‘I’ve heard that people of mixed marriages in Germany are executed,’ said Edward soberly.
‘Mama is sure terrible things are happening there,’ said Leah. ‘Thank goodness that here we’ve still got our Parliament and Mr Churchill. Isn’t he splendid? You can actually hear him growling when he’s on the wireless and talking about what he thinks of the Nazis.’
‘He’s working up to a roar,’ said Edward. ‘Something’s going to happen that Hitler won’t like. Well, that’s what slipped out of my section sergeant’s mouth the other day. He’s a friend of mine.’
‘Your section sergeant’s your friend?’ said Leah.
‘Yes, he says do this or do that, and I do it,’ said Edward. ‘But about you marrying me, Leah, you might find some people getting spiteful.’
‘Yes, some,’ said Leah, ‘but most people won’t fuss. They don’t in our country. Edward, do you realize we’re talking as if we’ve already agreed to get married?’
‘Yes, I’m noticing that, but I think we’d be sensible to wait a year before we become engaged, don’t you?’ said Edward.
Something told Leah he was right. Well, he wasn’t yet twenty and she was still only seventeen. But she couldn’t quite come to terms with being sensible, not in this sunny park, and not when she was high on adrenalin.
‘Oh, I suppose so,’ she said, ‘but I think I’ll be counting the days.’
‘Is that a fact?’ said Edward, an arm around her waist.
‘Edward, I just know I’d love to be married to you,’ she said.
‘Blimey,’ said Edward, ‘then I think I’ll be counting the days myself. You’re a lovely girl, Leah.’
‘Oh, my life,’ she said happily. It didn’t matter to her that Edward wasn’t husky or broad-shouldered or a Clark Gable. She knew, she just knew, he was kind and sincere, and comforting to be with. He was manly and protective, and he belonged to the family that her mother always said was the finest in the land, made so by their remarkable matriarch, Mrs Maisie Adams. Show me, her mother said once, any woman who has given the country three sons more splendid than Boots, Tommy and Sammy Adams.
Loitering GIs whistled at her. She simply walked on with Edward, pushing the problems of their different religions to the back of her mind, where they settled down without twitching.
Chapter Ten
Sunday
MR HAROLD FORD, WEATHERBEATEN in his middle age, and known as the Gaffer, was at the gate of a house in Wansey Street, Walworth, when an expected taxi from Waterloo Station pulled up. The cabbie got out, opened the passenger door and helped Mrs Cassie Brown and her children to alight. Six-year-old Maureen, called Muffin, and four-year-old Lewis, scampered up to the open gate and into the arms of the Gaffer, their granddad. Although the house was strange to them, Muffin being only two and Lewis an infant when their mother took them to live in Wiltshire, she had spoken of the place so often that they knew they were home.
‘Granddad!’ cried Lewis happily.
‘We’re here, Grandpa!’ exclaimed Muffin.
‘As expected and on time, which is a compliment to me old railways, eh?’ smiled the Gaffer, a ganger foreman, who had just transferred from Swindon back to his old working habitat with South-Eastern Railways. ‘Here I am, Cassie,’ he said, moving from the gate to help with the luggage the cabbie was depositing on the pavement.
‘Hello, Dad,’ said Cassie. She was in her twenty-ninth year, and still looked at life out of eyes that always seemed to be in search of unexpected gifts. A clear crisp sunny morning in December or a new balancing act by Lewis counted among the delightfully unexpected. She and her good old dad, together with the children, had been living in Wiltshire out of the way of bombs for well over three years. Finally, and because air raids on London were now rare, she had decided she could no longer wait to get back home. Home was here, in Walworth, and Walworth was the place of a hundred happy memories for her, most of them relating to her times with Freddy. Her decision had been helped by the moving out of wartime tenants from the house a month ago, and she had chosen to make the journey on a Sunday, when travel was just that much easier for a woman with two children and lots of luggage. ‘Dad, what d’you think now of us coming back?’ she asked.
‘I’m happy because I know you are,’ said the Gaffer.
