I made her my Mistress of the Robes, and she tried to teach me how to wear my (less beautiful) clothes as well as she wore hers. But I was a wretched pupil, and could never do it right. Her patience in handling this unsatisfactory apprentice was quite unbounded, and it was very ill repaid; but she went on hoping to the end, and her long deferred hope never made her kind heart sick. She continued to inspire me with the belief that I had possibilities.
This beautiful creature must have found country life very trying after her London world, but she bravely made the best of it. Till she came to me, she had never walked alone in the dark, and had been quite convinced that a taxi was the only natural mode of progression for a human being. Now she works in a canteen, and at first she thought that to walk home at night was about the most frightening thing she had ever attempted. She who had fearlessly faced irate producers, spoilt leading ladies, and dissatisfied chorus girls, could not check the beating of her heart when a startled pheasant crowed suddenly as he flew out of a tree on the road home. She who had designed and made wedding dresses and Court gowns to stand up to the criticism of aristocratic mothers and grandmothers, now had to grope her way along a winding path in a shrubbery, with a river gleaming and vanishing almost under her feet. In a few months, she became as brave as a lion in meeting these dangers. Still more, from the first she was quite fearless in facing what was always beyond me, self-satisfied shopmen. She spent hours every week in tackling rations, points, and controlled prices.
She was very critical of people, and expected that, like good clothes, they should follow the fashion of the day. She judged them as types rather than individuals, and she was as often wrong as right. But in one thing she was never wrong, and always right, this was the brewing of cocktails, which she made brilliantly, whether or not she had anything to make them of, and as the war went on, this was not unusual. She may have been driven to use the ingredients which the mayor of a neighbouring town told us he suspected he had made the first cocktail he ever tasted. As a telegraph boy had been carrying congratulatory telegrams to the squire’s house after a family wedding. The butler gave him something with which to drink the bride’s health. The telegraph boy could only think it was a mixture of Jeyes’ Fluid and Stephens’ Ink, and I am sure that my lodger often had little better from which to concoct her much-sought-after drinks.
Another permanent addition to my household was a soldier’s wife who came as housekeeper, bringing with her a little girl of just under a year old. Margaret Joan was the strongest character in the house. Her mother’s recipe for child education was Love without Discipline, and the baby ruled us all. When she was told to do anything, she paid no attention at all, but went on her gay way as if she was deaf. She could be most charming, but if she saw another child receive any attention, she yelled for hours. When, by some occult intuition, she surmised that I was having a dinner party, so that her mother would be busy, she refused to sleep at all, but screamed until someone went to sit by her. This sometimes went on for hours, which was not good for the delicious dishes her mother could make in normal times. Margaret Joan was extremely clever; she forgot nothing she had ever heard, and no one she had ever seen. By the time she was three, her vocabulary was larger than mine, or, at any rate, it included many words the meaning of which I did not know. She chattered away about “twerpy” people, or “attaboy’’; and when she was going for a walk she waved her hand and said “ Orrivor”. She sat for hours banging away on a tiny toy piano, singing at the top of her voice “Jerusalem’’, or “While Shepherds Watched”. She announced the meals from the age of two, and from that time onward she took her part in dusting and cleaning the house, though she did these things in her own way.
The baby was indeed a war-time baby, though fortunately the wail of sirens was the nearest she got to air raids. A siren at once made her mother relegate Margaret Joan to a seat on a cushion under a table or under the stairs; and we all pretended that this was a most amusing game. But you never could throw dust into her eyes. They were too wide open for that, and wide open too for long after she should have been in bed.
If Margaret Joan had not thrown her into the shade, we should have thought her mother was a very clever woman; but like the rest of the household, she had to take a back seat when her daughter was about. She was the quickest person I ever knew, and could produce a perfectly cooked dinner hardly half an hour after she had been singing lullabies to the baby for nearly two hours. Cradle songs are now out of fashion, and the modern nurse has no use for them; but it always pleased me to hear that crooning primeval sound come softly through the bedroom door, though I confess my appetite cheered up when at last it was succeeded by the merry clatter of saucepans and frying-pans.
Both the lady dressmaker and the housekeeper thought more quickly than their tongue could keep up with their brains. It was therefore often difficult for a slow-brained person like myself to interpret the phrases which I noticed they both used in common: “What’s a name—bits and pieces—when all’s said and done—this, that and the other—you know what I mean.” How are people clever enough to carry on a conversation composed solely of these idioms.
Another familiar of the house was a delightful character, Tilly, the daily woman. She had escaped from a heavily bombed town some miles away, and had been evacuated to our village. She possessed a husband, and a tribe of children, grandchildren, sons-in-law, daughters-in-law, and stepchildren. In spite of this galaxy of descendants, she was still a tall, slim, good-looking woman, with a dignified carriage, and a masterly hand with a broom or in a wash tub. She also had a masterly hand at cards, and won many prizes at the village whist drives, while, once a week, she enjoyed an evening in the village bar. Most of her children had gone with their schools to other villages, and she and her husband made the best of it in the lodgings allotted to them here.
