Henrietta Sees It Through (11 page)

‘I'm sorry I was so rude just now,' said Lady B.

‘It was my fault, really,' I said.

Mrs Savernack looked at us in astonishment. ‘What
is
the matter with you?' she said.

So we trundled her off with us to have some coffee. While we were waiting I took my W.V.S. badge out of my coat and pinned it in my turban, to wear there as knights of old used to wear their ladies' gloves.

Always your affectionate Childhood's Friend,

H
ENRIETTA

 

 

 

August 25, 1943

M
Y
D
EAR
R
OBERT

We had a Horse Show in a village near here on August Bank Holiday. Faith, who looks as lovely on a horse as off one, has been invited to ride somebody's hunter, so, of course, the Conductor wanted to go and see her do it, and he and Lady B and Mrs Savernack and Charles and I walked over. It was a long time since any of us had had a country walk, and we all enjoyed it, though our poor feet began to feel the strain before we got there.

The show was in a field near the river, and there was an enormous crowd round the ring and a few thousand bicycles stacked in the hedges. The air smelt of hot grass and horses and leather, and there were a lot of people in leggings and check caps with bits of grass in their mouths. Outside the crowd were the riders, white with excitement, ready mounted, waiting their turn, and under the trees were the patient farm horses, decked out in ribbons and jingling brass. Time slipped backwards with a click, and we were away in the careless and happy days of Peace. Just once an aeroplane passed overhead, and I looked up and said to myself, ‘What a target for a tip-and-run raider,' but quickly dismissed the thought from my mind. This rural scene of innocence and charm was not to be marred by thoughts of Hitler.

People in leggings and check caps

Charles and Mrs Savernack, who belong to the Horsey World, had tickets which entitled them to sit in deckchairs, among the High-Ups, with the sun behind them, but though the Conductor and Lady B and I begged them to avail themselves of this grandeur, they insisted upon staying with us among the Ordinary People.

When we arrived, there were a lot of children riding their ponies round and round the ring. Nearly all of them were little girls, sitting easily in their saddles, with their pigtails flying in the wind. Though outwardly calm in demeanour,
it was obvious that they were excited beyond words and would probably be sick in the night.

‘Male sex
not
well represented,' said Charles, shaking his head as one little golden-haired boy rode by.

Mrs Savernack snorted. ‘Aeroplanes!' she said bitterly.

Then there was a roar from the crowd as a gypsy girl entered the ring on one of the smallest Shetland ponies ever shown. In a cotton frock and a sad absence of knicker, she kept her long, thin legs off the ground with difficulty, and managed to get thrown in front of the deckchairs.

‘I hope she gets a special prize,' said the Conductor in a choked voice. He is always moved by the sight of gallant and unselfconscious youth.

‘That's the pony I like best - that pale one,' I said.

‘I suppose you mean the dun,' said Mrs Savernack.

‘Henrietta chooses horses because they have kind faces,' said Charles.

‘That's how I choose people,' said the Conductor.

At the end, the gypsy child - who, to our grief, had not been awarded the prize - put her feet to the ground and the pony walked away from under her.

After that it was the jumping, which was much the same as it always is in a Horse Show: the horses showing an intense reluctance to jump at all, and rather more determination than usual about refusing at the brick wall. The people in the crowd, who knew nothing whatever about it, gave a lot of advice and shouted ‘Whoops!' at every jump, which made the horses even more disinclined to jump than they had been before. One lady, dressed as for Ascot - in a black silk frock and long earrings - gave so much incorrect information in a loud voice that Charles became fascinated, and turned his back on the ring in order not to miss a word.

‘It's hard to believe,' he said in an awed whisper, ‘that
anybody
could know so little about anything and say so much.'

‘You find the same things at concerts,' said the Conductor. ‘It's the chap whose favourite tune is “In a Monastery Garden” who shoots his mouth about a Beethoven concerto.'

‘And at the Academy,' said Lady B, ‘the little man creeping round without a catalogue is the one who knows all about it.'

The Ascot Lady edged a little nearer and gave us a Look. ‘I can't think why people who are not interested in Horses come to Horse Shows,' she said. She then proclaimed that the horse which had - wisely, I thought - refused the five-barred gate hadn't had a chance, because the rider had been pulling at the snaffle.

Then it was Faith, and we pushed the Conductor to the front so that he would get a better view. She entered the ring looking superb on a beautiful mount.

‘Doesn't she look lovely?' said the Conductor. There were tears in his eyes, and Lady B squeezed his hand.

‘I like those light-brown horses. Don't you?' I said.

‘Bay,' said Mrs Savernack.

‘Bey? Oh, yes, bay, of course.'

Faith trotted with the others round the ring in a demure procession. As she passed our corner, she gave us a dazzling smile, and there was a burst of applause from the crowd.

‘Her hands are all wrong,' said the Ascot Lady, and the Conductor turned and glared at her through his spectacles.

‘Keep your chin in, Faith darling,' said Charles in a low voice.

Faith kept her chin in, and a little smile at the corners of her mouth. When they began to canter, her light-brown
horse - whose name was Alexander, and who was obviously enjoying every minute of his appearance in the ring - neighed loudly and began going sideways, like a crab.

‘She'll fall off!' cried the Conductor.

‘Nonsense!' said Charles.

In the end, Faith and Alexander won the first prize, and Faith cantered away with a card and a blue rosette between her teeth.

‘Who said her hands were wrong?' said the Conductor, turning round, but the Ascot Lady had disappeared.

