Bombs on Aunt Dainty

by Judith Kerr

  “Boots!” he cried, and she answered delightedly, “Jack! How lovely! Come and sit down!”

  She introduced him to Dickie and Anna as an Air Chief Marshal of whom even Anna had heard, and ordered another round of gin, and then the Air Chief Marshal ordered a third, to celebrate the news about Russia.

  “Best thing that’s happened in the war,” he said, “since we beat the bastards off last September,” and plunged into a long conversation with Mrs Hammond about the effects of this new development.

  Anna’s feeling of happiness had increased with each gin, until now it was like a vast smile in which she was entirely enveloped, but Dickie was looking at her and she felt she ought to say something.

  “I’m so sorry your dog isn’t well,” she brought out at last, a little indistinctly, and immediately found a wave of pity sweep over her for the poor animal which perhaps hadn’t been wormed when it needed to be.

  Dickie looked at her gratefully. “B-bit of a worry,” he admitted, and started to tell her about the dog’s lack of appetite, the state of its coat (why does it have a coat? thought Anna, until she remembered that he must mean its fur), and his lack of confidence in Wilson’s judgement. Then there were the horses, too, and the cows. It was difficult, nowadays, to find chaps who looked after them properly. He sat there in his new officer’s tunic, fretting about it all, and Anna listened and nodded and thought how nice he was and how nice to have lunch at Claridge’s with an Air Chief Marshal, and how nice that the Germans had attacked the Russians and would not now be invading England.

  And when the Air Chief Marshal, on leaving, congratulated Dickie on his attractive girlfriend, that was nice too, and rather funny, but an even funnier thing happened after he had gone.

  “Ma,” said Dickie reproachfully, “That m-man is in charge of a third of the Air F-force. Why does he call you Boots?” And Mrs Hammond answered in an astonished voice, “Always has done. Ever since we went to dancing classes together when we were five and I used to trample all over his feet.”

  At this Anna laughed so much that she found it difficult to stop and Mrs Hammond said, “Good God – we’ve made the poor child tight!”

  She gave her some black coffee and then she drove her to Bond Street tube station, where she told her to take the afternoon off.

  “My apologies to your Mama,” she said. “But what with the Russian front and Dickie getting his commission …”

  The rest of the sentence seemed somehow to have escaped her, and Anna suddenly noticed that Mrs Hammond’s speech, too, was less precise than usual.

  “Anyway,” cried Mrs Hammond, retreating a little unsteadily into the car, “It was a damned good party!”

  Anna still thought the story about the Air Chief Marshal quite funny even after the effects of the gin had worn off, and she told Max about it the next time she saw him. By this time it was July and Max was in deep gloom. The summer term was nearly over and he did not want to embark on a second year’s teaching, but all his enquiries about getting into the Forces had brought only discouraging replies.

  The Army and the Navy had firm rules forbidding the acceptance of foreign nationals. The Air Force, being a younger Service, had no such rule but didn’t accept them anyway. Max had more or less given up hope, but when he heard the Air Chief Marshal’s name he pricked up his ears.

  “If I could talk to him –” he said. “Do you think Mrs Hammond would give me an introduction?”

  “Well, I could ask her,” said Anna doubtfully, but in fact Mrs Hammond did much more.

  On the following Monday, after Anna had explained the situation to her, she rang the Air Chief Marshal in her presence, cutting through secretaries, adjutants and personal assistants as a ship cuts through the waves.

  “Jack,” she said. “Got a rather special young man I want you to meet. Can you have lunch?” Then, in answer to a question from the other end of the telephone, “I should think very bright indeed.” This was followed by some chat about the war, a reference to Dickie who had just been posted to his first operational squadron, and a joke about the dancing class, until the conversation ended with a laugh and an inexplicable shout of “Tally-ho!”

  “Well, that’s settled,” said Mrs Hammond. “Max and I are having lunch with Jack.”

