Observations placeholder
Heywood, Rosalind - The Infinite Hive - Frank has no torch, I must take him one to the station
Identifier
023057
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
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.