Forthwith, the house was steeped in a perpetual aroma of baking cakes (of course the cousins couldn’t be neglected either), till I got nervous lest the Food Controller should make it his business to call. Upstairs we not only went cakeless, but in order to make sugar-ends meet, we drank unsweetened tea and coffee, a trial to all of us! And stewed fruit requiring sugar was also taboo.
On second consideration, I am inclined to think that it was not, first and foremost, my benevolence that led me to adopt Mick: it was primarily a matter of self-interest! Even in war time it is necessary to have a little work done, if only occasionally, in the home; and if the household helpers were to take on yet another outside responsibility, in addition to the many already on their hands, I didn’t see where my work would come in at all—and I can’t do everything in the evening, after I get home from town. As it was, we were already knitting morning, noon, and night, for every branch of the Services!
I put the collection of figures and capital letters that represented Mick’s address, into my pocket-book with other similar data. Periodically I handed Abigail pairs of socks or mittens, a body-belt, handkerchiefs, and similar utilities; and when any sea-going event, such as a raid on a submarine base, or a “scrap” in the North Sea, or a warship mined, brought the Navy specially to my mind, I would go into the Stores and order a parcel to be sent to Mick, adding one for Dick also, if the occasion happened to be a harrowing one. At such times one feels one cannot do enough for our men; and Dick and Mick little knew how often they benefited by the misfortunes of others.
The first time I received a letter from my devoted friend Michael McBlaggan, I admit I was a trifle bewildered, as I couldn’t for the moment “place” any member of the McBlaggan family; but when I read the document through and noted how kind he considered it that my friend Miss Abigail should have introduced us, light dawned, and I sent him a post-card saying I hoped he would always let me know if he wanted anything further in the way of woollens.
And thus the months wore on, punctuated by laboriously written communications from Dick, with an occasional card from Mick, who kept more in the background. The great attraction, undoubtedly, was Dick. He entered into personal details, asked if the young lady had made the cakes herself. Here I understand cook was not too absorbed in her own relations to insist that full credit should be given to the right person; and Abigail wrote explaining that as she was very much occupied, and too busy to attend to the cooking, a friend who lived with her always made the cakes. Whereupon by return post I received a sloping, heavy-downstroked letter of thanks from the dutiful Dick!
On another occasion, Dick sent his photo (after being asked for it times out of number, I believe). It was not as satisfactory as it might have been, because it was an amateur snapshot group, and you know how easy it is to decipher the features when the hand camera has stood a quarter of a mile away (so as to include as much of the landscape as possible), and everyone’s face is in black shadow under a hat brim that has been tilted forward to exclude the full glare of the sun.
Unfortunately he omitted to put a X against himself, and as there were a dozen men in the group all in slouch hats and farm attire (to say nothing of the women and children), there was little to help us!
But he did say that, as Abigail had told him Canada was the one place above all others that she longed to see, and how she was hoping to go there as soon as the war was over, he had sent his picture taken on a Canadian farm. It was just a little gathering photographed on someone’s birthday.
Still, as he hadn’t given us any help in the matter, we had to decide ourselves which was the lonely sailor (though, as Abigail commented, she couldn’t understand how, with such a large collection of friends, he could ever have come to be so alone in the world). We picked out a thin, anæmic-looking young man, who was standing beside a comfortable, matronly woman in a shady hat and a big apron; and as her age might have been anything from thirty to sixty, we decided she was his mother, and I remarked what a nice homely soul she looked in her checked apron, and no wonder he was devoted to her, and how proud she must be of the dear lad—all of which Abigail accepted as a personal compliment.