How many German P.O.W.’s have escaped since the end of hostilities? How many still remain untraced? Why should letters to German P.O.W.’s in this country, sent by British nationals in this country, be subject to censorship? Will the Secretary of State for War relax restrictions so that German P.O.W.’s may send unrationed food to their homes at least for Christmas? What personal property, exactly, may a German P.O.W. take with him from England when he is being repatriated? What articles are prohibited, and why? Aggressive among the questions about export versus domestic consumption and the working hours lost by strikes since the end of the war, all the questions people are asking for their own sakes in these bewildered postwar years, the subject of the P.O.W. was somehow very reassuring in the fact that it was there at all.
I tried to say this, though I wasn’t articulate. John looked surprised. “Well, of course,” he said. But we know by this time that in a lot of places it isn’t of course.
From our viewpoint in the gallery Churchill, who lumbered in late during the question period, looked like a benevolent walrus. Photographs do not give an idea of the back of his neck, which shows a dowager bulge; Churchill in that way is much more photogenic than Sir Stafford, who takes a coldly realistic picture. Unfortunately, Churchill saw no occasion during our visit to speak. During a division he walked out, arm in arm with Eden, and Boothby following close behind.
After watching the unfortunate M.P.’s who do not sit near enough the Treasury desk to put up their feet, I began to feel a sympathetic crick in my back. The benches must be very uncomfortable for a long sit. Does this style of seat, I wonder, affect adversely one’s clarity of thought? Perhaps after a long term an M.P. achieves a sort of ecstatic other-worldly mental state, like the Buddha after long meditation.
At four o’clock, fairly certain that this time I couldn’t possibly miss another important moment by going away, I did go, because I had to. What followed, I was glad to discover later from John, was only a wrangle about the new taxation on advertising outlay. I carried away with me a general impression of the machinery of government as sniping from the Tories, countered by replies of quiet, dignified desperation from the ministers. Sample exchange:
QUESTION: What is being done about, or with, all the timber lying loose in Scotland? Considering the severe shortage of timber which is always being cited as an excuse for the delayed housing program, what about it?
ANSWER: The timber is being used for building, in the housing program.
QUESTION (or, rather, retort): It is not, as the Scots can testify: why is timber being imported and why does everyone say there is not enough timber for building, as long as this timber lies around as it does?
ANSWER: The gentleman in charge of timber is well aware that the Scottish timber exists, and it is not being wasted; it is all earmarked and will certainly be used in time.
RETORT: Well then, when? And why the delay?
ANSWER: In good time: the delay is owing to a scarcity of labor.
RETORT: Why is labor scarce?
ANSWER: Because laborers want houses. They won’t sign on for the job unless they can have houses. Houses can’t be built without timber, and timber can’t be had without labor.
On this note the subject is dropped, at least temporarily.
Then there was a gay little interlude on the subject of woolen underwear. According to the disgruntled questioners who spoke through the medium of their M.P., the export drive had gone too far on this commodity, and there is a grave shortage of woolen underwear in Britain. Does the gentleman responsible realize, asked the voice of England, that such a shortage may have a serious effect on the health of the nation?
The honorable gentleman in reply was reassuring if vague. Steps would be taken if steps were possible, he said.
Well, continued the M.P., would he please look into the matter?
The honorable gentleman confessed himself disturbed by the suggestion that he look into woolen underwear.
Laughter, believe it or not. Laughter in the House.
Then up jumped a ferocious-looking Labour lady, a rather stocky figure, swathed to her full chin in tweeds, with a collar and tie. She was also wrapped in a sense of righteousness. She fairly spat her words. Was the questioner aware, she said contemptuously, that people who use woolen underwear are merely mollycoddling themselves, and that they would be far better off without it?
If you aren’t wearing long pants this very minute, said I to myself, then I’m Chancellor of the Exchequer. Thoughtfully I made my way out to the riverside, into the magic lamp-studded dusk of Westminster.
15. ROYAL WEDDING DAY
They call it the day nursery in England, but I call it the playroom. That is where we keep the wireless, which I call the radio, because the Major doesn’t like wirelesses and there the noise is a long way off from his library. Thursday the twentieth of November was a foggy day which looked cold but turned out to be warm and muggy. Carola lagged over breakfast, looking at me out of the corner of her eyes over her glass of milk. She always lags. Usually I tell her to hurry up and get off to school, but Thursday the twentieth was a holiday. I don’t think she was quite sure about the holiday until breakfast was over. She was trying it out.
“What are you going to do about this ghastly thing, this holiday?” Mrs. Latch had asked me over the phone, tragically. “We’ll have to do something.” I reflected that she would have said the same thing, in the same way, if she had just sighted an eagle or an atomic bomb hovering over the cradle of her young. It’s the way she talks, a humorous desperation. “I was thinking of Bournemouth,” she continued. “I might take them over there. It’s the last week we’re allowed to use petrol. Isn’t it too awful.”
“Bournemouth? What can they do there?”
“I believe there’s a skating rink.” Mrs. Latch sounded faint with a sort of weary disgust of all skating rinks. “I suppose you’re going up to town for the wedding?” she asked, rallying.
