Something Dangerous
Page 58
‘Their necks!’ said Lady Beckenham. ‘I’m not worried about their necks, much better broken if this goes on, I’d say. One of those horses is a mare in foal and the other is very nervy and inclined to break out. If he tried to clear that gate, God knows what might happen, last time one of them did that it broke its back, had to be put down. I think you’d better let me talk to the boys, Mr Dawkins. They don’t seem to take a great deal of notice of you.’
Slightly reluctantly, Mr Dawkins allowed her to attend the next morning assembly, held each day in the ballroom; she stood up after prayers and told the boys that any more bad behaviour, ‘and you know what that is, the rules are perfectly clear,’ would result in expulsion from Ashingham.
‘I shall get your parents down here and tell them you’re going and why and that will be that. You’ll find yourself back in Dover at the mercy of the Germans.’
The more challenging spirits debated in whispers that night under the bedclothes whether she was within her rights to do this and, moreover, whether she meant it; it was generally agreed that she was and she did.
At the same time however, she did announce an impromptu games session every Sunday afternoon – ‘sack races and an obstacle course, that sort of thing, and if anyone wants to help with haymaking on the farm, they can come and see me. And if anyone wants to learn to ride properly, they can write and ask their parents. Mr Miller, my groom, has been kind enough to say he’ll organise that. Only don’t think you’ll be able to just arrive at the yard and mount; you’ll have to learn to groom and muck out, all part of riding, you know.’
Lord Beckenham had responded to Anthony Eden’s call on the radio for the formation of Local Defence Volunteers – later renamed the Home Guard – with great enthusiasm; within twenty-four hours the Ashingham Battalion had been formed, thirty-five men strong. He addressed them from the terrace of Ashingham wearing his rather elderly battle dress – ‘Far too big for him, I didn’t realise how thin he’d got, poor old chap,’ said Lady Beckenham – his medals pinned to his chest.
The younger ones leaned on their rifles, half amused, but the older men, many of them veterans of the First World War, Billy Miller included, found his speech moving and even distressing.
‘Looking at him standing there, telling us to fight off the invader, and that the safety and freedom of our land could depend on us, took me right back to Flanders,’ he said that night to Joan Barber in the village pub. ‘I felt quite – quite upset. It was like I could hear the screams again, feel the mud and the cold—’
Joan patted his hand and told him she could see that, especially with his leg and all, but it must be nice for him to feel he could do his bit for king and country as Lord Beckenham had said.
‘Don’t know about king,’ said Billy, ‘don’t have much of a feeling for all them, I’m with young Jay on that, but country yes. I’d die before I let one of those buggers – sorry, Joan – get on to Ashingham land. Pity about the holes in the ground, but there.’
The holes in the ground were a source of some contention with farmers; Churchill’s scientific adviser had recommended that in the event of a mass landing by air, now considered a serious possibility, large holes should be dug in the ground in all areas more than four hundred yards long and within five miles of an area of strategic importance. Even cropbearing fields were not exempt; furthermore, large stakes were to be driven into the ground to give the invading enemy further discomfort as he dropped to earth. All this was, of course, also hazardous to the small boys. It had become a separate and serious offence to play anywhere near the craters and another matter for serious discussion at Lady Beckenham’s assembly.
The Ashingham Battalion was rather more heavily drilled and disciplined than most – two sessions a week rather than one – and better equipped, admittedly with a rather odd armoury of weapons, ranging from Boer War rifles to Lord Beckenham’s own beloved Purdeys – ‘jolly good use for them, finishing off a few Germans’ – and even a pearlhandled pistol which Lady Beckenham’s mother had kept under her pillow all through her time in India. The neighbouring division was manned, it was said, with pitchforks and home-made clubs.
The Ashingham Battalion was also extremely zealous: in only its second week, a young courting couple found no less than three guns pointing at them as they lay in each other’s arms in the long grass by the river and were taken off to Ashingham where they were rigorously questioned in the kitchen.
