happy, told us how she had won some quite grand skating competition in Switzerland when she was young, and Colonel Simpkins said everybody ought to skate round an orange always.

  As we walked home, the young moon was rising behind the trees, with one very bright star in the top left-hand corner. Mrs Savernack said it wasn’t a star but a planet. I said I preferred to call it a star.

  Mrs Savernack said accuracy had never been Henrietta’s strong point.