A Question of Trust

by Penny Vincenzi

  ‘Oh, I’m sure that’s not true,’ she said, although she had heard this too and chosen to ignore it. ‘It’s probably just a myth. We can certainly agree that foxes are beastly animals. Oh, hello, Michael.’

  She accepted a small brandy from Michael as he joined them and sat back, hoping they would start talking about their student lives which always amused her. To her great disappointment, they returned to the subject of Europe and Hitler’s persecution of the Gypsies, and after a very short while she excused herself and went, greatly disappointed, to bed.

  Next morning it was pouring with rain, and Ned, Michael and her father read the papers for what seemed for ever, first over the breakfast table and then in the drawing room, and then launched into still further discussion until Caroline joined them for pre-lunch G and Ts, then it was lunchtime and a lot of excellent red wine was drunk, and then Michael and Ned drove off.

  Diana hoped most fervently that she would be able to meet Ned again. He might not have shown a great interest in her – or actually the slightest, if she was honest – but she felt instinctively that she could rectify that. And the weekend had served one very important purpose, confirming her view that Johnathan Gunning, for all his money and apparent suitability, was not remotely right for her.

  Chapter 4

  1938

  ‘You what?’ Jack’s voice was stern, defensive, not in the least the delighted welcoming reaction Tom had hoped for – even expected. God, he was hard to please. He’d thought his father would like the fact that he wanted to join him at the Labour Party meetings, events that were, for him, sacred affairs, akin to going to church; it seemed instead to be inspiring yet more resentment and hostility.

  ‘I do, Dad. I really would like to come. Do you have any objections?’

  ‘Well – no. I suppose not. As long as you’re coming in the right state of mind. I don’t want them to think you’re some would-be toff, looking to put them through their paces.’

  ‘Dad! I am not a would-be toff. I genuinely want to join the party – I’ve thought about it long and hard. I think it’s more important than ever, with the state the country’s in, war almost certainly on its way, and that idiot in charge. I mean, I don’t want war – who does – but it’s better than lying down and just taking whatever Hitler doles out, which is what Chamberlain seems to have brought us to. It scares me, I tell you.’

  Jack stared at his son; his expression was thoughtful. Then he smiled, his rare, rather grudging smile.

  ‘In that case come. It’ll be good to have your company.’

  It was a moment that Tom never forgot, marking not only the beginning of his lifelong commitment to the Labour Party, but almost more importantly, the sense that, at last, he had found a way to win his father’s approval.

  The meeting was at seven, in the Methodist church hall, Hilchester. They met early. ‘That’ll give you a chance to meet some of the members before start of business. Can’t promise you much excitement, just one of the councillors speaking, Alan Broadburn, but he’s very sound.’

  There were fewer there than Tom had expected, but they all knew Jack. They had clearly dressed for the occasion, as if for church, many of the suits as shiny as Tom’s own (he deliberately hadn’t worn his new, birthday-present one) and were for the most part middle-aged, the youngest being at least thirty. There were even, to his astonishment, a few women, mostly middle-aged too, but a couple of young ones, rather depressingly dressed, in drab too-long skirts, and shapeless cardigans over equally shapeless jumpers. Angela would not have admired their style, he thought.

  Jack introduced him to a few of the men. He clearly regarded the women as not worthy of his attention. They were all friendly; Jack had told him he wasn’t to make a great song and dance about what he did for a living, but a couple of them asked Tom and he wasn’t going to lie. They seemed impressed, and then to Tom’s absolute astonishment, Jack said, ‘Oh, he’s a bright lad, all right. Went to the grammar school, you know, did his Higher. Three Distinctions, wasn’t it, Tom?’

  It was the first time Tom could ever remember his father boasting about, or even admitting to, his academic success.

  ‘By heavens, you must be a clever one,’ said one of the men. He held out his hand to shake Tom’s. ‘Ted Moore. Very glad to welcome you, Tom. We need some young blood, especially of your calibre.’ He smiled at him. ‘I hope you’ll decide to join the party.’

  ‘I already have,’ said Tom.

