Octavia's War

by Beryl Kingston

  ‘But why?’ Octavia said, struggling to understand. ‘What is the matter with them?’

  ‘I think,’ Mrs Mannheim said, ‘it is because they need someone to hate, and we are there. They are angry. They have no jobs. They have been poor and unemployed for years. They do not count for anything. They have no self-esteem. Then they are told that we are a threat to them and so they lash out. We have become scapegoats.’

  Emmeline had been listening quietly. Now she joined in with a pertinent question. ‘You said it was difficult to get out of Germany,’ she said. ‘That’s right, isn’t it? Well, now that doesn’t make sense. At least it doesn’t to me. If they hate you so much, I would have thought they’d have been encouraging you to leave.’

  ‘Yes,’ Mrs Mannheim said, ‘you would think so, wouldn’t you? That would be the reasonable thing to do. But this is not a reasonable situation. This is a situation where prejudices and needs come into play. I think they need to have us there so that they can punish us.’

  That was an extraordinary idea. ‘Really?’

  ‘I wish it were not so,’ Mr Mannheim said, ‘but yes, really. I have watched their faces when they are kicking someone or painting the Star of David on a shop window or shouting their hatred at us as they pass and I have to say, they enjoy it. They are swollen with the pleasure of it. They look twice the size. It gives them a sense of power.’

  ‘That,’ Octavia said, remembering Holloway gaol, ‘is hideous.’ But she could believe it.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s not something I’ve ever seen,’ Emmeline told them, ‘so it’s hard for me to understand.’

  ‘It is for most people,’ Mrs Mannheim said.

  ‘And yet you understand it and talk about it calmly. I would be raging.’

  ‘It is my profession,’ Mrs Mannheim explained. ‘I am – was – a psychiatrist.’

  The idea kept Octavia awake for most of the night. Unlike Emmeline she had seen hatred in action. She’d seen it in Westminster when mounted police baton-charged a suffragette march and in Holloway gaol when she herself was held down and forcibly fed, so she knew how brutal and unreasonable it was. If the Germans were being encouraged to hate, they would be perfect cannon fodder. A belligerent army is just the place for men full of hatred. After all, if you’re allowed to hate one race, you can be persuaded to hate another. Jews today, French and British tomorrow. Unless the League of Nations can stop this man, she thought, there will be a war. I don’t see how we can avoid it.

  The Mannheims stayed at Parkside Avenue for nearly six weeks and they were excellent company, teaching Johnnie to play chess and talking politics to J-J and Octavia late into the night. But eventually Mr Mannheim came back from one of his sorties to the shipping offices to say that he had tickets for New York at last, ‘sailing on Thursday from Southampton.’

  ‘We shall miss you,’ Octavia said, as she saw them off at the gate. ‘You must write and tell us how you are getting on.’

  The promise was given, the goodbyes were said. ‘One day,’ Mr Mannheim told her, ‘we will meet in Berlin.’

  ‘I hope so,’ Octavia said, but she was thinking what a hard road they would all have to travel before that day could arrive.

  Chapter Three

  ‘You must tell her, Edie,’ Dora said. ‘You can’t go on wearing that great cardigan all the time and hoping no one’ll notice. You’re really showing now. It’s not fair. Think how she’ll feel if she finds out from someone else. Her own daughter not telling her. And Christmas coming and everything.’

  ‘It’s my baby, Dora,’ Edith said sullenly. ‘I’ll tell her when I’m ready. Just not now.’

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ Dora said, drinking her tea. ‘I would if it was me.’

  ‘But it’s not you, is it?’ her sister said. ‘It’s me, and it’s my baby.’

  Dora put down her tea cup, took a drag at her cigarette and looked at her sister levelly. ‘I’m beginning to think you don’t want the poor little thing,’ she said.

  ‘Well, I do,’ Edith told her stubbornly. And it was true. She hadn’t wanted it a bit, not at the start, but now that it was kicking she felt really sorry for it and was ashamed to have been so unkind. It must be the worst possible thing for a baby to come into the world and for its own mother to say she doesn’t want it. She was drawn with pity at the very idea.

  ‘Have bittick?’ Margaret said, looking at the biscuit tin. ‘Please, Mummy.’

