Part 13

Forthwith, the house was steeped in a perpetual aroma of baking cakes (of course the cousins couldn’t be neglected either), till I got nervous lest the Food Controller should make it his business to call. Upstairs we not only went cakeless, but in order to make sugar-ends meet, we drank unsweetened tea and coffee, a trial to all of us! And stewed fruit requiring sugar was also taboo.

On second consideration, I am inclined to think that it was not, first and foremost, my benevolence that led me to adopt Mick: it was primarily a matter of self-interest! Even in war time it is necessary to have a _little_ work done, if only occasionally, in the home; and if the household helpers were to take on yet another outside responsibility, in addition to the many already on their hands, I didn’t see where my work would come in at all—and I can’t do _everything_ in the evening, after I get home from town. As it was, we were already knitting morning, noon, and night, for every branch of the Services!

* * * * *

I put the collection of figures and capital letters that represented Mick’s address, into my pocket-book with other similar data. Periodically I handed Abigail pairs of socks or mittens, a body-belt, handkerchiefs, and similar utilities; and when any sea-going event, such as a raid on a submarine base, or a “scrap” in the North Sea, or a warship mined, brought the Navy specially to my mind, I would go into the Stores and order a parcel to be sent to Mick, adding one for Dick also, if the occasion happened to be a harrowing one. At such times one feels one cannot do enough for our men; and Dick and Mick little knew how often they benefited by the misfortunes of others.

The first time I received a letter from my devoted friend Michael McBlaggan, I admit I was a trifle bewildered, as I couldn’t for the moment “place” any member of the McBlaggan family; but when I read the document through and noted how kind he considered it that my friend Miss Abigail should have introduced us, light dawned, and I sent him a post-card saying I hoped he would always let me know if he wanted anything further in the way of woollens.

And thus the months wore on, punctuated by laboriously written communications from Dick, with an occasional card from Mick, who kept more in the background. The great attraction, undoubtedly, was Dick. He entered into personal details, asked if the young lady had made the cakes herself. Here I understand cook was not too absorbed in her own relations to insist that full credit should be given to the right person; and Abigail wrote explaining that as she was very much occupied, and too busy to attend to the cooking, a friend who lived with her always made the cakes. Whereupon by return post _I_ received a sloping, heavy-downstroked letter of thanks from the dutiful Dick!

On another occasion, Dick sent his photo (after being asked for it times out of number, I believe). It was not as satisfactory as it might have been, because it was an amateur snapshot group, and you know how easy it is to decipher the features when the hand camera has stood a quarter of a mile away (so as to include as much of the landscape as possible), and everyone’s face is in black shadow under a hat brim that has been tilted forward to exclude the full glare of the sun.

Unfortunately he omitted to put a =X= against himself, and as there were a dozen men in the group all in slouch hats and farm attire (to say nothing of the women and children), there was little to help us!

But he did say that, as Abigail had told him Canada was the one place above all others that she longed to see, and how she was hoping to go there as soon as the war was over, he had sent his picture taken on a Canadian farm. It was just a little gathering photographed on someone’s birthday.

Still, as he hadn’t given us any help in the matter, we had to decide ourselves which was the lonely sailor (though, as Abigail commented, she couldn’t understand how, with such a large collection of friends, he could ever have come to be so alone in the world). We picked out a thin, anæmic-looking young man, who was standing beside a comfortable, matronly woman in a shady hat and a big apron; and as her age might have been anything from thirty to sixty, we decided she was his mother, and I remarked what a nice homely soul she looked in her checked apron, and no wonder he was devoted to her, and how proud she must be of the dear lad—all of which Abigail accepted as a personal compliment.

* * * * *

Winter gave way to spring, and in like rotation mince pies were superseded by Swiss roll (to make which eggs were struck off our breakfast menu), and marmalade replaced the figs and dates in the parcels that went out to some unknown spot on the world’s ocean-spaces, all of which our wonderful Navy now controls.

