Henrietta's War (21 page)

The owner came hurrying across what I must call the sward, because grass seems too ordinary a word. ‘I see you are admiring those dwarf lupins,' he said. ‘People often cry out when they see them.'

‘I really must congratulate you on your lovely garden,' said Charles, who was now in the highest spirits.

‘Are you a gardener, Mrs Brown?' said the owner.

‘I am a weeder,' I said.

His wife, who had joined the party, leant towards me and said in a low voice, ‘What is your favourite weed?'

‘Groundsel,' I said, without a moment's hesitation.

‘Groundsel is my favourite, too,' said the owner's wife. ‘It comes out of the ground very sweetly, doesn't it?' and we gave each other a long Look, fraught, as they say, with understanding.

The owner walked with us to the gate, and we thanked him for his garden, and told him he ought to be a very happy man, because he worked hard all day at the thing he liked doing best in the world, and was making a bit of England more and more beautiful when such a lot of it was being made more and more ugly.

‘I like to think of it in that way,' said the owner.

Always your affectionate Childhood's Friend,

HENRIETTA

July 30, 1941

M
Y DEAR ROBERT
I wonder if you remember my telling you how Hilary and Pops swept me into their Blood Room in our Cathedral City Hospital and drew a reluctant drop from my ear?

I have had to pay dearly for this girlish prank, let me tell you, and you can imagine my horror when I got a postcard telling me I was urgently needed to give a blood transfusion at the Cottage Hospital on the following Tuesday.

Charles was very cross when I told him about it. ‘You shouldn't let yourself in for this sort of thing, Henrietta,' he said. ‘You know perfectly well that it's Evensong's night out. Supposing you want to lie down or something when you get home? Who's going to get the dinner?'

I said I would ask Evensong to change her day, and did people ever die giving their blood?

At this Charles and the Linnet, who was home for the day, went into shrieks of laughter and said, ‘Not very often.'

Tuesday found me in a considerable state of nerves. ‘Don't worry,' said Charles kindly. ‘Any weakness or discomfort you may feel will be purely psychological, and you may get a glass of beer when it is all over.'

At 3 p.m. I dressed myself carefully in the quiet clothes suitable to a donor, and crept up to the hospital. The first thing I saw as I walked in at the door was Mrs Savernack lying on a sort of stretcher and apparently dying. As I bent over her and took her hand, I suddenly realized how fond I was of her, and regretted all the unkind things I had said about her in the past.

Lying on a sort of stretcher

Mrs Savernack opened her eyes and said, ‘Where's that cup of tea?'

‘Here you are,' said an exquisite V.A.D., appearing round the corner.

‘There's a lot to be said for the old custom of bloodletting,' said Mrs Savernack heartily, smacking her lips as she handed back the empty cup. ‘Hullo, Henrietta! What are you goggling at? You don't mean to say you're going to try and give some blood?'

‘I shall try, and no doubt I shall succeed,' I said with dignity, for Mrs Savernack's continual assumption that I am unable to perform any useful duty is annoying, and I stopped regretting all the unkind things I had said about her in the past. As I was led away, I heard her say in a loud whisper, ‘You'll have trouble with that woman.'

Determined, after this, to give my very life blood without a murmur, I lay down on a stretcher, bared my arm, and turned away my head. A young R.A.M.C.
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lieutenant appeared and various things were done which I tried not to think about. ‘Keep on clenching and unclenching your hand,' he said kindly. ‘It prevents that unpleasant bubbling sensation.'

I clenched and unclenched my hand as hard as I could, for I found the bubbling sensation very unpleasant indeed, and the R.A.M.C. lieutenant said, ‘That's right – you're getting along nicely.' He had golden hair and was so like you, Robert, at the age of twenty-five, that I could hardly take my eyes off him.

I lay on my stretcher and decided that this blood transfusion business was child's play. It wasn't hurting, the bubbling sensation had stopped, the sun shone on the lieutenant's hair, and my V.A.D. sat beside me, a model of efficiency and comfort. Various people lay about on stretchers, looking yellow but quite calm; and, contrary to my expectations, blood was not being splashed all over the walls. Indeed, if you averted your eyes from sinister red bottles rotating in a sort of dignified dance on gramophones beside each bed, you might think the whole thing was nothing more than a cosy, communal siesta.

‘All right?' said the R.A.M.C. lieutenant. How bored he was with blood! I felt so sorry for him.

I turned my head and took a look at my V.A.D. sitting beside me so neat, sweet and calm, and I glowed with pride in the Old Regiment. ‘I was a V.A.D. in the last war,' I said, ‘but I never did anything exciting like this.'

