by Amy Myers
‘I don’t believe this is your idea,’ she said glumly on the way to the station.
He grinned shamefacedly. ‘Pa hasn’t been able to telephone, and we don’t feel we should interrupt him by telephone, so Mother has despatched me to call in and find out when she can expect to see him again. What a question at such a time!’
‘With me?’
‘Accompanied by Daniel was her suggestion. But Daniel’s so furious he can’t go to Greece, I told him to push off and find Felicia.’
‘Lucky Felicia, if he’s in that mood.’
‘She has a good effect on him. He becomes a more reasonable human being when she’s around. Haven’t you noticed? In fact, he behaves like a human being, and not like a young Apollo.’
‘Does he want to marry her?’ Caroline asked bluntly.
He hesitated. ‘Daniel is set on travelling. I think he has some idea of rushing round the world and coming back to claim her like Jacob and Rachel in the Bible.’
‘Jacob waited fourteen years.’
‘Only because he got palmed off with the ugly sister. No danger of that now I’ve – ouch!’ He dodged as she whacked him with her handbag.
‘Is your mother still speaking to you?’ she deemed it safe enough to venture.
‘Yes.’ He seemed surprised. ‘Why?’
‘Our engagement,’ she reminded him, taken aback.
‘Mother is the best Lord Nelson I ever met. She doesn’t like it happening so she assumes it isn’t. Her blind eye is so confident she’s not even annoyed about it.’
Caroline felt dismissed, a woman of no consequence, and somewhat cross with Reggie, although she could think of no logical reason why this should be so.
The train from Tunbridge Wells was late and already full. Only with difficulty did she manage to squeeze into the compartment, and Reggie was left standing all the way to Victoria. At East Grinstead, even more people crowded in, and at the thought of another hour and twenty minutes at least ahead, her heart sank. She tried to pretend it was fun, but the heat soon sapped energy, and she was glad when they arrived and could take some refreshment. That too was a struggle, for Victoria was packed with naval servicemen, and still lots of foreigners, judging by the babble of French and German. They weren’t even at odds with each other, preoccupied with their individual problems and their own leave-takings, special trains running, heartbreaking scenes of women clasped in foreign husbands’ and sweethearts’ arms. Caroline wondered if any of them was Mrs Dibble’s Lizzie’s Rudolf. The crowd was swelled by holiday-makers whose trains had been cancelled, taken over by the Government for troops. They were easy to spot for they, like her, were in seaside attire, boaters, blazers, light summer dresses. It was as if Brighton Pier had been dumped in Victoria Station by a large wave. Most of them, it seemed to her, were making for St James’s Park, just as she and Reggie were. She was used to seeing the Park full of nannies out with their charges in perambulators, now it was swamped by holiday-makers, sweethearts and sightseers, pulled there by the general humming of the air.
‘Exciting, isn’t it?’ Reggie hugged her, as they at last found a bench to sit on.
‘Yes.’ She meant it. It was hard not to be infected by the energy that seemed to be flowing through the crowds around them. ‘Do you think we’ll be drawn in, Reggie?’
‘I don’t think it will come to that. The Kaiser is a madman, so they say.’ Reggie put on a funny face, placed his forefinger under his nose, jumped up and strutted along the path, goose-stepping, to the amusement of strollers-by.
‘Don’t joke.’ She caught his arm in sudden alarm and he sat down again. ‘It is serious.’
‘We don’t make it better by long faces.’
A burly young man walked by with his arm round his lady-love, and she found herself longing to feel Reggie’s round her again, but he seemed preoccupied. She felt she was at the back, not the forefront of his thoughts, and it alarmed her.
‘A soldier and his lass,’ he observed.
‘He looks more like a plumber to me.’
‘I meant me.’
‘You?’