“Me? Good Lord, no. Why should you suppose that?”
“I always suppose everyone but me does these things,” explained Mrs. Latch. “Then would you like to come to Bournemouth too? Surely not?”
“Why, I … Why yes, thanks very much.”
“You don’t have to, you know. It’ll be the most frightful bother. I can perfectly well take care of both of them. But if you’d really like to …”
“After all,” I said, approximating the Latch drawl, which is catching, “it’s our cross having children; we must bear it. We’re in this together. What time do we start?”
The royal wedding was broadcast from the moment the procession started, reported by first one watcher and then another as the Irish Coach rolled through the thronged streets of London and on to the Abbey. Carola rushed to the front of the radio when I turned it on, and sat down on the floor. One of the marching bands in the procession played “God Save the King,” and the Princess came out of the palace and took her place in the coach, her dress in the meantime described by the broadcaster down to the last detail. Excitement up in London was mounting. At intervals the crowd cheered. It was more than a cheer, really; it was a full-dress roar. Sounding out through our little playroom it was frightening, as crowd noises often are. Albne with Carola between the four walls of the room, all papered with Mother Goose pictures, I began to wonder what it felt like to hear that noise close to your ears, and to know you were the cause of it. Not so good, perhaps. Though of course the royals know they’re symbols and must be used to it, I reflected.
The roar came again, and more strains of “God Save the King.” To my great self-disgust I felt tears pushing into my eyes and nose: sheer mechanical reaction, I said, scolding in my brain. In another moment I would fall victim to that roaring cheer, and be swept on with it; I might even, possibly, cry.
Mrs. Alford knocked on the door, and I was myself again. “May we listen in?” she asked, smiling. They filed in—the cook, Nellie, Jan—and primly took seats on the toy chest and the small milking s
tools. The Irish Coach, said the commentator, was getting close to the Abbey. It reached the door. It stopped. The white Princess— “Oh, I do hope she’s wearing good thick underwear,” I said sincerely—stepped forth, ready to be married.
The radio went dead.
“The lights are out too,” called Nellie, on a reconnaissance survey in the hall. “It must be an overload cut. Well, isn’t that just …”
We all groaned. Carola, with a howl of anguish, rolled on the floor. “Oh, turn it on, Mummy; turn it on,” she said, weeping. All morning her eyes had been filled with a vision of the Princess in her wedding dress; she had walked softly ever since getting up for thinking of the bride. Carola is simply nuts on brides. “I can’t bear it,” she sobbed. “We’re missing everything.”
Then the radio went on again, right in the middle of the ceremony. Carola was quiet and her tears dried on her cheeks. A choir sang, my eyes filled, but this time I did not scold myself. Music is legitimately moving, I remembered; besides, it suddenly came into my mind, aside from everything else, this really is a young girl getting married to a young man. One is allowed to weep at weddings.
Rose ran into the middle of the playroom, calling, “Carola, come on! Carola, we’re going to Bournemouth! Get your coat!”
“Where’s your mummy, Rose?” I asked, but I knew Ann Latch would be hovering in the hall, bundled all anyhow in her winter clothes, too shy to come in.
“Come on in,” I called through the door. “We’re listening to the wedding. Come on, it’s only us.”
She glided in, murmuring with a dying fall, “We’ve been listening, too, all morning.”
She stood silent in the middle of the room while I went out and collected our wraps. I felt she would say as soon as we were out of the staff’s hearing, “Too ghastly, isn’t it?” and I waited for the inevitable phrase as we went down the stairs, but for once she didn’t say it. Her husband was Navy.
“That music is good,” she said instead. “Lovely voices.”
“Who was doing the speaking?” I asked as we climbed into the car. The children were quarreling already—”I want to sit on this side.” “No, I want to sit there myself.”
“The speaking?” she asked vaguely. “Oh, you mean the marriage service. The Archbishop of Canterbury, wasn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Whoever he was, he says ‘Hurly Gerst’ instead of ‘Holy Ghost.’ Didn’t you hear him?”
She screamed briefly with laughter. “Yes, I suppose he does.”
It was quite warm in spite of the fog. We rolled along between misty shrubs, on a misty country road, going to Bournemouth on the royal wedding day. It didn’t look much like a wedding day, but we all knew it was. There seemed somehow to be a connection between the day and Mrs. Latch. Up in London a girl was marrying a young man. Ann’s husband had been a naval officer, like the bridegroom. Unlike the bridegroom, Latch was killed in action. It was a tenuous connection, but it was there.
“Mummy, is it Bournemouth yet?” asked Carola.
“No, darling, not for ages.”
“You are a silly Billy, asking is it Bournemouth,” said Rose. “Sometimes you are very silly indeed, Carola. Bournemouth’s ever so far.”
“Well, I know that as well as you do. I’ve been to Bournemouth, haven’t I, Mummy? Haven’t I, Mummy? Haven’t I? So there, I did go to Bournemouth the same as you. Oh, look, there’s a tank, ever so big. I see a tank. You didn’t see a tank.”
“I do, I see two tanks. Three.”
“Four tanks! Five!”
