A Spoonful of Sugar

by Brenda Ashford

  What language could I communicate to her in? One day the answer came to me. I suddenly remembered a lovely old nursery rhyme that always made me giggle.

  Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle,

  The cow jumped over the moon.

  The little dog laughed to see such sport,

  And the dish ran away with the spoon.

  Fun! That was what was missing from her life.

  So the next day, during our morning walk, I instigated a new game.

  “Let’s all pretend to make animal noises,” I announced.

  John started first with a marvelous impression of a duck. His quacking soon had everyone in stitches. Then it was my turn.

  “I am a lion,” I said. I tipped my head back and roared. “Let’s all roar.”

  Soon the fields around Little Cranford were echoing with the sound of roaring lions.

  I looked at Gretel.

  A funny little sound escaped her lips. A laugh!

  I roared again. There it was again. A throaty little giggle that lifted my sprits.

  She never fully came out of her shell, but from that day on I think she knew she could trust me. I learned an important lesson from Gretel. Just as important as love, children need fun in their life.

  There is all the time in the world to be serious and studious, as they get older, have to find employment, pay bills, and get bogged down in the responsibilities of being an adult, so surely little folk deserve a childhood that’s full of fun? It’s the single most valuable lesson in my eyes. I have always encouraged children to have a giggle wherever and whenever they can.

  Having fun encourages happiness, well-being, and confidence and fosters a wonderful sense of self-esteem. Most of the well-adjusted adults I know today had a childhood ringing with fun.

  A mischievous belly laugh and a child’s eyes that sparkle with fun light up my heart like nothing else on earth.

  Besides having fun my time in the countryside taught me a great many important lessons, not all of them to do with child care.

  Country folk respect the land. When you live off it, you have to nurture it and learn to follow its natural ebb and flow. Chickens weren’t eaten that much during the war, as their eggs were too important. Likewise the land needed to be treated like an untapped gold mine.

  The countryside around Little Cranford was mostly farming land already, but any scraps that hadn’t been given over to food production now were. During the war the number of acres of British soil under cultivation rose from twelve million in 1939 to just under eighteen million by the end of the war.

  At the beginning of the war, 70 percent of our food was imported; by 1943 that figure was reversed.

  Land all over the country had been dug up to provide food.

  The Ministry of Food issued posters and they were plastered over the village notice boards: “It’s not clever to get more than your fair share.”

  Here in Little Cranford the villagers operated their own unofficial food swap system. A farmer might swap the landlord of the local pub a rabbit for five eggs, or eggs for some bread. Villagers would eat anything in a pie, mostly rabbit but even squirrel and roadkill.

  People rubbed along together nicely in the countryside, and no one starved. In fact, thanks to the fresh air and profusion of local vegetables, I felt better than I ever had.

  We all seemed to be obsessed with staying healthy. My evacuees got free orange juice and cod-liver oil, which I administered daily; and his lordship would never sit at the House of Commons without a stomach full of porridge and Bemax.

  Suddenly, everyone knew how to cook and stretch and substitute. I still say I have never seen people healthier than in wartime. We didn’t overeat and we watched what we put into our mouths. Emergency measures had brought about the very reform that prewar nutritionists had campaigned for. We hardly ate sweets or chocolate or drank alcohol; and we never touched processed food, apart from powdered eggs and milk.

  Food production was war work, vital to keep the nation going, yet despite the huge efforts of our farmers on the land, lots of people thought they had it easy and had somehow ducked out of doing their duty.

  People judged them without knowing the full picture, always a dangerous combination. It still happens today sadly. People form snap judgments or opinions based on what they’ve heard or read. Nine times out of ten we never know the full story.

  Thanks to the legions of opinion-biased newspapers, Web sites, and media outlets, our views are seldom our own and rarely fully informed. I urge people to always try to see both sides of an argument; that way they may just arrive at a different conclusion.

  One lady whom I befriended in the village knew this attitude better than most.

