Since Munich Leslie Waring had been secretary of a large organization connected with naval charities. In the workings of this Sir Harry had taken a great interest and had been able to help her more than once at difficult corners. Of late this work had grown greatly and Leslie was so indispensable that she had been left in her job, though she would willingly have become a Wren and in many ways preferred it. After more than three years’ work, including being bombed in London and Portsmouth and two journeys to America, she had had a kind of breakdown and been ordered three months’ complete rest.
“And that,” said Lady Waring, on whom the general strain and tension of the war had the effect of making her talk aloud to herself as much as Alice, “is quite a good thing, because if she hadn’t been ill I couldn’t have had her here.”
This led her to a consideration of how very difficult it must be for people to write novels, because all the young heroines were in the Forces or civilian jobs and all the young heroes the same, so that there was very little time for novelists to make them fall in love with each other, unless they made the hero be a flying officer and the heroine a Waaf, and then one would have to know all the details of the R.A.F. or one would make the most dreadful howlers. Unable to find any real solution to this problem, she determined to wait till she saw Mrs. Morland, who wrote a novel every year to earn her living and would be able to tell her exactly how these things were done.
By now the sky was as light as it proposed to be and as Nannie Allen used so truly to say to George, “Laying in bed doesn’t get you up,” so she rang for Selina and said she would wear her blue tweeds.
“Selina,” she said, “do you know if anyone is going over to Worsted to-day? I want to send a message to Mrs. Phipps to say that I would be glad to have her on Tuesdays and Fridays. If the officer and his wife that Sir Harry was speaking about do come, we shall need extra help. Do you think we shall be able to manage? I don’t want Cook and Baker to feel put upon.”
“Oh yes, my lady,” said Selina. “Cook said it would be quite like old times and really she said she can’t do herself justice with your ladyship and Sir Harry out to so many meals. And I’m sure Baker won’t mind. She quite took to Mrs. Phipps.”
“But we don’t know if Mrs. Phipps can come yet,” said Lady Waring.
“Oh yes, my lady,” said Selina with kindly pity. “It was all arranged when we was having a cup of tea with Mrs. Phipps last night and she’s coming on Friday to begin. Private Jenks is her sister’s nephew, my lady.”
Marvelling at all the things she didn’t know, but delighted to hear of one difficulty smoothed out, Lady Waring finished dressing and rang up Captain Hooper’s private number. After some delay a voice said, “Captain Hooper speaking.”
“This is Lady Waring,” said she. “My husband tells me that you rang up last night about billeting an officer on us. He has gone to town, but if you will tell me what you want I will see what I can do.”
“Great minds meet, Lady Waring,” said the voice. “I was just going to ring you up. I hear you are going to be a friend in need.”
“Oh, not at all,” said Lady Waring, who did not in the least mean what she said, but already made a little nervous by her husband’s words about Captain Hooper, was not reassured by that officer’s voice. “What is it exactly?”
“Well, in these stirring times it’s difficult to get a house anywhere,” Captain Hooper continued, “and happening to pass the remark to the General that we were to have an Intelligence officer billeted on us who wants to have his wife with him, he said would we inquire. This Major Merton is due to arrive to-day. I suppose you couldn’t do anything about it. I mean having a big place and all that I thought you might be the Lady Bountiful in the case.”
Lady Waring’s mind during the foregoing had rushed like an express train through suspicion, repulsion, fear of the unknown major, a general wish to disoblige Captain Hooper in every possible way, remorse for nourishing evil thoughts of a soldier who was doing his best for a brother officer and couldn’t help being himself, the determination which was her fixed guide never to refuse help to the army, a second wave of repulsion, and finally the decision to settle everything at once and not give herself time to think how horrid it would be. So she said she would do all in her power to help and could Major Merton come and see her as soon as convenient.
“I assure you, Lady Waring, that your taking my request in the spirit you do is very much appreciated,” said Captain Hooper, obviously relieved. “I’ll tell the Major to report at your place as soon as he comes. Of course we can put him up for a day or two, but it’s the question of the wife I might drop in with him myself. I feel we quite know each other after this little chat and in times like these we must all pull together.”
“Yes, thank you so much,” said Lady Waring, hearing herself sounding quite idiotic. “Good bye.”
When describing this conversation later, Lady Waring averred that as she put the receiver up she distinctly heard the words “Chin-chin,” but this was generally considered a flight of poetic fancy.
“What can’t be cured must be endured,” she said aloud to herself and prepared to go down to the village and call on old Nannie. It was a dull day, raw and dark. As she walked round the house to get from the servants’ wing into the drive she saw disconsolate soldiers looking out of the windows and remembered how much gayer they had looked in the last war in their bright-blue flannel suits and red ties. Some of her convalescents were old friends as friendship goes in war-time, having been there for a fortnight or more, so she waved to them. A soldier tapped on the window and held Winston up for her to look at. He had put a tie round the kitten’s neck and was trying to make it hold a cigarette behind its ear. Winston opened his mouth and gave a silent mew behind the great plate-glass window. Lady Waring wondered if he was happy. Then she saw him arch his small head to be tickled behind the ears and felt he could well look after himself. In the drive Matron was having ten minutes’ walk up and down before going back to her duties, so Lady Waring stopped and greeted her.
