Youth at the Gate: A young woman’s memoir of life during the First World War

by Ursula Bloom

  I ought to be with you the evening of the day on which you receive this, and the train arrives at 6.20. Please meet me so that we can chat before your mother knows. This is most important for your safety.

  Your affectionate

  DAD

  I showed the letter immediately to my mother, and she could not imagine what it was about. She thought my father must have gone mad, and what he meant by ‘our behaviour at Walton’ completely mystified us both. Ours had been the most simple life; we had in fact been so impoverished that there was practically nothing that we could have done.

  My routine life had been spent in nursing Mother, in getting her out on to the front about eleven on sunny mornings and sitting there talking to her, or writing stories. After lunch she always had a long rest; in the evening officers and their wives came in for coffee and drinks. Whisky was still mercifully cheap, and I bought ‘The Three Gees’ at the International Stores for three-and-six a bottle. If we went without lunch for a week, we could contrive an evening with drinks.

  We could not think that anything could have gone wrong, yet according to my father’s letter it most certainly had. But how had the Bishop of Worcester become involved?

  ‘It’s no good trying to work it out,’ said my mother, ‘your father must have flown off at a tangent and has got hold of the wrong idea.’

  That evening I went up to the station to meet him. It was another of those lovely nacre-coloured evenings, when you could not believe that such a sinister thing as this wretched war even existed. The train was late, it was a single line from Thorpe-le-Soken and never hurried itself too much; when my father stepped off it in his grey flannel suit, I had to admit that he looked worried.

  We walked out of the station down to the sea-front, and I showed him the reinforcements on which the soldiers had worked so hard, thinking this would interest him. It had quite the contrary effect, for he stared at me in complete horror and said would I please not mention anything of the sort?

  ‘But why not?’ I asked. ‘They are here for everybody to see; there’s nothing secret about them, and we all talk about them.’

  ‘Not now, please. Please not now,’ said he.

  When we reached Mr. Barker’s Marine Hotel, an amiable old-fashioned building with the public gardens before it, I think he had come to the conclusion that he had better get the object of his visit off his chest, so we went into the gardens and sat down there to talk.

  He said: ‘Ursula, you’ve got to know, but something dreadful has happened. A letter has been sent to the Bishop by someone from Walton who asked that their identity should not be disclosed. They wanted to know if you and your mother were wife and daughter of a clergyman called Bloom in Yeatman-Biggs’ diocese. The Bishop wrote back and asked them why.’

  ‘But why should anyone write to the Bishop about us?’

  ‘I can’t think. I begged him to reveal the name, but he refused, I suppose he couldn’t do more. The second letter he received made him send for me, and the upshot was that he felt this was something I must know about and act upon.’

  ‘What did the letter say?’ I asked, not seeing daylight, and thinking my father was only being silly.

  ‘Apparently the Special Constables had had trouble with your house showing lights, and once this had coincided with a Zeppelin raid.’

  ‘Everybody here has trouble with their lights at some time or other. Our curtains don’t fit properly; they’re better than they were, but they’re not right yet. Why?’

  ‘The letter said that you and your mother spent all the time on the front watching the soldiers, and disguising your real intentions by pretending to do needlework. You wrote down what you saw in an exercise book.’

  ‘What do you mean by disguising our intentions? Of course I write in exercise books, they’re my stories,’ said I.

  He turned his blue eyes round on me, and I saw that he was distraught. ‘They suspect you of being German spies.’

  ‘But ‒ but how could we be?’ For the first time in my life I found myself stammering.

  ‘The name, I suppose. Bloom. It sounds German. Then you came down here as soon as the war started, and you seem to have been sitting on the front ever since. When the Zeppelins came over they said your mother tried to force her way past a Special Constable on to the front.’

  ‘But of course she didn’t. There was a plane pursuing the Zepps, and she ran down the road to see if she could get a better view from the opening by the Albion Hotel.’

  ‘The Bishop and I are worried.’

  At that moment I doubt if either of them was as worried as I was. I remembered with painful clarity that horrible night in London when the crowd had smashed some of the shops with German names over them, and the sausages had rolled into the gutters. I remembered the story of the poor little dachshund who had been stoned to death, and rather haltingly I said: ‘It’s ‒ it’s ridiculous. What about Joscelyn who is fighting with the British Army in France? What ‒ what do we do?’

  He didn’t know, for he himself was bewildered by it, and only too anxious that we did not become further involved. ‘We must all talk it out, and decide on what is the best action to take. It may mean that you’ll have to leave the coast.’

  I knew that I did not want to leave, somehow I had grown to care for the place, but I did not want my mother to be too worried. We walked home not in the merriest of moods. Supper was waiting and I felt some distaste for it which was odd for I had had no tea. My father told Mother what had happened. Having always been a fighter, more so than my father, her one idea was to get to the root of the matter. He thought we should retire into our shells, never go near the front, or have officers in to share coffee and three-and-sixpenny whisky.

  ‘They know you speak German,’ he said.

  ‘So does every woman who has been to school in Bonn.’

