PART V. War

I

England was at war. It had come.

I can hardly express the difference between our feelings then and now. Now we might be horrified, perhaps surprised, but not really astonished that war should come, because we are all conscious that war does come;
that it has come in the past and that, at any moment, it might come again. But in 1914 there had been no war for–how long? Fifty years–more? True, there had been the ‘Great Boer War’, and skirmishes on the North-west Frontier, but those had not been wars involving one’s own country–they had been large army exercises, as it were; the maintenance of power in far places. This was different–we were at war with Germany.

I received a wire from Archie: ‘Come Salisbury if you can hope to see you.’ The Flying Corps would be among the first to be mobilised. ‘We must go,’ I said to mother. ‘We must.’

Without more ado we set off to the railway station. We had little money in hand; the banks were shut, there was a moratorium, and no means of getting money in the town. We got into the train, I remember, but whenever ticket collectors came, though we had three or four £5 notes that mother always kept by her, they refused them: nobody would take £5 notes. All over southern England, our names and addresses were taken by infinite numbers of ticket collectors. The trains were delayed and we had to change at various stations, but in the end we reached Salisbury that evening. We went to the County Hotel there. Half an hour after our arrival Archie came. We had little time together: he could not even stay and dine. We had half an hour, no more. Then he said goodbye and left.

He was sure, as indeed all the Flying Corps was, that he would be killed, and that he would never see me again. He was calm and cheerful, as always, but all those early Flying Corps boys were of the opinion that a war would be the end, and quickly, of at least the first wave of them. The German Air Force was known to be powerful.

I knew less, but to me also it came with the same certainty that I was saying goodbye to him, I should never see him again, though I, too, tried to match his cheerfulness and apparent confidence. I remember going to bed that night and crying and crying until I thought I would never stop, and then, quite suddenly, without warning, falling exhausted into such a deep sleep that I did not wake till late the following morning.

We travelled back home, giving more names and addresses to ticket collectors. Three days later, the first war postcard arrived from France. It had printed sentences on it which anyone sending a card was only allowed to cross off or leave in: such things as AM WELL, AM IN HOSPITAL, and so on. I felt, when I got it, for all its meagre information, that it was a good omen.

I hurried to my detachment in the V.A.D.s to see that was going on. We made a lot of bandages and rolled them, prepared baskets full of swabs for hospitals. Some of the things we did were useful, far more of them were no use at all, but they passed the time, and soon–grimly soon–the first casualties began to arrive. A move was made to serve refreshments to the men as they arrived at the station. This, I must say, was one of the silliest ideas that any Commandant could possibly have had. The men had been heavily fed all the way along the line from Southampton, and when they finally arrived at Torquay station the main thing was to get them out of the train on to the stretchers and ambulances, and then to the hospital.

The competition to get into the hospital (converted from the Town Hall) and do some nursing had been great. For strictly nursing duties those chosen first had been mostly the middle-aged, and those considered to have had some experience of looking after men in illness. Young girls had not been felt suitable. Then there was a further consignment known as ward-maids, who did the house-work and cleaning of the Town Hall: brasses, floors, and such things; and finally there was the kitchen staff. Several people who did not want to nurse had applied for kitchen work; the ward-maids, on the other hand, were really a reserve force, waiting eagerly to step up into nursing as soon as a vacancy should occur. There was a staff of about eight trained hospital nurses; all the rest were V.A.D.s.

Mrs Acton, a forceful lady, acted as Matron, since she was senior officer of the V.A.D.s. She was a good disciplinarian; she organised the whole thing remarkably well. The hospital was capable of taking over two hundred patients; and everyone was lined up to receive the first contingent of wounded men. The moment was not without its humour. Mrs Spragge, General Spragge’s wife, the Mayoress, who had a fine presence, stepped forward to receive them, fell symbolically on her knees before the first entrant, a walking case, motioned him to sit down on his bed, and ceremonially removed his boots for him. The man, I must say, looked extremely surprised, especially as we soon found out that he was an epileptic, and not suffering from war wounds of any kind. Why the haughty lady should suddenly remove his boots in the middle of the afternoon was more than he could understand.

I got into the hospital, but only as a ward-maid, and set to zealously on the brass. However, after five days I was moved up to the ward. Many of the middle-aged ladies had done little real nursing at all, and though full of compassion and good works, had not appreciated the fact that nursing consists largely of things like bed-pans, urinals, scrubbing of mackintoshes, the clearing up of vomit, and the odour of suppurating wounds. Their idea of nursing had, I think, been a good deal of pillow-smoothing, and gently murmuring soothing words over our brave men. So the idealists gave up their tasks with alacrity: they had never thought they would have to do anything like this, they said. And hardy young girls were brought to the bedside in their places.

It was bewildering at first. The poor hospital nurses were driven nearly frantic by the number of willing but completely untrained volunteers under their orders. They had not got even a few fairly well-trained probationer nurses to help them. With another girl, I had two rows of twelve beds; we had an energetic Sister–Sister Bond–who, although a first-class nurse, was far from having patience with her unfortunate staff. We were not really unintelligent, but we were ignorant. We had been taught hardly anything of what was necessary for hospital service; in fact all we knew was how to bandage, and the general theories of nursing. The only things that did help us were the few instructions we had picked up from the District Nurse.

It was the mysteries of sterilisation that foxed us most–especially as Sister Bond was too harassed even to explain. Drums of dressings came up, ready to be used in treatment on the wounds, and were given into our charge. We did not even know at this stage that kidney dishes were supposed to receive dirty dressings, and the round bowls pure articles. Also, as all the dressings looked extremely dirty, although actually surgically clean (they had been baked in the steriliser downstairs) it made it very puzzling. Things sorted themselves out, more or less, after a week. We discovered what was wanted of us, and were able to produce it. But Sister Bond by then had given up and left. She said her nerves wouldn’t stand it.

A new Sister, Sister Anderson, came to replace her. Sister Bond had been a good nurse–quite first-class, I believe, as a surgical nurse. Sister Anderson was a first-class surgical nurse too, but she was also a woman of common sense and with a reasonable amount of patience. In her eyes we were not so much unintelligent as badly trained. She had four nurses under her on the two surgical rows, and she proceeded to get them into shape. It was Sister Anderson’s habit to size up her nurses after a day or two, and to divide those whom she would take trouble to train and those who were, as she put, ‘only fit to go and see if the crock is boiling’. The point of this latter remark was that at the end of the ward were about four enormous boiling urns. From these was taken boiling water for making fomentations. Practically all wounds were treated at that time with wrung-out fomentations, so seeing whether the crock was boiling was the first essential in the test. If the wretched girl who had been sent to ‘see if the crock was boiling’ reported that it was, and it was not, with enormous scorn Sister Anderson would demand: ‘Don’t you even know when water is boiling, Nurse?’

‘It’s got some steam puffing out of it,’ said the nurse.

‘That’s not steam,’ said Sister Anderson. ‘Can’t you hear the sound of it? The singing sound comes first, then it quietens down and doesn’t puff, and then the real steam comes out.’ She demonstrated, murmuring to herself as she moved away, ‘If they send me any more fools like that I don’t know what I shall do!’

I was lucky to be under Sister Anderson. She was severe but just. On the next two rows there was Sister Stubbs, a small sister, gay and pleasant to the girls, who often called them ‘dear’ and, having lured them into false security, lost her temper with them vehemently if anything went wrong. It was like having a bad-tempered kitten in charge of you: it may play with you, or it may scratch you.

From the beginning I enjoyed nursing. I took to it easily, and found it, and have always found it, one of the most rewarding professions that anyone can follow. I think, if I had not married, that after the war I should have trained as a real hospital nurse. Maybe there is something in heredity. My grandfather’s first wife, my American grandmother, was a hospital nurse.

On entering the nursing world we had to revise our opinions of our status in life, and our present position in the hierarchy of the hospital world. Doctors had always been taken for granted. You sent for them when you were ill, and more or less did what they told you–except my mother: she always knew a great deal more than the doctor did, or so we used to tell her. The doctor was usually a friend of the family. Nothing had prepared me for the need to fall down and worship.

‘Nurse, towels for the doctor’s hands!’

I soon learned to spring to attention, to stand, a human towel-rail, waiting meekly while the doctor bathed his hands, wiped them with the towel, and, not bothering to return it to me, flung it scornfully on the floor. Even those doctors who were, by secret nursing opinion, despised as below standard, in the ward now came into their own and were accorded a veneration more appropriate to higher beings.

Actually to speak to a doctor, to show him that you recognised him in any way, was horribly presumptuous. Even though he might be a close friend of yours, you were not supposed to show it. This strict etiquette was mastered in due course, but once or twice I fell from grace’ On one occasion a doctor, irritable as doctors always are in hospital life–not, I think because they feel irritable but because it is expected of them by the sisters–exclaimed impatiently, ‘No, no, Sister, I don’t want that kind of forceps. Give me…’ I’ve forgotten the name of it now, but, as it happened, I had one in my tray and I proffered it. I did not hear the last of that for twenty-four hours.

‘Really, Nurse, pushing yourself forward in that way. Actually handing the forceps to Doctor yourself!’

‘I’m so sorry, Sister,’ I murmured submissively. ‘What ought Ito have done?’

‘Really, Nurse, I think you should know that by now. If Doctor requires anything which you happen to be able to provide, you naturally hand it to me, and I hand it to Doctor.’

I assured her that I would not transgress again.

The flight of the more elderly would-be nurses was accelerated by the fact that our early cases came in straight from the trenches with field dressings on, and their heads full of lice. Most of the ladies of Torquay had never seen a louse–I had never seen one myself–and the shock of finding these dreadful vermin was far too much for the older dears. The young and tough, however, took it in their stride. It was usual for one of us to say to the other in a gleeful tone when the next one came on duty, ‘I’ve done all my heads,’ waving one’s little tooth comb triumphantly.

We had a case of tetanus in our first batch of patients. That was our first death. It was a shock to us all. But in about three weeks’ time I felt as though I had been nursing soldiers all my life, and in a month or so I was quite adept at looking out for their various tricks.

‘Johnson, what have you been writing on your board?’ Their boards, with the temperature charts pinned on them, hung on the bottom of the bed.

‘Writing on my board, Nurse?’ he said, with an air of injured innocence. ‘Why nothing. What should I?’

‘Somebody seems to have written down a very peculiar diet. I don’t think it was Sister or Doctor. Most unlikely they would order you port wine.’

Then I would find a groaning man saying, ‘I think I’m very ill, Nurse. I’m sure I am–I feel feverish.’

I looked at his healthy though rubicund face and then at his thermometer, which he held out to me, and which read between 104 and 105.

‘Those radiators are very useful, aren’t they?’ I said. ‘But be careful: if you put it on too hot a radiator the mercury will go completely.’

‘Ah, Nurse,’ he grinned, ‘you don’t fall for that, do you? You young ones are much more hard-hearted than the old ones were. They used to get in no end of a paddy when we had temperatures of 104; they used to rush off to Sister at once.’

‘You should be ashamed of yourself.’

‘Ah, Nurse, it’s all a bit of fun.’

Occasionally they had to go to the X-ray department, at the other end of the town, or for physiotherapy there. Then one used to have a convoy of six to look after, and one had to watch out for a sudden request to cross the road ‘because I’ve got to buy a pair of bootlaces, Nurse’. You would look across the road and see that the bootshop was conveniently placed next to The George and Dragon. However, I always managed to bring back my six, without one of them giving me the slip and turning up later in a state of exhilaration. They were terribly nice, all of them.

There was one Scotsman whose letters I used to have to write. It seemed astonishing that he should not be able to read or write, since he was practically the most intelligent man in the ward. However, there it was, and I duly wrote letters to his father. To begin with, he sat back and waited for me to begin. ‘We’ll write to my father now, Nurse,’ he commanded.

‘Yes. “Dear Father,’ I began. ‘What do I say next?’

‘Och, just say anything you think he’d like to hear.’

‘Well–I think you had better tell me exactly.’

‘I’m sure you know.’

But I insisted that some indication should be given me. Various facts were then revealed: about the hospital he was in, the food he had, and so on. He paused. ‘I think that’s all-’

“‘With love from your affectionate son,’?’ I suggested.

He looked deeply shocked.

‘No, indeed, Nurse. You know better than that, I hope.’

‘What have I done wrong?’

‘You should say “From your respectful son.’ We won’t mention love or affection or words like that–not to my father.’

I stood corrected.

The first time I had to accompany an operation case into the theatre I disgraced myself. Suddenly the theatre walls reeled about me, and only another nurse’s firm arm closing round my shoulders and ejecting me rapidly saved me from disaster. It had never occurred to me that the sight of blood or wounds would make me faint. I hardly dared face Sister Anderson when she came out later. She was, however, unexpectedly kind. ‘You mustn’t mind, Nurse,’ she said. ‘It happened to many of us the first time or so. For one thing you are not prepared for the heat and the ether together; it makes you feel a bit squeamish–and that was a bad abdominal operation, and they are the most unpleasant to look at.’

‘Oh Sister, do you think I shall be all right next time?’

‘You’ll have to try and be all right next time. And if not you’ll have to go on until you are. Is that right?’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘that’s right.’

The next one she sent me into was quite a short one, and I survived. After that I never had any trouble, though I used sometimes to turn my eyes away from the original incision with the knife. That was the thing that upset me–once it was over I could look on quite calmly and be interested. The truth of it is one gets used to anything.


II

‘I think it so wrong, dear Agatha,’ said one of my mother’s elderly friends, ‘that you should go and work in hospital on a Sunday. Sunday is the day of rest. You should have your Sundays off.’

‘How do you suppose the men would have their wounds dressed, get themselves washed, be given bed-pans, have their beds made and get their teas if nobody worked on a Sunday?’ I asked. ‘After all, they couldn’t do without all those things for twenty-four hours, could they?’

‘Oh dear, I never thought of that. But there ought to be some arrangement.’

Three days before Christmas Archie suddenly got leave. I went up with my mother to London to meet him. It was in my mind, I think, that we might get married. A good many people were doing so now.

‘I don’t see,’ I said, ‘how we can go on being careful and thinking of the future with everyone getting killed like this.’

My mother agreed. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I should feel just as you do. One can’t think of risks and things like that.’

We did not say so, but the probabilities of Archie’s being killed were: airly high. Already the casualties had startled and surprised people. A lot of my own friends had been soldiers, and had been called up at once. Every day, it seemed, one read in the paper that somebody one knew had been killed.

It was only three months since Archie and I had seen each other, yet those three months had been, I suppose, acted out in what might have been called a different dimension of time. In that short period I had lived through an entirely new kind of experience: the death of my friends, uncertainty, the background of life being altered. Archie had had an equal amount of new experience, though in a different field. He had been in the middle of death, defeat, retreat, fear. Both of us had lived a large tract on our own. The result of it was that we met almost as strangers.

It was like learning to know each other all over again. The difference between us showed up at once. His own determined casualness and flippancy–almost gaiety–upset me. I was too young then to appreciate that that was for him the best way of facing his new life. I, on the other hand, had become far more earnest, emotional, and had put aside my own light flippancy of happy girlhood. It was as though we were trying to reach each other, and finding, almost with dismay, that we had forgotten how to do so.

Archie was determined on one thing–he made that clear from the first: there was no question of marriage. ‘Entirely the wrong thing to do,’ he said. ‘All my friends think so. Just rushing into things, and then what happens? You stop one, you’ve had it, and you’ve left behind a young widow, perhaps a child coming–it’s selfish and wrong.’

I didn’t agree with him. I argued passionately on the other side. But one of Archie’s characteristics was certainty. He was always sure of what he ought to do and what he was going to do. I don’t mean that he never changed his mind–he could, and did, suddenly, and very quickly sometimes. In fact he could change right over, seeing black as white and white as black. But when he had done so he was just as sure about it. I accepted his decision and we set about enjoying those precious few days we would have together.

