Henrietta Sees It Through (23 page)

‘
To the Unsung Heroines of the War
'

Lady B and I stood up and said ‘Hear, hear,' and took large gulps of the Port of a Sort, which tasted like sherry and cider mixed, and the Young Mothers opened their eyes very wide and said: ‘What,
us
?'

Afterwards, in the drawing room, they sat about, most of them on the floor, and talked about leave, and the homes they were going to have when the war was over. I saw a tear trickle down Lady B's cheek, and Rosemary said: ‘Why, Lady B! You're crying!'

Lady B said, ‘Don't take any notice of me. I've been having bronchitis.'

Then it was time for ten o'clock feeds and ‘holdings out', so they put on their thick shoes in the hall, tied
handkerchiefs over their heads, kissed Lady B and Charles and me, and trudged off into the night.

Always your affectionate Childhood's Friend,

H
ENRIETTA

 

 

 

April 4, 1945

M
Y
D
EAR
R
OBERT

‘Hatred,' said Lady B, laying down the paper, ‘is a very silly thing.'

‘Who's hating who?' said Faith.

Lady B put on her spectacles again and picked up the paper. ‘The Middle West of America seems to be hating us,' she said.

‘How odd,' said Faith; ‘we don't hate them.'

‘We shall soon if they go on like this,' said the Conductor, who was weeding the path close by.

‘Oh, no,' said Lady B. ‘That wouldn't get us anywhere. Besides, there's no excuse for us to hate the Middle West. Nobody's working on us as they are on them.'

‘Who's working on them?' said Faith.

‘Germans,' said the Conductor, pulling up an enormous bit of groundsel with an air of triumph.

‘Little No-well, you are not to eat leaves,' said Faith, and she got up and picked her baby out of a flower bed. Little No-well was wearing a pale pink cardigan, and her eyes were the colour of those expensive, large, deep-blue forget-me-nots.

‘Little No-well, how sweet you are,' I said, as I always do when I look at her.

‘I wish you wouldn't, Henrietta,' said Faith for the hundredth time. ‘She's beginning to Understand.'

Lady B was still reading the paper. ‘There seem to be some people called Blue Star Mothers who are behaving in a very peculiar manner,' she said.
*

‘Blue Star Mothers?' said Faith. ‘How sweet!'

‘Pah!' said the Conductor.

‘What are they doing, anyway?' I said.

Lady B put down the paper and looked distressed. ‘They seem to think we started the war, and are going to gorge ourselves with food, when everybody else is starving.'

‘Monstrous!' said Faith pink with anger.

‘Germans,' said the Conductor, and walked away to the rubbish heap with his basket.

‘And yet,' said Lady B, ‘the funny thing is that if some Blue Star Mothers were sitting here with us now, they'd be saying how sweet Little No-well is, and asking if she'd had trouble with her teeth.'

‘If they said Little No-well was sweet I should like them,' said Faith, in a burst of honesty.

‘Of course you would,' said Lady B, ‘and they'd like us. We'd all be friends.'

‘ “Buddies” is the word,' I said.

‘It's all very distressing,' said Faith. ‘I wish you hadn't told me, Lady B. I never read the paper. I just look after the Conductor and Little No-well and think about the new baby in August. I don't like thinking about Blue Star Mothers.'

‘Nobody does,' said Lady B. ‘But we must.'

‘I shall have an ugly baby if I do,' said Faith.

‘Nonsense!' said Lady B.

‘I know!' said Faith. ‘Let's start a Society of Pink Star Mothers and tour America and be frightfully friendly.'

‘If you think I'm going to drag my family across the world in a spirit of goodwill towards Blue Star Mothers,' said the Conductor, who had returned from the rubbish heap, ‘you are making a big mistake. Home is the place for little children,' he said, and he picked Little No-well tenderly out of another flower bed and took a leaf out of her mouth.

‘What do you think we ought to do about it, Lady B?' I said, for Lady B is kind and wise and has sensible answers to most things.

Lady B wrinkled her forehead. ‘
I
don't know,' she said. ‘I suppose if we keep open minds, and read both sides, and don't fly off the handle, it will help. When I remember all my dear, my very dear American friends, I find it very hard to believe that what this paper says is true.'

‘Goodness knows I've been friendly to the Americans,' said Faith.

‘I'll say you have,' said the Conductor, with some bitterness.

‘Nothing will ever destroy those friendships,' said Lady B, ‘
nothing
,' but she sighed as she said it.

Just then we heard Faith's garden gate click. ‘It's the Wash!' said Faith rapturously.

The lawn where we were sitting was round the corner, so we couldn't see what was coming up the garden path, but we could hear it. Shuffle, click, scrape - shuffle, click, scrape.

‘What the hell——' said the Conductor.

‘Not the Wash,' said Faith sadly.

‘It sounds like a wild animal to me,' said Lady B, and Faith picked Little No-well up in her arms.

Shuffle, click, scrape. And then round the corner came George - our George - our American. One of his legs was in plaster, and he was dragging himself along on crutches. His smiling face, once so round and pink, was thin and drawn, but there he was - George, our George, giving the lie to the Blue Star Mothers.

‘George!' we said.

We led him to the seat

‘Well, it's certainly fine to see you folks again,' said George.

Then we all rushed at him. Lady B and Faith and I all kissed him, and the Conductor, his face white with emotion, wrung his hand.

