Henrietta's War Read online

  ‘Then what is it?’

  ‘Well, it’s like this...’

  ‘Well, it’s like this,’ said Lady B, getting rather pink. ‘I know it’s very silly of me, Henrietta, but I did hope, I did hope,’ she added passionately, ‘that Hitler would try and invade us on my birthday.’

  Always your affectionate Childhood’s Friend,

  HENRIETTA

  October 2, 1940

  MY DEAR ROBERT

  I had a letter from Dorothy Molesworth this morning. (You once played in a tennis tournament with her, do you remember?) She is working for the W.V.S. among the homeless in the East End and asks for clothes, and boots and shoes, and towels, and babies’ nappies to be sent as quickly as possible.

  I’ve been rushing round all the morning begging. I am not good at begging as a rule, but this righteous cause made me eloquent. Everybody was wonderfully generous, and I had difficulty in preventing Lady B from packing her entire wardrobe and sending it off in parcels.

  In the afternoon Mrs Savernack most gallantly offered to go round collecting while I packed the things up. Of course, she went on horseback, and by the time she had tied one enormous bundle on to her back, and was balancing another on the saddle in front of her, Gertrude (which is the unbelievable name of the patient bay mare which carries her) lost patience and bucked Mrs Savernack off. Fortunately she fell head first into one of the bundles, and was none the worse.

  Our biggest excitement this week, however, was provided by the Simpkinses. On Wednesday night Colonel Simpkins woke up and heard a commotion going on in his chicken-run. Convinced that it was nothing less than a descending parachutist, he rushed out in his pyjamas and found an enormous badger which had got into the hen-house through the nesting-box and was busy trying to dig its way out through the wooden floor.

  There have been a lot of hen casualties here lately, and Colonel Simpkins says he was almost as excited as he would have been if he had found Hitler in the hen-house. He sat down on the lid of the nesting-box and yelled for Mrs Simpkins.

  The chicken-run is a long way from the house, and Colonel Simpkins had to yell for a long time before Mrs Simpkins heard him. In the meantime the Admiral, who lives on the other side of the field, and who was just beginning to undress after duty with the Home Guard, opened the window and shouted, ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘I’ve got him!’ yelled Colonel Simpkins.

  ‘The deuce you have!’ yelled the Admiral, who also thought it was a parachutist, and he seized his rifle and rushed for the stairs. Unfortunately, he slipped on the polished floor of the landing and fell heavily to the ground, where he lay stunned.

  By this time Mrs Simpkins had woken up and poked her head out of the window. ‘What is it, Alexander?’ she cried.

  ‘It’s all right, my dear,’ shouted the Colonel, who knows how frightened she is of walking down their drive in the dark. ‘You go back to bed.’

  So Mrs Simpkins went back to bed, and Colonel Simpkins went on sitting on the lid of the nesting-box while the badger scroutled madly inside and the Admiral lay unconscious at the top of the stairs.

  Colonel Simpkins waited patiently for a time, but the badger became so violent he was afraid it might tear up the floor and escape, so he began yelling again.

  ‘What is the matter, Alexander?’ said Mrs Simpkins, leaning out of the window for the second time.

  ‘Come down here!’ yelled the Colonel.

  ‘Oh, dear!’ said poor little Mrs Simpkins. But she put on a coat and some goloshes over her bedroom slippers and crept down the drive in the dark, thereby performing an unrecorded act of heroism.

  In the meantime Mrs Admiral had been roused by the Colonel’s yells, and running out of her bedroom found the Admiral lying unconscious on the floor. She is a woman of iron self-control, so she merely put her head in at the maid’s bedroom door and said, ‘Florrie, the Invasion has begun,’ and then rang up Charles and the police.

  Found the Admiral lying unconscious on the floor

  I haven’t space here to untangle the rest of the night’s events, but eventually everyone, except the badger, was safely back in bed.

  Always your affectionate Childhood’s Friend,

  HENRIETTA

  October 9, 1940

  MY DEAR ROBERT

  I visited our Cathedral City the other day with the intention of seeing the Linnet, but she never got my message, so I waited in vain outside the wool shop. Not that I minded waiting. A visit to the Cathedral City is such a nice change these days that just to watch people hurrying by with strained shopping expressions on their faces is a thrill even when you do it for three-quarters of an hour, first on one leg and then on the other.

