Coming Home (101 page)

So you mustn't worry about us. I know it's difficult, when we are all so far away from each other; but I know too that whatever happens, we will be all right.

Lots of love,

Judith

The Nine Days Wonder, the evacuation of the British troops trapped at Dunkirk, was over. The first men were brought home on the night of May 26, but Dunkirk was ablaze, after days and nights of constant attack, and the jetties and harbours destroyed. And so what was left of the British Expeditionary Force gathered on the beaches and the dunes, to wait for escape; patient and orderly, lined up in long, winding queues on the flat French sands.

The troop ships and naval destroyers, under constant gunfire and air attacks, lay offshore, but without means of transport, there was no way that the beleaguered troops could reach them. Consequently, security was lifted, word went out, and the following night, from Dover, a fleet of small boats began to flow across the English Channel. Yachts and barges, pleasure boats, tugs, and tub-like dinghies; they came from anchorages and boatyards at Poole and the Hamble, from Hayling Island and Hastings, Canvey Island and Burnham on Crouch. And the men who skippered these small crafts were old men and young boys, and retired bank managers and fishermen and estate agents, and any person, sufficiently resolute, who had spent their peace-time summers innocently messing about in boats.

Their brief was to get as close to the beaches as they possibly could, load up with troops and carry them to safety, shuttling to and fro, delivering their exhausted human cargo to the offshore ships which lay waiting. Unarmed, raked by enemy fire, they kept this up until fuel ran out and it was time to return to England for fresh supplies and a couple of hours' sleep. And then, off once more.

Nine days. On June 3, a Monday, the operation ceased. By means of inspired organisation and improvisation, to say nothing of individual acts of enormous personal courage, over three hundred thousand troops had been rescued from the beaches of Dunkirk, and ferried home to England and safety. The entire country gave thanks, but forty thousand men had been left behind, to spend the next five years as prisoners of war.

But the Fifty-first Highland Division were not at Dunkirk. This division, including battalions of the Black Watch, the Argylls, the Seaforths, the Camerons and the Gordons, still remained in France, to fight on alongside all that remained of a disheartened French Army. But it was a losing battle. Each morning, the English newspapers showed the sinister, thrusting arrows of the unstoppable German advance, and it was frighteningly clear that it would be only a matter of days before this last courageous remnant of the British Army was driven to the coast.

Finally, St Valéry en Caux, and they could go no farther. Fog precluded rescue by sea, and the battle-weary battalions were surrounded — trapped by the overwhelming might of the German Panzer divisions. On 10 June the French Corps capitulated, and hours later all that remained of the Highland Division followed suit. Later, disarmed, they were permitted to march past their general, and, in the rain, gave him
eyes right.
They marched on, into captivity. The Black Watch, the Argylls, the Seaforths, the Camerons, the Gordons. Gus.

Afterwards, in retrospect, Judith was always to remember the war as being a bit like a long journey in an aeroplane…hours of boredom interspersed with flashes of pure terror. The boredom was perfectly natural. It was not humanly possible for any person to live through six years of war in the top gear of passionate involvement. But the fear, and the immediacy of that fear, were natural too, and during the dark days of Dunkirk and the fall of France, Judith, and just about everybody else in the country, existed on the tenterhooks of anxiety and suspense.

At The Dower House, the wireless on the kitchen dresser was kept on all through the day, burbling away to itself from early morning to late at night, in order that no single bulletin nor news flash should be missed. In the evenings, Judith, Biddy and Phyllis all gathered around the wireless in the sitting-room and listened, together, to the nine o'clock news.

As the cloudless early-summer days crawled by, despair was replaced by cautious hope, and then — as the extraordinary operation proceeded according to plan — by thankfulness and pride, and finally, intense relief. A relief that flowered into a sort of triumph. The men were home. They had returned with nothing but rifles and bayonets and some machine guns. Behind them lay, abandoned, massive amounts of equipment. Guns, tanks, and motor vehicles, much of which had been destroyed, along with petrol tanks and oil stores, in the smoking knackers yard which was still all that remained of Le Havre.

But the men were home.

Gradually, in dribs and drabs, came news of those who had been rescued, and who had been left behind in France. Palmer, the erstwhile Nancherrow gardener-cum-chauffeur, had made it. As had Joe Warren and his friend Rob Padlow.

Jane Pearson telephoned Athena from London with the glad tidings that Alistair Pearson was safe, hauled out of the sea by a burly yachtsman, warmed by a tot of the best French brandy, and delivered ashore at Cowes. For Alistair, it seemed a suitably civilised conclusion to his adventures. But the Lord Lieutenant's son had been wounded, and was in hospital in Bristol, and Mrs Mudge's nephew, and Charlie Lanyon, Heather Warren's friend, were both posted missing, presumed killed.

