Henrietta Sees It Through (17 page)

I took off my jersey and sat there.

‘If one were perfectly sure the general public would really benefit, it would be simple,' said the Great Bone Chief. ‘This arm has only got sixty degrees, Charles. I'd feel happier myself if I thought we'd get the thing working gradually.'

‘If we rush it there'll be a muddle.'

‘All these meetings - not much rotation here - they don't really get us anywhere.'

‘Ow!' I said.

‘Of course, nobody has the slightest idea what conditions will be like after the war.'

‘Doctors have got enough to do just now, God knows, without going to meetings. I think this needs a bit of help. Shall I come to you?'

‘No, no, Old Man, you're too busy. She can come in here for the night.'

At the word ‘she' I pricked up my ears, for I felt sure they must be talking about me. ‘I'd like to go to the Linnet's hospital,' I said.

This remark was ignored, and the Great Bone Chief went to the telephone and booked me a bed in a nursing home.

Outside, in the street, I said: ‘But Charles, I
wanted
to go to the Linnet's hospital.'

‘If it's more convenient for him in the nursing home you must go there,' said Charles. ‘Remember, he's a Very Busy Man, and he's Doing You for Nothing Because You Are a Doctor's Wife.'

‘Sometimes I wish I wasn't,' I said sadly.

‘Weren't,' said Charles.

Always your affectionate Childhood's Friend,

H
ENRIETTA

 

 

 

*
Henrietta had ‘done something' to her shoulder some time before, attracting varying degrees of sympathy from her friends according to whether or not they suffered from neuritis themselves.

 

 

 

May 17, 1944

M
Y
D
EAR
R
OBERT

Spring is nearly over and Nature's Pride is now a withered daffodil. I don't think the spring has ever been more lovely, and never before has it been so impossible to enjoy it in the simple and uncomplicated way in which the good God intended us to. Lady B says that when she looks at the double cherry tree in our garden with the blue sky behind it she is filled with an overwhelming sadness. Everybody does everything, whether it is weeding, standing in fish queues, or playing croquet, with a sort of fierce concentration, and tempers are even more frayed than before. Only Little No-well, cooing and chuckling in her pram, her sunburnt face one shade darker than her flaxen hair, and her eyes matching the forget-me-nots in the borders around her, is untouched by the strain and worry of the times.

Since I had my shoulder manipulated I have had to go about with my arm up in the air in a splint. The splint is grappled, as Shakespeare says, with hoops of steel to my bruised and aching body. It looks silly, as well as hurting, is awkward, ungainly, and difficult to negotiate in crowds.

‘Henrietta, what
have
you done to yourself?' people said, surging across the Street towards me, their eyes wide with sympathy.

‘I've had my shoulder manipulated.'

‘Is that all?' they said, in flat, disappointed voices, as though the whole thing were just a foolish whim on my part.

‘Here comes the One-man Band,' said the Conductor. ‘You only need a drum on your back, Henrietta, and a Jew's harp strapped to your chin, and a triangle hanging on your splint and you'd be OK.'

‘Take more water with it, my dear,' said the Admiral, with a knowing wink.

Outside the fish, shop, squeezing past the queue, I drove the point of my splint into Mrs Savernack's ribs. She turned on me, scarlet with anger. ‘Is it really necessary that you should walk up and down the Street in that thing, Henrietta, making an exhibition of yourself?'

‘Here comes the One-man Band'

I put my basket on the ground and advanced towards her with one clenched fist in the air, trying to remember, Robert, what you and my brothers taught me in my childhood about hitting people on the point of the chin, but Lady B stepped out of her place in the queue and led me gently away.

‘This is an awful place to live in,' I said in a trembling voice, after we had sat looking at the sea for some time. ‘
Awful!
'

‘Not awful,' said Lady B. ‘Difficult, perhaps, but not awful.'

‘Think of London,' I said passionately. ‘You only know the people you want to know in London.'

‘Pooh!' said Lady B. ‘Any fool can live in London, but it's an art to live in a place like this, at peace with your neighbours.'

This had never struck me before, and I turned it over in my mind.

‘Living in a small town,' went on Lady B, ‘is like living in a large family of rather uncongenial relations. Sometimes it's fun, and sometimes it's perfectly awful, but it's always good for you. People in large towns are like only-children.'

‘What a sage you are, darling Lady B,' I said.

‘Look at the Big Town people who come to live in the country,' said Lady B, who had evidently given this matter some thought. ‘Either they never have anything to do with anybody, which is cheating, because they get all this,' and Lady B waved her hand towards the sparkling sea, ‘for nothing, or else they throw themselves into the life of the place and get very angry and upset about things.'

‘I got frightfully angry and upset with Mrs Savernack just now,' I said sadly.

‘We all have our failures,' said Lady B kindly, ‘but on the whole I don't think we do too badly. Even the Londoners settle down after a year or two and begin to take things more calmly.'

‘You mean their spirits get broken.'

‘If you like to put it that way. But I tell you what, Henrietta,' said Lady B, thumping my knee to drive her meaning home, ‘after the war, everybody, even the people in towns, has got to mix up
more
, and
more
, and
more.
'

‘More?' I cried dismayed. ‘My idea was to go and live in a small flat in London and know five people.'

‘You always were a horrid little Isolationist,' said Lady B.

‘Yes,' I said meekly.

‘Of course, the air raids have mixed the town people up a bit,' said Lady B. ‘I mean, you can't rush into your neighbour's house and put out an incendiary in the bedroom and be entirely indifferent to him afterwards.'

‘Perfect strangers, they say, make each other cups of tea.'

‘There you are!' said Lady B. ‘It's splendid. But how are you going to keep that spirit going after the war is over?'

