The Chestnut Tree

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘You’d be surprised.’ Rusty looked determined. ‘You’d be surprised, Mum, really you would.’

  Because they had been hoping so much for a boy it had often seemed to the Todds that their aspirations had somehow seeped through to their unborn daughter, who had finally emerged from her mother’s womb determined to make up for the fact that she had disappointed them, by becoming even more of a boy than her brothers.

  For as long as Mrs Todd could remember her daughter had been in a boat, first on the waters of the estuary and later the sea itself. She had learned to sail with her father, more by custom than tuition. Quickly picking up the rudiments of managing a small dinghy, she was sailing solo by the time most of her contemporaries were trying to learn how to ride their first bicycles.

  By the age of ten she was managing the most sophisticated craft single handed. Ironically, although subsequently blessed with two sons, the Todds soon discovered that, besides Rusty, only Mickey showed a real interest in boats, and even that was a penchant that owed much to the fact that his older brother and his friends always left him out of their games.

  Not that Rusty minded. Mickey, being the youngest, was her pet lamb, with the consequence that he followed her devotedly, even out to sea, where he was usually violently sick.

  ‘Will Mickey get called up as well, do you think, Mum?’ Rusty asked her mother, after a long silence. ‘Soon, I mean?’

  ‘Hardly. They’re not calling them up at sixteen yet, I wouldn’t say, Rusty.’

  Mrs Todd sighed. Every time her children’s ages were mentioned she always did sigh. Too many miscarriages and too little money had worn her to a thread paper. It was little wonder that she had ended up suffering with arthritis, what with the worry and the pain of it all; but, alas, her husband had shown little interest in Marie Stopes’s contraception methods, or anything else, except boats and the boatyard.

  ‘And if what they’re saying’s right – that it’ll all be over by Christmas? Then there’s not a lot of need to fret.’

  ‘Familiar ring to it for your dad and me, that. It all being over by Christmas. Just what your grandfather said before he went off and got himself shot in the last war.’

  Having completed her chores, Rusty excused herself and collected up her West Highland terrier, pretending to go for walk, but finishing by going up to the beautiful old Anglo-Saxon church. There were many others kneeling there where first the Saxons and then the Normans had built, or re-built, their church to the greater glory of God. For Rusty, as she imagined for her fellow worshippers, there was comfort in the peace beneath the early English stone arches, but desperation in her prayer, repeated over and over again. Please, please, God, help there to be no war.

  David and Meggie learned about the invasion of Poland from the wireless on board the Light Heart, as with sails furled and engine idle she rode the swell three miles off Bexham Point.

  ‘I shall remember this moment for the rest of my life,’ Meggie murmured, as she sat in the bows staring at the invisible continent across the Channel to the south of them. ‘To us. All of us. Most of all—’ She stopped, staring across the water to the harbourside. ‘Most of all, to Bexham.’

  ‘That’s the best toast yet,’ David replied, handing her a tumbler of gin and French. ‘To Bexham where we all grew up.’

  ‘No, Davey,’ Meggie said, and she shook her head, the look in her eyes suddenly quite old, ‘where we all thought we were grown up. There’s rather more of that ahead of us. Growing up. We won’t know the meaning of it by the time all this is finished.’

  At the garage on the top of the hill above Bexham village Peter learned the news from a succession of customers who drove in to fill their cars up, as if hostilities had already broken out and petrol rationing was already in place. As he manned the pump Peter tried to reassure all those who stopped at the garage that there was absolutely no danger of his supplies drying up in the immediate future, only to be greeted with general disbelief.

  ‘There’ll be tanks on the roads before you know it, young Peter my lad,’ one of his regulars assured him. ‘And let’s just hope they’re ours and not Jerry’s.’

  ‘He won’t be setting foot here,’ Peter replied. ‘Not if I can help it.’

  ‘Right – course, you’re away to join up, eh, lad? When’s the big day?’

  ‘Day after tomorrow, sir. Can’t wait.’

