One evening when we had guests several Belgian women came round in a state of great distress. They had all come out in great red spots, they said, all over their arms, legs, and bodies. I looked at the arms presented for my inspection. I had never seen spots – or rather eruptions – which looked like these. Apparently all the inmates of one of the Tedworth Square houses for which I was responsible had come out in these strange and revolting lumps. It was, needless to say, the house in which The Giant was, and he was one of the worst sufferers.
They regarded me with a strange expectant interest when I went back there with the women. Two of these were sisters whose husbands had both been left behind. Both had a small daughter. Although sisters, or perhaps because, they quarrelled terribly. One child had red lumps all over her, the other had none, and this was the cause of a further outbreak of bickering between the sisters. The mother of the child afflicted with the lumps looked at me with arms akimbo and a challenging smile. ‘What do you think that these are, Marraine?’ she demanded. I said I didn’t know. But I had a horrible lurking fear of what they were. I asked the two sisters to accompany me to Dr Alice Pennell. I can see her now, in a splendid royal blue sari edged with gold, examining the plump freckled arms held out for inspection – then asking the two women to show her their chests. Then she told them to dress and said to me laughingly, ‘Don’t you know what these are?’
‘Insect bites?’ I hazarded.
‘Bugs,’ she whispered. ‘Yes. Bugs!’
I told her that all the inmates of a particular house had been attacked. ‘You’ll have to report this to the Sanitary Inspector,’ she said laughing. ‘The house will have to be fumigated and possibly things in it burned.’ Now the Flemish word for bugs is wandluis, and they are by no means strangers to Belgium, yet when I had to tell the sufferers from what they were suffering their fury and indignation knew no bounds. ‘Bugs!’ They were not accustomed to such disgusting things! Horrible! What a dirty country England must be! It was nothing to do with them – didn’t I inspect their rooms every week? Didn’t I examine their sanitary arrangements? It was nothing to do with them! ‘I knew it! I knew it!’ cried one of the sisters excitedly. ‘But I wasn’t going to say anything until Marraine said something. She didn’t know what these lumps are – and she’s a nurse!’
Dr Pennell was laughing at my discomfiture but she told the women to calm down and produced some lotion for the affected parts. She said that she had better give me a large bottle for the other bitten ones. We went back quickly as the Blitz had started but these two sisters were not in the least interested in bombs – no, bugs was the agitated topic. They were far more frightened of them. ‘Do you think we got them in the shelter, Marraine?’ they asked. But not all of the bitten ones went to the same shelter – no, it seemed to me that it was the house.
The next morning I went to the Town Hall and talked to a charming officer of the Health Department. He came with me to the house in question and we began a long, exhaustive search. He told me a great deal about the life history and habits of the bug – none of which I knew, and which I found fascinating. He told me how bugs hibernate and can lie in the ground in the foundations of old buildings and then, when a new and modern building is erected on the site, they can come to life and take up residence in the house as soon as it is inhabited. Usually one particular object of furniture or one particular place can be the breeding place for these parasites. He said we must not only fumigate the house but endeavour to find the offending source.
Inch by inch we searched that house. He was a delightful companion, making the whole thing seem like a detective adventure. We had sent all the refugees out of their rooms, and only The Giant, baleful and threatening, could be seen marching up and down in the square. At last after several rooms had yielded nothing we came to a room in which there was a most beautiful painted screen. As I have said before, all the furniture in these houses had been given by Chelsea residents for the refugees. This screen was very old and had padded silk painted panels. It was Chinese, and I would have loved to possess it. After all the chairs and beds had been examined as well as the wall-paper and the rugs, I was admiring the screen when the officer from the Health Department said, ‘Now – I wonder if that isn’t the culprit?’ He took a penknife and slit one of the padded panels – he slit it carefully with a regard for its beauty. I was horrified that it had to be cut at all. But with a cry of triumph he said, ‘Got ’em. Look! Look!’ and showed me the horrible nest of the biters!
‘Will it have to be destroyed?’ I asked him. ‘Probably. It may be possible to fumigate it and get rid of them completely – but it would be better to burn it. We’ll have to see.’ The house was sealed while the fumigation went on. We had had trouble with the refugees, who had been told to take what they needed for the day and to spend the time at the canteen until they went to the shelter. By the next morning the house would be clear again. I was very sorry for them. It was, as they said, a horrible thing to have happened to refugees in our country, but it couldn’t be helped.
Next day the house was examined again by the sanitary squad. They had decided not to return the screen. It seemed a shame that such a beautiful object should have been the home of such low parasites, but as the sanitary officer said, maybe even bugs can appreciate beauty! Mrs Freeth had known at once what the red lumps were when the women had stood showing me their arms, but she had been too diplomatic to say so.
The bites disappeared with the lotion and the bugs with the fumigation – and the refugees returned to the house, but with the unanimous request that they all be moved to another house because they knew that bugs never disappeared and they had no confidence in the fumigating van. The Town Hall said this was not possible and that as the house was now clear of the bugs, they must remain. Opinion of our British cleanliness had had a severe set-back.
