If the Invader Comes

by Derek Beaven

  ‘Take Martin on your own. You’ll be all right, I should think. Shouldn’t you?’

  Clarice was swept again, this time with gratitude. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course. Go up whenever you like. The parents won’t mind. And you’ll help Patrick groom. They approve of you, anyway.’

  Clarice took Martin the next day, though by noon there were ominous reports on the news. The ground she knew so well with Bea Bligh felt suddenly dangerous. Supposing the horse went lame, supposing he was spooked and threw her; supposing, with Bea out of the way, he intended to lead her astray only to make a fool of her, charging off at his own whim across wheatfields, over antiglider obstacles, past the army camp, and unstoppably by highway and byway, until he came to the undefended truth: that against an invader willing to incur massive losses the British stood no chance at all. Heat had nothing to do with the sweat that broke out on her.

  Martin, however, was impeccable. The ride was without incident. On her way back she glanced behind her. The southern horizon, in a glaze around the sun, was scribbled with white twists. She guessed they rose from Kent and the Thames Estuary, and was suddenly breathless, her lungs constricted. She felt the weight of her blonde hair bobbing in its net against her neck. For a second, panic held sway. Then her horse moved forward, and the prosaic fact that she could not but go forward with him was oddly inspirational – one of those moments when the commonplace appears brimful with meaning. Her fear ebbed. She was reminded of Phyllis’s lie on the gravel drive in front of the Riley Lynx. A path could open, even into danger.

  The next day there was nothing. At Knap’s covert she risked a canter, collecting the horse between her hands and legs and willing herself down into the saddle. She didn’t pull up until the fence with Appleby’s, where she waved to the haymakers on the other side and Martin snorted to the heavy, shaggy creature that pulled the machine. She patted his neck, turned, and cantered back. Hither and thither they tired each other out. Behind her she heard the clack of the mower. A gull flew across her line of sight. Nothing else.

  On 15 August, the usual paths led them down to the riverside, and Martin ambled along by the incoming tide. Overhead there were vapour trails, straight and directed seaward. At the fruit farm Clarice came across Dolly Hayman wearing a flowered overall and work gloves. She was on the point of going to help in the orchards, but offered tea. Standing beside Clarice’s horse, she alluded briefly to her news. Her sons had just been called up, her husband was picking damsons. Her ridged forehead conveyed an air of abstraction.

  Clarice dismounted, hooking the reins to the lopped branch of a tree, and was taken once again into the low-ceilinged room with its musical objects, its oil lamps, its excess of old-fashioned furnishings, covers and drapes. The eloquent stillness inside the wooden house moved her. Sunlight from the tiny windows caught curious Arabian patches where dust motes drifted.

  Mrs Hayman lapsed into silence while the kettle was heating, and deployed the tea things with muted ceremony, preoccupied, her grey hair scraped back in a bun, the small carbuncle poised upon her lip.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Clarice said. ‘About Ronald and Malcolm. I’m sure they’ll be all right.’

  ‘It isn’t for us to complain, is it?’

  Martlesham was scrambled; the engines overhead made the wooden roof ring and the teacups rattle. They talked resolutely of local matters, neither woman wanting to evoke the crisis. The piano was draped, the lid over its keyboard firmly closed. Clarice sipped her tea. She felt the mood of the room redouble, its peculiar Englishness, the grinning toby jugs and impossible china dogs. Her diamond-paned view on to the kitchen garden and the tennis court beyond looked like some intricate nursery illustration.

  But Mrs Hayman remained lost in thought. Aware of intruding, Clarice felt she ought not to have come; and she’d left her horse alone where the planes might have startled him. She finished her cup and stood up awkwardly to leave.

  It was then she mentioned the last time. How lucky she hadn’t persuaded his parents to let Jack, the little boy, come to stay with her at Pook’s Hill. Instead of rescuing him from bombs that had failed to fall, she would have taken him and placed him right in the firing line. So it seemed now.

  Straight away, she could have bitten her lip with the woman’s two sons destined for that same predicament, likely as not – the firing line; but Dolly Hayman looked relieved, and her face brightened at the mention of the child. She remembered how he’d cried at the cello.

