Octavia

by Beryl Kingston

  Within days, young men were volunteering in their thousands all over Great Britain, glad of the chance to leave their dull lives and prove themselves heroes. Everybody said the war was going to be short and decisive, ‘over by Christmas’ according to Sir John French, so they had to be quick about it. By the time Tommy returned from his training, in the full uniform of a second lieutenant and looking extremely handsome, the British army had doubled in size, the British Expeditionary Force had landed in France and the war was under way.

  He got back just in time for a celebration. Cyril and Podge had enlisted on the first day of the war and their proud parents had followed their training day by day, commiserating with them for the lack of tents and provisions and consoling their impatience as the weeks grumbled past. Now they were organising a family party to give them a proper send-off.

  ‘Such good brave boys,’ Maud said to her sister. ‘Heroes, the pair of them.’

  Amy was sorting out a pile of bunting, which was in such a tangle it was harder work than she expected. She had to pause for a minute to catch her breath. It was something she often had to do those days. ‘You will miss them when they go,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, I shall,’ Maud agreed. ‘But I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’m so proud of them. Especially when they’re in uniform. They look so splendid! They wear it all the time you know, even when they’re on leave.’

  ‘So does Tommy,’ Amy said. ‘And you’re right, it does make them look handsome.’

  ‘Do you think we ought to invite his parents?’ Maud asked. ‘Tommy’s I mean. Now he’s home. After all, he is part of the family and he’ll come to the party, won’t he? It would be rather nice. A combined send-off.’

  So the guest list was extended to include Tommy’s family and friends, and extra catering was ordered, and even though it all had to be done in a matter of days, it was a great success. By then Tommy’s brother James had enlisted too, so there were four soldiers to be petted and toasted and told they were heroes, even if young Jimmy wasn’t in uniform yet. In fact, they had so much champagne urged upon them that Podge, who wasn’t used to quite so much praise nor quite so much alcohol, became incoherent and giggly. When the time came to make a speech he could barely manage a sentence and every word in it was slurred, although he was applauded to the echo. And Jimmy was little better, saying, ‘Thank you. Most kind. King and country and all that,’ and then sinking back into his seat to happy cheers and laughter.

  Having reached the maturity of twenty-six, Cyril and Tommy could take as much drink as they were offered and still retain their eloquence. Tommy thanked his guests for their good wishes and told them he considered himself the luckiest man alive to be part of the great British army and to have persuaded Octavia to be his wife, ‘which took some doing, I can tell you!’ Cyril surprised everybody by quoting poetry.

  ‘It’s a sonnet by Rupert Brooke,’ he told them. ‘You know. The feller from Cambridge. Jolly good stick by all accounts. Anyway here it is. I think it speaks for us all.’ And he cleared his throat and began.

  ‘Now God be thanked who has matched us with His hour

  And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping

  With hand made sure, clear eye and sharpened power

  To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping,

  Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary.’

  It was done with such style that his guests broke into admiring applause. ‘Bravo that man!’ they called. ‘Well said!’

  ‘I don’t mind telling you,’ he admitted, a touch bashfully. ‘It speaks for me too. I was getting to be absolutely stifled in the bank before this happened. Sorry about that, Pater, but it’s the truth. Banks are a dashed good idea and all that but they ain’t for everyone. I feel like a free man now. Absolutely top hole. Off to do my duty and show the Hun what’s what. They may think they’ve got everything going their way, invading poor little Belgium and all that rot, but you wait till we get there. It’ll be a different story then.’

  That was applauded too. ‘That’s the style!’ his guests called. ‘You show ’em, Squirrel!’

  ‘Didn’t I tell you he was a hero,’ Maud said to her sister. ‘My dear brave boy.’

  ‘And I’ll tell you something else,’ her hero went on. ‘If there are any chaps out there who haven’t enlisted yet, you’d better tell ’em to jump to it or it’ll all be over before they’re trained. I give it till Christmas.’

  Later that evening when the drinking and dancing were done, Tommy walked Octavia home across the quiet heath. They strolled together in the moonlight, dreamily, his arm about her waist, stopping for kisses that roused them to the sharpest desires, kissing again and again, aching and unsatisfied.

  ‘You will come to the flat tomorrow,’ he urged.

  ‘Yes,’ she said between kisses. ‘Yes. Of course, my darling, darling.’

  ‘If we were married we could go there now,’ he complained. ‘All this observing the proprieties is such a bore.’

  ‘I know,’ she soothed. It wasn’t the time or the place to argue, for the heath was tranquil about them and the western sky already greened by the approach of dawn. Trees and bushes rustled in a sudden breeze as if they were sharing secrets, the grass was dappled with mysterious shadow, the white stars studded in their familiar patterns, aloof and watchful.

  ‘Will it be over by Christmas?’ she asked.

  He was kissing her neck and in thrall to sensation, so it took him a minute to answer. ‘Who can tell?’ he said. ‘Wars ain’t predictable.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I prefer not to think about it at all,’ he said. ‘I’d rather take you to bed and love you all night.’

