Octavia's War

by Beryl Kingston

  She was in bed, of course, and she wasn’t going to get up for hours. She and Ben had promised one another right at the start that they would do whatever they wanted to, whenever they wanted to, and, as their landlady rather liked the idea of having a tankie and his wife honeymooning under her roof, they’d been given plenty of latitude. For, as the permissive lady explained to her neighbour, ‘He’s off to that dreadful desert in a week or two and he could be killed, poor boy. We owe it to them really, don’t we?’

  The weather was kind to them that first week, with plenty of sun to warm them as they strolled beside the sea or walked on the Grand Pier, and balmy evenings to enjoy on their way to the pictures or the local dancehall.

  ‘I wish this could go on forever,’ Ben said as they strolled back to the boarding house through the salty darkness on their last precious evening. ‘Ten days is too little. They should have given us a month.’ Now that the moment of parting was so close he was torn by the anguish of it.

  ‘Next time,’ she said, trying to comfort him.

  He was sinking under the weight of an impossible sadness. ‘If there is a next time.’

  She put her hand over his mouth. ‘Don’t say such a thing,’ she said fiercely. ‘Don’t even think it. There will be a next time. And we will get married. I promise you.’

  He put his arms round her and held her so tightly she could barely breathe. ‘Darling, darling Lizzie,’ he said. ‘I love you so much. I’d go AWOL if you asked me to.’

  ‘I don’t ask you to.’

  ‘I would.’

  ‘I know,’ she said, and offered the best comfort she knew. ‘Don’t let’s stand out here. Let’s get back and go to bed.’

  It was three weeks before Tommy rang Octavia again and then it was to apologise ‘for losing his rag’ and to offer to take her to the West End. ‘Might be the last chance we get for a while,’ he said. ‘I’m off to Washington again.’

  Octavia was quite glad to hear it. Lizzie had come back from her ‘holiday’ looking drawn beyond her years and had spent the next week either doggedly sitting examinations or hidden away in her room, supposedly revising. It was Octavia’s custom to be there as the candidates went in, to wish them luck and see that they were all right, and the sight of Lizzie’s pale face made her ache with pity. It must be peculiarly difficult to have to say goodbye to your lover and watch him go off to war and then come back to school and sit examinations. In one way at least, Tommy’s trip to Washington was opportune. It would give his daughter a chance to recover her spirits a little before she had to face him again.

  But the trip to the West End was a temptation, besides being a chance to kiss and make up, so she took it and used it. She was beginning to understand that there was a pattern to his outbursts – first fury in which he said all sorts of silly things, then a long silence, then repentance and apology and finally a treat of some kind – and although it seemed pretty childish, at least she understood it. And his repentant tenderness almost made up for it.

  They went to see the latest Hollywood musical which was showing in Leicester Square. It was called Me and my Girl and was an anodyne confection starring Judy Garland. It was pleasant enough although not exactly thought-provoking. Afterwards he took her to dinner and made a great fuss of her.

  ‘Sorry about all that earlier on,’ he said, when the meal had been served. ‘You know, with Lizzie and the holiday.’

  She was stern with him. ‘So you should be.’

  ‘I’ve always been a bit obsessive when it comes to Lizzie,’ he confessed. ‘Silly I know, but I can’t help it. I want the best for her, that’s the trouble. Always have. Elizabeth was forever on at me about it.’

  There was so much that ought to have been said but Octavia forbore. It wasn’t the right moment. Not yet. She felt sure a better one would present itself, sooner or later, and there was no point in quarrelling with him needlessly. So they enjoyed their meal and spent a loving night together and the next day he took flight to Washington, quite his old cheerful self, promising to bring her back ‘some goodies from the land of plenty’. Which, she thought, will at least please Em.

  * * *

  Emmeline had had a difficult few weeks. She’d travelled to Tonbridge Wells every other day and grieved because Johnnie never seemed to be getting any better.