  ‘It’s certainly as well he stayed in London, as it’s turned out,’ she said. ‘Which goes to show you can never tell, can you?’

  ‘No, indeed, Mrs Hayman.’ Clarice fidgeted.

  Mrs Hayman hesitated. ‘That little boy told me such an unusual thing,’ she said.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘He was here on his own, you remember, while you and that couple played tennis. I gave him a tidbit and we stroked the cat. Then, just as I was settling him down – on the settee by the window it was, the sun coming in on his hair, bless him, quite an appealing little fellow if not for his table manners – he started fussing somewhat. You know the way they do when they’re wanting a nap. I said his mummy and daddy would be coming in soon from their game.’

  Dolly Hayman got up as though the story were over. She disappeared into the kitchen. Seconds passed. Then, holding a knitted tea cosy, she came back and sat down with it still in her hand, plucking at its stitches with her nail. Clarice waited.

  Eventually, Mrs Hayman resumed. ‘And do you know what he did next? His eyelids were getting so heavy he could hardly keep them open, poor mite.’ She gazed at the glinting air in front of her. ‘He nodded his head, quite deliberately, like this …’ Mrs Hayman imitated the movement and smiled. ‘ … and said the most extraordinary thing. He said, “My daddy’s in Pentonville. He got three years.” And the next second he was asleep.’

  ‘Are you quite sure?’

  ‘Certain, Clarice. It struck me at the time. And then I must have put it out of my mind because I didn’t know what to make of it.’

  ‘Was it some casual phrase, do you think? Some joke?’ She had difficulty standing. She was surprised to hear her voice carrying on, apparently normal. ‘Children pick up all sorts of nonsense, don’t they? A thing of that kind, maybe?’

  ‘It was with such conviction, you know. He looked me straight in the eye. And it shook me, dear.’

  ‘Yes. I can imagine.’

  ‘But, you see, I didn’t forget it. I know you must think I’m a foolish old woman, perhaps even a cowardly one, but it stayed in my mind. You’re the first person I’ve told.’

  ‘Not even Boss?’

  ‘It doesn’t do to repeat things, does it, and I haven’t liked to. At least not that kind of thing. As if he had any notion of what he was saying, poor child. But I think, now, that perhaps you ought to know, dear.’

  ‘Yes. Thank you. Perhaps I should. I’ve never thought you were foolish. Or cowardly.’ She laid a hand on her neighbour’s arm.

  ‘No mother likes to lose her sons.’

  ‘We’ve no reason to jump to conclusions, have we?’

  ‘About that other matter. I did think you ought to know.’

  Martin had been unruffled by the aircraft. Riding awkwardly out of the woods and back up to Bligh’s farm, Clarice glanced up. This time the sky was filled with a clear calligraphy. She could even see the planes; one, two … three shot down even as she pulled up her horse. It was beyond belief.

  Then out of nowhere came a sound that built, as she waited, into an unearthly screaming – and she saw Stukas going down on to the Martlesham airfield; she actually saw the bombs released as the planes dived, and heard the thump, crump, thump of the explosions, the very same terror weapon here as in Guernica, Warsaw, Rotterdam. Martin’s ears went back. He hopped sideways and whinnied. So close, the battle here over Ipswich and the sea off Harwich Harbour.

  The war, like the first high cloud streaks of a cyclone, was sending forma
l notice of itself. That night neither she nor her father could contemplate sleep. They stayed up late playing cribbage and turning the radio dial around the short-wave stations. Amid hisses and crackles, she found Morse code, and voices in strange languages, but no kind of an explanation. And Vic was in Pentonville …?

  THE WEATHER REMAINED perfect. Battle came again the next day, and again, and again. Saturday, cold, overcast, brought only temporary respite; the following week’s skies stood open again. In the South, under the sun’s traverse, the edge of the Kentish air engagements painted white trails upon blue after pale ceramic blue.

  Still every afternoon Clarice took the horse out, but she could bring herself to do no more than walk him on the higher ground. Like her neighbours, she was possessed with the urge to look up. Quite often, as the fight spilt away from its centre, specks of black wheeled, and silver glints corkscrewed miles above in a silent, blinding spectacle. The only accompaniments were birdcalls and the ratchet of grasshoppers, or the occasional gust stirring dry leaves. The tractor in the lane puttered to and from the harvest and Martin grew irritable.

