England to Me: A Memoir

by Emily Hahn

  “It’s impossible,” said Louise in despair, every so often. “I wonder if Nanny” (or Esther, or Mary, or the cook) “wouldn’t keep an eye on him for a minute or two? Just until I get my room straightened out.”

  At first with confidence, and later with grim but fading optimism, I always said, “Well, we can try …”

  Nanny, the first nurse after Margrethe, said that she’d love to keep an eye on Ian, just to help out while we got through the mail in the morning. Louise chanted her praises with enthusiasm. Nanny was a dithering old lady who taught Carola that certain words are rude, and that the world is divided into two sorts of people, ladies and gentlemen on top, working-class people beneath. I don’t think her four months’ tenure was enough to corrupt Carola, but it was really hard on the rest of us. Twice Nanny almost burned down the house by forgetting to turn off the iron, and as the chief reason for our having a nurse was that we wanted someone with whom Carola could safely be left while we were away, Nanny was a washout. From Louise’s point of view she was a disappointment too. At first Nanny adored Ian to the point of forgetting Carola; she and Mrs. Clifton were at daggers drawn over the poor baby. But as soon as she got him out in his gocart and took him for the sedate walks Carola hated, the baby was in danger. She left him strapped in the chair, much too close to the traffic, in the village road while she gossiped in the shops. She didn’t love him at all any more when he began to walk. Nanny didn’t like walking and kept making excuses not to take the children out.

  We parted from Nanny when it got too bad, and were without anyone for a while. This was so much of a relief that it seemed a pity to get anybody at all. But the Major and I were scheduled to go to Holland and we couldn’t expect Louise to watch Carola while we were away. In the meantime Louise made arrangements for herself: Fay, a girl from the village, was to come of an afternoon to take Ian out for his walk.

  “Why can’t Louise walk him herself?” asked the Major.

  “Now really, Charles. She has our mail and typing, and she hates walking, and she gets cold. You can’t take care of a baby that age and still do everything else.”

  “Pooh,” said the Major. “If she’d put him in the pen sometimes …”

  “Well, she won’t.”

  Louise was so happy over Fay that she actually stopped talking about Stanley long enough to say so. It was marvelous, she said, to have a breathing space. Everything was going to be all right from now on.

  But Fay never came when it rained, and it rained often. She cost Louise too much. Mrs. Clifton, who was still with us then, didn’t like Fay hanging around the kitchen even to give Ian his tea. Fay said Mrs. Clifton was rude, and often wouldn’t give the children enough to eat.

  “Oh dear, oh dear,” I said. With the trip to Holland looming over us, I went to London with Louise and hired Esther. Louise was happy about Esther; she was sure everything would be all right now. Esther would be the solution of every problem in the house.

  In the light of later events I must go on record as saying that I like Esther, a big Irish girl, so pleasant and eager to agree with one that she was saying, “Yes, yes,” before she knew what she was agreeing to. There was one drawback to Esther, though. She didn’t want to keep an eye on Ian, even if she should be paid to do it. After one or two experiences she said so, flatly. It soon became regrettably obvious that Louise didn’t like Esther, after all.

  “It’s nothing to do with my own personal feelings,” Louise assured me. “It’s not because she won’t take care of Ian. But after all she has nothing to do all morning while Carola’s at school. She might at least keep things clean. The night nursery is a pigsty. While you were in Holland …”

  “Well,” I said, “I like her, and so does Carola. You ought to like her, belonging to the same church and all that.”

  “But she’s so lazy. She doesn’t ever change her clothes.”

  “Well,” I said, “I like her.”

  I still like Esther. I’m sorry she ambled to Ireland without giving me any warning, though I know it was an integral part of her nature to do things that way. After an interval of six weeks’ waiting I hired Mary, so when Esther was ready to come back I didn’t have a place for her, much to Louise’s delight.

  “Everything will be wonderful now,” said Louise. “Mary is just exactly what you need for Carola. She’s young”—Mary was fifteen —”but she’s very mature for her age. She’ll be company for Carola, and after all you always have the Cliftons to fall back on.” Mary is granddaughter to the Cliftons, so I was surprised at Louise’s attitude.

