Fire in the Thatch by Edith Caroline Rivett

The matter of the fire at Little Thatch and Nicholas Vaughan’s tragic death had inevitably provided food for discussion and debate throughout the locality. It has been said by many townsfolk—especially by Londoners—that countryfolk who have not suffered from bombing or the major tragedies of war are callous in their disregard of other people’s sufferings. The Billeting authorities and the W.V.S. had frequently to argue with recalcitrant housewives who wished to refuse to accept billeting orders which would bring bombed-out townsfolk into farms and cottages. “We don’t want them here and we can’t do with them.” Anne St Cyres had often countered this objection by saying: “Can’t you imagine what it feels like to have had your home destroyed, to be left standing in a bombed street with nothing but the clothes you’ve got on, and then to hear people who have lost nothing at all saying ‘We don’t want you. You’re only a nuisance’?”

The fact was, of course, that imagination—particularly the slowly moving imagination of folk in a safe and remote countryside—fails to realise the distresses of those who are strangers. London, Bristol, and Hull might be showered with incendiaries and thousands might be homeless, but this fact did not impress the rural mind as did the burning of one thatched cottage and the death of one man who was coming to be regarded as a neighbour.