A terrible chasm opened before her. Reggie and Daniel both had OTC experience. Suppose in due course they had to join in this war? Worse, suppose they wanted to? With alarm, she remembered Reggie’s thwarted desire for an army career. Surely the Regular Army would be enough to protect Britain? And, if not, the Reserves and the Territorials? After Lord Haldane’s reforms, its organisation and manpower must be quite adequate to protect France and Belgium against Germany, formidable though Germany’s army was said to be. In Ashden Caroline’s feet had felt securely on the ground. Here, she felt thrown out of her depth, at one moment sucking at an ice cream (forbidden in Ashden) as though this were Margate on a perfect bank holiday, and at another in the midst of a major crisis. What was worse, it affected her. Reggie might go. Was that why he was so preoccupied, so exhilarated? She recalled all the times he had spoken so wistfully of how he had wanted an army career. Suppose that was why he was here, to beg his father to let him go to war? Daniel would be here now; he could run the estate, Reggie might argue. She fought to subdue panic so that Reggie should notice nothing, and concentrated on the crowds around. Everywhere they lined the streets, watching the motor-cars passing in to Downing Street, or towards the Houses of Parliament, and Whitehall. All those people locked in conference on a scorching hot day like this. Did the Kaiser not take time for a summer holiday, she thought irrelevantly, to distract herself.
Half-way through the afternoon, the crowds began by a sort of osmosis to head towards the Mall, and hearing a whisper: ‘His Majesty’, they followed, caught up in the surging mass. They arrived at the Mall just as the open car went by carrying King George and Queen Mary with the Prince of Wales. Caroline found herself waving and cheering with the rest, a lump in her throat; it was impossible not to be moved by this symbol of their own great country and Empire. His father’s work for peace in Europe may come to nothing, King George seemed to be implying, but I am still here, and here I shall remain.
Reggie grabbed the latest edition of a newspaper as soon as the motor-car had passed. ‘Shall we stay on this evening, Caroline?’ he asked casually. ‘I’d like to try to see Father, and I don’t feel I can barge into the War Office at the moment. He’s staying in Queen Anne’s Gate with Lord Haldane and Grey, too, the Foreign Secretary. It’s possible he may have news from Paris. Look, I can whizz into my club and telephone him to see if we can meet him, and I can telephone your parents.’
Caroline hadn’t even given a thought to what her parents might be thinking. Now she did: a late train home, and just possibly no train home if the situation deteriorated. A few days ago it would have mattered so much, her being alone with Reggie. Now it seemed immaterial. She was not ‘with Reggie’; he had slipped from her; he was hearing not the birdsong in St James’s Park but some siren voice calling him to the Colours, thousands upon thousands at his side, all marching in pursuit of some vague concept named honour.
‘It’s worrying, all this talk of war,’ Agnes said primly, trying to think of something to say, when there was so much needed saying.
‘Won’t affect us, will it?’ said Jamie solidly, lying back on the grass with his hands behind his head. ‘Never does in the country. Wars and politics are for townsfolk, not us. But it’s us keeps the country going while they get on with their games.’
She laughed at him. ‘What if another William the Conqueror strolls in?’
‘The Tommies can deal with him, while we get on getting corn in, and shoeing horses. They still have to be shod and, before you say it, Aggie, I know there aren’t so many now. I don’t want to work in a shop all my life. They’ll all be motor-forges soon. I reckon that’s what I’d like to be, a motor-forger.’
‘You’re daft, Jamie Thorn.’ She leaned over and, greatly daring, tickled his nose with a piece of grass. ‘You’ve never ever even been in a motor-car, I’ll be bound.’
‘I have so. Lots of t
imes. Anyway, you don’t have to have kissed a girl to know you’d like to. Or that you’d enjoy it.’ He grinned wickedly. ‘Only I weren’t going to say kissed.’
‘Jamie Thorn, I’m surprised at you.’
‘No, you’re not, Aggie.’ A pause. ‘It’s very quiet here. No one about.’
‘Apart from boats up and down the river, and them fishermen over there.’ Something in her chest seemed to be hammering at her.
‘We could move further back, get out of the heat, among the trees.’
A longer pause. ‘It is a little warm here,’ she admitted. She jumped to her feet and began to gather up their belongings, following his rigid back into the woodland. It felt strange beginning to undress before Jamie, until she saw he was as shy as she was. That made her feel a little better. ‘Do we have to take off everything, Jamie?’ she managed to blurt out.
