Henrietta's War Read online

  ‘Do you know what I have here?’ he said, holding it up and looking at me with round eyes.

  ‘Liver,’ I said.

  ‘Tripe,’ he said, in a low voice.

  ‘I believe it is very good if you boil it for several days,’ I said.

  ‘Tripe,’ he said

  ‘But think of the gas,’ said Colonel Simpkins.

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ I said.

  ‘I must say, I never thought I’d come to tripe,’ said Colonel Simpkins sadly. Then his face brightened. ‘If you ask me,’ he said, ‘I think this rationing is simply offal.’

  And I had so hoped, Robert, that we were going to get through our first week of meat rationing without anybody making that joke.

  Always your affectionate Childhood’s Friend,

  HENRIETTA

  P.S. A ’phone message has just come for Charles asking him to go at once to Gorse View to see Mr and Mrs Whinebite, who are suffering from gastric influenza.

  Gastric Influenza! . . . Ha!

  May 29, 1940

  MY DEAR ROBERT

  It is nice to be one of those people who are told to keep in the open air as much as possible because it gives me the best possible excuse to neglect all duties and sit on the roof, which is what I am doing now. But it’s all wrong to be here alone, without the Linnet and Bill and their friends sprawled about half-naked on mattresses, and you, with your hat tilted over your eyes, sleeping like one dead, and Charles arriving in a hurry with a glass of sherry in his hand and saying, ‘I never saw such lazy people.’

  How happy we were, and how little we realized how nice it was to be lazy and happy, without fear and anxiety and horror knocking at the back of one’s brain like a little gnome with a hammer.

  Where are those children whose only anxiety then was to get nicely browned on both sides, like a fillet of fish? And where are you, Robert? I know you aren’t where you were before, but where are you?

  It’s not much fun, you know, being a middle-aged woman, safe and protected, on a roof, thinking of other people in danger.

  You will say that this is no way to cheer a Brave Soldier – and how right you will be!

  You always like to hear about this place, so I will tell you that, outwardly anyway, it is just as it always was. On each chimney-pot sits a motionless seagull. Out at sea a few people are doing a little desultory sailing and sea-fishing, and one poor brute is having trouble with his outboard motor.

  Most of the bathing-huts are painted now and look very fine. Faith, of course, has out-hutted us all. A bathing-hut, to my mind, is a small wooden sentry-box crammed with damp towels, sand-shoes, black spectacles, melting chocolate, and fishing-tackle, and with so many wet bathing-dresses on the floor it is difficult to find anywhere to stand. But Faith has procured for herself a sort of mansion in off-white, with pale-green china on hooks, and a kettle, and chintz curtains with lilies of the valley all over them, and six green deck-chairs with canopies and salmon-pink cushions.

  She had what she called a hut-warming on Saturday afternoon, to which she invited Lady B and me and the Conductor. Lady B and I went feeling rather sheepish, because, a you know, Robert, having tea at a bathing-hut is one of the things Old Residents just don’t do; but, of course, we didn’t want to miss one of Faith’s parties.

  Faith was looking lovely in a pair of white linen shorts, and the Conductor became quite pale with love at the sight of her. We sat on the green deck-chairs with the pink cushions behind our heads, and ate asparagus wrapped up in thin slices of brown bread and butter.

  Looking at us through field-glasses

  ‘How heavenly this is!’ sighed Faith.

  ‘Perfect!’ croaked the Conductor, looking at Faith as Hiawatha looked at Minnehaha, with eyes of longing.

  Lady B said nothing. There was a rather strained expression on her face, and I wondered whether she minded Mrs Savernack looking at us through field-glasses from the top of the cliff.

  ‘What I want,’ said Lady B, after a long silence, ‘is a gun.’

  ‘Why, darling?’ said Faith.

  ‘To shoot German parachutists,’ said Lady B loudly and fiercely.

  The Conductor opened one eye. ‘Did He who made the lamb make thee?’ he said incredulously.

  ‘They’ll be coming down disguised as angels next,’ said Faith.