  ‘He’s as bad now as when we first saw him,’ she confided to Octavia. ‘He’s marginally better when that nice nurse is with him – the one he calls Gwyneth – but his hands are in a terrible state and now they say they’re going to operate on him, which seems dreadful to me. I mean what can they do, when his fingers are all curled up like claws?’

  Octavia didn’t know what to say to cheer her, especially as she tossed every scrap of offered comfort aside as if it made her angry. Eventually all she could find to say was ‘Well, we shall see, won’t we?’ and that seemed pretty fatuous.

  ‘This damned awful war!’ Emmeline growled. ‘How’s Lizzie’s young man? Is he there yet?’

  He was there, and he’d written home, once to his aunt and uncle and three times to Lizzie, telling her what a foul place the desert was, like an oven and when the wind blows the sand gets everywhere, in your food and your hair and up your nose, everywhere. In the second letter he told her how depressing it was to hear the old hands saying they hadn’t got a cat in hell’s chance of beating the Germans. In the third he reported that everything had come to a halt at a place called El Alamein. It’s a difficult terrain to fight in. You can’t go north because you’ d be in the Mediterranean and you can’t go south because there’s a line of cliffs there and a huge depression called Qattara, which is actually a salt marsh and not the right place for tanks, and there are minefields everywhere. Although I don’t know why I’m writing all this because I bet it’ ll be blue-pencilled.

  She wrote back to him after every letter, telling him how much she loved him and how much she missed him and urging him to look after himself. She didn’t say anything about the examination or about her life in school. It didn’t seem appropriate somehow, not when they were as good as married.

  The summer term ambled away. Her father came back from the States and took her out to tea, but seemed a bit put out because she didn’t have much of an appetite. Ben wrote a letter every week although, as he reported, There’s not much to say. Jerry’s keeping quiet for the moment. The sand is sand. Smithie took her final assembly and most of her senior pupils either went out to work or back to London for the summer. By the middle of August, Lizzie and Polly were the only two prefects left in the building. They entertained themselves with organising picnics and going to the pictures and telling stories to the juniors. And then there was a sudden flurry of news. Churchill had decided to replace General Auchinleck with another general called Alexander, and another one called Montgomery had been given command of the ‘forces in the field’. Within a week Ben was writing to tell her what an extraordinary man he was.

  He’s not much to look at, he said, bit on the short side, funny-looking face, big hooter, not exactly what you’ d call prepossessing, and he’s got the most peculiar voice, sort of high-pitched and nasal, but I tell you, he came down here and stood on a tank and talked to us and you could have heard a pin drop. I’ve never heard anybody in the army talk to us like that. He says we’re the best army the world has ever seen and the most highly trained and we’re going to hit the Germans for six. He says there’s no doubt about it. Rommel’s had a good run for his money, he says, but all that’s going to stop. Our campaign is going to be planned to the last detail, we’ve got powerful new tanks coming, we’re going to train and prepare until we’re in tip-top condition, and there’ ll be no stopping us. What do you think of that?

  It sounded extraordinary to Lizzie and not particularly likely. After all, the Germans had been having everything their own way ever since the war began so one speech was hardly going to turn it all round. Was it?

  Poppy was of the same opinion. ‘I mean, anyone can say things,’
she said. ‘It doesn’t necessarily mean they can do them.’ Nevertheless, she sat in the window seat holding the letter reverently, like something special and from another world. It thrilled her to be on the edge of Lizzie’s love affair and to think that Ben was a fighter. ‘I wonder what will happen next.’

  What happened next was that Rommel’s army attacked, and for the first time in the campaign they couldn’t press their attack home. After five days of heavy fighting they were forced to retreat and, eventually and ignominiously, ended up back in exactly the same position they’d come from. The British newspapers were cock-a-hoop and called it a splendid victory, and even Ben, who knew the territory better than the news editors, said it was a good show, although he admitted that they’d taken a lot of casualties, but don’t worry. I’ve come through without a scratch. Monty’s right. Next time we’ ll push them out of Africa altogether.

