Homing (7 page)

But she wondered if it looked as though she was funking it, working with creatures who had no souls and couldn’t tell their trouble. Maybe it was funk, not to face the human fright and pain and blood. At least Mab seemed not to think less of her this afternoon, when she finally chose her war work and signed up as an Animal Guard, though it was often hard to tell what Mab thought behind that unchildlike composure. Apparently Mab had more courage than Jeff’s wife, who found herself sick and shaky with what must be sheer cowardice when everyone else was so collected and sure where their duty lay. Even Mab was brave, thought Sylvia—and it was humiliating to remember, unfairly, that Mab would be sent to Farthingale before it began….

When Dinah set out for the BBC to hear Jeff’s broadcast, Mab and Virginia decided to try bed, but Sylvia was still
mooching
about in the drawing room, where Midge’s cage stood covered in a corner, when they all returned after midnight. Bracken said
he had given up sleeping for the duration, and they sat a while with drinks and sandwiches, discussing the telephone
conversation
which he had had with Johnny before the broadcast began. The Taverne, where the correspondents gathered in Berlin, was reduced to its neutral customers now, after having drunk the Russian Pact in with champagne the night before as a gesture of defiance and to relieve their feelings; neutrals and the smirking German editors who were now suddenly denying everything they had been taught by the Nazis to say about Russia for six years, in a brazen overnight about-face fantastic even for the mindless hirelings of Goebbels. By dawn some of the Taverne arguments had turned pretty nasty, and some of the less neutral, like Johnny, had had to take a turn in the Tiergarten to cool off. He would never forget Camilla’s face when he got home, Johnny said, roused out of a belated sleep to hear his latest news. “Sitting up in bed jawing
me
!” he reported with something like a snicker. “I had to remind her that
I
hadn’t gone to Moscow!”

They smiled rather feebly at the story, and their own dawn, twenty-four hours later, was greying the streets outside. Johnny thought the Berlin rumours last night of an immediate march into Poland were premature, because the German people hadn’t been sufficiently worked up to it. The Germans were awfully happy so far about the whole thing at Moscow, Johnny said—too happy even to feel sheepish, for the terms of the Pact
precluded
a Soviet alliance with Britain and France now, and banished the carefully nurtured German nightmare of
encirclement
. Now there could be no Eastern Front—except of course Poland, which didn’t count.

Johnny said the bar at the Adlon where he and Camilla lived was very lonely tonight with the British gone. He had been hanging out there with an American just out of Warsaw—some sort of Unofficial guy, just a Tourist, Johnny explained in his code voice which capitalized the vital word ever so slightly—one of those professional globetrotters on Holiday, as you might say.

This American said the Poles would fight like hell,
he
bet, and even then he gave them about a month, without help. They were too charming, and too confident, and too old-world, and too bloody ill-equipped. And by the way, said Johnny, ask Virginia if she remembered anything about October 1918.

Virginia would naturally remember several things about October 1918, but she had gone to bed for once, and Johnny had not told them what sort of thing she was supposed to remember.
Something about the American in the Adlon bar, apparently. Not much to go on. They speculated on it briefly, with yawns, and went off to lie down a while, if not to sleep, before the new day caught up with them.

“Of course I remember October 1918,” said Virginia at
breakfast
when they put it to her. “They went right on getting killed. What else do you want to know?”

“We sort of wondered if you recalled any Americans,” Jeff said mildly.

“Quite a few. Why?”

“We don’t know why,” Bracken admitted. “Johnny was trying to get something across last night on the phone. He’s met up with an American tourist type—he says—who is in and out of Warsaw, and then he said to ask you.”

“Intelligence man,” said Virginia, not batting an eye, pouring out more tea.

“Probably,” Bracken conceded with respect.

“What’s his name?”

“No names,” said Bracken.

“I see,” said Virginia.

And then, though her eyes were on her teacup and she did nothing so obvious as catch her breath or change colour, Bracken could have sworn that she thought of something. He waited, while a silence spread.

“Well, it’s not much to go on, is it,” said Virginia, her eyes still lowered, and they agreed it wasn’t and went on waiting. “There were dozens of them,” she remarked, and lifted her cup. “Most of them I wouldn’t know now from a hole in the wall. Why? Is it important?”

