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Returning to the guesthouse after the Ex-Servicemen's Fund meeting yesterday I chanced to see, at a distance, both Godfrey sisters walking up the High Street carrying shopping baskets and this reminded me of my promise to visit their brother. So this morning I took a stroll out to Cherry Tree Cottage.
The rain has at last eased off, and although the weather was very cold with a dull grey sky and biting wind, I was at least able to roll my umbrella and enjoy the view. I remember so clearly walking along this road with Wilson and Pike in forty-two on that terrible occasion when we had to tell the Godfreys that their cottage was to be demolished. Everything seemed so different then. It is a curious thing but I remember the war in bright vivid colour. Then the lane was alive with birdsong and the budding shoots of spring. Today I walked through a grey landscape of bare trees, mud, steel-coloured clouds that scudded across the sky and everywhere the drip-drip-drip of the soaking countryside.
It seemed to me, as I walked along, that the changes I saw all about me are rather like the changes that have happened in this great land of late. During the war we were desperate but proud; our anger against the German hordes burned fiercely and with intent. I have no doubt that, if the enemy had landed, every man, woman and child would have taken up whatever weapons they could lay hands on and set to it. And the Home Guard would have been in the vanguard. We may have been poorly armed and without basic equipment but we were prepared and would have been a terrible force of resistance on the streets of Walmington-on-Sea.
Now that all seems a long time ago, and things have changed. We have turned our backs on Winston who gave us all the resolve to resist the enemy; we've turned instead to a group of Bolsheviks who seem intent on undoing everything great we ever achieved in this country. We fought for six years for King and Empire - and now we have won we are abandoning the empire piece by piece. I am not an educated man. Everything I have achieved has been through hard work and a grasp of the practicalities. It angers me beyond words to see everything that I hold dear - everything that my generation fought two terrible wars to achieve - thrown away by men who despise enterprise, industry and advancement and prefer to replace them with red tape, stifling bureaurocracy and control.
These were my thoughts as I walked along the Oak Hill, against a biting wind. But I must say that my anger dropped away completely when I reached Cherry Tree Cottage. I knocked smartly and in response I heard a squawk, presumably from that wretched parrot of the Godfrey's, and one of the sisters pacifying the brute. The door opened and Miss Dolly Godfrey, professing much surprise and delight at seeing me, invited me inside.
Inside the cottage was as warm and inviting as I recalled it - a true English rustic home with a blazing log fire in the grate which was very welcome after a long cold walk. My visit provoked pandemonium in the house - I was reminded so much of that time we tried to set up a machine gun post in the Godfreys' living room. The parrot let out a sequence of loud squawks and shouted at the top of its voice 'Silly old buffer, silly old buffer'. I'm not sure who this was aimed at but the creature's beady eyes were fixed on me throughout the performance. Dolly Godfrey went into a paroxysm of tea making, running between the kitchen and living room in a way that belied her age. Meanwhile Her sister Cissy cantered around the room arranging chairs, plumping cushions and organising antimacassars - it was quite exhausting to watch.
In the meantime Godfrey himself was sitting placidly in a bath chair concentrating intently on a large partly completed jigsaw puzzle on a card table - he seemed quite unaware of my presence. Both sisters left the room on various errands and, feeling uncomfortable standing apparently unnoticed, I coughed. Godfrey jumped slightly, looked up and said calmly:
'Oh, hello Mr Mainwaring, how nice of you to drop in. Will you stay to tea?'
I greeted him warmly expressing my regret that I had not visited him sooner on my return, but he dismissed my apologies - and I had the distinct impression that he had not realised that I had been away at all. When I asked him how he was he replied that his main frustration was being unable to work in the garden.
It was some time before the Misses Godfrey returned with the tea (something to do with a faulty flue on the range making the kettle slow to boil) which gave me a pleasant opportunity to chat with my former medical orderly. I am not sure I had ever before fully understood Godfrey. When we were in the Home Guard I was, I admit it, often impatient with him. His inability to keep up with the younger men, his gentleness and lack of killer instinct were a source of endless frustration. Perhaps it was because Frazer referred to him so often as a 'silly old fool', and because of his old-fashioned manners - I did sometimes regard his as a liability.
Here, in his own living room, seated in a bath chair he was the perfect and gracious host and I felt quite ashamed. We reminisced briefly about the Home Guard days but he was not inclined to dwell on it and I recalled the misunderstanding over his role in the first war. As bank manager I knew Godfrey years as a customer. Yet until this afternoon I have never known him as a person.
We chatted in a slightly stilted way - I told him of my excursion to India, without going in to any detail about the difficulties that beset Elizabeth and myself whilst we were there. He told me about his lumbago, and how frustrated he felt being unable to get around as he used to.
Then Godfrey's sisters returned and our concentration turned to the tea. It was rather meagre - there being very little fat or sugar for baking. However Miss Dolly was able to conjure up a plate of upside-down cakes and the tea was served in bone china from a silver tea service. After the earthenware teapot and canteen cups of the guesthouse it was a delightful change.
The Godfrey sisters were able to tell me a good deal more about the goings on in Walmington than I have heard to date. It seems there has been quite a change in the town. Many of the old faces have disappeared - retired or moved on, and the gaps filled by younger men, many of them demobbed officers. I gather we have a new mayor - a 'career' politician (whatever that may be) and he is determined to create changes in the town.
I am not sure how to regard this news. I have always believed in progress, and the value of a practical man to drive it. However there is much that we can learn from the past that should not be lightly thrown away.
While his sisters were clearing the tea things Godfrey turned his chair to face me and said something that astonished me:
"Mr Mainwaring, I believe you have changed."
I would never have believed Godfrey capable of such surprising directness. I asked him what he meant, and he replied:
"Well sir, in the war you were decisive and direct - a true man of action. Now, if you don't mind me saying so, you seem to have lost a little urgency."
Then he looked me straight in the eye and said:
"Mr Mainwaring, I am an old man and I have reached the time in my life when its too late to do all of those things that I have put off for later. You are still young - take my advice and grasp the opportunities before you."
With that said he resumed his jigsaw puzzle as if nothing had passed between us and my last sight of him as I said my goodbyes and left was a white haired figure dressed in a herringbone jacket, hunched over a card table intently moving jigsaw pieces around.
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