  ‘One piece,’ Edith allowed, adding sternly, ‘I don’t want you spoiling your dinner.’ Now and then, as a great treat, she bought half a pound of broken biscuits and the girls loved them.

  ‘And me,’ Barbara said. ‘Please, Mummy.’

  ‘Since you’ve asked nicely,’ Edith said and watched while they made their choice. ‘Then I shall have to get on.’ There was a pile of ironing waiting on the ironing board and dinner to cook. ‘I will tell her Dottie. Only in my own time. I can’t rush it.’

  ‘Well, I’ve said my say,’ Dora sighed. ‘I can’t do more than that.’

  ‘It would be easier if the house wasn’t full of foreigners all the time,’ Edith said, putting the biggest iron on the trivet. ‘It’s not something you can tell your mother with a lot of foreigners all over the place.’

  ‘Take her out for a walk,’ Dora suggested.

  ‘Oh, come on, Dottie,’ Edith protested, ‘when does she have time to go out? She’s always working. Mind you don’t go near the iron, Margaret.’

  Emmeline had taken to her new job as hostess and carer easily and with enthusiasm. The Mannheims had taught her enough German to be able to welcome her guests, and to enquire if they needed another blanket or if they would like a second helping or another cup of coffee, and from then on and with Janet to help her, she’d been coping if not entirely happily then at least with the satisfaction of knowing she was doing something well worth while. Coffee had been a problem to start with because she really wasn’t very good at making it, but it was a problem solved when Mrs Mannheim offered to do it for her and actually found a delicatessen where they sold freshly ground coffee which made a lot of difference. From then on she simply handed the job over to someone else, surprised to see that even quite small children could manage it.

  ‘What you’re used to, I suppose,’ she said to Octavia. ‘It wouldn’t do for me but it takes all sorts. What are we going to do about Christmas?’

  ‘We shall invite them to join us,’ Octavia said. ‘We’ll give one another presents and we’ll buy a few little gifts for them and we’ll treat it as a holiday. They have a religious ceremony at Christmas time too. It’s called Chanukah. I’ve been looking it up. Perhaps we could combine them.’

  But as it turned out, there were no refugees to join them that Christmas. Mrs Hutchinson rang Octavia in the middle of December to tell her they were having great difficulty in getting anybody out at all. ‘It could be better in the New Year. We must hope so. I will keep you informed.’

  So it was a simple family holiday after all and a cheerful one. They spent most of their Christmas dinner happily castigating King Edward, although, as Emmeline said, ‘I suppose we can’t call him that now.’

  ‘He’s a fool whatever we’re going to call him,’ Dora said trenchantly, as she helped herself to more bread sauce. ‘Fancy giving up the throne of England for that ugly woman. She’s got a face like a flat iron.’

  ‘She’s no beauty, I’ll grant you that,’ J-J said, encouraging her. ‘But we can’t all be beautiful. She must have other charms.’

  ‘I can’t see what,’ Dora said. ‘She’s got no figure to speak of, she’s American, she’s plastered in make-up, she’s had two husbands. I mean, two husbands! What does that say about her?’

  ‘I think she’s a gold digger,’ Edith said. ‘She wanted to be Queen and wear ermine and jewels and drive about in the state coach. Good riddance to her, that’s what I say.’

  ‘I wonder what the new king will be like,’ Johnnie said, spearing a Brussels
sprout. ‘They say he’s a timid sort of bloke. Got a stutter apparently. Can’t get his words out.’

  ‘The Queen’s all right, though,’ Dora said, ‘as far as you can tell. At least she’s pretty.’

  ‘And they’ve got two pretty little girls,’ Octavia said. ‘Like you, Edie.’

  The pause that followed her remark went on just a little too long, so she looked up from her plate to reinforce her compliment with a smile – and then realised that Emmeline was giving her daughter the oddest look, that Dora was flashing an eye-warning to her, and that Edith was blushing. What have I said? she thought. It’s almost as if I’ve put my foot in it.

  ‘Not quite like you though, eh, Edie?’ Emmeline said, heavily. ‘If I’m any judge, you’ve gone one better.’

