The Fledgeling

by Frances Faviell

  Kathleen had to rush off back to her work with the Disabled Servicemen’s Handicrafts. I was doing some designs for the hand-block printed fabrics for which they were becoming known, and she was delighted with them when I showed them to her. ‘You don’t think there’ll really be a war, do you?’ she asked anxiously, as her work was for the maimed wrecks of men left by the 1914-18 war – and I could understand her horror of another. But when I looked at the Green Cat I was not sure and I did not reply.

  The Green Cat was eighteen inches high, and sat on a lacquer stand. Made of translucent green celadon, he was incredibly beautiful. He was not just a cat – he was CAT. But I could never look at him without remembering my hurried departure from Peking in July 1937 when the Japanese were advancing on the city, and for the first time I had seen refugees. Long struggling lines of weary trudging figures with their babies strapped on their backs and small children clinging to their thighs. I had reached Peking with great difficulty and only with the help of Chinese friends, and had just acquired the Green Cat for which I had exchanged my Leica camera, when we were ordered to leave immediately for the Settlement of Hong Kong. The journey was a nightmare because of the Cat. The little Chinese, Ah Lee, who had sold him to me had warned me that he was the Guardian of the Home. As long as he was treated with deference and respect my home would remain safe and prosperous. With great trouble and annoyance to others, I had got him home intact – and he was my most beautiful and treasured possession. Was he going to prove a Guardian of my Home? I looked at him sitting there in the studio window and I thought of all those fleeing pathetic refugees. It had happened in China – it had happened in Spain. Hadn’t the doctor lecturing to us on first-aid told us about it? Gruesome and vivid as were the details he had given us they had stuck in my memory. Some of his phrases would not leave it. ‘You won’t find sterile bandages and boiling water at hand when the casualties occur. Casualties don’t choose their place of annihilation – the bombs choose them – anywhere – anytime. You must be prepared for anything.’ And later in his lecture he had warned us about filth. ‘Don’t back away from dirt and filth – you’ll see plenty. Blood and tissues and spilled guts are not pretty, ladies and gentlemen – and they SMELL. You’ll have to get used to that. If you come upon a casualty with half his stomach laid open and his guts hanging out thrust your hands unhesitatingly into the wound and pack them back, hold your fists there to keep them in position if you have nothing else. The mess and smell may revolt you, but that man needs his guts – keep them in for him until medical help arrives.’ Had I not seen all those refugees – many of them bandaged and maimed – those words might not have been imprinted so indelibly, word for word, in my memory.

  I looked now from the window, down Swan Walk to the Thames, and conjured up a picture of the Royal Hospital Road as it would look if the recent exercise had been real, and if the circumstances which the doctor from the Spanish Civil War had described, applied here. I could see it – with the fires blazing, the buildings falling, the guns barking, and the planes droning above. It was horrible. But it was only in my imagination, which had always been too vivid. I shuddered – and shook myself back to reality. Everything was just as usual. The sun was shining, the river reflecting its light. The trees in the little Hans Sloane Physics Garden were full of noisy birds and some of them were in flower. That little garden had been there since 1673, I reminded myself, and the house on the corner of Swan Walk even longer. In the Royal Hospital Road people were walking to and from their lunch and their work. This was Chelsea – not Spain or China. ‘Come and have your lunch – it’s late,’ called Mrs Freeth. ‘That blessed exercise has taken all the morning.’

  It was hot and still and sultry that summer and each day seemed more tense and heavy than the last. It was difficult to concentrate on painting although I was at work on several portraits. Two of these were of young girls from South Africa who had been in London for the Season and had been presented at one of the Presentation parties. They were lovely and delightful girls and the sittings had been a great pleasure to me. They were, however, becoming apprehensive and nervous as letters urging them to cut short their Season and return to the Cape began coming by every mail. It was essential that I got the portraits finished in case they had to leave suddenly.

  My friends Leon and Mary Underwood came to see the portraits and Leon gave me some valuable help, as he invariably did. I have always had a great admiration for Leon, as sculptor, painter, writer and as a man, while as a teacher he is, I think, unsurpassed. He has that rare gift of inspiring in his pupils immense enthusiasm and, what is more, some of his own determination and inflexibility of purpose to achieve any given aim. I am fortunate indeed in having had the privilege of being in and out of his studio since I was in my teens. Leon, always unflinchingly honest, had no self-illusions about war. There would be one. He was certain about that. He had gone through the 1914-18 one. His son, Garth, would be of the age for immediate call-up for this next one. I think I learned how to look a thing in the face and not avoid it from him.

