‘Dad?’ Peter looked beseechingly at his father, his secret wish being to leave school that moment and devote his life to flying.
‘That’s enough for one day, I reckon,’ George said, quickly shaking Beaufort’s hand and hoping the wretched man would not think of yet another thing that would scare George witless. ‘By the by, did you let Peter have a go at all?’
Beaufort smiled at his pupil in a secretive way, as much as to say should he let on, while Peter merely shrugged his shoulders and grinned.
‘Apart from take-off I didn’t do a thing,’ Beaufort confessed, looking momentarily embarrassed. ‘Just shouted him through it, that’s all.’
George stopped in his tracks and stared back at the ace in disbelieving silence. ‘But you were in control just the same?’ he heard himself begging.
‘I didn’t need to be, Captain Dashwood. Your boy can fly that plane as well as I could after two weeks’ intensive training.’
After that nothing more was said about the venture, apart from a brief and much censored account given to Amelia on their return home. It was as if father and son had come to a silent agreement, since both Peter and his father knew that once that little yellow biplane had ascended like a bright and gorgeous butterfly into the clear blue English skies the die had been cast.
Peter was of course overjoyed that the ambition he had been nursing for as long as he could remember was not going to be an idle dream. As soon as he finally left school he now knew he would join the air force. On the other hand his father, although proud of his son’s precocious skill, and admiring of the boy’s courage, remembered what he had seen of the remains of those who had been shot down in flames by the enemy during the war and feared for him.
George tried to make as little of the matter as possible, doing his best to convince Amelia that Peter’s flying was nothing more than a boyhood obsession, and that by the time he started his new school some craze would take the place of aeroplanes, and they would find themselves worrying about something entirely different.
‘That’s children, darling,’ he said after dinner as they sat discussing the matter in the drawing room, watching what had been a clear summer sky slowly becoming overcast and ominous. ‘That’s children, and boys in particular.’
‘I think that’s my trouble. I’ve never been a boy.’ Amelia shook her head and smiled, while the look in her eyes stayed worried.
‘I wanted to be a train driver, just like every other little boy,’ George remembered. ‘That was all I wanted to be for practically all my childhood.’
‘I don’t remember that. I don’t remember that at all.’
‘It was my guilty secret. I kept it well hidden from you. I thought if you knew I wanted to be an engine driver you would never even contemplate marrying me.’
‘Are you trying to tell me, George Dashwood, that you were thinking of matrimony while you were still in short trousers?’
‘I’m afraid so,’ George sighed, relieved to see that he had distracted her. ‘I told you, after I met you at that cricket match I started drawing up a list of the friends I wanted at my wedding.’
‘I didn’t want to marry you at all,’ Amelia returned, still watching a sky that was becoming more threatening by the minute. ‘I wanted to run away with you and live with you in sin. I remember one day when we were sailing at Itchenor, I just wanted you to put the boat out into the Channel and sail us over to France where we’d take to the roads, living on our wits and talents.’
‘What particular talents were these, Mrs Dashwood?’
‘My musical ones – I would sing by the wayside and in cafés and taverns—’
‘The French don’t have taverns,’ George laughed. ‘And what was I going to be doing?’
‘You were going to be fighting. Not as a soldier, but as a prize fighter. Taking on all comers in illegal boxing matches held in the back rooms of whatever the French have if they don’t have taverns.’
‘You should have said. It sounds a splendid idea. How old were we at the time?’
‘Let me see.’ Amelia frowned, pulling an over-studious face. ‘I was ten, I think. So you’d have been a pompous fourteen.’
George roared with laughter and took her in his arms to hug her. As he did the first roll of thunder rumbled from not so distant clouds.
‘What can you have you been reading?’ he said. ‘ The Beloved Vagabond, no doubt. You were forever reading that book.’
‘Yes, I probably was,’ Amelia agreed. ‘Fancy you remembering that.’
‘You hardly ever had it out of your hand at about that time. Your head was always full of these wonderful romances.’
‘You’re my best. You know that, don’t you?’
‘And you are mine. Now come on – let’s go to bed early and watch what promises to be a rather spectacular storm break.’
By the time they had hurried upstairs the evening sky, which had now turned ink-black, burst into a tumult of rain while a clap of thunder directly overhead seemed to shake the ancient priory from the roof to the cellars.
‘This is going to be a spectacular display.’ George walked quickly between the bedroom windows shutting out the rain that was just beginning to drive towards the house.
Amelia watched as the lights started to flicker. ‘Storms really frighten me.’
‘I know. Remember the famous storm on the Downs?’
‘When you held my hand properly for the very first time.’
George turned back momentarily from the window, smiling at the memory, while a brilliant fork of lightning sizzled out of the storm clouds. ‘Do you know, when I held your hand that day, I’d never known such a thrill of excitement.’
‘Just from holding my hand?’
George nodded as another fork of lightning danced across the landscape. ‘Just from holding your hand.’
As another bolt of thunder crashed just above them, Amelia tried to pull George away from the window. But he stayed transfixed by the way the countryside outside was being lit up by the lightning.