  “I shouldn’t think you would want the Clifton element,” I said. “You have such definite ideas about Mrs. Clifton. You always said it is so much nicer, now Mrs. Clifton is keeping her own house.”

  “Oh well, that. Mary doesn’t mind looking after Ian.”

  We had arranged, without any chance of misunderstanding this time, that Mary, at augmented salary, was to take care of Ian during the day.

  Alas, after two weeks Mary said she would rather give up the augmentation in salary, and give up Ian too.

  This time I did not need the Major’s opinion to strengthen my own decision. This time, I said, I was not changing nurses.

  “I don’t see why you really care,” I said to Louise. “You’ve been dissatisfied with Mary. You say you might as well not have anybody as her. You say Fay would be better. You say Mary doesn’t take care of Ian at all, she doesn’t wash his clothes, she lost his blue dungarees, she lets him cry, she does nothing all morning while Carola’s at school.”

  “It’s not that,” said Louise tearfully. “You’re standing up for Mary. You’ve let our friendship be spoiled.”

  She went to her room and cried, and I sat in my room and cursed, and tried to be fair all around, and fulminated. (But the Major and I were going to Portugal.) “She’s getting neurotic,” I decided. I went and pulled Louise Out of her room, like a winkle, and waited until she had blown her nose. “You’re getting neurotic,” I said. “You stop it.”

  Somehow, though, it didn’t seem to help.

  Louise’s nervous breakdown came just at Easter, when I began to notice a familiar aura at meals. There was a lurking dread in the air. Somebody’s unhappiness hung over the table like a miasma. It was so much like the days of Mrs. Clifton that I kept waiting for an oven door to slam, but no doors slammed. Nothing happened. There was just the aura.

  Louise was silent. There was no cheerful chatter during meals. Louise was glum and quiet, and not even the magic word “Stanley” woke her up. After two days of it I couldn’t bear it any longer, though the Major didn’t seem to have noticed anything. I asked her.

  “It’s my head,” said Louise. She began to talk loud. “I’ve got the most frightful headache all the time. I think I’m going crazy. I’m in prison, I’m in prison, and I’ll never get out. I might as well be back in camp; life will always be just washing clothes, and washing more clothes, and looking after Ian, and—” She wept wildly. We put her to bed and called the doctor, and he gave her a sedative, and as soon as she got up I farmed Ian out to a woman in the village for a week, and Louise went to Yorkshire and Scotland to visit friends, and talked to her heart’s content about Stanley. She came back full of life. Ian had been a perfect angel, said Mrs. Collins; he ate his meals without trouble, he stayed in his pen without crying, he didn’t dirty his clothes unreasonably.

  “But he’s terrible now,” said the Major. Ian was terrible. He whimpered all the time, and clung to Louise’s skirts until she couldn’t move.

  “He’s afraid you’ll go away again,” I said.

  “I suppose that’s it,” she said, sighing deeply and falsely. She liked it for a couple of days, but then she began to feel frayed and edgy. We all did, but it was worst for Louise because she was in one room with Ian all the time. I tried to explain that to the Major.

  “Nevertheless, darling,” said the Major, “Ian begins to be a damned nuisance.”

  “Well, he’s tee
thing.”

  “No, I won’t swallow that any more. You’ve been giving me that for nearly a year.”

  “But babies teethe for eighteen months!”

  The Major looked horrified, but he stood firm. “Something can be done,” he said. “Something must be done. She has no control over him, that’s all.”

  Thus began the great reform phase for Ian. Perforce, I turned into a bully and a disciplinarian. Every time he started to whimper and cough at Louise I took him away from her, and when he continued to force his tears I smacked his thigh gingerly, according to the diagrams in the books which say you mustn’t smack babies on the bottom. He is a very clever child, and it was only two days before he got the idea. Mummy had let him down: Fate and the outside world had overtaken poor Ian. If he fussed at night or started whimpering unduly, all I had to do was shout “Ian!” in a dreadful stentorian voice, and he shut up immediately. At meals he ate his food and gestured meekly when he wanted water, instead of pushing his slops all over Mummy’s lap. It was a relief for all of us, but Louise must have hated my guts, and I don’t blame her. She controlled herself, though; only once did she say, rather cattishly, “Have you ever in your life smacked Carola?”

