Night Thoughts of a Country Landlady

by Edith Olivier

  During those first few weeks school holidays were still going on, and we arranged community games in the Rectory garden for our visitors. It was rather a business to convey my small lodgers to and from these, and we soon saw that when lessons did begin, the children who were billeted on the outskirts would have to be moved nearer the school. Mine among them. In many places, the additional number of children obliged the authorities to arrange that each party should only do half-time lessons, which meant that all the children were running wild for half the day. We were lucky, as we had a couple of small halls which were handed over to the newcomers, and the Rector generously gave up his dining-room as another classroom, so that both our home children and the visitors could have whole-time school. This ensured practically no disturbance to the curriculum of either school.

  Then came the day for calling in the children who had been billeted far from the schools. My beloved little girls had to go. They howled when they went, and my cook and I nearly did the same. I could not think how to deal with the situation, until I had the brilliant idea of taking them, en route to their new homes, to see a herd of cows being milked by machinery. This made them quite anxious for the moment to come when they could leave my door, and we had a most happy afternoon watching those cows, who did not at all agree with the queueing-up system, but were trying all the time to shoulder each other out of the way and get in first. We then had tea at a little tea-shop in the village and the children seemed cheerful when I parted from them. Later in the evening, my cook found Yvonne in floods of tears, having run into the street trying to make her way back here by herself. And then my dear Mother Superior came to the rescue, consoled the little girl, and the next day she assured me that all my ex-lodgers were “settling down”.

  The “ dormitory” was not long vacant. Two or three days later, I heard from an old friend, whose husband was a General about to take an army to France. She asked me if I could tell her of an hotel where she could stay during the last weeks while he was training his troops in the neighbourhood. I told her that “this house was the only hotel I could recommend’’; and in a very short time I had two more children in the dormitory, this time with a nurserymaid sandwiched between them. Kathleen was eight years old, and was a kind elder sister to Victor, who was only five, and young for his age. He seemed more of a baby than the determined Rosemary, the baby of the last party, though he really was the same age. When I had a tea party with my two sets of lodgers, Victor was the hero of the day. The little girls combined to make much of him, and he adored this.

  It was a happiness to me to have this little family in my house. The General was with his troops all day, and in the evening he came to dinner, arriving usually in time to play with his children for a quarter of an hour before they went to bed. After dinner, he had an hour or two with his wife. I knew that these were his last hours before he left for the front, and my one idea was to make myself scarce. Fortunately we were still in the stage (a stage, by the way, which has never ended) of grappling with our Black-out. That horrible effect of Hitler’s totalitarian war has at least one effect: it sustains ones wrath against its originator. But in those early days, the black-out served another purpose. It gave my sister-in-law and me an excuse for leaving the husband and wife alone, while we wandered round and round the house for about two hours each evening. No black-out was ever more completely tested and examined; and after the General had left, no German, however strong his Zeiss glasses might be, could have seen a gleam of light from any of my windows. But black-outs are the most temporary things in the world. Two years later, at the beginning of another winter, I made a fresh inspection, and decided that any invaders could sit comfortably in my garden, reading their maps by the light which escaped through the gaps in my once perfect black-out. But those days had not then arrived.

  I had some good talks with the General who, although the most reserved of men, was one of those rare people who can be interesting without giving secrets away. One day I asked him whether, in these days of tanks and aeroplanes it was still true to say that, in the last resort, wars are decided by the infantry. He said:

  “I still think so. Whatever material damage is done by aeroplanes, however swiftly tanks may get through a given piece of country the last millions of undefeated men, standing on their own feet, will have the last word to say.”

  Another question which I put to him concerned the Siegfried Line. Would it have a crucial effect on the war? The General said:

  “It sounds impregnable, but is only concrete. Its strength depends entirely on who is behind it.”

  I wrote down these dicta in September 1939, leaving time to prove their truth or falsity.

  In the Squire’s house was billeted a baby “school” for “ under fives’’, who were not often seen in the streets, for their playground was the Park. Every detail of the children’s equipment was perfect: their beds, their washbasins, their armchairs, their tables, their desks, their pots, and the pictures on their walls. They were a most friendly party and when I went to see them they crowded up, examining my clothes, opening my bag, and interested in all my belongings. They were like minnows clustering round some strange object that has fallen into the water. Their language was appalling, and a great surprise to us country people; but I often wonder what the effect will be on those slum babies of the memory in after life of those months in one of the famous great houses of England. They had awoken to a new world of beauty, space and peace; and because its outward character was so unlike the streets of Kentish Town, it would surely remain for ever in their minds.

  By now we were driven to housing our bombed-out refugees in the houses which before the war had been “condemned’’; and in order to furnish them, everybody lent what furniture they could spare. Pieces of carpet were very precious, and, like everyone else, I lent my garden chairs, my picnic tea-sets, and any blankets I could do without; and I gave away all my old clothes. Some of these people were not very welcome. They did not like the country, and obviously did not at all want to settle down among us. Their rooms were the picture of discomfort, though they could not be blamed for this, as the buildings were dilapidated and the furniture was never enough to go round. But they seemed naturally rather like gypsies. If a visitor tapped on the door the whole party opened it, crowding round full of curiosity and peeping out, one behind the other, at every sort of distance from the floor level. In appearance, these people were completely unlike our natives. They seemed foreign, with their narrow faces, their pale skins, and their dabs of lipstick.

