Mrs Miles's Diary

by S. V. Partington

  PART ONE

  August 1939 to April 1941

  Elystan Miles (Robin) circa 1914

  Photograph courtesy of Mary Wetherell

  1939

  Thursday, 24 August

  Here I am, sitting alone in the library at 8.10 p.m. Robin is wandering about the garden; the dug-out is not finished. Today the news is very bad. ‘We are,’ says Mr Chamberlain, ‘in imminent peril of war.’ Nobody seems to be happy any more. It was rather dreadful to see the people at Woolworths struggling around the curtain hook counter to buy apparatus for their dark draperies. I bought various wrong things in haste, and also had great difficulty in getting some cold ham at the equally crowded grocers. It was thronged with worried women, trying at the last moment to lay in things.

  Miss Sandworth, a fine old woman, tells me she has a class of thirty Czech refugees who are learning English. The men have all been helping with the hay harvest. Her friend Fred Pethick Lawrence has been trying to get the authorities to allow the Czechs to do a bit of work, and to slacken the regulations against it.3

  The wireless has just said, speaking of football: ‘Let us hope the crisis will pass, and the grand old game be more popular than ever.’

  I feel there is no hope left – and that we are in for the most terrible years.

  Basil is at Netley,4 Harry at Singapore. What will become of them?

  I have none of the happy conviction with which I went into the last war.

  Saturday, 26 August

  A hot, fearfully sunny day. The news is vague. Aeroplanes roar over. Bey Hyde comes in to ask me if she can put through a trunk call to Leamington Spa. She tells me she has lost her job through all this, at her fashionable town school. She must find another pensionable job.

  I, lightly: ‘Oh, you will join the Women Terriers?’5

  Bey: ‘One-and-six a day! No thanks.’6

  Later on in the bank a young cashier like a half-fledged sparrow advises a brand new customer: ‘If we close at the outbreak of war, it is only for, say, a day.’

  ‘I should like to cash some money. Ought I to do it today?’ she asks.

  I intervene to tell her that the moratorium before the last war was for four days and I advise her to get money now.

  The maid Nancy’s wedding is postponed. Her Argyll and Sutherland7 can’t get leave from Fife. The wedding cake is finished and is iced, the pale blue dress ready. Poor Nancy.

  Tuesday, 29 August

  I have forgotten what it is like to read a book. I am glad to work and to think; think hard of how to go through each day.

  Nancy’s fiancé is guarding the Tay bridge. Her wedding cake, really a lovely one framed in sugar lilies, is being stored at the Guildford bakers till the wedding can take place.

  Barbara8 writes: ‘I notice, talking to people here, that everyone seems very tired and sleepy in the daytime, and wakeful at night, and that seems to me to be the sort of natural adjustment in anticipation of things to come.’

  She tells a story of an old maid in her village who was overheard talking to herself. ‘Hitler thinks he’ll get everything (stamps her foot) but he won’t. I’ll see he doesn’t.’

  Wednesday, 30 August

  The little dark-eyed would-be bride is going about her work rather sadly today, with a wistful look. However, there seems a slightly hopeful pause in the Germans’ onslaught. Why does it not all begin?

  I hear that a certain lady here is offering dachshund puppies for nothing. There was quite a serious letter in The Times yesterday from a famous author, begging people not to be unkind to German dogs!

  I feel so exhausted I can hardly write this, and it is hot again. I can see on the allotments little groups of men talking interminably about Adolf.

  Ella McR. writes that 1,600 children from Glasgow are being evacuated there, and she is to have four girls. But nobody in these factory towns is thinking much about it. The women of England are depressed to death over the idea of the shared kitchen, and the children unknown. I saw Miss B. this morning, who confessed she had agreed to nothing more than two teachers in her little, comfy square house with its Chippendale chairs and soft pink carpets, and her old brown and white cups. She ‘could never afford to get together such things again if the marauding mob broke them up’, and seems to see a vision of lonely old age ‘in a back attic room, if crowds come down and storm us’.