‘Doesn’t it worry you?’ she asked anxiously, clinging tightly to his arm. ‘It must be just like the war, surely? I don’t know how you can stand it.’
‘It’s not remotely like the war. This isn’t manmade. There’s no-one being deliberately killed or blown to pieces for the sake of a few feet of mud. This is nature at her most magnificent, and that’s why I can watch it.’
‘Well I can’t, so I’m going to go to bed and hide under the covers.’
‘You do that. But I want to watch this.’
Amelia undressed, climbed into bed, and hid her head under her pillows, while George stood at the window and watched the worst storm suffered by the West Country since the turn of the century.
It was in the absolute calm which followed it that Amelia found herself dreaming a nightmare which would haunt her for years.
Eighteen
‘Peter!’
She woke up shouting his name, sitting up in bed drenched in the sweat of a nightmare. She was gone from the bed before George was sufficiently awake to find out what was the matter, gone down the corridor to their son’s room, pulling the girdle of her gown around her, pushing the damp hair away from her eyes.
‘Peter!’ she called again. ‘Peter!’
George was only half a second behind her. ‘What is it?’ he asked as he found her by the boy’s bed. ‘Whatever is the matter?’
‘I don’t know,’ she whispered, shivering with the chill of her perspiration. ‘I must have been dreaming.’
‘What? What were you dreaming?’
‘It was Peter. It was Peter, George.’ She whispered, half to herself. ‘It was Peter – and he was dead.’
George leaned down and gently shook their son awake. Peter stirred, but did not wake up fully, looking up at his parents with only one eye, not knowing who they were or where he was.
‘He seems fine.’
‘I must have been dreaming. But it was so – real.’
&nbs
p; She crept back to their own room, followed by George. He took her in his arms. ‘Want to talk about it?’
‘It was Peter. He was a young man – I don’t know. Eighteen, nineteen. But he was a young man, not a boy any more, and he was sitting in this deckchair somewhere, I think it was summer. Yes, it was summer, and he was sitting in a field, and in the middle of this field there was a long straight road. The sky was clear blue. There weren’t any clouds at all, just blue. Miles and miles of blue that seemed to go on for ever. And there were all these other young men the same age, all lying on the grass sleeping, or sitting in deckchairs reading magazines and smoking cigarettes, and Peter had on a sort of short leather jacket, I’ve never seen one like it, but I saw this one very clearly because he showed it to me. He said, “Do you like my jacket, Mummy?” And he zipped it up the front and laughed. Then I noticed something hanging on the back of his deckchair which looked like a knapsack. I said something like “Is that your lunch?” and he shook his head and said, “No – silk. It’s silk.” I saw all the other young men had them and as I looked they all smiled and said together, “Don’t worry, it’s silk, Mrs Dashwood.” And then everyone began to laugh and smile and I suddenly realized I was wearing the silk dress I had made to go on honeymoon with you. But the young men weren’t laughing at me, even though I was dancing by myself. They were laughing at something in the sky above them, something they were all pointing to.’
‘What? Did you see what they were pointing to?’
‘No. But I heard this alarm ringing – a sort of klaxon – like a very loud donkey braying, and when I looked again all the young men were running towards this road. Peter was leading them, running backwards and waving to me. He called to me but I couldn’t hear what he said, so I tried to run after him but the heels on my shoes broke. “Mummy! Mummy! Tell Daddy it’s all right – I won’t need Mr Framlingham!” Then everyone laughed, and they started to pull on these sort of helmets.’
‘Helmets – what? Flying helmets?’
‘Yes – perhaps that is what they were – because they had flaps over their ears – and then I could see the planes. The planes were all coming towards them down this road and the young men stopped them by holding the tips of their wings so they could swing themselves up into the cockpits.’
‘What sort of planes were they? Were they biplanes, or what?’
‘I don’t know what sort of planes they were, George! I have no idea about planes! All I know is they were planes I’ve never seen before! Single-winged with these big markings on them and cockpits that pulled over the pilots’ heads. The next minute they were in the sky while I was stumbling about this long road in my broken-heeled shoes which I couldn’t get off. Then another plane came past, a yellow biplane, and you were flying it and I was in the front seat and I could see Peter quite clearly. He is in another plane beside me, us, talking into something round his face, pointing to something up in the sky beyond. I can see what he’s pointing at – enemy planes, and they are vast. Much, much bigger than these tiny little things all the young men are flying – and they make this terrible noise. I block my ears and Peter laughs. I can hear him saying, “You always block your ears! When you don’t want to hear me!” Then suddenly his plane is on fire--’
Amelia stopped.
‘It’s all right. It was only a dream, darling. Just a dream.’
‘I know it wasn’t a dream, George,’ she asserted sadly, as they breakfasted alone out on a terrace bathed in warm sunshine. ‘It was a vision.’
‘I don’t see how you can know that.’
‘It’s hard to explain, except to say you know when things are a dream. There’s a sort of feel to them, and also a sort of lack of sense, and cohesion. This just wasn’t like that. But I can’t explain why. It’s just what I felt. No – no, it’s what I knew. I knew as I was dreaming it that this was a vision of the future. This is what is going to happen.’