  Clarice was amazed by what she saw. Her fate was in those inscrutable white characters, that leaked and drifted with the winds while the shaven earth baked below. Always her father was waiting by the wireless when she returned, with an old dog-eared volume of Milton open on his lap by which he hoped to make sense of war in heaven. Bombs fell on suburbs. The six o’clock news relayed a daily balance sheet of Heinkels, Dorniers, Junkers and Messerschmitts, as against Hurricanes and Spitfires.

  At the end of August there was low flying over Pook’s Hill itself. The morning was shattered by the diving whine of two engines. All the breakfast crockery juggled to machine-gun fire, and an unexpected hail peppered the roof. She ran outdoors with her father, to see a raider being chased out to sea. Around its fuselage a smoke cocoon was billowing, through which the incongruous wings stuck out on either side. Both planes were gone while the air still pulsed with their roar. Only when she glanced down did Clarice appreciate that she’d nearly been killed – by the fall of spent cartridges and shrapnel-like debris that lay all around her. One piece was hissing and steaming in the dew.

  Hitler spoke. She and her father heard it flashed one teatime. They gathered the full details at nine. The man of destiny had waited three months for Britain to stop night bombing. Such handiwork – by the English air-pirates – would be repaid one hundred fold, so help him God. The hour was coming when one of the two combatants would break. It would not be National Socialist Germany. He’d raze the English cities to the ground. ‘In England, they are filled with curiosity and keep asking. “Why doesn’t he come?” Be calm! Er kommt! Er kommt!’ Clarice turned the dreadful voice off.

  ‘Well, old thing,’ her father mocked. ‘That sounds like it. He means to do it. We’ll soon have that swine Wellbridge ringing the church bells. Judenrein, they call it, don’t they?’ He looked quite blanched, so odd – the first time she’d seen him without the colonies in his cheeks. ‘Shall I see you down to Manningtree right away and get you on that train?’

  She stared at him. ‘Train to where, Daddy?’

  ‘Anywhere. Anywhere away from here.’ He gripped the arms of his chair.

  How rejected she felt. ‘“If the Invader Comes, Stay Put.”’

  ‘They’ve been wanting non-combatants out of here for weeks.’

  She explained carefully, patronisingly. ‘We only know now that it’s definitely coming. We don’t know where. They’ve been going hardest for Kent and Sussex with the air raids, haven’t they? Then that’s probably where they’ll come ashore.’

  ‘Inconceivable they won’t hit Harwich, or Ipswich, at least with a raiding party. Let’s not pretend, darling. Talk about home to roost: the blunder’s mine and it looks the finish. While there’s any chance of a train left running, I want to get you away to London.’

  ‘Razing cities to the ground?’

  ‘Talk!’

  ‘Talk!’ she echoed. ‘Croydon. Wimbledon. People panicking already in Kensington shops. And Stepney, was it? Women wetting themselves at the sound of the sirens.’ She struggled to come up with more telling horrors. ‘You call them talk?’

  ‘Darling! Don’t you see?’ He pointed at the radio. ‘It’s the airfields that are strategic. The rest is,’ he spread his hands, ‘unfortunate. No matter what he says to try and frighten us, London isn’t the target. Paris wasn’t. Londoners know it. If he’s got any sense and he means to invade, he’ll keep on at the airfields. It stands to reason.’

  She twisted her hair. ‘So this is the Pike strategy, is it?’ Infuriating, his flush of logic – and after their shared vigils. ‘I’m to be shipped off while you play soldiers with your old gun.’

  ‘Don’t be bloody difficult, darling. This probably won’t be any place for a woman in a couple of weeks’ time. Even a couple of hours. Who knows? I should have thought your going was obvious.’

  ‘It’s not what we agreed!’ she cried, getting up. Her chair scraped at the floor.

  ‘I don’t remember us agreeing anything.’

  ‘Precisely! You’re not a combatant either!’

  ‘Don’t take that tone with me.’ Blotches were returning to his face; his knuckles on the chair arms were white.

  ‘Well, I’m most certainly not going. I’ve always had to be the one who goes, and I’m not being it again.’ She stamped her foot.