  The sky is rosy, and pale brooding grey clouds are over Netley Park,9 where the mansion is being got ready for the refugee babies and mothers.

  Thursday, 31 August

  Just heard that the evacuation of children is to begin tomorrow. Seventy are to arrive by buses here about 10.30. The evacuation notices are most inappropriately given out by BBC young men, who know little what despair enters the hearts of various women expecting the strangers and afraid to have them. Men just haven’t the foggiest.

  The Ministry of Health produced a series of emotive appeals in English and Welsh newspapers, asking for people to take in evacuees.

  Photograph © IWM PST15108

  All hope of peace seems gone tonight. The Reserves are called up – every category. Only my old man remains, a trained soldier of many years service, peacefully smoking his pipe, and bricklaying his dugout.

  We have shrunk into three rooms now, and the bedrooms are all ready for the refugees who with admirable sangfroid refrain from coming.

  A cordial invitation to come down to Picket Post, where the hundred windows of the school have all dark blinds.10 One longs for friends at this dreadful hour; dear friends to be close at hand.

  Robin calls me. ‘Come and listen!’ I fly in, to hear a long set of Hitler’s conditions and terms for Poland. The first is the unconditional surrendering of Danzig. We are surprised, and there is no explanation. Go to sleep feeling that this is unsatisfactory.

  Friday, 1 September

  The morning papers tell us that these terms were submitted to Poland very hurriedly, and without adequate time for the wretched country to cope with them. Robin strolls down the village at ten a.m. and returns to say that he hears that Germany has begun hostilities in Poland. I can hardly believe it. I sit at my writing-table trying to fill up income tax forms, and I accept the announcement with incredulity.

  Later it dawns on me, and the first sensation is that of intense relief. Hitler must be shown that his policy is a menace. I think immediately of my sons, of Harry and Basil.

  Harry (standing) and Basil as schoolboys

  Photograph courtesy of Mary Wetherell

  I write at 9.30 at night on the most fateful evening. We are blacked out, seriously and properly tonight, and it’s very sultry, and hard to bear the closely-pulled curtains. The BBC is instructing Terriers to report immediately.

  One hundred children arrived here at one, instead of ten a.m., and were duly sorted. Fancy, old Mrs C. takes ten in her large empty house at the top of the hill. The children are very popular – Nancy is delighted with three little brothers parked on her mother. They hailed a worm in the garden by a delighted and awed exclamation: ‘Coo! See that snake!’

  Saturday, 2 September

  Madge this morning went to the school at nine and filled the Girl Guides’ palliasses with straw from Netley barn, and motored round, distributing blankets to cottages that had not a supply. Then a consignment of mothers and babies arrived, and were carted about and dolloped quite correctly, according to plan.

  This afternoon my boarders called from London to tell me that their Harley Street house is much disturbed, as all the specialists are getting attached to hospitals and will not be using their consulting rooms in the West End. One great man said he just couldn’t pay his quarter’s rent as his patients wouldn’t pay up. I fear Joan will lose very heavily on this house of hers, which she has on lease from the Crown and pays for through specialists’ rents.11

  A peaceful hush lies over all England. It seems incredible that we should have to leave our gardens, full of the dying fires of red phlox and yellow rudbeckia, to listen
to this string of injunctions from the BBC about lighting restrictions, conscription and so on.

  Dr S. came to see Edie last night, and said: ‘Oh, I’ve had a jolly day, finishing up with sacking the cook. I found that she had been calling the Austrian housemaid “You dirty German”, so I said “You’ll pack up your things NOW and go.”’

  Basil wrote that he could not get away from Netley, and asked us to send his gas mask.

  Warsaw has been bombed six times today.

  Sunday, 3 September. Outbreak of War

  The Prime Minister, in the most delightfully English voice, told us just after eleven that we were at war.