Suzanne was consoling over this incident, and also amusing. By now I had got into the habit of dropping in to the Royal Hospital very frequently. I would find Suzanne in the kitchen busy with meals or chores. I loved going there and often Maurice would take me and show me something lovely in the old building, or point out an aspect of it which I had not known. It seemed to me that to live in that graceful elegant place with its ghosts and shadows of its long past history must be very satisfying. I always took from it some kind of peace which was absent anywhere else – and yet the Royal Hospital had already had some eight HE bombs on it, and on the night of October 16th had had no less than three unexploded bombs on the Infirmary and the old men had had to be evacuated. Connie Oades, as warden, had told me how she had had to go and help get the old men into their wheel-chairs to be moved. Some of them were very ill, but all were reluctant to leave. They were soldiers, they insisted, their place was to stay put! Soldiers did not run away. But the bombs had to be moved too – and might explode. The old men had to go.
One of them would not get into his wheel-chair and Connie played a game of peep-bo with him for he was senile and enjoyed childhood games – and thus she got him into the chair and they were all lined up. Only then did she discover that they were all still in their night-shirts and rightly indignant about it! One evening when incendiaries were falling and Richard and I had been dining with the Fitzgeralds we saw Maurice walking about trailing yards of hosepipe, and in the strange light, with his gas mask on for protection from the fumes, he looked like some prehistoric creature with an inordinate length of tail. Creeping behind him just to see that he was all right was Elizabeth in Suzanne’s French tin hat! Richard and I had dined with them in the lovely dining-room looking out over the Thames, with exquisite old branched candlesticks lit on the enormous family table, and then, the raid becoming unpleasantly localized, Maurice and Richard had gone out to deal with incendiaries while the dessert waited.
Suzanne’s mother, now permanently bed-ridden but looking beautiful in her lace cap with lavender ribbons, would hold court amongst her pillows. When the awful droning of the raiders rose to a shrill roar o
verhead and the horrible endless swooshing of a bomb started she would hold a beautiful rosary in her frail old hands and as the noise increased so did the volume of her Aves and Hail Marys. She was always anxious as to the whereabouts of each member of the family during these nightly ordeals and knew that her son-in-law was invariably patrolling the grounds no matter how heavy the raid.
Chapter Seventeen
JENNY WAS DELIGHTED at hearing from foreign news sources of Dutch underground movements which were hampering the Nazis in their control of the people and causing them endless trouble and annoyance. They refused to salute Nazi officers and pushed many into the canals at night. The first movement to be formed, known as the Nederlandsche Unie, did not believe in the liberation of Holland or the re-establishment of the House of Orange. For this reason Dr Colijn, the Prime Minister, had withdrawn from it. I had met Dr Colijn when living in Holland, and had painted one of his little granddaughters, and I remembered the thrill with which I had seen a Vermeer painting hanging in his beautiful house in The Hague. He was a delightful man, and his sincerity and stern adherence to what he considered to be right had struck me most forcibly. I wondered how an English friend of mine, widow of a famous Dutch Professor who belonged to this university circle, was faring under the hated Seyss-Inquart and his henchmen? How would they behave to the British-born wives in Holland, Norway, Belgium, and Germany? Would they be as well-treated as the German wives of Englishmen here? I doubted it.
General de Gaulle was rapidly gathering ground. He had returned from French Equatorial Africa where he had reorganized the administration there and also in the Cameroons. He broadcast a strong condemnation of the Vichy Government. The French, he said, were being relentlessly deprived of all social liberty. He was sure that the passion for freedom which had inspired Jeanne d’Arc, and Clemenceau, would lead to the deliverance of France. The Free French were to be seen all over London now, and I sometimes went to help in their canteen – this being a delightful change from the sordid chores which seemed daily to fall to me. In spite of their misfortunes the French were gay – wonderful company, wonderfully adaptable. I loved those evenings working there. They sang, danced, and almost brought the roof down – the noise of the Blitz was often completely drowned by the noise of the Free French.
There was still a lot of fun in London in spite of the black-out – or perhaps because of it – and all the canteens and pubs sounded to the roaring of ‘Roll Out the Barrel’ and the ‘Lambeth Walk’ and ‘Run, Rabbit, Run’. At the beginning of the war there had been a song which had caught on like wild-fire. It had a rollicking catchy tune – and words which took the public fancy. But since Dunkirk and the fall of France we never heard or sang it any more. It was ‘We’re going to hang out our Washing on the Siegfried Line’ – the Siegfried Line had proved stronger than the Maginot one.
Dr Pennell was excited because Mr Nehru had been imprisoned on November 5th for inflammatory speeches calculated to hinder the war effort, and she remarked drily that the day of his arrest had been well chosen as it was Guy Fawkes Day! His sister, Mrs Pandit, was also conducting a campaign against India helping in the war. Both of these people I had met in India, and had visited Mrs Pandit in her home in Lucknow. She was very charming and intelligent, and to an artist so absolutely beautiful that I had a great admiration for her and hoped that she would not imitate her brother and be incarcerated.
