Chapter 3 - Christmas and the Allberrys

Letters written home after Jane's arrival in England.

 Chapter 3

Christmas and the Allberrys

 

We now find Jane in Eric’s family’s home in Bromley, Kent, and it is December 1938.  Any last vestiges of home-sickness seem to have deserted her, at least for now.  Happiness prevails.  Jane has had the chance to meet Eric’s family: his parents Harry and Matilda Allberry, his sister Vera, his brothers Reginald and Edward (Teddy), but another brother (and Edward’s twin) Charles was away in Germany at the time, studying Coptic languages in Berlin (not a good place to be in late 1938, but he returned to the UK soon after.  It was a cruel irony that later, during the war, Charles would return to Germany, but this time to drop bombs on it.  

Jane got on famously with all of her new prospective brothers- and sister-in-law.  In particular Vera, of whom she was to see a good deal over the ensuing years.

 

Darling Mummy,

This really can’t be a very long letter because I am much too busy to write at length, and much too delirious to write anything sensible.  However, Eric is having to go up to Chorley for three days next week to pay off his men before Christmas, and during his absence I shall be able to write long accounts of all my doings.  I am sorry to be like this, but if you could see how thoroughly happy I am here you would understand my behaviour.  Everything is so enchanting and everyone is being so wonderful to me that I am really in great doubt as to whether it is all true.  I had a dreadful cold the day I arrived, being the last passenger on board to catch it after it had gone the entire round of the ship.  I was grubby and wet-nosed and looked awful but Eric didn’t seem to mind, and dear Mrs. Allberry buzzed around me with hot lemon drinks and things and put me to bed early.  She certainly is a darling, but then I really shouldn’t have expected Eric’s Mother to be very much else.  Mr. Allberry is an old dear too, and we swap yarns about dance music and Charlie Kunz the pianist, and give each other a bit of cheek.

Vera looks a little like Aunt Irene and is a perfect pet and very bright and we do famously together.  Young Reginald is rather pale and quiet and just growing up but in the course of time no doubt he will unbend a little from his lofty perch and join the fun.  Charles is in Germany, so I can’t tell you about him, but Teddy left his cottage and came up here tonight to see us, and brought me a large bunch of flowers, which was nice of him.  He is Eric’s favourite brother and mine too, which is a good thing.  My gramophone records have been very well received by both Teddy and Vera who like them very much. This afternoon Eric and I went to do our Christmas shopping, but I bought warm gloves and woolly pants instead and we went to a fancy restaurant, so now we go to London tomorrow to do our Christmas shopping.  Let’s hope we are more successful then, because time is running short, and we have certainly wasted a lot of it. 

 

Four days later Eric had gone to Chorley in Lancashire, so Jane has time to pen another long letter to her family.  In it she tells the full story to date from the time she arrived in the UK.

 

Eric having dashed off to Chorley, I now have time to write to you all and tell you the news. We’ll start from scratch and have a detailed account of all my doings and then you will know everything.

We docked at Southampton at 6am, which was when we had to have breakfast and the rain was pouring down a bit but I didn’t care because it was what I expected anyway.  I was eating my porridge when young Deborah said ‘There goes Eric’, but I wasn’t going to have my leg pulled so I remained quite calm and said ‘Does he?’ and went on with my porridge.  Two mouthfuls later I took a sly look and sure enough it was him!  By that time he was right down the other end of the dining saloon, so I had to hustle to catch him.  I didn’t expect him quite so early, or I would have hung over the rail and watched for him.  I was looking awful, with a perfectly frightful cold and my eye still a little lumpy and a hoarse croak instead of a girlish treble, but Eric didn’t seem to mind a bit.  We were both too excited to say anything, but he made me go back and finish my breakfast like a good girl.  I only ate my porridge, and that was all, because I just couldn’t manage anything more.  Eric bought me a gift too - a lovely bracelet of jade-green medallions all linked together with quaint Chinese characters.  That doesn’t describe it very well, but it is very light and pretty with dragons on.  I accused him of putting chains on me before I had even set foot on English soil, and he just laughed and said, 'Quite right, too,' or something like that.

The drive from Southampton to Bromley was wonderful and the rain stopped, so that I could see all the lovely country.  The fields were so green and pretty and I loved the bare trees.  They don’t look nearly so fierce as the Australian trees do when they are bare.   I was quite enchanted by it all, and couldn’t see enough of it, so every now and then Eric stopped the car and we got out and rambled about a little.  We had lunch just out of Badstock, in  a quaint little inn where I bumped my head severely on a beam over the fire-nook.  That was a pleasure because it was an extremely ancient beam and no doubt had served as  buffer for the heads of all sorts of druids and things!  I am afraid I didn’t talk to Eric very much because I was too busy reciting all the names on the signposts.  I had thought that Dornford Yates invented nearly all the place-names in his books, but it appears now that most of them are genuine, and I loved seeing them all written up in black and white.  Everything was so exactly as I imagined it that I just felt as if I was coming home, and didn’t feel a bit like a stranger.  Both of us started just where we left off and Eric hasn’t changed in the least, and he says that I haven’t either except that I have more confidence in myself which is a Good Thing.

