Octavia's War

by Beryl Kingston

  ‘That,’ Octavia said, ‘would be a consummation devoutly to be wished.’

  ‘Then it will please you to know that it is something we are presently considering,’ the chairman said. ‘There are concomitant problems, of course. Such an expansion would need a comparable expansion of the teaching force.’ He smiled at her, almost conspiratorially. ‘I don’t suppose you have any ideas about how that might be brought about?’

  Octavia hadn’t expected to be asked her opinion on how to increase the number of teachers but she was on such good form that afternoon that the question didn’t throw her in the least. ‘We have just been talking about the waste of talent in our present system,’ she said. ‘There must be thousands of young men and women in the forces who have had to learn to do all sorts of things they never dreamt were possible when they were restricted to what they were taught at elementary school. If they could be trained as teachers after the war, we would have plenty of skills at our disposal and, being ex-servicemen and women, they would bring considerable experience into the workforce too. I take it requiring women teachers to resign when they get married is now well and truly over?’

  ‘Oh, I think we’ve moved on from there,’ Miss Ellis said. ‘We’re not in the dark ages now.’

  ‘Married women teachers, ex-servicemen,’ the chairman teased. ‘What is the world coming to?’

  Sitting there in that warmly panelled room, watching the intelligent faces ranged around her, Octavia felt so confident and optimistic that she could answer any question he threw at her, even a teasing one. ‘Its senses,’ she said.

  ‘Well?’ Emmeline asked, when Octavia finally arrived home. ‘How did it go?’ She was simmering with excitement, her hair tousled and her eyes bright.

  ‘I think I told them what they wanted to know,’ Octavia said. ‘And I gave them a surprise or two to keep them on their toes.’ She was still feeling inordinately pleased with herself. It had been a good afternoon.

  ‘Glad to hear it,’ Emmeline said. ‘Now I’ve got some news for you. Johnnie’s getting married.’

  So that was what the excitement was about. ‘To his nice nurse, of course.’

  ‘Isn’t it splendid,’ Emmeline said. ‘He’s got to go to Canada though, that’s the only trouble.’

  Octavia sank into her easy chair feeling confused. ‘To get married?’ she asked. ‘I thought you said she was Welsh.’

  ‘No, no, not to get married,’ Emmeline said happily. ‘She is Welsh. The wedding’s in Glamorgan at some place I can’t pronounce. No, no, he’s got to go to Canada to work. They’ve taken him back in the RAF – and so I should think after all he’s been through, poor boy – and now he’s going to be a tutor and teach the conscripts how to fly. Only he’s got to do it in Canada, if you ever heard of anything so silly. Why they couldn’t send him somewhere near in England I can’t imagine. They’ve got enough bases. Anyway there it is, they’re going to Canada and they want to get married before they go.’

  ‘The trouble with you, Em,’ Octavia said, laughing, ‘is that you want the whole war to be organised to suit you.’

  ‘Not the whole war,’ Emmeline said. ‘You do exaggerate. Just my little bit of it. Anyway, Johnnie’s getting married. That’s the main thing. Actually getting married. I never thought I’d live to see the day, he’s been so slow. Well you know how slow he’s been. I’d almost given up on him. Thirty-eight and not married! I mean to say! And that’s another thing. What on earth am I going to wear?’

  It was a very pretty wedding in a very pretty church in a village called Eglwys Brewis. The choir sang lustily, Gwyneth’s family seemed absolutely enormous but they were all very welcoming and plainly very fond of their girl. And Johnnie gave a touching speech.

  ‘I know I should be thanking you all for coming,’ he said, ‘and I do thank you, all of you, naturally, but what I really want to do is to thank my new mother and father-in-law for this dearest girl, your Gwyneth and my wife. I don’t think she’ll mind if I tell you something rather personal. She was the first person I saw when I came round after I was shot down and I truly believe that seeing her saved my life. I’d damn nearly given up the ghost, you see, and there she was, saying, “Come on, Flight Lieutenant, open your eyes. I’m not going to let you die on me.” So I had to do as I was told and get on with it. Didn’t have much option did I, Gwyneth?’ He paused while they smiled at one another and his audience waited. ‘But seriously,’ he said, looking back at them all, ‘I might pull her leg about it but I shall remember it to my dying day. So what I want to say to you is this. I promise you I will look after her and treasure her and love her for the rest of my life. Thank you.’