  The appointment had been fixed for a day nearly a fortnight away and Max was very nervous about it. He decided to learn as much as possible about aeroplanes in the meantime, and his pupils were set endless essays to write in class while he studied the characteristics of everything from Tiger Moths to Messerschmitts, and a book about the theory of flight for good measure.

  Papa encouraged him in this. “Such an Air Chief Marshal,” he said, “will expect you to be well informed.” But Mama refused even to consider that there might be any difficulty.

  “Of course the Air Chief Marshal will make an exception for you,” she said, to Max’s rage.

  “But you don’t know that!” he cried. “And if he doesn’t, I don’t know what I’ll do!”

  Anna just kept her fingers crossed. She knew that if Max didn’t get into the Air Force he would feel it was the end of the world.

  A few days before Max’s appointment she was unpacking some woollies in the office. One of them was an Air Force sweater and she was holding it up, wondering whether Max would soon be wearing one like it, when Mrs Riley came in with a face wrapped in gloom.

  “Terrible news,” she said.

  “About what?” said Anna. There had been nothing special on the radio.

  Mrs Riley waved a tragic hand. “Poor lady,” she said. “Poor, poor Mrs Hammond. And there she was yesterday, as happy as a sandboy.”

  Mrs Riley was always making dramas out of nothing, so Anna said irritably, “What’s happened to her?” not expecting to hear anything that mattered.

  She was shattered when Mrs Riley replied, “Her son has been killed in his aeroplane.”

  Dickie, she thought, with his nice, not-too-bright face and his worries about the cows and the horses. It hadn’t even been an operational flight, just a practice one. The plane had stalled and crashed, and all the crew had died. Mr Hammond had brought the news later the previous afternoon – Anna had already left to post some parcels – and then he had taken Mrs Hammond home.

  “Their only child,” said Miss Clinton-Brown, who had arrived just after Mrs Riley.

  Anna tried to think of something to say, but there was nothing. What could you say about the death of this decent, simple person?

  “He was the glory of his squadron,” said Mrs Riley, striking an attitude. But that was just what he hadn’t been and for some reason it made it worse.

  There was nothing to do but to carry on as usual. The old ladies hardly spoke while they raced their machines up and down the seams, as though a larger turn-out of pyjamas would somehow make up to Mrs Hammond for her loss. Anna decided to tidy up the stock of knitting wool and it was not until half-way through the morning that she remembered about Max. What would happen about that now?

  When no news came from Mrs Hammond except a message through her chauffeur asking everyone to keep going in her absence, she decided to ring Max at the end of the day.

  “I don’t think she’ll want to keep the appointment,” she said, and could feel Max’s depression like a miasma leaking down the telephone. “And I think that’s a very good thing!” she cried, with a sudden vivid memory of Dickie smiling and talking about his dog only such a short time ago.

  Max said blankly, “If you speak to Mrs Hammond please tell her how sorry I am. But if I don’t hear from you I’ll come anyway, just in case.”

  The next few days in the office were full of gloom. The Bovril sessions were the worst times. The old ladies would sit sipping their hot drinks in silence and return to their work as soon as possible. Only once little Miss Potter paused while handing Anna her empty mug. “Why should it have been him?” she asked, and added with no sense of anti-climax, “He always used to ask me about my budgie.”
r />   There was no news of Mrs Hammond, and on the day of Max’s appointment Anna felt more and more depressed at the thought that he was coming all the way from the country to no purpose. He was due to arrive at twelve, and a little before this she waited for him in the disused ward, so that they would not have to talk in the sewing room.

  “No news?” he said at once, and she shook her head, taking in his shining shoes and carefully brushed suit.

  “I didn’t really think there would be.” He looked suddenly somehow crumpled. “Poor woman,” he said and added apologetically, “It’s just that I knew this was my only chance.”