  ‘There’s not much of the night left now,’ she told him. And teased, ‘You’re running out of time.’

  He was suddenly and unnervingly serious. ‘We’re all running out of time,’ he said, bitterly. ‘That’s the truth of it. Squirrel and Podge and me, all of us; running out of time, running away from our homes and the people we love, running, all of us, running headlong into a war and we don’t know what it will do to us, or what we shall see, or anything about it. Blind fools, the lot of us.’

  She was riven with pity for him, remembering that dreadful massacre and how she’d felt when she heard about it. He was right. It was all very well people saying it would all be over in sixth months but how could they possibly know? War was unpredictable. He was right about that too. There was no knowing what he would have to face in France, no knowing how monstrous the battles would be – and there were bound to be battles. It occurred to her that she was being selfish, thinking of herself and her job when he was going away to war. She ought to have agreed to marry him in August and not made him wait till Easter. Maybe she ought to do it anyway, now, quickly, before he leaves, while there’s still time.

  He was walking on, his arm still round her waist, as the trees whispered above them. I will speak to Papa, she decided, and see what he advises. Tomorrow, at breakfast.

  Sunday breakfast at South Hill Park was always a leisurely meal, with plenty of time to read the papers and discuss the news. J-J said it was the one moment in the week when they could relax and be themselves. ‘When I retire,’ he promised, ‘we shall have Sunday breakfast every day of the week. How will that suit you?’

  ‘I shall be married by then,’ Octavia told him, making her opportunity. ‘In fact, to tell you the truth, I’m beginning to wonder whether I ought to be married now.’

  ‘Now?’ her father asked, laughing. ‘Today do you mean?’

  ‘Before he goes to France.’

  Her mother was alarmed. ‘Don’t think I’m trying to discourage you, my darling,’ she said, ‘but it would give us very little time to prepare. We would do it of course, if that is what you truly want, but it’s very short notice.’

  Her father was looking at her quizzically. ‘I thought you had decided on next Easter,’ he said. ‘Is this a change of heart?’

&nb
sp; She answered him seriously ‘No, Pa,’ she said. ‘A change of obligation. He is going to war and I’m staying here. I shall be safe at home and he’ll be in the thick of it. He could be wounded – or even killed.’ It made her shudder to think of it. ‘Perhaps I ought to marry him before he goes. It’s what he wants.’

  J-J became serious too. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘But what of your work in the school?’

  ‘That is the problem.’

  He considered for a few minutes before he spoke again. Then he said, ‘Would you be happy to leave it now? Have you achieved all that you hoped to?’

  ‘Oh no,’ Octavia said earnestly. ‘I’ve barely begun. I’ve learnt a great deal over the year but there is so much more I need to know.’ And as her father’s expression was encouraging her, she began to elaborate, exploring ideas as they came into her mind. ‘There are so many educational practices I don’t understand. For example, why do we tell children the same things over and over again and make them learn everything by heart? The other teachers say it’s because children can’t learn without endless repetition and reinforcement, but that isn’t true. I know it isn’t. When they’re happy in what they’re doing, they learn easily and only need telling once – or at most twice. I’ve seen it on so many occasions.’

  The pins were falling out of her hair, as they always did when she was agitated but she didn’t notice. It was such a relief to be able to speak like this. She’d never been able to tell Tommy what she felt about teaching. He’d never seemed interested. He was a darling and she loved him passionately but he didn’t care about her work at all. Now with her father’s intelligent face approving what she was saying, her ideas pressed in upon her so hard she could barely contain them. ‘And there’s another thing,’ she said. ‘Why do people think it’s necessary to shout at children so much? You don’t have to shout at them. When they’re happy they will listen to a whisper. There are times when I think the others just want to punish the poor little things, they shout so much and cane them for so little. You would hardly believe what small transgressions merit the stick. But then again, to imagine teachers as sadistic is rather harsh. Too harsh to be acceptable, anyway. I have to admit that. Sometimes I suspect that they’re just doing what they’ve always done, without thinking about it. And they should think about it. If I could find a way to make them think, I should have lived to some purpose.’

  There was a strand of hair in her mouth and she stopped to remove it. ‘But then there are other matters too. Most of our children are underfed and poorly clothed, many are ill. They have head lice and adenoids and toothache. When the weather’s bad they cough all the time. And they truant. If they’re girls and their mother goes to work they have to stay at home to look after the little ’uns. If they’re boys and their father is working he takes them along as an extra pair of hands. And who can blame him? They need the money. Mr Shaw is quite right. We should be attending to all their needs, for food and clothing and somewhere to live, not just making them chant their tables. And that’s another thing…’

  ‘Stop! Stop!’ J-J begged, holding up both hands in mock alarm. ‘You are making my head spin.’

  ‘Yes…well…’ Octavia said and grimaced at him. ‘I’m sorry, Pa. I have gone on a bit but you did ask me.’

  ‘You have answered my question,’ he said. ‘Don’t you think so?’