George looked rather surprised. ‘What a welcome!' he said, as we led him to the seat. ‘Why, Henrietta, you're crying! And Lady B, too.' He took out his handkerchief and wiped our wet cheeks. ‘Don't look at me like that, Faith, Honey. I'm not a ghost.'

‘Oh, George,' said Lady B, ‘you don't know how glad we are to see you.'

‘You do like us, don't you, George?' I said earnestly.

‘But you're my friends,' said George simply. ‘Here, what is all this, anyway? Have I gone crazy or have you?'

‘It's the Blue Star Mothers,' said Faith.

‘Aw,
them
!' said George with contempt.

Always your affectionate Childhood's Friend,

H
ENRIETTA

 

 

 

*
In America, families would display a blue star in the window for each member of the household in the military and a gold star for those who had died. Understandably, these Blue Star Mothers - or the organisations that developed - tended to be very patriotic, somewhat isolationist and deeply suspicious of anything that might lead to the sending of more of ‘our boys to die in foreign wars'.

 

 

 

May 16, 1945

M
Y
D
EAR
R
OBERT

‘I am dreaming of a white August,' I sang, as I made a dash for the greenhouse. Lady B followed me, panting and brushing the snow from her coat. There we found the Conductor lovingly pressing little tomato plants into pots.

‘Conductor!' I gasped, quite overwhelmed by this generosity.

‘They're a Peace Present from Faith and Little No-well and me,' said the Conductor.

Just then Faith and Little No-well arrived at the greenhouse door. Little No-well had a tiny snowflake melting on her nose and seemed to think it very funny. I kissed them both and the Conductor as well, and thanked them for my lovely Peace Present, and the Conductor said he hoped the Germans would give in before the plants grew up and we ate all the tomatoes. Then we sat down on upturned flowerpots, while the snow fell gently, with a whispering sound, on the glass over our heads.

‘What are you going to do on VE Day, Henrietta?' said Lady B.

‘Stop weeding,' I said.

‘If you stop for long the bindweed will get the better of you,' said the Conductor.

‘I didn't say I was going to stop weeding for ever: I said I was going to stop for VE Day. I shall lie down on my bed with a hot-water bottle and a trashy novel. What are you going to do, Lady B?'

‘Go to church,' said Lady B. ‘And then I shall come up here and interrupt Henrietta's reading. You know, I don't think it's really safe for me to sit on this flower pot,' and she got up and perched on the shelf with the tomato plants.

‘If it's anything like a day, we're going to take Little No-well for a picnic to the bluebell wood,' said Faith. ‘And while we're there we're going to choose a name for the New-Baby-in-August.'

‘That will be a lovely thing to do,' said Lady B.

‘And when he's old enough to ask questions——'

‘Or she,' said the Conductor, who secretly yearns for another daughter.

‘——and says “Why did you call me—?” (whatever it is we do call him), we shall say, “We thought of it in the bluebell wood on VE Day.” '

‘And he'll say to himself, “How they do go on about that old VE Day, poor dears.” '

‘I hope so,' said the Conductor. ‘One of the things I love about Little No-well is that she doesn't know anything about the war,' and he put his hand tenderly on his baby's golden head.

‘They'll know about it all right,' said Lady B. ‘I don't suppose the mess will be cleared up by the time they start asking questions.'

Lady B and the tomato plants slid down

‘If it ever is cleared up,' said Faith gloomily.

‘Sometimes,' I said, ‘I feel absolutely hopeless about the future.
Hopeless
!'

Just then there was a loud cracking sound and Lady B and the tomato plants slid down the shelf on which they were sitting and landed with a crash in the corner. ‘Darling Lady B, are you hurt?' we all cried, and rushed to pick her up. Little No-well set up a wail.

‘I don't think so,' said Lady B, feeling her arms and legs. ‘No, I'm not. Dear me, bone-meal in the hair! How very unpleasant. Just take that bit of bass off my hat, will you, somebody? Little No-well, darling, I can't bear it if you cry, and oh, my goodness, look at the tomato plants!'

They were indeed a sorry sight. Broken flower pots and earth in a heap in the corner, and here and there a pathetic green leaf poking through.

‘Hopeless!' I said.

‘Henrietta,' said Lady B tartly, ‘that is twice in two minutes you've said “Hopeless!” You'd better ask Charles for a tonic.'

‘Yes, Lady B,' I said meekly.

‘Now, come along,' said Lady B, ‘and let's get this all tidied up.'

We set to work and began delving tentatively in the wreckage for the tomato plants. Only two were broken, and soon the others were planted firmly in new pots and the debris heaped in a basket. Little No-well stopped crying and smeared herself with wet mud in a corner.

‘There!' said Lady B, straightening her back. ‘You see, it wasn't so hopeless after all. Nothing ever is if you set to work with a will. And that, Henrietta darling, is my Great Thought for the day. And now I must go home and wash the bone-meal out of my hair.'

Then the snow stopped and the sun came out, and suddenly the greenhouse became as hot as a greenhouse, and we all rushed panting out into the fresh air.

Always your affectionate Childhood's Friend,

H
ENRIETTA

 

 

 

May 30, 1945

M
Y
D
EAR
R
OBERT

Well! So we've beaten the Germans at last, and I don't suppose I shall have to write you many more letters. All the same, writing to you has become such a habit I shall probably go on penning you long, chatty letters and dropping them over our garden wall onto your asparagus bed. Which reminds me that I am sorry to have to tell you that bindweed has reared its ugly head among your asparagus. I pointed this out to your tenants, but I won't tell you what they said in reply - decency forbids.