  Leon loved cats, and admired my Green Cat immensely. I envied him his complete concentration on whatever he was doing. War or no war, he urged me to finish the portraits.

  At last on August 24th the Emergency Powers Bill was passed through all its stages and became law. Lord Halifax broadcast the same evening. The Executive by this Act received powers to take further measures necessary to secure public safety in the event of war. M Daladier made a statement about Danzig on the 26th, saying that France was determined to uphold Poland’s independence.

  By now we all knew that war was inevitable, and on the Sunday, the 27th, another very hot, sultry day, streams of cars were already leaving London. People had begun buying up commodities in the shops. The streets of Chelsea, especially around the Duke of York’s Barracks, seemed full of khaki, soldiers were milling round everywhere. My two lovely young South Africans came round in a great state. Both had received cables ordering them to return at once. But the whole shipping future was in the balance – thousands, like them, having suddenly decided to go home, it was impossible to get on any boat. They were in despair, but there was little I could do to help them. Many families were already sending their children out of London, carloads could be seen, toys, perambulators, dogs, cats and birds all piled in with them or balanced on top of them. It gave me a strange feeling to see this – and the hot, still, brooding weather seemed so like that we had had during Munich, but the strain of that period was now intensified. I had finished one portrait and it had been crated in readiness for when a boat could be found. The other one was still not to my satisfaction – somehow the joy I had felt in creating it had all dissolved.

  In August we had a full-scale night exercise in Civil Defence. Again a mock air raid was in process over Chelsea. It was certainly less conspicuous for the actors and actresses than it had been in bright sunlight. On the other hand it was more dangerous in the black-out. Naturally there was some confusion and a few unfortunate incidents and much laughter. I was not a casualty this time, but a relief telephonist in the Control Room or Report Centre in the Town Hall, deep in the basement and well reinforced and sand-bagged. We had been trained by Mr T S Cane, the Borough Surveyor, in receiving and dealing with messages. There was a map in Control which showed at all times the distribution and position of all Civil Defence Services. To us it seemed a lovely game of make-believe, rather like halma, each Service in their separate corners awaiting their moves. Mr Cane had been a severe teacher, unrelenting about clarity, speed, and the legibility of handwriting. Alas, mine was so illegible that I had to print very carefully. I have never been able to read my own handwriting except immediately after it is written. As I was only to be a volunteer relief he passed me in spite of this, as I came up to his standard on speed and my reactions were apparently adequate. Several of the women full-time telephonists were excellent at the job, amongst these two young Scottish girls, Sheila and Chris, with whom I had become very frien
dly. During the training exercises we had had a lot of fun together. They were all on the night exercise now.

  It was exciting down there in that sand-bagged room as the mock messages from the wardens for help, for fire services, ambulances, stretcher and heavy rescue parties to be sent to various streets and squares in Chelsea came over the lines. We had been thoroughly grounded in the names of all Chelsea’s streets, terraces, squares and gardens, walks and avenues. Mr Cane was very strict about this, explaining to us that the saving of lives could depend on our knowledge of the correct position on the Civil Defence plan of each and every place in the neighbourhood. I remember his scathing remarks to me when I did not know in which district was Ixworth Place. Thanks to him I am well acquainted with the whereabouts of every Chelsea address. It had all seemed so silly when we had just been practising imaginary incidents and writing imaginary messages, but it was quite exciting when the messages actually came from the wardens during the big black-out exercise: although few of us really thought that we would ever have to receive them in an actual air raid.

  A Furrowed Middlebrow Book

  FM8

  Published by Dean Street Press 2016

  Copyright © 1958 Frances Faviell

  Afterword copyright © 2016 John Parker

  All Rights Reserved

  The right of Frances Faviell to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her estate in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  First published in 1958 by Cassell & Co. Ltd.

  Cover by DSP

  ISBN 978 1 911413 86 8

  www.deanstreetpress.co.uk