  Only once in these evacuation weeks did I hear the real sound of a voice which was maddened by panic. It belonged to a London woman who had been in a shelter when a reservoir nearby was bombed, and the shelter was suddenly flooded. She had seen many of her friends drowned in that shelter. Her husband was a soldier quartered somewhere near us, and she had fled here, but when she arrived she could not find him. This unbelievable last straw completely broke her down. She stood in the square outside our Committee Room, and her inhuman shrieks were terrible. I brought her upstairs to our room; and it really did not take us long to find her husband, whose officers were most kind in giving him leave to come to us, but in that short interval she cried most pitiably. It was like no sound I have ever heard. All the time her little boy sat stolidly by, reading the Pilgrims’ Progress, which he said he had never read before, and thought was a very pretty book. He apparently did not hear his mother’s sobs.

  I soon found that she had eaten nothing all day, and then I decided that the all-healing cup of tea might meet the case; so I invited her to come with me to our small village tea-shop for a little meal. One of our committee members proved that she was wiser than I. I had merely seen this unhappy woman as an abnormal creature, but she saw deeper. She found the real woman who had been submerged by the flood in that shelter. She knew that this woman would in the past have done her daily housework, cared for her little boy, cooked for her family. My fellow committee member reached that normal woman,
and called her back into action. I now saw what was almost like a treatment by artificial respiration.

  “Don’t you go with Miss Nightingale,” she said. “ I was just going home to get our luncheon, and I would like you and the little boy to come and have a snack with us. You won’t mind helping me to get it ready will you?”

  The idea of this little piece of work was the first thing that brought the unhappy woman back to normal. When I went to see them an hour and a half later, she had helped to get the dinner ready, she and the child had enjoyed it, and now she looked serene. Her husband had just gone out to find some lodgings for her, and the immediate trouble was over. Love and wisdom had healed the broken spirit.

  Chapter III

  NOT FORGETFUL TO ENTERTAIN STRANGERS

  In the first few months of the war, one problem faced all of us, who had, either perforce, or of our own free will, become landladies—I mean the problem of amusing our guests. We soon saw that the visitors, mostly people from the towns, found country life very dull; and we saw equally that it was essential to find some occasional outlet for the strangers within our gates. The close quarters were too close.

  It began in a very simple way, with the children. During the first few weeks, the evacuated schoolchildren were not sent to school. The arrangements for this were not completed. So that it came about that about three hundred strange children were wandering about the streets, for they were afraid to go farther afield. This question did not take long to settle. Community play solved it, and the Rector’s garden. Our own young people were very proud to conduct the guests backwards and forwards, and to teach them the local games; while the visiting teachers and friends kept the whole thing under control. When once the school term had begun, this was no longer necessary; but every kind of person in the village had got some idea of what it meant to give a big party, and to keep that party going. I believe that every village was tackling this job and most of them did it very well; but what struck me about it was that we found ourselves, for the first time, mutually responsible for the happiness and welfare of strangers in our neighbourhood. Automatically everyone was caught in this new activity, and I believe it showed to many people a new, and far more enjoyable, aspect of rural life. Hitherto, visitors from London and other big towns had been the property only of the friends or relations with whom they spent a week or. two in the summer. They seemed to think themselves superior to the rest of the country people; so superior in fact that we all had believed in their superiority. Now they appeared pathetic, homeless and at a loose end; and it was our part to “show them round”.

  This did not apply only to the children. The mothers were even more out of it. They had left their husbands behind, and someone with only a male view of housewifery had decreed that hostess and guest could easily share the kitchen and, still more impossible, the kitchen grate. If two separate meals were to be cooked simultaneously, such meals could easily be “ staggered”. The word “staggered” in that sense had not hitherto reached our village, but the suggestion was sufficiently staggering in itself, without seeking for any new meaning of the word.

  Here then was another appeal to entertain strangers. It too was on a small scale, but it paved the way to more elaborate entertaining later on. It again gave a sense of responsibility, as a place and not as individuals, for making our visitors as happy as possible.

  We opened a little afternoon club for mothers and babies. They ran it themselves, and it was a “place of their own”. When we went there, we went as guests. We now saw another aspect of entertaining—giving people the opportunity of entertaining themselves. This again increased our social acumen. The club did not last long, as most of those mothers went home in a short time; but it helped us to find our feet in another of the new paths which were opening before us.