  Susan, the village district nurse, was courting a local farmer by the name of Bill. Bill and his father, John, were the tenant farmers of his lord and ladyship. Susan was a lovely woman, real salt of the earth and fiercely proud of her man. I admired her loyalty immensely.

  For the most part my evacuees were fit and healthy, but Susan came by once a month to check on them and I warmed to her instantly. She was hardworking, and her faith in the Lord and love for Bill were everything to her. I was most impressed with her medical knowledge and care for people.

  One day Susan had a suggestion for me.

  “Do you think you can make it out next week?” she asked, when she stopped off on her rounds one morning.

  “I could try,” I said.

  “Good.” She gave me a grin. “The village hop is on.”

  With that she pedaled off and I found myself smiling. The village hop. I was sure it wouldn’t be half as grand as the London dance halls, but it was no less thrilling a prospect to me. I loved dancing, lived for it in fact. When I was growing up, Mother took me for dance classes at a function room behind the local pub. It was the highlight of my week. Sadly, we had to stop when Father lost his business.

  “I’m sorry, darling,” she told me and my brothers and sister. “We simply can’t afford it.”

  I was most aggrieved. “The others don’t love it as much as me,” I cried.

  My protests fell on deaf ears. Mother was the fairest woman I ever knew.

  “What I do for one, I have to do for all,” she replied, indicating that the matter was now closed. Of course, I was most put-out back then, but that little lesson served me well in life. One has to be fair in all one’s dealings.

  This lesson lodged in my mind and I have stuck to it religiously throughout my career. One must be fair and consistent, especially when it comes to children, who are always the first to point out an injustice or to sense an irregularity!

  Never, ever, be seen to favor one child over another or change the rules halfway along. Otherwise you are brewing up a whole heap of trouble. My mother had six children and loved us all and treated us all equally. If people today did the same with their children, the world would be a fairer and happier place—of that I’m certain.

  Still, I did so love to dance, and the thought of dancing at the village hop filled me with excitement.

  I don’t think I’d had a night out since this blessed war began three years ago. How could I? I’d been too busy looking after my charges. But now that I had so much help from her ladyship’s staff, there was much less for me to do of an evening. Yes, a night at the village hop would be most agreeable.

  So it was arranged that I would be accompanied to the hop by a local farmhand named Tom.

  I’d taken care with my appearance that night, changing out of my Norland uniform and putting on a lovely cotton floral dress. I swapped my flat shoes for a pair with a slight heel and combed my hair out, but that was the extent of my beautification. I was twenty-one and I don’t think makeup had ever touched my face.

  Many women in those days improvised, as makeup was scarce. Some used beetroot juice as rouge; and in the absence of foundation camomile was mixed with cold cream.

  I wouldn’t have known what to do with a tube of lipstick even if you’
d been able to find me one.

  “Best make do with what Mother Nature provided,” I said to myself, fluffing up my hair in the mirror.

  A small knock at the back door indicated that my date for the evening was here.

  Tom was a man of few words, which was just as well as he wasn’t the sharpest knife in the tool kit, but he was very sweet, not to mention jolly handsome. He had lovely thick curly hair, dreamy dark eyes you could get lost in, and strong muscular forearms, browned by a summer of harvesting hay in the fields.

  Nervously he took off his cap.

  “Can I accompany you to the hop, Brenda?” he said, in his thick country accent.

  “Yes, please,” I said, a little more eagerly than I’d planned.

  He held out a hand the size of a small tractor and grinned shyly.

  “You wash up real fine, Brenda,” he said, his eyes shining with sincerity.

  I wasn’t sure if this was a compliment, but as we walked to the village I realized Tom didn’t have a mean bone in his body. We didn’t manage much in the way of conversation, though, so it was a relief to reach the hop.

  They may have been jitterbugging up a storm elsewhere, but in these parts it was a little more innocent. Trestle tables with a small selection of sandwiches lined the edges of the village hall, and a makeshift bar was set up in the corner.

