Mrs. Miniver

by Jan Struther

  But that moment, for Mrs. Miniver, was still far ahead. She had not even quite detached herself yet from the place she had just left. Like the earth-bound spirit of one who has recently died, she still thought in terms of the life she had been leading. Glancing up at the clock of the dining-car, she reflected: “Hansi’s mother will just be tying the napkin round his neck; and he will be saying, ‘Bit-te, Mama, keinen Blumenkohl.’” The first time she had heard him say this she had caught his mother’s eye and smiled: for the tone and the sentiment were so exactly Toby’s. She had smiled, too, when she overheard at breakfast the so familiar question: “Aber du, Hansi, hast du dir die Zahne gut geputzt?” But she had done more than smile when Hansi, after a day or two’s distant politeness, had taken her by the hand and led her to a row of curiously-shaped pebbles in a secret hiding-place between the wood-stacks.

  “Meine Sammlung,” he said briefly. “My election,” echoed Toby’s voice in her memory. Her heart turned over: how could there be this ridiculous talk of war, when little boys in all countries collected stones, dodged cleaning their teeth, and hated cauliflower?

  Indeed, what always struck her when she went abroad was how much stronger the links are between people of the same calling than between people of the same race: especially if it is a calling which has more truck with the laws of nature than with the laws of man. The children of the world are one nation; the very old, another; the blind, a third: (for childhood, age and blindness are all callings, and hard ones at that). A man who works with wood, a man who works with iron, a man who works with test-tubes, is more akin to a joiner, a smith, a research chemist from the other end of the earth than to a clerk or a shopkeeper in his own town. A fisherman from Ushant and a fisherman from Stornoway are both citizens of the same relentless country; and Nicollier, the farmer with whom Mrs. Miniver had made friends at the village fête, had expressed in a different tongue precisely the same feelings and opinion as Tom (Brickwall) Iggulsden.

  If only, she thought, sipping her black coffee, one could somehow get them together—not the statesmen and the diplomats, but Toby and Hansi, Iggulsden and Nicollier. If only all governments would spend the price of a few bombers on exchanging for the holidays, free of charge, a certain number of families from each district. …

  The attendant brought her bill. She paid it, burying her last thought as a dog buries a bone, to be returned to later. They had passed Boulogne now and were on the last lap of the journey to Calais. As one does when there are only a few minutes to go and it is not worth while embarking on anything new, she let her gaze wander round the carriage, idly seeking the titillation of the printed word. On the windowsill she read:—

  Ne pas se pencher en dehors.

  Nicht hinauslehnen.

  E pericoloso sporgersi.

  Exactly, she thought. “What I tell you three times is true.” But the trouble was, it still had to be said in three different languages. …

  At the Hop-Picking

  Brickwall Farm consisted mostly of fruit and pasture: so few acres were under hops that Tom Iggulsden did not engage any professional pickers from London. He did the picking himself, with the aid of his wife, his mother, his five children, and any of the neighbours who cared to lend a hand: which generally included the whole Miniver family.

  This time the Minivers were enjoying it even more than usual. Before, they had always been mere casual helpers, doing it for fun and leaving off whenever they felt inclined. But this year they knew that Tom Iggulsden was really counting on them, for he was short of his three best workers. Both his sons had been called up, and his eldest daughter Ivy had gone off to try and get a job in a munition factory.

  Old Mrs. Iggulsden, who was picking into the same bin as Mrs. Miniver, disapproved of Ivy’s behaviour and was saying so with some force.

  “She never ’ad naow sanse, diddn’ Ive. Gooin’ arf jus’ ’fore de ’aapin’, an’ leavin’ ’er Dad short-’anded. … Reckon I’d ’ve prin’ nigh flawed ’er alive, if I’d ’a’ bin Taam.”

  “Now den, Ma,” said Tom Iggulsden with a grin, stretching up his long-poled knife to cut down a bine. He laid the thick twisted swag of greenery across the canvas bin and winked at Mrs. Miniver behind his mother’s back.

  “You git aan wid y’r owan jaab, Ma, an’ leave Ivy be. If she rackoned she ought to goo, she ’ad to goo, diddn’ she?”