The next thing that happened was that the dun I had picked out got a medal for being the best pony in the show, so you see, Robert, there is something in a kind face, after all.

We got terribly tired walking home.

Always your affectionate Childhood's Friend,

H
ENRIETTA

 

 

 

September 8, 1943

M
Y
D
EAR
R
OBERT

The Linnet has passed her finals and is now a State Registered Nurse. When she was a small, pink baby, lying in her cradle, I used, as mothers will, to plan careers for her. Anything from a ballet dancer to a Member of Parliament seemed possible and even probable, but I never thought of a State Registered Nurse. Which just shows Fate always has a surprise up her sleeve for you. The Linnet says she never thought of a State Registered Nurse either; the war thought of it for her.

The Linnet was so gloomy about her chances, and told Charles of so many frightful mistakes she had made in her exam, that we began to be quite anxious about the result, and it was a great relief to us both when she rang up, stammering and choking with excitement, to say she had passed.

‘I feel like Christian when the load fell off his back!' she shouted.

‘I'm sure you do, darling,' I said, holding the receiver a little further away from my ear.

This was obviously an occasion for celebrating, and leaving undone a great deal I ought to have done, I mounted the bus and the Linnet met me in our Cathedral City with a beaming smile. We went off and had the biggest tea that Lord Woolton allowed us. ‘I feel just as though I were taking you out at Half Term, Linnet,' I said. ‘It is almost impossible to realise that you are a married woman.'
*

The Linnet arose from her chair with a shriek. ‘I've forgotten to send Philip a cable to say I've passed!' she cried, and rushed from the Olde Tea Shoppe.

She came back later a little subdued, having failed to send her cable. Apparently, if you are in one sort of army in the Middle East you can have cables sent to you, but if you are in another you can't. It all seemed rather confusing, but nothing daunted the Linnet for long that afternon, and she dragged me off to the hospital to see her new uniform.

I was relieved to find that in spite of State Registration there was a familiar disorder about the Linnet's bedroom. The new uniform was blue, and brought out the colour of her eyes. It was nice, but I must say I shall be glad when there is plenty of starch and nurses can go back to their
white aprons again. The Linnet took a neat little white bow and put it under her chin and pinned the strings on the top of her head. I watched, entranced. Then she took a square of white cambric, put it on the floor, folded it this way and that, and put it also upon her head, and fastened it at the sides with Kirby-grips.

‘How's that?' she said.

I looked at my daughter. Her eyelashes seemed even longer than usual, little tendrils of hair curled up over the edge of her cap, and the bow under her chin gave a piquant, and at the same time touching, effect.

‘I think you look sweet, Linnet.'

‘Then why are you crying, you silly little thing?' said the Linnet, sitting down beside me on her bed.

‘It's all turned out so different from what we'd planned for you,' I said, and a tear dripped off the end of my nose. ‘We meant you to go to Paris, and then be Presented, and then go and stay with Uncle James, and here you are a State Registered Nurse.'

‘It's not such a bad thing to be - a State Registered Nurse,' said the Linnet, stroking my hand.

‘It's a
wonderful
thing to be, Linnet. That's why I'm crying.'

‘You are funny,' said the Linnet. ‘Now come and see Ivan Trickey.'

The Babies' Ward was open to the sky all down one side, and the afternoon sun lay in a golden bar across the floor. Several small children who were out of bed began shouting, ‘Nurse Linnet! Nurse Linnet!', and ran and clasped her round the knees. A very young nurse who, with limpid brown eyes above her mask, looked as seductive as any Eastern lady in a yashmak, was bathing a very small baby in a basin. The baby was yelling and showing toothless gums.

‘Isn't she adorable?' said the little nurse.

‘She doesn't seem very ill, does she?'

‘She was. She's going out tomorrow, worse luck,' said the little nurse with a sigh.

The Linnet led me round the ward. Some of the children were playing happily, but some of them lay very quietly in their cots - too quietly, and I reflected, not for the first time, that sick children and cats with mice were two of the Almighty's inscrutable ways which took a bit of explaining.

Bathing a very small baby in a basin

‘There's Ivan Trickey,' said the Linnet proudly.

Ivan Trickey was sitting up in his cot. His face was covered with a white lotion and his head was shaved. What hair he had appeared to be pale pink, and his arms were in splints to stop him scratching.

‘I love him so much,' said the Linnet in a strangled voice, ‘that I'd like to adopt him.'

‘Darling,' I said, ‘if you're really going to have four of your own, do you think it would be wise? I mean, school bills and all that. Besides, his mother probably loves him.'

‘She'd be mad if she didn't,' said the Linnet.

Ivan Trickey gave me a long, searching look, then laid his head on his knees and wept as though his heart were breaking.

I was horrified, but the Linnet said, ‘He only wants his supper. He's terribly greedy.'

In the last bed was a child twitching and snoring, its head on a mackintosh sheet. The Linnet said it looked
like a head injury and must have been admitted while she was off duty. Outside in the corridor was the mother, crying. I wanted to take her hand and say, ‘Don't worry. This is a lovely ward, and they'll do all they can for your baby. The nurses are kind. This one with the curly hair is my daughter, and she loves children. She was a child herself only a short time ago.' I wanted to say it more than anything else in the world, Robert, but could I? No. My tongue clove (or is it cleaved?) to the roof of my mouth and I stood there goggling till the Linnet led me away, and now I have another Grinding Regret to chew over when I wake in the night.