Rather to everyone’s surprise, Lord Beckenham attended not only the requisite government course, but the two-day residential version organised by Picture Post magazine at Osterley Park, the home of the Earl of Jersey. He came back literally quivering with excitement from two days of crawling through smoke bombs, learning to explode anti-tank mines and firing at mock dive-bombers, and indeed begged so hard to be allowed to stay on that he was promised a further two days the following year.
‘There’s talk of the Home Guard taking over actual defensive duties if all the young chaps go to France,’ he said to Lady Beckenham, ‘think of that, being back in the front line. God, I hope those bastards arrive soon.’
He was all for forming a cadet squad with the boys from the school and indeed held a preliminary meeting; it was only Matron’s report that several of the boys had woken crying with nightmares, after Lord Beckenham’s extremely vivid accounts of what could be done with a pitchfork, wielded with sufficient skill against the enemy, that the idea had to be scrapped.
‘So tell me, what is your view of the chances of America coming into the war?’
Sebastian looked at Barty over the spectacles that he now wore. They aged him, made him less spectacularly good-looking, and he had resisted them for years: finally giving in after a rather painfully frank session with Celia when he returned the proofs of the latest Meridian virtually uncorrected, with the comment that typesetters were clearly becoming increasingly skilled as the years went by.
He had taken Barty out to lunch, telling her she looked pale and tired: ‘and I know women don’t like being told that sort of thing, but it’s true.’
She felt pale and tired, she was sleeping badly and she knew the reason; not overwork, not the ache in her heart which still caught her by surprise at the most unlikely moments – when she saw a couple sitting, heads together, engaged in some intense conversation, when an American accent caught her ear – not even the news from France, which was very bad. It was a sense of resentment and injustice at having been emotionally blackmailed by Oliver; and of distaste with herself for having given in. She hated it, every day, the safe, dull safe backwater she found herself in; and it didn’t suit her. It wasn’t just the war and not being part of it; she had grown accustomed in New York, all through her time with Laurence, to living on the edge, every day a difficult ongoing challenge. And she missed that, as much as she missed Laurence himself, the difficulty and the danger. A new, tough challenge, a different sort of danger was what she needed, indeed longed for; and besides, she had not been brought up by Celia, been Billy’s sister without developing a fierce desire to help defend her country.
She had been deeply moved by Churchill’s speeches, his exhortation to courage, to duty; she longed to respond and every day she resolved to tell Oliver that she couldn’t stay any longer, that she was going to enlist, and every day she looked at him, so frail and aged, so clearly fearful for Kit and Giles, and put it off a little longer. Celia could have borne her absence, she knew; Celia, with her huge courage could bear anything; it had actually been on his own behalf that Oliver had made his plea. And she loved him too much to refuse it; but it was making her very unhappy.
It was still surprisingly easy to imagine the war away: in London that summer of 1940 the Houses of Parliament might be surrounded in barbed wire, there might be sandbags in every doorway, and large signs saying ‘Shelter’ dotted about the city, there might be food rationing and talk of clothing coupons, and a sense of intense patriotism everywhere, but within the reassuringly unchanged inner sanc
tums of the Mirabelle and the Caprice, the Dorchester and the Savoy, there were few clues. The waiters were all rather elderly to be sure, and a lot of the male clientele were in uniform, but you could still order gulls’ eggs, salmon trout, lobster and ‘Oysters!’ said Barty joyfully. ‘Oh Sebastian, how lovely.’
‘I’m surprised you like them. With your rather conservative tastes.’
‘I became a bit more adventurous in New York,’ she said, ‘I learned to like all sorts of things.’
‘Well, that’s the first good thing I’ve heard about that young man. If he could corrupt your purist tendencies . . .’
She was silent, thinking of other corruptions, other delights Laurence had led her into; then, ‘Why talk to me about the Americans?’ she said.