‘Exciting?' said the V.A.D. with a sigh.

I wanted to tell her how splendid I thought she and the other V.A.D.s were when suddenly a sweat broke out on me. I could feel it trickling down inside my shirt. ‘Psychological be blowed, Charles!' I said to myself. ‘I'm dying.'

‘All over,' said the V.A.D. brightly, and she bent my arm up. ‘Like a cup of tea?'

‘No,' I said.

This seemed to shake her, and she took one of my pillows away, loosened the belt of my cardigan, and held smelling-salts under my nose.

‘I think you'd better put some of that blood back,' I said weakly.

‘Keep perfectly still,' said the lieutenant, who had, presumably, witnessed so many blood-transfusion deaths that he wasn't going to start getting excited over mine.

But I didn't die. After a time I sat up and had some delicious tea out of a thick white mug. Mrs Savernack poked her head round the door. ‘Have any trouble with her?' she asked hopefully.

I looked imploringly at my V.A.D. and the lieutenant. They looked at me, and then they looked at each other. ‘None at all,' they said together and very firmly.

I hope they both get George Crosses.

Always your affectionate Childhood's Friend,

HENRIETTA

August 27, 1941

M
Y DEAR ROBERT
Lady B is very indignant about a picture she saw in the paper of Russian women with baskets in one hand and rifles in the other. ‘Why don't they give us rifles? If every woman in Britain had a rifle,' said Lady B, her eyes glittering wildly, ‘just think what they could do.'

‘I'd rather not!' said Charles, shuddering.

But I began thinking what a help a rifle would be during morning shopping.

LADY SHOPPER: Any cornflakes, Mr Green?

MR GREEN: No cornflakes, Madam.

LADY SHOPPER: No cornflakes at all, Mr Green?

MR GREEN: None, Madam.

LADY SHOPPER:(leaning across the counter and fingering the trigger of her rifle):
Are you quite sure there are no cornflakes
, Mr Green?

MR GREEN: Well, Madam, perhaps just one.

(He dives under the counter and produces the last packet, which he has been keeping for his wife's cousin.)

And just think how the Woman Who Took Somebody Else's Turn in the fish shop would fall, riddled with bullets, just as she was handed her cod steak – and serve her right, too. The more I thought about it the more I agreed with Lady B that it would be a good thing to arm the women of Britain.

But Faith thought it would be a mistake. She said there were so many rows in the place just now that it would lead to endless blood-feuds and vendettas, and practically nobody would be left alive at the end of the week. She looked at us very meaningly as she said this, and Lady B and I got rather red and shuffled with our feet, because, I must tell you, Robert, that Faith and Lady B and Mrs Savernack and I have been involved in one of the most stupendous rows which has ever taken place. Now it is all over, it is Lady B and I, the two more or less innocent parties, who shuffle, and Mrs Savernack and Faith who do not.

It came about like this. I happened to meet Mrs Savernack in the street one morning and she told me that Gladys, their cook, who has been with them for ten years, had given notice, and that Mr Savernack was so upset he'd had to go to Charles for something to make him sleep.

I said how sorry I was, and passed on, and that was the beginning of the row, though it looks harmless enough so far, doesn't it?

Next day was Sunday, and Faith arrived at Lady B's after church, and immediately began a moan because her cook wanted to be a W.A.A.F.
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I said, casually, that Mrs Savernack's Gladys was leaving, and poor Mr Savernack couldn't sleep. Faith hurried away soon afterwards with a determined look on her face, and I remember saying to Lady B that I hoped she'd set about acquiring Gladys in a tactful manner. A cloud a good deal smaller than a man's hand; but still, a cloud.

Faith set about acquiring Gladys in the most tactless way possible. She went to the Savernacks' house that evening through the tradesmen's entrance, and tapped on the kitchen window. Gladys, who is an extremely nervous woman at the best of times, and who has lived in dread of escaped Dartmoor convicts ever since she came to Devon, set up a shrill screaming. In rushed Mrs Savernack, to find Gladys with her apron over her head and Faith half-way through the kitchen window saying, ‘Double your wages and a portable wireless.'

‘What is this?' thundered Mrs Savernack.

‘Double your wages and a portable wireless'

‘Oh,' said Faith, who ought to have been confused, but wasn't, ‘Henrietta said something about Mr Savernack's headaches because Gladys was leaving.'

‘Who?'

‘Henrietta,' said Faith, who could so easily have said she'd heard a rumour about Gladys at the Bee. Mrs Savernack seized her by the arm and rushed her, as the Red Queen rushed Alice, down the road to our house.