The plan was that after a couple of days in London I should go down with him to Clifton, and spend the actual days of Christmas with him at his stepfather’s and mother’s house. That seemed a very right and proper arrangement. Before leaving for Clifton, however, we had what was to all intents and purposes a quarrel. A ridiculous quarrel, but quite a heated one.

Archie arrived at the hotel on the morning of our departure for Clifton, with a present for me. It was a magnificent dressing-case, completely fitted inside, and a thing that any millionairess might have confidently taken to the Ritz. If he had brought a ring, or a bracelet, however expensive, I should not have demurred–I should have accepted it with eager pride and pleasure–but for some reason I revolted violently against the dressing-case. I felt it was an absurd extravagance, and not a thing I should ever use. What was the good of my going back home to continue nursing in a hospital with an exciting dressing-case suitable for a holiday in peacetime abroad? I said I didn’t want it, and he would have to take it back. He was angry; I was angry. I made him take it away. An hour later he returned and we made it up. We wondered what on earth had come over us. How could we be so foolish? He admitted that it was a silly kind of present. I admitted that I had been ungracious to say so. As a result of the quarrel and the subsequent reconciliation we somehow felt closer than before.

My mother went back to Devon, and Archie and I travelled to Clifton. My future mother-in-law continued to be charming in a rather excessive Irish style. Her other son, Campbell, said to me once, ‘Mother is a very dangerous woman.’ I didn’t understand at the time, but I think I know now what he meant. Hers was the kind of gushing affection which could change just as rapidly into its opposite. At one moment she wished to love her future daughter-in-law, and did so; at another moment nothing would be too bad for her.

We had a tiring journey to Bristol: the trains were in a state of chaos still, and usually hours late. Eventually, though, we arrived, and had a most affectionate welcome. I went to bed, exhausted by the emotions of the day and travelling, and also by contending with my natural shyness, so that I could say and do the right thing with my future in-laws.

It must have been half an hour later; perhaps an hour. I had gone to bed, but was not yet asleep, when there was a tap at the door. I went and opened it. It was Archie. He came inside, shut the door behind, and said abruptly: ‘I’ve changed my mind. We’ve got to get married. At once. We will marry tomorrow.’

‘But you said…’

‘Oh, never mind what I said. You were right and I was wrong. Of course it is the only sensible thing to do. We’ll have two days together before I go back.’

I sat down on the bed, my legs feeling rather weak. ‘But–but you were so certain.’

‘What does that matter? I’ve changed my mind.’

‘Yes, but–’ there was so much that I could not bring out. I had always suffered from being tongue-tied when I most wanted to say things clearly.

‘It’s going to be all so difficult,’ I said weakly. I could always see what Archie could not: the hundred and one disadvantages in a prospective action. Archie only saw the essential itself. At first it had seemed to him absolute folly to get married in the middle of wartime; now, a day later, he was equally determined that it was the only right thing for us to do. Difficulties in the actual accomplishment, the upset feelings of all our nearest relations, made no impact on him at all. We argued. We argued much as we had done twenty-four hours before, this time the opposite way round. Needless to say, again he won.

‘But I don’t believe we can get married so suddenly,’ I said doubtfully.

‘It’s so difficult.’

‘Oh yes we can,’ said Archie cheerfully. ‘We can get a special licence or something–the Archbishop of Canterbury.’

‘Isn’t that very expensive?’

‘Yes, I believe it is, rather. But I expect we’ll manage. Anyway, we’ve got to. No time for anything else. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. So that’s all right?’

I said weakly that it was. He left me, and I stayed awake most of the night worrying. What would mother say? What would Madge say? What would Archie’s mother say? Why couldn’t Archie have agreed to our marriage in London, where everything would have been easy and simple. Oh well, there it was. I finally fell asleep exhausted.

A great many of the things that I had foreseen came true the next morning. First of all our plans had to be broken to Peg. She immediately burst into hysterical tears, and retired to bed.

‘That my own son should do this to me,’ she gasped, as she went up the stairs.

‘Archie,’ I said, ‘we’d better not. It’s upset your mother terribly.’ What do I care if it’s upset her or not?’ said Archie. ‘We’ve been engaged for two years, she must be used to the idea.’

‘She seems to feel it terribly now.’

‘Rushing it on me in this way,’ Peg sobbed, as she lay in a darkened room with a handkerchief soaked in eau-de-Cologne on her forehead. Archie and I looked at each other, rather like two guilty dogs. Archie’s stepfather came to the rescue. He brought us down from Peg’s room and said to us: ‘I think you two are doing quite the right thing. Now don’t worry about Peg. She always gets upset if she’s startled. She is very fond of you, Agatha, and she will be pleased as anything about this afterwards. But don’t expect her to be pleased today. Now you two go out and get on with your plans. I daresay you haven’t got too much time. Remember, I am sure, quite sure, that you are doing the right thing.’

Though I had started the day faintly tearful and apprehensive myself, within another two hours I was full of fighting spirit. The difficulties in the way of our marriage were intense, and the more it seemed impossible that we could be married that day the more I, as well as Archie, became determined that we would be.

Archie first consulted a former ecclesiastical headmaster of his. A special licence was said to be obtainable from Doctor’s Commons and cost £25. Neither Archie nor I had £2,5, but that we brushed aside, as we could no doubt borrow it. What was more difficult was that it had to be obtained personally. One could not get such a thing on Christmas Day, so in the end a marriage that day appeared quite impossible. Special Licence was out. We next went to a registry office. There again we were rebuffed. Notice had to be given for a period of fourteen days before the ceremony could be performed. Time slipped away. Finally a kindly registrar, whom we had not seen before, back from his elevenses, came up with the answer. ‘My dear chap,’ he said to Archie, ‘you live here, don’t you? I mean, your mother and stepfather reside here?’

‘Yes,’ said Archie.

‘Well then, you keep a bag here, you keep clothes here, you keep some of your effects here, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then you don’t need a fortnight’s notice. You can buy an ordinary licence and get married at your parish Church this afternoon.’

The licence cost £8. We could manage £8. After that it was a wild rush.

We hunted down the Vicar at the church at the end of the road. He was not in. We found him in a friend’s house. Startled, he agreed to perform the ceremony. We rushed home to Peg, and to snatch a little sustenance. ‘Don’t speak to me,’ she cried. ‘Don’t speak to me,’ and locked her door.

There was no time to be lost. We hurried along to the church, Emmanuel, I think it was called. Then we found we had to have a second witness. Just about to rush out and catch a complete stranger, by utter chance I came across a girl whom I knew. I had stayed with her in Clifton a couple of years before. Yvonne Bush, though startled, was ready enough to be an impromptu bridesmaid and our witness. We rushed back. The organist was doing some practising, and offered to play the Wedding March.

Just as the ceremony was about to start, I thought for one sad moment that no bride could have taken less trouble about her appearance. No white dress, no veil, not even a smart frock. I was wearing an ordinary coat and skirt with a small purple velvet hat, and I had not even had time to wash my hands or face. It made us both laugh.

The ceremony was duly performed–and we tackled the next hurdle. Since Peg was still prostrated we decided we would go down to Torquay, stay at the Grand Hotel there, and spend Christmas Day with my mother. But I had first, of course, to ring her up and announce what had happened. It was extremely difficult to get through on the telephone, and the result was not particularly happy. My sister was staying there and greeted my announcement with a great deal of annoyance.

‘Springing it like this on mother! You know how weak her heart is! You are absolutely unfeeling!’

We caught the train–it was very crowded–and we arrived at last at Torquay at midnight, having managed to book ourselves a room by telephone. I still had a slightly guilty feeling: we had caused such a lot of trouble and inconvenience. Everybody we were most fond of was annoyed with us. I felt this but I don’t think Archie did. I don’t think it occurred to him for one moment; and if it did, I don’t think he minded. A pity that everyone got upset and all that, he would have said, but why should they? Anyway, we had done the right thing–he was sure of that. But there was one thing that made him nervous. The moment had come. We climbed on the train, and he suddenly produced, rather like a conjuror, an extra suitcase. ‘I hope,’ he said nervously to his new young bride, ‘I hope that you are not going to be cross about this.’

‘Archie! It’s the dressing-case!’

‘Yes. I didn’t take it back. You don’t mind, do you?’

‘Of course I don’t mind. It’s lovely to have it.’

There we were, going on a journey with it–and our wedding journey too. So that was got over safely, and Archie was enormously relieved: I think he thought that I was going to be angry about it.

If our wedding day had been one long struggle against odds, and a series of crises, Christmas Day was benign and peaceful. Everyone had had time to get over their shock. Madge was affectionate, had forgotten all censure; my mother had recovered from her heart condition and was thoroughly happy in our happiness. Peg, I hoped, had recovered. (Archie assured me that she would have.) And so we enjoyed Christmas Day very much.

The next day I travelled with Archie to London, and said goodbye to him as he went off to France again. I was not to see him for another six months of war.



I resumed work at the hospital, where news of my present status had preceded me.

‘Nurrrse!’ This was Scottie, rolling his is r’s a great deal and tapping on the foot of his bed with his little cane. ‘Nurrrse, come here at once!’ I came. ‘What’s this I hear? You’ve been getting yourself married?’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I have.’

‘D’ye hear that?’ Scottie appealed to the whole row of beds. ‘Nurse Miller’s got married. What’s your name now, Nurse?’

‘Christie.’

‘Ah, a good Scottish name, Christie. Nurse Christie–d’ye hear that, Sister? This is Nurse Christie now.’

‘I heard,’ said Sister Anderson. ‘And I wish you every happiness,’ she added formally. ‘It’s made plenty of talk in the ward.’

‘You’ve done well for yourself, Nurse,’ said another patient. ‘You’ve married an officer, I hear?’ I admitted that I had risen to that giddy height. ‘Aye, you’ve done very well for yourself. Not that I’m surprised–you’re a nice-looking girl.’

The months went on. The war settled down to a grisly stalemate. Half our patients seemed to be trench feet cases. It was intensely cold that winter, and I had terrible chilblains on both hands and feet. The eternal scrubbing of mackintoshes is not helpful to chilblains on the hands. I was given more responsibility as time went on, and I liked my work. One settled into a routine of doctors and nurses. One knew the surgeons one respected; one knew the doctors who were secretly despised by the Sisters. There were no more heads to delouse and no more field dressings; base hospitals were now established in France. But still we were nearly always crowded. Our little Scotsman who had been there with a fractured leg left at last, convalescent. Actually he had a fall on the station platform during the journey, but so anxious was he to get to his native town in Scotland that he never mentioned it and concealed the fact that his leg had been re-fractured. He suffered agonies of pain, but finally managed to arrive at his destination, and his leg had to be reset all over again.

It is all somewhat of a haze now, yet one recalls odd instances standing out in one’s memory. I remember a young probationer who had been assisting in the theatre and had been left behind to clear up, and I had helped her take an amputated leg down to throw into the furnace. It was almost too much for the child. Then we cleared up all the mess and the blood together. She was, I think, too young and too new to it to have been given that task to do alone so soon.

I remember a serious-faced sergeant whose love letters I had to write for him. He could not read or write. He told me roughly what he wanted me to say. ‘That will do very nicely, Nurse,’ he would nod, when I read it over to him. ‘Write it in triplicate, will you.’

‘In triplicate?’ I said.

‘Ay,’ he said. ‘One for Nellie, and one for Jessie and one for Margaret.’

‘Wouldn’t it be better to vary them a little?’ I asked. He considered. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘I’ve told them all the essentials.’ So each letter began the same: ‘Hope this finds you as it leaves me, but more in the pink’–and ended: ‘Yours till Hell freezes.’

‘Won’t they find out about each other?’ I asked with some curiosity. ‘Och, I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘They’re in different towns, you see, and they don’t know each other.’

I asked if he was thinking of marrying any of them.

‘I might,’ he said, ‘and I might not. Nellie, she is a fine one to look at, a lovely girl. But Jessie, she’s more serious, and she worships me–she thinks the world of me, Jessie does.’

‘And Margaret?’

‘Margaret? Well, Margaret,’ he said, ‘she makes you laugh, Margaret does–she’s a gay girl. However, we’ll see.’

I have often wondered whether he did marry any of those three, or whether he found a fourth who combined good looks, being a good listener and being gay as well.



At home things went on much the same. Lucy had come as a replacement to Jane, and always spoke of her in awe as ‘Mrs Rowe’: ‘I do hope I shall be able to fill Mrs Rowe’s place–it’s such a big responsibility taking on after her.’ She was dedicated to the future of coming to be cook to me and Archie after the war.

One day she came to my mother, looking very nervous, and said: ‘I hope you won’t mind, Ma’am, but I really feel I must go and join the WAAFs. I hope you won’t think it wrong of me.’

‘Well, Lucy,’ said my mother, ‘I think you are quite right. You are a young, strong girl: just what they want.’

So Lucy departed, in tears at the last, hoping we would get on all right without her and saying she didn’t know what Mrs Rowe would think. With her, also, went the house-parlourmaid, the beautiful Emma. She went to get married. They were replaced by two elderly maid-servants to whom the hardships of wartime were unbelievable and deeply resented.

‘I’m sorry, Madam,’ said the elderly Mary, trembling with rage, after a couple of days, ‘but it’s not right, the food we’re given. We’ve had fish two days this week, and we’ve had insides of animals. I’ve always had a good meat meal at least once a day.’ My mother tried to explain that food was now rationed and that one had to eat fish and what was prettily called ‘edible offal’ on at least two or three days of the week. Mary merely shook her head, and said, ‘It isn’t right, it isn’t treating one right.’ She also said that she had never been asked to eat margarine before. My mother then tried the trick which many people tried during the war, of wrapping the margarine in the butter paper and the butter in the margarine paper.

‘Now if you taste these two,’ she said, ‘I don’t believe you’ll be able to tell margarine from butter.’

The two old pussies looked scornful, then tried and tested. They had no doubts: ‘It’s absolutely plain which is which, Ma’am, no doubt about it.’

‘You really think there is so much difference?’

‘Yes, I do. I can’t bear the taste of margarine–neither of us can. It makes us feel quite sick.’ They handed it back to my mother with disgust. ‘You do like the other?’

‘Yes, Ma’am, very good butter. No fault to find with that.’

‘Well, I might as well tell you,’ said my mother, ‘that that is the margarine; this is the butter.’

At first they wouldn’t believe it. Then when they were convinced they were not pleased.

My grandmother was now living with us. She used to fret a great deal at my returning alone to the hospital at night.

‘So dangerous, dear, walking home by yourself. Anything might happen. You must make some other arrangement.’

‘I don’t see what other arrangement I could make, Grannie. And anyway, nothing has happened to me. I’ve been doing it for several months.’

‘It’s not right. Somebody might speak to you.’

I reassured her as best I could. My hours of duty were two o’clock till ten, and it was usually about half-past ten before I left the hospital after the night shift had come on. It took about three-quarters of an hour to walk home, along, it must be admitted, fairly lonely roads. However, I never had any trouble. I once met a very drunken sergeant, but he was only too anxious to be gallant. ‘Fine work you’re doing,’ he said, staggering slightly as he walked. ‘Fine work you’re doing at the hospital. I’ll see you home, Nurse. I’ll see you home because I wouldn’t like anything to happen to you.’ I told him that there was no need but that it was kind of him. Still home with me he duly tramped, saying goodbye in a most respectful manner at our gate.

I forget exactly when it was that my grandmother came to live with us.