‘Home’s home,’ said Cassie. Her dad, a great handyman who could plug leaks in tin kettles, create a built-in wardrobe, and successfully fight the animosity of a burst pipe, had left Wiltshire a few days in advance to get the house in complete order for her and the children. Hubby Freddy, overseas with a battalion of the East Surreys, had written by Forces airmail five weeks ago in response to her letter telling him she was thinking of returning to Walworth. He said that as long as she was sure they weren’t going to run into any air raids, the move was fine by him. Being head of the family, he said, I’m appreciative of you asking for my approval, which I’m giving. Keep the kettle warming on the hob, he said, in case I turn up myself. Freddy love, I wish you would, she’d said in her reply. As for him being head of the family, she reminded him that Queen Victoria was old bones now, and that there were two equal heads to the family, except hers was more equal than his, which they’d agreed on ages ago. She was now waiting for his next letter, although letters from him were beastly irregular. He always apologized for keeping her waiting, but she knew why irregularity persisted. Freddy was in Burma.
She paid the cabbie, and gave him a generous tip.
‘Well, bless yer, lady,’ he said, ‘and good luck. You’re the kind the lads are fighting for. Wish I had two kids like yours. Instead, I’ve got four racketin’ gals, all in the Wrens and all a danger to the King’s Navy. Lucky they ain’t Queenie’s kitchen maids or they’d of blown up Buckingham Palace by now. They’re what yer might call accident-prone, like. Still, I’ve got a soft spot for all of ’em, specially as they ain’t blown me up yet, nor me dear old Dutch. Well, so long, lady, been a pleasure.’
‘Ta-ta,’ said Cassie, and took a look up and down Wansey Street as the taxi moved off. The street was just the same, just a little bit superior to most others in Walworth, and it had escaped bombs, the bombs Germany had unleashed in fiery storms on all its opponents, thus creating reigns of terror from the skies, for which its people, so triumphant at first, were now paying dearly.
However, there were no hideous gaps in Wansey Street, no brick-torn desolation, just the quiet street in which she and Freddy had started their married life. Across the way, a little farther down, was the bright front door in which lived Mr and Mrs Cooper, adoptive parents of Horace, husband of Freddy’s younger sister, Sally. I’ll call on them tomorrow, thought Cassie, following her dad into the house, he carrying the last of the luggage. She heard the children romping around in the parlour, discovering everything that was new to them. Her dad left all the luggage in the little hall for the time being, and went through with Cassie to the kitchen. The range fire was alight, a kettle on the hob, and the room was warm, homely and comforting.
‘I’ll make a pot of tea,’ said the Gaffer, and transferred the kettle to a gas ring in the scullery. Back he came, tireless.
Cassie looked at him, weatherbeaten and iron-grey, and just about the best dad in the world. He’d been a tower of strength all through their time in Wiltshire.
‘Dad?’
‘Well, Cassie?’
‘Wiltshire was lovely, I know, but it really is nice to be home, don’t you think?’
‘Bless yer, Cassie, that I do. I’m thinking of having a pint of old-fashioned wallop down at the pub tonight.’
‘You do that, Dad.’
‘I’m hoping to run into an old acquaintance, Henry Williams.’
‘Him?’ said Cassie. ‘But you never liked him.’
‘Sanctimonious geezer, always was, always will be,’ said the Gaffer. ‘Met ’im down the market yesterday. Know what he said? That it was criminal of Churchill to approve all this bombing of Germany.’
‘Well, I like th
at, I don’t think,’ said Cassie. ‘If any people’s asked for it more than the Germans, I don’t know who.’
‘If I see him in the pub tonight, I’ve got a few things to say to him,’ said the Gaffer. ‘Things I’ve thought about.’
‘Yes, go get him, Dad,’ said Cassie. ‘You’ve got everything in order in the house?’
‘Everything, Cassie, including the beds all aired. You can put yer feet up soon as you’ve had a cup of tea, eh?’
‘I’m fine, and the children were no bother,’ said Cassie, taking off her hat and pushing at her thick black hair. Boots would have liked her hairstyle. There were no curled rolls, only long shining hair down up in a crown. Cassie looked after her own hair to save what money she could out of her allowance from the Army. ‘Dad, all we’ve got to do now is wait for Freddy to come home.’