‘Oh – simply because you were there quite a long time, you must have got a feel for the psyche. And how pro- or anti-British they might feel. It would be marvellous to have them on our side.’
‘I don’t really know. I mean, I left two years ago, don’t forget. But – I’d say the East Coast people, the old-money set, they had a strong pro-British inclination. An upper-class American is terribly like an upper-class Englishman.’
‘I don’t think you’d find Celia agreeing with you,’ said Sebastian laughing.
‘No, I know. But you’d be surprised, they’re bothered with all the same things, traditions, marrying into the right families, keeping up standards at all costs. Anyway, they might be on our side, but I know Roosevelt isn’t in favour. And I’m very much afraid most of America wouldn’t be.’
‘And of course that slimy bastard Joe Kennedy, he’s a well-known admirer of the Nazis. Nasty piece of work, if you ask me, how he got to be Ambassador to Britain, I’ll never know. Well it says a lot about the Americans – sorry, Barty.’
‘It’s all right,’ she said smiling, ‘I can cope with it now. I’m really beginning to be over it. I think.’
‘Really?’ he said, his fierce eyes probing hers.
‘Well – I said beginning. Actually more than beginning.’
‘Good. Now I want to ask your advice about something. I really think I might send Isabella down to Ashingham. She can go to that school there, well, Lady Beckenham says she can, and as far as I can make out, the headmaster does what she says, poor chap. I don’t envy him. And she’d be safe, I worry about her being up here. The bombing is bound to start soon. And she’s too young to go to boarding school. What do you think?’
‘I think it’s a wonderful idea,’ said Barty truthfully. ‘Really wonderful.’
‘You think she’d learn something?’
‘Of course. It’s a very good little school, I’m told.’ She sighed. ‘I had such a lovely time down at Ashingham during the last war. It was the first time I really felt truly happy.’
‘Well I may do it, then. I’m getting very worried about her being here.’
‘I think you should. Oh, Sebastian, I wish we knew something about Adele. The telephone lines are completely dead to Paris now, there’s no news of her at all. I do hope and pray she’s all right.’
‘Of course she is. Right as rain.’
‘But the Germans are almost at the gates of Paris.’
‘I know, I know. But she’ll be all right. Survivors they are, those twins, both of them. Like their mother. I’d back them against Hitler’s army any day.’
Adele woke up with a start; there was a sword, or was it a knife, sticking into her side. She sat bolt upright, pushing the cushion she had used as a pillow on to the floor of the car. What was it, who had got in? She had locked the door so carefully, only leaving a tiny crack of each window open to let in some air. She had even worried about that, afraid that the Germans, or more likely some predatory French, less well-equipped for this journey than she was, might force a window further down. But otherwise they would have suffocated.
Still, a sword, she hadn’t expected that – only it wasn’t a sword, of course, she realised gratefully as she eased herself out of her cramped position, it was simply an agonising stabbing pain, from lying cramped up all night. She felt terrible though: hot, sick, thirsty . . .
She turned round, looked at the children. They were still asleep. They hadn’t stirred once she had finally got them settled, some time after midnight. She wasn’t too sure what the time was now – it was obviously very early, dawn had hardly broken, but her watch had stopped. That was horrible: not knowing the time. She had heard somewhere that it was one of the ways in which tortured prisoners had their spirits broken: by having their watches taken away, so that they had no idea what time of day or night it was and became totally disorientated. She must find out the time, and remember to wind her watch every night until she got home.
Until she got home; she kept saying it to herself. Not if, but when. She had already learned a hard lesson in that.