As one watched her face, it was easy to see that, in spite of her youthful carriage, and her power of tackling hard work, she must have had behind her a terrible experience. I learnt what this was when I had to attend a meeting in her home town, and offered to drive her there to see some of her old friends. The place was ruined beyond recognition. We stopped in the middle of the street where her own house had formerly stood. It was gone, so were its neighbours. I left her standing there, looking round with puzzled eyes for some landmark to recall the past and to help her to find the friends she had left behind. She was lost in the once familiar spot.
Chapter VII
SHOPPING BAG AND QUEUE
The first time I remember seeing a queue I did not call it by the now familiar name, nor did anyone else, but I now know that some time in the ’eighties I watched a primitive food queue.
As a little girl, I went to stay with an uncle and aunt who had a house on the Welsh border, and while I was there, they gave one or two big dinner parties. By the time such functions began in my own home, the nursery party was safely in bed; but my playmate cousin was a year or two older than I, and as she was allowed to stay up and see the guests arrive, I sat up too. It seemed to me to be a very grand dinner party, as we sat with Mademoiselle in a comer watching these beautifully dressed ladies and gentlemen talking together about things we knew nothing of. Then Duckfield the butler opened the door and announced, DINNER. As if by heaven-sent inspiration, all the guests seemed at once to know with whom they must pair themselves, and, being paired, in what order they should proceed towards the dining-room. But on this occasion there was one lady too many, and so my aunt decreed that the unpaired lady should be the daughter of the house. She was a tall and handsome girl, and she now placed herself exactly in the middle of the procession. She wore a dress of rose-coloured satin with a very long train, which isolated her from the couple following her, and she moved with an air of solitary and splendid indifference. It is a picture I have never forgotten. I heard Madamoiselle talking in a rather grown-up way to my cousin (who was at least nine years old) about “ la belle queue de Mlle lsobel’’, and so the scene has always
remained in my memory centred round that word—a word which I did not then know might describe the whole procession.
Of late years, the custom of forming this queue at dinner parties has been abandoned, rather to the inconvenience of the guests. We now pass to our meals in a manner of one of those companies of birds or beasts described by Mr. Joseph Strutt, in his book, Sports and Pastimes of the People of England, such as “a herd of crane, a dopping of sheldrakes, a gaggle of geese, a muster of peacocks, a bevy of quails, a covey of partridges, a congregation of plovers, a flight of doves, a walk of snipes, a brood of hens, a murmuration of starlings, a host of sparrows, a charm of goldfinches, a pride of lions, a sounder of wild swine, a dryft of tame swine, a rag of colts, a pace of asses, a baren of mules, a sculk of foxes, a flock of sheep, a clowder of cats, or a shrewdness of apes”.
These clowders, bevies, dryfts, and gaggles are shepherded into the dining-room with some labour by the hosts and hostesses, but they often make a bad block when they leave it. No one now has that inspired sense of precedence which seemed to “ spring eternal in the human breast” when I was young; and which to-day is limited to the compilers of Debrett and other peerages now too expensive for anyone to buy.
Though there are now few dinner parties, the queue flourishes in the streets and roads. The community has rightly perceived that congregations and gaggles, musters and murmurations, broods and bevies, if permitted on the public way, would inconvenience and hold up the traffic; so in all centres of population, the queue has, in the past few years, been a recognised thing. It is still more or less a new fashion in the country, but now it has arrived, we are beginning to learn its rigours. By all the Laws of the Medes and Persians, a queue is unbreakable, although to the naked eye it does seem to be composed of individuals. But a deadly electric wire runs through these separate units, and anyone pushing through this invisible connecting link, is in danger (metaphorically) of receiving an electric shock.
Those of us who have been accustomed to visiting London, are, of course, familiar with the well-known pre-war queues—the station queue, and the theatre queue; but hitherto we country people have treated them rather casually. Of course, if you think about it, you can’t buy railway tickets in any other way than in a queue—though I do remember that, some years ago, I was leaving London by a main-line station, and I ran rather late into the booking office. I vaguely saw a lot of people standing about, and, being a country cousin, I mistook them for a gaggle instead of a queue. Most of them seemed to have stationed themselves quite a long way from the guichet, and as I was in a hurry, I went as near to it as possible. A friend of mine, who was queueing up in the proper manner, as a law-abiding citizen should, was one of those before whom I cut in; but, knowing my country ways, he was merely mildly amused. He afterwards told me with what fury my innocent back was apostrophised by the line of people behind me. This only lasted a few seconds, for I suddenly perceived that I had come to the wrong railway terminus, and I flitted from the booking office in as unceremonious a way as I had flirted in.
I should never do that now, for, in these war days, railway queues are something that cannot be treated lightly. There are queues to admit you to the platform. There are queues to permit you to hire a taxi as you leave it. Docile people accordingly arrive at the station at least half an hour before the train comes in; and they stand patiently, baggage in hand, for all that time, before they can get into the train. On the other hand, people who are not docile, arrive later than ever. They miss the queue, but not the train. They run down the platform, leap in anywhere as the doors are being banged; and though they may have to stand the whole way, so do some of the docile waiters. On the other hand, if you must go by taxi, you can’t avoid a taxi queue. The policeman sees to that; and if you want to avoid him, you must go by Tube.