But, most personal and important of all — for Diana and Edgar Carey-Lewis, for Athena and Loveday and Mary Millyway and the Nettlebeds and Judith — Edward Carey-Lewis had survived, his fighter squadron having flown successive patrols over the mayhem of Dunkirk, scattering the formations of German bombers, and driving them away from the beleaguered beaches.

From time to time, all through those tense and anxious days, if he could grab the chance and get a clear line, Edward telephoned home, simply to tell his family that he was still alive, and very often his voice was high with the excitement of a sortie only just completed.

As for Gus, after St Valéry, all hope was lost for Gus. Gus was gone, with his Regiment, into eclipse. They all prayed that he was alive and had been taken prisoner, but so many of the Highland Division had been killed during the ferocious fighting that preceded St Valéry, that this alternative seemed only too likely. For Loveday's sake, brave faces were worn, but she was heartbroken, and refused to be comforted.

‘The great thing to do,’ said Mrs Mudge, ‘is to keep busy. Least, that's what people say, but it's easier said than done, isn't it? I mean, how can I say that to my poor sister, when she's sitting there worrying herself sick over whether her boy's dead or alive? Missing believed killed, indeed! What a bit of news for the poor soul to get in a telegram. And there wasn't no one in the house with her, her husband was up St Austell market, and only the telegram boy there to make her a cup of tea.’

Loveday had never seen Mrs Mudge so down. Disaster, death, sickness, operations, and fatal accidents were usually the breath of life to her, incidents to be imparted to others, and chewed over with much relish. But this, Loveday supposed, was different. This wasn't young Bob Rogers from over St Austell way, who'd cut his fingers off in the turnip-chopper, nor old Mrs Tyson who'd been found dead in a ditch on her way home from the Mothers' Union, but Mrs Mudge's own flesh and blood, and her sister's only son.

‘I feel I should go and be with her for a few days. Just for company. She's got daughters, living up-country, but there isn't nothing like a sister, is there? Talk about old days, you can, with a sister. Her daughters are that flighty, all they talk about is film stars and clothes.’

‘Then why don't you go, Mrs Mudge?’

‘How can I? Got the cows to milk and the dairy to see to. And the haymaking will be starting in a week or two, and that'll mean trips out to the fields with the tea-bottle and Lord knows how many extra mouths to feed. Hopeless, it is.’

‘Where does your sister live?’

‘Her husband's got a farm up the back of St Veryan. Back's the word. Back of beyond, I'd say. A bus once a week if you're lucky. Don't know how she stands it. Never did.’

It was half past ten in the morning, and they were sitting at the kitchen table at Lidgey and drinking tea. Helping Walter and his father on the farm, learning to cope with the balky tractor, feeding the poultry and now the pigs (a new acquisition, bought at Penzance market with an eye to bacon rashers), Loveday necessarily spent much of her days at Lidgey. But, just lately, since the black tidings of St Valéry had broken, she had taken to escaping here on the smallest excuse, and sometimes with no excuse at all. For some reason, she found the down-to-earth company of Mrs Mudge more comforting even than the loving sympathy of her mother, Mary, and Athena. Everybody at Nancherrow was being almost unbearably understanding and sweet, but the thing was, that while trying to come to terms with the fact that Gus was dead, and that she would never see him again, all she wanted to do was to be able to talk about him as though he
wasn't
dead. As though he were still alive. Mrs Mudge was good at this. Over and over again she had said, ‘Mind you, he might have been taken prisoner,’ and Loveday was able to say the same thing to Mrs Mudge, about Mrs Mudge's nephew. ‘We don't
know
that he's dead. There must have been such dreadful battles. How can anybody be sure?’

Thus they consoled each other.

Mrs Mudge had finished her tea. She pulled herself wearily to her feet, went to the range, and poured herself another cup from her huge brown teapot. Loveday looked at her back view, and thought that Mrs Mudge had lost her bounce. Family instincts were running strong, and she clearly yearned to be with her sister. Something must be done. Loveday's inbred Carey-Lewis sense of responsibility, along with her natural bossiness, rose to the fore. By the time Mrs Mudge had sat down again, Loveday had made up her mind.

She said firmly, ‘You must go to St Veryan now. Today. For a week, if necessary. Before the haymaking starts.’

Mrs Mudge looked as though she thought Loveday had gone mad. ‘You're talking some silly.’

‘I'm not talking silly. I can do the milking. Walter can help me, and
I'll
do the milking.’

‘You?’

‘Yes. Me. Farming's meant to be my war-work. And I can milk. You showed me how when I was little. I may be a bit slow, but I'll soon get the hang of it.’

‘You could never do it, Loveday. We start at six in the morning.’

‘I can get up. I can get up at half past five. If Walter can get the cows into the milking parlour for me, then I'll be here at six to start work.’