Shortly after the outbreak of the war, I imagine. She had become very blind indeed with cataract, and she was, of course, too old to be operated on. She was a sensible woman, so though it was a terrible wrench for her to give up her house in Ealing and her friends and all the rest of it, she saw plainly that she would be helpless living there alone and that servants were unlikely to stay. So the great move had been made. My sister came down to help my mother, I came up from Devon, and we all became busy. I don’t think I realised in the least at the time what poor Grannie suffered, but now I have a clear picture of her sitting helpless and half blind in the middle of her possessions and everything that she prized, while all round her were three vandals, rummaging in things, turning things out, deciding what to do away with. Little sad cries rose from her: ‘Oh, you’re not going to throw away that dress; Madame Poncereau’s, my beautiful velvet.’ Difficult to explain to her that the velvet was moth-eaten, and that the silk had disintegrated. There were trunkfuls and drawers full of things eaten by moth, their usefulness ended. Because of her worry, many things were kept which ought to have been destroyed. Trunk after trunk, filled with papers, needle-books, lengths of print for servants’ dresses, lengths of silk and velvet bought at sales, remnants: so many many things that at one time could have been useful if they had been used, but which had simply piled up. Poor Grannie sat in her large chair and wept.

Then, after the clothes, her store-room was attacked. Jams that had gone mouldy, plums that had fermented, even packets of butter and sugar which had slipped down behind things and been nibbled by mice: all the things of her thrifty and provident life, all the things that had been bought and stored and saved for the future; and now, here they were, vast monuments of waste! I think that is what hurt her so much: the waste. Here were her home-made liqueurs–they at least, owing to the saving quality of alcohol, were in good condition. Thirty-six demijohns of cherry brandy, cherry gin, damson gin, damson brandy and the rest of it, went off in the furniture van. On arrival there were only thirty-one. ‘And to think,’ said Grannie, ‘those men said they were all teetotallers!’

Perhaps the removers were taking their revenge: they had got little sympathy from my grandmother in moving things. When they wished to take the drawers out of the vast mahogany tallboy chests of drawers, Grannie was scornful. ‘Take the drawers out? Why? The weight! You’re three strong men, aren’t you? Men carried them up these stairs full of things. Nothing was taken out then. The idea! Men aren’t worth anything at all nowadays.’ The men pleaded they couldn’t manage it. ‘Weaklings,’ said Grannie, giving in at last. ‘Absolute weaklings. Not a man worth his salt nowadays.’ The cases included comestibles purchased to save Grannie from starvation. The only thing that cheered her when we arrived at Ashfield was devising good hiding places for them. Two dozen tins of sardines were laid flat on top of a Chippendale escritoire. There they remained, some of them to be entirely forgotten–so much so that when my mother, after the war, was selling a piece of furniture, the man who came to fetch it away said with an apologetic cough: ‘I think there is a large amount of sardines on the top of this.’

‘Oh really,’ said my mother. ‘Yes, I suppose there might be.’ She did not explain. The man did not ask. The sardines were removed. ‘I suppose,’ said mother, ‘we’d better have a look on top of some of the other pieces of furniture.’

Things like sardines and bags of flour seemed to turn up in the most unexpected places for many years to come. A disused clothes-basket in the spare-room was full of flour, slightly weevily. The hams, at any rate, had been eaten in good condition. Jars of honey, bottles of French plums, and some, but not many, tinned goods were liable to be found–though Grannie disapproved of tinned goods, and suspected them of being a source of ptomaine poisoning. Only her own preserving in bottles and jars was felt by her to be a properly safe conserve.

Indeed, tinned food was regarded with disapproval by all in the days of my girlhood. All girls were warned when they went to dances: ‘Be very careful you don’t eat lobster for supper. You never know, it may be tinned!’–the word ‘tinned’ being spoken with horror. Tinned crab was such a terrible commodity as not even to need warning against. If anyone then could have envisaged a time where one’s main nourishment was frozen food and tinned vegetables, with what apprehension and gloom it would have been regarded.

In spite of affection and willing service, how little I sympathised with my poor grandmother’s sufferings. Even when technically unselfish, one is still so self-centred. It must have been, I see now, a terrible thing for my poor grandmother, by then, I suppose, well over eighty, to uproot herself from a house where she had lived for thirty or forty years, having gone there only a short time after her widowhood. Not so much perhaps leaving the house itself–that must have been bad enough, although her personal furniture came with her: the large four-poster bed, the two big chairs that she liked to sit in. But worse than anything was the loss of all her friends. Many had died, but there were still a good many left: neighbours who came in often, people with whom to gossip over old days, or to discuss the news in the daily papers–all the horrors of infanticide, rape, secret vice and all the things that cheer the lives of the old. It is true that we read the papers to Grannie every day but we were not really interested in the horrible fate of a nursemaid, a baby abandoned in her perambulator, a young girl assaulted in a train. World affairs, politics, moral welfare, education, the topics of the day–none of these really interested my grandmother in the least; not because she was a stupid woman, nor because she revelled in disaster; it was rather that she needed something that contradicted the even tenor of everyday life: some drama, some terrible happenings, which, although she herself was shielded from them, were occurring perhaps not too far away.

My poor grandmother had nothing exciting now in her life except the disasters which she had read to her from the daily papers. She could no longer have a friend drop in with sad news of the awful behaviour of Colonel So-and-So to his wife, or the interesting disease from which a cousin suffered and for which no doctor had yet been able to find a cure. I see now how sad it was for her, how lonely, and how dull. I wish I had been more understanding.

She got up slowly in the morning after breakfast in bed. She came down about eleven and looked hopefully for someone who might have time to read the papers to her. Since she did not come down at a fixed time this was not always possible. She was patient, she sat in her chair. For a year or two she was still able to knit, because for knitting she did not have to see well; but as her eyesight grew worse she had to knit coarser and coarser types of garments, and even there she would drop a stitch and not know it. Sometimes one would find her weeping quietly in her armchair because she had dropped a stitch several rows back and it had all to be pulled out. I used to do it for her, pick it up and knit it up for her so that she could go on from where she had left off; but that did not really heal the sorrowful hurt that she was no longer able to be useful.

She could seldom be persuaded to go out for a little walk on the terrace, or anything like that. Outside air she considered definitely harmful. She sat in the dining-room all day because she had always sat in the dining-room in her own house. She would come and join us for afternoon tea, but then she would go back again. Yet sometimes, especially if we had a party of young people in for supper, when we went up to the schoolroom afterwards, suddenly Grannie would appear, creeping slowly and with difficulty up the stairs. On these occasions she did not want, as usual, to go to an early bed: she wanted to be in it, to hear what was going on, to share our gaiety and laughter. I suppose I wished she wouldn’t come. Although she wasn’t actually deaf, a good many things had to be repeated to her, and it placed a slight constraint over the company. But I am glad at least that we never discouraged her from coming up. It was sad for poor Grannie, and yet it was inevitable. The trouble with her, as with so many old people, was the loss of her independence. I think it is the sense of being a dispaced person that makes so many elderly people indulge in the illusion that they are being poisoned or their belongings stolen. I don’t think really it is a weakening of the mental faculties–it is an excitement that they need, a kind of stimulant: life would be more interesting if someone were trying to poison you. Little by little Grannie began to indulge in these fancies. She assured my mother that the servants were ‘putting things in my food’. ‘They want to get rid of me!’

‘But Auntie dear, why should they want to get rid of you? They like you very much.’

‘Ah, that’s what you think, Clara. But–come a little nearer: they are always listening at doors, that I know. My egg yesterday–scrambled egg it was. It tasted very peculiar–metallic. I know!’ she nodded her head. ‘Old Mrs Wyatt, you know, she was poisoned by the butler and his wife.’

‘Yes dear, but that was because she had left them a lot of money. You haven’t left any of the servants any money.’

‘No fear,’ said Grannie. ‘Anyway, Clara, in future I want a boiled egg only for my breakfast. If I have a boiled egg they can’t tamper with that.’ So a boiled egg Grannie had.

The next thing was the sad disappearance of her jewellery. This was heralded by her sending for me. ‘Agatha? Is that you? Come in, and shut the door, dear.’

I came up to the bed. ‘Yes, Grannie, what is the matter?’ She was sitting on her bed crying, her handkerchief to her eyes. ‘It’s gone,’ she said. ‘It’s all gone. My emeralds, my two rings, my beautiful ear-rings–all gone! Oh dear!’

‘Now look, Grannie, I’m sure that they haven’t really gone. Let’s see, where were they.’

‘They were in that drawer–the top drawer on the left–wrapped up in a pair of mittens. That’s where I always keep them.’

‘Well, let’s see, shall we?’ I went across to the dressing-table, and looked through the drawer in question. There were two pairs of mittens rolled up in balls, but nothing inside them. I transferred my attention to the drawer below. There was a pair of mittens in there, with a hard satisfactory feeling to them. I brought them over to the foot of the bed, and assured Grannie that here they were–the ear-rings, the emerald brooch, and her two rings.

‘It was in the third drawer down instead of the second.’ I explained. ‘They must have put them back.’

‘I don’t think they could have managed that,’ I said.

‘Well, you be careful, Agatha dear. Very careful. Don’t leave your bag lying about. Now tiptoe over to the door, will you, and see if they are listening.’

I obeyed and assured Grannie that nobody was listening.

How terrible it is, I thought, to be old! It was a thing, of course, that would happen to me, but it did not seem real. Strong in one’s mind is always the conviction: ‘I shall not be old. I shall not die.’ You know you will, but at the same time you are sure you won’t. Well, now I am old. I have not yet begun to suspect that my jewellery is stolen, or that anyone is poisoning me, but I must brace myself and know that that too will probably come in time. Perhaps by being forewarned I shall know that I am making a fool of myself before it does begin to happen.

One day Grannie thought that she heard a cat, somewhere near the back stairs. Even if it had been a cat, it would have been more sensible either to leave it there or to mention it to one of the maids, or to me, or to mother. But Grannie had to go and investigate herself–with the result that she fell down the back stairs and fractured her arm. The doctor was doubtful when he set it. He hoped, he said, it would knit again all right, but at her age–over eighty…However, Grannie rose triumphantly to the occasion. She could use her arm quite well in due course, though she was not able to lift it high above her head. No doubt about it, she was a tough old lady. The stories she always told me of her extreme delicacy in youth, and the fact that the doctors despaired of her life on several occasions between the ages of fifteen and thirty-five were, I feel sure, quite untrue. They were a Victorian assertion of interesting illness.

What with ministering to Grannie, and late hours on duty in the hospital, life was fairly full.

In the summer Archie got three days’ leave, and I met him in London. It was not a very happy leave. He was on edge, nervy, and full of knowledge of the conditions of the war which must have been causing everyone anxiety. The big casualties were beginning to come in, though it had not yet dawned upon us in England that, far from being over by Christmas, the war would in all probability last for four years. Indeed, when the demand came out for conscription–Lord Derby’s three years or for the duration–it seemed ridiculous to contemplate as much as three years.

Archie never mentioned the war or his part in it: his one idea in those days was to forget such things. We had as pleasant meals as we could procure–the rationing system was much fairer in the first war than in the second. Then, whether you dined in a restaurant or at home, you had to produce your meat coupons etc. if you wanted a meat meal. In the second war the position was much more unethical: if you cared, and had the money, you could eat a meat meal every day of the week by going to a restaurant, where no coupons were required at all.

Our three days passed in an uneasy flash. We both longed to make plans for the future, but both felt it was better not. The one bright spot for me was that shortly after that leave Archie was no longer flying. His sinus condition not permitting such work, he was instead put in charge of a depot. He was always an excellent organiser and administrator. He had been mentioned several times in despatches, and was finally awarded the C.M.G., as well as the D.S.O. But the one award he was always most proud of was the first issued: being mentioned in despatches by General French, right at the beginning. That, he said, was really worth something. He was also awarded a Russian decoration–the order of St. Stanislaus–which was so beautiful that I would have liked to have worn it myself as a decoration at parties.



Later that year I had flu badly, and after it congestion of the lungs which rendered me unable to go back to the hospital for three weeks or a month. When I did go back a new department had been opened–the dispensary–and it was suggested that I might work there. It was to be my home from home for the next two years.

The new department was in the charge of Mrs Ellis, wife of Dr Ellis, who had dispensed for her husband for many years, and my friend Eileen Morris. I was to assist them, and study for my Apothecary’s Hall examination, which would enable me to dispense for a medical officer or a chemist. It sounded interesting, and the hours were much better–the dispensary closed down at six o’clock and I would be on duty alternate mornings and afternoons–so it would combine better with my home duties as well.

I can’t say I enjoyed dispensing as much as nursing. I think I had a real vocation for nursing, and would have been happy as a hospital nurse. Dispensing was interesting for a time, but became monotonous–I should never have cared to do it as a permanent job. On the other hand, it was fun being with my friends. I had great affection and an enormous respect for Mrs Ellis. She was one of the quietest and calmest women I had ever known, with a gentle, rather sleepy voice and a most unexpected sense of humour which popped out at different moments. She was also a very good teacher, since she understood one’s difficulties–and the fact that she herself, as she confessed, usually did her sums by long division made one feel on comfortable terms with her. Eileen was my instructress in chemistry, and was frankly a great deal too clever for me to begin with. She started not from the practical side but from the theory To be introduced suddenly to the Periodic Table, Atomic Weight, and the ramifications of coal-tar derivatives was apt to result in bewilderment. However, I found my feet, mastered the simpler facts, and after we had blown up our Cona coffee machine in the process of practising Marsh’s test for arsenic our progress was well on the way.

We were amateurish, but perhaps being so made us more careful and conscientious. The work was uneven in quality, of course. Every time we had a fresh convoy of patients in, we worked furiously hard. Medicines, ointments, jars and jars of lotions to be filled, replenished and turned out every day. After working in a hospital with several doctors, one realises how medicine, like everything else in this world, is very much a matter of fashion: that, and the personal idiosyncrasy of every medical practitioner.

‘What is there to do this morning?’

‘Oh, five of Dr Whittick’s, and four of Dr James’s, and two of Dr Vyner’s specials.’

The ignorant layman, or laywoman, as I suppose I ought to call myself, believes that the doctor studies your case individually, considers what drugs would be best for it, and writes a prescription to that effect. I soon found that the tonic prescribed by Dr Whittick, and the tonic prescribed by Dr James and the tonic prescribed by Dr Vyner were all quite different, and particular, not to the patient, but to the doctor. When one comes to think of it, it is quite reasonable, though it does not perhaps make a patient feel quite as important as he did before. The chemists and dispensers take rather a lofty view where doctors are concerned: they have their opinions also. One might think that Dr James’s is a good prescription and Dr Whittick’s below contempt–but, they have to make them up just the same. Only when it comes to ointments do doctors really become experimental. That is mainly because skin afflictions are enigmas to the medical profession and to everyone else. A calamine type of application cures Mrs D. in a sensational manner; Mrs C., however, coming along with the same complaint, does not respond to calamine at all–it only produces additional irritation–but a coal tar preparation, which only aggravated the trouble with Mrs D. has unexpected success with Mrs C.; so the doctor has to keep on trying until he finds the appropriate preparation. In London, skin patients also have their favourite hospitals. ‘Tried the Middlesex? I did, and the stuff they gave me did no good at all. Now here, at U.C.H., I’m nearly cured already.’ A friend then chimes in: ‘Well, I’m beginning to think there is something in the Middlesex. My sister was treated here and it did her no good, so she went to the Middlesex and she was as right as rain after two days.’

I still have a grudge against one particular skin specialist, a persistent and optimistic experimenter, belonging to the school of ‘try anything once’, who conceived the idea of a concoction of cod liver oil to be smeared all over a baby just a few months old. The mother and the other members of the household must have found poor baby’s proximity very hard to bear. It did no good whatsoever and was discontinued after the first ten days. The making of it also rendered me a pariah in the home, for you cannot deal with large quantities of cod liver oil without returning home smelling to high heaven of noisome fish.

