A few days after this the Air Raids began.
We had heard, of course, that they would come. There had been
the Zeppelin raids; people had talked of bombardment from the
air; of London being destroyed; of German plans for more and
larger aeroplanes than anyone had seen; but it had not seemed
very real. And now, when the first raid came, I did not realize
what it was.
I was undressing in my bedroom; it was about half-past ten, and
I heard the warning whistles. Then came the shouts through a
megaphone, ‘Take cover; take cover,’ a rhythmical, rather melancholy
shout, like a sort of refrain. I stood still with my hairbrush
in my hand; I remember that I was brushing my hair. The gas was
turned low for fear of waking the baby, Rachel was the baby,
in her cot at the end of the room; and it flickered a little
in the draught from the open window, though the blinds were tightly
drawn. I was thinking, I don’t know why, of a summer holiday
when I was a child, with Guy and Hugo, at Yearsly. I was thinking
of the high trees, and the swishing sound of the branches against
the house; and I remembered how at first, when I was very little,
I had been almost frightened of that sound, and afterwards I
had got to love it.
It was a quiet place, unshaken, unshakeable, so it seemed to
me; even being a hospital had not changed it really.
And Cousin Delia too, she was always the same. I thought of her
calm face with the mass of grey hair swept upwards from the forehead,
and those great grey eyes of hers, that were like Guy’s, but
quieter. I could picture her face older, sadder, with more shadowed
eyes, but I could not picture it harassed or worried or upset,
nor marked with the fear or strain of the War.
And a great longing for Cousin Delia came over me, a longing
for the quiet security of Yearsly, for the old high trees and
the swishing branches, the sun-dried brick of the walled garden,
the pear trees outspread against the wall, and the jasmine gate,
and the droning of the bees. Inside that garden it was always
sheltered and warm, outside the wind rocked through the beech
trees, the clouds trailed rolling shadows across the wide green
lawns, the high grass swayed and bent, like waves at sea, but
the peace and quiet remained unbroken.
I thought of Guy and Hugo as boys, as they had been in those
early summers when first I was there, boys in the branches of
the beech trees in the High Wood, calling to each other among
the calling of the rooks; and regret came over me, poignant,
impersonal regret, at the inevitable pathos of existence; the
relentlessness of time, and change, and the haunting dearness
of the past.