Henrietta Sees It Through (4 page)

‘Three pink gins, please,' said the Admiral to the barman, in a low voice.

‘You look very nice in it, Major,' said the Lady Visitor, who appeared to be one of those women who believe in making themselves pleasant at all costs.

‘Funny place this,' said the spy. Then he leaned forward in a confidential manner and said: ‘Believe me or believe me not, I was chased - yes, positively chased - by two females on the cliff path this morning.'

‘I can't believe it!' said the Lady Visitor.

‘Fact, I assure you,' said the Major, twirling his moustache.

‘Were they attractive?' said the Lady Visitor.

‘Not a bit,' said the Major. ‘And, what's more, they were old enough to know better.'

‘I was chased by two females on the cliff path this morning'

We swallowed our pink gins and crept out as silently as we had come in. As we got to the door we heard the Lady Visitor say: ‘It must have been your uniform that attracted them, poor things.'

Always your affectionate Childhood's Friend,

H
ENRIETTA

 

 

 

May 6, 1942

M
Y
D
EAR
R
OBERT

Spring is here, and I have started what Charles calls my rearguard action with the weeds. Daffodils are dancing and fluttering in a not inconsiderable, and definitely cold, breeze, and wood anemones rear their delicate heads, as people who write about the spring are so fond of saying.

Yet, in spite of the burgeoning and budding, life in your old home town is not as uneventful these days as I could wish it to be. A few days ago, in the middle of lunch, and without the slightest warning, things suddenly began to be very unpleasant indeed. After two tremendous Bangs and the rattle of machine-gun bullets, I slid gracefully under the dining-room table and cowered there until the enemy plane, after a few more Bangs, had roared over our chimney-pots and out to sea again.

I slid gracefully under the table

When I emerged, Charles was still eating his lunch. ‘That gave you a turn,' he said with a grin.

‘Yes.'

‘Dirty swine,' said Charles, cutting himself another slice of bread.

‘Yes.' I looked with distaste at the lunch I had been enjoying a few moments before.

‘Eat up your food, Woman, eat up your food,' said Charles irritably.

‘I don't really feel hungry now.'

‘Can't work on an empty stomach,' said Charles. Then the telephone rang, and he said ‘Ah,' and left the room, and a few minutes later I heard him drive away in his car.

If it was Hitler's idea to strike terror into the hearts of sleepy West Country folk, then the whole thing was a failure, because it has simply made everybody very angry indeed. Lady B came round that evening, quite pink with annoyance. ‘I'm in such a temper,' she said.

Charles said he wished he could give her a little something, but there wasn't a drop in the cupboard.

When we asked Lady B if she had been upset by the Incidents, she said no, she had got under the piano and taken some of Fay's Dog Bromide mixture, which had worked wonders. Lady B said Fay had been quite unmoved by each shattering explosion, and had remained in her basket with a bored expression on her face.

‘The people whose windows have been blown in are very scornful of the ones whose windows have not been blown in,' said Lady B. ‘And the people whose doors and windows have been blown in are scornful of the people whose windows only have been blown in, and the people whose houses have been knocked down are scornful of everybody.'

‘Snom bobbery is rife,' I said.

‘What, dear?' said Lady B, peering at me anxiously.

‘Snom bobbery.'

‘She's probably suffering from shock,' said Charles to Lady B in a low tone.

We are all very proud of our home town, Robert. Nobody made a fuss and everything worked smoothly, rather to the disappointment of the Visitors who prophesied Muddles.

Mrs Savernack covered herself with glory by rushing into the garden and firing a shot-gun at the enemy plane.

She swears she scored a hit, and is now so flushed with success that she is trying to form a Women's Home Guard. She says she isn't going to ask me to join, because I wouldn't be any good.

The only person besides Lady B's Fay to be quite unmoved by the raid is our gardener, who is so deaf he never heard anything. When I told him about it he shook his head in a knowing way. ‘Ar,' he said, ‘her couldn't get me. I was in the old greenhouse.'

Always your affectionate Childhood's Friend,

H
ENRIETTA

 

 

 

June 3, 1942

M
Y
D
EAR
R
OBERT

Bill and the Linnet have both had a few days' leave. It was lovely having them at home together. Luckily the weather was beautiful, and they spent nearly all their time lying on the roof, playing the gramophone to each other.

Since they left home our gramophone records have got rather behind the times. There is nothing in the world as sad
as an old dance tune and, once or twice, while shaking the mop out of the bathroom window and seeing them lying there in such pre-war abandon, I was moved almost to tears.

‘What are you looking so miserable about?' shouted the Linnet.

‘It's that tune about Smoke in My Eyes.'

‘Gosh!' said Bill. ‘It's so old you must almost have danced to it in your youth.'

‘Oh, no, Bill,' said the Linnet seriously. ‘Not as old as all
that.
'

Children say this sort of thing. They don't mean it unkindly . . .

