Octavia's War

by Beryl Kingston

  ‘Oh dear,’ Emmeline said. ‘You’re all talking as if it’s bound to come.’

  ‘It is bound to come, Ma,’ Johnnie said, brown eyes serious. ‘In fact…’ Then he paused and gave thought to what he was going to say. He knew it would hurt her but it would have to be said sooner or later and this seemed as good a moment as any. ‘The fact is…I was going to tell you this in a day or two anyway. The fact is, I’ve joined the RAF.’

  The silence that followed his announcement was complete and intense, all three of his relations watching him with total attention. Then Emmeline began to howl. ‘Oh, my dear, good God! Don’t even say such a thing, Johnnie. You can’t do it. You simply can’t. What were you thinking of? You’ll get killed.’ She picked up the paper and waved it at him. ‘You see what they’ve done. They kill people.’ She was weeping in earnest now, the tears streaming down her cheeks. ‘Tell him, Tavy. He can’t do it. Oh, I can’t bear it. Not with the baby and Arthur in the army and everything. Didn’t we have enough last time? Tell him, Uncle. Oh, please somebody, tell him.’

  Johnnie got up, walked round the table, sat beside her in Octavia’s empty chair and tried to hold her hands, but she shook him away, weeping terribly. ‘Don’t touch me!’

  He was very upset but he tried to be reasonable. ‘The bombers will come, Ma,’ he said. ‘There’s no doubt about that now. You must see that. They will come and we’ve got to be ready for them. I knew it would upset you but I had to do it. I couldn’t just sit by and leave it to other people.’

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ Emmeline wept. ‘Why does it have to be you?’

  ‘I’m going to learn to fly one of the new fighters,’ he told her patiently. ‘Look, I shall be called up eventually, Ma, we all will. You do know that, don’t you. You must. It’s been in all the papers. We’ll all get called up. We shan’t have any choice about it. So I thought if I’ve got to go anyway I might as well go now under my own terms. This way I can get to do the job I really want, instead of being drafted into something I might not like. It’s all right, really it is. I shan’t take risks.’

  ‘Oh, oh, oh,’ Emmeline wept. ‘I don’t want you to go at all. You’re my only son. Can’t you see that? The only one I’ve got left. I don’t want you to go at all.’

  He looked across the room at Octavia. ‘Aunt?’ he appealed.

  ‘I don’t want you to go either,’ she said. There was no criticism in her voice, only admiration. ‘None of us do, if we’re honest, but I can see that you must. I think you’ve done a very courageous thing. And so does your mother. It’s just a shock to her at the moment, isn’t it, Em?’

  But Emmeline was drowned in tears and couldn’t answer.

  ‘It’s the only thing I could do,’ he told Octavia. ‘I can hardly go on designing buildings when they’re going to be blown up. That would be nonsensical. Still, I’d better go and do it now or I shall be late and that won’t please Mr Carmichael.’

  Emmeline managed to stop crying long enough to kiss him goodbye, but when he was gone, she sat in her chair and cried most bitterly. ‘It’s just like the last time all over again,’ she wept. ‘Why can’t those stupid fools in Geneva do something to stop it? They must have seen it coming. That was supposed to be the war to end all wars. They kept on and on about it. The war to end all wars. And now look where we are. First Squirrel, and then my poor little boys, and now my Johnnie. And baby coming along so well too. And Arthur in the Territorials, and God knows what will happen to him either. I don’t think I can bear it.’

  ‘The trouble is nobody’s asking us whether we can bear it or not,’ Octavia said. ‘They’re just assuming we will.’

  Emmeline raised a tear-streaked face to her cousin. ‘I don’t think I can, Tavy.’

  ‘Whatever happens,’ Octavia promised, ‘we will bear it together. All of us. And now I must go to school or I shall be late and there’s a lot to do. We’ll put our minds to all this as soon as I get home. Ah now, here’s Janet come.’ What a relief to have that sensible girl to look after Pa and her poor Em. ‘More tea I think, Janet. We’ve just heard the news about Guernica.’