  “I don’ see naow sort o’ sanse in it,” mumbled the old woman, quite unconvinced. “She’d be doin’ more good a-pickin’ o’ dese ’ere ’aaps fer to goo into folk’s bellies, dan a’makin’ o’ dem old bullets fer to goo into deir ’eads.”

  Tom Iggulsden’s wife, overhearing this from the next bin, shot an apologetic glance at Mrs. Miniver. She had a light hand with pastry but was a little inclined to be genteel; and her mother-in-law’s robustness of speech often made her uncomfortable, especially in front of “foreigners.”

  “Of course,” put in Mrs. Miniver diplomatically, “some people would try to make out that hops were nearly as bad as bullets. Teetotallers, I mean.”

  “Oh—dem!” said old Mrs. Iggulsden with royal scorn. She stripped off her next handful of cones almost vindictively: they fell into the half-full bin without a sound, light, soft and ghostly, a dozen little severed heads of teetotallers.

  Presently there came the familiar cry of the binman, who walked round every so often to ladle the hops out into ten-bushel pokes.

  “Git your ’aaps ready, please!”

  Warned of his approach, they left off picking and set to work to clear out all the odd leaves and pieces of stalk which had dropped in by mistake. This was the part that the children enjoyed most, because it meant leaning right over the edge and plunging one’s arms elbow-deep into the feathery goldy-green mass.

  The role of bin-man, this year, was played by Tom Iggulsden himself, in the intervals of cutting down bines; and his assistant, who held the mouth of the poke open, was Vin. When the two of them arrived everybody stopped working and tried to guess how many measures there would be in the bin.

  “Twalve, I rackon,” said old Mrs. Iggulsden.

  “Fifteen,” said Judy hopefully. But Tom, taking the first scoop with his wicker basket, said “Thirteen.” And thirteen it turned out to be.

  It was certainly a relief to knock off for a bit, to straighten one’s back and stretch out one’s fingers. They had been going hard at it ever since lunch-time, with the effortless industry which is born of working with good company, in pleasant surroundings, at a perceptibly progressing task. It was like knitting: you couldn’t bear to stop until you had done one more row, one more bine. But it was also like watching the sea come in on a calm day, as the soft green tide crept steadily up the brown cliffs of the bin.

  Old Mrs. Iggulsden reached under her stool for a bottle and took a generous swig.

  “Ma … !” said her daughter-in-law, going through hell.

  “’Aaps outside needs ’aaps inside,” said the old woman cheerfully. “Ain’t that right, Mrs. Miniver?” She wiped her mouth on the back of her hand. Her briar-root fingers, which could still strip a bine more quickly than most people’s, were stained black with juice and covered with scratches from the rough clinging stems. So indeed were everybody’s, except for those who were not too proud to wear gloves. But though gloves could protect one from stains and scratches, nothing could protect one from the drowsiness, the nearly irresistible drowsiness, which comes over all but the most hardened towards the end of a long day’s picking. It seems to be more than a scent that emanates from the hops: it is almost a visible miasma, sweet yet agreeably acrid, soothing yet tonic, which blurs the edges of one’s thoughts with a greenish-gold glow.

  “Where’s Toby?” said Mrs. Miniver suddenly. Nobody knew.

  “I ’a’n’t seen nothin’ of ’im since dinner-time,” said Mrs. Iggulsden. “Ver’ like ’e’ll be down at the fur bin along o’ Molly.”

  But he was not at the far bin, nor at any of the others. Mrs. Miniver, always a
little uneasy about the main road, went off to look for him. It was extraordinary how soon, wandering through the narrow leafy aisles, one got out of sight of the others. For a short time their voices followed her: the broad vowels, the clipped consonants, the unvarying parabolas of the Kentish speech. But from a few rows further on she could neither see nor hear them. She was alone in the heart of a silent, orderly jungle; a jungle which was like one of the most advanced patterns in a gigantic game of cat’s cradle. Wherever she stopped to call or listen for Toby, she found herself at the converging point of eight green alleys; and from the root of every plant four strings stretched upwards and outwards to the wire trellis overhead, each with two bines climbing round it the way of the sun. (And why, in the name of an inscrutable providence, should hops always twine with the sun, while scarlet runners invariably went a-widder-shin?)