  They stood in the half-darkness, wondering what to do next. They’d better have some lunch, thought Anna, as soon as the old ladies had gone – perhaps she could hurry them up.

  “I’ll just go into the sewing room,” she began, when she heard a car door slam.

  They looked at each other.

  “Do you suppose …?” said Max.

  There were footsteps outside – not like Mrs Hammond’s, thought Anna, these were slower and more slurred – but a moment later the door opened and there she was. She blinked a little at seeing them unexpectedly in this dim place, but otherwise she seemed just as usual with not a hair out of place and her face carefully made up. Only her eyes were different and her voice, when she spoke, was hoarse, as though she were having to force it to work.

  She shook her head as they stumbled into some attempt at condolences.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “I know.”

  For a moment her glance rested on Max as though she were trying, through him, to recreate poor Dickie who might even have stood in the same spot only a week or two before. Then she said, “I can’t face the old ladies. We may as well go.”

  She started towards the door with Max following, but stopped before she reached it.

  “Max,” she said in her strange, hoarse voice, “you know you don’t have to do this. Are you sure it’s really what you want?”

  Max nodded and she stared at him with something almost like contempt. “Like a bloody lamb to the slaughter!” she shouted. Then she shook her head and told him to take no notice.

  “Come along,” she said. “We’ll go and see Jack.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Two weeks later Max was accepted by the Air Force.

  Mama said, “I told you so,” and he was sent to a training camp in the Midlands where conditions were rough and he spent most of his time marching and drilling, but when he came home on leave in his uniform he looked happier than he had done for a long time.

  The very first time he had a day in London he came to the office to thank Mrs Hammond, but she was not there. Since Dickie’s death she had come in less and less, and Anna found herself almost running the place on her own. It was not difficult, but it was dull. She had not realised how much her interest had depended on Mrs Hammond’s presence, and the old ladies missed her even more than Anna did.

  They looked at Anna glumly when she poured out the Bovril, as though it were hardly worth drinking without Mrs Hammond to tell them about Mr Churchill and Queen Wilhelmina, and quarrelled a good deal among themselves. Miss Clinton-Brown had been put in charge of cutting out pyjamas (which had previously been supervised by Mrs Hammond) and endlessly thanked God for having made her the sort of person others could rely on, while Miss Potter and Mrs Riley sat together and said nasty things about her under cover of the hum of their sewing machines.

  There were fewer letters to type and Anna spent much of her time checking through the card index and keeping the peace. Sometimes when she could think of nothing else to do she made drawings of the old ladies on a pad under her desk. Some of them came out quite well, but she always felt guilty afterwards because after all that was not what she was getting paid for.

  Winter came early and almost at once it got quite cold. Anna first noticed it while she was waiting at the bus stop in the mornings. Her coat suddenly seemed too thin to keep out the wind and when she got to the office she had to thaw out her feet over the gas fire. On Sundays, when the weather was fine, she would walk across Putney Heath with Mama and Papa. The grass crunched frostily under their feet, the pond at Wimbledon Parkside was frozen even though it was barely November, and the ducks stood gloomily about on the ice.

  Sometimes, if they were feeling rich, they would stop at the Telegraph Inn and Papa would have a beer while Anna and Mama drank cider, before returning to the hotel for lunch. They tended to delay until the last possible minute, for once you were back, there was nothing much to do.

  After lunch everyone sat in the lounge, now filled with the tables and leatherette chairs which Frau Gruber had brought from the Hotel Continental, because it was the only room with heating. It had an open fire and in the maharajah’s day, when you could get as much coal as you liked, there must have been a great blaze which would have warmed every corner. But now, with fuel hard to come by, it never seemed to get quite as warm as one would have liked.

  It was not very exciting sitting in the lukewarm room with nothing to do except wait for supper, but people occupied themselves as best they could. They read, the two Czech ladies knitted endless scarves, and for a while the Woodpigeon tried to teach Anna Polish. He had a book which she tried to read, but one day when he was feeling depressed he took it from her in the middle of a sentence.