“Hard to tell. It could be,” Bracken said cautiously.

“He’ll get himself killed, no matter who he is, mucking about in Warsaw, once the fun starts,” said Virginia.

“The American Embassy has taken a villa outside Warsaw as a refuge in case of air raids,” Bracken said. “No flies on Biddle.”

“Well, so they have here, at Epsom or somewhere,” she agreed. “And will the German bombers know Biddle’s Embassy villa outside Warsaw from anybody else’s villa when the time comes—or will they care?”

“Remains to be seen,” said Bracken, handing his cup for more
tea. He perceived that there would be nothing more forthcoming now, and when Virginia remarked that believe it or not the annual cricket party at Farthingale village was tomorrow and she had to be seen there as usual, he allowed Johnny’s mysterious American to sink into temporary oblivion.

“You’d think they’d call the cricket off this year,” Sylvia remarked.

“What, and let Hitler have the satisfaction?” Virginia
demanded
. “They begin to plan these August festivals in January. This one has already sustained the march into Prague and the death of Albania. We aren’t going to miscarry now!”

“But surely everybody’s called up,” said Sylvia.

“Regulars and reservists, yes. But there are still enough old crocks and schoolboys to make a team, and the village expects it. They could never do it without Mab and me, though, so we’ll be off right after lunch, if we can have the car.”

“Certainly, take the car. But there’s no real rush yet,” Bracken said.

The morning papers lay beside him, folded so that only one headline was visible.
Hitler’s
Midnight
Conference,
it said. Next to that there was a column about all Warsaw digging trenches, even expensively dressed women swinging picks and shovels in the dramatic eleventh hour effort.

The breakfast table party broke up reluctantly, and Virginia kissed her brother and Jeff good bye with a secret dread of what might happen in the interval before she saw them again.
Telephone
service to the country areas was curtailed and belated even now, and once down in Gloucestershire she would feel cut off and out of touch. Except for the children, she would have much preferred to stay in London.

Putting the last overnight things into her bags for the drive to Farthingale, she felt the same uneasy finality—when would she see Upper Brook Street again? The uncertainty, the depression, the sudden preciousness of commonplace things and everyday people took her mind back again to 1918. October. There had been dozens of Americans, yes, and one of them was now in and out of Warsaw where the bombs would fall first. Intelligence work, if that was it, was no joke nowadays, even for a neutral. Worse than ever before, because bombs didn’t care about neutrals, for one thing, and much good Ambassador Biddle’s suburban villa would be once the Nazi planes began on Warsaw…. October…. Twenty-one years ago, less a month.

Virginia stood by the window of her bedroom, looking out at the muggy, drizzling London day.

What weather, she thought, trying not to think of the other thing. Beastly day for the drive home. But you don’t know if he is still alive, she thought. He went back into the Line that October. You don’t know if he was still alive when the Armistice came. But if he is—Intelligence is just about what you might expect Tracy Marsh to be doing…. Did they say my name last night, there at the Adlon or wherever it was? Camilla would hear, and wonder. Camilla was a kid V.A.D. in 1918,
preoccupied
with her own unhappy affairs, which had nothing to do with stray American wounded passing through the hospital where they both worked. Anyway, it couldn’t be…. But then why did Johnny say to ask me….

In Dinah’s town Rolls, with the ageing chauffeur to drive it, Virginia and Mab and Noel the spaniel left London in the early afternoon, going round to pick up Basil and his nurse—who was fortunately a sensible woman, thought Virginia, and was doing her best to prevent him from growing up a self-satisfied prig like Ian.

It was a mild day of clouds and sun, with showers, and except that they kept passing lorry loads of Air Territorials going
somewhere
in a hurry, England looked entirely peaceful and normal. Mab found Virginia a little absent-minded during the drive, and supposed that she was thinking of the people they had left behind them in London, for Mab hated that part of it too. Sylvia was grown up and Sylvia was brave and so Sylvia had the right to stay with Jeff. Dinah stayed with Bracken. Irene stayed with Ian. And in Berlin, Camilla stayed with Johnny. Children and
grandmothers
were spared the awful glory of sticking with a husband no matter what happened. You said good bye to Jeff, you felt his lips briefly on your cheeks, his coat was rough and warm under your hands, and then the door closed behind him and Bracken, off to Fleet Street and the tickers. But Sylvia would be there when he came home tonight. And when the bombs came? But Sylvia was brave.

