Chapter 9: An Unexpected Return
Two months after our local leave, my husband hurt his back and was invalided home. We only had two days in which to pack all our belongings. I am not good at packing, and my husband and I made a bargain a long time ago: he does the packing, and I do the unpacking. On the first night on the boat train, I found that I had the box full of boots instead of the box with cushions and rugs. We had an unpleasant journey home, which was full of anxiety about the future. We did not have a very good leave either, spending all the time going twice a week from Sussex to London for my husband's treatment. Luckily, driving did not hurt him, and so we went in the car. We had a seven-year-old Fiat 11 horsepower, which never let us down. We stayed with my husband's family, where my husband spent most of his time in a deck chair. We stayed in England for six months until my husband was fit enough to go back to Nigeria.
During these six months, we managed to go for a week to our usual summer haunt - Fowey. We went by car and stopped for the night at Plymouth; the next morning, we crossed to Cornwall on the ferry. While we were on the ferry boat, my husband started a conversation with a couple in a car behind us. They were on holiday and did not know where to go, and my husband said they could come with us to Fowey.
They had a little Morgan three wheeler, and in one small town, when we slowed down for people crossing the road, a little boy shouted to our new acquaintance, "Mister, you've lost your front!"
The man started to pat his shirt and look round for what was wrong, but the boy said, "No, the front of your car!"
It must have been a good joke because a policeman laughed. Our Fiat behaved very well on the hills and narrow corners. Once, as we went round a corner, we had to stop dead as there was a woman with a pram right in the middle of the road, though there was a good footpath.
My husband was very cross and said, "I don't know why that stupid woman walks in the middle of the road when there is a perfectly safe footpath there."
Helen said, "I know why, Daddy: so that the baby can see on either side of the pram."
She had a twinkle in her eye as she said it.
We enjoyed our week at Fowey. We had a boat, and to save my husband's back Helen and I did the rowing when we went out. Helen was not quite eight then, but she was much better with the oars than I was. I always got them in an awkward position; they either hit me in the chest, wouldn't come out of the water together when I wanted them to, or came out too quickly and showered everyone. We were in rooms and were very well looked after. The landlady was a cheerful, talkative woman who was a very good cook. They had a little boy of about four, and he spent all his time catching insects.
House flies were his speciality; he used to come quietly into our room and say, "Have you flies in here?"
If there was one, he would skilfully catch it in a match box. The house was full of match boxes with all sorts of insects and garden pests. If he was very friendly with you, he would show you his special collection. His mother told us that when he was a baby, she would put him in the garden and give him a worm, and he would play with it for hours, good as gold, never wanting any toys. He was such a good little chap, apart from at six o'clock in the morning, when he used to sing improvised hymns. Some years before, when we were camping, we had made friends with some very nice farmers. They were retired now, and we spent a lot of time with them, going about in a boat or car. There are lovely creeks all round Fowey, with pretty villages on the wooded banks.
One Sunday afternoon, we rowed to a village called Golant, and found a beautiful old church. People were arriving for the evening service, so we went in too. The clergyman preached a very good sermon. It was all about people like us, who wander about and go into a church because they like it and think that the church is interesting. He said that if everybody behaved like that, the churches would not exist, as there would be no finance to support them. He looked at us very pointedly, and we were very uncomfortable, poor miserable sinners. My husband put all the change he had in his pocket onto the collecting plate. The man was a very good speaker and was in great demand in those districts.
The couple with whose acquaintance my husband had made on the Plymouth ferry would not leave us, and wherever we went, they went too. They had no initiative and could not amuse themselves. We got so tired of them that we went to St Ives at the end of the week, but unfortunately, they came with us, so the weekend in St. Ives was not as bright as it might have been. It rained all weekend, and we had to share the sitting room with them. The young wife had big eyes and grinned a meaningless, tepid smile. She was attractive, not at all unpleasant, but she just sat and smiled, unless she was eating. Her husband was much more lively, but his foolish jokes nearly made me a murderer that miserable weekend. I never felt more like leaving my family for good. However, they had another week of holiday, and we had to get back for further treatment of my husband's back. I never forgot his hasty friendship and often made him wild by reminding him of it.