‘There will have to be sort of Social Centres in each district,' I said.

‘Half the people wouldn't go to them.'

‘There'd have to be a law compelling people to go there at least once a week.'

‘I hardly feel that would induce a spirit of bonhomie and good cheer,' said Lady B doubtfully, ‘and the people who didn't approve of them would say they were hot-beds of gossip.'

‘Which they would be, of course.'

‘It's all very difficult,' said Lady B with a sigh.

Just then Mrs Savernack came round the corner. She was carrying a heavy basket, which she put on the ground with a sigh before sitting down beside Lady B. ‘I'm sorry I said that to you just now, Henrietta,' she said. ‘Having had a Bad Arm myself, too.'

‘It's all right, Mrs Savernack,' I said, shuffling with my feet.

‘I'm so bothered about the boys,' said Mrs Savernack, frowning at the sea. ‘It makes me irritable.'

I was torn with remorse. ‘And I nearly hit you on the nose,' I said unhappily.

Mrs Savernack stretched out her legs and looked, intently at her large feet. ‘I often think,' she said, ‘that it would be a good thing if we hit each other from time to time.'

‘Gracious!' said Lady B. ‘And here have I been advocating Social Centres to promote Good Feeling.'

Always your affectionate Childhood's Friend,

H
ENRIETTA

 

 

 

June 28, 1944

M
Y
D
EAR
R
OBERT

I know you want an ordinary gossipy letter from your home town, but it is difficult to write one this week. We can hear the big naval guns booming away across the Channel, and all our thoughts and our prayers are over there with you all.

On D-night, when the firing began and the planes were roaring overhead, I woke Charles up. ‘Charles,' I said, ‘it's begun.'

‘Nonsense,' said Charles. ‘Target practice.'

‘It sounds different. And the planes are so low.'

Charles listened, and the old house gave a creak and a shudder. Then he got out of bed and we looked out of the window. The sky was full of coloured lights. Charles sighed. ‘Yes,' he said, ‘you're right. It has begun.'

‘Oh, Charles!'

‘Now, don't get in a fuss,' said Charles, clambering back into bed.

‘I feel useless.'

‘So do I, by God!' said Charles. ‘But it can't be helped. We're too old to take an active part in this show, Henrietta, and running round the place with our eyes sticking out isn't going to help anybody. Thank the Lord we've both got plenty of work to do,' and having delivered himself of this sound advice, he pulled the sheet up to his chin and fell asleep.

I lay awake listening to his gentle snores and wishing, not for the first time, that I had the same sane and steady disposition as my husband. The house kept on creaking and shuddering and the planes zoomed over the chimney pots. I tried not to think of the Linnet's Philip, and you, and the others, and planned a summer holiday in which we were all
together and very happy, with the sun shining all the time. ‘Escapism,' whispered a voice, so I stopped planning the summer holiday and got up and fetched another eiderdown from the spare room, for the night seemed to have turned suddenly cold.

Lady B rang up in the morning, and said: ‘I've dropped two plates and a cup on the kitchen floor already, and I feel there is More to Come. How are you, Henrietta?'

‘Cold.'

‘Read the first chapter of Joshua,' said Lady B, and rang off.

I read the first chapter of Joshua and felt better for it, then I took my basket and went down the Street.

‘The Second Front has begun!' said a lady from the hotel. ‘Isn't it lovely? Now the war will soon be over and I'll be able to have my car again!'

The Street seemed to be full of young wives with white, set faces, pushing perambulators. I longed to say something to them, but was afraid to. I still seemed very cold.

The Linnet came home to supper and sat on my knee. This always distresses me, for it means she is unhappy. It also deprives me of the use of my legs for several hours afterwards. Charles came home steady and sane. He said to the Linnet, ‘Your mother keeps wrapping herself in a rug and looking like a sick monkey.' This made us all laugh and we had a drink and felt better. Lady B rang up after supper and said: ‘Read the last bit of the Epistle of Paul to the Ephesians.' The Linnet and I read it together and she said: ‘It steadies you, doesn't it?' and I said, ‘Yes.' Then I went to see her off on the bus. As she was getting on, she turned round and said: ‘Put on some more woollies, Mummy.' Her face looked very white as the bus turned the
corner, and reminded me of the days when I used to see her off on the school train.

The next morning, determined not to be a sick monkey any more, I put on all my winter clothes and went down the hill whistling the waltz out of the Nutcracker Suite.

The first person I met was Mrs Whinebite. ‘Henrietta!' she said in a shocked voice, ‘just fancy whistling at a Time Like This!'

‘I——'

Mrs Whinebite looked at me coldly. ‘Of course, your son is in Palestine,' she said, ‘but you might have a little consideration for the Feelings of Others.'

‘I'm sorry,' I said, and crept away feeling ashamed.

As I turned the corner, I ran straight into the Admiral. ‘God bless my soul!' he said. ‘What a long face!'

I smiled weakly.

‘You mustn't go about looking like that at a Time Like This, Henrietta,' he said. ‘Think how depressing it is for other people.'

Tomorrow, I think, I shall do the shopping in my gas mask.

George, our American friend, arrived here a week or two ago in a Jeep, and with quantities of luggage.

‘My, dear George,' I said, running out into the yard, ‘have you come to live with us?'

‘No, I've come to say goodbye. I was wondering whether you and Charles would mind very much if we parked a few things in your attic. It's Boots mostly.'

‘My dear George,' I said, ‘we would be proud,' and I meant it, for George's Regiment was once Cavalry, and when their horses were finally reft from them they
clung sadly to their Boots, even bringing them across the Atlantic with them, and taking them out and singing to them from time to time.