“I really can’t thank you enough, Lady Waring,” said Matron, with the gleam of devotion in her eyes, “for your sympathy and forbearance last night. But I mustn’t talk of myself. I see you have not taken my advice about staying in bed for a day. You really need someone to look after you.”
Lady Waring asked after the kitten.
“He is quite devoted to me already,” said Matron proudly. “He follows me everywhere. He wanted to come out with me, but I said, ‘No, Winston’—you know it feels quite funny to call a cat Winston, but I dare say Mr. Churchill has quite a number of cats called after him—‘No, Winston,’ I said, ‘Auntie is going walkies and it’s too wet for little pussy-paws,’ and he understood every word I said. So Sergeant Hopkins happened to be passing and pussy—Winston, I should say, but I always called the old pussy pussy—rubbed against his legs as much as to say, ‘Auntie’s going for a walk, so you take care of me, Mr. Soldier.’ Sergeant Hopkins is one of our really nice men, so helpful to the nurses and always willing to go down to the village for any little thing.”
Lady Waring murmured her interest.
“And I am sure you will be pleased to hear,” said Matron, “that Private Jenks has given Winston a ping-pong ball to play with. Where he got it I cannot think, but Winston was so pleased, and played with it as if he was human. I think Jenks has had his lesson against cruelty to animals, and after all there’s a war on.”
Whether Matron meant that cruelty to animals was a venial offence when so much cruelty to humans was going on everywhere, or that humanitarians ought not to be hard on our gallant men who were giving their lives, and in Private Jenks’s case their appendix, for their country, or, as seemed most probable, that she uttered the phrase without attaching any meaning to it, Lady Waring could not say. She took leave of Matron and went on down the drive, wondering not for the first time whether it was very horrid of her not to have any particular love for animals, and why the relation
ship of auntie was so peculiarly repellent as between middle-aged spinsters and kittens. Still, if the breach between Matron and Private Jenks was healed, that was all to the good.
Ladysmith Cottages where Nannie lived were at the Worsted end of the village, opposite the Sheep’s Head, Geo. F. Pollett, licensed to sell wines and spirits, Pampler’s Entire. They had been built by Sir Harry’s father and though hideous were warm and comfortable. The walls, of ugly grey brick with a diamond pattern of ugly red brick, were draught-proof; the dark grey slate roofs never let in a drop of rain; the pitch-pine doors fitted closely; the depressing art-brown wallpapers defied dirt and use; and the scullery and wash-house taps rarely needed attention. They were mostly let at nominal rents to old servants and pensioners and carried with them a prescriptive right to coal, which the Warings always used to lay in by truck-loads in the summer. Nannie Allen lived at No. 1, which, with No. 6 at the other end, was the most genteel, having a bow window in front on both floors and a little built-out hall, so that the front sitting-room could be the whole width of the house instead of having the passage sliced off it. But in one respect No. 1 was superior to No. 6, for over the hall was a little room which in No. 6 was used as a bedroom, but in No. 1 had a real bath. This had been put in by Sir Harry to please Nannie when she retired from nannying, for after a life of nurseries she felt a bath was a necessity, and though she seldom or never used it herself, she kept it exquisitely clean and saw to it personally that any old charges who came to stay with her used it to the fullest extent.
Nannie Allen, the good-looking daughter of a small Barsetshire farmer, had married very young and against her parents’ wish Albert Allen, a dashing commercial traveller who had drunk himself and his business into the grave in a couple of years, leaving his widow with one child, a girl called Selina. Her parents offered to take them both, but the widow would not be what she called beholden. She left little Selina at the farm and went into service as nurserymaid, rising very soon to be nurse with one or more under her. Selina grew up with her dashing father’s curly hair, her mother’s good looks and a happy disposition. Her marriage to Mr. Crockett, a middle-aged greengrocer in Blackheath, had been a happy one, but though she cried bitterly after his death she could not help cheering up, and as we know was ordered by her mother to come and look after Lady Waring.