I was a pariah on several occasions in 1916–more than once as the result of the fashion for Bip’s Paste, which was applied to all wounds treated. It consisted of bismuth and iodoform worked into a paste with liquid paraffin. The smell of the iodoform was with me in the dispensary, on the tram, in the home, at the dinner table, and in my bed. It has a pervasive character which oozed up from your finger tips, wrists, arms, and over your elbows, and of course was quite impossible to wash off as far as the smell went. To save my family’s feelings I used to have a meal tray in the pantry. Towards the end of the war, Bip’s Paste went out of favour–it was replaced by other more innocuous preparations, and finally was succeeded by enormous demijohns of hypochlorous lotion. This, arising from ordinary chloride of lime with soda and other ingredients, caused a penetrating smell of chlorine to pervade all your clothes. Many of the disinfectants of sinks, etc., nowadays have this kind of basis. The mere sniff of them is enough to sicken me. I furiously attacked a very obstinate manservant we had at one time:

‘What have you been putting down the sink in the pantry? It smells horrible!’

He produced a bottle proudly. ‘First class disinfectant, Madam,’ he said.

‘This isn’t a hospital,’ I cried. ‘You’ll be hanging up a carbolic sheet next. Just rinse the sink out with good hot water, and a little soda occasionally if you must. Throw that filthy chloride of lime preparation away!’

I gave him a lecture on the nature of disinfectants and the fact that anything which is harmful to a germ is usually equally harmful to human tissue; so that spotless cleanliness and not disinfection was the thing to aim at. ‘Germs are tough,’ I pointed out to him. ‘Weak disinfectants won’t discourage any good sturdy germ. Germs will flourish in a solution of one in sixty carbolic.’ He was not convinced, and continued to use his nauseous mixture whenever he was sure I was safely out of the house.

As part of my preparation for my examination at Apothecaries Hall, it was arranged that I should have a little outside instruction from a proper commercial chemist. One of the principal pharmacists in Torquay was gracious enough to say that I could come in on certain Sundays and that he would give me instruction. I arrived meek and frightened, anxious to learn.

A chemist’s shop, the first time that you go behind the scenes, is a revelation. Being amateurs in our hospital work, we measured every bottle of medicine with the utmost accuracy. When the doctor prescribed twenty grains of bismuth carbonate to a dose, exactly twenty grains the patient got. Since we were amateurs, I think this was a good thing, but I imagine that any chemist who has done his five years, and got his minor pharmaceutical degree, knows his stuff in the same way as a good cook knows hers. He tosses in portions from the various stock bottles with the utmost confidence, without bothering to measure or weigh at all. He measures his poisons or dangerous drugs carefully, of course, but the harmless stuff goes in in the approximate dollops. Colouring and flavouring are added in much the same way. This sometimes results in the patients coming back and complaining that their medicine is a different colour from last time. ‘It is a deep pink I have as a rule, not this pale pink,’ or ‘This doesn’t taste right; it is the peppermint mixture I have–a nice peppermint mixture, not nasty, sweet, sickly stuff.’ Then chloroform water has clearly been added instead of peppermint water.

The majority of patients in the out-patient department at University College Hospital, where I worked in 1948, were particular as to the exact colour and taste of their preparations. I remember an old Irish woman who leant into the dispensary window, pressed half-a-crown into my palm, and murmured: ‘Make it double strong, dearie, will you? Plenty of peppermint, double strong.’ I returned her the half-a-crown, saying priggishly that we didn’t accept that sort of thing, and added that she had to have the medicine exactly as the doctor had ordered it. I did, however, give her an extra dollop of peppermint water, since it could not possibly do her any harm and she enjoyed it so much.

Naturally, when one is a novice at this kind of job, one has a nervous horror of making mistakes. The addition of poison to a medicine is always checked by one of the other dispensers, but there can still be frightening moments. I remember one of mine. I had been making up ointments that afternoon, and for one of them I had placed a little pure carbolic in a convenient ointment pot lid, then carefully, with a dropper, added it to the ointment that I was mixing on the slab. Once it was duly bottled, labelled, and put out on a slab, I went on with my other work. It was about three in the morning, I think, that I woke up in bed and said to myself, ‘What did I do with that ointment pot lid: the one I put the carbolic in?’ The more I thought the less I was able to remember having taken it and washed it. Had I perhaps clapped it on some other ointment I had made, not noticing that it had anything in it? Again, the more I thought, the more I was sure that that was what I had done. I had put it out on the ward shelf with the others to be collected on the following morning by the ward-boy in his basket, and one ointment for one patient would have a layering of strong carbolic in the top. Worried to death, I could bear it no longer. I got out of bed, dressed, walked down to the hospital, went in–fortunately I did not have to go through the ward, since the staircase to the dispensary was outside it–went up, surveyed the ointments I had prepared, opened the lids, and sniffed cautiously. To this day I don’t know whether I imagined it or not, but in one of them I seemed to detect a faint odour of carbolic which there should not have been. I took out the top layer of the ointment, and so made sure that all was well. Then I crept out again and walked home and back to bed.

On the whole it is not usually the novices who make mistakes in chemists’ shops. They are nervous, and always asking advice. The worst cases of poisoning through mistakes arise with the reliable chemists who have worked for many years. They are so familiar with what they are doing, so able to do it without really thinking any more, that the time does come when one day, preoccupied perhaps with some trouble of their own, they make a slip. This happened in the cases of the grandchild of a friend of mine. The child was ill and the doctor came and wrote a prescription which was taken to the chemist to be made up. In due course the dose was administered. That afternoon the grandmother did not like the look of the child; she said to the nannie, ‘I wonder whether there is anything wrong with that medicine?’ After a second dose, she was still more worried. ‘I think there is something wrong,’ she said. She sent for the doctor; he took a look at the child, examined the medicine–and took immediate action. Children tolerate opium and its preparations very badly. The chemist had blundered; had put in quite a serious overdose. He was terribly upset, poor man; he had worked for this particular firm for fourteen years and was one of their most careful and trusted dispensers. It shows what can happen to anybody.

During the course of my pharmaceutical instruction on Sunday afternoons, I was faced with a problem. It was incumbent upon the entrants to the examination to deal with both the ordinary system and the metric system of measurements. My pharmacist gave me practice in making up preparations to the metric formula. Neither doctors nor chemists like the metrical system in operation. One of our doctors at the hospital never learned what ‘containing 0.1’ really meant, and would say, ‘Now let me see, is this solution one in a hundred or one in a thousand?’ The great danger of the metric system is that if you go wrong you go ten times wrong.

On this particular afternoon I was having instruction in the making of suppositories, things which were not much used in the hospital, but which I was supposed to know how to make for the exam. They are tricky things, mainly owing to the melting point of the cocoa butter, which is their base. If you get it too hot it won’t set; if you don’t get it hot enough it comes out of the moulds the wrong shape. In this case Mr P. the pharmacist was giving me a personal demonstration, and showed me the exact procedure with the cocoa butter, then added one metrically calculated drug. He showed me how to turn the suppositories out at the right moment, then told me how to put them into a box and label them professionally as so-and-so one in a hundred. He went away then to attend to other duties, but I was worried, because I was convinced that what had gone into those suppositories was 10% and made a dose of one in ten in each, not one in a hundred. I went over his calculations and they were wrong. In using the metric system he had got his dot in the wrong place. But what was the young student to do? I was the merest novice, he was the best-known pharmacist in the town. I couldn’t say to him: ‘Mr P., you have made a mistake.’ Mr P. the pharmacist was the sort of person who does not make a mistake, especially in front of a student. At this moment, re-passing me, he said, ‘You can put those into stock; we do need them sometimes.’ Worse and worse. I couldn’t let those suppositories go into stock. It was quite a dangerous drug that was being used. You can stand far more of a dangerous drug if it is being given through the rectum, but all the same…I didn’t like it, and what was I to do about it? Even if I suggested the dose was wrong, would he believe me? I was quite sure of the answer to that: he would say, ‘It’s quite all right. Do you think I don’t know what I’m doing in matters of this kind?’

There was only one thing for it. Before the suppositories cooled, I tripped, lost my footing, upset the board on which they were reposing, and trod on them firmly.

‘Mr P.,’ I said, ‘I’m terribly sorry; I’ve knocked over those suppositories and stepped on them.’

‘Dear, dear, dear,’ he said vexedly. ‘This one seems all right.’ He picked up one which had escaped the weight of my beetle-crushers. ‘It’s dirty,’ I said firmly, and without more ado tipped them all into the waste-bin. ‘I’m very sorry,’ I repeated.

‘That’s all right, little girl,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry too much,’ and patted me tenderly on the shoulders. He was too much given to that kind of thing–pats on the shoulders, nudges, occasionally a faint attempt to stroke my cheek. I had to put up with it because I was being instructed, but I was as stand-offish as possible, and usually managed to engage the other dispenser in conversation so that I could not be alone with him.

He was a strange man, Mr P. One day, seeking perhaps to impress me, he took from his pocket a dark-coloured lump and showed it to me, saying, ‘Know what this is?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘It’s curare,’ he said. ‘Know about curare?’

I said I had read about it.

‘Interesting stuff,’ he said. ‘Very interesting. Taken by the mouth, it does you no harm at all. Enter the bloodstream, it paralyses and kills you. It’s what they use for arrow poison. Do you know why I carry it in my pocket?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘I haven’t the slightest idea.’ It seemed to me an extremely foolish thing to do, but I didn’t add that.

‘Well, you know,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘it makes me feel powerful.’

I looked at him then. He was a rather funny-looking little man, very roundabout and robin redbreast looking, with a nice pink face. There was a general air of childish satisfaction about him.

Shortly afterwards I finished my instructional course, but I often wondered about Mr P. afterwards. He struck me, in spite of his cherubic appearance, as possible rather a dangerous man. His memory remained with me so long that it was still there waiting when I first conceived the idea of writing my book The Pale Horse–and that must have been, I suppose, nearly fifty years later.


III

It was while I was working in the dispensary that I first conceived the idea of writing a detective story. The idea had remained in my mind since Madge’s earlier challenge–and my present work seemed to offer a favourable opportunity. Unlike nursing, where there always was something to do, dispensing consisted of slack or busy periods. Sometimes I would be on duty alone in the afternoon with hardly anything to do but sit about. Having seen that the stock bottles were full and attended to, one was at liberty to do anything one pleased except leave the dispensary.

I began considering what kind of a detective story I could write. Since I was surrounded by poisons, perhaps it was natural that death by poisoning should be the method I selected. I settled on one fact which seemed to me to have possibilities. I toyed with the idea, liked it, and finally accepted it. Then I went on to the dramatis personae. Who should be poisoned? Who would poison him or her? When? Where? How? Why? And all the rest of it. It would have to be very much of an intime murder, owing to the particular way it was done; it would have to be all in the family, so to speak. There would naturally have to be a detective. At that date I was well steeped in the Sherlock Holmes tradition. So I considered detectives. Not like Sherlock Holmes, of course: I must invent one of my own, and he would also have a friend as a kind of butt or stooge–that would not be too difficult. I returned to thoughts of my other characters. Who was to be murdered? A husband could murder his wife–that seemed to be the most usual kind of murder. I could, of course, have a very unusual kind of murder for a very unusual motive, but that did not appeal to me artistically. The whole point of a good detective story was that it must be somebody obvious but at the same time, for some reason, you would then find that it was not obvious, that he could not possibly have done it. Though really, of course, he had done it. At that point I got confused, and went away and made up a couple of bottles of extra hypochlorous lotion so that I should be fairly free of work the next day.

I went on playing with my idea for some time. Bits of it began to grow. I saw the murderer now. He would have to be rather sinister-looking. He would have a black beard–that appeared to me at that time very sinister. There were some acquaintances who had recently come to live near us–the husband had a black beard, and he had a wife who was older than himself and who was very rich. Yes, I thought, that might do as a basis. I considered it at some length. It might do, but it was not entirely satisfactory. The man in question would, I was sure, never murder anybody. I took my mind away from them and decided once and for all that it is no good thinking about real people–you must create your characters for yourself. Someone you see in a tram or a train or a restaurant is a possible starting point, because you can make up something for yourself about them.

Sure enough, next day, when I was sitting in a tram, I saw just what I wanted: a man with a black beard, sitting next to an elderly lady who was chattering like a magpie. I didn’t think I’d have her, but I thought he would do admirably. Sitting a little way beyond them was a large, hearty woman, talking loudly about spring bulbs. I liked the look of her too. Perhaps I could incorporate her? I took them all three off the tram with me to work upon–and walked up Barton Road muttering to myself just as in the days of the Kittens.

Very soon I had a sketchy picture of some of my people. There was the hearty woman–I even knew her name: Evelyn. She could be a poor relation or a lady gardener or a companion–perhaps a lady housekeeper? Anyway, I was going to have her. Then there was the man with the black beard whom I still felt I didn’t know much about, except for his beard, which wasn’t really enough–or was it enough? Yes, perhaps it was; because you would be seeing this man from the outside–so you could only see what he liked to show–not as he really was: that ought to be a clue in itself. The elderly wife would be murdered more for her money than her character, so she didn’t matter very much. I now began adding more characters rapidly. A son? A daughter? Possibly a nephew? You had to have a good many suspects. The family was coming along nicely.

I left it to develop, and turned my attention to the detective. Who could I have as a detective? I reviewed such detectives as I had met and admired in books. There was Sherlock Holmes, the one and only–I should never be able to emulate him. There was Arsene Lupin–was he a criminal or a detective? Anyway, not my kind. There was the young journalist Rouletabille in The Mystery of the Yellow Room–that was the sort of person whom I would like to invent: someone who hadn’t been used before. Who could I have? A schoolboy? Rather difficult. A scientist? What did I know of scientists? Then I remembered our Belgian refugees. We had quite a colony of Belgian refugees living in the parish of Tor. Everyone had been bursting with loving kindness and sympathy when they arrived. People had stocked houses with furniture for them to live in, had done everything they could to make them comfortable. There had been the usual reaction later, when the refugees had not seemed to be sufficiently grateful for what had been done for them, and complained of this and that. The fact that the poor things were bewildered and in a strange country was not sufficiently appreciated. A good many of them were suspicious peasants, and the last thing they wanted was to be asked out to tea or have people drop in upon them; they wanted to be left alone, to be able to keep to themselves; they wanted to save money, to dig their garden and to manure it in their own particular and intimate way.

Why not make my detective a Belgian? I thought. There were all types of refugees. How about a refugee police officer? A retired police officer. Not too young a one. What a mistake I made there. The result is that my fictional detective must really be well over a hundred by now.

Anyway, I settled on a Belgian detective. I allowed him slowly to grow into his part. He should have been an inspector, so that he would have a certain knowledge of crime. He would be meticulous, very tidy, I thought to myself, as I cleared away a good many untidy odds and ends in my own bedroom. A tidy little man. I could see him as a tidy little man, always arranging things, liking things in pairs, liking things square instead of round. And he should be very brainy–he should have little grey cells of the mind–that was a good phrase: I must remember that–yes, he would have little grey cells. He would have rather a grand name–one of those names that Sherlock Holmes and his family had. Who was it his brother had been? Mycroft Holmes.

How about calling my little man Hercules? He would be a small man–Hercules: a good name. His last name was more difficult. I don’t know why I settled on the name Poirot, whether it just came into my head or whether I saw it in some newspaper or written on something–anyway it came. It went well not with Hercules but Hercule–Hercule Poirot. That was all right–settled, thank goodness.

Now I must get names for the others–but that was less important. Alfred Inglethorpe–that might do: it would go well with the black beard. I added some more characters. A husband and wife–attractive–estranged from each other. Now for all the ramifications–the false clues. Like all young writers, I was trying to put far too much plot into one book. I had too many false clues–so many things to unravel that it might make the whole thing not only more difficult to solve, but more difficult to read.

In leisure moments, bits of my detective story rattled about in my head. I had the beginning all settled, and the end arranged, but there were difficult gaps in between. I had Hercule Poirot involved in a natural and plausible way. But there had to be more reasons why other people were involved. It was still all in a tangle.