  Getting no answer to her cries, she walked back towards the pickers. And there, just out of sight of the last bin, lay Toby, fast asleep on a pile of pokes, with a leafy bine trailing right across him: a small rosy Bacchus with juice-stained hands. She smiled, and covered him up with an empty sack. There was no need to wake him until it was time to go home.

  “From Needing Danger …”

  STARLINGS

  25th September 1939

  DEAREST SUSAN,

  Thank you for your long letter. I began one to you the day before war broke out, but until this evening I haven’t had time to sit down and finish it. And when I re-read it just now it was like reading a letter by a different person, so much has one’s mood changed in the last few weeks. So I tore it up.

  You say, tell you facts and feelings. Well, facts first, they’re easier. Clem’s A.A. Battery is quartered in a girls’ school, from which he writes superbly funny letters. The girls are absent, of course, but their school-stories are there, and he is finding these a fascinating study. His favourite chapter-heading, so far, is “Monica Turns Out a Decent Sort”; but at present he is absorbed in a last-war one about a games mistress who was a spy in disguise and used to write code messages on tennis-balls and throw them into the North Sea. He says he can hardly wait to get to the end. He is also making a collection of graffiti, which are all quite touchingly mild. Things like “Gwenny T. is a Big Pig” and “Molly B. is a Brat.” There is a very dignified one, which simply says: “I think Gwenny T. is the most hateful person I have ever met.” And another, arranged like an equation: “Violet W. + Gwenny T. = Lovey-dovey. ∴ Ha! ha!” Clem says he was so relieved to find that somebody liked poor Gwenny T. after all.

  The children are down here, having the time of their lives with our seven tough and charming evacuées —but I’ll tell you more about that next time I write. Mrs. Downce has played up admirably. I was rather afraid she might be pot-faced, but not a bit of it. To tell you the truth I think she is delighted to have some Cockney voices in the house. It makes her feel at home after her twenty-five years in Darkest Kent. She had quite a Dr.-Livingstone-I-presume expression on her face when she welcomed them in.

  Ellen (our present incarnation of the cosmic principle of house-parlourmaid, successor to Gladys, who got married) is down here, too, helping Nannie and Mrs. D. Mrs. Adie is in London, sleeping in the kitchen so as not to have to traipse downstairs when the raid-warning goes. “Well, Madam,” she said with a wry smile, “I never thought I’d live to be glad that I couldna persuade ye to shift into one o’ yon new non-basements. The Lord,” she added solemnly, “doesna seem to care how much trouble He gies Himself in order to bring us to our senses.” I was amused at the time, and sent Clem an elaborate picture in coloured chalk of guns, tanks, and aeroplanes charging across Europe, with a Jovial bearded face directing operations from a cloud in the left-hand top corner, and a repentant Mrs. Adie in the right-hand bottom one. But during the last fortnight I’ve begun to feel—N.B. we are now on to feelings—that she may be right, after all. As you know, she has a real Scots genius for coining phrases, and it is extraordinary how often they ring true.

  The thing is, we’re all so buoyed up just now with the crusading spirit, and so burningly convinced of the infamy of the Government we’re fighting against (this time, thank goodness, one doesn’t say “the nation we’re fighting against”)—that we’re a little inclined to forget about our own past idiocies. The fact that we are now crusaders needn’t blind us to the fact that for a very long time we have been, as Badger would say, echidnas. I can think of a hundred ways already in which the war has “brought us to our senses.” But it oughtn’t to need a war to make a nation paint its kerbstones white, carry rear-lamps on its bicycles, and give all its slum children a holiday in the country. And it oughtn’t to need a war to make us talk to each other in buses, and invent our own amusements in the evenings, and live simply, and eat sparingly, and recover the use of our legs, and get up early enough to see the sun rise. However, it has needed one: which is about the severest criticism our civilization could have.