It was when Selina was about seven that Nannie had gone to the Priory, and the little girl was sometimes asked to spend a week of her school holidays there, under her mother’s care. When little George Waring went to his first school, Nannie had stayed on as maid to his mother, but a few years later Sir Harry had been ordered abroad. His wife was to accompany him and Nannie felt the call of the nursery too strong, so with many tears she went to take charge of Cecil and Leslie Waring, the latter from the month. From them she had moved to other families, always giving complete satisfaction, but never obtaining it herself for two reasons: the first that babies will have parents who are apt to imagine that they can bring up their own children, the second that babies are so blind to their own advantage as to grow up. About ten years previously she had got her old-age pension and on this and her savings decided to retire for good. The Warings, who had never lost touch with her, suggested that she should come and live at No. 1. Her parents were dead, so she furnished the house with their things and the photographs of all her charges, whose parents were delighted to be able to send a child or children to stay with their old Nannie to recover from mumps, or be away from an outbreak of measles, or because a father was abroad and a mother doing war work. Nannie cooked and slaved for them with grim affection, bullied them about their hair and nails, and refused to let them help in the house on the grounds that young ladies and gentlemen didn’t do such things; but somehow Miss Mary and Master John were usually to be found in the kitchen, helping with the beds, or getting in her way on washing-day. By virtue of her nurse’s mysterious power she was always able to get girls from twelve to fifteen from the village to help her, and not one of them dared to use her cheap lipstick while Mrs. Allen could see her.
Perhaps because she had stayed longer at the Priory than in other places, George Waring had been her favourite. Other little boys had been killed between 1914 and 1918, but it was George’s death that she had most mourned. Photographs of him at every stage, from a long-clothes baby to a second lieutenant, hung on her walls and stood framed in every room in the house. Lady Waring knew, though she was too honest to feel any shame about it, that George was thought of more often at Ladysmith Cottages than he was at the Priory. Lady Waring could welcome Cecil Waring without restraint as heir to the estate, but she knew that Nannie, although she had taken Leslie Waring from the month, would always look upon Cecil as an interloper. She could not help admiring Nannie’s uncompromising loyalty and at the same time she hoped it was not hypocritical in her to be glad that she could like her husband’s nephew and feel that the place would be in good hands in years to come. She might have added, “if Cecil survives the war,” but she did not, for in spite of talking aloud to herself she remained very sane and could look the most unreasonable facts in the face and give them their proper value.
She knocked at the door and was admitted by Nannie, who had already heard through the village grapevine that her ladyship was on her way down. In the sitting-room a fire was burning. The room was a little too full, owing to the amount of furniture for which Nannie had sentimental feelings, but everything was exquisitely clean. The mantelpiece was thick with photographs of her soldier-charges from a stout general whom she had often bathed as nurserymaid in her first place to the youngest round-faced boy in battledress fresh from his public school. The gem of the collection however was undoubtedly her great-nephew Sid, brother to Mrs. Barclay’s nurse over at Marling Hall, with a pair of Kitchener moustaches and a chest which could best be described as a strikingly handsome military bust.
“You know Sid is a sergeant-major now, my lady,” said Nannie.
“How splendid,” said Lady Waring. “Do sit down, Nannie.”
“Of course if you wish it, my lady,” said Nannie, pulling up to the fire a chair with carpet back and seat. This ceremony was invariable and Nannie would have felt much hurt had this form of protocol been omitted.
After all proper inquiries had been made after Nannie’s nieces and nephews and such of her ex-charges as Lady Waring knew personally, Nannie offered a cup of tea.
“Thank you so much, Nannie, but I really must be going on,” said Lady Waring.
“It’s no trouble, my lady, and I’m going to have one myself in any case and the kettle’s just coming to the boil,” said Nannie; which again was part of the invariable ritual. While Lady Waring waited for the kettle to make up its mind an idea came into her head.
“Nannie,” she said, when the tea was poured out, “I’ve been asked to take an officer and his wife. I could do it, but Miss Leslie is coming and we shall be rather a squash. Your rooms are free, aren’t they? Would you like to take them? I would see them first and inquire about proper references for the rent and so on.”
Nannie’s face assumed a guarded expression from which Lady Waring augured the worst.
“I’m sure, my lady, I would like to take anyone to please you, but officers’ wives—well, you never know. Besides, Lady Graham wrote yesterday to say they had measles at Master John’s school and could she send him here when school breaks up till he is out of quarantine, so of course I said I would keep the rooms till I heard from her, and really I couldn’t manage Master John with people in the house, he’s such a tow-row boy. Just like his Uncle David used to be. So I hope you’ll be able to manage, my lady, not but what I’d always like to oblige you.”
Lady Waring felt it was not worth pressing the matter at the moment. If John Graham was as tow-row as his Uncle David Leslie used to be, Nannie’s little house would hardly hold him and an officer and wife.
“How is Mr. David, Nannie?” she asked, looking at a very rakish snapshot of him at St. Moritz on the mantelpi
ece.
“Somewhere abroad, my lady,” said Nannie. “I’ve no patience with the Government not letting us know where anyone is. As if it could do anyone any harm me writing to David and sending him some of my socks. But he sent me a lovely card, my lady. It was a view of York Cathedral, with ‘Posted at Sea’ on it, so we must suppose he was in a ship. Dear, dear, never will I forget the time Lady Emily took the two younger ones to Dieppe for the day. Miss Agnes was as good as gold, but poor Master David was as green as a cucumber. I’ve never seen a child so sick in my life. And the moment we landed, running about as bold as brass.”
Growing Up Page 5