Henrietta's War (4 page)

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

M
Y 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

M
Y 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.

Colonel Simpkins said soothingly that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

Always your affectionate Childhood's Friend,

HENRIETTA

February 21, 1940

M
Y DEAR ROBERT
A few days ago I took Mr Perry for a walk along the sea-front as far as the rocks. You couldn't call it a spring day, but it was the sort of day which makes you feel that spring may not be so very far away after all. Mr Perry, who hates the cold, was frisking along in a light-hearted manner, looking very handsome in his little coat, and a redshank on the marsh was giving its strange, questioning cry. I was just trying to decide whether it was saying ‘Why?' or ‘Who?' when I saw Faith rushing along the path towards me. She was gasping for breath and her face was quite white.

‘What is it?' I cried.

‘Mine!' gasped Faith, seizing me with both hands.

‘What is yours, Faith, dear?' I said gently, for indeed, Robert, I had begun to think she had lost her reason.

‘Mine, you fool!' she shouted, and with one shaking hand she pointed towards the sea. Then she pushed me aside and rushed on.

I looked where she had pointed and there, bobbing up and down not far from the shore, and drifting steadily towards the rocks, was a large, round, black object.

I stood rooted to the spot with horror, and felt the palms of my hands go damp. Nobody in the world is more frightened of being blown up than I, but there is just one thing I am more frightened of still, and that is a big BANG. To my mind, when threatened with a bang there is only one thing to do, and I did it. I sat down on the ground, put my fingers in my ears, shut my eyes tightly, and began singing the ‘Pilgrims' Chorus' out of
Tannhäuser
as loudly as I could.