  At seven, the committee took their places on the platform, and the minutes of the last meeting were read and signed. Then came Any Other Business, mostly such matters as whether the two failed street lights on the High Road had yet been given the attention of the council, and who should represent the branch at the forthcoming Remembrance Day parade.

  At eight o’clock, tea was served by the ladies, together with some very dried-up cheese sandwiches and extremely soggy biscuits. In the middle of this, Alan Broadburn, the evening’s speaker, arrived, flustered and red in the face. He had been held up at the town hall. ‘By the mayor. I did tell him of course that I had this meeting to attend, but he wanted my opinion on something rather important.’

  Tom wondered what the important matter was, but he guessed it was more likely to be about street lights or dustbins than any matter of national concern. He made a note that at the next meeting – not this one; Jack would be horrified at his drawing attention to himself so early – he would raise the matter of the possible need for public air-raid shelters. If it took months to get street lamps mended, how on earth would any shelters get dug before the war was a distant memory?

  The chairman, Councillor Roberts, clapped his hands and asked everyone to return to their seats as Councillor Broadburn would now give his talk on ‘Challenges in Education in Hilchester’ adding rather peremptorily, ‘And perhaps the ladies would clear the things away?’

  The ladies were clearly going to miss at least the beginning of the talk, which seemed very unfair to Tom. He half rose to offer help, but Jack tugged at his jacket and shook his head at him in disapproval.

  ‘Let them do it,’ he said, his voice low, looking anxiously about him lest anyone should have noticed. ‘That’s their job, they expect it.’

  Councillor Broadburn rose to his feet and cleared his throat, pulling out a sheaf of notes from his large, shabby briefcase. Tom was rather pleased by the subject, clearly an advance on street lighting, despite his concern about the ladies. Then, just as the talk began, the door burst open and a girl came in. She had clearly been running as she was out of breath, her face flushed. It was a very pretty face, Tom noted, crowned by brown curls, with big brown eyes and what one of Angela’s magazines would have described as a rosebud mouth. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘So sorry. I missed the bus.’

  ‘Councillor Broadburn is only just starting his talk,’ the chairman said. ‘The other ladies are washing up. Perhaps you could go and give them a hand before you sit down.’

  This was clearly designed as a reprimand, but the girl was not to be put in any place except a chair in front of Mr Broadburn.

  ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘I’ve come to hear the talk. It’s of great interest to me as I’m a teacher and I don’t want to miss any of it. I’m happy to wash up afterwards.’

  Her brown eyes met the chairman’s defiantly; he could hardly insist without causing a scene. The talk began.

  If Tom had expected to hear a debate on standards of education, or the relative merits of the state and private schools in Hilchester, he was to be disappointed; it was an elongated and very boring rant about the conditions in the schools: leaking roofs, constantly failing heating systems, cracked windows, and most important of all, a shortage of basic stationery, not just paper, but pens and pencils. ‘Shocking, it is, quite shocking. And of course it’s all down to lack of funds, and has this government helped? Of course they haven’t. The education budget is a disgrace. Totally insufficient, but why should they care, their children are all in the private schoo
l, no worn blackboards or leaking roofs at Eton, we can be sure of that …’

  There was a loud ‘hear, hear’.

  The late-arrival girl put her hand up.

  The chairman shook his head at her disapprovingly

  ‘Questions at the end, if you please, Miss – Miss –?’

  ‘Leonard,’ she said, ‘Laura Leonard.’ She seemed undeterred by the reprimand. ‘I just wanted to say—’

  ‘There will be plenty of time for questions at the end,’ said the chairman firmly.

  ‘Well, at least he has all the right ideas,’ said Laura Leonard, uncrushed, ‘and we must be thankful for that at least. But I simply wanted to add my experience to raise another matter, closer to the matter under discussion.’

  ‘Miss – er – Leonard, I did say “questions at the end”,’ said the chairman rather feebly but Councillor Broadburn invited Miss Leonard to make her point.

  ‘Well, one problem at my school, St Joseph’s Hilchester Primary, East Hilton, is that—’

  ‘Position there?’ said the chairman, determined not to allow her the floor uninterrupted.