  I wonder whether it’s too much to hope that afterwards, when all the horrors are over, we shall be able to conjure up again the feelings of these first few weeks, and somehow rebuild our peace-time world so as to preserve everything of war which is worth preserving? What we need is a kind of non-material war museum, where, instead of gaping at an obsolete uniform in a glass case, we can press a magic button and see a vision of ourselves as we were while this revealing mood was freshly upon us. I know that this sounds silly and that there are no such magic buttons. The nearest approach to them, I think, are the poems and articles—and even the letters and chance phrases —which are struck out of people like sparks at such moments as this. So write all the letters you can, Susan, please (to me, if you feel like it, but at any rate to somebody), and keep all the ones you get, and put down somewhere, too, everything you see or hear which will help later on to recapture the spirit of this tragic, marvellous, and eye-opening time: so that, having recaptured it, we can use it for better ends. We may not, of course, ever get the chance: but if we do, and once more fail to act upon it, I feel pretty sure we shan’t be given another one.

  As usual in all moments of stress, I’ve been falling back on Donne. It’s a pity preachers never seem to take their texts from anything but the Bible: otherwise they could base a perfectly terrific sermon for the present day on verse 16 of his Litany—the one which begins “From needing danger …” Do look it up—I know there’s a copy in the library at Quern, in the little bookshelf just on the left of the fireplace.

  Yours ever, with much love,

  CAROLINE.

  Mrs. Miniver Makes a List

  “Will ye be wanting anything more tonight, mem?” asked Mrs. Adie, putting the coffee down by the fire and picking up Mrs. Miniver’s supper-tray.

  “No, thank you, nothing at all. As soon as I’ve made out my list of Christmas presents, I’m going straight to bed.”

  Mrs. Adie paused at the door, tray in hand.

  “Ay,” she said. “This is going to be a queer kind of Christmas for the bairns, with their Daddy away.”

  “I dare say he’ll get leave,” said Mrs. Miniver hopefully.

  “Mebbe ay, mebbe no.” Mrs. Adie was not one to encourage wishful thinking. “To say nothing,” she added, “of having ten bairns in the house, instead of three. My! It’ll take me back to when I was a wean myself.”

  “Why, there weren’t ten of you, were there?”

  “Thirteen,” said Mrs. Adie, wearing the particular expression that Clem always called “Scotland Wins.”

  Mrs. Miniver was surprised, not so much by the information itself as by the fact that Mrs. Adie had vouchsafed it. She was not in the habit of talking about her own childhood. Indeed, she rather gave the impression that she had never had one, but had simply risen from the foam, probably somewhere just off the East Neuk of Fife.

  “Well, I’ll say good night, mem.”

  “Good night, Mrs. Adie. That was a lovely Welsh rabbit.”

  Left alone, Mrs. Miniver poured out a cup of coffee a
nd sat on the fender stool to drink it, roasting her back. Yes, it was going to be a queer Christmas for everybody this year. To the parents left behind in the big cities it would seem only half a Christmas; to the hard-pressed foster-parents in the country, a double one. Out of her own seven evacuees at Starlings, only two, she knew, had ever had a tree of their own. And Reen, the eldest—a shrill, wizened, masterful little creature of twelve, who in the last two months had become so touchingly less shrill and wizened (though no less masterful)—had never even hung up her stocking. She was inclined to scoff at the idea of taking to this custom so late in life.

  “On’y kids do that,” she said. “It’s sissy.”

  “Vin still does it,” said Mrs. Miniver. “He’s nearly sixteen, and he’s not in the least sissy.”

  “Are you sure?” asked Reen suspiciously.

  “Quite sure,” said Mrs. Miniver, without a twitch. (She must tell Vin this, next time she wrote.)

  But it was too early yet to make plans about stockings. First of all, she must get on with that list of presents. She put down her coffee-cup and went resolutely over to the writing-table.

  One of Mrs. Miniver’s bad habits—which, like many bad habits, was only an exaggeration of a good one—was that she was apt to begin by being methodical and to end by being a magpie. It was, for instance, quite a sound idea to keep one’s Christmas present list until the following year, so as to make sure that one didn’t leave people out or give them the same thing twice running. But the worst of it was, she never could bring herself to throw away the old lists when they were done with; and as she had started the habit when she first married, she had now accumulated no less than seventeen of them. Not only did they take up an unnecessary amount of space in an already overcrowded drawer, but they caused her to waste time at a season of the year when time was most valuable: for whenever she opened the drawer to consult last year’s list, she found herself quite unable to resist browsing through the earlier ones.