Winter gave way to spring, and in like rotation mince pies were superseded by Swiss roll (to make which eggs were struck off our breakfast menu), and marmalade replaced the figs and dates in the parcels that went out to some unknown spot on the world’s ocean-spaces, all of which our wonderful Navy now controls.
Likewise, cretonne gave place to unbleached calico, my remnants being exhausted.
Existence downstairs fluctuated between heights of excitement and depths of gloom. The Crystal Palace authorities had a most unreasonable way of shipping men off to Mesopotamia, Salonika, Hongkong, Archangel, or anywhere else where they thought the air would prove salubrious, without a single word of inquiry as to whether the transfer met with cook’s approval. Hence, there was a series of constantly recurring blanks to mar what would otherwise have been a life of unsullied joyousness; and at such times of depression cook darkly hinted that punching tram tickets and ordering people to “move up a little on that side, please,” would be a deliriously exhilarating occupation compared with the monotony of cake-making for nobody-knows-who!
As every gift-giver is aware, there is invariably a grey hiatus between the sending off of the gift and the arrival of the recipient’s gratitude; hence, the bustle and excitement of getting off each parcel of eatables and pair of socks and tin of tobacco was always followed by a spell of wistful longing, while the postal authorities, out of sheer perversity (we presumed), held back the letter that would have meant so much to Abigail.
Moreover, Pamela was doing anything but contribute to the gaiety of nations! She was often in with Abigail on her spare evenings; and seemed to devote the time to perpetual croaks, on one occasion ending with the assurance that, for her part, she should have nothing to do with a man who was merely a common sailor; self-respect, if nothing else, would make her look for something better than that.
I am glad to say Abigail had sufficient spirit left to retort that if he was good enough to fight for her, he was good enough for the bestowal of a cake. Nevertheless, a decided coolness sprang up between them; and for a week or two after this exchange of confidences, Abigail appeared to be sinking in a rapid “decline” (as they used to call it), and I felt I was positively inhuman to expect her to do a hand’s turn in the house.
Yet life was not entirely bereft of purple patches. The gloom consequent upon the Silence of the Navy lifted occasionally. As, for instance, when we had a bomb drop in our road. Yes, in our very road!—or, at any rate, it was only just round the corner; and, as everybody knows, one affectionately appropriates as one’s own all neighbouring roads (quite irrespective of the rentals, too) if they chance to possess a bomb. And, in any case, it would have dropped in our road if only it had been a hundred yards nearer this way.
Ours was quite an up-to-date bomb, one of the sort that “went clean through the wood pavement to the depth of a couple of feet, and made a hole large enough to bury a man in, and not a sound window within a mile radius.” That’s the kind of bomb ours was! And it was trimmed in the latest fashion, with a policeman, and a cord right round it, and two gentlemen with pickaxes who scratched the surface of the wood blocks occasionally in the intervals of looking important. They were wearing them like that in London at the time.
Of course we, in common with the whole parish, swelled with pride; for a while all social distinction was waived, rich and poor alike took the same interest in the bomb, or at least in the hole it had made; the bomb itself was removed so quickly that no local eye save that of the police and the pickaxe gentlemen ever saw it; though the milkman averred that, as he was driving to the station in the early dawn, he saw a van going in the opposite direction; he couldn’t see what was in it, hence it certainly was carrying away the bomb.