Henrietta's War (23 page)

November 19, 1941

M
Y DEAR ROBERT
I am in London! Every year when autumn comes, and the bathing-dresses have been washed and put away, and the roof umbrella stowed in the cellar, and the cushions in the linen cupboard, I begin to long for London. I didn't go up at all last year, and this year the craving became so intense that at last I rushed to the telephone and rang up Linda Dixon and asked her if she could have me to stay for two days, and that I'd bring a rabbit. Linda, who is the most welcoming person in the world, said it was just what she was longing for, and the rabbit wasn't necessary.

I was so pleased and excited I could only stammer and stutter down the telephone, but as soon as I had put the receiver back I began to have doubts. Suppose a bomb were to drop on Charles in my absence? Suppose a bomb were to drop on me in London? Charles and I hold strong views about being blown up together if we have to be blown up at all, and I had a vivid mental picture of Charles and the children in deep mourning, and Charles saying: ‘She would go. I couldn't stop her. Your poor mother always had a craving for pleasure and excitement,' and an even worse one of me returning to find our house a smoking ruin surrounded by Charles's weeping patients.

‘What's the matter?' said Charles after dinner. ‘You seem very gloomy.'

‘I'm going to London to-morrow.'

‘I thought you wanted to go to London,' said Charles. ‘You've been saying nothing else for a fortnight.'

‘Well, now I'm going I sort of don't want to.'

Charles gave me a patient look. ‘You always go on like this,' he said.

‘Who's going to take Perry for his walkies?'

‘Not me,' said Charles firmly, and opened
The Times.

I woke up next morning with a heart like lead. Why, oh, why, had I deliberately let myself in for this agony? There was the telephone beside my bed. I lay and looked at it for a bit, and then picked up the receiver and asked for ‘Trunks'.

‘Linda, I'm not coming.'

‘But why, darling?'

‘Well, I just feel I can't.'

‘Now, Henrietta,' said Linda firmly, ‘I know exactly how you feel, but you must fight against it. We shall expect you for tea.' Then she rang off.

As soon as I got out my suitcase Perry went and sat in it, looking at me very piteously. Charles said, ‘Good-bye, old girl. Don't get run over in the black-out, you're such a fool in traffic.' Matins flung her arms round my neck and said, ‘Oh, Madam, Madam, take care of yourself !' The man in the bank said, ‘London? I hope we shall see you safely back, Mrs Brown.' Faith said, ‘You'll have an awful journey,' and the Conductor said, ‘London will make you cry.'

When I got to the station it was a shock to find that the twelve o'clock train now starts at twelve-thirty. Things are not what they were in the Old Country, Robert. But it gave me time to go back and fetch my earrings, which I had left on the mantelpiece. Matins, who thought I was my own ghost, uttered a loud shriek when she saw me, and dropped the dustpan and brush; and Perry, poor darling little Perry, who, like Mr Priestley, has his own ideas about Time, thought two days had passed, and gave me an ecstatic welcome.

It was almost worse getting off the second time, but I dragged myself away, and met Mrs Savernack in the road outside. ‘You look very togged-up, Henrietta,' she said disapprovingly.

‘I'm going to London, Mrs Savernack.'

‘But we are asked not to travel.'

‘I am going on business,' I said primly, looking down my nose, and left her staring.

This triumph over Mrs Savernack, my only one so far, did a lot to cheer me, and as I nearly missed my train and had to run from the top of the hill, there was no time for any more heart-burnings. Of course, directly I got in the train I began to enjoy myself, and, contrary to Faith's gloomy forebodings, I got a corner seat.

I nearly missed the train

As we slid into the suburbs, excitement clutched at my heart in the old way, but I found myself wondering whether I would get the same welcome as I used to. In the old days, London used to say, ‘Here are the Autumn Visitors, give them a welcome,' and as you stepped out of the train, Waterloo Station bowed and smiled; but that was before the war. What was London going to say this time? Would she say, ‘You are not a Londoner. Go back to the country where you belong, and don't come here to stare at my wounds'? I turned my eyes away from the devastation outside Waterloo, and fixed them on my book.

But London is just the same, Robert. As I drove away in my taxi, the autumn sunshine was on Westminster Bridge, and the tops of the houses loomed out of a faint grey mist, and there were dahlias in the park. Just the same, and unbelievably lovely. There are Gaps, of course, but even we in the West have Gaps, and after the first gasp of surprise and horror, one gets used to them. ‘Here I am,' says London, ‘knocked about a bit, but still here, and ready to give a welcome to a Country Cousin.'

When I was at Waterloo yesterday, Robert, I looked for you under the clock, and almost thought I could see you standing there. Where, like the Pale Hands somebody loved, are you now?

Always your affectionate Childhood's Friend,

HENRIETTA

December 3, 1941

M
Y DEAR ROBERT
Here I am, home again. Three days in London is not enough, but I must tell you of the exciting morning I had with Linda before I left.