  “Often,” I said promptly. “I always felt terrible afterward too.”

  The only person who enjoyed this period of stern control was Carola. After the disgusting habit of children (at least I hope it’s characteristic, and not a special villainy of her own) she watched and gloated when I scolded the baby. “He jolly well deserves it, doesn’t he, Mummy?”

  “Oh, shut up, Carola. Go away.”

  Life seemed to degenerate within doors at our house. Instead of poisoning me, as she wanted to, Louise turned again to her grudge against Mary. “I don’t want for a minute to suggest that the poor child lose her job. After all, I’m broadminded enough to realize that she’s very young. But I hate to see Carola suffer, that’s all. It’s not for myself I mind it—I know you think I’m prejudiced on account of Ian, but it’s not that—if the servants only dared talk to you as they do to me, you’d know what that poor child has to put up with. Now I don’t want to worry you, Mickey, goodness knows you’ve got other things on your mind, but I’d feel a lot easier when I go away if I could see that somebody else was in charge of Carola. Not that I suggest your sacking Mary, not for a minute. After all, she’s only a child.”

  Outside, the world went about its affairs. The Tory press cackled and jeered at the fact that Britain’s gold loan was slipping away fast and faster. The Liberal newspaper kept pecking away at the Government. Our vegetable garden suddenly began to produce green peas, tomatoes, carrots, and potatoes in profusion, and the sun shone over all, making the farmers grumble about drought but gladdening the hearts of the rest of us. It was hard to remember winter and chilblains. The Labour press made hay in the unprecedented sunshine; our woods smelt heavenly; even the nettles gave out a good smell as I squashed them underfoot for another few days, and with all the other growing things, Louise’s grudge grew too.

  “Louise,” I said, “you are becoming almost too neurotic. Something must be done.”

  She wagged her head, exactly like a woman thinking I was neurotic, and being charitable about it. It was most irritating.

  Suddenly, everything happened at once to Louise. The Chinese Government remembered her existence, recalled her efficiency in the office, and recollected that they owed her back wages and recognition for wartime services. The world opened up before her. Just as Ian cut his last bad tooth Louise was given a good job, a lump sum, and a free trip to China. The greatest of these, she said happily, was the trip to China, where you can get amahs for your baby. The house was in a turmoil of long-distance telephones, cables, and luggage arrangements. Now and then Ian went out for a walk and got lost; one day a man who was laying a pipe down in the main road brought him home. Another time a stranger in goggles rode his motorcycle up to the door to report that a Chinese child was sitting in the middle of the road, making mudpies, to the great danger of passing motorcars and also, incidentally, of himself. Louise said fondly, “Isn’t he brave!”

  It happened that the Major and I set out for Portugal a week before Louise’s great expedition was due to start. I was packing my bag when I saw Jan, the gardener, carrying Ian up the drive from the main road. Those were busy days for gardening, but Jan took time off to save the baby’s life.

  “Here he is, Louise,” he said, putting down his burden. “He went down to the road again.”

  “Oh, Jan,” cried Louise, “just look after him for a while, will you? I’ve got to send this telegram.”

  Six weeks later I had a rapturous letter from Louise, posted at Port Said. “We’ve had a wonderful trip,” she wrote, “and everyone just loves Ian. They all take turns looking after him for me.”

  There wasn’t a word of spite against Mary in the whole letter.