  Every woman at the reception said ‘Aah!’ and most of them cried, Emmeline and Edith copiously. Even level-headed Dora was swimmy-eyed.

  ‘That was a really lovely wedding,’ she said as they headed off to catch the bus that would take them to the station and the long journey home. ‘They’re so happy together. It was a joy to see them.’

  It upset her when her mother burst into tears all over again. ‘Damned Canada,’ she wept. ‘They didn’t have to send him there. I shall never see him again Dotty. I can feel it in my bones. I shall be pushing up the daisies before they let him home. Pushing up the daisies. It’s all too dreadful. I can’t bear it.’

  ‘He’ll be back before you know he’s gone,’ Dora tried to comfort. ‘You’ll see. Once we get on with the Second Front.’

  ‘Once,’ Emmeline wept. ‘It’s never once though is it? It’s over and over again, killing all the young men, over and over again. Telling us it’s the war to end all wars. And what’s this war supposed to be? Tell me that. I can’t bear it.’ And she put her head in her hands and sobbed quite terribly.

  By that time the people on the bus were looking at her, some awkwardly, some with sympathy, all three children were anxious, and Joan was clinging to her mother’s arm. Dora and Edith felt most uncomfortable.

  ‘Em dear,’ Octavia said quietly, putting a clean handkerchief into her cousin’s damp hand. ‘Try not to cry. You’ll make yourself ill.’

  Dora was firmer. ‘Don’t keep on, Ma,’ she whispered. ‘People are looking at you.’ But she got no response at all.

  Edith tried to be positive. ‘Cheer up, Ma,’ she said. ‘He’s only got married. That’s all. It’s not the end of the world. You’re upsetting the girls, look. You don’t want that, do you?’

  But Emmeline went on crying. There didn’t seem to be anything any of them could say to stop her and in the end they simply left her to it and talked to the children, partly to reassure them, poor little things, and partly to cover the noise she was making. She cried all the way to the station and was still sniffing as they walked onto the platform.

  ‘I hope she’s not going to do this all the way to London,’ Dora whispered to Octavia. ‘I’m beginning to think there’s something the matter with her. I mean it’s not like her to go on and on like this, now is it.’

  They eased her onto the train as if she was an invalid and sat her in the corner by the window, where she stared out at the gathering darkness and didn’t say anything. None of them could understand why she’d cried so much and for so little. They were used to her tears but there had always been a good reason for them up to now and she usually recovered much quicker than she was doing that evening. It was very upsetting, especially after such a lovely wedding.

  She was silent all the way into London and all the way out again to Woking and, when Octavia had finally driven them home from the station, she went straight upstairs to bed without saying a word. And that was peculiar.

  ‘Do you think she’s ill?’ Edith said, when she’d put the girls to bed and come down to join her aunt in the drawing room.

  ‘I’ve never heard of an illness that started with a crying fit,’ Octavia told her, ‘but I suppose it’s possible. Let’s hope not. Perhaps she’s just overwrought. She’s had a lot to cope with, what with one thing and another. We’ll see how she is
in the morning and if she’s no better we’ll call the doctor.’

  The next morning they all overslept, which didn’t matter because it was a Sunday, and Emmeline stayed in bed later than any of them. It was midday before she came downstairs, looking very pale but not weeping, which was a great relief to Edith. ‘I’ll just get on with the potatoes,’ she said, opening the larder.

  ‘We’ll do it for you if you like,’ Edith said. ‘Won’t we, Aunt. Give you a bit of a rest.’

  But Emmeline filled the colander with potatoes and settled at the kitchen table to peel them, her face set. ‘I’ll get the joint on presently,’ she said.

  So they left her to it. Edith made a rice pudding and washed up the breakfast things and Octavia cycled over to Downview to see how her pupils were. When she got back Emmeline was setting the table, working doggedly and not saying anything.

