Henrietta's War (9 page)

Charles and I, every summer, even go so far as to play a game called ‘Insults'. It is a simple pastime which amuses us and does the Visitors no harm. Every time we are insulted by a Visitor, separately insulted, I mean, we score a point. Charles always wins; partly because he meets so many more people than I do, and partly because his profession exposes him to insults of the juiciest variety.

They are continually saying to him: ‘Can you give injections?'; or ‘Have you ever heard of a drug called “M and B”?' and things like that. But somebody did once say to me, after I had recounted a modest anecdote, ‘And how did
you
come to be having lunch in the Savoy Grill?'

It sometimes seems we can do nothing right.

If we are cheerful, they say: ‘Of course, you people down here simply don't
realize
there is a war on.' If we show anxiety, they are moved to laughter, and say that to hear us talk anybody would think this was the one spot Hitler had his eye on. But last week, when the soldiery arrived and began their activities, a good many of them packed their boxes and went away again.

Not all, because some of them have taken furnished houses for the duration, and the relentless march of time is already beginning to change them from Visitors into Residents. Only yesterday I heard one of them say angrily: ‘Really! All these strangers make shopping impossible!'

The soldiery continues its activities, and pill-boxes spring up all around us like mushrooms. Writing one's name, and a little Hitler abuse, in the concrete before it is dry has provided many of us with a lot of quiet fun, and Perry shows just what he thinks of the Nazi régime every time he passes them.

Lady B's house is now completely surrounded by impedimenta. I met her yesterday struggling up the hill with her shopping basket. ‘Look!' she cried, waving her hand towards a mass of barbed wire and concrete. ‘I never thought I'd be in the front line. I'm so
proud
!'

‘Look!' she cried

I have been pasting strips of linen on the windows, an absorbing occupation, and one that I recommend to anybody who feels an attack of the jitters coming on.

First you make some paste according to B.B.C. instructions. That in itself induces a feeling of smug satisfaction, and tearing up material and pasting it crossways on the panes of glass completes the good work.

After putting pale-blue on the bathroom window, I was so flushed with success I started hunting all over the house for pieces of material which would tone in with the colour schemes. Yellow in the kitchen, green in my bedroom, pink in the Linnet's, it was all too fascinating, and the results exceeded my wildest dreams.

Faith, who dropped in during the afternoon and had already done her own windows expensively with adhesive-tape, stood transfixed.

‘I really can't compete with that, my dear Henrietta,' she said enviously.

(But she did, because she went home and did the whole house with lingerie silk in pastel colours, each strip coming from a half-circle in the corner, like the rays of a setting sun. People go miles to see it.)

It was the duck's-egg-blue for the dining room which stumped me finally. I searched the house for something suitable, and it was a long time before I found it.

Charles, sitting down to dinner that evening, looked towards the windows and suddenly stiffened with dismay.

‘Oh, Henrietta!' he said reproachfully. ‘My nicest pyjamas!'

Always your affectionate Childhood's Friend,

HENRIETTA

July 31, 1940

M
Y DEAR ROBERT
We were all thankful when Faith gave up her job in London and came back here to be an A.R.P. warden. Partly because we felt that running out into the streets and collecting stray animals during an air raid was not suitable work for her, and partly because the Conductor, whose passion seems to continue in one long crescendo, made our lives a burden during her absence with his yearnings and lamentations.

Even Lady B and I, who are devoted to him, took to hiding behind the counters in shops when we saw him coming and putting large ‘NOT AT HOME' notices on our doors whenever we were alone in our houses. Not that they kept him away, for he used to stand outside, looking wistfully in at the windows until, for very shame, we invited him in.

I knitted nearly a whole Balaclava helmet while he opened his heart to me, and Lady B said his voice was so soothing she found it almost impossible to keep her eyes open and slept solidly through most of his visits.

Slept solidly through most of his visits

One evening, when Charles had been called out to a case, I felt so sure of an impending Conductor, and so unable to cope with him, that I crept quietly up to bed at nine o'clock. I had hardly settled myself comfortably with my book when there was a timid knock, and the Conductor's face, with a distraught expression on it, peered round the door.

‘You don't mind if I come in, do you, Henrietta?' he said hoarsely, and without waiting for an answer he seated himself at the foot of my bed and began –

‘I don't bore you, do I?' he said about half an hour later, and I opened my eyes with a start. Lady B had been quite right about the soothing quality of his voice.

What a good plan it would be, I thought sleepily, if the Conductor could be employed as a conducer of sleep. Charles, I knew, had many patients who lay awake worrying about the war, and the Conductor was continually complaining that Faith didn't love him, because his weak chest prevented him from doing useful war work. Well then – well then –

The next thing I remembered was the Conductor's voice, still tolling like a beautiful bell, and Charles in his pyjamas standing at the door of his dressing-room.

‘Hullo,' he said mildly, ‘what's going on here?'

‘It's Faith,' I said sleepily. ‘She doesn't love him.'

‘Tell me about it,' said Charles kindly, but unwisely, as he clambered into bed.

‘You see, it's like this, Charles,' said the Conductor, getting off the end of my bed and transferring himself to the end of Charles's and beginning all over again.

In the morning, when we woke, he had gone . . .

Always your affectionate Childhood's Friend,

HENRIETTA

August 7, 1940

M
Y DEAR ROBERT
Ever since the soldiery arrived in this town a patriotic fervour has been sweeping it like a prairie fire, and everybody is getting an immense amount of fun out of it.

The Admiral appealed through a loud-speaker in the street on Saturday night for people to go and dig trenches, and there was a fine response on Sunday afternoon, and a still finer crowd to watch the fun.

The Big Moment was when Mrs Savernack arrived, in shorts, and leaping into the trench began to wield her pick with such fury that the people on either side of her moved quietly away. It warmed our hearts to see her, for she has been sadly out of sorts ever since they took away her guns and refused her for the L.D.V.

But it was the aluminium appeal which finally restored her to her old form. As soon as she heard it she rushed and borrowed a hand-cart from the Boy Scouts, and never, except possibly during the days of the Great Plague and its grisly cry of ‘Bring out your dead!' have people dreaded a house-to-house collection more.

‘Rat-a-tat-tat!' goes the door-knocker, worked with gusto by Mrs Savernack's strong right arm. ‘Rat-a-tat-tat!' And the housewife, after peering through the curtains, runs with a smothered cry to hide her new three-decker steamer under the bed in the spare room.

‘Is anybody at home?' shouts Mrs Savernack, opening the back door, and unless she gets an immediate answer she walks in and finds her way to the kitchen.

‘You don't want this,' she says firmly, taking a saucepan out of the cupboard.

‘I do! I do!' cries the housewife, wringing her hands. ‘It's what I make the coffee in!'

‘You should make it in a jug,' says Mrs Savernack, and retires with her prey.

‘Rat-a-tat-tat!'

Everybody has given willingly and generously, but that is not enough for Mrs Savernack, who holds the opinion that any woman with an aluminium utensil in her house is a Fifth Columnist. After a few days her collection became so enormous she had to hire an empty shed to house her spoils, and fixed on me to guard them during her absence.

I agreed, for it is better to give in to Mrs Savernack at once, and now I spend most of the day sitting in the Aluminium Depôt worrying about the things I ought to be doing in my own home.

Did I tell you, Robert, that I am beginning to know the difference between the noise our aeroplanes make and that of the enemy?

Always your affectionate Childhood's Friend,

HENRIETTA