Henrietta's War (17 page)

On my way home I met the lodger coming out of our gate. ‘The Form's gone,' I said.

‘Gone?' said the lodger, looking at me with a good deal of respect. ‘Do you mean actually posted?'

‘I've just dropped it into the letter-box myself,' I said. ‘I had a little help over filling it in.'

That same afternoon Lady B came to tea. She brought her knitting.

‘How do you feel about the Invasion?' I said to her.

‘Calm,' said Lady B. ‘How do you?'

‘Calm too,' I said, ‘and nobody could be more surprised, because as a rule I am terrified of practically everything.'

‘I think we are being Given Strength,' said Lady B. ‘Like when people are going to have babies, and everybody goes about with white, drawn faces except the Expectant Mother, who is perfectly calm, because she
knows
everything is going to be all right. It is Nature's Way.'

‘Great Britain as an expectant mother is quite a new one,' I said.

‘And America is the Expectant Grandmother, worrying like mad because she is afraid it is all going to be too much for us,' said Lady B.

‘And Mr Churchill is the Nurse, very calm and confident, and saying, “You'll be worse before you're better.” '

I wonder the cartoonists haven't thought of it before now, don't you, Robert?

Always your affectionate Childhood's Friend,

HENRIETTA

March 12, 1941

M
Y DEAR ROBERT
I think the British Housewife is having a confusing as well as a difficult time just now. Not very long ago we were urged to fill up our store-cupboards with enough food to last us for a fortnight in case of Invasion. ‘Up, Housewives, and at 'em!' was the slogan of the day, and, burning with patriotic zeal, we all rushed to the grocer's.

Filling up a store-cupboard is, of course, the greatest fun, and Matins and I spent a happy morning stowing away tins of tongues and soups and milk and fruit and a popular beef stew with veg in a very, very secret place, which I won't write down here in case this letter were to fall into Hitler's hands.

Charles raised his eyebrows rather at the weekly housekeeping cheque, until it was explained to him that it was all part of the Victory Campaign.

The glow of our pride and self-satisfaction had hardly had time to die down when I read in the paper one morning that a Power at Whitehall had made a speech in which he had said that he had been shocked – yes,
shocked
– to find that the British Public was Hoarding Food. The rest of his speech rather gave one the impression that he would take pleasure in personally and publicly horse-whipping anybody who had so much as a tin of pineapple chunks stowed away under the stairs.

Blushing hotly, Matins and I rushed to the secret hiding-place and unearthed our treasure. For the next fortnight Evensong and I fed Charles, who has a prejudice against eating tinned foods of any description, on mysterious and highly seasoned dishes.

‘Curry
again
, Henrietta?'

‘Well, yes, Charles. It's warming this weather, don't you think?'

‘What's this made of ?'

‘Oh, just bits, you know.'

‘It looks a little like tongue to me,' said Charles, peering closely at his plate and dissecting a small piece in an unpleasant surgical manner.

‘There might be one or two little bits of tongue in it, Charles.'

Next week was Invasion Week, and on opening my morning paper I read that the Housewife also could play her part by Staying Put, and doling out, with forethought and economy, those stores which she had wisely collected while the Germans were still on the other side of the Channel.

I gave a low groan and dropped the paper on the floor. ‘What's the matter?' said Charles.

‘I'm afraid the books will be rather high again this week, Charles.'

‘Never mind,' said Charles kindly. ‘They've been very low for the last fortnight.'

‘I bet they have,' I said to myself, but I didn't say it aloud, as I am a firm believer in letting sleeping dogs lie.

Isn't it funny the way the initials ‘B.O.' always stand for something rather awful? In the chemists' advertisements before the war, of course, they stood for something so humiliating that it could only be alluded to by initials, and even then with shame. When Bill and the Linnet were small they used to mean ‘Buzz Off '. Now they stand for Billeting Officer and Black-out, two of the biggest Bogeys of our lives.

The other day, when I was having my hair done, I composed a 1941 Folk Song called ‘Black-outs Hey', which began –

Oh, come, my Love, come away, come away,
And do the B.O. with Me-O.