Likewise, cretonne gave place to unbleached calico, my remnants being exhausted.

Existence downstairs fluctuated between heights of excitement and depths of gloom. The Crystal Palace authorities had a most unreasonable way of shipping men off to Mesopotamia, Salonika, Hongkong, Archangel, or anywhere else where they thought the air would prove salubrious, without a single word of inquiry as to whether the transfer met with cook’s approval. Hence, there was a series of constantly recurring blanks to mar what would otherwise have been a life of unsullied joyousness; and at such times of depression cook darkly hinted that punching tram tickets and ordering people to “move up a little on that side, please,” would be a deliriously exhilarating occupation compared with the monotony of cake-making for nobody-knows-who!

As every gift-giver is aware, there is invariably a grey hiatus between the sending off of the gift and the arrival of the recipient’s gratitude; hence, the bustle and excitement of getting off each parcel of eatables and pair of socks and tin of tobacco was always followed by a spell of wistful longing, while the postal authorities, out of sheer perversity (we presumed), held back the letter that would have meant so much to Abigail.

Moreover, Pamela was doing anything but contribute to the gaiety of nations! She was often in with Abigail on her spare evenings; and seemed to devote the time to perpetual croaks, on one occasion ending with the assurance that, for _her_ part, she should have nothing to do with a man who was merely a common sailor; self-respect, if nothing else, would make her look for something better than that.

I am glad to say Abigail had sufficient spirit left to retort that if he was good enough to fight for her, he was good enough for the bestowal of a cake. Nevertheless, a decided coolness sprang up between them; and for a week or two after this exchange of confidences, Abigail appeared to be sinking in a rapid “decline” (as they used to call it), and I felt I was positively inhuman to expect her to do a hand’s turn in the house.

Yet life was not entirely bereft of purple patches. The gloom consequent upon the Silence of the Navy lifted occasionally. As, for instance, when we had a bomb drop in our road. Yes, in our very road!—or, at any rate, it was only just round the corner; and, as everybody knows, one affectionately appropriates as one’s own all neighbouring roads (quite irrespective of the rentals, too) if they chance to possess a bomb. And, in any case, it _would_ have dropped in our road if only it had been a hundred yards nearer this way.

Ours was quite an up-to-date bomb, one of the sort that “went clean through the wood pavement to the depth of a couple of feet, and made a hole large enough to bury a man in, and not a sound window within a mile radius.” That’s the kind of bomb _ours_ was! And it was trimmed in the latest fashion, with a policeman, and a cord right round it, and two gentlemen with pickaxes who scratched the surface of the wood blocks occasionally in the intervals of looking important. They were wearing them like that in London at the time.

Of course we, in common with the whole parish, swelled with pride; for a while all social distinction was waived, rich and poor alike took the same interest in the bomb, or at least in the hole it had made; the bomb itself was removed so quickly that no local eye save that of the police and the pickaxe gentlemen ever saw it; though the milkman averred that, as he was driving to the station in the early dawn, he saw a van going in the opposite direction; he couldn’t see what was in it, hence it certainly was carrying away the bomb.

For the rest of us, however, we had to be content with a brave effort to get as near to the cord as we could, and crane our heads above our shorter brethren in order to catch a glimpse of the gaping void, while a thrill went down every spine, irrespective of bank balances.

And we might have remained in that splendidly democratic frame of back unto this day (no one being anxious to have any closer acquaintance than his neighbour with the bomb), had it not been that a piece of shrapnel was discovered in the garden next us. Whereupon the owner developed much upliftedness, and his servants bragged amain.

My own staff took it even more to heart than I did; and it was amazing how much time it was necessary for all hands to spend in the garden in order to cut a cabbage or gather three sprigs of parsley. Between them they didn’t leave an inch of the garden unexplored, and it is a fair-sized one.