George drank some coffee and stared up at a perfect cloudless summer sky. Around them the lawns and flower beds steamed a soft mist as the sun began to dry them, while in the distance could be heard the waters of the swollen river in what had to be full spate.
‘If, at some point,’ George said, refilling his now empty cup, ‘Peter does want to join the RAF, if when he grows up he finds he still wants to fly, you know I’m not going to be able to stop him.’
‘You can stop him doing anything until he is twenty-one.’
‘Let me put it another way. If that’s what Peter still wants to do when he leaves school, I don’t think I should stop him. Do you?’
‘Yes, George. Yes I do.’
‘But that’s not really the point, is it?’ George asked her gently. ‘The point is what happens if there’s a war.’
‘Is there going to be a war, George? I thought what you all fought and died for – I thought that was the war to end all wars.’
‘I don’t know if there’s going to be a war. No, that’s a lie. Of course there’ll be another war. Man can’t stop fighting wars, but if you mean is there going to be another war soon, I don’t know. All I can say is that there shouldn’t be.’
‘There shouldn’t be, George? How do you mean?’
‘I mean if there is another war it will be through bad government. Mismanagement. We won the last war and Germany lost it. If she ever becomes strong enough to fight another European war, it will be our own fault. That’s why there shouldn’t be another war, and believe you me, Amelia, I shall make it my business to make as sure as I can that there isn’t one.’
‘But suppose there is, George. Suppose there is and Peter joins the RAF, which he will--’
‘If he’s old enough, or still young enough – who knows?’
‘George—’
‘You are saying,’ George said slowly, looking at her carefully across the table, ‘if there was another war within – I don’t know – let’s just say if there was a war for which Peter would be eligible to fight, you would like me to stop him from fighting? While other people’s sons fight for our country and our future and our safety – you want me to say to our son I forbid you to do what you want to do? Do you want me to make a coward of him? Is that what I’m to do?’
‘Will you fight? If there’s another war, George?’
‘I’m not a professional soldier any more, so I don’t have to fight.’
‘I thought you were a pacifist now – so that you believed you shouldn’t fight.’
‘I’ve never declared myself a pacifist. All I’ve spoken out against is the last war. The way it was mismanaged. The waste. The futility of it, if you will. But I have never said that war is wrong per se. Aggression is wrong. Annexing other people’s territory is wrong. Wholesale slaughter of innocent people is wrong--’
‘To us, George. As you always say yourself, people seem to be able to justify anything. Look what’s happening in Germany. The Nazi party is getting stronger and stronger every day, they’ve started persecuting Jews, limiting freedom of speech – things we all hold to be wrong but which they are convinced are right.’
‘The German politicians maybe. But not the German people – I doubt that.’
‘But if say the Nazis really come to power, if Germany becomes the sort of danger so many people think it will, would you fight then? If it came to another war?’
‘The first thing I would do is fight to prevent such a thing happening.’
‘I don’t want to lose my son, George.’
‘I would do anything for you, Amelia. You know that.’
‘Then stop Peter from flying.’
‘It was a dream, darling. Something you dreamed because it was something you’re worried about. It was only a dream.’
‘No, George. It wasn’t. What I saw was the future.’ Amelia got up from the table, touched George on his cheek, and began to head back into the house.
‘Where are you going?’ George asked, turning round in his chair. ‘I thought we might go for a walk.’
‘I think I’m
going back to bed, George. And I don’t think I’m ever going to get up again.’
* * *
Afraid to dream, she did not go back to bed, but the nightmare stayed with her all that day, none the less. Everywhere she looked she could see the burning plane spinning in the sky. When she tried to read a book all she could see was her son’s face melting in the flames and his stricken plane crashing into the sea.
Finally in despair she turned her wireless on at full volume, changed into her riding clothes and hurried out to the stables to get Max ready for the hack she hoped would at last clear the terrible pictures from her mind.
‘Can I come with you?’ she heard a voice behind her enquire as she brushed Max out as vigorously as she could. ‘I can get Taffy ready in a minute.’
‘Of course you can, Peter,’ Amelia answered, smiling at her son who had come to stand beside her. ‘I thought I’d ride up through the woods and onto White Sheet Down.’
‘Daddy coming?’
‘No, Daddy’s working,’ Amelia replied, taking a rope halter to help Peter catch his crafty old Welsh mountain pony. ‘He’s designing us a brave new world.’
‘I don’t know what that means, Mummy.’
‘And I don’t know why I said it. Come on, sausage. Let’s go and try and catch old Taffy.’
They rode for three hours high on the Wiltshire Downs, across prehistoric burial grounds, past ancient forts hidden deep in the chalk turf and along bridle paths which had borne the footfall of Roman soldiers. The sun was hot and the air was so clear Amelia felt that if they looked long and hard enough they would be able to see all the way across the plain to Salisbury Cathedral. They talked very little until they turned their horses for home, heading west through the ancient woodland of Snail Creep Hanging, Great Ridge and Stonehill Copse, forests formed of old trees, twisted giants with gnarled faces, the way bisected with historic tracks that had once led pilgrims to Salisbury.
The Kissing Garden Page 28