  Lizzie couldn’t show this letter to Poppy because as well as reporting the battle it spoke too movingly of remembered and private delights. But she read out the bits about the battle and Poppy said he was very brave, which was perfectly true. Then, since the new term was about to begin and they couldn’t stay in Downview, they put their minds to what they were going to do until they went up in October.

  Poppy was all for taking a temporary job as a land girl. ‘It’ll be jolly hard work,’ she said, ‘but it’s a healthy sort of life and the pay’s not bad and it’s only for six weeks.’

  ‘I’ll phone Pa,’ Lizzie said. ‘See what he thinks.’ She’d barely seen him since the wedding, except for when he took her out to tea, but this sort of request was possible and might be a sort of olive branch. Not that he deserved one but she couldn’t stay angry with him for ever.

  She was right about it being an olive branch and pleased by how happily her father accepted it. ‘Jolly good idea,’ he said and asked if she needed funds, ‘for travel and so forth.’

  ‘She’s coming to her senses, you see,’ he said to Octavia when he saw her that Saturday. ‘She’s got over all that silly nonsense with the soldier. I knew she would, only you wouldn’t have it. Bit of firm handling. That’s all she needed. It’ll do her the world of good to be working in the open air. Put some colour in her cheeks. Just what she needs before she gets on with her studies.’

  So Lizzie and Poppy said goodbye to Smithie and their nice Miss Henry, promised to write to them and let them know how they were getting on, and went to work on a farm in Cambridgeshire where they picked potatoes and fed chickens and learnt to plough and milk cows, and Octavia welcomed her new first-formers and gave sashes and gowns to her new prefects, and Edie sewed more parachutes than ever, and Tommy took it easy, for the first time in years, and Ben and his fellow tankies prepared themselves for the decisive battle that Monty had promised.

  It began on the night of the 23rd of October, while Lizzie was asleep in her elegant room at St Hilda’s and Tommy was at his club and Octavia was writing up her journal in her quiet bedroom, and it opened with a massive bombardment. It was put up by a thousand heavy guns and the noise of it was so deafening that Ben wrote afterwards that it was a wonder it didn’t split their eardrums. But it had the desired effect. By the early hours the New Zealand Division were in action clearing a gap through the minefields in front of the German forward position and they were followed by the armoured divisions. For the next two days what Montgomery called ‘a crumbling process’ went on slowly and inexorably as pockets of resistance were tackled and ‘mopped up’. Then on November 2nd the New Zealanders broke through the enemy lines followed by the 7th Armoured Division and the Germans began to retreat. From that moment on the battle became a rout. It was, as Monty had promised, a decisive victory.

  Back home, the headlines yelled ‘Success’ and ‘Victory’ and parliament gave permission for church bells to be rung in celebration. It was the first time they’d been heard since war was declared and the sound of them was heart lifting. ‘Now,’ people said, listening to them as they sang across winter fields and peaceful villages and bomb-battered towns, ‘we’re on the way to winning, at last.’

  But it was Churchill who put the situation into words in a speech to the House of Commons. True to character, he was careful to sound a note of caution but the triumph of his tone was unmistakable. ‘It is not the end,’ he said in his fruity voice. ‘It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is perhaps the end of the beginning.’

  On the day that the speech was reported in the papers, Tommy rang Octavia in one of his happiest moods.

  ‘End of the beginning, you see,’ he said. ‘Monty’s done a great job. Now we’re on our way. We’ve just been having a party.’

  She laughed at that. ‘It sounds like it.’

  ‘I’d rather have a wedding though,’ he said. ‘Just the time for it, don’t you think? Great victory, celebrations, end of the beginning, that sort of thing.’

  She’d been buoyed up by the good news ever since it broke, feeling relieved and excited, and now his bubbling happiness was so infectious, it tipped her into a decision. He was right. It was the time for it. ‘We shall have to consult our diaries,’ she said.

  He cheered. ‘Dearest girl,’ he said. ‘I’ll bring mine with me on Saturday.’