The thought of it made him so hard he had to turn away.
‘Be quick, Aggie,’ he almost choked. ‘Just … just.’ He couldn’t say it as he fumbled with his trousers and when he looked round there was a neat pile of calico and Aggie sitting down hugging her skirt round her knees. Somehow that made him even harder, and he sat down by her side. ‘Sure, Aggie?’
‘Yes, Jamie.’
‘Suppose it happens again like it did – that time?’ He tried to explain and she listened.
‘We’ve the rest of our lives to make it all right.’
So they had, so they had.
Awkwardly he pushed at her skirt, and then her arms were round him and it was all fumbling and pushing until he found the place. He didn’t stop to wonder if it would be all right; he knew it would be and it was. At first he was afraid of hurting her, but he couldn’t do anything about it, so he pushed on. She let out a yelp, but all she said was, ‘Go on, my lover, go on.’
There wasn’t any need to worry this time, and he was past thinking anyway, just full of a roaring and a loving that swelled up higher and higher, taking him over completely until he burst into her, and saw she was there, his beautiful, beautiful Agnes, and then she wasn’t because he was crying. Not for long though.
‘I’ll have the biggest and best motor-forge in Sussex,’ he vowed jubilantly, lying back on the grass afterwards. ‘That’s because you’ll be my missis. You could serve teas and ices.’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘The nippers can help you,’ he offered boldly.
‘Get on with you, Jamie Thorn.’
Sir John returned briefly to see his son at Queen Anne’s Gate in the middle of the evening. He greeted Caroline courteously enough, but she knew she was an irrelevance. His words were for Reggie, not because he was his son but because this was war and men’s business. Dazed by the unreality of the circumstances, she felt this justified, but as the group talk continued she began to feel excluded. Did not women suffer as much in war as men, though in different ways? And why should those ways always be different? Sir John was grey-faced from lack of sleep and the gravity of the situation, and was clearly anxious to return to the War Office.
‘Germany has demanded free passage through Belgium. It will not be granted, of course, and we shall issue an ultimatum this evening giving them twenty-four hours to guarantee Belgium’s neutrality.’
‘Will they do so?’ Reggie demanded.
‘Luxembourg is already invaded. That is your answer. Our own mobilisation orders are agreed, and will be issued tomorrow morning.’
‘But what about Ireland? Suppose they seize their opportunity for civil war?’
‘John Redmond has pledged Ireland’s support in this crisis. They will fight with us.’
‘And France?’ Caroline did not dare ask directly about Isabel in the light of such awe-inspiring news.
‘Paris is calmly resigned to war. There are already skirmishes in the east.’ Then Sir John did recollect what had been happening in Ashden. ‘You must forgive me, my dear, for my preoccupation. I understand you and Reginald announced your engagement on Saturday. I must congratulate you, though I could have wished –’
‘What, Father?’ Reggie interrupted angrily.
‘A better time, my son.’ He paused. ‘You will no doubt be discussing the situation with Daniel when you return home?’
Innocent words, but the look father and son exchanged terrified Caroline. She did not speak lest the sickness in her stomach overwhelm her, after they left Queen Anne’s Gate. She realised that instinctively they were walking not towards Victoria Station, but towards the Mall, where crowds were surging up towards Buckingham Palace, obviously for an expected appearance by King George and Queen Mary. When at last the doors opened and they came on to the balcony, the whole crowd around them seemed to explode in one vast cheer. The sound of ‘Rule Britannia’ and ‘God Save the King’ enveloped them, Union Jacks and tricolours were waving on all sides, picking up the blood red of the geraniuims bedecking the palace, and caught up in the euphoria they found themselves singing too.
‘Why should we want to sing?’ she asked Reggie, as they fought their way through the crowds back to the railway station. ‘Is it for war?’
‘No. I think it is for England.’ he replied soberly, but as she turned to look at him she sensed that, beneath his serious expression, excitement was still pulsating.