  ‘I’ll have it on the table in two shakes of a lamb’s tail,’ Janet promised, putting on her apron. ‘Doan’t you worry, Miss Smith.’

  The advice was unnecessary, for Miss Smith was not a woman to worry. She was a woman who took action. If there was a problem she would deal with it. By the time she got back to the house that afternoon, she knew what had to be done and set about doing it at once.

  First she wrote a careful letter to The Times. She described the attack on Guernica as cruel, callous and totally unjustified, and pointed out that the Spanish people were no threat to Germany, and that to allow a military power to bomb an open city and kill and maim its inhabitants was completely intolerable. ‘Something must be done to deter Herr Hitler,’ she said. ‘The man is a bully and needs to be stopped.’

  Then, since she was fairly sure that her letter and others like it would be ignored – how could it be otherwise when the League had no military power with which to respond? – she turned her attention to matters which were within her competence. She picked up the phone and asked for Tommy’s number.

  It was a relief to hear his sensible voice. ‘Tavy, my dear. What an unexpected pleasure.’

  ‘It might not be quite such a pleasure when you hear what I want,’ she warned him.

  ‘I presume this is about Guernica.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it is, although not directly. I need some information.’

  ‘Fire away,’ he said. ‘If I can give it to you, you shall have it.’

  Straight in, blunt and to the point. ‘Where is my school going to be evacuated to?’

  There was a pause while he gathered his thoughts. ‘That may take a bit of finding out,’ he told her. ‘It’s all very hush-hush at the moment.’

  ‘But they’ve made plans for it, haven’t they?’

  ‘And they want to keep them secret. It wouldn’t do for the Germans to get wind of them. We wouldn’t want them dive-bombing the trains.’

  ‘No,’ Octavia said, shuddering at the thought. ‘We would not. But I don’t need to know the details. It’s nothing like that. Just where we would be going. A hint would be enough. I’d keep it to myself.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he promised. ‘You’ll have to be patient though. I can’t rush it. How’s the family?’

  ‘Johnnie’s joined the RAF. He wants to fly a Spitfire. Em’s in a terrible state.’

  ‘That’s two of them then. Mark joined up last week.’

  Octavia could feel her heart sinking. ‘I thought he was going to Oxford.’

  ‘So did we. But apparently not. He says it’s something he’s got to do and Oxford will have to wait. Foolhardy, of course, but admirable.’

  ‘Like father like son,’ she said. ‘I can remember what you said when you joined up.’

  He laughed. ‘It’s more than I can.’

  ‘You said it was the done thing. It was expected of a chap.’ She could remember his voice saying it.

  ‘Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose,’ he said.

  ‘Heaven help us all,’ she said and meant it.

  Her letter was published in The Times the next morning and so were several others from some rather eminent people. But, just as she feared, nothing came of it. The League of Nations deplored the attack but went no further, the British Government discussed it but decided that nothing could be done, the newspapers continued to print letters about it for a day or two and then dropped it and after that, to her annoyance, everything went quiet and the horror seemed to be forgotten. The people of Guernica buried their dead, General Franco, encouraged by the unchecked power of his German ally, redoubled his attacks on the government army in northern Spain, convinced that his rebellion would soon be successful and that he would be the next European dictator, and the British press turned its transient attention to the coming coronation.

  ‘And what
good that will do to anyone,’ Octavia said, ‘I really can’t imagine. All this silly flummery. We should be concentrating on the things that matter.’

  ‘It won’t stop our young men joining the Forces,’ Emmeline said bitterly. ‘And that’s all I care about.’

  Johnnie got his expected letter two weeks later and passed it to his mother at the breakfast table. She took it better than Octavia had feared and only wept in private where none of them could see. Tommy and Elizabeth came to dinner with the news that Mark had already gone, and the two mothers commiserated with one another when they were all walking in the garden afterwards. Octavia was glad they had one another for comfort and company, and besides, it gave her the chance to ask Tommy if he’d found out what she wanted to know.

  ‘I have tried,’ he said. ‘But nothing yet, I’m afraid. I can’t push it or they’d smell a rat.’