It made me absent-minded at home. My mother was continually asking why I didn’t answer questions or didn’t answer them properly. I knitted Grannie’s pattern wrong more than once; I forgot to do a lot of the things that I was supposed to do; and I sent several letters to the wrong addresses. However, the time came when I felt I could at last begin to write. I told mother what I was going to do. Mother had the usual complete faith that her daughters could do anything.

‘Oh?’ she said. ‘A detective story? That will be a nice change for you, won’t it? You’d better start.’

It wasn’t easy to snatch much time, but I managed. I had the old typewriter still–the one that had belonged to Madge–and I battered away on that, after I had written a first draft in longhand. I typed out each chapter as I finished it. My handwriting was better in those days and my longhand was readable. I was excited by my new effort. Up to a point I enjoyed it. But I got very tired, and I also got cross. Writing has that effect, I find. Also, as I began to be enmeshed in the middle part of the book, the complications got the better of me instead of my being the master of them. It was then that my mother made a good suggestion.

‘How far have you got?’ she asked.

‘Oh, I think about halfway through.’

‘Well, I think if you really want to finish it you’ll have to do so when you take your holidays.’

‘Well, I did mean to go on with it then.’

‘Yes, but I think you should go away from home for your holiday, and write with nothing to disturb you.’

I thought about it. A fortnight quite undisturbed. It would be rather wonderful.

‘Where would you like to go?’ asked my mother. ‘Dartmoor?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, entranced. ‘Dartmoor–that is exactly it.’

So to Dartmoor I went. I booked myself a room in the Moorland Hotel at Hay Tor. It was a large, dreary hotel with plenty of rooms. There were few people staying there. I don’t think I spoke to any of them–it would have taken my mind away from what I was doing. I used to write laboriously all morning till my hand ached. Then I would have lunch, reading a book. Afterwards I would go out for a good walk on the moor, perhaps for a couple of hours. I think I learnt to love the moor in those days. I loved the tors and the heather and all the wild part of it away from the roads. Everybody who went there–and of course there were not many in wartime–would be clustering round Hay Tor itself, but I left Hay Tor severely alone and struck out on my own across country. As I walked I muttered to myself, enacting the chapter that I was next going to write; speaking as John to Mary, and as Mary to John; as Evelyn to her employer, and so on. I became quite excited by this. I would come home, have dinner, fall into bed and sleep for about twelve hours. Then I would get up and write passionately again all morning.

I finished the last half of the book, or as near as not, during my fortnight’s holiday. Of course that was not the end. I then had to rewrite a great part of it–mostly the over-complicated middle. But in the end it was finished and I was reasonably satisfied with it. That is to say it was roughly as I had intended it to be. It could be much better, I saw that, but I didn’t see just how I could make it better, so I had to leave it as it was. I re-wrote some very stilted chapters between Mary and her husband John who were estranged for some foolish reason, but whom I was determined to force together again at the end so as to make a kind of love interest. I myself always found the love interest a terrible bore in detective stories. Love, I felt, belonged to romantic stories. To force a love motif into what should be a scientific process went much against the grain. However, at that period detective stories always had to have a love interest–so there it was. I did my best with John and Mary, but they were poor creatures. Then I got it properly typed by somebody, and having finally decided I could do no more to it, I sent it off to a publisher–Hodder and Stoughton–who returned it. It was a plain refusal, with no frills on it. I was not surprised–I hadn’t expected success–but I bundled it off to another publisher.


IV

Archie came home for his second leave. It must have been nearly two years, since I had seen him last. This time we had a happy leave together. We had a whole week, and we went to the New Forest. It was autumn, with lovely colourings in the leaves. Archie was less nervy this time, and we were both less fearful for the future. We walked together through the woods and had a kind of companionship that we had not known before. He confided to me that there was one place he had always wanted to go–to follow a signpost that said ‘To No Man’s Land’. So we took the path to No Man’s Land, and we walked along it, then came to an orchard, with lots of apples. There was a woman there and we asked her if we could buy some apples from her.

‘You don’t need to buy from me, my dears,’ she said. ‘You’re welcome to the apples. Your man is in the Air Force, I see–so was a son of mine who was killed. Yes, you go and help yourselves to all the apples you can eat and all you can take away with you.’ So we wandered happily through the orchard eating apples, and then went back through the Forest again and sat down on a fallen tree. It was raining gently–but we were very happy. I didn’t talk about the hospital or my work, and Archie didn’t talk much about France, but he hinted that, perhaps, before long, we might be together again.

I told him about my book and he read it. He enjoyed it and said he thought it good. He had a friend in the Air Force, he said, who was a director of Methuen’s, and he suggested that if the book came back again he should send me a letter from this friend which I could enclose with the MS and send to Methuen’s.

So that was the next port of call for The Mysterious Affair at Styles. Methuen’s, no doubt in deference to their director, wrote much more kindly. They kept it longer–I should think about six months–but, though saying that it was very interesting and had several good points, concluded it was not quite suitable for their particular line of production. I expect really they thought it pretty awful.

I forget where I sent it next, but once again it came back. I had rather lost hope by now. The Bodley Head, John Lane, had published one or two detective stories recently–rather a new departure for them–so I thought I might as well give them a try. I packed it off to them, and forgot all about it.

The next thing that happened was sudden and unexpected. Archie arrived home, posted to the Air Ministry in London. The war had gone on so long–nearly four years–and I had got so used to working in hospital and living at home that it was almost a shock to think I might have a different life to live.

I went up to London. We got a room at a hotel, and I started round, looking for some kind of a furnished flat to live in. In our ignorance we started with rather grand ideas–but were soon taken down a peg or two. This was wartime.

We found two possibles in the end. One was in West Hampstead–it belonged to a Miss Tunks: the name stuck in my mind. She was exceedingly doubtful of us, wondering whether we would be careful enough–young people were so careless–she was very particular about her things. It was a nice little flat–three and a half guineas a week. The other one that we looked at was in St. John’s Wood–Northwick Terrace, just off Maida Vale (now pulled down). That was just two rooms, as against three, on the second floor, and rather shabbily furnished, though pleasant, with faded chintz and a garden outside. It was in one of those biggish old-fashioned houses, and the rooms were spacious. Moreover it was only two and a half guineas as against three and a half a week. We settled for that. I went home and packed up my things. Grannie wept, mother wanted to weep but controlled it. She said; ‘You are going to your husband now, dear, and beginning your married life. I hope everything will go well.’

‘And if the beds are of wood, be sure there are no bed bugs,’ said Grannie.

So I went back to London and Archie, and we moved into 5 Northwick Terrace. It had a microscopic kitchenette and bathroom, and I planned to do a certain amount of cooking. To start with, however, we would have Archie’s soldier servant and batman, Bartlett, who was a kind of Jeeves–a perfection. He had been valet to dukes in his time. Only the war had brought him into Archie’s service, but he was devoted to ‘The Colonel’ and told me long tales of his bravery, his importance, his brains, and the mark he had made. Bartlett’s service was certainly perfect. The drawbacks of the flat were many, the worst of which was the beds, which were full of large, iron lumps–I don’t know how any beds could have got into such a state. But we were happy there, and I planned to take a course of shorthand and book-keeping which would occupy my days. So it was goodbye to Ashfield and the start of my new life, my married life.

One of the great joys of 5 Northwick Terrace was Mrs Woods. In fact I think it was partly Mrs Woods which decided us in favour of Northwick Terrace rather than the West Hampstead flat. She reigned in the basement–a fat, jolly, cosy sort of woman. She had a smart daughter who worked in one of the smart shops, and an invisible husband. She was the general caretaker and, if she felt like it, would ‘do for’ the members of the flats. She agreed to ‘do for’ us, and she was a tower of strength. From Mrs Woods I learned details of shopping which had so far never crossed my horizon. ‘Fishmonger done you down again, Love’, she would say to me. ‘That fish isn’t fresh. You didn’t poke it the way I told you to. You’ve got to poke it and look at its eye, and poke its eye’. I looked at the fish doubtfully; I felt that to poke it in its eye was taking somewhat of a liberty.

‘Stand it up on its end too, stand it up on its tail. See if it flops or if it’s stiff. And those oranges now. I know you fancy an orange sometimes as a bit of a treat, in spite of the expense, but that kind there has just been soaked in boiling water to make them look fresh. You won’t find any juice in that orange.’ I didn’t.

The big excitement of my and Mrs Woods’ life was when Archie drew his first rations. An enormous piece of beef appeared, the biggest piece I had seen since the beginning of the war. It was of no recognisable cut or shape, did not seem to be topside or ribs or sirloin; it was apparently chopped up according to weight by some Air Force butcher. Anyway, it was the handsomest thing we’d seen for ages. It reposed on the table and Mrs Woods and I walked round it admiringly. There was no question of if going in my tiny oven. Mrs Woods agreed kindly to cook it for me. ‘And there’s such a lot,’ I said, ‘you can have it as well as us.’

‘Well, that’s very nice of you, I’m sure–we’ll enjoy a good go of beef. Groceries, mind you, that’s easy. I’ve got a cousin, Bob, in the grocery–as much sugar and butter as we want we get, and marge. Things like that, family gets served first.’ It was one of my introductions to the time-honoured rule which holds good through the whole of life: what matters is who you know. From the open nepotism of the East to the slightly more concealed nepotism and ‘old boys’ club’ of the Western democracies, everything in the end hinges on that. It is not, mind you, a recipe for complete success. Freddy So-and-So gets a well-paid job because his uncle knows one of the directors in the firm. So Freddy moves in. But if Freddy is no good, the claims of friendship or relationship having been satisfied, Freddy will be gently eased out, possibly passed on to some other cousin or friend, but in the end finding his own level.

In the case of meat, and the general luxuries of wartime, there were some advantages for the rich, but on the whole, I think, there were infinitely more advantages for the working class, because nearly everyone had a cousin or a friend, or a daughter’s husband, or someone useful who was either in a dairy, a grocery, or something of that kind. It didn’t apply to butchers, as far as I could see, but grocers were certainly a great family asset. Nobody that I came across at that time ever seemed to keep to the rations. They drew their rations, but they then drew an extra pound of butter and an extra pot of jam, and so on, without any feeling of behaving dishonestly. It was a family perk. Naturally Bob would look after his family and his family’s family first. So Mrs Woods was always offering us extra titbits of this and that.

The serving of the first joint of meat was a great occasion. I cannot think it was particularly good meat or tender, but I was young, my teeth were strong, and it was the most delicious thing I had had for a long time. Archie, of course, was surprised at my greed. ‘Not a very interesting joint,’ he said.

‘Interesting?’ I said. ‘It’s the most interesting thing I have seen for three years.’

What I may call serious cooking was done for us by Mrs Woods. Lighter meals, supper dishes, were prepared by me. I had attended cookery classes, like most girls, but they are not particularly useful to you, when you come down to it. Everyday practice is what counts. I had made batches of jam pies, or toad-in-the-hole, or etceteras of various kinds, but these were not what were really needed now. There were National Kitchens in most quarters of London, and these were useful. You called there and got things ready cooked in a container. They were quite well cooked–not very interesting ingredients, but they filled up the gaps. There were also National Soup Squares with which we started our meals. These were described by Archie as ‘sand and gravel soup’, recalling the skit by Stephen Leacock on a Russian short story–‘Yog took sand and stones and beat it to make a cake.’ Soup squares were rather like that. Occasionally I made one of my specialities, such as a very elaborate souffle. I didn’t realise at first that Archie suffered badly with nervous dyspepsia. There were many evenings when he came home and was unable to eat anything at all, which rather discouraged me if I had prepared a cheese souffle, or something at which I fancied myself.

Everyone has their own ideas of what they like to eat when they feel ill, and Archie’s, to my mind, were extraordinary. After lying groaning on his bed for some time, he would suddenly say: ‘I think I’d like some treacle or golden syrup. Could you make me something with that?’ I obliged as best I could.

I started a course of book-keeping and shorthand to occupy my days. As everyone knows by now, thanks to those interminable articles in Sunday papers, newly married wives are usually lonely. What surprises me is that newly married wives should ever expect not to be. Husbands work; they are out all day; and a woman, when she marries, usually transfers herself to an entirely different environment. She has to start life again, to make new contacts and new friends, find new occupations. I had had friends in London before the war, but by now all were scattered. Nan Watts (now Pollock) was living in London, but I felt rather diffident about approaching her. This sounds silly, and indeed it was silly, but one cannot pretend that differences in income do not separate people. It is not a question of snobbishness or social position, it is whether you can afford to follow the pursuits that your friends are following. If they have a large income and you have a small one, things become embarrassing.

I was slightly lonely. I missed the hospital and my friends there and the daily goings on, and I missed my home surroundings, but I realised that this was unavoidable. Companionship is not a thing that one needs every day–it is a thing that grows upon one, and sometimes becomes as destroying as ivy growing round you. I enjoyed learning shorthand and book-keeping. I was humiliated by the ease with which little girls of fourteen and fifteen progressed in shorthand; at book-keeping, however, I could hold my own, and it was fun.



One day at the business school where I took my courses the teacher stopped the lesson, went out of the room and returned, saying ‘Everything ended for today. The War is over!’

It seemed unbelievable. There had been no real sign of this being likely to happen–nothing to lead you to believe that it would be over for another six months or a year. The position in France never seemed to change. One won a few yards of territory or lost it.

I went out in the streets quite dazed. There I came upon one of the most curious sights I had ever seen–indeed I still remember it, almost, I think with a sense of fear. Everywhere there were women dancing in the street. English women are not given to dancing in public: it is a reaction more suitable to Paris and the French. But there they were, laughing, shouting, shuffling, leaping even, in a sort of wild orgy of pleasure: an almost brutal enjoyment. It was frightening. One felt that if there had been any Germans around the women would have advanced upon them and torn them to pieces. Some of them I suppose were drunk, but all of them looked it. They reeled, lurched and shouted. I got home to find Archie was already home from his Air Ministry.

‘Well, that’s that’, he said, in his usual calm and unemotional fashion.

‘Did you think it would happen so soon?’ I asked.

‘Oh well, rumours have been going around–we were told not to say anything. And now,’ he said, ‘we’ll have to decide what to do next.’ ‘What do you mean, do next?’

‘I think the best thing to do will be to leave the Air Force.’ ‘You really mean to leave the Air Force?’ I was dumbfounded.

‘No future in it. You must see that. There can’t be any future in it.

No promotion for years.’

‘What will you do?’

‘I’d like to go into the City. I’ve always wanted to go into the City. There are one or two opportunities going.’

I always had an enormous admiration for Archie’s practical outlook. He accepted everything without surprise, and calmly put his brain, which was a good one, to work on the next problem.

At the moment, Armistice or no Armistice, life went on as before. Archie went every day to the Air Ministry. The wonderful Bartlett, alas, got himself demobbed very quickly. I suppose the dukes and earls were pulling strings to regain his services. Instead, we had a rather terrible creature called Verrall. I think he did his best, but he was inefficient, quite untrained, and the amount of dirt, grease and smears on the silver, plates, knives and forks, was beyong anything I had seen before. I was really thankful when he, too, got his demobilisation papers.

Archie got some leave and we went to Torquay. It was while I was there that I went down with what I thought at first was a terrific attack of tummy sickness and general misery. However, it was something quite different. It was the first sign that I was going to have a baby.

I was thrilled. My ideas of having a baby had been that they were things that were practically automatic. After each of Archie’s leaves I had been deeply disappointed to find that no signs of a baby appeared. This time I had not even expected it. I went to consult a doctor–our old Dr Powell had retired, so I had to choose a new one. I didn’t think I would choose any of the doctors whom I had worked with in the hospital–I felt I knew rather too much about them and their methods. Instead I went to a cheery doctor who rejoiced in the somewhat sinister name of Stabb.

He had a very pretty wife, with whom my brother Monty had been deeply in love since the age of nine. ‘I have called my rabbit,’ he said then, ‘after Gertrude Huntly, because I think she is the most beautiful lady I have ever seen’. Gertrude Huntly, afterwards Stabb, was nice enough to show herself deeply impressed, and to thank him for this honour accorded her.

