Henrietta's War Read online

  Charles and I enjoyed ourselves enormously, as we always do at these occasions. But then Charles and I are no gardeners; so it was with no feelings of resentment, but only those of genuine admiration, that we wandered round the Simpkins’ well-groomed paths, exclaiming at the beauty of their Orange Kings, Daffodil Yellows, and Orange Princes.

  ‘Aren’t they lovely ?’ we said to Lady B, whom we found peering closely at some Fire Kings through her lorgnettes.

  ‘It’s like a seedsman’s catalogue!’ said Lady B, with a contemptuous snort.

  Charles and I looked at each other with our eyes wide open. To have a garden like a seedsman’s catalogue has always been our wildest ambition. Besides, it was the first catty thing we had ever heard Lady B say, which just shows how, far from being an ennobling pursuit, gardening simply corrodes the character.

  Peering closely at some Fire Kings

  After that we found the Admiral stealing cuttings in the greenhouse and discovered that Mrs Savernack has a special handbag, lined inside with mackintosh, which she always takes with her.

  Feeling a little saddened, Charles and I wandered off to the vegetable garden. There is nothing in the world as soothing as a well-cared-for vegetable garden. Charles says that people with nervous breakdowns ought to take campstools and sit in them all day.

  The Simpkinses’ is a particularly pleasing one, because it has flowers in it as well. Nasturtiums and Sweet Williams and Marigolds and Love-in-a-Mist – all the ordinary, cheerful, hardy flowers which nobody bothers about, and which Mrs Simpkins only picks when she is hard up for flowers for the house.

  ‘Aren’t they lovely?’ I said to Mrs Savernack, who came down the garden path towards us, her mackintosh-lined bag bulging with loot, and a satisfied expression on her face.

  ‘Pah!’ said Mrs Savernack. ‘Common annuals!’

  Charles and I have decided that the only people in this place who could possibly give a really successful Garden-Proud party, at which all the guests enjoyed themselves, are ourselves. We would give it at the bottom of our garden, where the bindweed has done so well, and there is that particularly fine bed of nettles.

  Always your affectionate Childhood’s Friend,

  HENRIETTA

  August 28, 1940

  MY DEAR ROBERT

  There are sad sights to be seen on our hitherto respectable beach now that the soldiery has taken away all the bathing-huts. Umbrellas and fishing-boats are used in a pathetic attempt at preserving the decencies, but I sometimes think it would be really less embarrassing if we did without them and just undressed on the beach in a carefree manner.

  I have yet to see a more remarkable sight than Mrs Savernack taking off her clothes under a large sheet with a hole in the middle for her head to poke through.

  When I got down to the beach this morning, having undressed in decency and comfort in my own home, I found a large crowd watching her in fascinated silence.

  ‘Hullo, Henrietta!’ shouted Mrs Savernack, who imagined everybody was watching her because they wished they had thought of having a sheet with a hole in the middle themselves. ‘Going to have a dip?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Savernack.’

  ‘You ought to bring a sheet down, like I do,’ said Mrs Savernack in a hearty way. ‘It’s absolutely splendid. Cool and cheap – and the best of it is that nobody has the slightest idea what you are doing,’ and as she said this she stepped, first with one foot and then with another, out of an obvious if unseen garment.

  ‘Yes, they have,’ I said. ‘I know exactly what you are doing now.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Henrietta,’ said Mrs Savernack, unfastening her stays with a loud, clicking noise. ‘Now, where is my bathing dress? Just pass it to me, will you?’

  I poked it under the sheet. Mrs Savernack stooped and picked it up, and after a series of contortions drew the sheet over her head and emerged ready for her swim.

  When Mrs Savernack bathes she looks so like one of the comic characters out of a Noël Coward revue that it is difficult to persuade the Summer Visitors that it isn’t a sort of publicity stunt. On this occasion a young man sitting near me clapped his hands and said, ‘Jolly good!’

  I looked at him and shook my head slightly, and his jaw dropped. ‘Good Lord!’ he muttered, and got up and plunged into the sea and swam a long way out, to cover his confusion.

