Henrietta's War by Joyce Dennys

Author:Joyce Dennys
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2011-03-25T16:00:00+00:00

October 23, 1940

MY DEAR ROBERT

It was a big mistake telling Faith I was frightened of bombs. Charles always says that people who say they aren’t frightened are either liars or fools, so when, in the course of a conversation with Faith, I happened to mention that I hated the idea of a bomb dropping on my head, I little realized the effect it would have upon her attitude towards me.

To say it is protective is to put it mildly, and it is certainly humiliating. Twice, after air raids in the night, she has rung up just as we were dropping off to sleep again to ask how I was, and made Charles very angry indeed. If I am out for a walk with her and happen to look up into the sky at passing aeroplanes, she puts an arm round my shoulders and says: ‘It’s all right, Old Thing, they’re ours,’ and she has bought me plugs to put in my ears. But as we have no anti-aircraft guns and all our BANGS, so far, have occurred without warning, it is difficult to see how they will be of any practical value, unless I wear them all the time and carry on conversation with the help of an ear-trumpet.

If people discuss air raids in front of me, Faith makes faces at them over the top of my head and points at me in a meaning way. This used to make me angrier than anything, but now that this place has filled up with London and Surrey evacuees, each with a Bomb Story which has got to be told, I have begun to wish that I had Faith always at my elbow.

It isn’t that we aren’t sorry for them, for indeed, indeed we are. The first three Bomb Stories I heard moved me nearly to tears, and I lay awake all night planning how we could help them to forget. But one Bomb Story is very like another, and after a time one comes to the end of one’s exclamations of horror, and the attention begins to wander. And when we try to tell them our Bomb Stories, they say ‘Pshaw!’ ‘Pshaw!’ they say, with superior smiles, and make no attempt to listen.

The person who really carries his life in his hands these days is Charles, who, when he is called out in the small hours, is not allowed any lights at all on his car, and has to steer a hopeful, zigzag course between the pillboxes and various obstructions which have been put up all over the roads. When he consulted the police on this ruling they said tersely that if they caught him driving without lights they would summons him. But if he drives with lights the soldiery will shoot him. It seems that the wisest course would be to defy the police and pander to the soldiery, only if he does that he is practically sure to crash his car and kill himself that way. So you see he is what you might call awkwardly placed.

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