‘He’ll walk in one day, Cassie, you bet he will,’ said the Gaffer. He knew just how much Cassie missed her bloke. They’d been inseparable from the moment they first met, when Cassie was only ten. By the time she was fourteen, she was pulling out the hair of any girl who threatened to be a rival. But the perishing war had done what nothing else could have. It had taken Freddy into the Army and away from Cassie, and there were times when she was pretty down in the mouth. ‘Soon as we’ve laid ruddy old Hitler low and chopped ’is block off, Freddy’ll walk right in, you’ll see,’ he said.
‘Dad, I love you,’ said Cassie.
‘Well, bless yer, Cassie,’ said the Gaffer, and coughed.
Lewis yelled from the parlour.
‘Mum! Granddad! Muffin’s jumping on me! Mum!’
‘No, I’m not,’ called Muffin, ‘I’m just sitting on him, that’s all.’
But perhaps Lewis did have something to complain about. Muffin was plump and he was a lightweight. Cassie smiled. Wiltshire or Walworth, one was the same as the other to lively, runabout kids. For herself, the atmosphere of home was what counted most. Old Walworth was grey and sooty. Wiltshire was green and clean. But Walworth was where she and her family belonged, where she and Freddy had enjoyed endless years of togetherness, first as boy and girl, then as husband and wife, and then as parents.
Don’t be long coming home, Freddy.
The Gaffer enjoyed his stand-up face to face confrontation with Henry Williams in the pub that evening. Henry tried to stick to his guns about the heavy bombing of Germany, saying Churchill had a lot to answer for. Churchill, actually, had his reservations about the efficacy of the raids, but allowed the chiefs of the Allied Air Forces to have their way.
The Gaffer flayed Henry with a barrage of words and got him so steamed up that he invited the Gaffer to step outside, where he swung punches. The Gaffer took a few, then responded in kind.
‘Hold that, Henry. That’s from me. And hold this one. That’s for me daughter Cassie. And here’s one on behalf of me son-in-law Freddy.’
Henry gave up, and well before any copper arrived.
Freddy at this stage of his commitment to the war was with a group of the late General Wingate’s Chindit guerrillas of the 14th Army behind the Japanese lines in Burma. They were fighting for survival in the steamy heat of the terrain, while repeatedly hitting Japanese lines of communication during the mighty battle for Kohima. The lurking presence of the enemy made every sortie a threat to life and limb. Dysentery, malaria and other kinds of malignant diseases also took their toll, and while Freddy had earned the three stripes of a sergeant, it was the high incidence of death that placed them on his sleeve well before he might have expected. As lean as a whippet, he was teak-brown and teak-hard, his cheerful nature submerged beneath the grim necessity to kill or be killed. Survival was the keynote.
Not that any of the Chindits fell easily by the wayside. They were hard and lethal fighters, many resistant to diseases by now, and they had learned from the Japs how to apply cunning and trickery to the art of disposing brutally of the enemy. They were also bitter men, for they’d been away from home for over two years, and felt they belonged to the Forgotten Army. But it did not make them less dangerous, as the Japanese were finding out. Their epitaph was already in the making, an epitaph addressed to their descendants.
‘For your tomorrow we gave our today.’
In Britain, the country from which the 14th Army was so remote, men and machines were on the move. At night huge motorized convoys of regiments, battalions and squadrons, together with guns, tanks and other armour, were heading for the South of England, and from every direction north, east and west.
The armada was beginning to gather, and Churchill’s promise to one day get at the throat of the Nazi beast was taking shape. His teeth had become formidable fangs the moment the Americans and their massive weight of armour entered the war as his allies.
Chapter Eleven
EMMA’S SISTER ANNABELLE was still in Wiltshire with her children, Philip who was eight now and six-year-old Linda. Cut off from her parents and her Adams relatives, she was nevertheless determined not to put the children at risk by returning to her home off Denmark Hill. Air raids looked to have stopped, yes, but she simply didn’t trust that gang of Berlin rotters. What had happened to the commonsense of the German people in placing their trust in such a clique of odious men was a mystery to her. Hitler had hardly been able to wait to lead them into another terrible war.