Last week, when I was half-way up the cliff path, a sudden splutter overhead sent me headlong, like a rugby back, into the nearest doorway, which happened to be the entrance to the Men's Club. Colonel Simpkins, who happened to be coming out, stepped over me in some surprise.

‘My dear Henrietta!' he said as he helped me to my feet.

I brushed the dust off my coat, feeling foolish.

‘What
were
you doing?' said Colonel Simpkins. Just then there was another rattle overhead. Colonel Simpkins looked up and then smiled kindly at me. ‘It's all right, you know; it's one of Ours,' he said, patting my arm. ‘Not that it isn't a very sensible thing to do, Henrietta - very sensible indeed. We should always be ready for any emergency. By the way, I notice you are not carrying your gas mask.'

‘I'm sorry.'

‘Keep it in your shopping basket, my dear. And now come and have some coffee.'

I remembered this kindness when we met next at Lady B's and poor Colonel Simpkins came most unexpectedly under attack.

Lady B is very indignant because only ninety-five people voted for equal compensation for women who get injured in air raids. The usually genial atmosphere of her little flat was charged with sex-antagonism when we all met there after church on Sunday morning to help her drink the bottle of sherry somebody had sent her for her birthday.

‘I grudge every drop I pour into your glass,' said Lady B bitterly as she helped Colonel Simpkins.

Colonel Simpkins looked hurt. ‘
I
didn't vote against Equal Compensation,' he said, like a little boy who has been given an undeserved smack.

‘Would you have voted for it?' said Lady B, standing over him like the Avenging Angel.

Colonel Simpkins exchanged a quick look with the Admiral and shuffled with his feet. ‘It's all a matter of economics,' he said.

‘Economics be damned!' said Lady B. ‘My limbs are worth as much to me as yours are to you; more, in fact, because I'm a poor widow-woman in reduced circumstances, and if I had only one arm I wouldn't be able to cook my food, whereas if you had only one arm Mrs Simpkins would cook yours.'

‘I might be left a widower one day. Who knows?' said Colonel Simpkins.

‘What did you say, Alexander?' said little Mrs Simpkins, sitting up, her cheeks very pink.

‘Life is very uncertain, my love,' mumbled the Colonel, for whom, I must say, my heart was bleeding.

‘Well, if I were left a widow I know what I'd do,' said little Mrs Simpkins, clearly and unexpectedly. ‘I'd move into a
much
smaller house, and I'd sell your roll-top desk.'

After that there was an awkward silence, broken at last by Faith, who was home for the weekend and who is
sometimes tactful more by mistake than good management.

‘I really cannot see,' she said, ‘why legs shoul be considered less valuable than the Admiral's!'

She was standing beside the Admiral, and she put one leg forward and pulled her skirt up well above the knee. ‘I really cannot see,' she said, ‘why my legs should be considered less valuable than the Admiral's.'

There was another silence - an awed one this time, because, of course, Faith's legs are famous all over the West Country. I often wonder where she gets her silk stockings. Personally, I think that people with legs like hers ought to have them provided by the Government because they do so much for morale. After that, everybody cheered up. Lady B kissed Colonel Simpkins and said she hadn't meant to hurt his feelings, and Colonel Simpkins said that if Lady B lost an arm he would come and do her cooking himself, and Mrs Simpkins said, ‘Come along home, you old Flirt.'

Afterwards, when Lady B and I were getting the lunch - for Charles was out with the Home Guard, and I had taken down my sausage roll to heat in Lady B's oven - I said to her, ‘It's a good thing they've taken all the railings away, or you'd have been chained to them by now, shouting for Equal Compensation.' Lady B, who was making some
mustard in a cup, chuckled. Then she looked up at me very seriously. ‘No, I wouldn't, Henrietta,' she said. ‘You can't do that sort of thing in wartime. That, of course, is where they score.'

‘But there's nothing to stop you making a fuss after the war,' I said, ‘and having processions with injured women wheeled in chairs.'

‘Ah!' said Lady B. ‘The poor souls!'

Always your affectionate Childhood's Friend,

H
ENRIETTA

 

 

 

July 1, 1942

M
Y
D
EAR
R
OBERT

On Tuesday I went to an orchestra practice. They are learning a piece which wants three little tiny Pings on the triangle, and I was chosen to deliver them.

‘Your performance on the Nightingale during the Toy Symphony did nothing to justify my confidence in you as a triangle player,' said the Conductor unkindly, ‘but I can't think of anybody else who can spare the time.'

‘As a matter of fact, I can't spare the time myself,
actually
,' I said, but the Conductor ignored this remark.

I have often longed to attend a practice of what is known in this place as the Ork. Once or twice I have met the Conductor staggering away from the hall with a white face, followed by the flushed and twittering members of his orchestra, whose shaking legs can hardly carry them to the bun shop for cups of reviving coffee which will enable them to face the hill home.