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Like everyone else in the burns unit, Johnnie Thompson was pleased by the news from El Alamein too, although privately he was even more pleased by the fact that after two painful operations his hands were so much improved. They were still scarred, of course, and more clawed than they should have been. That was something he would have to live with. But they were serviceable. They would hold a knife and fork or a cup. They would even do up the buttons on his tunic and that was a real achievement.

  He was practising his new trick at that moment, sitting in a chair alongside his bed and feeling rather pleased with himself.

  ‘Look at you!’ Nurse Jones said, as she walked up the ward.

  Not for the first time, Johnnie thought what a very nice voice she had. It was so warm and encouraging and it had that nice lilt to it. ‘Good or what?’ he said beaming at her.

  ‘First rate,’ she said. ‘I’ve come to change your dressings but don’t stop. Finish what you’re doing.’

  ‘Will I get marks out of ten?’ he asked.

  She smiled at that because it was a long-standing joke between them that she gave him marks for what he endured. ‘I’ve brought your paper for you,’ she said, ‘and you’ve got a letter. Which do you want first?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘That’s the trouble with you lot,’ she said, putting the newspaper and the letter on his locker. ‘You’re such greedy-guts. I never knew such a bunch. Right then. Are you ready for the torture?’

  And that was another thing, he thought, as he eased back onto the bed. She was always gentle. She never hurt him if she could possibly avoid it. He picked up the paper and began to read it as she started work on his remaining foot, lowering it into its bath of salt water. ‘Ten out of ten,’ she said. ‘That’s coming along lovely. Mr Ferguson’s visiting presently. He will be pleased.’

  Her praise was pleasant but he was too caught up in the news to notice it. ‘Look at this, Gwyneth,’ he said. ‘The Yanks are in the war at last.’ And he read the headlines to her. ‘Anglo-American force lands in North Africa.’

  ‘About time too,’ she said, turning his foot to one side.

  Johnnie went on reading aloud. ‘The greatest armada of ships and aircraft ever assembled for a single operation today landed American troops in Vichy-French North Africa. As Rangers, Marines and infantry landed from the sea, paratroopers dropped on key airports in Morocco and Algeria. They had taken all their objectives by nightfall. They’re going to encircle the buggers. Pardon my French, Gwyneth.’

  ‘Never mind pardon your French,’ Gwyneth told him. ‘Hold your foot still or you won’t get ten out of ten. It’s more like seven at the moment.’

  Johnnie picked up his letter and opened it. ‘Sor
ry about that,’ he said and settled down to read quietly. It lasted all of five seconds and then he was chortling again. ‘Will you look at this,’ he said, waving the letter. ‘This is my Wing Co. He’s found me a job.’

  ‘Well good for him,’ Gwyneth said. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Tutor pilot, teaching the trainees. He says I’m just the sort of chap they’re looking for. Plenty of flying hours, Spitfire pilot, that sort of thing.’ Outside the window the sky was crumpled and colourless, like old sheets, but in this little corner of the ward the air was suddenly rosy with hope.

  ‘Will you go for it?’ she asked.

  He tried to be sensible although his heart was racing with excitement. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I think I might. I’ll have to get my tin leg fitted first but when I’m up and running…’

  ‘Good things happen in threes,’ she said, gentling his foot back into the bath. ‘I wonder what the third will be.’

  It came later that morning when Mr Ferguson did his rounds and examined Johnnie’s stump. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I think you’re ready to have your prosthesis fitted. I will make the arrangements. I hear you’ve had the offer of a job.’

  ‘Not exactly an offer, sir. I can apply for it.’

  ‘Then I trust you will. We shall have you up and walking in no time at all now. If I were you I would put in the application today. Strike while the iron’s hot.’ There was nothing like the thought of being back in harness to keep up his patients’ morale. ‘Well done.’

  Johnnie saluted him. Nothing less than a salute would do.

  Emmeline was none too pleased to be told that he was going to be moved. ‘It’s miles out of the way,’ she complained to Edith, ‘as if Tonbridge wasn’t bad enough, and he’s not allowed visitors. I told you, didn’t I? What sort of a hospital is that?’