Homing (9 page)

Morbid, unaccustomed thoughts for Charles, who presented to the world a deceptively stolid Guardsman’s countenance. In view of the standard British joke that the War Office is always preparing for the last war, the off-hand way in which he had been summoned to London, at a time when most of the dug-outs from 1918 were a drug on the market, was to him a sign that this time they were really up against it. And as for Tracy Marsh—if he was in Warsaw now, and if he ever got out, he, Charles, would give his game leg for a chance just to listen to him.

A sound at the door turned their heads towards it. Mab stood there, apologetic in a dressing gown and slippers, with purple shadows under her eyes.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “I got terribly hungry—”

Charles rose instantly, holding out welcoming hands.

“Come and join the wake,” he said. “You can have all the sandwiches.”

“Suppose I pop down to the kitchen and warm some milk,” said Virginia, rising too. “Wouldn’t you like a cup of Ovaltine?”

“I can get it,” Mab said, holding to Charles. “Melchett’s gone to bed, I expect.”

“I’ll do it. You sit down here with Charles and Rosalind.”

It’s worse for the young, Virginia was thinking on her way to the kitchen. Suppose you were fourteen, and had never seen a war, and had to keep a stiff upper lip. Suppose you were Mona, and in love. What will they all have to bear before this is over! We had our fun, we had the last of it, before the other one. And what can we do now to help them?
Ovaltine!
And love. Lashings of love, for all of them, even the ones out of Birmingham—especially the ones out of Birmingham, God help them….

Saturday produced glorious weather, and the atrocity stories began to come out of Poland. While evacuation proceeded methodically in England, the trains full of women and children leaving Warsaw were bombed, creating chaos and horror. And England had not declared war.

“We’re right to wait,” Virginia said, white-faced, laying aside the newspaper. “We’re right to get ours out before he can get at them.”

Driving into the village after breakfast to the Parish Hall which served as the reception centre for evacuees, Virginia joined Rosalind who was already there, surrounded by her lists and billeting vouchers and accommodation forms, in a group of competent women who were dealing with small crises left over from yesterday and preparing for new complications which would begin with the first busload expected before noon today.

“Hullo,” said Rosalind, looking wrung out but composed. “Charles got off to London early this morning.”

“Today? I thought—”

“They phoned through and wanted him at once. Things are speeding up.”

“There’s no real news this morning.”

“The House meets at three. It will come then.”

Meanwhile, rumour invented reasons for the delay, especially in the pubs. Paris was wobbling, they said—there was
something
sinister going on at the top in France. Mussolini had stepped in—Russia had tripped up Hitler already—Roosevelt was going to do something—there would be another Munich—they had discovered too late that there was no way to get help to Poland in time—the first raid over England would come without warning before the declaration could be made—there was a Ray—there was a new gas—something sensational in the way of defence from bombing would be revealed…. “I am not going to believe anything unless I hear it on the BBC,” Virginia said firmly.

Some things they did know, even down in Gloucestershire. There would be no more weather forecasts in Britain, but it was the most beautiful day of the whole year. The observers’ post on the hill behind Cleeve was fully manned, on duty round the clock, and the Specials were out on patrol. The wardens’ posts were at full strength, with somebody always on the telephone, with maps hung and gasmasks and decontamination suits smelling up the passage. One glanced up instinctively at planes in the sky and thought subconsciously, “Ours”. One saw cattle grazing in a field, ancient horses living out their placid existence in a mechanized age, and thought of low-flying German planes with machine guns….

The district medical officer arrived at the Parish Hall with his grisly supplies—sealed dressings, bottles of Dettol, bandages and lint and splints—not much of it, really—how much would be enough, in Gloucestershire? More children arrived, dismal or
over-excited as the case might be, and more pregnant mothers with those sinister pink cards….

At the back of everyone’s efficiency and good humour there lurked a common rage—that bloody awful little man called Hitler….

