WAINWRIGHT HOME

In Broadstairs, in April 1939, I was walking slowly past the Wainwright Home on the Eastern Esplanade, when I suddenly smelt a breath of hyacinths, and, the next moment, a waft from some drain, or garden earth-closet. I stood still to savour the violent twining of the smells and half-shut my eyes. When I opened them again and looked down on the pavement in front of me, I discovered these amazing words in powdery white chalk:

Naughty Susan past this way with Lord Admiral B. Beatty.

This seemed to me then wilfully beautiful and unreal. I could not think who had made them. Certainly no sane grown-up—perhaps a lunatic or a fey artistic person? But that last idea was too unpalatable and too unlikely. I would not have it. And yet, what child would use ‘naughty’ in that childish way? And what child would know so much about the figure of another too recent war?

Nelson, yes, but surely not Lord Admiral B. Beatty?