Dr Stabb told me that I seemed a healthy girl, and nothing should go wrong, and that was that. No further fuss was made. I cannot help being rather pleased that in my day there were none of those ante-natal clinics in which you are pulled about every month or two. Personally, I think we were much better off without them. All Dr Stabb suggested was that I should go to him or to a doctor in London about a couple of months before the baby was due, just to see that everything was the right way up. He said I might go on being sick in the morning, but after three months that it would disappear. There, I regret to say, he was wrong. My morning sickness never disappeared. It was not only a morning ailment. I was sick four or five times every day, and it made life in London quite embarrassing. To have to skip off a bus when you had perhaps only just got on it, and be violently sick in the gutter, is humiliating for a young woman. Still, it had to be put up with. Fortunately nobody thought in those days of giving you things like Thalidomide. They just accepted the fact that some people were sicker than others having a baby. Mrs Woods, as usual omniscient on all subjects to do with birth and death, said, ‘Ah well, Dearie, I’d say myself that you are going to have a girl. Sickness means girls. Boys you go dizzy and faint. It’s better to be sick.’

Of course I did not think it was better to be sick. I thought to swoon away would be more interesting. Archie, who had never liked illness–and was apt to sheer off if people were ill, saying: ‘I think you’ll do better without me bothering you’–was on this occasion most unexpectedly kind. He thought of all sorts of things to cheer me up. I remember he bought a lobster, at that time an excessively expensive luxury, and placed it in my bed to surprise me. I can still remember coming in and seeing the lobster with its head and whiskers lying on my pillow. I laughed like anything. We had a splendid meal with it. I lost it soon afterwards, but at any rate I had had the pleasure of eating it. He was also noble enough to make me Benger’s Food, which had been recommended by Mrs Woods as more likely to ‘keep down’ than other things. I remember Archie’s hurt face when he had made me some Benger’s, and allowed it to go cold because I could not drink it hot. I had had it, and had said it was very nice–‘No lumps in it tonight, and you’ve made it beautifully’–then half an hour later there was the usual tragedy.

‘Well, look here,’ said Archie, in an injured manner. ‘What’s the good of my making you these things? I mean, you might just as well not take them at all.’

It seemed to me, in my ignorance, that so much vomiting would have a bad effect on our coming child–that it would be starved. This, however, was far from the case. Although I continued to be sick up to the day of the birth, I had a strapping eight-and-a-half-pound daughter, and I myself, though never seeming to retain any nourishment at all, had put on rather than lost weight. The whole thing was like a nine-month ocean voyage to which you never got acclimatised. When Rosalind was born, and I found a doctor and a nurse leaning over me, the doctor saying, ‘Well, you’ve got a daughter all right,’ and the nurse, more gushing, ‘Oh, what a lovely little daughter!’ I responded with the important announcement: ‘I don’t feel sick any more. How wonderful!’

Archie and I had had great arguments the preceding month about names, and about which sex we wanted. Archie was very definite that he must have a daughter.

‘I’m not going to have a boy,’ he said, ‘because I can see I should be jealous of it. I’d be jealous of your paying attention to it.’

‘But I should pay just as much attention to a girl.’

‘No, it wouldn’t be the same thing.’

We argued about a name. Archie wanted Enid. I wanted Martha. He shifted to Elaine–I tried Harriet. Not till after she was born did we compromise on Rosalind.

I know all mothers rave about their babies, but I must say that, though I personally consider new-born babies definitely hideous, Rosalind actually was a nice looking baby. She had a lot of dark hair, and she looked rather like a Red Indian; she had not that pink, bald look that is so depressing in babies, and she seemed, from an early age, both gay and determined.

I had an extremely nice nurse, who took grave exception to the ways of our household. Rosalind was born, of course, at Ashfield. Mothers did not go to nursing-homes in those days; the whole birth, with attendance, cost fifteen pounds, which seems to me, looking back, extremely reasonable. I kept the nurse, on my mother’s advice, for an extra two weeks, so that I could get full instructions in looking after Rosalind, and also go to London and find somewhere else to live.

The night when we knew Rosalind would be born we had a curious time. Mother and Nurse Pemberton were like two females caught up in the rites of Nativity: happy, busy, important, running about with sheets, setting things to order. Archie and I wandered about, a little timid, rather nervous, like two children who were not sure they were wanted. We were both frightened and upset. Archie, as he told me afterwards, was convinced that if I died it would be all his fault. I thought I possibly might die, and if so I would be extremely sorry because I was enjoying myself so much. But it was really just the unknown that was frightening. It was also exciting. The first time you do a thing is always exciting.

Now we had to make plans for the future. I left Rosalind at Ashfield with Nurse Pemberton still in charge, and went to London to find a) a place to live in; b) a nurse for Rosalind; and c) a maid to look after whatever house or flat we should find. The last was really no problem at all, for a month before Rosalind’s birth who should burst in but my dear Devonshire Lucy; just out of the WAAFs, breathless, warm-hearted, full of exuberance: the same as ever, and a tower of strength. ‘I’ve heard the news,’ she said. ‘I’ve heard you are going to have a baby–and I’m ready. The moment you want me, I’ll move in.’

After consultation with my mother, I decided that Lucy must be offered a wage such as never before, in my mother’s or my experience, had been paid to a cook or a general maid. It was thirty-six pounds a year–an enormous sum in those days–but Lucy was well worth it and I was delighted to have her.

By this time, nearly a year after the armistice, finding anywhere to live was about the most difficult thing in the world. Hundreds of young couples were scouring London to find anything that would suit them at a reasonable price. Premiums, too, were being asked. The whole thing was very difficult. We decided to take a furnished flat first while we looked around for something that would really suit us. Archie’s plans were working out. As soon as he got his demobilisation he was going in with a City firm. I have forgotten the name of his boss by this time; I will call him for convenience Mr Goldstein. He was a large, yellow man. When I had asked Archie about him that was the first thing he had said: ‘Well, he’s very yellow. Fat too, but very yellow.’

At that time the City firms were being forward in offering postings to young demobilised officers. Archie’s salary was to be £500 a year. I had £100 a year which I still received under my grandfather’s will, and Archie had his gratuity and sufficient savings to bring him in a further £100 a year. It was not riches, even in those days; in fact it was far from riches, because rents had risen so enormously, and also the price of food. Eggs were eightpence each, which was no joke for a young couple. However, we had never expected to be rich, and had no qualms.

Looking back, it seems to me extraordinary that we should have contemplated having both a nurse and a servant, but they were considered essentials of life in those days, and were the last things we would have thought of dispensing with. To have committed the extravagance of a car, for instance, would never have entered our minds. Only the rich had cars. Sometimes, in the last days of my pregnancy, when I was waiting in queues for buses, elbowed aside because of my cumbrous movements–men were not particularly gallant at that period–I used to think as cars swept past me; ‘How wonderful it would be if I could have one one day.’

I remember a friend of Archie’s saying bitterly: ‘Nobody ought to be allowed to have a car unless they are on very essential business.’ I never felt like that. It is always exciting, I think, to see someone having luck, someone who is rich, someone who has jewels. Don’t the children in the street all press their faces against the windows to spy on parties, to see people with diamond tiaras? Somebody has got to win the Irish Sweep-stake. If the prizes for it were only £30 there would be no excitement.

The Calcutta Sweep, the Irish Sweep, nowadays the football pools; all those things are romance. That, too, is why there are large crowds on the pavements watching film stars as they arrive at the premières of film shows. To the watchers they are heroines in wonderful evening dresses, made up to the back teeth: figures of glamour. Who wants a drab world where nobody is rich, or important, or beautiful, or talented? Once one stood for hours to look at kings and queens; nowadays one is more inclined to gasp at pop stars, but the principle is the same.

As I said, we were prepared to have a nurse and a servant as a necessary extravagance, but would never have dreamed of having a car. If we went to theatres it would be to the pit. I would have perhaps one evening dress, and that would be a black one so as not to show the dirt, and when we went out on muddy evenings, I would always of course, have, black shoes for the same reason. We would never take a taxi anywhere. There is a fashion in the way you spend your money, just as there is a fashion in everything. I’m not prepared to say now whether ours was a worse or a better way. It made for less luxury, plainer food, clothes and all those things. On the other hand, in those days you had more leisure–there was leisure to think, to read, and to indulge in hobbies and pursuits. I think I am glad that I was young in those times. There was a great deal of freedom in life, and much less hurry and worry.

We found a flat, rather luckily, quite soon. It was on the ground floor of Addison Mansions, which were two big blocks of buildings situated behind Olympia. It was a big flat, four bedrooms and two sitting-rooms. We took it furnished for five guineas a week. The woman who let it to us was a terrifically peroxided blonde of forty-five, with an immense swelling bust. She was very friendly and insisted on telling me a lot about her daughter’s internal ailments. The flat was filled with particularly hideous furniture, and had some of the most sentimental pictures I have ever seen. I made a mental note that the first thing Archie and I would do would be to take them down and stack them tidily to await the owner’s return. There was plenty of china and glass and all that kind of thing, including one egg-shell tea-set which frightened me because I thought it so fragile that it was sure to get broken. With Lucy’s aid, we stored it away in one of the cupboards as soon as we arrived.

I then visited Mrs Boucher’s Bureau, which was the recognised rendezvous–indeed I believe it still is–for those who want nannies. Mrs Boucher managed to bring me down to earth rather quickly. She sniffed at the wages I was willing to pay, inquired about conditions and what staff I kept, and then sent me to a small room where prospective employees were interviewed. A large, competent woman was the first to come in. The mere sight of her filled me with alarm. The sight of me, however, did not fill her with any alarm whatever. ‘Yes, Madam? How many children would it be?’ I explained that it would be one baby.

‘And from the month, I hope? I never consent to taking any baby unless it is from the month. I get my babies into good ways as soon as possible.’

I said it would be from the month.

‘And what staff do you keep, Madam?’

I said apologetically that as staff I kept one maid. She sniffed again. ‘I’m afraid, Madam, that would hardly suit me. You see, I have been accustomed to having my nurseries waited on and looked after, and a fully equipped and pleasant establishment.’ I agreed that my post was not what she was looking for, and got rid of her with some relief. I saw three more, but they all despised me.

However, I returned for further interviews the next day. This time I was lucky. I came across Jessie Swannell, thirty-five, sharp of tongue, kind of heart, who had lived most of her time as nurse with a family in Nigeria. I broke to her, one by one, the shameful conditions of my employment. Only one maid, one nursery, not a day and night nursery, the grate attended to, but otherwise she would have to do her own nursery and–final and last straw–the wages.

‘Ah well,’ she said, ‘it doesn’t sound too bad. I’m used to hard work, and that doesn’t bother me. A little girl, is it? I like girls.’

So Jessie Swannell and I fixed it up. She was with me two years, and I liked her very much, though she had her disadvantages. She was one of those who by nature dislike the parents of the child they are looking after. To Rosalind she was goodness itself, and would have died for her, I think. Me she regarded as an interloper, though she grudgingly did as I wanted her to do, even if she did not always agree with me. On the other hand, if any disaster occurred, she was splendid; kind, ready to help, and cheerful. Yes, I respect Jessie Swannell, and I hope she has had a good life and done the kind of thing she wanted to do.

So all was settled, and Rosalind, myself, Jessie Swannell, and Lucy all arrived at Addison Mansions and started family life. Not that my search was ended. I had now to look for an unfurnished flat to be our permanent home. That of course was not so easy: in fact it was hellishly difficult. As soon as one heard of anything one rushed off, rang up, wrote letters, yet there really seemed to be nothing possible. Sometimes they were dirty, shabby, so broken down that you could hardly imagine living in them. Time after time someone got in just ahead of you. We circled London: Hampstead, Chiswick, Pimlico, Kensington, St. John’s Wood–my day seemed one long bus tour. We visited all the estate agents; and before long we began to get anxious. Our furnished let was only two months. When the peroxided Mrs N. and her married daughter and children returned they would not be likely to let it to us for any longer. We must find something.

At last it seemed we were lucky. We secured, or more or less secured, a flat near Battersea Park. Its rent was reasonable, the owner, Miss Llewellyn, was moving out in about a month’s time, but would actually be content to go a little sooner. She was moving to a flat in a different part of London. All seemed settled, but we had counted our chickens too soon. A terrible blow befell us. Only about a fortnight before the date of moving we heard from Miss Llewellyn that she was unable to get into her new flat, because the people in it were in their turn unable to get into theirs! It was a chain reaction.

It was a severe blow. Every two or three days we telephoned to Miss Llewellyn for news. The news was worse each time. Always, it seemed, the other people were having more difficulty getting into their flat, so she was equally full of doubt about leaving her own. It finally seemed as though it might be three or four months before we would be able to get possession, and even that date was uncertain. Feverishly, we began once again studying the advertisements, ringing up house agents, and all the rest of it. Time went on, and by now we were desperate. Then a house agent rang up and offered us not a flat but a house. A small house in Scarsdale Villas. It was for sale though, not to let. Archie and I went and saw it. It was a charming little house. It would mean selling out practically all the small capital we had–a terrible risk. However, we felt we had to risk something, so we duly agreed to buy it, signed on a dotted line and went home to decide what securities we should sell.

It was two mornings later when, at breakfast, I was glancing through the paper, turning first to the flat column, which by now was such a habit with me that I was unable to stop it, and saw an advertisement: ‘Flat to let unfurnished, 96 Addison Mansions, £90 per annum.’ I uttered a hoarse cry, dashed down my coffee cup, read the advertisement to Archie, and said, ‘There’s no time to lose!’

I rushed from the breakfast table, crossed the grass courtyard between the two blocks at a run, and went up the stairs of the opposite block, four flights of them, like a maniac. The time was a quarter past eight in the morning. I rang the bell of No. 96. It was opened by a startled-looking young woman in a dressing-gown.

‘I’ve come about the flat,’ I said, with as much coherence as I could manage in my breathlessness.

‘About this flat? Already? I only put the advertisement in yesterday. I didn’t expect anyone so soon.’

‘Can I see it?’

‘Well…Well, it’s a little early.’

‘I think it will do for us,’ I said. ‘I think I’ll take it.’

‘Oh, well, I suppose you can look round. It’s not very tidy.’ She drew back.

I charged in regardless of her hesitations, took one rapid look round the flat; I was not going to run any risk of losing it.

‘£90 per annum?’ I asked.

‘Yes, that’s the rent. But I must warn you it’s only a quarterly lease.’ I considered that for a moment, but it did not deter me. I wanted somewhere to live, and soon.

‘And when is possession?’

‘Oh well, any time really–in a week or two? My husband’s got to go abroad suddenly. And we want a premium for the linoleum and fittings.’

I did not much take to the linoleum surrounds, but what did that matter? Four bedrooms, two sitting-rooms, a nice outlook on green–four flights of stairs to come up and down, true, but plenty of light and air. It wanted doing up, but we could do that ourselves. Oh, it was wonderful–a godsend.

‘I’ll take it,’ I said. ‘That’s definite.’

‘Oh, you’re sure? You haven’t told me your name.’

I told her, explained that I was living in a furnished flat opposite, and all was settled. I rang up the agents there and then from her flat. I had been beaten to the punch too often before. As I descended the stairs again I met three couples coming up; each of them, I could see at a glance, going to No. 96. This time we had won. I went back and told Archie in triumph.

‘Splendid,’ he said. At that moment the telephone rang. It was Miss Llewellyn. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘that you will be able to have the flat quite certainly in a month now.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Oh yes, I see.’ I put back the receiver. ‘Good Lord,’ said Archie. ‘Do you know what we’ve got? We’ve now taken two flats and bought a house!’