“Shut up, Carola,” I said over my shoulder. “Stop that yelling.”
“Well, Rose is seeing my tanks. It’s not fair.”
“I can look at them just as well as you. There’s no law.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” I murmured, speaking under the noise to Ann. “Has Nurse spoken to you about these two? She’s going to separate them in class.”
“No, is she? Why?”
“Too much competition,” I said. From the back of the car came shrill cries: “I can so.” “Well, I can too. I can a million thousand times.”
“Hear that?” I said. “At school, evidently, it’s just as bad only more painful. Rose is better at sums than Carola, and so Carola can’t do anything now without one eye on Rose, even reading— she’s better at reading than Rose, but it doesn’t seem to make any difference—and it’s got them both down terribly.”
“Oh, dear,” sighed Mrs. Latch. “Do you believe in all that? That teacher terrifies me. She’s so efficient; it’s too dreadful. Have you decided on a boarding school yet?”
“No.”
“But three years isn’t too much time, you know. Schools are so frightfully crowded. I’ve put Rose down for several of them. You pay two guineas for the privilege of enrolling, and forfeit it if the child doesn’t go. Isn’t it too awful?”
“Well, I’m of a divided mind about boarding school.”
Ann Latch looked at me with the surprise, faint and far away, of an expiring woman. “Oh,” she said.
We drove through a town of swirling cloudy fog and flying flags. “Why are all the flags out, Mummy?” shouted Carola in my ear. Carola always talks very loud when she is with Rose.
“The wedding, I expect.”
“We’ve got our flag out,” said Rose smugly.
“We could if we wanted, but we don’t want any old flags.”
“Oh, shut up, Carola,” I said. “Please.”
The children had been fed and then left with an instructor at the skating rink. A thin coating of water lay over everything in Bournemouth, the pavements, the cars in the parking lot, the two gigantic figures of Father Christmas decorating the façade of a department store. It was not raining, but we breathed little drops of water as we walked, and water shone palely on Ann’s head bandanna.
Haphazardly, without system, we bought toys. Between us we bought more toys than either of us alone would ever have done. It was my idea to get the crepe-paper hats, but it was Ann who thought of the little tug that really works in water. If Ann hadn’t gone into the game shop I shouldn’t have thought of buying Snakes and Ladders. Ann became enthusiastic over a tiny doll’s house Christmas stocking, so I bought one, too, though privately I couldn’t give it much credit. Up and down Christchurch Road we went, talking all the time and occasionally getting lost.
“Look, they’ve put up some sort of figures in the Park,” said Ann. “Whatever is that object? A swan? Yes, and look at the dog. It must be for an illumination after dark.”
“But they’d never allow the electricity, would they? With the fuel crisis what it is?”
We went down into the Park for a closer look. I had been right: there was no electricity, but each figure had been painstakingly outlined in small shaded candles, ready to be lit.
“They’ve done everything, haven’t they? What a lot of trouble they’ve taken. Look—a big G.R. too. What a pity the children won’t be able to see it lit up; I suppose we’ll have to be back home before night.” Mrs. Latch’s voice was wistful. “It’s such a pity. I often think, you know, of giving up our cottage and moving to Bournemouth, or London. It’s so dreadfully lonely there for Rose.”
“But it’s healthy, and you’ve such a nice house.” Here we got lost again, and had to ask the way back to the main street.
“When she’s safe in boarding school I’ll move,” said Mrs. Latch. “Just think, to be free again. Absolutely heaven, isn’t it? Are you sure you don’t believe in boarding school?”
We talked about the children’s dancing class and the ways and means of getting them to the right place at the right time. “I’m having the most frightful time with the petrol permit people,” sighed Ann over our tea. “I put in for a petrol allowance to take her to school and dancing class and riding, and merely got a question back: can’t the child ride a bicycle?”
I snorted. “From that house? You’re miles away from any road where a bicycle can be used—and anyway she’s
only six. They must be mad.”
“They are mad,” said Mrs. Latch resignedly. “I have now sent a doctor’s certificate saying no, definitely the child cannot ride a bicycle to school. I expect I’ll get the permit in the end, but really, all those forms to fill in again … it’s too awful.”
“Charles won’t fill in forms,” I said. “How’s Rose getting along with her riding?”
“Oh, not at all, I’m sure. I never ask the mistress anything about Rose’s progress. I’m afraid to. And Carola?”
“I’ve no idea. I believe she fell off twice last Tuesday. I heard a rumor to that effect.” We finished our tea and picked up our coats. “Rose is having Sun Rays,” said Ann, “every Wednesday afternoon. Have you thought of Sun Rays for Carola?”
“Oh, I’ve thought of it, but do you really think she needs it? She never has colds. Well, hardly ever. And she takes that revolting malt stuff after lunch.”
“I suppose it’s all nonsense really. But the doctor recommended it for Rose. What with food getting so difficult …” Mournfully Ann drifted out to the street with me. It was almost dark, though not yet four. We looked at our watches; it was time to get the children.
Ann Latch said, “Have we forgotten anything, do you suppose?”
I turned and looked at her in surprise. “Parcels, you mean? I don’t—”