Her husband Nick, a fighter pilot, had almost become a fatal casualty of the conflict when he had to crash-land his plane. His injuries kept him hospitalized overseas for three months, and it was another three before he was able to return to duty. But that, he told her when he was finally home on leave, had probably saved him from becoming one of the RAF’s many dead in the battle for Malta, where the skies were another form of hell. His squadron, what was left of it, had been posted home for rest and recharging, and the move had coincided with his convalescent leave.
His squadron was eventually sent to Italy when the Allies invaded Mussolini’s Fascist state. Today, however, she was going to see him again, because he and other fighter pilots were once more back in England, this time training to handle new and faster planes. In his letters, Nick hadn’t said what planes they were. Well, he wasn’t allowed to tell her everything. But in his last letter he’d said he’d be with her for three days, after which he and the other pilots would depart overseas for what to Annabelle was the umpteenth time. She hoped it wouldn’t be Burma, a world away, and a nightmare world at that. By all accounts the war against the Japanese in Burma was of a kind that belonged to one’s worst dreams. Annabelle could have killed Hitler herself for starting a war that had encouraged Japan to join in.
It was just two in the afternoon, and she was shopping in the high street of the Wiltshire village, Philip and Linda being at school. Nick was due to arrive about three, and had told her he was getting a lift in Bloggsy’s car from his present station in Somerset.
‘Bloggsy?’ said Annabelle, who by pre-arrangement with Nick was receiving a call from him in the village phone booth at the time.
‘Roger Blewitt-Broughton actually,’ said Nick, ‘so we call him Bloggsy, of course. First-class pilot, but mad as a dog.’
Annabelle was now experiencing a sense of happy anticipation. She was a demonstrative woman, and more temperamental than Emma. Twenty-seven now, she had her highs and lows, and she had had her disagreements with Nick, but she was equipped, by virtue of family traditions, to work at her marriage, because sustaining the bond was far more worthwhile than breaking it. Sometimes dissatisfaction reared its unwelcome head on account of Nick’s prolonged absences from her life and the lives of their children. Such moods were partly due to worry that his time as a fighter pilot would come to an end from enemy action, for she was well aware that losses among his kind were heavy. However, all dissatisfaction melted away immediately leave brought him back to her, and there was always the knowledge that the RAF would ground him for executive duties when he had completed his maximum tours of active service.
An open sports car was racing along
the winding country roads not far from the village. Five RAF flying men, including the driver, were crammed into the car, nominally a two-seater. The owner-driver, Pilot Officer Blewitt-Broughton, was taking bends in hair-raising style.
‘Keep this pram on the bloody road, Bloggsy!’ yelled one passenger.
‘Don’t wet your pants, Kipper,’ shouted Bloggsy.
‘I already have, you lunatic.’
They came out of a bend on the wrong side of the road, the car skewing and squealing as Bloggsy wrenched at the wheel. A police constable, riding a bicycle, stopped, dismounted, moved to the middle of the road and held up an authoritative hand. The car came to a giddy, scarifying halt on tyres almost bald.
‘Afternoon, officer,’ said Bloggsy, ‘what can we do for you?’
‘You in charge of this vehicle, sir?’
‘Right first time,’ said Bloggsy, sporting a flowing moustache, ‘it’s my own baby.’
‘Well, it’s overloaded, sir, and by the evidence of my own eyes, being driven in a manner dangerous to behold, which is an offence. It ’ud be safer for your passengers to catch the afternoon bus that’ll be coming along shortly.’
‘Have a heart, officer,’ said Bloggsy, ‘most of us have got another ten miles to chew up.’
‘Well, I don’t wish to spoil the day for you gentlemen, but I have to caution you to drive with due care and attention, as is required by the law. Understood, sir?’
‘Hearing you loud and clear, officer,’ said Bloggsy.
It was a little later when Annabelle, emerging from the grocer’s old-fashioned but spicy-smelling establishment, saw the sports car entering the village at racing speed. She stared in horror as it rushed towards a woman crossing the street. Brakes went on, wheels spun, tyres shrieked, and the car, skidding, slewed past the paralysed woman at an ungovernable rate. It struck the kerb sideways on and turned over with a sickening crash. Men in RAF uniforms hurtled from it. The engine died, but the upper wheels were still spinning, the car on its side, the driver a crumpled heap, half in, half out, the passengers limply sprawled over the pavement.
The Way Ahead Page 9