  ‘You most certainly are.’ He pulled himself up to confront her.

  ‘And leave you here, silly man, not knowing what’s happening, to be shelled to bits, bombed, God knows what. The very best case would be a lot of rude soldiery tramping their boots through Pook’s Hill with no one to look after it. Brewing up their whatever they call it. Bivvy.’

  They both laughed suddenly. But Clarice seized the initiative. ‘He needs air supremacy, does he? Has he got it? No! Anyway, where would I be supposed to stay. The Ritz?’

  But her father turned towards his walnut bureau, as though the military discussion were settled. There was a letter on the open flap. ‘You’ll go to Phyllis’s. I’ve written to her. Air supremacy! If he hasn’t got it already he damn nearly has.’ He swung round at her, suddenly blazing. ‘The only thing telling us what’s what is that box, Clarice!’ He pointed again to the dull bakelite of the wireless. It sat innocently on the Pembroke table by the window, on its beige doily. ‘We know what the bloody BBC chooses to tell! Don’t you see? If he caught the French completely napping, why not us? Since matters have exceeded credibility, I’ve also written to your grandmother.’

  ‘Granny Tyler. Without telling me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Both! Why Phyllis and why without telling me?’

  ‘You’ll do as you’re told!’

  She was ready to weep with frustration. It was like an episode from her early teens, about some boyfriend, perhaps, or a late-night jaunt to a Malayan cinema. ‘Over my dead body!’ she yelled.

  ‘Exactly. That, or worse.’

  ‘Oh! For that comforting thought much thanks!’

  ‘Clarice!’

  She left, slamming the sitting-room door, stamping as loudly as she could up the stairs and into her room. It grew dark and she sat alone in the murk. Disconnected images of Vic presented themselves, but she was too wrought to assemble them. She couldn’t think, she could not hold on to her mental processes. Something prevented her from placing one notion against the next. At last she undressed and cast herself into bed.

  Later, she heard her father come up to his own room. He didn’t knock or say good-night. She lay awake, still furious at his betrayal, and astonished that tonight of all nights – the night indeed, for perhaps he was right – she was tucked up in her foolish flannel nightie with the little orange and blue flowers and neither of them was in the east bedroom manning England’s defences.

  Disinclined to relent or make the first move, however, she lit a
candle to read by. But from the assortment of favourites on her shelf she couldn’t choose the one particular book with which to be defeated. It was very provoking. About midnight her temper drained away and a cramped little terror caught up with her again, rising up from her belly in waves of anguish. Her temples throbbed, she felt faint. Her father was right. The kill ratios on the wireless … the battle might already have been lost. Hitler’s boast – it could mean only one thing. What voice would come from the sea, the air, tonight?

  But not all the legions of the damned would induce her to seek refuge with Phyllis. Since there was little possibility of sleep, she’d inform her cousin of the fact. She’d write to Phyllis directly.

  By the flickering light at her dressing-table, with an old dip pen that blotted from the ink bottle – because her elegant Parker was nowhere to be found – she began to write, and only in the letter did she rediscover quite how much the lie Phyllis had practised against her had hurt, and quite how bitter she was towards her cousin. Good manners seasoned her diatribe of home truths with last thoughts, even appeals to reason. But by the time you read this, or if this letter should ever reach you made the scribbled testament read vexingly like a suicide note – though it lasted for three pages.

  The only profit was that the fair construction of her dislike tired her out, so that finally she slumped over Robin Townely’s scented notepaper and prepared to get back into bed, beyond worrying, beyond listening out for the bombardment. She scrawled a final line, and remember me, won’t you, with all affection to little Jack. That at last gave the matter of Pentonville a chance to state its case. ‘Of course. Heavens! “He got three years.” I’d better go, then.’ She fell asleep.

  INSIDE THE CELL there were stifling ridges of sound in the darkness. Vic woke and for a moment was flummoxed. Of course it was Hemmings, snoring, three feet above him in the upper bunk. He listened intently for guns, or the drone of planes, but there was nothing beyond the breathy stertor of his cell mate. He knew where he was – the slop bucket stank in the heat. But the prickle in his eyes was not from ammonia fumes – it came from the dream that had woken him.