  ‘I was going to tell you, Ma,’ Edith said, looking shamefaced. ‘Only there were always so many people round. I mean, I never got you on my own. I mean, it’s not something you can say in front of a load of foreigners.’

  ‘When is it going to be?’ Emmeline said. ‘If we’re allowed to know.’

  ‘When’s what going to be?’ Johnnie asked. The conversation seemed to have taken a turn he couldn’t follow. He looked round the table at them all, his eyes questioning.

  ‘We’re expecting,’ Arthur told him, rescuing Edie. ‘Beginning of April.’

  ‘Good-oh!’ Johnnie said, and returned to his meal.

  His nonchalance made them all laugh and the tension broke into a chorus of congratulation led by J-J. ‘What good news, Edith, my dear!’

  ‘Yes, it is, isn’t it,’ Dora said, this time giving her mother a warning glance. ‘We’re all really happy for you, Edie. Aren’t we, Ma?’

  And John Erskine echoed her, ‘Good news, Edie. Really good news.’

  Margaret had begun to suspect that something was going on. ‘What is, Mummy?’ she said. ‘What’s good news?’

  ‘Nothing that you need to know about,’ Edith told her firmly. ‘I hope you’re going to eat that all up like a good girl.’

  The child scowled and appealed to her father. ‘What’s good news, Daddy?’

  ‘That we’ve got two pretty little girls,’ he said. ‘Like the new Queen.’

  That was a better answer. ‘Has she got two pretty little girls?’

  ‘Yes, she has,’ her father said, ‘but they’re not as pretty as mine.’

  It was such a splendidly affectionate and diplomatic answer that there were smiles all round the table, even from Emmeline, who was still feeling annoyed that she hadn’t been told before, and took care to have the last disapproving word. ‘I hope it doesn’t choose to arrive on All Fool’s Day, that’s all,’ she said.

  But the baby, who turned out to be another girl, to her father’s secret disappointment, was a creature of great good sense. Not only did she stay where she was until the foolish day was past, she arrived quickly and with very little fuss in the middle of the morning on Sunday the 5th of April, so that her sisters could tiptoe into the bedroom and see her as soon as she was born and her father could walk to the corner of the road and phone her grandmother with the good news.

  Emmeline put on her hat at once and took the tram to Colliers Wood. And fell in love at first sight. ‘Such a little duck,’ she said to Edith, sitting beside the bed and slipping her finger into the warm, curled fist of her new granddaughter. ‘Just look at those dear little dimpled hands. Couldn’t you just eat her? What are you going to call her?’

  ‘Joan,’ Edith said. ‘I think she looks like a Joan, don’t you?’

  ‘I think she looks like a little duck,’ Emmeline said, as the baby clutched her finger. It was the most loving and natural approval.

  Later that day, when Emmeline had come happily back to Parkside Avenue glowing with delight at her new grandchild and full of plans for the clothes she would make for it – ‘I shall get the wool first thing tomorrow morning. She’ll need a nice new matinee jacket. Edie’s kept her baby clothes very nicely but there’s no warmth in hand-me-downs’ – Octavia and her father sat by the fire in the study and told one another how relieved they were that everything had gone so well.

  ‘To be truthful, I thought she might take against it,’ Octavia admitted. ‘She was so touchy at Christmas.’

  ‘We live in troubled times,’ J-J said. ‘I think it is making us all touchy.’

  That was true enough, Octavia thought. Far too many people were quick to take offence these days and usually with very little cause. ‘It’s all this talk of war,’ she said. ‘We live under a shadow.’

  ‘I’m afraid we do, my dear,’ J-J said, and sighed. ‘We know what we’re in for this time, that’s the trouble. We know what’s coming and we can’t do anything to prevent it.’

  ‘If the League of Nations had taken action against Mussolini when he invaded Ethiopia, we wouldn’t be in such a mess now,’ Octavia said. She was seriously disappointed in that organisation. ‘They asked for help, specifically asked for it, and all they got was a lot of useless talk in Geneva and no action at all. We should have sent in an army to drive him out.’

  ‘Exactly so, my dear,’ J-J agreed, ‘but we didn’t have an army. Tommy is right. An international organisation needs an international army. Moral force is useless against a dictator, I’m sorry to say.’