While I was under the drier I worked out a rather engaging little Folk Dance to go with it, in which the couples advanced, each holding two sticks with a piece of black cloth suspended between them, changed partners, set to corners, and, after a little Olde Worlde stamping and circling, advanced down the room in a long line, the black cloth held high above their heads like a long, dark ribbon.

I was so pleased with my idea that I took it to Mrs Whinebite, who is the Folk Dance and Song queen down here; but I am sorry to say she didn't think much of it.

‘If you don't mind my saying so, Henrietta,' she said, ‘I think it would look rather silly, and all that black stuff would quite spoil the brightness of the print frocks and sun-bonnets.'

‘They might wear tin hats and gas-masks.'

‘God forbid!' said Mrs Whinebite, closing her eyes.

‘But Folk Dances are supposed to represent the spirit of the age, aren't they?' I said, for I was loth to abandon my idea without a struggle. ‘In a few hundred years the gas-mask will probably have evolved into something quite quaint, such as a wreath of wild flowers worn round the nose and chin, and tied to the head with ribands gay.'

I thought it would please Mrs Whinebite to hear me say ‘ribands' instead of ‘ribbons', but by that time she wasn't even listening.

Something quit quaint

Always your affectionate Childhood's Friend,

HENRIETTA

April 9, 1941

M
Y DEAR ROBERT
Charles held a stirrup-pump practice on the lawn after lunch on Sunday.

‘Now, you, Henrietta, had better be on the hose, which is practically foolproof,' he said kindly. ‘All you have to do is to crawl along with the dustbin-lid in one hand and the hose-pipe in the other, taking care to keep your head not more than three inches from the ground, and with your gas-mask ready to be put on at a moment's notice.'

‘It sounds too easy,' I said.

‘As a matter of fact, it's perfectly simple,' said Charles. ‘You use the spray on a bomb and the jet on burning wood-work. Just press this brass thing, and it changes from one to the other.'

‘How do I know which is the spray and which is the jet?' I said.

‘Try both,' said Charles patiently, ‘and then you can see for yourself.'

‘Oh, yes; of course.'

‘The lodger had better pump,' said Charles, ‘ “for though she's little, yet she's fierce”.'

‘Like Hermia,' said the lodger.

‘You've been educated,' said Charles admiringly.

‘And what are you going to do, Charles?' I said.

‘I shall probably be at the hospital, so it's no good counting on me,' said Charles. ‘You women have got to stop the place burning down somehow. Now then, Henrietta, down you go.'

‘It's very damp,' I said.

‘Don't be a coward. Down you go.'

‘What shall I do?' said Charles's mother, who is staying with us just now, and had come out to see what was happening.

Charles looked at her thoughtfully. ‘You'd better run to and fro with refill buckets of water,' he said.

‘O.K.,' said Grannie, and trotted off.

‘Perhaps you'd better bring half a bucket at a time,' shouted Charles. ‘After all, she is eighty-four,' he added to himself in an undertone.

Suddenly my spirits soared up like a rocket. How could Hitler ever dream for one single moment that there was the slightest chance of defeating people like us?

Last Wednesday I found Lady B in her greenhouse, repotting chrysanthemums. ‘I am enjoying myself so much,' she said apologetically. ‘Of course, one oughtn't to take one's attention off the onions for one single minute, but I couldn't bear to see these poor things suffering any more. Look at that!' she said triumphantly, as she heaved one out of its pot and held it up for me to see.

I found Lady B in her green house

It was indeed a sorry sight. The roots had pressed on a hopeless quest for freedom all round the sides, and had even grown, in a pathetic cascade, out of a hole at the bottom of the flower-pot.

‘That's just exactly how I feel,' I said, deeply moved by the spectacle.

Lady B looked at me for a moment, and then began putting fine mould into the large and spacious pot which was to be the chrysanthemum's new home.

‘It
is
awful, never getting away,' she said. ‘But, after all, it's better to be bodily pot-bound than mentally pot-bound, like the Germans. Mentally
and
spiritually pot-bound,' she said, enjoying the expression, and we went in to tea strangely comforted.

Always your affectionate Childhood's Friend,

HENRIETTA