Henrietta's War (20 page)

It was just like Lady B to be so plucky and sensible about it, and when I went up to tea one day last week it was a shock to find her sitting on the floor with a child's doll on her lap and the tears rolling down her cheeks.

With a child's doll on her lap

‘It was Sarah's,' she said in a choked voice while she fumbled about for a handkerchief.

I passed her mine in silence. Sarah was Lady B's very precious daughter who died as a V.A.D. in the last war.

‘She was a rather plain little girl,' said Lady B, dabbing at her eyes. ‘Freckly, you know, and with cut knees, but such a darling. This is the doll she loved best. Her name is Hermione.'

Hermione's eyes opened with a click and she said ‘Ma-ma.'

‘Keep her,' I said.

‘Good gracious, no!' said Lady B briskly, and she got up off the floor and put Hermione back into her cradle. ‘I'm going to get rid of everything which isn't really necessary. I shall keep one fork and one spoon and one knife and one chair and one bed, and my life will be simple and idyllic.'

‘And what about a table?'

‘A table, of course.'

‘And what about the evacuee?'

‘Don't be tiresome, Henrietta.'

‘It will be nice not to have to bother about weeds,' I said wistfully.

‘It will be heavenly!' said Lady B with fervour. ‘I shall have a window-box in which I shall dig with my one fork.' ‘

I think I shall stop being sorry for you,' I said.

‘I should think so, indeed!' said Lady B, pouring out the tea. ‘It is the best thing that has happened to me for ages, and you mustn't take any notice if I get a bit weepy and sentimental; it is the privilege of age.'

She was quite her old self again.

‘I'm not at all sure that I shan't grow mustard and cress in my window-box.'

‘And you could cut it with your one pair of nail-scissors.'

Lady B smiled happily. ‘The secret of happiness is to adopt
this
attitude towards possessions,' she said – and she made a pushing-away gesture with her hands – ‘rather than this,' and she pulled an imaginary treasure to her bosom. ‘Once you can drop the grabbing habit everything is plain sailing. I'm all right, because my family has been coming down in the world for so many generations that it's sort of in my blood. It's the ones on the up-grade who are finding it so difficult to get into reverse. Poor things,' she added, with deep sympathy.

‘You are a philosopher,' I said, ‘and young men ought to sit at your feet.'

‘I can't imagine anything nicer,' said Lady B.

Always your affectionate Childhood's Friend,

HENRIETTA

June 18, 1941

M
Y DEAR ROBERT
The Conductor gave two concerts last week, one here, and one in an outlying village. He has been in bed ever since. Here we had our usual rather sullen audience composed of people who had been bludgeoned into buying tickets and who would rather have been playing bridge. The most exciting moment of the afternoon, as far as I was concerned, was when I came in with a loud fluting note a whole bar too soon, but with great presence of mind I turned and gave Faith, who was standing next to me, a Look, and the Conductor, thinking she was the culprit, smiled indulgently.

I turned and gave Faith a look

The concert in the outlying village was much more fun because the Women's Institute hall was packed with people who all wanted to be there, and were determined to enjoy themselves at all costs. The front seats, which had gone up sixpence this year and were now two shillings, were gratifyingly full of London Visitors, and officers who are billeted in the village. They had come partly because their landladies had sold them tickets, partly because they felt it was the duty of the gentry to uphold Village Effort, but mostly because they hoped it would be like the gramophone record of ‘Our Village Concert', and that they'd get a good laugh. The back seats came partly to laugh at their friends on the stage, and partly to laugh at the gentry laughing at the village . . .

Faith was looking divine, as usual. But how long can it last? We were all dreadfully sorry for her the other day when clothes rationing was announced. She came up to our house straight after the broadcast looking white and drawn.

‘I've given up offering people my whisky, Faith,' said Charles gently as he led her to the sofa, ‘but I'd like you to have some now.'

‘I'd sooner have some sherry,' said Faith in a choked voice.