  ‘Deputy Headmistress,’ she said with a look that could only be described as smug, ‘and my problem is lack of books. They’re in really bad condition some of them, pages missing, that sort of thing. And I have to say, it’s getting worse. The children mistreat the books—’

  ‘Mistreat them? I find that very shocking. That seems to me to smack of a lack of discipline, Miss – er –’

  ‘Leonard,’ said Laura Leonard, her eyes brilliant, clearly fired up for battle. ‘I do assure you, we do our very best with discipline, in every area of school life, but why should children treat carefully a book with half the pages falling out? I spend quite a lot of time glueing them back each evening. But is it so surprising the boys decide to make darts with them?’

  ‘I’d have thought,’ said the chairman, seizing revenge, ‘well-disciplined children would do nothing of the sort. Perhaps those in your care—’

  ‘With respect, sir,’ said Laura Leonard, ‘there are thirty-seven children in my class. I do my very best, we all do, but some children are undisciplined at home and therefore disruptive at school. Without doubling the staff at our disposal, it is virtually impossible to keep order all the time. Perhaps you would like to make a visit to St Joseph’s one day and see for yourself?’

  ‘I would obviously be delighted,’ said Roberts, ‘but I am a very busy man.’

  ‘Well, you will have to take my word for it then. And they have water fights, filling their water pistols from the buckets in the toilets, put there for catching the rain—’

  ‘Are they allowed to bring water pistols to school? Surely not!’

  ‘Of course they’re not. But they do. And short of searching them all every morning, pockets, lunch bags – which we don’t have time for – well, again I can only say, Mr Roberts, you should try stopping them.’

  ‘So what is your question?’

  ‘Not a question! Merely an observation. Adding to Councillor Broadburn’s own plea for bigger budgets. But I would propose that before the next election, we add that to our manifesto—’

  ‘Yes, well, we could consider that and then possibly vote on putting it forward,’ said Roberts. ‘Now—’

  ‘And there’s something else,’ said Laura. ‘Something different. But it’s all linked and might help if it could be addressed. It is that we are one school governor short and it’s extremely difficult to recruit them. I thought if I brought this to your attention, you might be able to help.’

  The committee looked at one another, spoke under their collective breath and then Councillor Roberts said, ‘Well, you’re right, it is difficult to find people willing to give the time and expertise. I consider it a position of utmost importance. More so with secondary schools, of course. Unfortunately, I am governor of a secondary school in Hilchester, so I can’t take another one on.’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Laura Leonard, and Tom could see her struggling to disguise her horror at the possibility that the councillor might join her team. ‘I – I wouldn’t dream of asking you. But there might be a – a person known to some of you gentlemen …’

  There was a silence; then Mr Roberts wound up his speech.

  ‘I would like to propose a vote of thanks to Councillor Broadburn for sparing his valuable time to give us a most thought-provoking talk.’

  Subdued applause followed; and then the chairman closed the meeting.

  Tom stood up, winding his scarf round his neck; he had no overcoat and it was getting very cold. He caught Laura Leonard’s eye and smiled at her; she smiled back, and they stood there, two bright, promising young people among the dingy middle age of the meeting.

  ‘Come along, lad,’ said Jack. ‘We’ve a bus to catch.’ Tom turned obediently, to be intercepted by Ted Moore.

  ‘You know what, young Tom,’ he said, ‘you might consider that governor’s position yourself. You’re young, of course, but you’ve got the education and the energy, I’d guess. We could go and ask the young woman. I liked her – mind of her own. What do you say?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Tom, embarrassed. ‘I’ve no idea what school governors do.’

  ‘As much or as little as they’re prepared to. It can’t be hard, I’ve done it myself. Bit of fundraising, support to the staff in various ways, that sort of thing. But the right person can bring a lot to a school. Come along, let’s have a word with her. Miss Leonard – a moment of your time, please?’

  And thus it was that Tom Knelston, aged only nineteen, became a governor of St Joseph’s Hilchester Primary, East Hilton, and, as a consequence, rather good friends with its feisty young deputy headmistress.