  A gramophone playing dance music by Henry Hall, Jack Payne, and Bert Ambrose crackled in the corner.

  “Can I get you a drink, Brenda?” asked Tom shyly.

  Apart from a sip of Mother’s sherry at Christmas I’d never really drunk alcohol before. I’d far rather have had a lemonade, but I didn’t want to appear unsophisticated. But what to ask for? Beer was a man’s drink and wine wasn’t really available. Gin and tonic always struck me as a glamorous drink. Iris always used to sip a G & T in the evening.

  “I’ll have a gin and tonic, please,” I replied.

  Seconds later Tom was pressing a paper cup containing a little clear, warm liquid into my hand. It was all gin and no tonic. Ice wasn’t available either, not that I would have known it needed lots of it to make it drinkable.

  I took a big sip and grimaced. The liquid trickled down my throat and a second later I felt like my gullet was on fire.

  Goodness gracious.

  “Oh, I say,” I spluttered.

  “Strong, isn’t it,” said Tom, laughing.

  As the fiery sensation in my throat died down, I felt a lovely warm glow in my tummy and soon it had spread right down to the tips of my toes.

  “It’s rather nice, this,” I said, taking another gulp.

  “Well …” said Tom awkwardly. Suddenly, I realized I was looking at his back retreating across the empty dance floor.

  Tom had scuttled off to join all the other farmhands. The room had segregated: all the local women and land girls were standing on one side of the hall and all the men huddled on the other.

  I suppressed a giggle. The women far outnumbered the men and for all the world it looked like a human cattle call, with the women eyeing up what hapless, terrified-looking males were left.

  No matter, I thought, taking another swig of my drink.

  It was really rather good stuff, this gin. Made me feel terribly happy and glowy.

  By the time I finished my drink, I was roaring drunk. Even my face was tingling. I giggled as I tried and failed to place a fingertip on the end of my nose. Suddenly, a newfound confidence gripped me.

  I had come here to dance and dance I jolly well would.

  “S’ where’s Tom,” I slurred to myself.

  I started to cross the dance floor, but the tiresome thing kept moving. Weaving my way, I narrowly avoided a collision with a trestle table before planting myself in front of Tom.

  “Dance, please,” I ordered a stunned-looking Tom.

  “You heard the lady,” said the man he was chatting to, grinning.

  Tom did as ordered, and before long we were spinning round the room together, his strong arms preventing me from falling flat on my face on the floor of the village hall.

  Suddenly, a hand gripped Tom’s shoulder and I whirled round in surprise.

  “Excuse me?” said the man Tom had been chatting to before.

  “Henry is the name,” he announced confidently as he cut in, his hands encircling my waist. “Now be a good thing and step aside, Tom.”

  Tom was left standing, his mouth flapping open and shut like a stranded goldfish, as Henry whisked me into his arms.

  “You don’t want to waste your time with him when you could be dancing with a real man,” he whispered to me, and winked.

  Well, of all the cheeky …

  Henry danced with great gusto, his tall body leading the way. All through the song he kept up a stream of constant chatter. I’d barely finished answering one of his questions when he was asking me another. Goodness, he was so interested in my life.

  Henry was by no means as good-looking as Tom. He was very ordinary, in fact, with pale eyes unlike the chocolate-brown ones I preferred, but he certainly had a smooth tongue.

  “You’re a real lady,” he whispered in my ear. “I’d never have left you in the corner.”

  Before long Tom had recovered from the indignity of being left standing and cut back in.

  “Excuse me,” he muttered grimly, firmly removing Henry’s arm from mine.

  Back and forth, back and forth I went all night like a Ping-Pong ball, between Tom’s and Henry’s arms. What a night. I had never felt so in demand.

  It could have been the gin or the amorous advances of my competitive farmhands, but by the end of the evening my head was spinning and I had stars in my eyes.

  “The last waltz belongs to me,” said Henry, issuing me with a dazzling smile.

