27 . a German prisoner of war camp came to the village . quiet , gaunt young men , they gave no trouble . they tamed and made pets of grey squirrels and field mice and kept the camp in a beautiful state of order . garden patches surrounded by whitened stones sprung up where there had been nothing but rubble and old tins . if all fraternising had not been strictly forbidden , the village maidens would gladly have obliged . some of the men were allowed to take outside work in the afternoons , which was how I got Willi . he came as part-time gardener in place of Ron , transferred to another home guard . when I first saw Willi I thought him a middle-aged man . he was gaunt and angular and already going grey . I was surprised to discover he was only twenty-three . what it had taken Ron a whole day to do , Willi achieved in an hour , leaving everything ship-shape and in order it was good to see . he was embarrassingly humble and self-effacing , bitterly ashamed of what he could do nothing about . there were many children coming about the place and he would stop for a moment and lean on his spade and watch them . especially a small blonde girl . one day he told me she was just the age of his own small daughter . I also have a son , but him I have not seen . as we got to know Willi better , he told me he had been taken away from his farm , shortly after he left school , turned into a soldier and packed off . I worked with agriculture and knew little about politics . I was not very clever . I did not know very well what it was all about . only that I who wished to be a farmer , must be a hero . in the country we hear talk of Hitler and this and that . it did not seem to have anything to do with us . it had been so much my own position at the start of it all that I understood well enough . a General in full rig came down one day to lunch with me . he came across Willi in the garden . Willi went very white , half expecting , I think , a sword would be drawn and he would be cut down on the spot . the General took out a cigarette case and offered him one . it is not like that with us , Willi said afterwards , and he shook his head , sad and bewildered . he worked for me for two years . I gave him tea on his afternoons at the cottage , with boiled eggs and coffee , things he had not seen for years . he asked if he might take the used coffee grounds back to his friends . he never did anything without first asking permission , always a little shamefaced , as if fearing he presumed . before he left he made a doll for the little girl he called Blondie , and came shyly to ask might he be permitted to give it to her . there was nothing arrogant or bumptious about him , and nothing servile . only excessively humble and any kindness or consideration that came his way obviously caused him immense surprise . Willi went back to Germany when peace came . his home was now in the Russian zone . here in my own country , he wrote me , I am less free than I was as a prisoner of war in England . his ambition was somehow to save enough to get his family and himself out , and at one time it had seemed within his grasp . then a change in the currency laws reduced his savings to nothing . I have not heard from Willi for some time . the last news I had of him was from someone who had got out and gone to America and wrote me from there saying Willi had asked him to inform me he had not forgotten us but life was not easy , and please when I wrote him would I be very careful what I said , because letters to foreign countries and from foreign countries were carefully watched . no one wrote the man in America can realise what these poor people must go through and suffer . the houses are broken and there is not wood or nails to mend them , and now since these new laws , much of his saving money is also gone . I did not get my usual Christmas card last year . the box of clothes I sent for his children was not acknowledged . 28 . to visit America just after the war was like waking from a bad dream to find oneself suddenly in Aladdin &apos;s cave , with all the jewels edible . we were mostly undernourished , in England , grown accustomed to empty shops and dreary plaster mock-ups of trifles and iced cakes , and of a sudden here was the real thing . fruit piled man-high in the supermarkets . ice creams we had forgotten about . great steaks that looked like a dinner for eight , were a portion for one . I remember I had to buy a good bit of soda mint to tide me over . the toys made even greater impact . we had n&apos;t seen a toy for years . at Saks Fifth Avenue there was a whole window devoted to Teddy bears - pink and blue and the conventional buff . Teddy bears with lovable coloured velvet and chamois leather soles to their feet - leading a domestic life in Teddy-sized houses . my scanty dollars did not run to buying any of them , but looking was free . people were so kind . I felt like a shipwrecked mariner who had been rescued by a luxury liner . strangers pressed boxes of chocolates on me . the lift man in one of the big shipping companies , previously known to me , gave me a large supply of candy bars , saying sister , you sure look peaked . I saw Oklahoma with its original cast , before it had been watered and slowed down as someone appears to think American plays have to be for English audiences ( but they are wrong ) . that was a little interlude worth facing the rigours of the journey out and back for - and they were many . I went out on a liberty ship . there was a rumour going about that