Dover Beach

by Leslie Thomas

  Sitting on the opposite seat Cartwright opened the package.

  ‘They had it waiting for me at Church House,’ Sarah said.

  He had taken off the wrapping. The book was old and scuffed. ‘Look at that,’ he said. ‘Kentish Churches Since the Reformation. Just what I need.’ He looked at her quizzically. ‘It must seem absolutely mad doing this, worrying about churches and their stuff, when we’re under shellfire and waiting for the Jerries.’

  ‘Not at all. Your history is something you’re fighting for.’

  He put his arms about her and said: ‘It’s not as though we’re doing any fighting. Everyone’s been on the alert, day upon day, night after night, but you can only stare at the English Channel for so long. Everybody is having a good time, going to pubs and dances. Spelling bees and raffles, for God’s sake. The army is trying to keep itself occupied by marching up and down.’ He paused. ‘And there’s always the shelling.’

  September afternoon light drifted through the browning leaves of the lime walk over the path leading to the church door. Other shadows moved unhurriedly across the stones of the path. They sat on a mossy tombstone drinking tea from cups and saucers. It was very peaceful.

  ‘Old Jeffrey Baines won’t mind,’ said the vicar tapping the tomb. His name was Henry Francis Lyte and he proudly told them it was the same as the curate who had composed the words of ‘Abide With Me’.

  He was sitting on the tombstone on the opposite side of the path. ‘Been there since 1743,’ he said. ‘The Baines family still live here in the village. Every Sunday, if it’s fine, some of the older ones sit here, keeping Jeffrey company, until it’s time to go home for lunch.’

  ‘Everywhere is so quiet,’ said Sarah. ‘For a war.’

  ‘Some people are even a touch disappointed,’ said the vicar. He was a round, youngish man, with a good smile. ‘I’ll show you our treasured books.’

  He led them towards the rectory, smothered in trees. He opened the heavy door and casually moved a shotgun from the hall stand. ‘For shooting rooks,’ he said. ‘They’re a real pest. Not that I’ve ever hit one. That’s why they won’t have me in the army.’

  They went into a room full of untidy papers and cushions, with a settee and two heavy armchairs. He pulled the curtains wide to let in the sun, sending up thousands of dust particles. ‘That’s what an airborne invasion would look like, I imagine,’ he said standing back and studying it.

  He moved piles of parish magazines and newspapers so they could sit down. ‘You tried to join up then,’ said Cartwright.

  ‘I thought I had to,’ shrugged the vicar. ‘But they wouldn’t have me because I can’t see very well. In any case, I would want to be a soldier, an ordinary, real soldier. There are too many chaplains, padres or whatever.’

  He sat on the edge of a worn armchair. ‘That’s a terrible job anyway, a chaplain. I went down to Dover hospital when that first convoy was attacked in July. I thought I was going to pass out. All those poor fellows, asking me about heaven, what it was like.’

  He became suddenly silent, crushed. ‘Who knows what it’s all for.’ Then he straightened up. ‘The books,’ he said to Cartwright. ‘That’s why you’ve come.’

  ‘It is,’ said Cartwright. ‘It seems like an odd occupation just now. Making lists of books.’

  Mr Lyte shook his head. ‘It’s a good sensible thing,’ he said, ‘guarding what we have.’ He rose. ‘I’ll get them. They were kept in the church for centuries but I thought it might be a good idea to bring them over here.’

  He went from the room and returned with difficulty carrying a dark wooden chest. Cartwright apologised and helped him to put it on the oval table. It was locked and the clergyman took the key from a vase on the mantelshelf and opened it. ‘Now, let’s see what’s here,’ he said. ‘If I recall there’s . . .’ He paused with only a little embarrassment. ‘Oh, Lady Chatterley’s Lover.’ His visitors both laughed. ‘Haven’t read it since my days at theological college,’ said the vicar. ‘I was making a special study of sin.’

  They stayed at the same inn on misty Romney Marsh as they had the first time, in the same big old bed in the same room, but with a new moon. It floated as though behind gauze outside the open window as they lay close together in the dark. The same cat climbed over the sill and, folding itself up familiarly at the foot of the bed, began to purr.

  ‘This could be the last time,’ Sarah said deeply sad. ‘We may not see each other again until after the war.’