  “What is the good?” he said. “None of us will ever see Poland again.”

  Everyone knew that no matter whether the Germans or the Russians won the war, neither would ever give Poland back her independence.

  Sometimes a couple called Poznanski organised group discussions about it. They never reached any conclusions, but just talking about Poland seemed to cheer them up. Anna quite enjoyed these, for the Poznanskis handed out paper and pencils in case anyone should wish to make notes, and instead of listening she would surreptitiously draw the other people.

  Once she made a funny drawing of the two Czech ladies knitting in unison. She carried it with her to the dining room when the gong went for supper and Mama picked it up while they were waiting for the trayloads of mince and cabbage to reach them.

  “Look,” she said, and showed it to Papa.

  Papa looked at it carefully. “This is very good,” he said at last. “Like an early Daumier. You ought to draw far more.”

  “She ought to have lessons,” said Mama in a worried voice.

  “But Mama,” said Anna, “I’ve got my job.”

  “Well, perhaps in the evenings or at weekends,” said Mama. “If only we had some money …”

  It would be nice, thought Anna, to have something to do in the evenings, for they were very dull. She and Mama had already read their way through half the books in the public library and the only other distraction was bridge, which Anna disliked. She was glad, therefore, when Mama announced that they had been invited to spend an evening with Mama’s Aunt Dainty.

  Aunt Dainty was Cousin Otto’s mother, and the invitation was to celebrate Otto’s return from Canada where he had been first interned, then released and finally sent home for some special purpose which Aunt Dainty was vague about.

  “Are you coming, Papa?” said Anna.

  But Papa had finally persuaded the BBC to broadcast one of his pieces to Germany and was busy writing a second one in the hope that they would take this, too – so Mama and Anna went on their own.

  As their bus crawled through the blackout towards Golders Green, Anna asked, “Why is she called Aunt Dainty?”

  “It was a nickname when she was a child,” said Mama. “Somehow it stuck, even though it hardly suits her now.” Then she said, “She’s had a bad time. Her husband was in a concentration camp. They got him out before the war, but he’s never been the same.”

  It was difficult finding the address – a basement in a long street of houses which all looked the same – but as soon as Mama pressed the bell, the door was flung open by one of the largest and plainest women Anna had ever seen. She was wrapped i
n a long black skirt almost down to the ground and there were various sweaters, cardigans and shawls on top of it.

  “Ach hallo – come in!” she cried in German, revealing a mouthful of irregular teeth, but the eyes half buried in the heavy face were friendly and warm and she embraced Mama enthusiastically.

  “Hello, Dainty,” said Mama. “How lovely to see you.”

  Aunt Dainty swept them down some steps and into a large room which must have been a cellar, but had been so draped with curtains and hangings of every kind that it had acquired a certain grandeur.

  “Sit down, sit down,” she cried, waving them towards a sofa piled high with cushions, and added, “Goodness, Anna, you’re so grown up – you look just like your father.”

  “Do I?” said Anna, pleased, and while she warmed her hands over the oil stove which heated the room, Mama and Aunt Dainty embarked on the usual conversation of how many years was it, and don’t you remember that time at Lyons in Oxford Street, and oh no perhaps she was at school then but I’m sure you must have seen her – until Otto came in.

  He looked better dressed than Anna had ever seen him and Aunt Dainty at once put her arm round his shoulder as though she had not yet got used to having him home.

  “He’s leaving again quite soon,” she said. “Back to Canada.”

  “Canada?” cried Mama. “But he’s only just left there.”

  “I came home to see some people and get some things cleared up – papers and so forth,” said Otto. “Then I’m going back to Canada to do a job of research. Touch wood,” he added, just to be on the safe side.

  “To and fro across the Atlantic like a pendulum,” wailed Aunt Dainty. “And with German U-boats everywhere waiting to catch him.”