Charles filled a port glass to the brim and handed it to her. ‘You can still buy hats,' he said tenderly.

‘Hats!' said Faith. ‘Nobody wears a hat in the country!' and she tossed off her sherry as though it were vodka.

‘And you've got an awful lot of clothes to go on with,' I said, and Faith gave me a withering look.

‘It wouldn't matter so much if the make-up wasn't going off the market,' she said gloomily. ‘You can get away with no clothes if you've got plenty of make-up.'

‘I'm sure you can,' said Charles admiringly as he refilled her glass.

‘My grandmother used to tell me that once when she particularly wanted to cut a dash at a dance she made herself some rouge out of red geranium petals and was the Belle of the Ball. In fact, that was the night she hooked grandfather.'

‘I suppose she mixed the petals with something?' said Faith, with deep interest. Then the Conductor came in and Faith, who was starting on her third glass of sherry and cheering up, waved to him and said she had decided to have an evening coat made of patchwork silk.

‘Motley's the only wear,' said the Conductor. Then he sat down beside her on the sofa and took her hand. ‘I just want you to know,' he said, ‘that you can have
all
my coupons.'

‘Are they transferable?' said Faith, who was greatly touched by this sign of devotion.

‘Only among families,' said Charles.

‘Well – ' said the Conductor, with a meaning look.

Charles saw them to the gate. When he came back he said that if the Conductor didn't pull it off this time he never would.

The next morning I met Lady B. ‘My dear,' she said, ‘Faith has gone stark staring mad.'

‘Has she accepted him?' I asked eagerly.

‘Not as far as I know,' said Lady B. ‘But she's got her garden cramjam full of the most awful red geraniums.'

Always your affectionate Childhood's Friend,

HENRIETTA

July 2, 1941

M
Y DEAR ROBERT
One of the prize gardens in these parts was thrown open to the public one day last week. Charles and I both went, Charles because the sixpence a head entrance fee was in aid of the Cottage Hospital, and I because I wanted to see the garden.

I think it is the loveliest garden I know. To begin with, it is large, but not so large as to make the owner's house look like a tool shed. Then it has a little stream running along the bottom edge, as all good gardens should have; but best of all, everything in it seems to be growing there because it is the right and proper place for it to grow, and not because some determined person with a spade has made a hole and shoved it in.

Charles and I wandered round in a depressed way, wondering how we could ever have dared to call the jungle which surrounds our house a garden. Here there were no weeds, no slugs, snails, or greenfly, and everything seemed to be growing healthily and happily in the right shape. Most of the plants were so rare that they had little metal notice boards with long Latin names on them stuck into the ground beside them, and the few we did recognize were new and surprising colours.

One of the prize gardens was thrown open to the public

‘That's a delphinium, Charles.'

‘Don't be silly, Henrietta, it's pink.'

‘All the same, it
is
a delphinium, Charles.'

Charles sighed. ‘Let's go and have a look at the veg,' he said.

But if he hoped to see signs of neglect in the vegetable garden he was doomed to disappointment.

We returned to the flower garden in silence. The owner was walking about with a shooting-stick, a proud and happy man, talking to his guests, advising, explaining, and listening patiently to long, boring stories of other people's garden troubles.

‘I think those azaleas are
the
most beautiful things I've ever seen,' said a guest in a hushed gardening voice.

‘Yes, but look at this little beast,' said the owner, poking fretfully at a rather less exuberant specimen with his shooting-stick. ‘It came from Mongolia and I
can't
get it to settle down.'

‘You see, Charles,' I said wistfully, ‘he isn't even conceited.'

Suddenly Charles clutched my arm and pointed with a shaking finger. ‘Look!' he said. ‘Look, Henrietta!'

There it was, growing low on the ground, urban, squat, and packed with guile, like the Cambridge people in Rupert Brooke's poem, and with roots, as well we knew, in Australia.

‘Bindweed!' we shouted, and leaped forward like hounds at a kill.