Virginia bought a local afternoon paper at the end of the journey to Gloucestershire. It said that Hitler had sent for the British Ambassador, which might be interpreted as a good sign. It said there was a feeling of relief, however faint, through the country. While negotiation existed, a chance remained. Anyway, the
Echo
concluded, the Nazis had miscalculated the effect of the
deal with Russia. Instead of caving in, Britain and France were more determined than ever to see the end of a situation full of unpleasant surprises, intolerable tension, and suspense.
Everybody
was sick of Hitler. One way or another, Hitler had to go.

They arrived at Farthingale at sundown unreasonably tired, to find the elderly parlourmaid and the ancient gardener coping with blackout preparations in the drawing room. Virginia threw down her hat and stood facing the great west window where the tea table was always laid. Fitted plywood shutters—black sateen curtains on extra rods—in Gloucestershire!

“Oh,
what
a swot it’s going to be, blacking out every night!” she cried in despair. She had felt rather foolish last spring having part of the cellar reinforced to construct a refugeroom—but now it was done and ready, like the blackout arrangements. Tomorrow it must be stocked like Dinah’s with emergency stores….

Basil was asking in a whining voice for the seventh time if Mummy would be there in the morning. Virginia rounded on him.

“Nobody will have their mummies with them pretty soon!” she said a bit sharply. “And most people won’t even have their grannies!”

Basil was tactfully removed nurserywards by his nurse, who knew her way around the house from previous visits.

“That reminds me, madam,” the elderly maid Melchett
remarked
with some reluctance and an anxious smoothing of her apron. “Lady Laverham rang up and I was to tell you that we have been alerted for the reception of the children from
Birmingham
.”

“Good Lord,
when
?”

“That’s not definite yet, madam. She said the people from the Bank that is booked in there at Cleeve are expected too. And there’s been a gentleman here again about the billeting, and I let him look at the rooms. That’s the third time.”

“All right,” said Virginia, resigned. “Let ’em all come. But first let me have a nice dry Martini, very cold, and a dish of salted almonds.”

As Melchett left the room on the errand and the gardener eclipsed the westward window with his blackout rehearsal, Virginia turned away to snap on a table lamp, which illumined the small satirical smile on her lips. It sounded like praying, she thought. Please God, let me always have a nice dry Martini
first.

“Gran.”

“Yes, darling.” She noticed with compassion that Mab had not sat down either.

“I haven’t got a job. In the war, I mean.”

“Later, darling.” Virginia sighed. Fourteen.

“But everybody has to do something,” said Mab, standing helplessly in the middle of the rug. “And with the Bank people billeted here in the house we won’t have any of the Birmingham children—”

“Thank God,” said Virginia piously. “The village will be full of them, never fear. We’ll have to have working-parties to make warm clothing and stuff for the new babies which are sure to arrive. You can knit and sew quite nicely, so you can help with that. And something must be done for their entertainment, I suppose, because the cinemas will all be closed.”

“Shall we get bombs down here, do you think?” Mab asked, trying to sound academic and detached.

“Theoretically, no. We are a reception area. But they’ll try for Cardiff and Birmingham, and the observers’ post on the hill beyond Cleeve will catch it—which takes them right over our heads,” Virginia conceded wearily, and came to lay her arm round the small, lonely figure in the middle of the room, as a different window, on the south, went dark in its turn. “We’re all groping, Mab, if that’s any comfort to you. Nobody knows much more than you do about what’s going to happen. And nobody’s any braver than you are, either. Does that help?”

“But the people staying in London—they have to be brave—”

“They have to find courage,” Virginia said. “It’s not quite the same thing. Deep down inside, everybody’s scared, believe me. It’s how you behave in spite of being scared that counts.”