Robert leaned angrily from the window of the car. ‘I am halted, you fathead!’ he bellowed. ‘What the hell is all this?’
The heads vanished all at once as though pulled down by the same string. From one side of the road a dozen donkeys viewed the scene as they chewed. He saw that men were erecting tall stakes and poles along the first fairway of the golf club. As he took in this operation a man detached himself from behind the tree trunk, an exceptionally thin and tall figure which walked with a sorrowful lurch. Robert recognized him from his solicitor’s days as a man who had been a court messenger at Winchester Assizes. ‘Jeffreys,’ he called from the car. ‘What the devil’s going on?’
Jeffreys had an armband bearing the letters LDV tight as a tourniquet on his thin upper arm. He was wearing brown dungarees and carrying an air gun. His helmet was too big and wobbled as he moved his head. ‘Identity card, please,’ he said solemnly.
‘Jeffreys, it’s me. Robert Lovatt. God, you’ve known me long enough.’
The man studied him intently but with no recognition, and then intoned: ‘Identity card, please. All traffic on this road is being checked.’
Angrily Robert stared at Jeffreys. No response stirred in the other’s face. ‘My God, what a farce!’ exclaimed the older man. He produced his National Identity Card from his wallet. The guard read it minutely, turned it over and stared at the other side.
‘Why don’t you try smelling it, man?’ demanded Robert.
‘Sorry Mr Lovatt, sir,’ muttered Jeffreys, returning the card with the reply: ‘But that’s the orders. Parachutists could be dropping any minute.’
‘They could hardly be so well disguised as to look like someone you’ve known for thirty years,’ retorted Robert. ‘Now will you please ask your toy soldiers to move that ruddy tree trunk out of the way. I’m on business of national importance.’
Jeffreys appeared discomfited. ‘One of the wheels ’as come off, Mr Lovatt. We can’t move it. They’ve sent to the garage in Lyndhurst for help.’
Robert bristled. ‘And am I supposed to sit here while you fix it?’
‘No, sir,’ said Jeffreys pointing towards the golf club. ‘You can go into the golf course there and out at the far gate.’ Apology festooned his face. ‘You could get stopped again. Some of our unit are up there putting up the poles on the fairways.’ His eyes moved towards Robert’s. ‘Precautions against gliders, that is.’
Robert nodded. ‘Going to make the golf difficult,’ he said less fiercely.
‘Have to play between the poles, I s’pose,’ said Jeffreys. ‘I never did play myself.’
He wished Robert good afternoon and slouched back towards the tree trunk barricade. ‘’S all right. I know ’im,’ he called towards his comrades. ‘Mr Lovatt. Used to be at Winchester.’
Robert turned the car towards the golf club gate. As he did so he saw that the iron farm wheel which had been fixed to one end of the tree was leaning weakly. He remembered Jeffreys had always been a slow man, a joke among the pre-war Assize people at Winchester, where centuries before Judge Jeffreys had sent so many to the execution block. The messenger had been given many nicknames and once his friends had persuaded him to sign a joke death warrant. He had gone through the years never showing a sign that he knew the significance of the jests. And now he was defending the country.
The men erecting poles and posts on the golf course did not stop Robert. Several were thick in an angry argument with the groundsman and the elderly club secretary who were apparently objecting to obstacles being thrust into the precious languid greens.
Once more he emerged into the open moorland of the forest. There were few houses there, just long slopes of wild countryside, bogs, valleys and gathered copses. Deer, ponies, cattle, donkeys and black pigs roamed freely. In the Great War, he remembered, there had been a regiment of Indian troops encamped in that place, hundreds of brown, mystified men, waiting to be fed into the trenches of Flanders. Some of the forest gypsies had tried to sell them pork.
The journey became mildly hilly and then, with a quiet delight he had always enjoyed, the point of Salisbury Cathedral stood out before and below his road, the tallest spire in England rising from the distant, dun-coloured city.
Major-General Geoffrey Sound lived in a red, mullioned house in the Cathedral Close at Salisbury. As the sun turned through the day so the shadow of the tallest spire moved like the hand of a great clock across the Close and over his house.
When Robert arrived the staunch old officer was sitting in his garden staring with a sort of dismay at a pictorial book, Aircraft of the Fighting Powers.
