Henrietta's War

Henrietta's War

News from the Home Front

1939 – 1942

Joyce Dennys

Author's Introduction

Footnote

A Note on the Author

TO PIPPA

Author's Introduction

I
never do Spring Cleaning. I know I should and every year am filled with a longing to do better and rush round the house emptying drawers and shelves on to the floor and unearthing many treasures such as my dark glasses (mourned as lost) and endless snapshots. After enjoying several holidays in retrospect I somehow lose heart and bundle everything back again.

But this year I was rewarded for my good intentions by discovering a bundle of pieces I had written during the War for the
Sketch
magazine. The cuttings were anything but tidy, the margins thick with arrows, stars and balloons. But they were still readable and it was enthralling to be reminded of the privations and discomforts suffered by those living in what Authority was pleased to call a Safe Area. It made fascinating reading.

‘Did we really do those peculiar things?' I said to my friend Caroline who had dropped in and was reading over my shoulder.

‘We certainly did,' she said.

‘Did we really parade the streets at night wearing tin hats?'

‘Of course we did,' said Caroline. ‘Look here, Joyce, I've got a daughter who is in publishing. Why don't you send these things to her – she won't mind the balloons.'

And that's exactly what I did.

Devon, 1985

October 18, 1939

M
Y DEAR ROBERT
It was good to get your letter and hear that you are in a ‘perfectly safe place', though I wonder how much of that is true and how much intended to allay the alarms of your Childhood's Friend. And why, when I and everybody else know that you are in France, must I address my letters to Berkshire? Well, well, I suppose They Know Best, and Ours Not to Reason Why, but I seem to remember that when I wrote to you in the last war I used to put ‘B.E.F.,
1
France', quite boldly on the envelope, thereby no doubt endangering the safety of the British Empire.

I think there is a tendency in our generation to adopt a superior, know-all attitude towards this war just because we happen to have been through the last one, which the young must find maddening. Charles and I fight against it, not always successfully, I'm afraid. Lady B was here yesterday. Her view of the ‘Ah, my dears, this is all very different from the last Dear Old War' brigade is bracing, to say the least. I saw Bill and Linnet exchange a satisfied look as she leaned further and further forward in her excitement. Bill is waiting for a commission, and Linnet is going into hospital as a probationer. I won't write any more about them now or this letter will fail as a message of cheer for a middle-aged colonel on the Western Front. Next week I shall be able to write about them more calmly. One gets used to anything in time.

Leaned further and further forward

Here we go on much as usual and one feels faintly ashamed of being in such a safe area. Charles says, ‘How do you know it
is
a safe area?' and, of course, we don't. We don't know much about anything yet. But in the meantime we have been told it is a safe area, and one is thankful not to have to start being frightened before one need. Freddie writes that in London everybody's ears are growing
straight
out of the sides of their heads with listening.

I feel this letter will not be complete without a word about our refugees. The day they were due to arrive, Charles and I had to go to a funeral at the other end of the county, which, incidentally, did nothing to raise our drooping spirits, but we left the Linnet in charge, with instructions that when the little fellow arrived she was to examine his head (Charles's suggestion this, doctors are inclined to look on the sordid side of life, aren't they?), give him a nice hot bath, an egg for his supper, tuck him up in bed, and write a heartening letter to his mother. The Linnet, who has not been head girl at school for nothing, took these duties seriously, even going so far as to lay a bar of chocolate on the lonely pillow and fish her old teddy-bear out of a box in the attic. At half-past five a youth of sixteen, just under six feet tall, was deposited on our doorstep. Linnet said she just managed to get the teddy-bear out in time. He ate the chocolate. His name is Bertram, and we have the whole Technical School billeted in the village. All such nice boys, but you can't feed them on ten shillings a week – at least, I suppose you
could
, but it wouldn't be quite kind. How eminently sensible is Mrs Whinebite, who has taken in all her rich relations as Peeing G's – thus, in the words of J. M. Barrie, ‘turning her necessity to glorious gain'.

My dear Robert, I have a great urge to knit something for you! I suppose you are overrun, or, rather over-wrapped with scarves. Do you remember the scarf I knitted you in the last war?

Always your affectionate Childhood's Friend,

HENRIETTA

November 1, 1939

M
Y DEAR ROBERT
It is really very nice to get letters from you saying you are well, comfortable, safe, and having French lessons from a beautiful countess, though it sounds rather
too
much like the lull before the storm.

French lessons from a beautiful countess

Charles says you are having a good war, and would you like to change places with him? Poor Charles! He does hate the idea of being stuck down here for the duration, saying ‘There! There!' to old ladies, and still lives in hopes of being called up. Colonel Simpkins said to him yesterday, ‘What? You here still? I thought you got a D.S.O. in the last war?' Charles blinked at him through his spectacles and said gently, ‘Ah! But, you see, I'm too frightened to go to this one,' so we are expecting a shower of white feathers by every post.

This is a belligerent community to make up for the extreme peacefulness of our surroundings, I suppose. Yesterday was a lovely sunny afternoon, and I took Perry for a walk up the cliff path. Young Widdecombe was painting his fishing boat, and there were old ladies on seats, and a great many gloriously healthy, tough-looking babies in prams. (All the babies nowadays give you the impression that for tuppence they'd biff you one on the nose. Is this the result of Truby King methods or have they always been like this?) At the top of the cliff I had a long, earnest, nose-to-nose conversation with Mrs Savernack about the Women's Institute Choir, and on the links there was a man having a lesson from the pro to cure a nasty slice in his drive. The sea was very quiet and still, just whispering on the pebbles, and as I walked home the evening lights on the water to the west were pearly, so that I had to keep turning round to look at them. I began to wonder whether I might not be suffering from some horrid hallucination, until I saw our gas-masks on the hall table.

But in the matter of trousers, dear Robert, the war has hit us hard. Nobody can live in a seaside town without becoming more or less slack-minded. Our female visitors every summer adopt such a nautical air one expects them to break into sea-shanties any minute. But now, such is Hitler's power, this evil influence has begun to affect even the residents, and it keeps breaking out in the most unlikely quarters. Miss Piper, the girl in the greengrocer's, has gone into jodhpurs; Faith, our friend, looks quite superb in a pair of pin-striped flannels; Mrs Savernack, though I can hardly expect you to believe this, saw fit to appear last week in a pair of khaki shorts (we all consider her excuse that she is digging her way to victory a poor one); and I tell you frankly, Robert, only my love for Charles has kept me out of a pair of green corduroy dungarees.