  I had just decided to go away, when a car stopped on the other side of the road and Hilary Dane poked her well-groomed head out of the window.

  ‘What are you doing in our city so bright and early, Henrietta?’ she said.

  ‘What are you, Hilary, if it comes to that?’ I said.

  ‘Oh, I’m just off to my job,’ said Hilary, in the fussy, important war-workers’ manner which I envy so much.

  ‘What is your job, Hilary?’ I said, with all the reverence which was expected of me.

  Hilary leant a little further out of the window. ‘Blood,’ she said in a low voice.

  ‘Blood?’ I cried. ‘Whose blood?’

  ‘Practically everybody’s,’ said Hilary. ‘Pops Filligan and I are in it together.’

  ‘In it?’ I said faintly.

  ‘At the hospital,’ said Hilary, starting the engine. ‘Come and look us up. We’re slack just now. Nobody ever sees you nowadays, Henrietta.’ And then she drove away.

  I always get through my shopping quicker when the Linnet isn’t with me, and at noon I found myself with a half-hour to spare, so I decided I would take Hilary at her word.

  Hospitals always alarm and confuse me, and in spite of all sorts of notices and pointing arrows I managed to lose my way, and opened several wrong doors before I arrived at the right one.

  ‘Come in,’ said two stern voices in answer to my timid knock, and I opened the door.

  ‘Yes?’ said Pops, without looking up from the typewriter she was working with two fingers.

  ‘Excuse me, but is this the Blood Bath?’ I said.

  ‘Yes?’ said Pops, without looking up

  ‘Henrietta!’ they said, and got down from their type-writers to welcome me.

  ‘How nice you look in your white coats,’ I said, for indeed they did. ‘What do you do in this little cell?’

  ‘Blood,’ they said simply.

  ‘You keep saying Blood,’ I complained. ‘What do you do with it?’

  ‘We group it for blood-transfusions,’ said Hilary patiently. ‘What group are you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

  Hilary and Pops exchanged a long, meaning look. ‘Are you just being your vague self, or don’t you really know?’ said Hilary.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Do you mean to say you haven’t been grouped?’ said Pops in a shocked voice.

  ‘Er – no. I forgot to go when they did it at our Cottage Hospital.’

  ‘You don’t mind having your finger pricked, do you?’ said Hilary, who had taken some sort of weapon out of a bottle.

  ‘I suppose you couldn’t prick me somewhere else?’ I asked diffidently, for I hate having anything done to my fingers.

  ‘Certainly,’ said Pops briskly as she seized me by the ear. ‘You don’t mind the smell of ether, do you?’ she added, and began dabbing with a piece of cotton-wool.

  ‘Not at all,’ I whispered, breathing deeply and hoping I might soon become unconscious.

  ‘Some people say it makes them feel sick,’ said Hilary, who was pinching my ear. ‘You seem to have very little blood, Henrietta.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Ah! Here we are,’ she said, and held up a small glass tube.

  ‘It looks very pale to me,’ I said anxiously.

>   ‘Don’t worry, it’s diluted,’ said Pops with an encouraging pat. Then they smeared it on a sort of china palette and did things to it.

  ‘Disappointing,’ said Hilary. ‘I thought she would be something rare and exciting.’ Then they asked me my age, and whether I had asthma and malaria, and gave me a card marked ‘O’. I suppose it means Ordinary.

  That evening I was telling Charles all about Hilary and Pops and how wonderful they were.

  ‘Good for them,’ said Charles.

  ‘I wish I had some war work,’ I said sadly.

  ‘You’ve plenty of other sort of work,’ said Charles kindly; ‘and what about the Bee?’

  ‘The Bee wouldn’t let me use the sewing-machine today. It said if everybody used the machines the work would get done too quickly.’

  ‘I see what you mean,’ said Charles.

  ‘Everybody has a badge or a uniform except me.’