‘Can’t tell one damned flying machine from another,’ he confessed sorrowfully. He shut the book like an explosion. ‘Damned things have ruined warfare, if you ask me.’
The major-general had suffered wounds in his years of service and now, walking with a cane, he dragged his right leg like a rake across the grass. Robert told him of the forest road-block. The old man shook his head. ‘What did Cromwell say to John Hampden – “Your troops are old, decayed serving men, tapsters and such kind of fellows!”’
‘I’m afraid,’ said Robert, ‘that is what it’s going to be like. My chaps are good fellows enough, but they don’t have much idea.’
‘Still, we must make a start. Do the best we can. It can’t be any worse than getting Egyptians into shape.’ He shrugged unhappily. ‘Never thought I’d see the day when we had to think of troops dropping from the sky on strings,’ he sighed. ‘What next, I ask myself.’ He put a tired hand on Robert’s shoulder. ‘Sit down, sit down,’ he said, leading him towards a wooden seat by the garden path.
They sat. The slender veil of shade from the cathedral spire was moving over the sunny shrubs and the comforting lawn. Robert thought there was something familiar about the white stones that formed the path, so shining and regular.
‘Recognize them?’ asked Sound, pleased at his interest and prodding the path with his stick. ‘War graves. Got them from the War Graves Commission, see. Some fool stone mason made them an inch too wide or too narrow, or some such thing, and the Commission didn’t find out until it was too late and they’d paid the fellow by that time. Naturally war graves have to be of regulation size, just the same as army blankets and bits of four by two. Damned embarrassed they were, so I took them off their hands. Got them for a song. Better than wasting them, don’t you think?’
Robert was unsure. He nodded vaguely. ‘Useful,’ he agreed, however: ‘Jolly useful.’
‘The War House won’t be pleased with this LDV business,’ said Sound. Robert was still looking at the stones in the path. ‘They don’t like the notion of private armies, never did. That’s why Lawrence never hit it off with them.’ He stood up and dragged his foot back towards the house. ‘Tea?’ he asked as Robert stood and followed him. ‘Or a drink?’
‘It’s tea,’ called a woman’s voice from the house. ‘I’ve just made it.’
‘Tea, I’m afraid,’ sighed Sound. ‘There’s no arguing. She’s the commanding officer these days.’
‘It’s an idea anyway,’ said Robert, still carrying on the original conversation. ‘It would be mad to have able-bodied men standing hands-in-pockets at a time like this.’
The major-general paused in mid-drag: ‘You’ve got a sharp mind, Lovatt. Always did. Never understood why you didn’t stay in the army. I’m no good now. Finished. Just sitting around waiting for that damned spire to revolve once more.’ Bitterness spiked his voice. They had reached the low door. Wistaria fell like a pale blue curtain over the ruddy brickwork on the wall. The major-general’s wife, a tall serene woman, walked gravely towards them with a silver tea-tray.
‘So nice of you to come, Major Lovatt,’ she said formally. She took in her husband with a mischievous smile. ‘I do hope you’re in time to save the country.’
‘We’re going to try,’ put in her husband fiercely before Robert could frame a reply. ‘Our damnedest, we’re going to try. It’s time someone took some firm
action with Hitler.’ He sat down heavily and arranged his cane alongside his stiff leg like a sword. ‘Good God,’ he sighed. ‘I saw two perfectly able and fit chaps out hiking – hiking of all things – shorts and knapsacks and all that. At a time like this. Where’s the planning, I ask you? And useless they were at hiking for that matter. I had to show them how to read a damned Ordnance Survey map.’
‘They were probably spies,’ said Mrs Sound, putting a cake-slice on a tassa replete with fruit-cake. She said it softly but with light malice.
Her husband reddened. ‘Silly bloody spies, if you don’t mind me saying so. Attracting attention like that.’ He lowered his creased eyes with embarrassment. ‘Anyhow, I misdirected them. Sent them in entirely the wrong direction. Just in case.’
‘Jolly well done,’ said his wife. She retreated unhurriedly towards the door. ‘I must leave you. The butcher has promised to keep two lamb chops for me. And some beef dripping. I won’t be long.’