  Succumbing to his slightly forceful charm I allowed my exhausted head to rest on his shoulder and swayed dreamily in his arms.

  I’d gone to the hop with Tom, but it was Henry I left with.

  As we tottered along the country lanes, the fresh night air sobering me up, I realized my hand was clamped firmly in Henry’s.

  It may have been a frosty autumn night, so cold and clear our breath hung in the air like smoke, but inside I was toasty warm. The aftereffects of the gin or was something more magical weaving its spell on me?

  Soon we reached Granville House and on the porch we turned to face each other.

  “I knew you’d come home with me,” Henry said softly, a touch arrogantly.

  “Oh yes?” I laughed. “And what made you so sure of that?”

  “Because Tom and I had a bet on who would see you home, and I never lose a bet, Brenda Ashford.”

  “Good night, Henry,” I said, smiling.

  It was pitch-black outside, but as I turned to close the door I saw his satisfied grin. He looked like the cat that got the cream.

  As I flopped into bed, my head was spinning from the events of the evening. Poor Tom. He was such a lovely chap and I hadn’t meant to abandon him, but there was just something about Henry. Sure, he was cocky, but I found his arrogance endearing in a strange way. He’d also been the perfect gentleman. He delivered me home safe and sound and hadn’t even tried to kiss me, though if he’d tried I probably would have found it hard to say no.

  The next morning, over breakfast with his lordship, I grinned like the Cheshire cat. Even my Bemax didn’t taste quite as bad. And when I took my charges out for their morning walk, I felt as if I were floating on air. Was this what it felt like to be in love? It was probably too soon to say, but one thing was for sure: Henry had left a big impression on me.

  I felt like I’d gained entry to an exclusive club. Romance had finally come into my life and now I had men actually fighting over me. What fun!

  Mr. Worboys was outside the stable block, polishing his lordship’s Daimler, and chuckled when he saw me.

  “I daresay someone had a good time at the hop last night,” he said.

  “I wouldn’t like to say, Mr. Worboys,” I said, but
I couldn’t hide the smile on my face.

  That euphoric feeling lasted all day. Even her ladyship coming into the nursery to inspect the children didn’t disperse my cloud of joy.

  Henry had promised to take me out again and he made good on his promise. He turned up the very next day, clutching a bunch of wildflowers he’d picked.

  I was playing with the children by the stable block when he arrived. I could tell by the way he strutted up the path like he owned the place and casually placed one foot up on the upturned bucket Mr. Worboys had been using to wash the Daimler with earlier that he’d lost none of his confident swagger.

  Dressed in his casual farming gear and smelling faintly of manure did little to diminish his appeal in my eyes.

  I felt my heart start to race a little.

  “You look lovely in your uniform, Brenda,” he said with a smile, looking me up and down.

  I blushed furiously as the children stopped the game they were playing and looked at the more interesting new one being played out before them.

  “How do you fancy being taken out for tea by me on your next half day off?” he asked. “They do a mean cream tea in the next village.”

  It wasn’t much of a first date by today’s standards, I’ll wager, but to an impressionable twenty-one-year-old back in 1942, it was better than an invitation to the Ritz.

  “Oh, I’d love to,” I gushed.

  “Good, I’ll pick you up around three, then. Be ready.”

  And then he was gone. All the evacuees stared curiously after this cocky young man as he bounded down the drive, humming to himself.

  “You’ve got a funny look on your face, Nurse Brenda,” John said finally.

  “Have I?” I murmured.

  I counted down the days, hours, and minutes to our date, and on the day agonized over what to wear.

  Mrs. Worboys found me on the afternoon, wailing to myself in the bedroom.

  “Whatever is wrong, Brenda, dear?” she asked.

  “It’s my date with Henry. He’s taking me for tea in the next village, but I have nothing to wear,” I cried in despair. “Nothing.”

  I didn’t own any of the silk stockings that some of the lucky girls in the cities were given by GIs, nor makeup or jewelry.