  ‘Or fairies,’ said the Conductor.

  ‘And we’ll have to look inside the backs of their collars to see whether they’re bogus or not,’ said Faith.

  ‘I shan’t shoot to kill,’ said Lady B with relish. ‘I shall aim at their legs.’

  Always your affectionate Childhood’s Friend,

  HENRIETTA

  June 5, 1940

  MY DEAR ROBERT

  I am afraid there has been a certain amount of what my old nanny used to call ‘creating’ here lately, and some of it by people who ought to know better. There was a lot of gloomy talk going on in a corner at the Bee one day, until Mrs Savernack, scarlet with rage, banged on the table with her fist until all the reels of cotton and thimbles jumped in the air.

  ‘Will you stop it!’ yelled Mrs Savernack.

  Everybody sat in stunned silence, and after a minute Lady B stopped whirling the handle of the sewing-machine and looked up over the top of her spectacles.

  ‘Mrs Savernack is quite right, you know,’ she said in her kind, fat voice. ‘Gloomy thoughts don’t help the men who are fighting, and good thoughts do.

  ‘I am a great believer in the Power of Thought,’ she continued, pulling out yards of tacking thread. ‘I take a big breath and shut my eyes and send great waves of hope and courage and confidence across the Channel. And what’s more,’ she said triumphantly, ‘they get there!’

  It struck me what a good idea this was, and on my way home I began sending thought-waves to you and Bill, which was a silly thing to do just then, because I walked straight into the Admiral on his bicycle and fell flat in the middle of the road.

  When I opened my eyes, the Admiral was bending over me. ‘It was all my fault,’ I said apologetically, conscious of his distress.

  But whatever the Admiral’s emotions, distress was certainly not one of them, for his face was beaming. ‘Lie perfectly still,’ he said. ‘I have sent for a stretcher.’

  ‘But I don’t need a stretcher,’ I said, remembering with horror that he had been attending ambulance classes.

  I tried to get up, but he held me firmly on the ground. By this time a large crowd had collected, and the Admiral, with a grave face, began feeling my legs, which, to his disappointment, proved to be intact. Then two delighted young men arrived with a stretcher, a lot of splints, and a tourniquet or two.

  ‘But I don’t need a stretcher!’

  ‘I don’t need those!’ I said wildly. ‘I’ve grazed my hands, that’s all.’

  ‘Stop the bleeding, boys,’ said the Admiral, rubbing his hands with glee, and each young man seized an arm.

  Mr Bolton, my friend from the Red Lion, came running out with something in a glass. ‘No stimulants,’ said the Admiral sternly, and Mr Bolton, distressed by my condition, drank it himself.

  Tourniquets may be a comfort if you have severed an artery, but they are nothing short of torture if you haven’t.

  What they missed was a nasty bump on the back of my head. When I showed it to Charles, he sent me to bed and told me to stay there two days and not read.

  So, here I am.

  Always your affectionate Childhood’s Friend,

  HENRIETTA

  June 12, 1940

  MY DEAR ROBERT

  It is Friday, and my day for writing to you, and so I take my pen in hand, hoping that if you do have time to think of the day of the week, you will remember that I am writing even if you aren’t getting the letters. Sometimes I think of you a month or two hence, when we have won this battle, sitting down with a sigh and having about fifteen of my letters handed to you in a bunch.

  It is a disconcerting thought, my dear Robert, I assur
e you. Fifteen letters about the trivial doings of protected people in what is called a safe area! Will you read them, or will you put them aside with a sigh as something which has become unreal?

  I can hear you saying, ‘Why should death and destruction be more real than people leading orderly and protected lives?’

  Perhaps by then we shall have shared some of your dangers, and the substance of my letters will not be altogether trivial. Well, we are ready. There is no need for you to worry about us. I am sure there is no greater coward in the west of England than your Childhood’s Friend, but I hope that if the bombs do fall I shall be able to remember that every BANG here means one less in France.

  The Home Defence Corps has made all the old gentlemen here very happy. Before breakfast, on the morning after the broadcast, they began crowding into the police station, and with sheepish grins giving their wrong ages.