‘Two lamb chops, beef dripping,’ repeated the major-general in a grumble. He turned to Robert. ‘Cavalry is the answer,’ he said solemnly. ‘In this part of the country anyway. Plenty of open ground. I’d match cavalry against anything the Hun could put in the field.’
He was pouring the tea and he spilled it in his emphasis. The silver snout of the teapot was swivelled around like a tank turret. ‘You can’t fight a war with tin boxes on wheels,’ he said. ‘Never could. And as for these marionette blighters on their strings. A squadron of Hussars would clean them up in quick time.’
‘Of course,’ agreed Robert. An uneasy sensation of having gone through all this before, in childhood, came over him.
‘I wager old Dodger Doddington over at Lyme Regis has already been roped in,’ continued Sound. He was making a mess of pouring the tea. ‘And that chap Clark, you know, in Bournemouth, remember him? He had command somewhere or other.’
‘He’s dead,’ Robert reminded him. ‘We went to the funeral.’
‘Damn, so we did. He’s no use then.’ From somewhere within the house a clock struck softly. ‘Four,’ confirmed Sound. ‘Let’s see if the BBC has any news.’
He rose with a hint of leadership and Robert followed him as he scraped from the room. There were military pictures and mementoes on the wall; a polo team in Persia, a fancy-dress ball in India, cricket at Sandhurst, the menu card of a long-digested regimental dinner. They went into a small room, a study, with a desk and a telephone and one wall covered with a map of Europe, small flags and stickers marking the last-broadcast dispositions of the conflicting forces. Robert’s eyes went to Abbeville. He remembered it well. A café and a friendly girl, long, long ago. ‘I hear the Germans have reached Abbeville,’ he ventured. A Union Jack and a tricolour were still pinned to the town.
‘Been waiting for confirmation,’ said Sound in a vexed voice. He switched on the wireless set and it began to crackle. His face had sagged when he looked up again, sadness and worry in its lines. ‘I never consolidate a claim until it’s announced officially, Lovatt,’ he said. ‘I can’t bring myself to believe that it’s all happening.’ He looked down to adjust the pepper-pot knob of the set. ‘I’m very much afraid they’re going to swamp us,’ he said with sudden anguish. Suddenly Robert thought the old man was going to weep. ‘I don’t think I could bear defeat,’ he continued slowly. ‘Not after winning all those years.’ There was popular organ music being broadcast by Sandy Macpherson. Wrath rallied the major-general. ‘That benighted bugger playing that benighted instrument again,’ he complained. ‘Why don’t we play marches to fill the gaps like other countries do?’
An announcer, his voice as stiff as his undoubted shirt, broke into the playing and announced a special news bulletin. Sound waved Robert towards an armchair. He dropped tiredly on to the chair at the desk.
‘Fierce fighting continues on the Western Front,’ said the faceless man predictably. ‘General Gamelin, the Allied Commander-in-Chief, in a message to French troops has said: “Any soldier who cannot advance should allow himself to be killed rather than abandon that part of our national soil which has been entrusted to him . . .” It is officially confirmed that German forces have taken Abbeville . . . Allied forces have retreated to prepared positions and to straighten the fighting line . . .’
With difficulty the major-general rose from the desk and, taking a small swastika flag, placed it resignedly into the town of Abbeville on the wall map. ‘You know, old man,’ he said as he turned to Robert, ‘I’ve often thought what splendid mines could be made from milk churns. Packed with explosives they’d go off a treat, don’t you think? One hell of a bang.’
The garden was coming to its best. Throughout May the weather had been exceptionally fair and the early summer flowers were bursting through under the loaded blossom of the trees. On 22 May regulations came into force which, for the first time since the signing of Magna Carta by King John in the year 1215, took away many personal freedoms from the British people. The Government voted itself power to direct any person to any occupation or place, to take over property, to make summary arrest.
Harry picked up The Times from the chair just within the hall as he carried his cases to the front door. His mother was coming down the stairs. ‘They can send you out to fight now, mother,’ he called. ‘See, you can be directed anywhere by Winston, if he so pleases.’
Elizabeth smiled and said: ‘As long as he doesn’t put me down the coal mines I think I’ll manage.’
He opened the door and the full colour and scent of the garden was before them. ‘It’s looking wonderful,’ he said quietly. ‘Really peaceful.’
