II
So time went on, now not so much like a nightmare as something that had been always going on, had always been there. It had become, in fact, natural to expect that you yourself might be killed soon, that the people you loved best might be killed, that you would hear of deaths of friends. Broken windows, bombs, land-mines, and in due course flying-bombs and rocketsa€“all these things would go on, not as something extraordinary, but as perfectly natural. After three years of war, they were an everyday happening. You could not really envisage a time when there would not be a war any more.
I had plenty to keep me occupied. I worked two whole days, three half-days, and alternate Saturday mornings at the Hospital. The rest of the time I wrote.
I had decided to write two books at once, since one of the difficulties of writing a book is that it suddenly goes stale on you. Then you have to put it by, and do other thingsa€“but I had no other things to do. I had no wish to sit and brood. I believed that if I wrote two books, and alternated the writing of them, it would keep me fresh at the task. One was The Body in the Library, which I had been thinking of writing for some time, and the other one was N or M?, a spy story, which was in a way a continuation of the second book of mine, The Secret Adversary, featuring Tommy and Tuppence. Now with a grown-up son and daughter, Tommy and Tuppence were bored by finding that nobody wanted them in wartime. However, they made a splendid come-back as a middle-aged pair, and tracked down spies with all their old enthusiasm.
I never found any difficulty in writing during the war, as some people did; I suppose because I cut myself off into a different compartment of my mind. I could live in the book amongst the people I was writing about, and mutter their conversations and see them striding about the room I had invented for them.
Once or twice I went down to stay with Francis Sullivan, the actor, and his wife. They had a house at Haslemere, with Spanish chestnut woods all round it.
I always found it restful to stay with actors in wartime, because to them, acting and the theatrical world were the real world, any other world was not. The war to them was a long drawn-out nightmare that prevented them from going on with their own lives, in the proper way, so their entire talk was of theatrical people, theatrical things, what was going on in the theatrical world, who was going into E.N.S.A.a€“it was wonderfully refreshing.
Then I would be back again in Lawn Road, my face covered with a pillow as a protection against flying glass, and on a chair by my side, my two most precious possessions: my fur coat, and my hot-water-bottlea€“a rubber hot-water-bottle, something at that time quite irreplaceable. Thus I was ready for all emergencies.
Then something unexpected happened. I opened a letter and found it was a notification that the Admiralty were preparing to take over Greenway, practically at a momenta€?s notice.
I went down there, and met a polite young naval lieutenant. He could give me hardly any time at all, he said. He had been unimpressed by the plight of Mrs Arbuthnot, who, having first tried to fight against the order, was now pleading for time to confer with the Ministry of Health as to where to move her nursery. The Ministry of Health cut no ice at all when it came into opposition with the Admiralty. They all moved out, and there I was left, with a household of furniture to move! The trouble was that there was nowhere to move it to. Again, no removal or storage firm anywhere had any room: every warehouse was already full to the ceiling. Finally, I got on to the Admiralty and they agreed that I should have the use of the drawing-room, in which all the furniture could be stored, and also one small room on the top floor.
While the work of furniture-moving was in progress Hannaford, the gardener, who was a faithful old rogue, devoted to anyone he had served for long enough, took me aside and said, a€?You look now what Ia€?ve saved for you from Her.a€I had no idea who Her might be, but I accompanied him to the clock tower above the stables. There, leading me through a kind of secret door, he showed me with great pride an enormous quantity of onions on the floor, covered with straw, and also a mass of apples.
a€?Come to me afore she went, she did, and said, were there any onions and apples, because as shea€?d take a€?em with her, but I wasna€?t going to let Her have thema€“no fear, I wasna€?t. Said most of the crop had failed, and I just gave her enough as was good for her. Why, they apples were grown here, and so were those onionsa€“shea€?s not going to have a€?em, take them away to the Midlands or the East Coast or wherever shea€?s going.a€?
I was touched by Hannaforda€?s feudal spirit, though nothing could have been more embarrassing. I would a thousand times rather Mrs Arbuthnot had taken away all the apples and onions; now they were landed on my hands, with Hannaford wagging his tail like a dog who has retrieved something you dona€?t want from the river.
We packed up cases of apples, and I sent them to relations who had children and might like them. I could not face returning to Lawn Road with two hundred odd onions. I tried to wish them on to various hospitals, but there were far too many onions for anyone to want.
Though our Admiralty was conducting the negotiations, it would be the United States Navy which would take over Greenway. Maypool, the big house above us on the hill, was to accommodate the ratings, and the officers of the flotilla were to take over our house.
I cannot speak too highly of the kindness of the Americans, and the care they took of our house. It was inevitable, of course, that the kitchen quarters should be more or less a shamblesa€“they had to cook for about forty people, and they put in some ghastly great smoky stovesa€“but they were very careful with our mahogany doors; in fact the Commander had them all walled up in ply-wood. They appreciated the beauty of the place too. A good many of this particular flotilla came from Louisiana, and the big magnolias, and especially the magnolia grandiflora, made them feel at home.
Ever since the war, relations of some officer or other who was at Greenway have come along to see where their son or cousin or whoever it was had been stationed. They have told me how he wrote about it and how he had described the place. I have been round the garden with them sometimes, trying to identify certain parts of it he had particularly loved, though it is not always easy because of the way things have grown up.
By the third year of the war of all my various houses none was available to me at the moment I wanted it. Greenway was taken by the Admiralty; Wallingford was full of evacuees, and as soon as they went back to London, some other friends of oursa€“an elderly invalid and his wifea€“rented Wallingford from me, and their daughter and her child joined them there. 48 Campden Street I had sold at an excellent profit. Carlo, had shown the people over it. a€?I wona€?t take less than ?￡3,500 for it,a€I had said to her. It seemed a lot to us at that time. Carlo came back rather pleased with herself. a€?Ia€?ve made them pay an extra ?￡500,a€she said. a€?I thought they deserved to.a€?
a€?What do you mean, deserved to?a€?
a€?They were rude,a€said Carlo, who had a real Scottish dislike of what she called insolence.
a€?They said disparaging things about it in front of me, which they shouldna€?t have done. They said a€?What hideous decorations! All this flowered wallpapera€“Ia€?ll soon change that!a€a€?How extraordinary some people area€“fancy taking that partition wall down!a€So I thought,a€said Carlo, a€?they had better have a lessona€“and I put up the price ?￡500.a€Apparently they had paid without a qualm.
I have a war memorial of my own at Greenway. In the library, which was their mess-room, an artist has done a fresco round the top of the walls. It depicts all the places where that flotilla went, starting at Key West, Bermuda, Nassau, Morocco, and so on, finally ending with a slightly glorified exaggeration of the woods of Greenway and the white house showing through the trees. Beyond that again is an exquisite nymph, not quite finisheda€“a pin-up girl in the nudea€“which I have always supposed to represent the hopes of houris at journeya€?s end when the war was at last over. The Commander wrote and asked me if I would like this fresco painted out and the wall put back as it was. I hurriedly replied it would bean historic memorial, and that I was delighted to have it. Over the mantelpiece were sketched out roughly the heads of Winston Churchill, Stalin and President Roosevelt. I wish I knew the name of the artist.
When I left Greenway I felt sure that it would be bombed and that I would never see it again, but, luckily, all my presentiments were wrong. Greenway was untouched. Fourteen lavatories were added, instead of the larder, and I had to fight the Admiralty to take them away again.