  He knew. They were lying on their backs, naked but a little apart, only their fingers touching. ‘It doesn’t seem fair, does it,’ he said. ‘But then nothing does.’

  ‘In love and war,’ she murmured.

  ‘And there’s no way out? No way you can stay?’

  ‘Only by marrying,’ she said. ‘And I don’t think there’s going to be time for that.’ She gave a sorry laugh. ‘They’re getting rid of everybody they don’t think of as essential. There are security checks every day. There was a clerk, a cipher clerk, arrested last week. Passing coded messages on to some pro-German group.’

  She turned to him so that her breasts were against his ribs. His arm took her in. ‘It will probably be next week,’ she said. ‘Or soon after. They’re sending groups back to the States by way of Southern Ireland. Then you take an American ship from Cork,’ she said. ‘And keep your fingers crossed.’

  They said nothing more for several moments. Then she turned on to her naked back again and stared at the shadowed ceiling.

  ‘Ah, love,’ she whispered, ‘let us be true, to one another! . . .’

  He picked it up: ‘For the world, which seems, to lie before us like a land of dreams . . .’

  She continued: ‘So various, so beautiful, so new . . .’

  Together they spoke in the dark: ‘Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light . . .’

  Sarah rolled on to him. He pulled the sheet over her. She was crying now.

  They made love again. In the end she remained above him. He felt for the tears on her face and wiped them with his fingers. She was still for a while, then she began to giggle. ‘Oh, darling,’ she said, her wet face against him. ‘This cat is walking up and down my back.’

  The East Kent Company’s evening bus arrived in Dover at precisely seven o’clock as it had done since the days when it was drawn by horses. Bombing, shelling, the threat of invasion, the deaths of its staff and the destruction of its own bus station made no difference to the timetable. It was a matter of pride.

  Ardley met Rose at the bus stop and they kissed with a touch of formality. ‘Plaza then?’ she said.

  ‘That’s the best bet,’ he answered. They walked arm in arm towards the cinema. Two land-mines had been dropped by parachute that morning demolishing shops and houses in the eastern part of the town and causing five deaths.

  At the Plaza cinema there was a comedy with Ethel Revnell and Gracie West. The main film was a war drama starring Marlene Dietrich, who people still regarded with suspicion since she was from Germany and sounded like it.

  There was also a Ministry of Information short film called Mrs Smith Answers the Door in which a resourceful Englishwoman finds an enemy paratrooper on her front step. She has already deflated the tyres of her bicycle and hidden the pump. The German is at a loss.

  It was the Gaumont-British News which provoked the biggest reaction from the audience. The King and Queen, visiting war-wounded in a hospital, were clapped and Churchill was cheered violently. Then came some film of Hitler with Hermann Goering, his fat air-force commander, looking across the Channel from the French coast. A mass outcry of booing and hissing lifted from the audience. Goering was pointing across the Strait of Dover as if Hitler, with binoculars, might not know in which direction England lay.

  Through the booing and hissing the servicemen began to sing lustily to the marching tune ‘Colonel Bogey’:

  ‘Hitler ’as only got one ball,

  Goering ’as two but very small,

 
; Himmler’s got something sim’lar,

  But poor old Goebbels ’as no balls at all!’

  When the main film began Rose settled back with Ardley’s arm around her shoulders. They were wreathed in blue cigarette smoke and almost silence. Ardley waited for the opportunity to place his fingers on her breast beneath her woollen cardigan and she placed her fingers on top of them.

  They walked, arms about each other’s waists, to the bus stop. They kissed and then kissed again. ‘Do you feel this is getting serious?’ said Ardley close to her face.

  ‘I think it is, a bit,’ said Rose. The bus arrived and the conductor stood watching wryly.

  ‘Goodnight, love,’ said Ardley.

  ‘Goodnight, love,’ said Rose.

  Rose got on to the platform. Ardley said: ‘See you Saturday.’ She smiled and waved and the bus drove away with her still waving. ‘Bloody hell,’ said Ardley to himself. He performed a brief jig on the pavement. ‘I’m in bloody love.’

  Twice he had been to the low house in the village hollow. On the first evening Spatchcock had poured him cider from a stone flagon and told him more about the Boer War. They sat each side of the September evening fire, low in the grate, while Rose was putting her horse to bed. She had come in grumbling from her patrol. ‘We ride and we stop and we search the sky and not a solitary Hun,’ she said. ‘Maybe the rumours about them being invisible are right.’