It seemed something of a problem. I was about to ring up Miss Llewellyn and tell her we didn’t want the flat, but then a better idea occurred to me. ‘We’ll try to get out of the Scarsdale Villa house,’ I said, ‘but we’ll take the Battersea flat, and we’ll ask a premium for it from someone else. That will pay the premium on this one.’

Archie approved highly of this idea, and I think myself it was a moment of high financial genius on my part, because we could ill afford the £100 premium. Then we went to see the agents about the house we had bought in Scarsdale Villas. They were really very amiable. They said it would be quite easy to sell it to someone else–in fact there were several people who had been bitterly disappointed about it. So we got out of that with no more than a small fee to the agents.

We had a flat, and in two weeks time we moved into it. Jessie Swannell was a brick. She made no trouble at all about having to go up and down four flights of stairs, which was more than I would have believed possible of any other nurse from Mrs Boucher’s.

‘Ah well,’ she said, ‘I’m used to lugging things about. Mind you, I could do with a nigger or two. That’s the best of Nigeria–plenty of niggers.’

We loved our flat, and threw ourselves heartily into the business of decoration. We spent a good portion of Archie’s gratuity on furniture: good modern furniture for Rosalind’s nursery from Heal’s, good beds from Heal’s for us–and quite a lot of things came up from Ashfield, which was far too crowded with tables and chairs and cabinets, plate and linen. We also went to sales and bought odd chests of drawers and old-fashioned wardrobes for a song.

When we got into our new flat we chose papers and decided on paint–some of the work we did ourselves, part we got in a small painter and decorator to help us with. The two sitting-rooms–a quite large drawing-room and a rather smaller dining-room–faced over the court, but they faced north. I preferred the rooms at the end of a long passage at the back. They were not quite so big, but they were sunny and cheerful, so we decided to have our sitting-room and Rosalind’s nursery in the two back rooms. The bathroom was opposite them, and there was a small maid’s room. Of the two large rooms we made the larger our bedroom and the smaller a dining-room and possible emergency spare-room. Archie chose the bathroom decoration: a brilliant scarlet and white tiled paper. Our decorator and paper-hanger was extremely kind to me. He showed me how to cut and fold wallpaper in the proper way ready for pasting, and, as he put it, ‘not to be afraid of it’ when we papered the walls. ‘Slap it on, see? You can’t do any harm. If it tears, you paste it over. Cut it all out first, and have it all measured, and write the number on the back. That’s right. Slap it on. A hairbrush is a very good thing to use to take the bubbles out.’ I became quite efficient in the end. The ceilings we left to him to deal with–I didn’t feel ready to do a ceiling.

Rosalind’s room had pale yellow water paint on the walls, and there again I learnt a little about decoration. One thing our mentor did not warn me about was that if you did not get spots of water paint off the floor quickly it hardened up and you could only remove it with a chisel. However, one learns by experience. We did Rosalind’s nursery with an expensive frieze of paper from Heal’s with animals round the top of the walls. In the sitting-room I decided to have very pale pink shiny walls and to paper the ceiling with a black glossy paper with hawthorn all over it. It would make me feel, I thought, that I was in the country. It would also make the room look lower, and I liked low rooms. In a small room they looked more cottagey. The ceiling paper was to be put on by the professional of course, but he proved unexpectedly averse to doing it.

‘Now, look here, Missus, you’ve got it wrong, you know. What you want is the ceiling done pale pink and the black paper on the walls.’

‘No, I don’t,’ I said, ‘I want the black paper on the ceiling and the pink distemper on the walls.’

‘But that’s not the way you do rooms. See? You’re going light up to dark. That’s the wrong way. You should do dark up to light.’

‘You don’t have to dark up to light if you prefer light up to dark,’ I argued.

‘Well, I can only tell you, Ma’am, that it’s the wrong way and that nobody ever does it.’

I said that I was going to do it.

‘It will bring the ceiling right down, you see if it doesn’t. It will make the ceiling come down towards the floor. It will make the room look quite low.’

‘I want it to look low.’

He gave me up then, and shrugged his shoulders. When it was finished I asked him if he didn’t like it.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s odd. No, I can’t say I like it, but…well, it’s odd like, but it is quite pretty if you sit in a chair and look up.’

‘That’s the idea,’ I said.

‘But if I was you, and you wanted to do that sort of thing, I’d have had one of them bright blue papers with stars.’

‘I don’t want to think I’m out of doors at night,’ I said. ‘I like to think I’m in a cherry blossom orchard or under a hawthorn tree.’

He shook his head sadly.

Most of the curtains we had made for us. The loose covers I had decided to make myself. My sister Madge–now renamed Punkie: her son’s name for her–assured me in her usual positive fashion that this was quite easy to do. ‘Just pin and cut them wrong side out,’ she said, ‘then stitch them, and turn them outside in. It’s quite simple; anyone could do it.’

I had a try. They did not look very professional, and I did not dare to attempt any piping, but they looked bright and nice. All our friends admired our flat, and we never had such a happy time as when settling in there. Lucy thought it was marvellous, and enjoyed every minute of it. Jessie Swannell grumbled the whole time, but was surprisingly helpful. I was quite content for her to hate us, or rather me–I don’t think she disapproved of Archie quite so much. ‘After all,’ as I explained to her one day, ‘a baby has got to have parents or you wouldn’t have one to look after.’

‘Ah well, I suppose you’ve got something there,’ said Jessie, and she gave a grudging smile.

Archie had started his job in the City. He said he liked it and seemed quite excited about it. He was delighted to be out of the Air Force, which, he continued to repeat, was absolutely no good for the future. He was determined to make a lot of money. The fact that we were at the moment hard up did not worry us. Occasionally Archie and I went to the Palais de Danse at Hammersmith, but on the whole we did without amusements, since we really couldn’t afford them. We were a very ordinary young couple, but we were happy. Life seemed well set ahead of us. We had no piano, which was a pity–but I made up for it by playing the piano madly whenever I was at Ashfield.

I had married the man I loved, we had a child, we had somewhere to live, and as far as I could see there was no reason why we shouldn’t live happily ever after.

One day I got a letter. I opened it quite casually and read it without at first taking it in. It was from John Lane, The Bodley Head, and it asked if I would call at their office in connection with the manuscript I had submitted entitled The Mysterious Affair at Styles.

To tell the truth, I had forgotten all about The Mysterious Affair at Styles. By this time it must have been with The Bodley Head for nearly two years, but in the excitement of the war’s ending, Archie’s return and our life together such things as writing and manuscripts had gone far away from my thoughts.

I went off to keep the appointment, full of hope. After all they must like it a bit or they wouldn’t have asked me to come. I was shown into John Lane’s office, and he rose to greet me; a small man with a white beard, looking somehow rather Elizabethan. All round him there appeared to be pictures–on chairs, leaning against tables–all with the appearance of old masters, heavily varnished and yellow with age. I thought afterwards that he himself would look quite well in one of those frames with a ruff around his neck. He had a benign, kindly manner, but shrewd blue eyes, which ought to have warned me, perhaps, that he was the kind of man who would drive a hard bargain. He greeted me, told me gently to take a chair. I looked round–it was quite impossible: every chair was covered with a picture. He suddenly saw this and laughed. ‘Dear me,’ he said, ‘there isn’t much to sit on, is there?’ He removed a rather grimy portrait, and I sat down.

Then he began to talk to me about the MS. Some of his readers, he said, had thought it showed promise; something might be made of it. But there would have to be considerable changes. The last chapter, for instance; I had written it as a court scene, but it was quite impossible written like that. It was in no way like a court scene–it would be merely ridiculous. Did I think I could do something to bring about the denouement in another way? Either someone could help me with the law aspect, though that would be difficult, or I might be able to change it in some other way. I said immediately that I thought I could manage something. I would think about it–perhaps have a different setting. Anyway, I would try. He made various other points, none of them really serious apart from the final chapter.

Then he went on to the business aspect, pointing out what a risk a publisher took if he published a novel by a new and unknown writer, and how little money he was likely to make out of it. Finally he produced from his desk drawer an agreement which he suggested I should sign.

I was in no frame of mind to study agreements or even think about them. He would publish my book. Having given up hope for some years now of having anything published, except the occasional short story or poem, the idea of having a book come out in print went straight to my head. I would have signed anything. This particular contract entailed my not receiving any royalties until after the first 2000 copies had been sold–after that a small royalty would be paid. Half any serial or dramatic rights would go to the publisher. None of it meant much to me–the whole point was, the book would be published.

I didn’t even notice that there was a clause binding me to offer him my next five novels, at an only slightly increased rate of royalty. To me it was success, and all a wild surprise. I signed with enthusiasm. Then I took the MS away to deal with the anomalies of the last chapter. I managed that quite easily.

And so it was that I started on my long career; not that I suspected at the time that it was going to be a long career. In spite of the clause about the next five novels, this was to me a single and isolated experiment. I had been dared to write a detective story; I had written a detective story; it had been accepted, and was going to appear in print. There, as far as I was concerned, the matter ended. Certainly at that moment I did not envisage writing any more books, I think if I had been asked I would have said that I would probably write stories from time to time. I was the complete amateur–nothing of the professional about me. For me, writing was fun.

I went home, jubilant, and told Archie, and we went to the Palais de Danse at Hammersmith that night to celebrate.

There was a third party with us, though I did not know it. Hercule Poirot, my Belgian invention, was hanging round my neck, firmly attached there like the old man of the sea.


V

After I had dealt satisfactorily with the last chapter of The Mysterious Affair at Styles, I returned it to John Lane, then, once I had answered a few more queries and agreed to a few more alterations, the excitement receded into the background, and life went on as it would with any other young married couple who are happy, in love with each other, rather badly off, but not too much hampered by the fact. Our times off at weekends were usually spent in going to the country by train and walking somewhere. Sometimes we made a round trip of it.

The only serious blow that befell us was that I lost my dear Lucy. She had been looking worried and unhappy, and finally she came to me rather sadly one day and said, ‘I’m terribly sorry to let you down, Miss Agatha–I mean, Ma’am, and I don’t know what Mrs Rowe would think of me, but–well, there it is, I’m going to get married.’

‘Married, Lucy? Who to?’

‘Someone I knew before the war. I always fancied him.’

I got more enlightenment from my mother. As soon as I told her, she exclaimed, ‘It’s not that Jack again, is it?’ It appeared that my mother had not much approved of ‘that Jack’. He’d been an unsatisfactory suitor of Lucy’s, and it had been decided by her family that it was a good thing when the couple quarrelled and parted company. However, they had come together again now. Lucy had been faithful to the unsatisfactory Jack and there it was: she was going to get married and we should have to look for another maid.

By this time such a thing was even more impossible. No maids were to be found anywhere. However, at last, whether through an agency or a friend–I can’t remember–I came across someone called Rose. Rose was highly desirable. She had excellent references, a round pink face, a nice smile, and looked as though she was quite prepared to like us. The only trouble was she was highly averse to going anywhere where there was a child and a nurse. I felt that she had to be prevailed upon. She had been with people in the Flying Corps, and when she heard that my husband had been in the Flying Corps too she obviously softened towards me. She said that she expected my husband knew her own employer, Squadron-Leader G. I rushed home and said to Archie, ‘Did you ever know a Squadron-Leader G.?’

‘Not that I can remember,’ said Archie.

‘Well, you must remember,’ I said. ‘You must say that you came across him, or that you were buddies, or something like that–we’ve got to have Rose. She’s wonderful, she really is. If you knew the awful creatures I have seen.’

So in due course Rose came to look upon us with favour. She was introduced to Archie, who said some complimentary things about Squadron-Leader G., and was finally prevailed upon to accept the position.

‘But I don’t like nurses,’ she said warningly. ‘Don’t really mind children–but nurses, they always make trouble.’

‘Oh I’m sure,’ I said, ‘that Nurse Swannell won’t make trouble.’ I was not so sure, but on the whole I thought that all would be well. The only person Jessie Swannell would make trouble for would be me, and that I could stand by now. As it happened, Rose and Jessie got along well together. Jessie told her all about her life in Nigeria, and the joy it had been to have endless niggers under her control, and Rose told her all that she had suffered in her various situations. ‘Starved, I was, sometimes,’ said Rose to me one day. ‘Starved. Do you know what they gave me for breakfast?’

I said that I didn’t know.

‘Kippers,’ said Rose gloomily. ‘Nothing but tea and a kipper, and toast and butter and jam. Well, I mean, I got so thin I was wasting away.’

There was no sign of Rose wasting away now–she was pleasantly plump. However, I made sure that when we had kippers for breakfast two kippers were always pressed upon Rose, or even three, and that eggs and bacon were served to her in lavish quantities. She was, I think, happy with us and fond of Rosalind.

My grandmother died soon after Rosalind’s birth. She had been much herself up to the end, but then got a bad attack of bronchitis, and her heart was not strong enough to recover from it. She was ninety-two, still able to enjoy life, not too deaf, though very blind by this time. Her income, like my mother’s, had been reduced by the Chaflin failure in New York, but Mr Bailey’s advice had saved her from losing all of it. This now came to my mother. It was not much by this time, because some of the shares had depreciated through the war, but it gave her £3–400 a year, which, with her allowance from Mr Chaflin, made things possible for her. Of course everything got far more expensive in the years after the war. Still, she was able to keep on Ashfield. It made me rather unhappy not to be able to contribute my small income towards the upkeep of Ashfield, as my sister did. But it was really impossible in our case–we needed every penny we had to live on.

One day, when I was speaking in a worried voice about the difficulties of keeping up Ashfield, Archie said (very sensibly): ‘You know, really it would be much better for your mother to sell it and live elsewhere.’

‘Sell Ashfield!’ I spoke in a voice of horror.

‘I can’t see what good it is to you. You can’t go there very often.’

‘I couldn’t bear to sell Ashfield, I love it. It’s–it’s–it means everything.’

‘Then why don’t you try and do something about it?’ said Archie. ‘What do you mean, do something about it?’

‘Well, you could write another book.’

I looked at him in some surprise. ‘I suppose I might write another book one of these days, but it wouldn’t do much good to Ashfield, would it?’

‘It might make a lot of money,’ said Archie.

I didn’t think that was likely. The Mysterious Affair at Styles had sold close on 2000 copies, which was not bad at that time for a detective story by an unknown author. It had brought me in the meagre sum of £25–and this not for the royalties on the book, but from a half share of the serial rights, which had been sold, rather unexpectedly, to The Weekly Times for £50. Very good for my prestige, said John Lane. It was a good thing for a young author to have a serial accepted by The Weekly Times. That might be, but £25 as the total income from writing a book did not encourage me to feel that I was likely to earn much money in a literary career.

‘If a book has been good enough to take, and the publisher has made some money by it, which I presume he has, he will want another. You ought to get a bit more every time.’ I listened to this and agreed. I was full of admiration for Archie’s financial know-how. I considered writing another book. Supposing I did–what should it be about?

The question was solved for me one day when I was having tea in an A.B.C. Two people were talking at a table nearby, discussing somebody called Jane Fish. It struck me as a most entertaining name. I went away with the name in my mind. Jane Fish. That, I thought, would make a good beginning to a story–a name overheard at a tea shop–an unusual name, so that whoever heard it remembered it. A name like Jane Fish–or perhaps Jane Finn would be even better. I settled for Jane Finn–and started writing straight away. I called it The Joyful Venture first–then The Young Adventurers–and finally it became The Secret Adversary.

Archie had been quite right to settle in a job before he resigned from the Flying Corps. Young people were desperate. They had come out of the Services and had no jobs to go to. Young men were always ringing our doorbell, trying to sell stockings or offering some household gadget. It was a pathetic sight. One felt so sorry for them that one often bought a pair of rather nasty stockings, just to cheer them up. They had been lieutenants, naval and military, and now they were reduced to this. Sometimes they even wrote poems and tried to sell them.