The journey had begun fairly well; they had moved quite easily through the city streets, which were for the most part wonderfully empty and clear; she had decided to leave by the Porte d’Italie on to the main road south. Every time she passed a main railway station, they were held up by the milling crowds and queues trying to force their way into it, dreadful, shocking scenes, reminiscent of some medieval painting of hell she thought, people pushing and shouting at one another, tall men manhandling their way through the crowd, children held aloft, crying, often screaming, for the parents they had been separated from, old people literally panting in the heat, here a woman fainting, there a man collapsed, calling for a doctor, everyone ignoring him. And there were no trains; or almost no trains. It was the first time she had witnessed this particular horror; it increased her fear.
Her own children watched fascinated, staring out of the windows unmoved by the suffering, intrigued by such strange behaviour on the part of grown-up people.
‘That man is horrible,’ said Noni, pointing out a huge man at the back of a crowd, who was elbowing quite brutally two old women out of his way. ‘Why is he doing that?’
‘He wants to get a train,’ said Adele briefly.
‘Well, he should wait in the queue. Stupid man. I’m glad we’ve got the car.’
She was less glad later on: as they sat in the great crawling line of people leaving Paris for the south, lurching along in first gear, making so little speed the speedometer didn’t register it. The evening sun beat through the windows; first Lucas, then Noni began to grizzle and whine that they were hot, thirsty, they wanted to get out.
‘I can’t stop now,’ said Adele, struggling to keep her voice calm and good-natured.
‘Why not?’
‘Well because if we stop, we’ll get behind in the queue. Other cars will overtake us and—’
‘Doesn’t matter. It’s so slow anyway. Look, that old man is pushing the lady on the cart. Where do you think they’re going?’
‘Oh – to see some friends,’ said Adele, ‘like we are.’
There were many such sights. The most fortunate were in cars; others were on bicycles, in carts, on motorbikes, in wheelbarrows, a great many were on foot, women carried babies, while children trailed behind them, crying. The men carrying suitcases, packed hastily with the few possessions they had felt they could not leave behind. All looking frightened, bleak, hopeless, a long, snaking line of human misery, stretching before her as far as she could see.
She felt horrified, shocked at the scale of the exodus; she had expected to see a lot of cars, buses, lorries, but not this desperate, frightened army. It must be so very much more dangerous than she had thought; why had they been told so little? And had Luc known and kept it from her? No, surely not, they had all been the victims of the same conspiracy, the same cowardly foolish deception; she was not to know that at that very moment the French Government was leaving Paris in a fleet of large comfortable cars . . .
‘We ought to help that old lady,’ said Noni suddenly looking at an old woman sitting weeping in the gutter, holding her head, ‘she’s upset, what do you think’s happened?’
But ‘Darling, I’m sorry, we can’t,’ she said, and indeed she knew they couldn’t, she was going to need every resource at her disposal for her own small group of refugees. ‘Their friends will be here soon.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I just do.’
Lucas started crying again.
‘He’s thirsty,’ said Noni.
‘Well give him a bit of that apple Mme André gave us. Not all of it, Noni, he’ll choke. Bite a bit of it off and give it to him – that’s right.’
Lucas looked at the apple derisively, hurled it on the floor of the car and went on crying.
‘Don’t cry,’ said Noni, sweetly maternal. She took his hand, stroked it, ‘we’ll soon be there, won’t we, Mummy?’
‘Yes of course we will.’
By dusk they had only travelled a very few kilometres southwards; they were on the secondary road, it seemed slightly quieter and in any case the main ones were reserved for the army, and official vehicles. She had spent hours poring over the map late on Sunday night, after Luc had gone to sleep, plotting a route.
She had decided to go down via Chartres, it seemed the most direct way. Map reading was not one of her skills to put it mildly; she had never been able to work out which direction roads went in, how to relate the real one she was on to the winding line on a map. But desperation had driven her on; she had finally gone to sleep with her route fairly clear. Chartres, only about 100 kilometres from Paris, Tours, 240 kilometres. 150 miles. They should do that easily in twenty-four hours. And then on down to Bordeaux in another – well, she would worry about that when she got to Tours. She had not, however, reckoned on sharing the route with countless thousands of others . . .