I recently read someplace that the light from the flame of a single candle can be seen as far as a mile. It jolted my memory of an occasion many years ago, when I was about 11 years old and living with my family on a farm in Southern England.
War had been declared in September 1939, and my cousin Pam, who at 10 was just a few months younger than me and who lived in London, had come to live with us, since her parents and mine felt she would be a lot safer in the countryside, on our farm.
We had greatly enjoyed each other’s occasional company for years, so I was happy to share my small bedroom with Pam. Her single bed was on the window side of the room, and there was a small table between her bed and mine, against the other wall.
Electricity had not come to the farm yet, so when we went to bed, our light was from a candle. Since blackout restrictions demanded there were to be no lights showing anywhere, my mother had gotten busy with her sewing machine and made curtains of a heavy black material for every room in the house. The curtains were always drawn and closed as daylight faded, and most of the lamps were lit then. The lamps were for downstairs. Upstairs we used candles.
Most evenings when Pam and I had gone upstairs to bed, we were allowed to read for a short while. This particular night, we were in our beds happily reading when my mother shouted up the stairs: “You girls closed your curtains, didn’t you?”
Whoops! No! Pam immediately scrambled upright on her bed, and with arms outstretched yanked the two curtains together, and called out “Yes, Auntie,” and back to our reading we went!
Ten minutes later there was a loud knock on the front door. My mother answered it to find two men with large ARP (Air Raid Precautions) arm-bands, regulation half-blacked-out flashlights and mud-covered shoes! They grumpily reported seeing a light in our area when they were bicycling along the Lambourn Road, about a mile away. They’d turned off the road and started up the farm lane.
“We have opened and shut five blasted gates, sloshed through ankle-deep mud, and were picking our way through a small field and a bunch of cows when the ruddy light went out!” one of the men testily said. “It has to have been at this house!”
“I don’t think so,” said my mother. “My girls have gone to bed and they always close their curtains.”
The two men apparently looked very peeved, aggravated and unconvinced, but they finally gave up arguing, and with more dire warnings they left.
When the door had slammed shut and we heard the garden gate close, Pam and I trundled downstairs and confessed to my mother the true story. We never forgot to close the curtains again!
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