  ‘Churchill was a prisoner of Johnny Boer,’ said Spatchcock. ‘But he escaped. Some said he broke his parole, but I don’t know. It wouldn’t surprise me. He’s never been somebody you can trust.’

  ‘We’re trusting him now,’ pointed out Ardley.

  Spatchcock scratched his big nose. ‘He’s a good actor and he can talk,’ he said. ‘He talks better than Hitler. And a lot slower.’

  ‘There’s plenty of hands helping with the harvest this year,’ Rose said. ‘Half the British army.’

  ‘Keeps us occupied,’ said Ardley. ‘What else would we do? We march, we pretend to blow up bridges, we train as much as we can, but there’s a limit. They’re talking about roping me in to help a chap from the Education Corps to teach the men reading and writing. Most of them can add up. And he’s giving them lectures on citizenship and suchlike.’

  ‘Depends which country they’re going to be citizens of,’ said Rose.

  They went from the house and walked towards the village but she did not tell him where they were going. She halted outside the village hall where they had met at the dance. Ardley could hear a vocal chorus sounding. Carefully Rose opened the door and put her finger to her lips. ‘It’s practice night,’ she whispered.

  There were a dozen women and four men, one in fireman’s uniform, another with a black eye patch, grouped around a big woman almost engulfing a piano stool as she pumped the keys. She stopped playing and everyone turned towards the open door. ‘Sorry,’ said Rose. ‘I had to muck out.’

  ‘Hope you’ve had a wash, girl!’ exclaimed the man with the eye patch and everyone laughed.

  Rose introduced Ardley. ‘My friend,’ she said. ‘Who’s in the army.’

  ‘Unless he’s in disguise,’ said the one-eyed man.

  The large woman rose from the piano and the stool creaked. ‘I’m Polly Mason,’ she said. ‘This is our first autumn get-together, merely a tune-up. And one or two are missing. But in November we are going to put on a glorious Gilbert and Sullivan evening.’

  She had water-filled blue eyes and she looked challengingly around the group before manoeuvring herself on to the wide piano stool again. ‘Right,’ she said brightly. ‘Let’s have some lung openers. Some really good singing.’ Rose joined the end of the half-circle.

  She thumped the keys resoundingly but just as the singers opened their mouths for ‘Old Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and All’ she stopped and turned like a fairground roundabout towards Ardley who had seated himself on a chair against the wall. ‘Do you sing? Or play?’

  Ardley stood and walked towards the group. ‘I bang the piano a bit,’ he said. ‘We have one in the front room at home and we’ve sometimes had a Sunday night sing-song around it.’

  ‘Oh, good, good,’ enthused Polly. She lifted herself from the stool. ‘You take over here, young man. This thing is going to collapse under me before long. I can feel it going.’

  Ardley took her place. He was a good everyday piano player and he launched into ‘On Ilkley Moor Baht ’At’ and they quickly joined in, singing with spirit and some tune. Then Ardley played a chord and began to sing by himself, unselfconsciously, ‘Rose of England’.

  The village people fell to silence while he sang and applauded with surprise when he finished.

  ‘How wonderful,’ Polly’s large face beamed. ‘Perhaps you could join us in our Gilbert and Sullivan evening. November fourteenth.’

  ‘I don’t know where I’ll be,’ said Ardley truthfully. He glanced at Rose and saw how happily flushed she was. ‘By that time I could be in Berlin.’

  That Saturday the village dance was lively, only one of four dances throughout the Dover region, plus an Olde Tyme Ball at the town hall and an amateur talent contest at the British Legion. That day the German guns on the French coast had laid out a bombardment more prolonged than usual, but without improved accuracy. Every one of the high-explosive shells fired towards Dover fell well short of the town and even the projecting harbour. By six o’clock fishermen were scooping up hundreds of fish killed by the explosions and floating on the surface of the water waiting to be collected. Over the whole town that evening lay the aroma of fried cod and hake. With chips.

  There was no air of desperation at the village dance, no urgent sense of having a carefree and abandoned time before it was too late. Instead there was a feeling of release, release from the working-class restrictions of pre-war days when only the wealthy could misbehave and get away with it. Now there were freedoms, often from wives, husbands and families, and there was some available money. Nobody very much cared what you did. Invasion, battles and death might occur next week.