  ‘I only need to know the name of the town,’ Octavia told him. ‘That’s all. Uprooting a Dalton school is going to take a lot of organisation. We need more space than most schools and better timetabling. We need to start planning it now.’

  He smiled at her urgency. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I know. I’ve seen Lizzie’s timetable. Couldn’t understand a word of it. Don’t worry, old thing. I’ll persevere. You’ll get your name in the end.’

  But it was very unsatisfactory and her face showed it.

  The summer progressed as though the world was still normal. The much vaunted coronation was held – despite her poor opinion of it – in May and exactly as planned only with a different king and queen, both archaically grand in state crowns and velvet cloaks. The two little princesses wore cloaks and crowns too, to Margaret’s intense interest, and although rain was threatening all day, it held off until after the ceremony which the papers said was ‘a good omen’.

  ‘Good omen my eye!’ Emmeline said when she read the newspaper accounts at breakfast the next morning. ‘Still, at least it’s over and done with. I was getting heartily sick of it. All that fuss. Now I suppose his silly brother will marry that awful woman of his.’

  ‘I don’t think it matters what he does now,’ Octavia said, buttering her toast, ‘providing he keeps quiet.’

  ‘No,’ Emmeline agreed, ‘you’re probably right. Personally, I shall take the children to Eastbourne, as soon as Johnnie goes. They could use a holiday and Arthur’s going to be away with the Territorials, so Edie says. You and Uncle can manage without me for a week or so, can’t you? You’ve got young Janet.’

  In fact she was away for a month and, during that time, Tommy and Elizabeth came to dinner again, Johnnie wrote to report that flying was an absolute joy and, down in Sussex, Barbara and David celebrated their sixth birthdays and wore paper hats and had a special party at the boarding house.

  According to Edith and Dora, who sent their aunt a daily postcard, all four children were enjoying the seaside very much and were being very good. ‘It might be the last holiday we get,’ Dora wrote, ‘so we’re making the most of it.’

  It might be the last holiday I get to organise this evacuation, Octavia thought, and I can’t even start. Oh, come on, Tommy. Buck your ideas up!

  But September came and the new term began and she was still waiting. And to make matters worse, Hitler seemed to be starting up again. At the end of the month, the papers were full of pictures of him at his annual Nuremburg rally, posturing and shouting on a stage backed by an enormous swastika, and all of them reported his boast that the Third Reich would last for a thousand years. Then, as if he hadn’t made his point abundantly clear, he appeared again, in the Olympic Field of May, dramatically spot-lit, with the hideous Mussolini pouting like a toad beside him and an audience estimated to be almost a million strong. Both men talked about their countries need for an empire. ‘Without colonies,’ Hitler said, ‘Germany’s space is too small to guarantee that our people can be fed safely and continuously.’ Germany needed Lebensraum and he was determined to give it to them. ‘The attitude of other Powers to our demands is simply incomprehensible.’

  Octavia wrote a postcard to Tommy that evening. ‘This war is rushing down upon us at a rate of knots,’ she said. ‘I need that information.’

  Four days later he rang her at school. ‘Tavy,’ he said, ‘I believe you were thinking of taking a holiday in one of our country towns.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘I could recommend a trip to Woking.’

  Chapter Four

  Octavia drove to Woking on the very next Saturday. It was a warm October morning and, once she’d cleared Kingston and was out in the country, the roads were bordered by shorn fields wreathed in smoke-blue mist and trees and hedgerows in a blaze of autumnal colour. It quite lifted her spirits to see them. Whatever this town was going to be like, she would do everything she could to make it a comfortable refuge for her girls.