  ‘Not like some,’ his customer replied. ‘And certainly not like before. Last time Jerry made trouble we were knocking each other over in the rush to teach him a lesson. This time – I don’t know.’ The man shrugged and shook his head sadly. ‘You’d think it wasn’t anything to do with us.’

  This was certainly not the impression Peter got later on that day when he sat in the darkness of the cinema with Mattie Eastcott on one side of him and her friend Virginia on the other, listening to the sobs of some of the audience as they all watched an already meaningless newsreel about pre-invasion Poland.

  The show over, the three of them drove home in Peter’s Austin 10. Inside the car there was complete silence. No one could think of anything to say. There was nothing they could say, until, a few minutes out of Bognor, Peter rounded a corner and found himself being stopped by soldiers, and ordered to turn off all his driving lights.

  ‘Haven’t you heard about the blackout, son?’ the sergeant scolded him. ‘Come into force as from this a.m. and that means no lights. No lights. Got it?’

  ‘I thought it was only headlights that were banned when driving?’

  ‘Then you thought wrong, didn’t you? Now on your way and make sure those lights of yours stay off! Now, and for the duration. Off, do you hear?’

  Despite the fact that they all knew that Peter was right, the three of them bowed to the sergeant’s demand and as a consequence endured an appallingly difficult journey back to Bexham, guided by nothing more than the light of an extremely pale and only occasionally visible moon.

  Peter and Mattie sat in the car at the end of the lane that led to her parents’ house. Virginia, sensing that she was about to feel even more of a gooseberry than she did already, had demanded to be dropped off first on their way through the now totally darkened village.

  ‘Wonder what your parents would say if they knew you’d been to the films with me tonight? I dare say they’d faint from shock, wouldn’t they?’ Peter stared ahead of them, out on to the estuary.

  ‘They’d say the same as if they knew I’d been out dancing with you,’ Mattie replied, half turning to look at her tousle-haired companion.

  ‘I shall miss dancing with you, Mattie.’

  ‘Then hurry up and win the war, Peter, and then we can dance again.’

  Mattie smiled at him, and as she did so she found herself hoping that she might get him to kiss her. But being completely inexperienced in such matters she had no idea if he would, only that she wanted him to. It just seemed so right, after all the weeks they had spent dancing together.

  ‘Are you just doing this because I volunteered? Because I’m going off to fight?’

  ‘Because you’re going off to fight I’d rather I wasn’t doing this. As a matter of fact. Really. Whatever doing this might mean.’

  ‘Going out with me. Dancing with me. Being this nice.’

  ‘In order of preference, then. I went out with you because I like you. I danced with you because I like you. I go to the cinema with you because I like you. I like you.’

  ‘After the war’s over—’

  ‘When the war’s over and when you come home again – well?’

  ‘Well – will you? I mean will you still be here? I mean, will you?’

  ‘Will I what, Peter? Will I what exactly?’

  ‘I don’t have the right to ask you. We’ve only been dancing a few times – and I’ve only taken you out once, properly, tonight. To the cinema. With your friend. That’s not very much, even if there is a war on, is it?’

  Mattie took hold of one of Peter’s hands and held it between her two far smoot
her ones.

  ‘If what you’re trying to ask is will I still be here, the answer is I jolly well hope so. And if what you’re really trying to say is will I – well. Will I – will things be the same? Will I still go out with you – then of course I jolly well will. Just don’t stay away too long, that’s all. Just hurry up and knock the spots off Mr Hitler.’

  Peter said nothing, silenced for once, only trying to make out her expression in the darkness, how serious she was, whether she meant what she said, was not still just teasing him, making light as she normally did.

  ‘Right, I’d better let you go then, Mattie.’

  ‘Not before—’

  ‘Not before what?’

  ‘Well, what do you think? Before we’ve kissed goodnight, silly.’

  Judy learned the terrible fate of the world in the gloomy drawing room of her aunt’s house on Mull. Left alone in the large grey-stoned house that sat at the head of a small seaweed-infested tidal loch on the western side of the island, she had been trying to keep herself amused with the latest variation of Patience which she had just taught herself from a book of card games when Mrs Craig, whose gloomy countenance matched the general mood of the house, appeared from nowhere to turn on the wireless.