  The band, the Channel Swingers, had to be wedged in a corner because of the number of dancers. The caretaker had newly chalked the floor so that after the opening foxtrot shoes and boots appeared to have a light dusting of snow.

  The bar was wedged in the opposite corner to the band. The squad had clubbed together for a pint of Guinness for Sergeant Dunphy. Ardley was dancing with Rose, and Sproston was sent to collect his contribution. He came back and said: ‘You’d need a chisel to prise those two apart.’

  Tugwell asked: ‘Have you ever been married, sarge? Or thereabouts?’

  ‘A few brushes,’ admitted Dunphy. He looked as if he had trouble in remembering. ‘There was a lady in India,’ he said squeezing his eyes to assist the recall. ‘Beauteous and aromatic. I went through some form of ceremony with her.’

  ‘Was she . . . er, dusky, sarge?’

  ‘Just a touch,’ said Dunphy. ‘Anglo-Indian, and they’re beautiful people. All of them. Name of Gloria. I don’t know whether it was legally binding. It was more symbolic.’

  Everyone joined in the novelty dances: the hokey-cokey, the Gay Gordons and the Dashing White Sergeant. Two bulging land-girls had a fight over a thin airman during the ladies’ excuse-me waltz.

  Ardley and Rose danced together all night, hardly an inch between them. ‘Shall we go out?’ she suggested. ‘It’s getting stifling in here.’

  They eased the blackout blanket aside and, having let it drop into place again, opened the door and went out into the placid air. There was a wall behind the village hall. It was lined with embracing couples. ‘Let’s stroll up the hill,’ Rose said. ‘They’ll bring down that wall.’

  It was a short rise with a wooden seat at the top, near the dark church tower. They sat on the seat. ‘How long do you think you’ll be here?’ asked Rose.

  ‘In Dover? God knows.’

  She looked prudently across the back of the bench. ‘Nobody’s listening,’ she said. ‘They tell you wa
lls have ears, don’t they, and so do hedges. Everybody thinks they know everything around here. They even thought they knew the date of the invasion.’

  ‘All over the country they thought they did,’ he said. ‘We’ve been building bridges, when we’re not digging trenches. Building them and pretending to blow them up. How long we’re going to be pretending, I don’t know. Maybe Jerry will make up our minds for us. If he comes, then he comes. If he doesn’t, then God knows, we could be hanging about for years. Not that I mind.’ Their arms encircled each other. ‘I’ve met you.’

  He waited, then said: ‘Rose, will you marry me?’

  Rose seemed unsurprised. ‘When?’ she said. ‘You’ll have to ask Spatchcock.’

  ‘I’ll ask him,’ said Ardley. ‘What about next Saturday?’

  On the day before the wedding an enemy shell exploded in the field next to the church killing a cow, wounding another, and sending the rest of the small herd in a headlong panic over the crumbling churchyard wall and through the graves. They were rounded up cowering and ululating under the roof of the lych-gate. That night a homeward-bound Dornier dropped two spare bombs into an orchard not far from the village, bringing all the apples down at once.

  ‘I was assured that this was a safe parish,’ complained the vicar to Spatchcock. He was new and nervous. ‘Out of range of the guns and of no interest to the Luftwaffe.’

  ‘Been quiet enough up to now,’ said the old man. ‘They never tried to bomb the Reverend Hodgekinson.’

  ‘Well, I’m not the Reverend Hodgekinson, I am the Reverend Kenneth Hands,’ said the peeved vicar. ‘I’m from Worcester and I’m too close to the Germans for my liking.’

  ‘I saw your name in the paper,’ Spatchcock assured him. ‘Give it time. The Huns might go away.’

  They were standing at the vicarage gate. ‘And look at the churchyard,’ complained the priest. ‘All churned up by those mad cows.’

  ‘Turned old Bertie Shanks’s grave right over. Never thought I’d see him again.’

  Rose’s bridal gown was white silk. Ten days before it had been a parachute supporting a Messerschmitt pilot on his long drop to the ground. The German manufacturer’s number was still on the hem. The village women had used a pattern from Home Notes magazine, cut it out and sewn it within a week. Rose tried it on only on the morning of the wedding. It was, she said, perfect.