Working side by side, unemotionally, doggedly, right through lunch and on to tea time, Virginia and Rosalind got the new consignment from Birmingham off to its lodgings before the blackout, without anything which could be called disaster.
Nothing
was born on the spot, Virginia remarked with visible relief, and nobody threw up on the floor. And when they parted from each other with weary smiles the knowledge that they must not use the telephone for non-essential chat gave them a lonely
cut-off
feeling. The loss of Charles’s weekend at home was a blow. Things must be in a bad way indeed, to overcome official reluctance to make use of that generation which was so terrifyingly scarce, even in Charles’s exalted field.

She arrived back at Farthingale to learn that in her absence four female secretaries and four typists ditto had taken up their quarters in the house, and she went upstairs to make them
welcome
. She found them much as she had expected—well-dressed, personable girls, tired to death, a little on the defensive in these strange surroundings, anxious to please, and perhaps somewhat awed at sight of her. As usual there was one among the lot that stood out.

“I never thought anything nice could come of this war,” said the secretary whose name was Anne Phillips. “But living in a house like this one will make up for a lot.”

Virginia, who loved the house so passionately herself, at once warmed to the girl.

“Come downstairs and have a look round before the blackout,” she suggested. “You’re to have the small drawing room for your own use. Don’t feel that you have to coop up in your bedrooms all the time.”

“
Two
drawing rooms in the house?” Anne exclaimed, impressed.

“Well—card room, music room, back parlour—whatever you want to call it. There’s a piano in it, and a radio of course. It’s on the left at the foot of the stairs. Come along, I’ll show you.”

Claudia Merton, who shared the bedroom with Anne, said she’d rather get settled in first, thanks, and Anne followed Virginia downstairs, walking lightly, trailing one hand down the
polished banister. She was a frail blonde with enormous eyes and a generous mouth. Her silk-clad ankles looked breakable, like a deer’s. Virginia wondered if she had ever had quite enough to eat, but her voice was well-placed and
unself-conscious
her vowels were unself-conscious and correct.

“I’ve always dreamed of a house like this,” Anne was saying as they reached the lower hall. “And to think it took Hitler to get me inside one!”

“I’m sure he never meant to oblige you,” Virginia said.

“And wouldn’t he be furious if he knew!” They laughed together, and Anne admired the little parlour set aside for their use, and then paused on the bottom step on her way back to finish unpacking. “I hope you won’t mind Claudia’s bad manners,” she said unhappily. “Her boy’s been called up, and she’s taking it very hard. It makes her seem cross.”

“And how about your boy?” Virginia asked kindly.

“I’m lucky. I haven’t got one.”

She skipped away up the stairs, with a graceful little wave from the top. What a nice child, Virginia thought, and forgot all about her.

Not until evening did the Prime Minister announce to a troubled, unruly House that there had been no reply from Hitler and that no further conference could take place while the invasion of Poland continued. Although there was still no formal declaration of war by Great Britain and France, a time limit was now implied. The House was to assemble tomorrow for its first Sunday session in modern times.

The prolonged agony of delay and seeming indecision caused only exasperation when the late News was read by the BBC.

“What are they
doing
!”
cried Virginia, switching off the radio and rumpling her hair with the same impatient hand.

“It seems as though they don’t know what to do,” Mab said, longing for Jeff’s opinion, which was only as far away as the telephone one could not use.

“They know well enough. We shall be a laughing-stock if this goes on. I’ve got to talk to Bracken!”

“It’s like the crocodile’s clock,” Mab remarked thoughtfully, and Virginia sent her an inquiring look. “In
Peter
Pan
,” Mab explained. “You hear it ticking. You know it’s coming. Finally you only want to get it over with.”

The telephone rang, and they both rushed to it. It was Dinah, low-voiced and hurried, slipping in one little three minutes from
London. A cable had come to say that Evadne and Stephen were sailing today. On an American boat, so Virginia needn’t worry, Hitler wouldn’t touch that.

“How do we know he won’t?” asked Virginia grimly. “Tell us more, we’re starving for news.”

“We don’t know any more here,” Dinah said wearily. “Unless at Whitehall, and censorship is on even there. I must talk fast, let me see—there was a violent thunderstorm tonight while the House was still sitting, and everybody thought it was the first air raid. You’re supposed to laugh at that.”

“Ha-ha,” Virginia obliged mirthlessly. “Go on—quick.”