  It turned out to be a small, rather sleepy place. It had a sizeable railway station (which is where we shall arrive) facing an imposing Victorian hotel called the Albion – (I’ll get something to eat there later on) – a small narrow High Street and a longer street called Chertsey Road which ran at a sharp angle from the square in front of the station and was full of shoppers. She parked the car in front of the hotel and set off to explore. Small shops, and lots of them. She noticed a MacFisheries, Boots the Chemist, Woolworths, Timothy Whites, Burtons, several good butchers (that’ll please Em), bakers, grocery stores, even a bookshop, library and stationers run by one WA Elton, where she stopped to buy a map of the town. It struck her as she walked along the pavement that this was a gentle sort of place and that the people she was passing lived at an even quieter pace than the one she was used to in Wimbledon. Groups of women stood on the pavement passing the time of day with their neighbours, errand boys cycled and whistled along the middle of the road, women pushed prams with their toddlers trailing behind them and there was hardly any traffic at all. She watched two cars driving by at a sedate pace and there was a horse and cart waiting patiently outside the fishmonger’s, but, except for a gang of small scruffy boys who were obviously on their way to the Saturday pictures, nobody was in a rush. Yes, she thought, we could enjoy life here.

  But where was the school? That was the important thing. I’ll go back to that hotel, she decided, and have a pot of tea and take a good look at my map.

  She was impressed by the Albion Hotel, which was spacious and comfortable, with Turkey carpets on the floor and armchairs to sit in while you drank your tea and a waitress in neat black and white to serve you. The map wasn’t anywhere near so helpful, for although various schools were marked on it, there was nothing to indicate what sort of schools they were. The waitress said she didn’t know, explaining, ‘I’ve only been here three weeks, ma’am,’ but suggested asking the barman. That worthy wiped the counter dry, gave it a final polish with his sleeve and then spread the map out to take a good look at it.

  ‘What sort of school were you after, ma’am? If I may make so bold.’

  ‘A grammar school.’

  ‘That would be a private school, I daresay?’

  It amused her to think that he saw her as a prospective parent. ‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s a county school I’m looking for.’ They’d hardly be likely to expect a small private school to share its premises with a large London county school.

  ‘Well, we’ve got two of those,’ he said. ‘A boys’ and a girls’. Which would it be, ma’am?’

  ‘The girls’ one.’

  ‘That’s in Park Road,’ he said, tracing the road on the map with a finger so broad that it totally obscured it. ‘It’s a fair old walk.’

  She smiled at his concern. ‘I’ve got a car.’

  ‘Ah, well then,’ he said. ‘Park Road, that’s what you want. Over the other side of the station. You can’t miss it.’

  What she missed wasn’t the road, but the school. She’d driven from one end of the road to the other, following it uphill and round several bends, admiring the new detached houses with their neat f
ront gardens and their large windows and their carriage drives, noticing what a lot of fine trees there were, passing a long holly hedge and thinking that there must be a particularly big house behind that, but she’d seen no school. He had said Park Road, hadn’t he? So it must be here somewhere. Sighing, she turned the car and drove slowly back the way she had come, looking carefully to the right and left. Then she saw what was behind the long holly hedge and realised her mistake. She’d been looking for a school building, thinking vaguely that it would probably be something like her own at Roehampton. What she’d found was a line of huts. There were five of them and they stood in considerable grounds, but they were just huts!

  Oh dear, she thought, staring at their inadequacy. There’ll never be room for all my lot in five huts, even if we have the whole place to ourselves, never mind if we have to share it. And she parked the car and went to take a closer look. She was peering in at the window of a science lab, feeling relieved that at least they had one of those, when someone walked up beside her. It was a man in his shirt sleeves, carrying a mop and a bucket. ‘Can I help you?’ he said.

  He thinks I’m trespassing, she thought, and assumed her headmistress’s voice at once. ‘Ah, good morning,’ she said. ‘Are you the school keeper?’

  He was and looked at his bucket to prove it.

  ‘Then you’re just the person I want to see,’ she told him briskly. ‘You would know how many pupils there are in this school.’

  ‘Three hundred and ten,’ he said promptly, ‘as of this September.’

  Two forms a year, she thought, calculating swiftly. It is small.

  ‘Were you thinking of sending a girl here?’ he said. ‘If I may make so bold as to ask.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said and added, ‘actually I was thinking of sending more than one,’ wondering what on earth he’d say if she told him it would be somewhere between four and five hundred.