  Octavia was sombre. ‘How long do you think we’ve got, Pa?’

  ‘There’s no way of knowing,’ her father admitted. ‘It depends on Herr Hitler and what he does next.’

  What he did next, on a peaceful April day while Edith and her two little girls were walking their old pram and their new baby up the long slope of Wimbledon Hill to visit their grandmother, was to order the German Air Force to bomb a small market town in northern Spain. A small market town called Guernica. He chose his moment brutally because it was a Monday so the market square was crowded with men, women and children.

  The attack was described in shocked and shocking detail in all the English newspapers the following morning. On their first bombing run, the planes dropped high explosives, on their second they set the shattered streets alight with incendiary bombs, and then, as if they hadn’t done enough damage, they flew low over the wreckage and machine-gunned the fleeing inhabitants. Eye witnesses spoke of the shock and terror of it, of injured people sitting by the roadside too dazed to speak. Soldiers were collecting charred bodies, one man wrote. They were sobbing like children. The smell of burning human flesh was nauseating. Houses were collapsing into the inferno. It was impossible to go down many of the streets because they were walls of flame.

  J-J was always the first person to read the paper in the morning, usually as he sat at the breakfast table while Em and Tavy were busy making the tea and cooking the breakfast. Then he would pass the paper on as soon as Johnnie had come yawning downstairs and they were all settled. But that morning he was so upset by what he read that he was very near tears and couldn’t trust himself to speak. He held the paper up so that they could all see the headlines and passed it to his daughter without a word. She read it quickly, frowning and troubled, and when she’d passed it on to Emmeline, she got up, lit a comforting cigarette and switched on the wireless.

  ‘It’s almost time for the news,’ she said. ‘They might know more.’ But she kept the volume turned right down so that her father wouldn’t be disturbed by the preceding programme. Light music is all very well, but it can be irritating when you’re distressed.

  Presently, the well modulated voice of the newsreader spoke into the quiet of the room, as Emmeline wept and her son smoked and read the newspaper grimly. The horrific details of the air raid were given calmly and without emotion in the time-honoured tradition of the BBC. Yesterday morning there had been an air raid on the Basque border town of Guernica. It had been carried out by squadrons of German planes, Heinkel 1-11’s and Junkers 52’s, with fighter support. The town was almost completely destroyed. There were many casualties. ‘This morning survivors are evacuating the town.’

  ‘I don’t underst
and it,’ Emmeline wept. ‘These are ordinary young men, that’s all, ordinary young men like our Johnnie, and they do a thing like this. It’s hideous. Dreadful. Don’t they have mothers and sisters? I mean what’s the matter with them? Why are they killing Spaniards? There’s no sense in it.’

  Octavia was remembering what Mrs Mannheim had told them. ‘They’ve been taught to hate,’ she said. ‘That’s what’s the matter with them. They’re not like Johnnie. They’ve been turned into fighting machines. They obey orders.’

  ‘Then they could attack anybody,’ Emmeline said.

  ‘Yes,’ Octavia told her sadly. ‘That’s what they’re for.’

  ‘They could attack us.’

  ‘Yes.’

  There was a long fraught silence. Outside in the garden the new grass was freshly green, the ancient apple trees grew tender with pink and white blossom, daffodils fluttered as disarmingly as butterflies in all the borders, the blackbird was singing his passionate yearning song. Spring was waking their world with the promise of new precious life and they sat in their comfortable kitchen, at their familiar table, facing the possibility of death and destruction. This house could be blown to pieces, Octavia thought, this warm, comfortable, peaceful house, where we’ve lived so happily and easily all these years. She could already see it as a pile of rubble.

  ‘What on earth would we do?’ Emmeline said.

  ‘The children are going to be evacuated,’ Octavia said, thinking aloud. ‘They’ve had plans drawn up for years, according to Tommy. He told me about it ages ago. Very well then, once I know where we’re going, I shall rent a house big enough for all of us and evacuate you too.’

  ‘And leave this house?’ Emmeline said.

  Octavia’s answer was brusque with the distress she was hiding. ‘If it’s likely to be bombed, yes, of course.’

  ‘It would be a load off my mind if I knew you were out of it,’ Johnnie said.