Linda is a Salvage Adviser to a borough. When I said, ‘How grand that sounds!' she turned those marvellous eyes on me and said simply, ‘It
is
grand.' I really believe she is prouder of being a Salvage Adviser than she was of being the best Juliet ever seen on the English stage. Her job, as far as I can make out, is to go round to all the houses in the borough crying, ‘Bring out your dead!' and then people rush out into the street with their old family teapots, or tear up the railings in the front garden, and Linda takes them away in a wheelbarrow. At least, that is what she told me, but one mustn't expect the unvarnished truth from people with imaginations.

Well, of course the Press soon got wind of these activities and came tearing round to the Salvage Headquarters, baying like hounds. Linda told me she really
did
want to be an anonymous salvager, but as the matter was taken out of her hands she determined to give the
Evening Banner
, which was the paper which got the first refusal, so to speak, a run for its money.

That evening we went round to see Linda's two old great-aunts, Julia and Lucy, who live in a museum-piece house in a romantic square which is on Linda's salvage beat. Linda's aunts are the sort of regal and delightful old ladies of whom people say, ‘They were intimate friends of Edward the Seventh, and he always went to tea there on Sunday afternoons.' They have a parlour-maid called Emerson who has been with them for fifty years – and now you know exactly the sort of house it is.

Linda was greeted rapturously at the front door by Emerson, and asked to see her aunts. We were shown into a room which had three original Landseers on the walls, and a mantelpiece draped with velvet. When Linda explained what she had come for, Aunts Julia and Lucy were on to it like lightning. It was easy to see from which side of the family Linda has inherited her dramatic talents.

‘Will Emerson be all right?' said Linda.

‘We will coach her in her part,' said Aunt Lucy.

The next morning we arrived in good time at the Salvage Headquarters. Linda was wearing a new hat, and the young men from the
Evening Banner
were practically speechless with excitement.

‘This is my assistant, Mrs Brown,' said Linda, pointing at me. ‘She accompanies me everywhere, for there are some streets in my district where No Woman Would Care To Go Alone.'

The Salvage City Father, who adores Linda and would never ask her to visit a Street Where No Woman Cares To Go Alone, besides having spent the best years of his life eliminating such streets from the borough, looked a little bleak at this, but sportingly said nothing.

The other young man took photographs of Linda –

(
a
) arriving at the office;

(
b
) sitting at her desk; and

(
c
) talking to the City Father.

After that we set out in a taxi.

‘I always choose my house by the window-curtains,' said Linda as we drove into the aunts' square.

‘There's a good one,' said the reporter pointing.

‘No, I think this one,' said Linda firmly, and the taxi drew up at her aunts' door.

Emerson answered the door, wearing spectacles and with her cap a little crooked. ‘I am the Salvage Adviser,' said Linda. ‘Is your mistress at home?'

‘I doubt whether they'll see you,' said Emerson, in a strange, unnatural voice.

Arriving at the office

‘Oh, please,' said Linda, with the smile that used to bring the gallery cheering to its feet. It was on this occasion noted, in shorthand, by the reporter in his little book.

We were shown into the drawing-room. Emerson retreated hastily, and there was a noise like a sneeze as she shut the door. Aunt Julia was sitting in a high-backed chair, doing tatting, and Aunt Lucy was playing ‘The Last Rose of Summer' on the piano, which was very out of tune.

‘I am the Salvage Adviser,' said Linda, in a rather shaky voice. ‘Is there any salvage you can let me have to help Old England in her hour of need?'

Aunts Julia and Lucy rose to their feet and stood side by side in dignified silence. Then Aunt Julia spoke. ‘My dear,' she said, ‘my sister and I are in very reduced circumstances.'

‘Nearly all our possessions,' said Aunt Lucy sadly, looking round the overcrowded room, ‘have come under the auctioneer's hammer to pay our debts.'

‘But England's call has never gone unheeded in this house,' said Aunt Julia, and she went to a corner-cabinet and took out a pair of handsome Sheffield-plate candlesticks which she handed to Linda. ‘They were given to our father by Disraeli,' she said simply.

Then Aunt Lucy went to the writing-desk and unlocked a drawer. She took out a little bundle of letters tied with pink ribbon. ‘Please take them,' she said, and pressed them into Linda's hands.

The other young man took a lot of photographs, and we were asked to partake of gooseberry wine. This was served by Emerson in long-stemmed glasses and the other young man took yet another photograph. I don't know what the gooseberry wine was, but there was a lot of gin in it, and we parted hilariously on the steps of the Salvage Office.

‘You're a grand showman, Miss Linda Larcombe,' said the reporter, and I rather think there was a twinkle in his eye.

We took the candlesticks and the little bundle of letters back after tea. ‘Darlings, you were
magnificent
,' said Linda, kissing them warmly, ‘and what
did
you do to the piano?'

‘I unscrewed some of those knobs inside with the pliers,' said Aunt Julia.