Henrietta Sees It Through (15 page)

‘Absolutely, Charles. Was the baby born on Christmas Day?'

‘Five minutes to spare.'

The Conductor capered into the hall, and back again with his hat and coat. ‘Is darling Faith disappointed because it's not a boy?' he said.

‘Not a bit. She says she's going to have a boy next year.'

‘God forbid,' I said, and went out to the kitchen to fill my hot-water bottle.

Always your affectionate Childhood's Friend,

H
ENRIETTA

 

 

 

February 23, 1944

M
Y
D
EAR
R
OBERT

I have been to a party, or rather a partee, because it was given by Americans.
*
When George, who is a very old friend as well as being an American, rang up from our Cathedral City and asked me to the partee, Charles, and Lady B, and Faith, and the Conductor thought he was trying to be funny.

I returned to the telephone. ‘Are you being funny, George?' I said.

‘Are you being funny
, George?'

‘Funny? Hell! I'm assking you to a partee. I thought you said you liked partees?' ‘I do like parties, and I think it's very sweet of you to ask me.' ‘I like arsking you,' said George in an exaggerated English voice. ‘As a matter of fact, it's a wedding.' I put down the receiver and returned to the drawing room. ‘It's a wedding,' I said. ‘I suppose the poor girl hasn't got a mother and they want somebody to tell her the Facts of Life,' said Charles.

‘She probably has got a mother,' said Faith, ‘and they want another middle-aged woman to keep her company.'

‘Perhaps George just wants Henrietta to go with him,' said Lady B kindly.

‘But Henrietta never
goes
to parties,' said Faith.

‘Nor will you, Faith,' I said, ‘when little No-well is grown up.'

‘I will!' said Faith.

‘Well, she won't like it. Girls like their mothers to sit at home with their knitting.'

‘You go and enjoy yourself,' said Charles.

I went back to the telephone in the hall. ‘Hullo?'

‘Hello, I thought you'd gone for one of those long country walks you English are so keen about.'

‘I'd love to come to the partee, George.'

‘Fine.'

I returned to the drawing room and found everybody discussing my clothes. ‘She hasn't a thing fit to wear,' said Faith.

‘There's my Fuchsia,' I said.

‘With three darns down the front of the skirt,' said Faith witheringly.

‘If you're going to this thing at all,' said Charles, ‘you must go properly dressed.'

‘You must get a new frock,' said Lady B firmly. ‘You don't want the Linnet to be ashamed of you.'

‘And do make up your face properly, Henrietta,' said Faith. ‘Don't just dab some powder on your nose and think that's enough.'

In the end, I bought a new frock,
and
a new hat, and the Squander Bug sat on my pillow all night, singing in a high, thin little voice.

On the morning of the party, Charles sat up in bed and said: ‘How's the Party Girl?'

‘I'm not going,' I said. ‘It's a very cold day, I feel tired and I know I won't enjoy myself.'

‘You must go,' said Charles, ‘if it's only to amuse Lady B and me. Besides, you promised. You don't want George to go back to America and say English women don't know how to behave, do you?' So I went.

I arrived in our Cathedral City cold and low in spirits. In spite of a careful make-up, my face, in the glass of the hotel Ladies' Cloak, looked pink in some places and blue in others. The Linnet and George were very kind to me all through lunch, and told me how much they liked my hat and my frock, but my thoughts kept turning in a nostalgic way to my home, and Charles, and Perry, and Evensong, and the kitten, and I wondered how they were getting on without me. Then we got into a taxi and went to the wedding.

Towards the end of the service George bent down and whispered: ‘Cheer up. You'll enjoy yourself in a minute.' I did.

Outside, in the road, were drawn up twenty Jeeps. The front Jeep had two tin cans attached to it by long strings, and an enormous placard on the back saying, ‘Just Married'. Heading the procession was a lorry with the band in it. I noticed that nearly all the officers, who looked like naughty schoolboys, were carrying large, unexploded fireworks.

‘There aren't going to be Bangs, are there, George?'

‘I'll say there are!' said George.

Then the Married Couple emerged from the church, and the little bride, protesting faintly, was lifted into the first Jeep, the guests and their escorts clambered into the other nineteen, the band struck up a rousing tune, and amid cheers, and a series of shattering explosions, the Procession started.

Our Cathedral City was literally and figuratively shaken. Like a barrage balloon which has escaped from its moorings,
my spirits rose and soared. I saw Mrs Whinebite standing in the crowd. ‘Hullo, Mrs Whinebite!' I shouted, and she cut me dead.

Outside the station we passed another wedding, all white satin and family veils, coming from the cathedral. They waved to us and we waved to them, and I wondered whether they were enjoying themselves as much as we were.

When we got back to the Mess, the Linnet introduced me all round and everybody began calling me Mummy, which wasn't exactly what I'd hoped for, but half a tumblerful of what looked like orange juice, but tasted a good deal nicer, had induced in me a carefree attitude towards life, and I didn't really mind. And, oh! Robert, how well they danced! I hadn't enjoyed dancing so much since you went away.

‘Have another drink, Mummy?'

‘Over magnolia blooms and lilied lakes——'

‘Why are you saying that?'

‘I always say that to see whether I ought to have another drink or not.'

‘And ought you?'

‘No.'

George and the Linnet, who were listening-in to this conversation, went away to telephone to Charles and tell him I was having a good time.

The one called Big Feet came to see me off at the station, and I kissed him goodbye. I mean, if you've been called Mummy all the afternoon, you can do these things.

Charles and Lady B were at the station this end to meet me. As I got out of the train, Charles said: ‘Here comes the Red-Hot Momma.'