  It was true. She had. Her work was too important to her to be left. But knowing it didn’t stop her feeling selfish and when Tommy’s embarkation leave was over and she went to Victoria station to wave him goodbye, she felt worse than she’d ever felt in her life. She stood on the platform among all the other wives and mothers, watching as the long train snaked away from her, khaki arms waving from every window and grieved to think how badly she had treated him. My poor dear Tommy, she thought. I should have married you. I was wrong to put the school first.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Life was very quiet after their soldiers had gone and it seemed a long time before their first letters home began to arrive.

  ‘At last!’ Octavia said when Tommy’s letter was delivered and was annoyed to see that her hands were shaking as she opened it. To her disappointment, he hardly said anything at all. He’d arrived ‘in good order’, couldn’t tell her where he was, ‘they censor everything’, hadn’t seen anything of the others and hoped she wouldn’t forget him.

  ‘The others’ were equally terse. According to Emmeline, ‘Podge sends picture postcards and doesn’t say anything and all Squirrel ever says is that he’s ticketty-boo or in the pink and please send another parcel and can he have some more jam. Although he did say he hoped we were missing him. Soppy thing. As if we wouldn’t.’

  Her children missed him terribly. Dora and Eddie, being seven and six years old, were grown up enough to understand that he’d gone to France and that it was a long way away and he couldn’t just come back when he felt like it, but Edith, who was only just five and often very babyish, fretted to see her uncles every time she came to visit Grandma and refused to be comforted, no matter how hard her mother tried to explain things to her. Two-year-old Dickie was too young to understand, of course, which was just as well, for Emmeline was now heavily into the seventh month of her fifth pregnancy and too weary to cope with tears and tantrums.

  ‘It’s all very well for people to say when you’ve got four you don’t notice another one,’ she complained to Octavia. ‘I do. My back’s killing me and I notice it every day.’

  In September, Octavia started her second year at Bridge Street School and was soon enjoying it even more than she’d enjoyed the first one. She’d been given her old class in a different classroom. ‘It is a special dispensation you understand, Miss Smith,’ the headmaster told her. ‘In view of the good work you did with them last year.’

  The children knew nothing about dispensations. They simply welcomed her back like an old friend. ‘Billy said you was gettin’ married, miss,’ one little girl confided, ‘but we knew you’d never.’ Octavia was touched by their confidence even though it renewed her guilt about the way she’d treated poor Tommy. She tried to assuage it by writing to him every day and as an extra sop to her conscience, she took to visiting Emmeline every Thursday to help with the children and swap such news as they had.

  It would have been easier for them if the news had been good. But it wasn’t. It had been bad from the beginning, when what had been reported as a great victory at a place called Mons turned out to be a retreat, and as the weeks passed it got worse. The Germans overran Belgium and neither the French army nor the BEF seemed able to stop them. There were battles at places they’d never heard of, the casualty lists were terrifying, and as if to underline how appalling they were, there was an official call from the government for another ‘half a million men’.

  ‘If they go on killing one another at this rate,’ Octavia said to her father, ‘we shan’t have any men left.’

  On October the 19th, when baby Johnnie slid, red-faced and bawling, into their darkening world, there was a battle at a place called Ypres. The casualty figures were the worst yet. That night when Octavia wrote to Tommy to tell him about the new baby, she asked him how things really were.

  His answer was no help to her at all. ‘Can’t tell you, old thing,’ he wrote. ‘Blue pencil and all that rot.’

  Christmas came and was celebrated quietly. None of them had the heart for parties now, although Amy did volunteer that she’d try to organise something if J-J thought she should.

  ‘And what about your wedding, my darling?’ she said to Octavia, as they sat about the fire on Boxing Day. ‘Easter isn’t far away now. Will you still go ahead with it?’

  ‘I doubt it, Mama,’ Octavia said. ‘We chose Easter because we thought the war would be over by then. Now… No, I think we’ll probably wait until it really is over and plan it then.’

  ‘That would probably be the best thing,’ her mother agreed, with evident relief. ‘Everything’s so uncertain these days.’ And she tried a
little joke to lighten the conversation, because it was really extremely sad to be talking about postponing her Tavy’s wedding, especially when they’d all been looking forward to it for such a long time. ‘I don’t suppose you could even be sure he’d get leave for it, could you? And we could hardly have a wedding without the groom. Perhaps it will be over by the summer.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Octavia said, although privately she was beginning to think that even the summer was unlikely. It was going on so relentlessly and, reading between the lines of what the newspapers were reporting, it seemed to have reached a stalemate, because the armies were digging themselves in. By the end of January, there were reports of soldiers living in trenches all along the front line, and so many men were in the army that there was a chronic shortage of manpower back at home. More and more women were working in munitions and it wasn’t long before they began to appear in the streets of London, cleaning windows and delivering bread and coal. But in February, at long, long last, Tommy came home on a week’s leave.

  He was so changed that when he arrived at Octavia’s doorstep to collect her for their first evening out, she could hardly recognise him. All his lovely thick hair had been cut back to a stubble, his face was lined and there was a long scar on his left hand.

  ‘Oh, Tommy!’ she said, as they walked down the path together. ‘What have they done to you?’

  ‘Fortunes of war, old thing,’ he said lightly.