  In the middle of a summer like this last one you are apt to look upon country life as a cheerful joke and nothing at all arduous. Windows and doors stay open for the whole season. Apples and pears are ripening and a paternal government smilingly presents you with extra sugar coupons to make jam. Clothes are a secondary consideration rather than a necessity. The milk is better and you can have vegetables and berries for the picking. But we had become so canny that the afterthought was always there: “How lovely it is now, and how awful it’s going to be!” poor Carola must have heard us say a dozen times a day. “It’s going to be a bad winter.” It got her down. One forgets those intense terrors of childhood. Heaven lies about us in our infancy right enough, but so does hell, and for every moment of boundless, wild hope I used to enjoy I paid with other moments of limitless despair. I had forgotten all that until Carola one day at lunch put down her spoon and with tears in her eyes said, “I do wish it was going to be a nice winter instead of a nasty one.” All of a sudden I remembered how once, long ago, I heard Mother say to Dad, “I don’t know where we’re going to find the money for those piano lessons,” and for days my thoughts were haunted by gloomy visions of the entire family penniless and ragged in the wintry streets, like the Poor Little Match Girl.

  I reassured Carola, I hope, but there is no reassuring the newspaper writers, who peer into a future as deeply black as that which I envisioned on the other side of the piano teacher’s monthly account. They have always done this in England, and I suppose they always will. I am no Pollyanna, but really, not the atomic bomb, not even annihilation is going to be as bad as the Fleet Street boys make out every day in time for the next edition.

  Take the bread ration as an example. Bread was rationed in England about the middle of 1946, just before we arrived. We read all about it in advance in the papers, including news of a housewives’ procession, a general protest, and an unavailing petition to the Minister. When we got here we were nervous about eating bread. We went very carefully with it during our first meals, and it was with some surprise that I saw a good deal of dry bread going to feed the chickens every day. Still, I realized chicken feed is valuable, too, and the bread is not being wasted. When I heard a friend of mine saying airily, “Oh, I never use all my B.U.’s (bread units),” I decided she must be exceptional, and that her family ate like birds. It was only when I started going over the household bills item by item, quite a time after we first got here and Mrs. Clifton had gone, that I found out how casual our consumption of bread had become.

  “Do we ever use all our B.U.’s, Mrs. Alford?” I asked the cook, about a year after that indignant protest parade in London. Mrs. Alford laughed lightly, just as if there had never been a time when bread was unrationed and when housewives declared that was one thing they would never, never stand for. “Oh no!” said Mrs. Alford genially. “Nobody ever does use it all, I expect.”

  I still didn’t believe it, and carried my research into London. It’s much harder to keep house in town, as anybody will tell you, so I asked my city friend Barbara. No, Barbara never used all her B.U.’s either. Barbara viewed
with equanimity Mr. Strachey’s latest threat to cut the bread ration. “Oh yes, all that fuss,” she said when I reminded her of the housewives’ parade. “Yes, I’d forgotten that. Well, I rather think that was deliberately stirred up, you know.”

  Does it seem a questionable reassurance, that we’re not yet going short of bread? Perhaps, but I think Carola would welcome it, just the same.

  She is not likely to get reassurance from the press, on that ground or others. The ultimate in waspish criticism was reached when one of the papers reported a coroner’s verdict on a dead baby. The child had fallen from its pram, a “utility” article, the low price of which is subsidized by the State, and was strangled in the strap while its mother was in the butcher shop. The verdict, of course, was death by misadventure. You wouldn’t think even a newspaperman could read a political lesson into that pitiful little item, would you? Then you don’t know the British press. The headline said,

  CHILD MEETS DEATH

  OWING TO UTILITY ARTICLE

  PRAM TOO SHALLOW,

  SAYS CORONER

  11. HOLIDAY

  It was just a year after leaving the States that we went to Portugal for a month, but it seemed longer. Never before has a mere year done so much—in peacetime, that is—to my mentality. I only half realized it until we were really out of England, the plane buzzing along over the Channel on one of those bright days when all the world looks like an ordnance map. I felt as if I had just slithered out of something. This, I told myself, is ridiculous; what gives this feeling? Don’t all people have the same sensation of shedding responsibilities when they step on a ship or a plane? Yes, but it was more than responsibilities we were shedding. Civilized travel has always in my lifetime been beset with small worries—luggage, reservations, currency—but never has it been so complicated as it is in anticipation, today, from England. We were shedding forms, rules, regulations, and more forms.