  ‘She’s been as quiet as a mouse since you left,’ Edith reported, when Octavia joined her in the kitchen. ‘Not saying much and not smiling. It’s very odd. I mean she hasn’t said sorry or anything. Not that I think she ought to, I mean. But it’s not like her not to say anything and she always says sorry after she’s been crying. D’you think we ought to get the doctor?’

  ‘Has she been crying again?’ Octavia asked.

  ‘No,’ Edith said. ‘Just quiet and not saying anything.’

  ‘We’ll leave it a day or two and see,’ Octavia decided. ‘There’s no point in dragging him out if she’s just tired.’ Doctors worked long enough hours without being called out unnecessarily.

  So they waited and although Emmeline didn’t seem to be getting any better and was still far too quiet and unsmiling, at least she was listening to the children when they came home from school and cooking the meals in her usual way.

  ‘Nerves,’ Dora said, when she rang for the second time to see how she was. ‘I thought that at the time. Women do get nerves, especially at her time of life.’

  ‘She’s fifty-nine, Dotty,’ Edith protested. ‘She’s long past that.’

  ‘Nerves,’ Dora said firmly. ‘You mark my words.’

  ‘I think it’s the change of life,’ Poppy Turner said. ‘Women go ever so peculiar at the change. You should see my mum.’

  She and Lizzie were in the British Restaurant in Oxford, eating meat pie, dehydrated mashed potatoes and overcooked cabbage, and setting the world to rights. The person whose behaviour they were analysing at that moment was the cook at Poppy’s hall of residence, who had taken to muttering to herself and throwing saucepan lids about.

  ‘I don’t think my mother ever reached the change of life,’ Lizzie said. ‘She was only forty-two when she died.’

  Poppy changed the subject at once, alerted by the sadness that was dragging her friend’s pretty face. ‘How’s Ben?’

  ‘Cheesed off, so he says,’ Lizzie told her. ‘They’re waiting to invade Sicily and he says it’s non-stop bull.’

  ‘What’s bull?’

  ‘Unnecessary spit and polish, drill, that sort of thing. They all had to have a bath last week because Monty was coming to inspect them and apparently when he says “Have you had a bath, soldier?” they have to be able to answer “Yes, sir”. He said it was absolutely ridiculous. I mean it must have been if you think about it, having a bath in the desert. He said it was ten men to a small tin bath, so the last one got out dirtier than he went in.’

  ‘Heavens!’ Poppy said. ‘When’s he coming on leave?’

  Lizzie sighed. ‘When they’ve conquered Italy, as far as I can make out.’

  ‘Heavens!’ Poppy said again. ‘But that could be ages.’

  ‘Yes,’ Lizzie said. ‘It could.’ And every single day he was fighting she would worry about him and feel afraid. It was an anguish to wait for news when he was in the middle of some attack somewhere. It gave her a nasty scrabbling knot of fear in her belly nearly all the time and at night when she was on her own she wanted to howl. Even when a letter did finally come, it was still dreadful because although she knew he’d been all right when he’d posted it, anything could have happened to him while it was being sent to England. In one way this long wait for news of the invasion was better. She was lonely and missed him achingly but at least she wasn’t frightened all the time.

  She looked at her empty plate and sighed again. If only the war could be over and done with and they could be together. But it went on and on and the news was dreadful, even if there were more victories now. The only respite from it was to disappear into her reading and live in the easier delights of romantic poetry, Elizabethan drama and the nineteenth-century novel, or to give herself over to the provocative stimulus of being taught by Helen Gardner and Dorothy Whitelock. She was well aware that, had it not been for the war, her life at Oxford would have been extremely pleasant, a bit like life at Downview really, each of them with their own carefully doled out rations of butter and jam and their own scuttleful of coal. The conversations in their rooms at night, when they drank cocoa and huddled over their inadequate fires, were a trifle more learned – they talked about sex and Shakespeare, politics and Priestley, deplored the deliberate elitism of Ezra Pound and T S Eliot, discussed the news. Of course they kept their most private thoughts to themselves. It was only when Poppy or Mary came to Oxford to visit her that she was able to talk about Ben, and even then there were a great many things she couldn’t tell them, all of them censored in one way or another.