“Churchill was in the House tonight, and Lloyd-George—like 1914 over again. All the barrage balloons are up over London and everybody is standing to. Mona is with her ambulance, helping to empty the hospitals of movable patients to make room for an estimated fifty thousand casualties a week—that figure is based on what happened at Barcelona and Warsaw. Yes, I know, our defences are better! Sandbags everywhere now, and plate glass windows all taped in pretty patterns. Theatres closing, people out of work. We can’t go on like this, it will come tomorrow morning. There go the time-pips, I’ll have to stop—”

The connection ended.

As Virginia hung up, the door of the small parlour opened across the hall and the Bank girls came out, having listened to the News on their radio there.

“What
does
it mean?” asked Anne from the foot of the stairs. “Are we going to back down?”

“That was my sister-in-law calling from London,” said Virginia. “They don’t seem to know any more than we do.”

“It would be ten times worse than Munich,” said Anne. “We can’t hold up our heads if we don’t do something now.”

“Tomorrow, I think,” said Virginia. “About noon.”

She watched them trailing up the stairs. The one who was taking it badly mopped at her eyes, and Anne laid a consoling arm round her waist.

Then it was Sunday morning, September third—bright warm sunshine—a blaze of autumn colour in the gardens and the parks—green, tidy England—ten o’clock, and keep your radio turned on for an announcement at eleven—as though anyone’s radio was ever turned off, any more—eleven o’clock, here it comes—Bow bells, the BBC signal that a special bulletin was due—bells, like a wedding….

Virginia gathered the Bank girls in the big drawing room with the family. “We’ll swallow it together,” she said. They found places on the edges of the chairs and sofas, only Anne seeming at ease as a guest. Claudia Merton sniffed audibly and blew into her handkerchief while they waited. Basil was there, restless and oppressed, with his sensible nurse. Mab was there, silent and withdrawn in her young dignity. Miss Sim the governess, returned only yesterday from Scotland, sat upright in a corner with her knitting. Virginia lighted a cigarette….

At eleven-fifteen the familiar schoolmasterish voice of the Prime Minister emerged at last from the radio: “
I am speaking to you from the Cabinet Room of Number
10
Downing Street. This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government a final note stating that unless we heard from them by eleven o’clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland a state of war would exist between us. I now have to tell you that no such undertaking has been received….
”

“Well,” said Virginia quietly when it was over, “now we can hold up our heads, Miss Phillips. Now we are at war. Don’t anyone go away, I’ll only be a minute—”

When she had left the room they sat almost motionless and silent, obediently waiting for her to return. She was followed by Melchett wheeling a trolley on which were frail-stemmed glasses and a bottle of champagne in an ice-bucket.

“Dutch courage,” said Virginia, watching while Melchett popped the cork and began to fill the glasses, and the girls, wide-eyed and speechless, were almost as stunned by the elegance of champagne at eleven o’clock on a Sunday morning as by the declaration of war.

So they drank to victory, while the BBC read out again the air raid instructions and precautions they already knew by heart.

And Virginia thought of Jeff’s mother Phoebe, who by a miracle had survived when the Lusitania went down in 1915—but Evadne was on an American boat, Hitler would never touch that. And she thought of Dinah and Sylvia, who would stick with their husbands in London, which might at any moment now become the firing line. And of Camilla in Berlin, sticking to Johnny, which would be much worse. And of Charles and Oliver, who could remember a war in South Africa, to say nothing of the one in Belgium, and who were too old now for fighting, praise be—at least, for the sort of fighting which was required of them in all the previous, predictable wars….

Most of all, Virginia thought about her only son Nigel, who had grown up so like his father, even to being a barrister with chambers in the Temple—a rather dim and stranded copy of his father, since the sudden death of his young wife after only two years of marriage. They thought it was just a cold—then she started to cough—and then it was pneumonia and she was gone. No children—nothing for Nigel to go on with. Nobody saw him any more, he was at Winchester about a will case the week Virginia and Mab had left London. Since then he had rung up once or twice, but he was always bad about writing, and now it wasn’t the thing to use the telephone….