Always your affectionate Childhood's Friend,

H
ENRIETTA

 

 

 

*
The south-west of England was by now full of friendly American troops practising for the invasion of Europe. Linnet remembers seeing General Eisenhower in Exeter.

 

 

 

March 8, 1944

M
Y
D
EAR
R
OBERT

I don't know whether it is the East Wind, or War Weariness, or just that we've taken the slogan ‘Is Your Journey Really Necessary?' too literally and not been away from this place enough, but anyhow, everybody has suddenly become very bad-tempered and disagreeable, and if things go on as they are, soon nobody will be on speaking terms with anybody else.

The atmosphere at the Bridge Club, they say, is electric, and the Admiral and Colonel Simpkins are already cutting each other in the Street. Nobody quite knows what their quarrel is about, but the rumour is that Colonel Simpkins left the teapot at the A.R.P. Report Post full of tea leaves, and the Admiral put the tea leaves, wrapped in an abusive note, on the pillow of the Report Post bed just before Colonel Simpkins came on duty. Even little Mrs Simpkins, that mildest and sweetest of women, had a flaming row with Mrs Whinebite in the fish shop, and the Conductor and Faith are furious with Mrs Savernack because she says they are spoiling Little No-well. On Sunday the vicar preached a very straight sermon on Charity. The congregation listened in sullen silence, and glared balefully at each other as they shuffled out.

‘I'm cross,' said Lady B when I met her in the Street one morning. ‘And don't start saying we've a great deal to be thankful for or I shall smack you, Henrietta. I
know
we have a great deal to be thankful for, but I'm still cross. I hate this Street and all the silly people who walk up and down it.'

‘This is terrible,' I said, for it is always our dear Lady B who keeps happy and good-tempered, no matter how unpleasant everybody else is.

‘Now don't begin saying you don't feel cross too,' said Lady B, glaring at me.

‘Well, I'm practically always cross in the Street,' I said, ‘especially in an East Wind, but as a matter of fact, I don't feel particularly cross at the moment.'

‘Oh, Henrietta, how tiresome of you!'

‘I'm sorry, Lady B, but that's the way it is.'

Just then Mr Whinebite passed. ‘How's your lumbago?' I said politely. Although Doctors' Wives are supposed to know nothing, I find people get very annoyed if I don't enquire after their diseases.

‘Splendid!' said Mr Whinebite. ‘I'm getting along like a two year old. Small thanks to your husband, though. I've been going to Doctor Rival for a month.' Then he hobbled away. ‘You might tell Charles,' he shouted over his shoulder.

‘Ungrateful Swine!' I muttered, and then I said it again louder, and hoped he'd hear.

Lady B grinned. ‘Now you
are
cross!' she said.

‘Any objection?' I said through clenched teeth.

‘None at all,' said Lady B in a strained voice.

For the first time in our lives we looked at each other with cold dislike, and then the Siren went. Everybody said, ‘There's the Siren,' and looked up at the sky, and cocked an ear at a faint humming which was coming from the sea.

‘I do
hate
the Siren,' said little Mrs Simpkins, coming out of the butcher's, ‘and we live so far away.'

‘Come home with me,' said Mrs Whinebite, ‘and we'll have a cup of tea,' and she tucked her hand under little Mrs Simpkins's arm and led her away.

The humming grew louder and there was some gunfire along the coast. ‘I wouldn't stand about in the Street, if I were you,' said the Admiral, who had appeared from nowhere in a tin hat.

Lady B and I betook ourselves to the porch of the bank, and Lady B said that if the bank received a direct hit we might, in death, be surrounded with wealth as we never had been in life.

‘ “Received” is an awful word,' I said. ‘Why do things always receive direct hits instead of getting them?'

‘It's a good-enough word for a bomb,' said Lady B.

Pop-pop-pop-pop-pop.

‘Damn the Germans,' I said.

Crump, crump.

‘Damn the bloody Germans!' said Lady B.

Mr Whinebite came hobbling up the Street and paused outside the bank, ‘You know, Henrietta,' he said earnestly, ‘it was only because Charles was so frightfully busy. He always said it would be a long job, and——'

‘If you're going to talk about your lumbago, you'd better come in here,' said Lady B. ‘Remember, everything that Goes Up has got to Come Down.'

Mr Whinebite joined us in the porch and went on talking about his lumbago. There were a few more Bangs and then an aeroplane flew out to sea. A minute later a Spitfire streaked across the sky in pursuit and everybody began cheering.

‘Atta Boy!' shouted Mr Whinebite, and executed a caper on the pavement, in the middle of which he uttered a loud shriek and clapped his hand to his back. I opened my mouth to say ‘I thought you said your lumbago was cured,' but thought better of it.

Soon after that the All Clear sounded and Lady B and I went off to have some coffee. A little farther up the Street we saw the Admiral and Colonel Simpkins going into the pub together, arm in arm, their tin hats on the backs of their heads.

‘Isn't it
awful
,' said Lady B, ‘that we have to have a German plane over us to stop us being disagreeable and make us realise that we have a Great Deal to Be Thankful For?'

‘It may be the East Wind,' I said.

‘That's no excuse,' said Lady B. ‘We ought to be extra happy and extra kind so that we can help the people who have really got something to be miserable about, and all we do is to Bite, Scratch, and Sting.'

‘You've said it, Boss.'

‘Just because you've been to an American partee, Henrietta, there is no reason why you should cease to speak in your native tongue. But, as I was saying, we've got to mend our ways, East Wind or no. Do you remember the poem by Robert Louis Stevenson?