Then the following morning Abigail rushed in excitedly with the news that she had discovered a piece of shrapnel in the bonfire débris. I went down to inspect, and was shown an oblong piece of curved iron, wider at one end than the other, and with a sharp spike at the wider end. I confess that to me it was wonderfully reminiscent of the old trowel that had lost its wooden handle and had lain unhonoured and unsung for a year in the leaf-heap; but I said nothing about _that_. Whatever its origin, it was crumpled up a bit with heat, one could see—not surprising either, as we had had a roaring bonfire two days running and burnt up all the pile of dead leaves.

When I was devising plans for its removal, they said, Hadn’t it better wait there till the master came home?

But the Head of Affairs is celebrated for his truthfulness; and he and that old trowel had lived on terms of unalloyed friendship for years (till the split came over the handle), and—well, I merely said I thought we would deal with it at once; no need to add to the master’s many worries.

Cook said: Oughtn’t it to be immersed in a pail of water? Her cousin at the Crystal Palace had told her that——, etc.

So we got a pail of water; I bade them stand well out of harm’s way, while I put it in. Of course they feebly offered to do it for me, but seemed relieved when I insisted on taking all risks; one ran to one side of the garden and one to the other, and then decided they should feel safer if they both stood close together.

Just as I was about to pick it up, cook shrieked out to me not to touch it with my hands, as it might be poisoned. I said I would take it up with a pair of tongs; but she said she thought it ought to be insulated with china. It might be electrified with the shock; you never knew what inventions those fiends were up to, and one of her cousins who was in the electricians’ corp (or something like that) had told her that——, etc.

So we compromised with a large china soup ladle and a big wooden spoon, which I used like chop sticks, and at last got the shrapnel into the water. Of course it was disappointing when it dropped heavily to the bottom without so much as a sizzle, much less a bang. Still—we had the comfortable feeling that we were on the safe side now.

Eventually I had it in my study. I said it would be safer there. But though the neighbourhood was thus debarred from seeing and handling it, the fame of it spread with amazing rapidity; and the lady across the road arrived quite early in the afternoon, having heard from her housemaid, who had heard it from her gardener, who had heard it from the road-sweeper, who had heard it from the grocer’s man, who had heard it from my cook, that I had a huge shell weighing half-a-hundredweight, covered with venomous spikes, all deadly poison, that had dropped down the chimney right into the centre of the kitchen fire, where it had been found, still hissing, when they went to rake out the ashes in the morning.

I didn’t display the fragment to my neighbour, nor to subsequent callers; it is such a pity to rob people of happiness. I merely said I thought it better to keep it well away from all vibration, as so far it hadn’t exploded. And one and all assured me I was very wise, and remembered pressing engagements elsewhere.

I reached the zenith of my fame when a police inspector, accompanied by a subordinate, rang the front door bell, and understood that I had in my possession a portion of a Zeppelin that had foundered on my lawn. It appeared that he had been up all night, and had worn out miles of shoe leather, hunting for the missing half of that Zeppelin; and had I the gondola as well? He seemed to suspect that I might be holding that back in order to have it stuffed and put under a glass shade in the drawing-room.

He looked disappointed when I showed him the fragment of iron; said they had plenty of bits that size; but he admitted that none of them had a spike like that at one end, and darkly hinted that it might be just the missing link they were looking for. Then he and the subordinate tenderly carried it away between them.

We all intend to visit the War Museum later on. Personally, I’m very keen to see what they ticket it.

* * * * *

Nevertheless, when each little excitement subsided, reaction set in, and Abigail’s spirits promptly dropped to zero. But at length a post card arrived in time to save her (and us) from utter collapse, and the bath-taps were once more polished to the tune of “Days and moments quickly flying.”

Thus, as I have already stated, winter merged into spring; and then spring made way for early summer (as I’ve known it do before), and we racked our brains to find a suitable substitute for pork pie.