I conceived the idea of having a pair of this kind–a girl who had been in the A.T.S. or the V.A.D. and a young man who had been in the army. They would both be rather desperate, looking for a job, and then they would meet each other–perhaps they would already have met in the past? And then? Then, I thought, they would be involved in–yes, espionage: this would be a spy book, a thriller, not a detective story. I liked the idea–it was a change after the detective work involved in The Mysterious Affair at Styles. So I started writing, in a sketchy kind of way. It was fun, on the whole, and much easier to write than a detective story, as thrillers always are.

When I had finished it, which was not for some time, I took it to John Lane, who didn’t like it much: it was not the same type as my first book–it would not sell nearly so well. In fact they were undecided whether to publish it or not. However, in the end they decided to do so. I did not have to make so many changes in this one.

As far as I remember it sold quite well. I made a little in royalties, which was something, and again I sold the serial rights to The Weekly Times, and this time got £50 doled out to me by John Lane. It was encouraging–though not encouraging enough to make me think that I had as yet adopted anything so grand as a profession.

My third book was Murder on the Links. This, I think, must have been written not long after a cause celebre which occurred in France. I can’t remember the name of any of the participants by now. It was some tale of masked men who had broken into a house, killed the owner, tied up and gagged the wife–the mother-in-law had also died, but only apparently because she had choked on her false teeth. Anyway, the wife’s story was disproved, and there was a suggestion that it was the wife who had killed her husband, and that she had never been tied up at all, or only by an accomplice. It struck me as a good plot on which to weave my own story, starting with the wife’s life after she had been acquitted of the murder. A mysterious woman would appear somewhere, having been the heroine of a murder case years ago. I set it in France, this time.

Hercule Poirot had been quite a success in The Mysterious Affair at Styles, so it was suggested that I should continue to employ him. One of the people who liked Poirot was Bruce Ingram, editor at the time of The Sketch. He got in touch with me, and suggested that I should write a series of Poirot stories for The Sketch. This excited me very much indeed. At last I was becoming a success. To be in The Sketch–wonderful! He also had a fancy drawing made of Hercule Poirot which was not unlike my idea of him, though he was depicted as a little smarter and more aristocratic than I had envisaged him. Bruce Ingram wanted a series of twelve stories. I produced eight before long, and at first it was thought that that would be enough, but in the end it was decided to increase them to twelve, and I had to write another four rather more hastily than I wanted.

It had escaped my notice that not only was I now tied to the detective story, I was also tied to two people: Hercule Poirot and his Watson, Captain Hastings. I quite enjoyed Captain Hastings. He was a stereotyped creation, but he and Poirot represented my idea of a detective team. I was still writing in the Sherlock Holmes tradition–eccentric detective, stooge assistant, with a Lestrade-type Scotland Yard detective, Inspector Japp–and I now added a ‘human foxhound’, Inspector Giraud, of the French police. Giraud despises Poirot as being old and passe.

Now I saw what a terrible mistake I had made in starting with Hercule Poirot so old–I ought to have abandoned him after the first three or four books, and begun again with someone much younger. Murder on the Links was slightly less in the Sherlock Holmes tradition, and was influenced, I think, by The Mystery of the Yellow Room. It had rather that high-flown, fanciful type of writing. When one starts writing, one is much influenced by the last person one has read or enjoyed.

I think Murder on the Links was a moderately good example of its kind–though rather melodramatic. This time I provided a love affair for Hastings. If I had to have a love interest in the book, I thought I might as well marry off Hastings! Truth to tell, I think I was getting a little tired of him. I might be stuck with Poirot, but no need to be stuck with Hastings too.

The Bodley Head were pleased with Murder on the Links, but I had a slight row with them over the jacket they had designed for it. Apart from being in ugly colours, it was badly drawn, and represented, as far as I could make out, a man in pyjamas on a golf-links, dying of an epileptic fit. Since the man who had been murdered had been fully dressed and stabbed with a dagger, I objected. A book jacket may have nothing to do with the plot, but if it does it must at least not represent a false plot. There was a good deal of bad feeling over this, but I was really furious and it was agreed that in future I should see the jacket first and approve of it. I had already had one slight difference with The Bodley Head, and that was in The Mysterious Affair at Styles, over the spelling of the word cocoa. For some strange reason, the house spelling of cocoa–meaning by that a cup of cocoa–was coco, which, as Euclid would have said, is absurd. I was sternly opposed by Miss Howse, the dragon presiding over all spelling in The Bodley Head books. Cocoa, she said, in their publications, was always spelt coco–it was the proper spelling and was a rule of the firm. I produced tins of cocoa and even dictionaries–they had no impression on her. Coco was the proper spelling, she said. It was not until many years later, when I was talking to Allen Lane, John Lane’s nephew, and begetter of Penguin Books, that I said, ‘You know I had terrible fights with Miss Howse over the spelling of cocoa.’

He grinned. ‘I know, we had great trouble with her as she got older. She got very opinionated about certain things. She argued with authors and would never give way.’

Innumerable people wrote to me and said, ‘I can’t understand, Agatha, why you spelled cocoa ‘coco’ in your book. Of course you were never a good speller.’ Most unfair. I was not a good speller, I am still not a good speller, but at any rate I could spell cocoa the proper way. What I was, though, was a weak character. It was my first book–and I thought they must know better than I did.

I had had some nice reviews for The Mysterious Affair at Styles, but the one which pleased me best appeared in The Pharmaceutical, Journal. It praised ‘this detective story for dealing with poisons in a knowledgeable way, and not with the nonsense about untraceable substances that so often happens. Miss Agatha Christie,’ they said, ‘knows her job.’

I had wanted to write my books under a fancy name–Martin West or Mostyn Grey–but John Lane had been insistent on keeping my own name, Agatha Christie–particularly the Christian name: he said, ‘Agatha is an unusual name which remains in peoples’ memories.’ So I had to abandon Martin West and label myself henceforth as Agatha Christie. I had the idea that a woman’s name would prejudice people against my work, especially in detective stories; that Martin West would be more manly and forthright. However, as I have said, when you are publishing a first book you give way to whatever is suggested to you, and in this case I think John Lane was right.

I had now written three books, was happily married, and my heart’s desire was to live in the country. Addison Mansions was a long way from the park. Pushing the pram there and back was no joke, either for Jessie Swannell or for me. Also there was one permanent snag: the flats were scheduled to come down. They belonged to Lyons, who intended to build new premises on the site. That is why the lease was only a quarterly one. At any moment notice might be given that the block was to be pulled down. Actually, thirty years later, our particular block of Addison Mansions was still standing–though now it has disappeared. Cadby Hall reigns in its stead.

Among our other activities at the weekend, Archie and I sometimes went by train to East Croydon and played golf there. I had never been much of a golfer, and Archie had played little, but he became keenly appreciative of the game. After a while, we seemed to go every weekend to East Croydon. I did not really mind, but I missed the variety of exploring places and going long walks. In the end that choice of recreation was to make a big difference to our lives.

Both Archie and Patrick Spence–a friend of ours who also worked at Goldstein’s–were getting rather pessimistic about their jobs: the prospects as promised or hinted at did not seem to materialise. They were given certain directorships, but the directorships were always of hazardous companies–sometimes on the brink of bankruptcy. Spence once said, ‘I think these people are a lot of ruddy crooks. All quite legal, you know. Still, I don’t like it, do you?’

Archie said that he thought that some of it was not very reputable. ‘I rather wish,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘I could make a change.’ He liked City life and had an aptitude for it, but as time went on he was less and less keen on his employers.

And then something completely unforeseen came up.

Archie had a friend who had been a master at Clifton–a Major Belcher. Major Belcher was a character. He was a man with terrific powers of bluff. He had, according to his own story, bluffed himself into the position of Controller of Potatoes during the war. How much of Belcher’s stories was invented and how much true, we never knew, but anyway he made a good story of this one. He had been a man of forty or fifty odd when the war broke out, and though he was offered a stay-at-home job in the War Office he did not care for it much. Anyway, when dining with a V.I.P. one night, the conversation fell on potatoes, which were really a great problem in the 1914–18 war. As far as I can remember, they vanished quite soon. At the hospital, I know, we never had them. Whether the shortage was entirely due to Belcher’s control of them I don’t know, but I should not be surprised to hear it.

‘This pompous old fool who was talking to me,’ said Belcher, ‘said the potato position was going to be serious, very serious indeed. I told him that something had to be done about it–too many people messing about. Somebody had got to take the whole thing over–one man to take control. Well, he agreed with me. “But mind you,” I said, “he’d have to be paid pretty highly. No good giving a mingy salary to a man and expecting to get one who’s any good–you’ve got to have someone who’s the tops. You ought to give him at least–”’ ‘and here he mentioned a sum of several thousands of pounds. ‘That’s very high,’ said the V.I.P. ‘You’ve got to get a good man,’ said Belcher. ‘Mind you, if you offered it to me, I wouldn’t take it on myself, at that price.’

That was the operative sentence. A few days later Belcher was begged, on his own valuation, to accept such a sum, and control potatoes. ‘What did you know about potatoes?’ I asked him.

‘I didn’t know a thing,’ said Belcher. ‘But I wasn’t going to let on. I mean, you can do anything–you’ve only got to get a man as second-in-command who knows a bit about it, and read it up a bit, and there you are!’ He was a man with a wonderful capacity for impressing people. He had a great belief in his own powers of organisation–and it was sometimes a long time before anyone found out the havoc he was causing. The truth is that there never was a man less able to organise. His idea, like that of many politicians, was first to disrupt the entire industry, or whatever it might be, and having thrown it into chaos, to reassemble it, as Omar Khayyam might have said, ‘nearer to the heart’s desire’. The trouble was that, when it came to reorganising, Belcher was no good. But people seldom discovered that until too late.

At some period of his career he went to New Zealand, where he so impressed the governors of a school with his plans for reorganisation that they rushed to engage him as headmaster. About a year later he was offered an enormous sum of money to give up the job–not because of any disgraceful conduct, but solely because of the muddle he had introduced, the hatred which he aroused in others, and his own pleasure in what he called ‘a forward-looking, up-to-date, progressive administration’. As I say, he was a character. Sometimes you hated him, sometimes you were quite fond of him.

Belcher came to dinner with us one night, being out of the potato job, and explained what he was about to do next. ‘You know this Empire Exhibition we’re having in eighteen months’ time? Well, the thing has got to be properly organised. The Dominions have got to be alerted, to stand on their toes and to co-operate in the whole thing. I’m going on a mission–the British Empire Mission–going round the world, starting in January.’ He went on to detail his schemes. ‘What I want,’ he said, ‘is someone to come with me as financial adviser. What about you, Archie? You’ve always had a good head on your shoulders. You were Head of the School at Clifton, you’ve had all this experience in the City. You’re just the man I want.’

‘I couldn’t leave my job,’ said Archie.

‘Why not? Put it to your boss properly–point out it will widen your experience and all that. He’ll keep the job open for you, I expect.’

Archie said he doubted if Mr Goldstein would do anything of the kind.

‘Well, think it over, my boy. I’d like to have you. Agatha could come too, of course. She likes travelling, doesn’t she?’

‘Yes,’ I said–a monosyllable of understatement.

‘I’ll tell you what the itinerary is. We go first to South Africa. You and me, and a secretary, of course. With us would be going the Hyams. I don’t know if you know Hyam–he’s a potato king from East Anglia. A very sound fellow. He’s a great friend of mine. He’d bring his wife and daughter. They’d only go as far as South Africa. Hyam can’t afford to come further because he has got too many business deals on here. After that we push on to Australia; and after Australia New Zealand. I’m going to take a bit of time off in New Zealand–I’ve got a lot of friends out there; I like the country. We’d have, perhaps, a month’s holiday. You could go on to Hawaii, if you liked, Honolulu.’

‘Honolulu,’ I breathed. It sounded like the kind of phantasy you had in dreams.

‘Then on to Canada, and so home. It would take about nine to ten months. What about it?’

We realised at last that he really meant it. We went into the thing fairly carefully. Archie’s expenses would, of course, all be paid, and outside that he would be offered a fee of £1000. If I accompanied the party practically all my travelling costs would be paid, since I would accompany Archie as his wife, and free transport was being given on ships and on the national railways of the various countries.

We worked furiously over finances. It seemed, on the whole, that it could be done. Archie’s £1000 ought to cover my expenses in hotels, and a month’s holiday for both of us in Honolulu. It would be a near thing, but we thought it was just possible.

Archie and I had twice gone abroad for a short holiday: once to the south of France, to the Pyrenees, and once to Switzerland. We both loved travelling–I had certainly been given a taste for it by that early experience when I was seven years old. Anyway, I longed to see the world, and it seemed to me highly probable that I never should. We were now committed to the business life, and a business man, as far as I could see, never got more than a fortnight’s holiday a year. A fortnight would not take you far. I longed to see China and Japan and India and Hawaii, and a great many other places, but my dream remained, and probably always would remain, wishful thinking.

‘The question is,’ said Archie, ‘whether old Yellowface will look kindly on the scheme.’

I said hopefully that Archie must be very valuable to him. Archie thought he could probably be replaced with somebody just as good–heaps of people were milling about wanting jobs still. Anyway, ‘old Yellowface’ did not play. He said that he might re-employ Archie on his return–it would depend–but he certainly could not guarantee to keep the job open. That would be too much for Archie to ask. He would have to take the risk of finding his place filled. So we debated it.

‘It’s a risk,’ I said. ‘A terrible risk.’

‘Yes, it’s a risk. I realise we shall probably land up back in England without a penny, with a little over a hundred a year between us, and nothing else; that jobs will be hard to get–probably even harder than now. On the other hand, well–if you don’t take a risk you never get anywhere, do you?’

‘It’s rather up to you,’ Archie said. ‘What shall we do about Teddy?’ Teddy was our name for Rosalind at that time–I think because we had once called her in fun The Tadpole.

‘Punkie’–the name we all used for Madge now–would take Teddy. Or mother–they would be delighted. And she’s got Nurse. Yes–yes–that part of it is all right. It’s the only chance we shall ever have, I said wistfully.

We thought about it, and thought about it.

‘Of course -you could go,’ I said, bracing myself to be unselfish, ‘and I stay behind.’

I looked at him. He looked at me.

‘I’m not going to leave you behind,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t enjoy it if I did that. No, either you risk it and come too, or not–but it’s up to you, because you risk more than I do, really.’

So again we sat and thought, and I adopted Archie’s point of view.

‘I think you’re right,’ I said. ‘It’s our chance. If we don’t do it we shall always be mad with ourselves. No, as you say, if you can’t take the risk of doing something you want, when the chance comes, life isn’t worth living.’

We had never been people who played safe. We had persisted in marrying against all opposition, and now we were determined to see the world and risk what would happen on our return.

Our home arrangements were not difficult. The Addison Mansions flat could be let advantageously, and that would pay Jessie’s wages. My mother and my sister were delighted to have Rosalind and Nurse. The only opposition of any kind came at the last moment, when we learnt that my brother Monty was coming home on leave from Africa, My sister was outraged that I was not going to stay in England for his visit.

‘Your only brother, coming back after being wounded in the war, and having been away for years, and you choose to go off round the world at that moment. I think it’s disgraceful. You ought to put your brother first.’

‘Well, I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘I ought to put my husband first. He is going on this trip and I’m going with him. Wives should go with their husbands.’

‘Monty’s your only brother, and it’s your only chance of seeing him, perhaps for years more.’

She quite upset me in the end; but my mother was strongly on my side. ‘A wife’s duty is to go with her husband,’ she said. ‘A husband must come first, even before your children–and a brother is further away still. Remember, if you’re not with your husband, if you leave him too much, you’ll lose him. That’s specially true of a man like Archie.’

‘I’m sure that’s not so,’ I said indignantly. ‘Archie is the most faithful person in the world.’

‘You never know with any man,’ said my mother, speaking in a true Victorian spirit. ‘A wife ought to be with her husband–and if she isn’t, then he feels he has a right to forget her.’

Posted in An Autobiography