  Charles has just started his twenty-fifth series of V.A.D. lectures. All the sensible and efficient people in this place passed their V.A.D. exams ages ago, and a good many of them are already in Naval and Military Hospitals, wondering wistfully, as they clean the taps, why they bothered to learn so much about the Circulation of the Blood. This time Charles’s class is composed of the leftovers, so to speak, and so you will not be surprised, dear Robert, when I tell you that I am one of them.

  Not that I should ever be able to leave my home and become a V.A.D., and I feel strongly that in the case of Invasion I would be far more use running round after Charles with Something Hot in a Casserole than getting under the nurses’ feet at the Cottage Hospital; but for very shame I felt I must go and swell the numbers. Besides, I rather wanted to see for myself what it is that Charles does at his lectures which makes so many ladies stop me in the street next morning and tell me that he is a Darling.

  I needn’t have worried about swelling the numbers, because the room, when I arrived, was packed. The class reminded me of the Middle Vth at school, which was always composed of oddities, and the girls who were too stupid to get into the Upper School. There were a lot of Visitors there as well, and a few hardened V.A.D. veterans who had passed their exams so often they thought they might as well pass them again.

  I was surprised to see Mrs Savernack there, for she has always despised nursing. I went and sat next to her and she whispered to me that she was still trying to get into the Home Guard, but in the meantime she thought she might as well take the V.A.D. course. Mrs Whinebite was there, too, sitting in the front row and jangling with beads.

  Charles lectured in a slow and hesitating manner, and I found it hard to believe that he had done it twenty-four times before, until I realized it was his way of getting facts into people’s heads.

  So many people rushed to administer First Aid...

  When we got to the Digestive System Charles displayed a fairly nauseating chart and Mrs Savernack fainted dead away.

  So many people rushed to administer First Aid I thought I should be killed in the crush.

  Always your affectionate Childhood’s Friend,

  HENRIETTA

  September 4, 1940

  MY DEAR ROBERT

  Hoping this doesn’t find you as it leaves me at present – viz ., in prison. Well, as a matter of fact, not actually in prison, but definitely under the shadow of the Arm of the Law.

  It all came of Showing a Light, a mysterious Will-o’-the-Wisp radiance which apparently shone like a searchlight straight in at the police station windows, so that the policemen who were off duty couldn’t get a wink of sleep, and those who were on duty had to spend hours scouring the neighbourhood in order to locate it. But when our Nicest Policeman finally tracked it down to our house and came racing up the garden-path in full cry, it disappeared.

  ‘You were showing a light,’ he said sternly to Charles, who went down to the door in his pyjamas.

  ‘Where?’ said Charles.

  ‘There,’ said the policeman, pointing at my bedroom window.

  ‘I don’t see one,’ said Charles.

  ‘It’s been put out now,’ said the policeman in a disappointed voice.

  The next night, just as I was doing my hair, there was another peal at the front-door bell.

  ‘You are showing a light!’ said the policeman, as pleased as Punch.

  ‘Where?’ said Charles.

  ‘There,’ said the policeman; but it had gone.

  In the end it turned out to be the light over my dressing-table, reflecting in the glass every time I did my hair. The policeman was kind but stern
about it. ‘This will have to be reported, you know,’ he said.

  ‘They’re getting very strict about these black-out offences,’ said Mrs Savernack with relish when I told her about it. ‘You’ll probably have to go to Jug.’

  ‘Darling Mother,’ said Bill, who was on leave at the time, ‘I will send you a doughnut, and inside will be a little file with which you will be able to saw through the bars of your cell.’

  ‘She’d never manage it, Bill,’ said the Linnet seriously. ‘I shall send her some cheese crumbs so that she can make friends with a mouse.’

  ‘The worst of going to prison,’ said Lady B, ‘is that you always have trouble with your passport afterwards.’

  ‘We shall all be at the gates to meet you when you come out, dear,’ said Mrs Simpkins, squeezing my hand.

  I said I didn’t mind anything as long as I was allowed to have my hot-water bottle with me, but this remark was greeted with derisive laughter.