The frequent visits of friends of other nationalities were a welcome relief from the petty annoyances of the somewhat drab work we were all doing. Lotuh Kuo, my lovely Chinese friend, had often some exciting and thrilling bit of news from China to tell us. Just now she and her husband were adopting two war orphans, victims of Japanese aggression – just as Carla and Francesca were victims of the Nazis.
But I think it was Asta Lange who had the most exciting story of all for us. She had many Norwegian friends in London and belonged to a circle of women who worked for Norwegian Servicemen. She told us how a huge sum of gold had been whisked away from under the Nazis’ noses and conveyed to the coast by relays of children on sledges. These magnificent children had saved this gold from being seized by the occupying Germans simply by sitting on it. The sledges were heaped with furs and skins for warmth, and under these was the gold. The children sat on the gold bars without giving the slightest indication of their precious burden. They got it safely to the coast where it was shipped, almost under the eyes of the Germans, on to a fishing vessel, and brought at great risk to England. We loved this story – when Asta told it on a Sunday morning while we were all drinking our beer, which was becoming scarcer and scarcer.
We often dined at the Café Royal and also at the Royal Court Hotel in Sloane Square. When on my return from the Far East I had been moving in to Cheyne Place I had stayed there and Mr Wilde, the Manager, had been most kind and helpful. He had been for many years in Egypt and as both Richard and I knew Cairo and Alexandria we always had plenty to talk about. We sometimes remarked on the large amount of glass in the dining-room, the walls of which were almost covered with mirror-glass, giving the illusion of very great space. The hotel had a deep strongly reinforced air-raid shelter for its residents of which Mr Wilde was justly proud. He himself was always in evidence on noisy evenings when the bombs were near, reassuring the guests.
On the night of November 12th we had dined there rather early and the sirens had sounded while we were having dinner. Richard had to go on fire-duty at the Ministry and I had left him at the entrance to Sloane Square Station and hurried home in case I was called. It was not my evening for duty but several nurses had colds and I had said I would be available if needed. I had hardly reached home when a terrific thud shook the road, but I could see nothing. The wardens were out, and there was activity in the sky and the barrage was pretty heavy, but the great thud had not been located immediately.
About half past ten the telephone rang and someone called me to go at once to the Royal Court Hotel. The line was very bad, almost impossible to hear, and it was with difficulty that I had got the message at all. As I had only just left the hotel I presumed that I had left something valuable behind there. I rang the FAP and said that I had just been called by someone to go to the hotel, and to my astonishment the VAD who answered the telephone said, ‘Yes, Mobile Unit has just gone there.’
The square presented an amazing sight – two great flaming jets guarded the pit which had once been the station. The bomb had severed the gas main. The firemen shouted to me as I tried to pick my way across to the Royal Court Hotel, and the newly built station had just disappeared into the depth below. They were already bringing out the first dead and injured and carrying those requiring immediate treatment into the hotel.
Dr and Mrs Phillips were at work in charge of the Mobile Unit. Mr Wilde and the staff were splendid. Table napkins, towels, blankets, and rugs all appeared as we laid the injured down in the lounge and hall. It was a pretty grim business – and again the appalling dirt was the most striking thing. It was evident that getting the bodies out was going to take all that night and many more. The bomb had fallen as a train was leaving the station, and the rear carriage was caught directly – the remainder of the train was shot by the blast almost to South Kensington station. This incident was most ghastly as regards the holocaust of human flesh. Identification was almost impossible – and bodies were put together roughly on to stretchers and some of them taken into nearby houses to be pieced together later somehow. George Evans was working down on the station. The worst casualties were the Underground staff who had been in the canteen on the station when the bomb fell. There were fourteen men, one conductress, and two attendants in the canteen. By the following Saturday – the bomb having fallen on the Tuesday previously – there had been thirty-eight stretchers of human flesh pieced together – but George Evans told me that there were still seventeen people to be accounted for. Countless dustbins and what we called ‘bundles’ of pieces of human flesh had been retrieved as well – so awful was the carnage and blood
that two gallons of disinfectant had to be used. The body of the conductress had disintegrated, only one small female piece found as evidence of her having been in the canteen, as she was known to have been, at the time the bomb fell.
When helping with the first essential aid to those being placed in ambulances for hospital the very things of which that doctor had warned us from his Spanish war experiences were abundantly apparent. In the hotel we used anything at hand to staunch blood and clean dirt off the injured until they could be properly attended to in hospital. Sterilization in any form was out of the question. Our Mobile doctor and unit were absolutely splendid – as were the hotel staff working with them. When I went home exhausted after Mr Wilde had given us all a stiff drink the thing which I most needed was a bath. I was filthy, blood and dirt were over all my clothes – as they had been on the casualties. The dirt, indeed, was the most noticeable thing about almost all casualties. What one needed for the sufferers before the extent of their injuries could be assessed was a hot shower – and this was the one thing which no FAP could provide. We just had to wash off the dirt using swabs and basins of water, but in most cases the clothes of those who had been in an ‘incident’ were useless afterwards and had to be removed immediately because of filth. The smell of explosions was very pungent, and one that stuck in the nostrils afterwards. The dust and plaster smelt too, an ancient timeless smell of civilization.
A Chelsea Concerto Page 20