A little tentatively his mother laughed. ‘Perhaps we’ve spent far too much time admiring our gardens,’ she added. ‘Trimming the hedges, pruning the trees, mowing the grass, making sure the paths were weeded. Some of us thought that the entire blessed world was right here.’
‘You mean we should have taken a peep over the hedge,’ he suggested. He put his arm around her middle-aged waist, enjoying the silk of her dress. They put his cases in the back seat of the car and climbed into the front.
He had brought the newspaper with him and he glanced at it while they drove towards the station.
‘There are people in Luxemburg paying to get a good view of the fighting across the border,’ Harry told her. ‘It says here that they are sitting in deck chairs watching it all going on.’
She drove slowly as if not anxious to get to the station too early. The road, so familiar, rolled over the green moorland of the forest. There were horses in the distance drinking at a shining pool. They drove to the brow of the middle of the three modest hills and the countryside opened out around them like a coloured umbrella. From their right, from the direction of the pool, came a horse and rider. ‘It’s that girl,’ said Elizabeth grimly.
‘Bess,’ he answered. ‘She rides very well, doesn’t she.’
‘She’s very accomplished,’ said his mother enigmatically.
The girl encouraged the horse up the last grass incline and splashed through a low stream. ‘Ah,’ she said lightly. ‘A sailor off to the sea. Good morning, Mrs Lovatt.’
‘Good morning, dear. What a nice mount.’
Elizabeth had not stopped the car but they were progressing so slowly that Bess was able to jog easily alongside. ‘I’m thinking of buying him,’ said Bess. She patted the chestnut’s neck. ‘For my war work.’
‘Are you joining the cavalry?’ asked Elizabeth pleasantly. Harry grimaced and nudged his mother. ‘What are you doing, Bess?’ he asked.
‘Mounted patrols,’ she announced importantly. ‘Riders covering the forest to report parachutists landing. This is a big area, you know. Four hundred square miles of it.’
‘And what do you do when you find a parachutist?’ asked Elizabeth. ‘Scream?’
The girl became tight-lipped. ‘You’re off to sea, then?’ she said to Harry. ‘Mind you don’t get wet.’
‘Portsmouth naval barracks, I expect,’ answered Harry wryly.
‘Although that’s strictly a military secret.’
‘I won’t tell anybody, I promise,’ returned the girl. She turned the horse and, waving deftly, set out again across the uneven countryside, eventually vanishing into a copse of young trees.
Harry and his mother drove on in silence for a while. ‘You’ve never liked Bess very much, mother,’ said Harry. ‘Don’t you think you’re a bit heavy on her?’
‘I always see her as such a useless person, I’m afraid,’ confessed his mother stiffly. ‘Amusing herself by playing games.’
They reached the station yard and he took his cases and laid them on the paving stones outside the gate. Ben, who was wearing his LDV armlet over his porter’s uniform, came out and picked them up. ‘Back to school again, are we, sir?’ he joked wheezily.
‘It is a bit like old times, isn’t it, Ben?’ laughed Harry. He told his mother not to get out of the car and then leaned over and embraced her.
‘Take care, Harry, please,’ she said, looking straight ahead. ‘As far as you can.’
‘Listen, lovely,’ he said kissing her cheek. ‘We’ll all have to take care. You make sure you do.’ He withdrew a little from her and grinned. ‘What would you do if a Jerry parachutist landed in the garden? Ask him to do some weeding?’
She astonished him by saying readily: ‘I have your old rook rifle. Your father says that if you hit anybody directly between the eyes with that it would account for them. I’m going to start practising as soon as you’re out of the way. Here’s your train now. Goodbye, darling.’
Every window of the train was latticed with strips of adhesive, each pane like a badly cut face. On this wide morning, the only other passenger in Harry’s compartment had pushed down all the windows so the breeze from the sea and the country flew in unchecked.
The other man was large, made larger by festooned fishing tackle and bulky clothing. He had a plum face squashed beneath a felt hat and supported by a heavy coat and oilskin from which gaitered legs were thrust with a confidence approaching belligerence. Beside him, oddly like a pair of spare legs, were his waders, and beside them, leaning against the window, were his encased rods, with his basket and landing net on the seat beside him. ‘Don’t like the look of the war news,’ he said to Harry. ‘Not one bit.’
The Dearest and the Best Page 15