  As President of the Women’s Institute, I now had a new idea. This was to organise two “ War-time Banquets” for the members. All the world knows that a Cup of Tea is the climax of every well-conducted Institute meeting; but these banquets were to be climaxes of climaxes. To begin with, they were luncheons, taking place before the meeting really began. Their primary object was not conviviality, though it must be admitted that this was a conspicuous by-product of our banquets. They were destined to show us with what excellent meals we could feed our families and friends, without using any ingredient which had been brought overseas, or which, in fact, had required any transport at all. The dishes were made by members from materials produced in the place. We each brought our own plates, knives, forks, and spoons. Also our own glasses. But here the President stepped in. Glasses, yes. But the tumblers used throughout the meal must be filled with water only. At the end of the banquet, when the famous home-made wines which have made the reputation of many of our members, were produced, to drink the one toast of the day—the soil of our native country, I made myself responsible for the wine glasses. I produced liqueur glasses; for I knew of old the charm and potency of some of these drinks. I therefore took care that while we drank wisely, we should not drink too well.

  We learnt a great deal from these banquets, on the subject of living luxuriously from our own back gardens; although later on Lord Woolton did cold-shoulder the too free use of our poultry yards and our home-cured hams.

  But in the first months of the war, we could with clear conscience, enjoy not only the vegetable soups and stews, and the tarts packed with fruits of our own growing, but also the cold chicken and salad and the game pies (made largely of rabbits). How good they all were! But what I personally enjoyed most of all was a dish of Barley Bannocks, eaten with home-made cream cheese. All my life, I had heard of these as the food for pigs, which the labourers’ families were reduced to eating in the “ hungry forties”. A hundred years must have matured this legendary food, for it turned out to be the most delicious kind of hot biscuit, made of barley meal; and I only wish I could often eat it. All the bread at these banquets was made from flour grown on our farms and baked in our own ovens.

  We had now become tea-party conscious, and our Institute quickly gave a party for the evacuated mothers with small children, when musical chairs alternated with piano sonatas, and riddles with religious recitations—the whole winding up with Sir Roger de Coverley. It was very lively.

  As Christmas drew near I had another and most enjoyable party for some refugees from Vienna and Czecho-Slovakia who had succeeded in escaping to this country before the war began. I had heard that they were homesick for the Christmas trees of their native land, and I decided to decorate a little one for them. It could stand on our tea table, and could afterwards go back with them to the house which had been lent them as a home. Most of them had not yet learnt to speak English fluently, while we none of us knew much German. As for Czech, till that afternoon it had been a dead language to us all. It was therefore to be expected that this party would fall very flat, and that all its sparkle would have to come from the candles on the Christmas tree. Quite the reverse. We learnt that no party is so amusing as one which consists of people who are more or less strangers to each other, and who don’t understand one another’s language well enough to know at all what anyone else is talking about. This opens the door to the gayest and most unexpected plays on words. It is the latest form of the old game of cross questions and crooked answers.

  I suppose it is still necessary for diplomats to know the language of the country to which they are accredited, though I believe that it often happens that they know, or think they know it, too well. Perhaps if two countries were on the verge of breaking off relations, a verbal misunderstanding might be the last straw. But if it is only a case of breaking bread together, these mutually incomprehensible lingoes add sauce to the dish. The most commonplace people become original. Very rapid steps towards intimacy are made, when everyone is teaching his partner how to translate two quite unknown languages into one another.

  A feature of this party was that it inspired one of our guests to tell us something about the Christmas customs of her own
country. She made an entrancing picture of Vienna as she had known it in Christmas seasons; and it seemed tragic to think that a people of such human sympathies, and such romantic and happy tastes, could have fallen under the harsh and unimaginative yoke of the Nazis.

  In the charming account of a Viennese Christmas, we learnt that the Christmas trees do not only stand in the houses, but also in the parks, for the birds too are given their Christ-baume, hung with scraps of food, and surrounded all day by the quivering wings of flights of birds swirling round and round and perching for a moment. Every morning fresh food is put out on these birds’ Christmas trees, and all through the season, the parks are alive with the twittering, fluttering hosts.

  Viennese squares also have their Christmas trees, which appear, brilliantly lit, weeks before the day itself. They are inscribed “ Give to the poor”. Everyone, rich or poor, responds to this appeal as well as he can, by giving presents to the Christmas Committees who arrange that no one shall be left out. Then there are the Christmas markets, open-air stalls which go on for several weeks, laden with cheap presents, and also with little fir trees to be converted on Christmas Eve into family Christmas trees in each home. The Sunday before Christmas is called Golden Sunday, and on that day all the shops remain open, to give people a last chance of buying their presents. On Christmas Eve comes the family supper of coffee. and Striezl—a wonderful pastry, plaited with almonds, raisins, and other fruit. Our Viennese lady told us that this tasted “ marvellous”. And then we heard of the beautiful midnight Mass when the country people walk in from long distances through the night. In a district like the Tyrol, this pilgrimage sometimes takes several hours, often through deep snow. She described the lanterns twinkling one by one as they appeared through the doors of far-off farmhouses on the mountain-sides. You can watch them coming down the hill until they meet each other, to unite in a soft wide stream of light which vanishes at last into the church door.