  The next morning, on my plate was a little parcel, and inside a round disc which I recognized as the top of a pillbox. It hung on a green ribbon and on the disc was printed ‘L.A.B.D.’.

  ‘What does “L.A.B.D.” mean, Charles?’ I said, for I had recognised the printing.

  ‘Looking After Busy Doctor,’ said Charles.

  Always your affectionate Childhood’s Friend,

  HENRIETTA

  October 23, 1940

  MY DEAR ROBERT

  It was a big mistake telling Faith I was frightened of bombs. Charles always says that people who say they aren’t frightened are either liars or fools, so when, in the course of a conversation with Faith, I happened to mention that I hated the idea of a bomb dropping on my head, I little realized the effect it would have upon her attitude towards me.

  To say it is protective is to put it mildly, and it is certainly humiliating. Twice, after air raids in the night, she has rung up just as we were dropping off to sleep again to ask how I was, and made Charles very angry indeed. If I am out for a walk with her and happen to look up into the sky at passing aeroplanes, she puts an arm round my shoulders and says: ‘It’s all right, Old Thing, they’re ours,’ and she has bought me plugs to put in my ears. But as we have no anti-aircraft guns and all our BANGS, so far, have occurred without warning, it is difficult to see how they will be of any practical value, unless I wear them all the time and carry on conversation with the help of an ear-trumpet.

  If people discuss air raids in front of me, Faith makes faces at them over the top of my head and points at me in a meaning way. This used to make me angrier than anything, but now that this place has filled up with London and Surrey evacuees, each with a Bomb Story which has got to be told, I have begun to wish that I had Faith always at my elbow.

  It isn’t that we aren’t sorry for them, for indeed, indeed we are. The first three Bomb Stories I heard moved me nearly to tears, and I lay awake all night planning how we could help them to forget. But one Bomb Story is very like another, and after a time one comes to the end of one’s exclamations of horror, and the attention begins to wander. And when we try to tell them our Bomb Stories, they say ‘Pshaw!’ ‘Pshaw!’ they say, with superior smiles, and make no attempt to listen.

  The person who really carries his life in his hands these days is Charles, who, when he is called out in the small hours, is not allowed any lights at all on his car, and has to steer a hopeful, zigzag course between the pillboxes and various obstructions which have been put up all over the roads. When he consulted the police on this ruling they said tersely that if they caught him driving without lights they would summons him. But if he drives with lights the soldiery will shoot him. It seems that the wisest course would be to defy the police and pander to the soldiery, only if he does that he is practically sure to crash his car and kill himself that way. So you see he is what you might call awkwardly placed.

  ‘ That raid was soon over, wasn’t it?’

  The Admiral tells me that we are going to have a new and much louder siren, which is a pity, because I am sure it will make everybody much more frightened of air raids. The one we have now is the sweetest little thing. Nobody hears it except those who, like ourselves, live near to the police station, and even I missed its gentle wheezings this afternoon, because I happened to be boiling a kettle at the time.

  Faith, who dropped in on her way home from the A.R.P. Headquarters, found me having tea in the kitchen and reading The Last Chronicles of Barset.

  ‘That raid was soon over, wasn’t it?’ she said in the bright A.R.P. manner they have been taught to adopt towards nervous civilians.

  ‘What raid?’ I said.

  That rather took the wind out of her sails but a nice cup of tea and the cheering thought that I might be going deaf with age revived her in no time.

  Always your affectionate Childhood’s Friend,

  HENRIETTA

  November 13, 1940

  MY DEAR ROBERT

  It is such a beautiful day, and I am writing this sitting in the sun on my roof, which is not bad for the beginning of November. There is a soft haze over the sea, which is very still, because we have an off-shore wind. Every now and then a yellow leaf comes fluttering down from the mulberry-tree, and there is a smell of bonfires in the air which would fill me with a delicious autumn melancholy if it wasn’t for the feeling that I ought to be in a London air-raid shelter, being bombed.

  The fact that I am more useful where I am is small comfort. I think everybody down here feels the same way, and the corroding thought that we are not bearing our share of the burden grows and grows and is getting us all down. This melancholy state of mind is not helped in any way by our evacuees from London, who seem to be incensed by the fact that nobody in this place has been killed by enemy action so far.