  But we married women still feel that the part we have to play in this war is mundane, unromantic, and monotonous, and there has been some ugly muttering at the Bee, I can tell you. Mrs Savernack, in particular, has been hopping mad with fury and frustration, and was all for forming a Women’s Defence Corps on her own.

  Faith, who happened to be sitting next to her, and who was sick of making button-holes anyway, was fired with enthusiasm and spent the rest of the morning designing a uniform. Lady B said she wouldn’t join if it were trousers, so Faith evolved a circular green skirt to the knees, with shirt to match, and a yellow forage cap which she said would look like gorse from an aeroplane.

  Mrs Savernack said she wouldn’t have me as a volunteer because I would get too tired and be frightened of the BANGS. I considered this a gross libel on my character and set up a plaintive mew, but Mrs Savernack patted me kindly on the shoulder and said it was my duty to look after Charles and give him hot meals at regular intervals, because he is one of the Key Men. Then she gave me Faith’s buttonholes to finish.

  It was decided that the corps should be called ‘The Women of the West’, and have two Was entwined as a badge. But it all came to nothing, because Mr Savernack Put His Foot Down, a thing he only does on the rarest occasions, and the next day they came and took away all Mrs Savernack’s sporting guns, as well as her rifle and revolver. She is more or less a broken woman now.

  But the result of all this excitement was that Faith became thoroughly restless and discontented, and on Monday she went up to London to look for work. I did my best to persuade her to stay, and told her the Bee needed her, but she would go.

  The Conductor is heartbroken, and is preparing to follow her, which is silly, because he has a weak chest, and has been sent down here by his doctor. Besides, we need him to play the organ in church.

  I had a letter from Faith this morning. She says she has got a marvellous job as Animal A.R.P. Warden. In the event of a raid it is her duty to rush out into the street and collect all the wounded and frightened animals, and take them to headquarters.

  Charles says that when you think how difficult it is to collect your own dog or cat in your own home when they aren’t frightened or wounded, it seems that her task will be of little practical purpose.

  I need hardly tell you, dear Robert, that the Call to fill in our Identification Cards found me without the slightest recollection of where mine was, or indeed of ever having received one. However, it came to light in my workbasket when I was looking for a button to sew on to Charles’s pyjamas.

  I find that I grow more and more absent-minded, and I blame the war. We are so constantly urged to concentrate on keeping Bright, Brave and Confident, that it doesn’t give a woman a moment in which to realise that she hasn’t put on her skirt that morning, or that she is walking down the High Street in her bedroom slippers.

  With a hot-water bottle strapped to her back

  But I have been Digging for Victory and Lumbago again. Lady B says I am the only person she has ever seen gardening with a hot-water bottle strapped to her back.

  Always your affectionate Childhood’s Friend,

  HENRIETTA

  June 19, 1940

  MY DEAR ROBERT

  I have been feeling lately that I ought to make myself some new summer nightdresses. Not that there is anything actually wrong with the ones I have now. They are very nice nightdresses – for wearing in bed, which was the purpose I had in mind when I bought them. But staying in bed all night is apparently not one of the things we are going to be allowed to do this summer, and for sitting in cellars, fire-fighting, and tackling parachutists, not to mention submarines and collapsible boats in the bay, I think something a little more substantial than triple ninon and lace is needed.

  As Lady B says, it will be quite embarrassing enough to have one’s old friends, such as the Admiral and the young man out of the shoe shop, administering first-aid and carrying one through the streets on a stretcher, without having to borrow a coat to hide one’s shame.

  When I confided these anxieties to Charles, he said, ‘Quite right. What you need is some nice thick woollen pyjamas.’ When I asked him whether he really fancied his wife wearing nice thick woollen pyjamas in the middle of the summer, he shuddered and said, ‘God forbid!’ Which just shows how unhelpful even sensible people like Charles can be at times.

  Faith wrote from London that thick silk tailored ones of the night-shirt variety were considered suitable, so I bought some material.