Oh, yes, we had departed months ago from the “nothing but cake” rule. We decided that a thin, anæmic-looking young man (as per the photographic group) needed still more feeding up, and there wasn’t a sufficiency of body-building material in modern cake, as everyone knows who has sampled war-flour, even with currants _as well_ as carraways. So the Head of Affairs and I stoically relinquished the one thin slice of breakfast bacon that we had shared between us each morning, and devoted the proceeds to pork pies for the Navy—in accordance with the highest ideals of the Food Controller.

But, as every good housewife knows, you mustn’t feed your family—let alone your friends—on pork pie when there isn’t an R in the month; and with April nearing its end, and May looming, what was to take its place? As cook said, you are so dreadfully handicapped when you have to sew up your parcel in calico; you can’t send soused mackerel, or Welsh rabbit with Red Tape tied round you like that!

Abigail suggested potted shrimps; but cook scornfully reminded her that seafaring men, living in the midst of shrimps and salt fish all their days, weren’t likely to hanker after it at meal times. We compromised on savoury cheese patties—a come-down after the pork pie, we admitted; only we could think of nothing else equally nutritive and seasonable.

Unfortunately, when I ordered extra cheese to be sent weekly to meet the naval demands (and up to that time I hadn’t seen any rules for rationing cheese), the Stores “greatly regretted,” etc., but there was a scarcity at the moment; they could let me have a tin of golden syrup, however, or, they had a fair stock of candles.

So we removed cheese from our upstairs dietary, consoling ourselves with the thought that, at best, it was only half a course.

Meanwhile it was pleasant to know that the fleet had voted the cheese patties “A 1,” due, so cook said, to the fact that she had told Dick to put the patties into a _slow_ oven for ten or twelve minutes before eating, as “it made all the difference.”

* * * * *

I was beginning to get nervy with the strain of it all. You see, if a letter delayed in coming, then the question arose: Did they like the last parcel? or, had we sent, by chance, something they didn’t care for? And then my household assistants looked darkly at me; _I_ was to blame for ever having suggested lemon curd tartlets. As Abigail said, probably lemon didn’t agree with Dick, it didn’t always with thin people.

Cook acquiesced, adding that you never can tell! There was her eldest sister’s husband, a perfect terror for temper; yet look what he saved her in doctor’s bills—he might have had epileptic fits instead!

On the other hand, there was her uncle (no relation to her really, only her aunt’s husband, and second husband at that), do what you would, you couldn’t rouse him to take an interest in his food or anything else. Her poor aunt had spent a little fortune on medicine; and as bright a house as you could want, not shut off with a whole lot of garden like my house, but nice and close on to the pavement, with heaps of traffic going by. And exactly opposite, the broken railings that the motor-van ran into and killed the driver; heaps of people came to look at the place Sunday afternoons. But her uncle never took a bit of notice of it.

No, you _never_ can tell!

* * * * *

All the same, I felt guilty, and began to wonder how long I should be able to hold out! And then——

It was a lovely Saturday in May. We had just got up from a late lunch when there came a violent ring at the door bell. The Head of Affairs was in the hall at the moment, and he opened the door—to find two big sailor-men on the doorstep, each carrying a parcel. They inquired for me.

Now, like most other households, khaki and navy blue always find a welcome at our door for the sake of our own who are away, serving their country, and those who have already laid down their lives in the cause of Right and Justice.

So the Head of Affairs walked them straight in upon me, without waiting to ask for their birth certificates.

Did I say they were big? That isn’t the word for it! They were more than that, they were massive; tall, broad, well-made, and tough-looking, with beaming, round, red faces; they ought to have been pictured, just as they were, for a naval recruiting poster.

They looked a little confused, for the moment, at finding themselves precipitated into an unexpected drawing room; but they made straight for me, with that large, rolling stride inseparable from the British sailor. Fortunately the room isn’t beset in the orthodox fashion with a multitude of bric-à-brac obstacles in the way of small chairs and tables, for they seemed to sweep the decks fore and aft as they strode over the carpet, and I thought I should never find my hand again after they had both given it a hearty shake.