The train did not reach Ashden until well after midnight, and as they picked their way in the darkness down Station Road, Reggie’s arm around her waist, all was quiet after the uproar of London. Only one remaining cottager still kept a vigil. On Bankside old Jacob Timms, father of the newsagent, was sitting in his chair outside his cottage, the oil lamp glowing within, picking out his dark silhouette. He had been there for many, many hours, and until midnight there had been a hushed circle of people listening as he read out the news from London, as each special edition arrived.
On his way home from the War Office late that night, Sir John Hunney called in to the Foreign Office to see the Foreign Secretary. He found him with a friend. The ultimatum to Berlin had been given, now came the waiting. ‘I’ll turn down the lamps,’ he offered. ‘Then you can see the people more clearly. It is a strengthening sight.’
The Foreign Secretary moved to the window, and looked out into the darkness. ‘The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.’
Caroline could not sleep that night, though little enough remained of it. Perhaps it was the fast-moving events of the day, whose end was not yet known, perhaps the knowledge that the happiness that had been so nearly within her grasp had slipped an inch or two away. In the morning she rose to face the inevitable recriminations for her late homecoming, but to her surprise there were none. Her father was engrossed in The Times, and Felicia was reading over his shoulder. Why? Caroline wondered instantly. Felicia was never normally interested in world events, but she had spent the day with Daniel … Nonsense. Caroline tried to take hold of herself. She was over-tired and her imagination was galloping as usual well in advance of facts.
‘Is there news of Isabel?’ she asked anxiously.
‘None. Your mother has gone to calm Mrs Swinford-Browne.’
Mother calm her? Father looked at her in that way of his which said: I know what you’re thinking. Keep it merely as a thought. So Caroline did. She seized the paper after her father left for Matins, finding a perverse comfort in the way The Times maintained its formal order: a front page of personal advertisements, page after page of statistics and law reports, and in the very middle the war news. It seemed to help keep it in perspective – temporarily.
Felicia continued to read over her shoulder, interspersed with prowls around the room. Finally she observed, ‘The Honourable Artillery Company is seeking what it describes as “eligible recruits” because it is not up to strength. Will many regiments do that, do you think?’
Caroline laid the newspaper down, detecting the overdone casualness in her sister’s voice. ‘I don’t know, Felicia.’ She meant, and Felicia knew she did, I don’t know if Daniel will want
to go to war. I don’t know if Reggie will. ‘How’s Mother?’ she asked, determined to keep off those imponderable, terrifying unknowns.
‘Better.’
‘Even if Isabel has an uncomfortable journey, she will get back,’ Caroline pointed out. ‘She’s not in Brussels, she’s in Paris.’
‘Perhaps,’ Felicia said quietly, ‘but if she were being sensible she’d be back by now. The last of the special trains has come in, and they weren’t on it.’
‘When was Isabel ever sensible? But that doesn’t mean she’s in danger, merely that she’s decided not to sacrifice her honeymoon to the Germans. And darling Edith will have instructed her that it isn’t nice for a young gel to send postcards on a honeymoon.’ If Caroline had hoped to make Felicia laugh, she was disappointed.
‘A column of soldiers came through yesterday. They had full packs and they were watering the horses at the pond. They were singing “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary” just as though there were no emergency. They sounded so cheerful.’
Caroline followed these inconsequential comments exactly, and braced herself. ‘British soldiers always do,’ she commented lightly.
‘That’s what Kipling says in his verse. I wonder if it’s really true? I tried to think of the men yesterday under fire –’
‘Don’t, Felicia, please. Didn’t Mother say we should visit the wives of the Tilbury brothers to see if they are in need with their husbands going away so unexpectedly.’
‘Yes, she did. We’ll go after breakfast. I’m sorry, Caroline.’
George was out for the day with a friend from Skinners, and Phoebe had decided to visit Philip Ryde’s sister, Beatrice, with whom he lived. When Felicia and Caroline too had departed, Elizabeth, returned from The Towers exhausted from her endeavours, seized the chance to return to her sole preoccupation.
‘Edith is distraught, Laurence. Could we not telephone Sir John to cable the British Ambassador in Paris? Isabel is our daughter?’