  It seems incredible! As I write, the sad day has gone by. The evening sun is glowing on the garden, and Edie’s border shows her marigolds still beautifully fresh and golden. The low voices of the tenants, one of them the exhausted billeter, float up.12 Robin is round at a cottage getting quarters for Hoffman’s car. Our visitors arrive tomorrow. For how long?

  Early this morning Madge reported that news had come from London that a great increase in the billeting lists was expected, and that compulsory billeting must begin at once. She asked me to go and watch over a tearful neighbour, an old widow, solitary in a large house, frightened of what might be coming to her.

  Robin and I went in a hurry over to the loft; he said that ten soldiers might be billeted there comfortably. Who was to move the billiard table? ‘Easily done,’ was his calm reply.

  How one longs for all this NOT to have happened at this deceiving time of year! In no time the autumn winds will be howling and sobbing and moaning about, and we shall be darkening windows early. I wish this whole house were let to some reliable people, that the tenants were safe in Grantown, that Robin and I were safe in Rhynie, he tilling the land, and I with Mildred13 and the twins, brushing up my knowledge in a calmer air.

  Aeroplanes drone by all day long, all night long.

  My neighbour, Mrs F., says a blazing light comes from my window. This is terrible! I thought it was perfectly screened. Robin is going round to gaze tonight. I have a baby bulb above my head, tiny, so that I can just read. I think it must be the moon on the glass.

  The King spoke on the radio, curiously slow and sad and with much lack of vitality. Better far that the Queen had spoken.

  I dread tomorrow, with all its guests and adjustments. How I wish I were near some friend I really love just now. The children from town are not coming till late, so the village hall is rapidly prepared. I go past, and see mattresses and blankets airing outside. Many Londonish figures go by pushing prams, and the cottagers are well pleased with their guests, and reckon to make money out of the eight-and-sixpence each. One of our greatest women authorities on Africa sits checking in allowances at the school. What this war is going to cost the country! Mothers get five shillings a week allowance and three shillings for each child, and free billets.

  Monday, 4 September

  Today came news of a ship torpedoed going to Montreal. The Athenia.14

  H. and M. arrived hot and tired about teatime. They had been up two hours last night owing to an air raid signal; it was a false alarm. No raids here yet, and the village is dreaming in quiet apparently. But inside Drydown House Mrs C. must be contending with her ten children. ‘I took too much on, Mrs Miles,’ said the gallant old lady, pounding up the long sunny hill today.

  Sara writes that the billeting arrangements in Weymouth have been very faulty. Children alone were expected. As they sat assembling gas masks in the schoolroom, about one hundred mothers laden with children, infants and impedimenta were suddenly thrust upon them. In dark and rain they took them round, begging and imploring people to have them. Much misery.

  Tuesday, 5 September

  More about the dreadful sinking of the Athenia in the papers, and the survivors’ own stories on the wireless. Women baling out water from the lifeboats with their shoes. Terrible!

  Into Guildford, where a noticeable air of strain and excitement could be seen in the sad faces of the shoppers. Odd, in the library, to see that masses of the books on ‘Will Hitler March?’ are standing unread and unopened. That is all over now. But there is an ominous lull.

  Where are our men going from Aldershot? The FANYs15 are in great demand there, worked to death by the Army Service Corps, and proud to be so worked.

  Helen’s tiny London refugee, aged two, was in the car with her in Guildford today. She bought it some new underclothes, as its trousseau was infinitesimal. When her husband returned this evening, the babe picked up its new pantaloons and said in a tone of great self-complacency, ‘Mine’, and then, waving its vest, ‘Mine’.

  In Guildford, about a third of the people were carrying gas masks. Mrs F. at the Shetland Shop says her business has completely ceased.

  Half our scheduled children have not arrived yet and probably never will. The mothers billeted at the Rectory want to use the Aga stove, and are driven out of the kitchen, so some have gone home.

  Madge has gone night-driving – a rehearsal I suppose for ARP.16 People are having their cars edged with white paint along the footboards and mudguards.

