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Rosalind Heywood – The Infinite Hive

For a time during the 1939-45 war he [her husband] was a Deputy Director at the War Office and he used to come home to Sunningdale to sleep whenever possible. One dark, wet November evening my mother and I were sitting quietly together after tea and I broke the silence by saying, a propos of nothing, 'Frank has no torch. I must take him one to the station.'

My mother was not pleased; even in her old age she was full of fears for her children, though never for herself.

‘He always takes a torch,' she protested. 'It's absurd to walk all that way in the rain for no reason at all.'

I did not want to annoy her; in fact, I found it hard to stand up to her; yet the conviction that my husband needed a torch to get home in the blackout was strong enough to make me brave her continued protests - and the weather - and walk to the station.

 It was worth it.

On getting out of the train he exclaimed spontaneously 'I am glad to see you. My torch gave out as I left the war office and I wasn’t at all looking forward to that long walk in the dark without one.’

I do not remember ever having taken such apparently irrational, not to say inconvenient, action when it was not needed.