  ‘What’s for afters?’ Poppy was asking the waitress.

  ‘Apple pie and custard.’

  Poppy made a grimace. ‘Why is it always apple pie?’

  ‘Search me,’ the woman said. ‘I suppose we en’t run out of apples.’

  ‘Two,’ Lizzie told her. ‘We’ve got to have something to keep out the cold.’ It was a wintry sort of day and she’d left her gloves in her room. ‘Now then, Poppy, tell me how you’re getting on with your course. Last time you were here you said you weren’t learning anything that Smithie hadn’t taught you already.’

  ‘Actually,’ Poppy said, ‘we had a very good lecture only last week from a woman called Miss Ellis. All about what schools are going to be like when the war’s over.’

  ‘And what are schools going to be like?’

  ‘Well…’ Poppy said. ‘According to this Miss Ellis…’

  Emmeline’s ‘nerves’ kept her quiet and unresponsive until the third week of April, and by then Edith and the girls had grown used to the change in her and didn’t pay much attention to it. Octavia had been watching her more closely and she was still worried. It was so unlike her competent, outspoken cousin to be subdued and quiet. She wasn’t crying any more, which was one good thing, but there was something about her that was, well, disquieting to say the least. If Octavia had been asked to describe what it was, she’d have said she wasn’t herself. Not that anybody did ask her opinion. They were all too busy getting on with their lives. So she watched and worried and was careful to hide the newspapers when the news was bad, just in case it provoked another outburst. And the news was bad, particularly that week.

  The first sign that something terrible was happening was a report that somehow or other the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto had managed to get hold of some guns and were actually fighting the Germans. An SS officer called General Juergen Stroop had been sent to the ghetto with two thousand troops to ‘subdue’ them with machine guns, mortars and flamethrowers. As more details began to emerge it was obvious that the Jews were being massacred. Some of them had tried to escape by taking to the sewers, so the sewers had been flooded to flush them out. There was talk of thousands of deaths and of dead bodies lying in the streets covered in newspaper.

  But it wasn’t until Tommy came down for a long weekend that she found out exactly what had happened and by then she’d had an anguished letter from Mr Mannheim telling her what little he knew about it. What a wicked world we live in, he said, that such things can be done.

  ‘All quite true, I’m afraid,’ Tommy said. ‘We’ve had some truly appa
lling reports coming out. There were over three hundred thousand Jews in the Warsaw ghetto when the Nazis set it up and now it’s down to fifty thousand. A lot have been sent to concentration camps, of course, but a lot more have died of starvation. This uprising was sheer desperation.’

  ‘It’s too dreadful to think about,’ Octavia said passionately, ‘so what it must be like to be living there and enduring it and seeing it happening every day…’

  ‘The Mirror says the Germans are going to kill them all,’ Edith said.

  Tommy sighed. ‘That seems to be their intention, yes.’

  Emmeline had been sitting at the table listening without saying a word. Now she stood up, her face wild. ‘Those wicked, wicked Germans,’ she said. ‘Haven’t we had enough of them? Killing and killing and killing. There’s never any end to it. My poor dear Cyril gone and Podge gassed and Dickie and my poor Eddie and my Johnnie with his leg amputated and now all these Jews being burnt and gassed and all for what? That’s what I want to know. All for what? It’s evil. Don’t you see? It should be stopped before we all go mad. That’s what’ll happen. We’ll all go mad. I can’t bear it. Why doesn’t someone make it stop? I can’t bear it.’ She was crying so much her words were slurred. ‘Bear it…’ she wept. ‘I can’t…It’s not fair…I can’t.’

  Edith and Octavia put out their hands to her, begging her to stop. ‘Mum! Please don’t.’ ‘Em dear, please…’ But she shook them away and turned from them wildly. Then she ran headlong out into the garden, banging the kitchen door after her.

  They looked round at Tommy, neither of them quite sure what to do. ‘Leave her be,’ he advised. ‘She won’t come to any harm in the garden.’

  Edith was embarrassed that he should have seen such an outburst. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘What must you think of us?’

  ‘I’ve seen men go off like that in the trenches,’ he said. ‘They used to babble and cry too. They called it shell-shock in those days.’