  Chapter 5

  1939

  The engagement is announced between the Hon. Johnathan Gunning, youngest son of Sir Hilary Gunning, of Guildford Park, Yorkshire, and Diana, only daughter of Sir Gerald and Lady Southcott, of the Manor House, West Hilton, Hampshire.

  So she’d done it. Well, it wasn’t surprising, Ned supposed. She had clearly been compelled to get her life sorted, or as near as was possible in this bloody awful world they were in at the moment. Everyone was doing that to an extent, rushing into all sorts of arrangements and liaisons. Hers was an entirely personal need, of course, nothing to do with the impending war.

  He did feel a certain responsibility, though; he had to a degree, albeit hopefully a small one, driven her to it. He was sure she didn’t love the bloke, just needed a ring on her finger. If he’d responded to her more enthusiastically that night at the Savoy, both guests at a dinner dance, given by a friend of her brothers … but he hadn’t. He’d rejected a pretty blatant overture, with as much charm as he could manage. It wasn’t charm she’d wanted, it was sex, and with him, Ned Welles, not Johnathan Gunning. She’d been very drunk, worked every trick in the book on him, teasing, flirting, tempting, her lovely body pressed against him as she pulled him onto the dance floor, her mouth briefly on his, her eyes naked and hungry. She’d been so angry, clearly felt completely humiliated when he took her back to the table, thanked her, bowed slightly and asked to be excused. She wasn’t used to rejection, beautiful as she was, amusing and self-assured. And sexy, so sexy.

  Anyway, Gunning had been there too, and she’d gone straight into his more than welcoming arms; he’d never seen any girl working on a man with such determination. It was a lesson in, well, women, he supposed. The expression in her eyes as she looked over her shoulder at him and waltzed off with Johnathan was of absolute triumph. I don’t want you, that look said, never did, I was just fooling around. That had been mid-December, this was mid-February. He’d put money on the wedding being pretty soon, almost certainly this summer.

  Well, he really couldn’t worry about it any more. She was nineteen, not a child, and Diana Southcott was most assuredly not his responsibility. He had more immediate concerns. He was having dinner with his father at the Reform and he knew exactly why the invitation ha
d been issued. Sir James was not convinced Ned was working hard enough; he wanted to check on that and also make sure that surgery would be his ultimate discipline. He was haunted by the notion that Ned would choose ENT or, God forbid, obstetrics. The first and only time Ned had voiced his interest in that, a casual listener might have thought a career in organised crime had just been mooted.

  Well, he could tell his father he was set on surgery and had rather gone off the obstetric notion, though specialising in paediatrics seemed interesting. He wondered what the reaction might be to that. He could do with a good dinner; he’d blown his allowance for the month in two weeks, mostly on drink. It helped, pushed the nightmare away a bit.

  Crossing London by bus, in the direction of Pall Mall, he looked out at the trenches dug in the great parks, offering shelter for people caught in any possible air raids; he couldn’t see they would be of enormous help, but at least they were there. Otherwise London seemed determined to ignore any imminent danger.

  Most people held the view that war simply couldn’t happen again, that no politician would be foolish enough to allow it, after the horrifying lessons of a mere twenty years earlier.

  Ned could still hear his father’s voice raging about the iniquity of what had come to be known as the Munich crisis the previous September. ‘Bloody disgraceful load of pacifists in charge of the country! They should all be strung up, Chamberlain first, allowing Germany to annex whatever it likes. Why can’t they get out there and face the bastards down?’

  There had been a few pockets of action immediately after Munich; huge barrage balloons appeared over London to protect it from German bombers, but swiftly disappeared again, deemed more trouble than they were worth. One had been caught in electric cables, five immediately broke adrift. There were calls from Herbert Morrison, leader of the London County Council, for volunteers to the Auxiliary Fire Service, but only a handful of people had turned up: in response to the assumption that three thousand firefighting appliances would be required, it transpired that to date only ninety-nine were available. And when the Canon of Westminster decided he should set an example by attending lectures on a first-aid course, the better to care for the thousands of casualties that would clearly result after a German attack, the initial talk was on the treatment of snake bites.