  ‘Ye’ll be needin’ to hear this, Miss. The Huns are in Poland.’

  Despite knowing that war was, as it were, on the cards, Judy found herself standing up with the shock of it. She remained standing while she listened to the latest news bulletin in the company of the housekeeper, who regularly punctuated the silence with a sharp clicking of her tongue.

  When the bulletin was over Mrs Craig switched the wireless off as briskly as she had turned it on.

  ‘Now then, if ye have any washing that needs doing, Miss, I should take it off you.’

  Judy frowned at her. ‘Washing? You want my washing now?’

  ‘If ye’d rather be caught with your linen dirty.’ Mrs Craig sighed with a shake of her head. ‘’Tis all the same to me.’

  So while the housekeeper washed the household linen clean rather than be caught napping by any invading force, Judy took herself out for a long walk in the woodlands by the side of the loch until she reached a point with a full view of the Atlantic ocean.

  Below her the tide was racing in and a strong wind was up, swishing her rich dark hair away from her face, and high as she was she could still feel the tang of salt on her skin and taste it on her lips. The ocean was green-grey and angry-looking, breaking vast white-capped waves against the granite rocks before scuttering away in lethal whirlpools. Judy stared at the sea, unable to take her eyes from it, knowing that somewhere below its fury soon, if not right at this moment, Walter would be hidden from sight, submerged in a dark steel tube loaded with deadly weapons, in search of those who were now their mortal enemies.

  Please God, she whispered into the wind. Please God keep him safe and bring him home. Please, please God.

  Wheeling high above her some big dark bird called a loud cry before folding its wings backwards to dive swiftly down into the seething seas and disappear from sight, leaving Judy with the feeling that God was not listening.

  Afterwards, not only Judy but everyone would always remember where they were and what they were doing at 11.15 a.m. on Sunday 3 September, 1939, when the prematurely old and seemingly already war-weary voice of Neville Chamberlain announced on the wireless that, since Germany had failed to respond to the British government’s ultimatum to withdraw her troops from Poland, a state of war now existed between the two countries.

  The congregation gathered in St Mary’s Parish Church, Bexham, received confirmation of what they had all been dreading when the vicar’s eleven-year-old daughter walked solemnly up the aisle and broke the news to her father as he was about to climb into the pulpit to deliver his sermon. He at once abandoned his prepared text to convey the message to his parishioners, before cutting short the service so that everyone could hurry back to their now threatened homes.

  ‘Bad news,’ Loopy Tate said to Sir Arthur as she and Hugh hurried past him on their way back to Shelborne. ‘Terrible news.’

  ‘Yes, terrible,’ Sir Arthur agreed, ‘but at least it means we got let off the vicar’s sermon. I wish the clergy wouldn’t talk about themselves so much. I, I, I. That’s all they seem to ever say. I. Aye, aye, and that’s naval, everyone knows that, not church.’

  Ahead of them the main street of the village was thronged with people, not all of whom had been attending Matins. Windows had been flung open and neighbours who had barely exchanged a word with each other during all their years of residence in Bexham were now talking animatedly to each other about the news.

  Cups of tea and glasses of sherry were being handed out to anyone gathered round the bay window of the Lupins, a large and rambling house at the end of the high street which was the home of two spinster ladies, Miss Penrose and Miss Henshaw, known to all as Penny and Henny, while PC Ambrose was to be seen cycling slowly and carefully around the village announcing the outbreak of hostilities through a megaphone he had strapped to his head.

  To Hugh and Loopy’s astonishment they saw the landlord of the Three Tuns sitting at a table outside his pub being comforted by one of his barmaids, his great round red face suffused with tears, while not ten feet away from him on the quayside a group of children were happily spinning round in a circle as they celebrated the indefinite closure of schools for the duration.

  ‘War brings nothing good in its wake.’ Hugh turned from the sight of the children making themselves dizzy going round and round, and round and round, as they sang No more Latin, no more French, no more sitting on a hard school bench.