they frequently came apart in the middle . the weather was so bad the tin biscuits were never out of the portholes . four women , one of them desperately seasick all the way ( not me ) , were closeted together in a small cabin for eight days . but there was any amount of drink on board - to us amazingly cheap - and the other three stood me cocktails , and even champagne , to encourage me to recite poetry , or tell them stories . over all that trip hangs a golden alcoholic haze . I came back in luxury on the Queen Mary . she was still a trooper and there were not enough chairs for everyone to sit down in the lounge at the same time , so they never had a chance to cool off . four of us shared a cabin for sixteen - hence the luxury . one was a woman I could not place . she tried to smuggle in a fifth - a dog - but the numbers were against her , and him we packed off to the butcher - traditional cherisher of hounds aboard ship . she wore slacks and a jumper , and went to bed by simply undoing one button when the whole caboodle fell off on the floor . usually half seas over , she had glasses of whisky standing around at vantage points , to which she put her lips when so disposed . these we emptied out of the window or down the loo when we got a chance . nightly she staggered in , undid the vital button and went to bed smoking a cigarette . presently it fell from her nerveless fingers on to the bunk beneath which was piled high with life jackets marked highly inflammable . why more Atlantic liners did not , and still do not , go up in flames , I often wonder , what with lit cigarette ends blowing about the decks - lit cigarettes thrown away to windward taking a short cut into the handy portholes . however , we got our wayward belle , in the face of fearful odds , safely ashore . she was discouraged because we would not allow her gentlemen friends in to visit her in the cabin . England looked drab and shabby , the autumn colours faded and wishy-washy after the Connecticut fall . I returned to troubles galore , but so pepped up with square meals I felt I could face anything . my Mother-in-law was getting old . she had seen plenty of trouble and finally succumbed to the buffetting of fate and retired to bed for good . this was a very sensible idea , except for the fact she had no one to look after her save Redman the gardener . that same patient soul who had been bombarded with Shakespeare in the asparagus beds . he had been wielding trays and goodness knows what else until I arrived . accustomed to eastern servants in her young days , my Mother-in-law had never been able to accustom herself to the I-don&apos;t-mind-if-I-do attitude of domestic workers at home . they in their turn would have none of her autocratic ways . so she was all alone . I knew you would fix something when you got back , dear , she said , with touching confidence . the situation was complicated by Redman himself collapsing . I finally got her rooms and attendance in a large country house nearby , where from her windows she would see much the same scenery as from her own home . old ladies are crotchety and hard to please . she kept me busy one way and another , and it seemed strange that I - the only one who had ever stood up to her - was the one she turned to now . no other member of the family was available or mobile , or within reach . or they had young children of their own , or they had married a wife and could not come . old age can be frightening in these days when the young people have all been brought up to please themselves only . forgetting that for them also a time will come &amp;hellip; . there was no snow that year until March . Ron , newly demobbed from the home guarding , gladly laying his rifle aside , built me a fruit cage for the raspberries and gooseberries . it looked like an elephant keddah . Mrs X , the carpenter &apos;s wife , died . there were two Mrs X&apos;s in the village . rumour at first reported the wrong one , at which Mr X , the carpenter , was deeply incensed . it &apos;s my wife wot &apos;s died . surely I ought to know , he said , standing in his yard full of statuary which for some reason he collected . ( warriors in strange uniforms , angels off tombs , elves and toads . ) it was ever such a surprise , said Mr X in an injured voice , as though resentful of the fact she had not given him proper warning . he said he hoped I &apos;d come and take a look at her when he got her all proper and laid out . I could not face it , but passed the invitation on to my home help , in whose day disaster was ever a bright flag . although it was common knowledge that Mr X had never paid much attention to Mrs X while she was mobile , he was immensely proud of her now she was dead . his arrangement of screens , and flowers and pieces of rich embroidery purchased at sales ( perhaps against this very day ) was , said my home help , tearfully , a real treat . the funeral was not to be for a whole week . he does not want to part with her , she said , wallowing , and shedding a further tear . maybe he &apos;ll stuff her and keep her , I said , trying to introduce a lighter note . this conjured up a life-like picture of Mrs X neatly stuffed ( for everything Mr X does is meticulous ) , wearing her dolman and toque , propped up in his yard amongst the rest of the statuary . I wrote to June in America saying , do n&apos;t have me stuffed , pettie , when I die . unless you think I could be useful standing in the hall holding a tray for cards - like bears in Scots baronial homes . 