Henrietta Sees It Through Read Online Free Page A

of our home town, Robert. Nobody made a fuss and everything worked smoothly, rather to the disappointment of the Visitors who prophesied Muddles.
    Mrs Savernack covered herself with glory by rushing into the garden and firing a shot-gun at the enemy plane.
    She swears she scored a hit, and is now so flushed with success that she is trying to form a Women’s Home Guard. She says she isn’t going to ask me to join, because I wouldn’t be any good.
    The only person besides Lady B’s Fay to be quite unmoved by the raid is our gardener, who is so deaf he never heard anything. When I told him about it he shook his head in a knowing way. ‘Ar,’ he said, ‘her couldn’t get me. I was in the old greenhouse.’
    Always your affectionate Childhood’s Friend,
    H ENRIETTA

 
    Â 
    Â 
    June 3, 1942
    M Y D EAR R OBERT
    Bill and the Linnet have both had a few days’ leave. It was lovely having them at home together. Luckily the weather was beautiful, and they spent nearly all their time lying on the roof, playing the gramophone to each other.
    Since they left home our gramophone records have got rather behind the times. There is nothing in the world as sadas an old dance tune and, once or twice, while shaking the mop out of the bathroom window and seeing them lying there in such pre-war abandon, I was moved almost to tears.
    â€˜What are you looking so miserable about?’ shouted the Linnet.
    â€˜It’s that tune about Smoke in My Eyes.’
    â€˜Gosh!’ said Bill. ‘It’s so old you must almost have danced to it in your youth.’
    â€˜Oh, no, Bill,’ said the Linnet seriously. ‘Not as old as all
that.
’
    Children say this sort of thing. They don’t mean it unkindly . . .
    Last week, when I was half-way up the cliff path, a sudden splutter overhead sent me headlong, like a rugby back, into the nearest doorway, which happened to be the entrance to the Men’s Club. Colonel Simpkins, who happened to be coming out, stepped over me in some surprise.
    â€˜My dear Henrietta!’ he said as he helped me to my feet.
    I brushed the dust off my coat, feeling foolish.
    â€˜What
were
you doing?’ said Colonel Simpkins. Just then there was another rattle overhead. Colonel Simpkins looked up and then smiled kindly at me. ‘It’s all right, you know; it’s one of Ours,’ he said, patting my arm. ‘Not that it isn’t a very sensible thing to do, Henrietta - very sensible indeed. We should always be ready for any emergency. By the way, I notice you are not carrying your gas mask.’
    â€˜I’m sorry.’
    â€˜Keep it in your shopping basket, my dear. And now come and have some coffee.’
    I remembered this kindness when we met next at Lady B’s and poor Colonel Simpkins came most unexpectedly under attack.
    Lady B is very indignant because only ninety-five people voted for equal compensation for women who get injured in air raids. The usually genial atmosphere of her little flat was charged with sex-antagonism when we all met there after church on Sunday morning to help her drink the bottle of sherry somebody had sent her for her birthday.
    â€˜I grudge every drop I pour into your glass,’ said Lady B bitterly as she helped Colonel Simpkins.
    Colonel Simpkins looked hurt. ‘
I
didn’t vote against Equal Compensation,’ he said, like a little boy who has been given an undeserved smack.
    â€˜Would you have voted for it?’ said Lady B, standing over him like the Avenging Angel.
    Colonel Simpkins exchanged a quick look with the Admiral and shuffled with his feet. ‘It’s all a matter of economics,’ he said.
    â€˜Economics be damned!’ said Lady B. ‘My limbs are worth as much to me as yours are to you; more, in fact, because I’m a poor widow-woman in reduced circumstances, and if I had only one arm I wouldn’t be able to cook my food, whereas if you had