As I looked at the big, burly fellows, both of them well on to forty I should say, I knew instinctively that these were our two forlorn sailor-lads—our poor anæmic, lonely Dick, and desolate, unsympathised-with Mick. And I must say I never saw two men bear neglect more bravely!

At first, conversation seemed all on my side: they sat stiffly on the extreme edge of their chairs, while Dick answered in monosyllables, Mick seeming permanently tongue-tied! But the Head of Affairs produced cigars warranted to banish all nervous embarrassment and to induce a man to sit comfortably anywhere; and soon they were giving us details of their homes and relatives—small things, perhaps, that are apparently the same the world over, but mean so much to each individual. It was still Dick who did most of the talking. He was undoubtedly the more attractive of the two.

As they were constantly making wild clutches at their parcels which threatened to tumble off their knees without the slightest provocation, we offered to put them on the table. But Dick explained, with almost child-like confusion, that they were presents for me and the other lady. And would I mind taking them? He made Mick open his bundle first. There came to light an anchor, the like of which I had never seen before, though I had heard of their existence. It was about eighteen inches long, made of red velvet stuffed with sawdust so as to form an immense pin cushion. This was most elaborately decorated with beads—as I thought at first—but it proved to be pins with coloured glass heads. Lengthwise down the anchor was this inscription, carried out in large white-headed pins,

“AFFECTION’S OFFERING.”

There were various ribbon bows, and ends and tags finished off with beads, and a cord for hanging it on the wall; altogether, it was a most ornate, glittering creation!

Keeping company with the anchor was a wooden rolling pin, that had been enamelled a delicate pink, with hand-painted sprays of forget-me-nots at intervals. This also had bows and ends and a ribbon to hang it on the wall; it likewise bore an inscription:

“TO GREET YOU.”

While I praised the colouring, and the workmanship of both, I promptly chose the rolling pin.

Mick looked a trifle disappointed, and explained that he had really intended the anchor for me; and thought the rolling pin would be nice for the lady who had sent the cakes.

But I clung to the rolling pin; even though it wasn’t quite in line with my ideas of decorative art, its sentiment was so non-committal! Besides, I wanted Abigail to have the anchor. Even though it be but a passing incident, it is pleasant to receive an “affection’s offering” occasionally, when we are young.

Dick’s parcel contained a large box covered with shells, and very pretty it was. In a smaller packet he had a coral necklace. I chose—and praised—the box with a perfectly clear conscience this time. You have to go to a great deal of trouble before you can vulgarise a sea-shell; and, fortunately, the box-maker hadn’t taken any trouble at all; he had merely stuck them haphazard over the cardboard lid, with a border of small ones round the edges, and the effect was lovely. I also knew that Abigail would much prefer the necklace. You can’t carry a big box about with you, to display it casually to your friends.

My genuine pleasure over the presents thawed them to such an extent, that Dick then explained they had come round with the intention of taking us out to a picture palace; Mick wanted to take me, and he, Dick, would take Miss Abigail. But, he added hesitatingly, that perhaps, after all, that wasn’t the sort of thing I would care about; and he looked rather beseechingly at the Head of Affairs, hoping we should understand what he couldn’t manage to put very clearly into words.

We did understand. Gratitude is none too plentiful in these days that we could afford to flout it because it chanced to appear in unconventional guise. We appreciated all that they had planned to do by way of saying thank you for what we had done for them—and it was little enough we had done, when one considers our debt to such men as these!

I explained that though _I_ was engaged that evening, Abigail was not; and they must now show her those parcels.

She had no knowledge that they were in the house; and you should have seen her face when she answered the bell and I introduced Mr. Dick and Mr. Mick.

In reply to my inquiries as to what she could do in the way of hospitality, she was certain that cook could get a really nice meal ready for them in a few minutes; and if even cook couldn’t she, Abigail, could, and Pamela had just come in, and she would help; it wasn’t the slightest trouble—and she looked positively radiant as she took the two in tow.