  ‘They know that as well. Someone has gone to a lot of trouble to find out everything they could.’

  I was nervous, and because I thought they might like to talk about this alone I slipped out into the street on which the pleasant summer night had now descended. I had intended to go on to the beach, then realized that I dare not do this in case someone suspected that I was there to send messages to the enemy! In a single instant I myself had changed! I was afraid. I watched a searchlight playing in a long shaft of light which penetrated up into the sky and was afraid to be found looking. It would be easy to misinterpret my movements, and then I would become more suspect. The more I thought of it the clearer was the fact that it was extremely difficult to act innocently and behave normally.

  They shoot people for this, I thought. The situation was exaggerating itself in my mind, not without reason, for at that time in the nation’s history all England searched for spies, and with infuriated vigour.

  Next morning I rose early to get my father’s breakfast.

  I had a chat with the milkman, an amiable fisherman who had already taught me the right way to cook a kipper, having caught me frying one, and going up in smoke over it himself. I wondered with horror if he had heard the scandal and what he privately thought I was. In one way I wished to do a bolt, in another I wanted to fight. It was hard to know what to do next.

  That afternoon my father went for a walk to the Naze whilst Mother was resting. He was in search of geological specimens which he said were a species to be found only in this particular part of the cliffs. There was a look-out on the Naze (the tower is there today), manned, I believe, by the Royal Navy and out of bounds for all of us, though my father did not know it. Arming himself with that idiotic sponge-bag of his to contain specimens, a pocket magnifying-glass which was a treasure that went everywhere with him, and some sandwiches, he busily examined the cliffs. He became so rapt in this that he was oblivious when the look-out sentry challenged him. Unaccustomed to people yelling at him, I doubt whether even if he had heard he would have paid any attention, merely surmising that someone was being rude.

  He was a middle-aged clergyman
pottering after fossils, and the next thing was that they fired a shot which bounced on the ground just ahead of him. He found that surprising, if not irritating. An officer approached and questioned him, and what made my father so angry was that he had the impertinence to take his precious sponge-bag from him, also the magnifying-glass. It was some time before he could get them back, and I don’t think that they would have parted with them then, save that they had come to the conclusion that nothing would make my father go away without them, and the thought of having him with them for the night was a bit too much!

  When he returned to Hertford House he was purple with rage. We immediately realized that this unfortunate affair would only increase the suspicions about the Bloom family which were already boiling up. There had recently been some nasty stories in the papers about spies who had disguised themselves as clergymen (even as nuns), and we could imagine these being quoted round the hearthsides of Walton.

  My father was now angry and wanted to shake the dust of the place off his feet. Most unfortunately, although we had talked of nothing else save a plan of campaign since his arrival, he left without any definite action being devised.

  Mother was the one who finally determined on a plan. She was always by far the stronger fighter. She would carry on as she had begun, and so make people realize how innocent was our behaviour. But she was anxious to discover who had written the letter to the Bishop. She came to the conclusion that it could only be one of the Smiths, he was the local incumbent. The Bishop would have ignored an enquiry from a layman, and no layman would have thought of writing to him.

  On our arrival at Walton Mr. and Mrs. Smith had called on us, and the call had been returned within the proper ten days and at the polite hour, which was still vital in social life. The correct cards had been left, and we had taken tea in the dark vicarage. Later they had come to tea with us and that was where the friendship had ended, for no further invitation had come and it was their turn. The ‘turn’ was important in the social activities of that day, and to step out of turn was to commit a gaffe.

  Mother wrote frankly to Mr. Smith, saying that she had been in touch with the Bishop of Worcester with regard to the fact that a writer who wished to remain anonymous had suggested that she and her daughter were German spies. She explained her education in Bonn, that her son was serving with the B.E.F. in France, and that the Blooms were not, and never had been, anything to do with Germany, but had come from Denmark. She suggested that the best way to clear up this matter was to meet in a friendly manner, and she asked him to tea. She said that she would not be discourteous, and her only wish was to end a difficult situation.

  The reply was most unpleasant.

  Mr. Smith refused to deny or accept the accusation. He would not meet her, and only wished the correspondence to cease, most certainly he would not reply to any further letter from her. It was clear that he did not believe a word of what she had said about her innocence.

  It sounds little today, but in that hour we were two women facing a threat which could easily be disastrous. The spy stigma was a virulent disease; it could end in arrest as a lot of other unfortunate people had already discovered.

  We felt like naughty children who had been accused of a sin they had not committed, and we had no idea how to clear ourselves, or how to live through the next few weeks when it must be so very much to the fore in our minds. Fate came to the rescue in a dreadful way. Mother went upstairs that evening to change her blouse (our loyal adherence to the old days at the rectory) and she came down looking different. Her face was ashy, her eyes had gone dark; she looked helplessly at me.

  ‘Is something the matter?’ I asked.

  She sat down, for a moment not speaking, and her hands were twisted together in her lap. Then when she did speak it sounded like some rusty old door wheezed open by force. ‘It’s come back,’ she said.

  ‘Not another lump?’

  She nodded. Whatever else went on in our lives, this malignant enemy stood his ground; it was another desperate situation about which we could do nothing.