  A hot, glorious night. There were silver wheels of spiders’ webs on the mauve daisies and white roses this morning.

  Wednesday, 6 September

  Mrs M. (an alien)17 went to the police station in Guildford to register, and was told that she must not go further than five miles from Shere without getting a permit EACH time from this office. As she had to have her photo taken, she can’t go to London tomorrow to see a solicitor about her doctors in Harley Street leaving their practices.

  Apples keep falling, rosy and green ones, and the London children are asked in to pick them up.

  I went to buy some fish for dinner, and was told that there was none, so am opening a tin of tongue.

  Greatly cheered and fortified by a letter from Harry, all kindness and sympathy for us.

  After breakfast a sobbing sound rent the air, and we thought it was a warning of an air raid, but apparently it was an All Clear. The milkman explained that there had been two raids at Aldershot. I gather, however, that we shall not be told much by the authorities, who are studiously vague about it in tonight’s report.

  Mother writes inviting us to come to Scotland.18 I wish I could, but it is not possible at present.

  Friday, 8 September

  The brother of a woman here rang up from Blackdown to say he was going to France tomorrow, and must see a relative before going. It is all over the village – very wrong of him to give it away.

  We have sent for a petrol licensing book. Cars are not about Guildford now so much. The shelves of the local grocers are emptying fast. There seems no authentic news in the paper; it is to be a hush-hush war.

  My guest (American) enquires blandly if I am not leading my normal life just now? If not, why not? With the whole of life darkened and apprehensive! But she has no sons – or ties.

  The newspapers are almost all smaller today. I think the British Weekly19 may die.

  Saturday, 9 September

  Fetched Basil at about three-thirty. A Queen’s man20 told Robin at the crowded station that they were off to France next day. Basil looked pale but smiling; it was just three weeks since we had left him at Netley, when no war had started and peace still brooded (though very uneasily) on Southampton Water.

  Basil dislikes the red tape and bad organisation of the Army hospital – so many forms, such lack of co-ordination – yet he enjoys the work of his wards. He is very anxious now about his future, where he will go, where he will be sent – so long as he can get some work of a medical nature. Ambulances, field hospitals, trains and so on are all being assembled at Netley; many doctors gathering under canvas.

  The brilliant heat continues. ‘There is nothing to look forward to, and nothing to talk about save war,’ says Madge disconsolately.

  Gosh, how nervous we all feel at this intolerable thing! The government has announced that they will prepare for a three-year war. I sh
ould say the nerves of our fliers would not stand it for so long as that.

  ‘Do not listen to too much news,’ says Basil. ‘No evening paper for me.’

  Monday, 11 September

  Today I went to London by car with Joan, the loveliest drive in sunshine. As we came up to the top of Putney Hill I caught sight of the most attractive lot of silver balloons floating above London.21 I was extremely struck by them, there were so many against the serene sky of September blue. It seemed all day, as I went about town, that they were on active guard, like silvery birds of friendliness.

  At first we went to the police station in Battersea, which was so heavily sandbagged it was hard to squeeze into the doorway. There Joan tried to get a permit for her housekeeper to come back to London. In vain: regulations for the unnaturalised22 are very stiff in this war.

  The streets in London are distinctly better than they were, vastly relieved of traffic. No Lifeguards on duty in Whitehall. Charles I’s statue not sandbagged, nor Eros in the Circus, nor David at Hyde Park Corner. On I went, under the silver balloons, to buy a winter coat which was got very easily at Swan and Edgars, which was almost empty. Strange to glance in at the great evening dress department, all pretty models, with not one soul buying.

  ‘Silvery birds of friendliness . . .’ Barrage balloons being built at the Dunlop Balloon Factory, Manchester.

  Photograph © IWM HU36241

  Wednesday, 13 September

  I felt this afternoon that I was at last resting a bit. Since the war started there has been no rest at all, only misery and agitation and struggling to make things go right.