  A lot of people rang me up on the day of the trial and wished me luck. I dressed myself carefully in neat, quiet clothes, and wore clean wash-leather gloves. Charles and Bill and the Linnet said they had never seen such a respectable, law-abiding citizen. When we got to the Court they stood at the back, looking fierce and protective, and I sat myself down among the criminals.

  The criminal next to me was a rather nice baby of ten weeks with red hair. I asked its mother what it had done to break the Law, and she said it was an Angel. Then it got hiccoughs, and was turned over on to its front, and was sick on my skirt. We were busy cleaning ourselves up when the magistrates came in and everybody stood up. I looked anxiously to see what sort of an Ogre was in the Chair and found it was the Admiral, who refused to smile at me.

  The criminal next to me...

  When you have always regarded the police as your Friends and Protectors it is a little disconcerting suddenly to find that they have become Accusing Angels. Our Nicest Policeman said his piece beautifully and was altogether fair and just, if a trifle monotonous in tone. I think that saying that a light emanated from my window ought to get him promotion, if nothing else does. None of the others had thought of it. But I was rather glad, as I stood there, that I had nothing bad on my conscience.

  ‘My lord,’ I said in a quavering voice, and the Admiral looked at me as he did once at a Drama Club show when I gave him the wrong cue.

  The magistrates, except for the Admiral, who remained stern, listened with compassion and sympathy to the story of the light over my dressing-table. ‘One must do one’s hair, mustn’t one?’ said a lady magistrate, and we exchanged womanly smiles. I was fined two pounds.

  ‘You look very gay,’ said the Conductor, whom we met outside our house. ‘What have you been doing?’

  ‘Mum’s been up in front of the Beak,’ said the Linnet.

  ‘She had a Chink in her bedroom,’ said Bill.

  ‘Well, that’s better than a Jap,’ said the Conductor, who is inclined to be a little coarse sometimes.

  We are still wondering why it took the police eleven months to notice that light.

  Always your affectionate Childhood’s Friend,

  HENRIETTA

  September 18, 1940

  MY DEAR ROBERT

  Charles said that I wouldn’t allow him to enjoy the air raids in peace, and that my plaintive bleat of ‘Don’t-you-think-we-ought-to-go-downstairs?’ was worse than the sirens. So now we have moved our beds down into the drawing-room. We took their heads and tails off them, and with nice folk-weave covers to match the ceiling they looked so attractive we wondered why we hadn’t thought of divans before. Flushed with success, we sawed off their legs, and the Conductor, whose jokes have been getting worse lately, made up a new riddle, ‘Why are Charles and Henrietta like their beds? Because they are low and inviting.’

  So now Charles sleeps peacefully all through the night, except when patients call him out, and in the morning I tell him all about the siren and the thumps, bumps, and thuds which have kept me awake.

  Personally, I am one of those who like to talk during an air raid, and make cups of tea as soon as the All Clear is sounded; and though I miss these simple pleasures there is a lot to be said for the bed-sit life which we have adopted, and Charles assures me that if the house begins falling down, a grand piano is just as good to sit under as the scullery table.

  A grand piano is just as good to sit under

  Did I tell you, Robert, that Mrs Savernack has started a corps of Women Mounties, and goes about all day in jodhpurs and an armlet. Their duties are to ride about on horseback and show people the way, like the Women Riders on Dartmoor, only, unlike them, Mrs Savernack’s Women Mounties are not acknowledged by the War Office; neither (though nobody likes to tell Mrs Savernack this) are their services in the least necessary in this part of the world.

  Unfortunately, nobody here has a horse of her own except Mrs Savernack and Faith, and Faith is already an Air Raid Warden. However, now when the siren goes she rides down to the A.R.P. headquarters instead of walking, thereby combining the two jobs.

  I met Mr Savernack this morning looking very worn. He says Mrs Savernack gallops about all night and only comes home when day is breaking.

  Colonel Simpkins’s granddaughter, Penny, who has been evacuated here from Kent, has got hold of a donkey and become Mrs Savernack’s constant companion during the day. Mrs Simpkins had to put her foot down about night-riding. Mrs Savernack says she never used to have any use for girls, but Penny is different. They make a curious pair riding about together, obviously delighting in each other’s company.

  ‘Hullo,’ said the Conductor jovially, when he met them this morning; ‘looking for a windmill?’