  We are very, very sorry for the Londoners in our midst, Robert, but we do wish that they wouldn’t begin all their sentences with ‘You people down here – ’.

  ‘You people down here make me wild,’ said a London Lady to whom we had been listening meekly for half an hour at the Bee yesterday morning. ‘You aren’t at grips with reality at all. You simply don’t realize what it is like in London.’

  ‘We probably realize more than you think,’ said Lady B, in her kind way. ‘And anyway, why be cross with us? You might as well be angry with somebody because he hasn’t had appendicitis.’

  ‘You go to bed and sleep peacefully all night,’ said the London Lady indignantly.

  ‘We’d gladly stay awake if it did any good,’ said Lady B.

  ‘What’s that about sleeping peacefully in bed all night?’ said Mrs Savernack, who had just looked in on her way home after her usual patrol. ‘I haven’t had a night in bed for six weeks.’

  ‘Indeed?’ said the London Lady. ‘And what do you do?’

  ‘I patrol the moor on horseback,’ said Mrs Savernack, ‘protecting people like you. And so do the Home Guard, and the Special Constables, and the Coast Watchers, and the Soldiers, only they have to do it on their feet.’

  Like the hosts of Tuscany, we could scarce forbear to cheer, for we felt that a blow had been struck in our defence.

  ‘Pooh!’ said the London Lady. ‘Protecting us from what? Now, in London – ’

  ‘Don’t!’ said Faith earnestly. ‘Don’t start all over again.’

  The London Lady was incensed. She rose majestically and put her thimble away in her bag. ‘What this place needs is a few bombs,’ she said.

  ‘We’ve had quite a lot of BANGS,’ said Lady B soothingly, ‘and perhaps we shall get some right on the houses soon. If the Invasion comes we certainly will.’

  ‘There’s no fear of Invasion now, is there?’ said the London Lady, a trifle anxiously.

  ‘Well, you never know,’ said Lady B, with an innocent expression on her face. ‘The soldiers seem to think there is still some danger of it, now the nights are getting longer. They say this beach is particularly suitable for landing tanks on,’ she added chattily. ‘Of course, the houses on the Front would suffer most, especially the hotels,
because they are such wonderful targets.’

  ‘Lady B,’ I said severely, after the London Lady had hurried away, ‘I think you’ve been naughty.’

  ‘I fear so, I fear so,’ said Lady B contritely. ‘But I was sorely tried.’

  The people I really am sorry for are the not-so-well-to-do evacuees, who are crowded into small houses with their children, and I really do think something ought to be done about them. So much is done for the soldiers in the way of canteens and entertainment, but nobody seems to think that these poor women might be glad of an afternoon’s fun occasionally, or that they and their hostesses might be glad to get away from each other from time to time.

  The other day the lease of the cinema at our public hall came to an end, and in the middle of the night an Idea came to me about it, and I got so worked up I couldn’t go to sleep again. In the morning I rushed round to see the Admiral at the council offices, and found him sitting at a table, looking severe.

  ‘Take that Bench expression off your face,’ I said breathlessly. ‘I’ve got an idea. It’s about the public hall. Listen: the council must take it over and turn it into a People’s Palace.’

  Sitting at a table, looking severe

  ‘Sounds a bit Bolshie to me,’ said the Admiral.

  ‘Somewhere for the evacuated mothers to go to, where they could have tea and listen to the wireless, and games for the children – and the Drama Club and the W.I. and all that, of course – and dances for the soldiers – and lectures, perhaps – no class distinctions, just anybody who wants to join – and a children’s library – and roller-skating – and the cinema twice a week – and the Ladies’ Orchestra – all the entertainments gathered into one place – the great Beating Heart of the town – ’ I paused for breath.

  ‘You do have the strangest ideas, Henrietta,’ said the Admiral. ‘Who’s going to run this Beating Heart? And, anyhow, another cinema company has taken the hall, so that’s that.’

  I went home feeling like a barrage balloon that somebody has playfully spiked with a bayonet.