THE WILLING HORSE

By EVELYN SIMPSON

MRS. TREWENNA is in the middle forties. She lives in a neat little house on the outskirts of the city, and, as she says herself, she has always been " the energetic sort, not one to sit still and be waited on." Before the war she ran her home single-

handed, had a very effective finger in several useful local pies, and kept an intelligent, if proud, eye upon the manners and morals of her young son and daughter. When she read in her newspaper of the " goings on " of Hitler in Europe, she would say " We ought to stop it. It's not right," and when reminded that it would be her Joe—and probably his sister Gladys—who would have to do the stopping, she would reply firmly " I hope Joe and Gladys will always do their duty. And I hope I shouldn't be the one to hold them back."

When war finally broke out and Joe volunteered for the R.A.F.,

he was doing well in the second year of his articles to a local solicitor, but he had always been aeroplane-mad, and Mrs. Tre- wenna began at once to knit him light-blue pullovers and mittens and socks, and later to save up her butter and egg ration to make cakes to send to him. She also immersed herself in the less showy activities of the W.V.S. and Y.M.C.A., and a canteen at the station, and later, when Gladys was borne off to the extreme north of Scotland with the Wrens, Mrs. Trewenna merely assumed an extra batch of voluntary work—became the secretary of a Savings Group, ran a Red Cross Penny-a-Week fund, and kept open house for friends from the blitz areas, until a bomb carried off the greater part of her own roof. She rejoiced when she read that the " call- up " was to be extended to older women. " It isn't right that the young ones should have to do all the work while we sit safe at home," she said. "I shall volunteer for munitions." But just before she had to register, Joe was reported missing, and though his mother never gave up hope, she began to have fainting fits if she stood for too long in a hot atmosphere, and the doctor said that factory work was out of the question.

Reluctantly Mrs. Trewenna agreed to take an office job and so release a younger " mobile " woman. There were no buses at the right times, so she had to cycle, leaving the house at half-past eight and getting back at a quarter-past seven. No one seemed eager to take over her Savings Group or her Red Cross collection, and she didn't want them to fizzle out, so she " fitted them in somehow " ; and when Mr. Trewenna, observing his wife grow mare and more pallid and, it must be confess.-I, more and more irritable, asked " Why must it be always you who does it? Why can't someone else take a turn? " she would reply vaguely " Oh, well, you know how it is. There's always some who won't do anything until they're made to. Which they will be soon. Bevin says so. That's one thing about this call-up : it is fair." And Mr.

Trewenna would say that he supposed it was, but that she mustn't knock herself up, Bevin or no Bevin, and helped her to wash up the supper things. Gradually, however, he became less and less amenable. " What about Mrs. Jones? " he would ask. " She doesn't seem to be called up. And that Miss Smith. What's she doing, drinking coffee every morning in Bloggs's? " Mrs. Trewenna at first replied that their turn couldn't have come round yet, adding

gleefully that they must be a good bit older than they wanted people to think, for Mr. Bevin kept saying that there was to be no favouritism and pulling strings: everyone was to be treated fairly.

Later, she became rather snappy, and said that Mrs. Jones and Miss Smith would be " caught in the end," making no reply to her

husband's comment that they seemed to be having a jolly good run for their money, anyway. Almost every evening he would bring home a fresh example of " unfairness." There was Mrs. W., who was technically exempt because she had a child under fourteen ; but Mrs. W.'s mother took entire charge of the child, while her daughter " gallivanted about " all day. There was X., a conscientious objector, who had been " let off everything," and now lived comfort- ably at home on an allowance from his father, while his young wife, who shared his views, had simply ignored the order to register.

(" They'll get her in the end," said his wife. " And what will they do with her when they've got her? " enquired her husband.) The:e was little Miss T., who had candidly observed in his hearing that

Mummie knew the people who ran the call-up in Z., and they had said that they would ofianise it so that she wasn't• bothered. And Mrs. Trewenna, too tired, almost, to listen to what he was saying, would Lanark, " Well, I can't bother about other people. If they haven't got any consciences, it isn't my fault: I have."

One evening, when Mrs. Trewenna looked even more green with fatigue than usual, her husband burst out " What I want to know is why it's always those who try to do their duty who suffer. Why do the others get off scot-free? They said we should all be in the same boat in this war, but it's the same as the last one. Taking us

for suckers again, that's what they're doing. I won't have you kill

yodrself like this." And Mrs. Trewenna had to put aside her Red Cross accounts and go to the pictures with him to calm him down, and then get up half an hour earlier the next morning to darn her last pair of presentable stockings. Moreover, it became increasingly difficult for her to keep her end up in their arguments. Things grew more and more puzzling. They would read of wage-strikes in the arms factories, and Mr. Trewenna would say " I wonder what would have happened if the boys at El Alamein had struck for an extra bob a day? " They would hear the Minister of Labour boast- ing about the total mobilisation of woman-power, and they would shrug their shoulders and remark " Pity he doesn't come and live in our road for a month or two. He'd talk different then."

The Trewennas are not publicly articulate. They have a natural good taste which prevents them from making what they call " a fuss " about what they feel may not be their business. At present this diffidence is increased by the conviction that it wouldn't be any good if they did. No one would take any notice. So far as they are concerned, the second great essential of justice—that it must be

obvious that it is being done—is non-existent, and they arc no longer sure that the fint—that it is being done—can be relied on.

They, and others like them, are slowly—and reluctantly, for they are naturally trustful and anxious to think the best of everyone— developing into rather bewildered cynics. For, as Mr. Trewenna says, nobody minds doing their whack, but fair's fair, after all, and why should some people always get away with it all the time?