Everything is quite wonderful, and I don’t know what I have done to deserve it.  I am quite sure that we will manage perfectly, and the future doesn’t worry me at all as far as our two selves are concerned, and what happens to us from the outside must be dealt with as it comes along.

All the family is charming, and so far I have got on very well with all of them.  Vera is a darling, and we do splendidly together. Mrs. Allberry is a dear too, but it will be a long business getting to know her well.  She is wonderfully kind to me and so far everything has gone splendidly, and during Eric’s absence this week I shall probably see more of her and get to know her better.  I am not straining every nerve to try and please her because then I couldn’t be myself, and if she doesn’t like me when I am being myself then she never will anyway, so that’s that.

Edward came down for tea that evening, to meet me, and brought me some lovely flowers.  He is a dear, taller than Eric and amusing, and works in a bank, which he hates.  He has a funny cottage just out of town, which he shares with another lad.  Edward and Charles are twins, and Charles is the very brilliant one who is in Germany at present, and doesn’t get on with Eric.  From what I hear of Charles he is liable to be very clever at other people’s expense and has no patience with people who have a slower wit than himself.  That won’t worry me because I shall do as Eric does and pretend that he isn’t part of the family, but an honoured guest who must be treated with extreme politeness.  I don’t really think about it at all, because in all probability I shall only see him about once a year.

On Friday, we went up to London in the car to do Eric’s Christmas shopping.  I glooped into all the windows of Liberty’s, and got a crick in my neck looking at Nelson’s column and the Houses of Parliament.  I saw lots of places that I had read of so often, and it was all very thrilling.  We went to the pictures and saw Suez,  which was rather feeble and slow, and then had hot malted milk and biscuits and went home via Hyde Park and Buckingham Palace and over Lambeth Bridge.  I saw the remains of the Crystal Palace on the way into town, and it just looked very grimy and uninteresting.

Yesterday was the most bitterly cold day I have ever experienced in my life, but the sun was shining very brightly, so that was all right.  I didn’t thaw for hours after we all went for a long walk with the dog, but ate a huge dinner, much to Eric’s delight.  He is very severe with me and keeps making me do things that are good for me, and I suffer terribly.  Both of us are quite mad, I fear,  but it is rather fun.  This morning the poor dear had to go out into the bitter cold at 7.30, and return to Chorley, but he will be back on Thursday night for Christmas week-end, and return again to Chorley on Tuesday for two days then back here for nine more days.  All very satisfactory.

The job at Chorley will last until the middle of February, and then we go to South Wales for about a year.  Other than that I can’t tell you anything because that is all we know ourselves. We hope to be married in three weeks or maybe not until just before we go to Wales, all depending on whether Eric can find us a house in Chorley or not.  So far his efforts have not been crowned with success, but he is still trying.  I’m not agitated about it because it is important that he winds up his work at Chorley successfully, and he can’t do that if he has to bustle round looking for houses �" nor if I am about the place either �" so I am staying here.  I have to knit him some heavy working socks and alter two knitted pullovers for him, so I shall be quite busy.

The snow is falling heavily this morning, and I can watch the garden being buried by it as I write, but I have no ambition to play in it because there is still a piercingly cold wind blowing and it is bitterly cold everywhere except by the fire.  I have lots more letters to write, so even though I haven’t told you every single thing I think I must stop writing to you and turn my attention to someone else.  I will write again next week when Eric goes back to Chorley, unless I have time to write again before then.  He sends you all his fondest love and best wishes for Christmas and the New Year, and so do I.

I think with sorrow of you all sweltering in the heat while I snuggle round a fire and watch the snow falling and don’t envy you in the least.  At present I wouldn’t change places with anyone else on earth because I am completely happy and so thrilled with everything.  I wish you could be here too, to join in the fun, then it would be perfect.  My fondest love to everyone of you and all my friends as well.  Your Jane.

 

Jane’s happiness continued unabated, even though years later she had not quite the same view about the weather in winter, especially in Scotland, and in her next letter to her family written on Boxing Day, 1938, she waxes lyrical about the British winter and Christmas in the snow.  She is writing from the home of her parents-in-law-to-be in Bromley, Kent:

 

 

Dearest Family,

I have just had such a happy Christmas Day and do hope that you all enjoyed yourselves as much as I did.  I thought about you all a good deal through the day and trusted that it wouldn’t be too hot and unpleasant for you, but I suppose it was.  Here, it was very cold and the first white Christmas for over ten years. The weather has been bitter lately, with quite heavy falls of snow each night.  The roads are so thick with frozen snow that travel by car is quite impossible in most parts of the country, although it can still be managed in the city and to the west of London.  The footpaths have about four inches of frozen snow on them, and walking is a dangerous business because one is so likely to slip.  Plumbers have been working day and night dealing with frozen water pipes or burst pipes in peoples houses, and now and then one hears of funny things like the woman who couldn’t go out because her false teeth were frozen into the glass of water overnight. 

Nearly fifty people have died as a direct result of this sudden and bitter cold, so you can imagine what sort of a welcome England gave me.  I have bought lots of warm clothes so I am very comfortable and rarely feel unhappily cold except when I have been walking for some time in the snow and my feet freeze up.  That doesn’t worry me very much, though, except that I have acquired a chilblain on my heel which makes walking a rather sore business.

So, that’s that about that.