  ‘A windmill ?’ said Penny, who likes riding better than reading.

  ‘Don’t take any notice of him,’ said Mrs Savernack, ‘he’s mad.’

  The Conductor sighed. Sometimes, I am afraid, he finds us a little discouraging.

  Always your affectionate Childhood’s Friend,

  HENRIETTA

  September 25, 1940

  MY DEAR ROBERT

  Since the Germans began concentrating on London they seem to have forgotten this part of the world, and we feel almost ashamed of our peaceful nights. I won’t say quiet and peaceful, because the soldiery spends most of the hours of darkness rushing madly up and down the streets on motorbikes. Lying warm and comfortable in our beds, that makes us feel more ashamed than ever; but Charles says there is no need to worry, as we shall probably all get our turn in time.

  The Linnet is on night duty at her hospital now. I asked her if she was afraid in the raids, and she said there wasn’t time. The first thing she has to do when the warning goes is to chase down the corridor and persuade a shell-shocked patient to return to bed. Then she collects an armful of babies out of the maternity ward and lays them, cheeping and chirping, under the draining-board in a pantry, and after that she has to put tin basins over the patients’ heads. (And if that isn’t a brilliant hospital idea, Robert, I’d like to know what is.) By that time she is ready to lend a hand, in some lowly capacity, in the operating-theatre.

  Faith, who must be in the mode even when it’s bombs, went to London when the trouble started and came back next day looking very wan. She had thought air-raid shelters would be all song and story and bonhomie but found that no one even wanted to talk. They all flung themselves down on their Lie-Lows with set expressions on their faces, determined to Sleep for Victory.

  Remembering the children cheered her up a bit; especially the little boy who announced, ‘I like the screaming ones best,’ while one was actually coming down directly overhead.

  But then everybody seems to be getting terribly tough. Bill writes us the most bloodthirsty letters from the north-east coast. He used to be such a gentle boy, it is hard to believe that his letters aren’t a sort of joke; but if they aren’t, then he is only longing for one thing, and that is for Hitler to start invading England.

  And he isn’t the only one, eit
her. It was Lady B’s birthday yesterday. She won’t allow anybody to buy her presents in wartime, so in the evening I took her up a bunch of roses, and found her surrounded by golden telegrams.

  ‘Are you having a happy birthday?’ I said.

  ‘Lovely, thank you, dear,’ said Lady B. ‘Would you like to read my telegrams?’

  I read them, and Lady B gave me a lightning word-portrait of each of the givers whom I didn’t know already.

  ‘That’s Teddy Barchester. I can’t think why he signed it “Edward”, but they say he’s grown very pompous lately. We used to know him in Rome. A very peculiar man. He used to play the violin and dance at the same time. He was very much in love with me when I was a girl.’

  ‘Why didn’t you marry him?’

  ‘My dear! A man who danced while he played the violin! Besides,’ added Lady B simply, ‘he had a wife’; and added after a pause, ‘she died under rather peculiar circumstances.

  ’ ‘What circumstances? ’ I said, for this sounded as though it might be the beginning of one of Lady B’s most enthralling stories; but she wouldn’t say.

  ‘I’ll tell you when Teddy’s dead,’ she said. ‘It wouldn’t be fair now.’

  ‘And who is Queenie?’

  ‘She used to be the housemaid at my old home when I was a girl. I lent her a frock once to go to a party in, and she hooked her young man at it. She’s very rich now.’

  ‘What a lot of faithful friends you have!’

  ‘Yes. I’m a very lucky old woman,’ said Lady B sadly.

  I peered closely at her. Something had disturbed that lovely serenity which we all love so well. ‘You aren’t feeling ill, are you?’ I said anxiously.

  ‘Don’t be silly, Henrietta.’

  ‘You’re not ’ I hesitated, hardly daring to ask this question, for Lady B is one of those rare people who maintain that old age is not a calamity – ‘you’re not feeling old by any chance?’

  ‘Why should I feel old?’ said Lady B. ‘I’m only seventy-five.’

  ‘Or frightened?’

  She gave me a look of contempt, and didn’t trouble to answer.