  Loopy walked on with him, thoughtful and preoccupied, until at last, hurrying towards them from the estuary where they had been fishing, they saw Rusty and her two brothers, with their still assembled rods slung over their shoulders.

  ‘Heard the news, have you, you three?’ Loopy called to them, as they ran past.

  ‘Colin the Lobster told us!’ Tom called back. ‘Heard it from the coastguard!’

  ‘By the by, I think you’re wrong, Hugo,’ Loopy said once the youngsters had passed by. ‘About wars not doing anyone good. Some people gain from war.’

  ‘I’m leaving aside the arms boys, Loopy, you know that. They who make arms always support war.’

  ‘I’m thinking nearer home. When I was in the stores yesterday, a couple of the local farmers were in. They sounded pretty darned pleased at what was about to happen. Reckoned it would stop the present agricultural slide to ruin.’

  ‘We’re certainly going to need all the food we can grow, of that there is no doubt.’

  ‘Only thing is, Hughie – if they call up all the able-bodied men, who’s going to see to the land?’

  Hugh stopped by the gate, looked quizzically at his wife, and then squeezed the bicep of her right arm.

  ‘Not you, my dear, and that’s for sure. I don’t want you to break your fingernails,’ he teased. ‘Now come on – I could kill a whisky sour.’

  As the Todds ran past the Eastcotts’ house they saw Lionel Eastcott hauling a Union Jack up to fly on the staff in front of his house. They stopped to watch him stand and salute the flag now unfurling in the stiffening breeze, an action that prompted Mickey to try to imitate him, before picking up again and running on towards their cottage where they found their father and mother busy with black adhesive tape at the windows.

  ‘What’s that for, Dad?’ Mickey wanted to know. ‘They won’t be bombing Bexham, will they?’

  ‘Seeing we’re right on the coast, boy, there’s no telling what they’ll do. Now go and give your mum a hand with the blackout stuff. Half them screens need blacking.’

  Rusty led the way, stopping as the three of them hurried upstairs to stare through the window at something in the glass-clad lean-to outside.

  ‘Mickey?’ she called, continuing up the stairs. ‘I want to ask you a favour!’

  Once they had finished helping their mother
to paint some extra blinds she had made the day before with a mixture of lampblack and size and left them to dry out on the grass, Rusty took Mickey back to the lean-to shed and pointed out the young sapling that her brother had been growing in the little patch of ground their father allowed them to garden for themselves.

  ‘Can I have it?’

  ‘I won that, I did, when it was a conker. I won that.’

  ‘I know that, Mickey, but I have a place for it, a special place.’

  ‘But I’m growing it till it gets as tall as Brighton Pier.’

  ‘I’m not going to stop it growing, silly. Come on, and I’ll show you.’

  Taking her doubtful brother by one hand Rusty hurried him off to the green at the other end of the village.

  ‘Here,’ Rusty said, choosing a bare, uncultivated spot near the cricket pavilion. ‘This is where we’ll plant him.’

  ‘Can’t see as to why,’ Mickey said, scratching at his thick head of hair, and looking about him. He pointed across the grass. ‘They’ve got trees here.’

  ‘Yes, but no chestnuts. A village green should always have a chestnut.’

  ‘Don’t see why.’

  ‘Because it’s lucky, see? The horse chestnut is a lucky tree. Not like yew, which is for graveyards, and that. Now, come on. We’ll go back and dig him up. For luck. See?’

  ‘I still don’t see the point.’

  ‘The point is, Mickey, there’s a war on now. If you remember. So I thought we should plant something to last out. Something maybe to outlast us all.’

  But Mickey looked obdurate, and Rusty, knowing that look all too well, decided to leave her plan to another day.

  ‘With Norway, Hitler’s bitten off more than he can chew.’

  Meggie looked across at her grandmother with a sudden frown. ‘Do you think?’ she asked, absently. She had just received a letter from Judy Melton, marooned, poor soul, in Scotland with her mother and a gorgon of a housekeeper. ‘Madame Gran?’

  ‘Yes, darlin’?’

  ‘You know Lady Melton, don’t you?’