  I was engaged upon this seemly task last Thursday evening, and Charles was reading an Anthony Trollope novel as an antidote to the nine o’clock news, when the telephone rang.

  I answered it, expecting the usual message about aches and pains, and heard Bill’s voice.

  ‘Everything went black,’ as they say in books, but it really was Bill, and in a hurry because his train was just leaving. I rushed back and knocked over a small table with coffee cups on it.

  Charles looked up with a serene Trollope-ish expression on his face and said, ‘My dear girl, what are you doing?’

  ‘Bill’s back!’ I said, in a high, shrill voice.

  ‘Good,’ said Charles.

  ‘He telephoned from a station. He’s not wounded. He’s coming home to-morrow.’

  ‘Good,’ said Charles again, and returned to Barchester Towers. And you’d hardly think he had been worrying ceaselessly about a son at Dunkirk, would you? But he had.

  Bill has been home four days now. The first three he spent sleeping, but on the fourth he went down the town and got his hair cut, and then came home and said he wanted to go up to the Tennis Club.

  The club was looking its best. Little tables with orange table-cloths were out on the terrace. The tennis courts were sadly empty, but all the bowling greens were in use, and so were the croquet lawns for, believe me or not, Robert, we are having a Croquet Tournament.

  ‘This,’ said Bill, with a happy sigh, ‘is perfect.’

  We ate our tea in dreamy silence, listening to the click of croquet balls, and the shouts of them that triumphed on the bowling green came faintly from the other side of the hedge.

  The first three he spent sleeping

  ‘Quite, quite perfect,’ said Bill. ‘Never stop playing croquet, will you? This is what we want to come back to.’

  Always your affectionate Childhood’s Friend,

  HENRIETTA

  July 3, 1940

  MY DEAR ROBERT

  I picked up a paper this morning, and read a cheery little article which said that if you are caught in an air raid while out in the street, the best thing to do is to throw yourself into the nearest doorway and lie on the ground with your feet towards the street, and put a piece of indiarubber between your teeth to prevent your ear-drums from bursting.

  I read this in a detached sort of way, and decided that I would carry a piece of indiarubber about in my pocket in case of need. And then, suddenly, the sheer incredibility of this war struck me, as it does all of us from time to time, like a blow. That we, with our electric light and wireless and Technicolor films, should have to throw ourselves
into doorways with indiarubber between our teeth seemed just too madly fantastic, as well as undignified.

  But now I am talking about the war, and that is what I promised you I wouldn’t do, so I will tell you about the dog which has been evacuated upon Lady B. It is the size of a large rat, and has long, silky hair covering it all over, so that it is not until you look closely at it and meet a bright, knowing eye peering at you through the tangle that you know which end is which.

  Lady B, whose friend did not specify the breed in the telegram announcing the animal’s arrival, made up her mind it would be a Dalmatian, and was bitterly disappointed at first, but has now succumbed to the creature’s undoubted charm.

  Its name is Fay, and though small, it is extremely fierce and autocratic, and drags Lady B about on a lead. The sight of them out together has cheered everybody up.

  ‘Now, now,’ says Lady B, ‘don’t drag me over.’

  ‘This dog is a regular Hitler!’

  Yesterday she wanted to go to the shops, and Fay wanted to go to the Parade, where she puts it across big with all the local dogs. There was a long struggle, and I thought at one time that Lady B was going to be defeated, but she won in the end.

  ‘This dog is a regular Hitler!’ said Lady B.

  She says that now she has Fay, she is no longer frightened of parachute troops, and has not slept with such a sense of security since her husband died.

  Always your affectionate Childhood’s Friend,

  HENRIETTA

  July 17, 1940

  MY DEAR ROBERT

  However brave I try to be, and however carefully I forge myself armour to keep the Bogies at bay, there are times when it seems to disintegrate, and I suddenly find myself exposed and defenceless and drowning in dark waters. I had one of these bouts on Wednesday, and didn’t enjoy it.

  I was walking on the cliff path listening to the frightening noises our own soldiers make when Colonel Simpkins came up.