  ‘It can’t have been there long or the radium people would have noticed it,’ I said, clutching at faint hopes before they rushed past me. ‘It could be a gland swollen up, or something?’

  Mother shook her head. ‘I suppose they’ll operate again. Like this, I shall gradually be hacked to pieces.’

  I said: ‘Let’s go round and see the doctor now? It’s no good waiting for bedtime, then lying awake and thinking about it all night. Let’s go round, shall we?’

  She wasn’t listening. I repeated it. She stayed silent for a time, then she said, ‘All right.’

  It was low tide and people were paddling on the beach, the children making a lot of noise. The hazy horizon told us good weather was coming, and here or there the grey smudge of a ship showed. We went to the doctor, and he saw us at once. He said it was a small thing and could be removed with a ‘local’, there was really nothing to worry about, for the next radium treatment would put it right. But we had seen the writing on the wall, and once one reads that, hope waves goodbye. This was the routine performance of this particular malady.

  The doctor telephoned the surgeon at Clacton whilst we were there, and he arranged to do it in Mother’s bedroom as before, and it could be early next week. I doubt if either of us listened to the conversation, for we were thinking of things ahead; we had for the moment forgotten the war horrors, and the tragedy of being dubbed as spies; we thanked him and walked back. People were turning home, for we had been longer than we had thought.

  ‘It’ll be all right,’ I told her, I hoped comfortingly.

  In a meaningless voice she said: ‘Yes, of course. It’ll be all right.’

  My father did not come down for this operation, really there was no need. I think privately he had been far more disturbed by the affair on the Naze than he had admitted, and he must have known he should have visited the vicar for us and have challenged him on our behalf. Mr. Smith might have told a brother in the cloth, and my father’s defence would have been far more effective than anything Mother or I could hope to put up.

  The only bright spot of that particular week was a letter from Joscelyn, telling us that he was in the south of France and would shortly be sailing for a secret destination. He wrote:

  I’m glad to be getting out of this and going where I know I shall like it better. I read much about it as a boy at Whitchurch, it should be interesting.

  As a child Joscelyn had been amazingly interested in the Book of the Dead, and we knew at once that he would now be going to Egypt, where he would be reasonably safe.

  The war was getting nowhere, and there were all sorts of troubles at home with shirkers, and with dock struggles and such. The amiable people of the world in which I lived seemed to have changed and to be showing new faces, which in itself was alarming and bewildering.

  On the day of the operation, the district nurse came in, and the two doctors, and I sat alone waiting for their return with tea ready in the rather charming sitting-room of Hertford House. I felt dismally alone. I remember I picked up a paper and in it was an article by Marie Corelli, friend of my extreme youth, and she startled me by the fact that she showed fresh reasons for the present world conditions.

  The public emotionalism of the hour is apt to become rather more hysterical than reasonable, and before we begin to groan and scream in the Press about the ‘unpatriotic’ it might be wiser for us to consider the position dispassionately, not only from the worker’s point of view, but also from that of the shirkers. The long and splendid peace enjoyed in these fortunate isles of Britain, a peace too little appreciated or gratefully recognized has created round us an atmosphere of comfort and security which has in its turn engendered personal selfishness. Like fine fruit kept too long in wadding, and beginning to deteriorate into rotten pulp, so we have hardly shown ourselves aware of anything going on outside our protective set. We have deliberately encouraged the workers not to work, just as we have deliberat
ely encouraged our shirkers to shirk …

  I, who had been brought up in an era when class was class, and had known Marie Corelli as a gifted lady who herself was not above the challenge of selfishness, was amazed to find that she could write in this vein. Had she changed?

  The Clacton surgeon came downstairs and sat down to have tea with me, the other doctor going off to another case. Mr. Percy Coleman was such a kind man and he asked if I had made any plans for my own future. I said that I had not, and he asked if I had a young man.

  ‘Oh no,’ I told him.

  He was surprised. ‘I should have thought that any girl with your face would have had a dozen,’ he said. ‘I don’t like to think of you being so alone. If a young man did come along, take an old chap’s advice, and think seriously about him.’

  ‘No one will come along,’ I ventured.

  ‘You never know.’ He finished his tea and then went to the waiting car. The last thing he said was, ‘Don’t forget that if a young man did come along, it might be the answer.’

  Late that night when Mother was asleep, I walked out into the calmly beautiful moonlit night. It was always so lovely at Walton when the people were away and the beach was still. I wondered what the surgeon had really meant, then I knew that he was a kind man and he had not liked to think of me being so alone. It was good of him to think for me.

  Chapter 8

  Mother went back to the Radium Institute for further treatment, and this time I stayed behind, our funds were too low for both of us to go. I was nervously apprehensive of being alone, for Hertford House was capacious, and at any time the Zeppelins might be over.

  I solved the difficulty the first two evenings by going to my room whilst it was still daylight, locking myself in and staying there. I did not think I could have faced the horror of going upstairs in the dark knowing nobody else was in the house with me, though not for the world would I have admitted that to Mother.