Theatre queues have a long and honourable pedigree. I think they must have existed in Shakespeare’s day, and that, as well as holding horses outside the Globe, he kept a place in many a queue for one of the courtiers who were afterwards supposed to have written his plays—Essex, or Southampton, or even for Mr. W. H. of the Sonnets. Theatre queues have always been highbrow. You have only to look at them from without, to realise that. Their members are very superior. They know each other very well and are often as talkative as a literary club. They fill up the hours on their camp-stools with quite good dramatic criticism. Members of queues are really the most alive section of that London public which makes or mars the success of a play; and in that, too, they prove their long pedigree. They descend from the crowd which stood in an Elizabethan pit. Before the war, as they sat on their camp-stools, they ate chocolate, read evening papers, and perhaps studied large tomes about Psychology, Aesthetics, or Economics. I am told that in these strenuous days, you can even meet a Cabinet Minister, or a member of the House of Lords, or of the Bishop’s Bench, spending his few hours of recreation in a cinema queue; but I myself have never been in a queue so august as that.
In the country, most queues are strictly utilitarian. They are food queues or bus queues. In fact, there are two phrases which will be for ever inscribed on the hearts of war-time housekeepers—Shopping Bag and Food Queue. Lord Woolton has decreed that “man shall not live by bread alone’’, but I think he favours woman living by the Queue and the Shopping Bag. For it is no use getting into a food queue, or into a bus queue which will land you in one, unless you possess a shopping bag. Without that, you must carry home a miscellaneous collection of onions, cabbages, fish, and tea cakes in your pockets, for the salvage minister will not let you have any paper.
So every woman now owns a shopping bag, and she is jealously possessive about it. At first, these bags were brilliant and striking-looking objects—in vivid colours and jazz designs; but as the war years roll on, and cleaning materials grow hard to come by, they all decline to the same level of dusty duskiness, reminiscent of two colours fashionable in my youth—Elephant’s Breath and Desert Sand.
On the morning when the ration cards for the new week come into effect, there is often a certain amount of well-mannered altercation as to whether or not a landlady and lodger may each borrow the other’s bag. The winner of this friendly debate now hangs it on her arm, draws on a rather sorry-looking pair of Wellington boots, and sallies forth to shop. Other housekeepers are doing the same. The first two meet with cordial greetings, and proceed together up the road, talking about food. Another be-bagged figure is now seen approaching. The greetings become less cordial; and indeed they die away altogether, as it becomes clear that quite a number of women are on the same quest. They all hope to catch the early-morning bus to the market town.
Then begins the first queue. It is a bus queue, and queues of that breed are usually very friendly, but not so this early one. It stirs some of the evil passions of the human heart, for it is plainly about to develop into a food queue. Everyone wants to travel by this bus, so as to arrive in time to give its passengers the first pick of the market stalls, and there may not be seats for all. It is all very well for people who live at the extreme limit of the bus journey. There is certain to be room for them. But at every village on the road a little group is waiting by the post office. At first these groups are easily absorbed, but as the bus gets nearer the town, every cubic inch of space has been filled up, till there is no hope at all for people like ourselves, who live only a mile or two from the market. At last the bus appears round the corner. Futile umbrellas hail it, though these are obviously unnecessary, as the driver can plainly see the little crowd which now sways uncertainly into the road. He quickens his pace, and the bus rattles heartlessly by.
This common misfortune draws the rebuffed travellers together. They will no longer be rivals in that first picking over of the market stalls, so they have lost the angry sensation of a food queue, and are merely a defeated bus queue. They consult together. The tough ones resolve to make the best of it, and to walk. Others give up altogether and walk home; while the remaining few form themselves into a gaggle to
gossip in the shelter till the next bus comes, an hour later.
The talk last Monday was mostly about coupons. One middle-aged woman, with a thin, practical face, and a badly cut dress, disclosing all the flaws in her shapeless figure, declaimed on the extravagance of buying “Ready Mades”.
“Such shoddy material!” she said shrilly. “ I would be ashamed to put it on my back. It has gone into rags before you can turn round in it, as the saying is. I buy good stuff by the yard and make it up at home. I made this dress myself,” she finished, looking round upon the party with venomous superiority.
The rest of the gaggle looked her up and down, as if to say, “We thought as much”. But no one answered.
“I do think it is a shame,” said a motherly woman with a little girl at her side, “that we have to give coupons for pocket handkerchiefs. They write up everywhere that
Coughs and sneezes
Spread diseases
and don’t I know they do. Half the children at school haven’t got a handkerchief, and they splash about everywhere. This poor little one comes back every week with a fresh cold. Well, I’ve made up my mind. I don’t send this child any more, and if the school attendance officer comes round, I shall just tell him off.”
The gaggle here broke into two parries, one recommending black-currant juice for a cold, and the other condoling with a war-time landlady, who had lost her best bath towel, which one of her lodgers had taken out bathing.
Night Thoughts of a Country Landlady Page 7