Octavia's War (10 page)

But still nothing much was happening in Europe. After over-running Czechoslovakia and Poland, Hitler was keeping uncharacteristically quiet and there were no new German invasions for the Allied forces to withstand. By the end of October the newspapers were calling it the phoney war.

Preparations for it went ahead notwithstanding. Everybody was given a National Identity Card and a ration book, and every street had an air raid warden whose job was to enforce a total blackout and who was considered an unnecessary busybody in consequence. The darkness led to a very marked increase in road accidents and falls, and after a while every other kerbstone was painted white and letter-boxes
and pavement trees were given a bold white ring in the hope that this would reduce the number of collisions in the total darkness of a moonless night. And the wait went on.

It wasn't long before Octavia's pupils were asking their form mistresses if they could go home and see their parents at the weekend.

‘I don't see any reason why not,' Octavia said, when the matter was brought up at one of her weekly staff meetings. ‘Providing they don't travel in the blackout and providing staff don't mind them missing Saturday lessons. They're sensible girls and it's not a long journey.'

‘What are we to tell them about the Christmas holiday?' Miss Bertram wanted to know. ‘Some of them are asking about that too.'

‘We'll make a decision nearer the time,' Octavia said. ‘It's six weeks yet and we don't know what might happen in six weeks. The war might start. London might be bombed. I don't think we should commit ourselves to anything yet.'

What happened was that it started to snow.

Lizzie Meriton woke early that morning and for a few seconds she couldn't think why. Then she glanced at the window and realised that the light was odd and that the sky was completely white. No, to be accurate – and Miss Bertram said you should always be accurate when it came to colour – it wasn't exactly white because white was denser and this sky wasn't dense at all. It looked delicate with a faint touch of very pale yellow and an odd sort of sheen to it, as if there was a light shining on it from a mirror somewhere. But there couldn't be, could there? And lying there all warm and snug under the blankets, she suddenly thought of HG Wells's novel
The War of the Worlds
, the one they'd read in the third form, and remembered with
a shiver of horror that the space ship had arrived right here in Woking. What if a space ship had landed during the night? But it couldn't have, could it? There were no such things as space ships and she was a sensible girl. Wasn't she? Yes, of course she was. She had to be. She was on her own now. She got up, put on her slippers and her dressing gown and went to the window to see exactly what was happening.

The world was completely white. The reflecting mirror was snow. ‘Come and have a look at this,' she said to Poppy.

‘What fun!' Poppy said. ‘Is it a school day?'

Edith didn't think it was any sort of fun at all. She bundled her two little girls into the warmest clothing she could find and sent them off to school looking as fat as snowmen. They came home at the end of the day soaking wet and glowing because one of the local boys had let them have a turn on his toboggan.

‘You should've seen us, Mum,' Maggie said. ‘You come down the hill at a hundred miles an hour. Geoff said.'

‘Well, don't go breaking your legs, that's all,' Edith told her. ‘It's bad enough being here without broken legs.' She was finding life in a farmhouse extremely difficult, and sharing a kitchen with her landlady was a nightmare. ‘Look at the state of your gloves.'

‘That was the snowballs,' Barbara said happily. ‘I like being off school when it's snowing. D'you think we'll be off tomorrow? Geoff said they close down when it snows because of the boilers.'

‘I hope the snow goes on for ever and ever,' Maggie said, handing her sodden gloves to her mother.

‘Heaven help us all,' Edith said.

The next day the snowfall was so heavy and prolonged that
the school
did
close down, to the girls' delight. They went tobogganing again and built a snowman that Maggie said was ‘big as a house'.

‘It looks as if it's set in for the winter,' Edith wrote to her mother. ‘And my poor Arthur in France.'

‘Look on the bright side,' Emmeline wrote back. ‘At least there's no fighting.'

Which was true, for apart from occasional reports of running battles between the Russian Red Army and the Norwegians in the much deeper snows of Norway, the war continued to be more phoney than real.

Lizzie and her friends were thrilled with the cold weather. The canal had frozen solid and now they had an ice rink and could go skating whenever they wanted, and as Poppy said, ‘This is the life! I hope it goes on for ever and ever.' And sure enough the cold weather continued. After a week or two, Woking WVS arranged to take over the gym in the boys' grammar school on Sunday afternoons so that visiting parents would have somewhere warm where they could meet their children and have a cup of tea. It was much needed for by that time the snow wasn't quite so pretty. The pavements had been cleared so many times that there were perpetual mounds of frozen slush at the pavement edge, much pitted by discarded cigarette ends and streaked yellow by the local dogs, and rather too many people were hobbling with chilblains and complaining that they didn't know how much more of this awful weather they could stand.

‘Fat lot of good talking like that,' Emmeline said. ‘The weather's like the war. We've just got to get on with it.'

‘Christmas is coming, Em,' Octavia said. ‘Look forward to that.' Her school was fizzing with preparations for it. The
sixth form were rehearsing their customary Christmas play – and that always cheered everybody up – Miss Bertram and her art classes were making paper chains and Christmas decorations and cards, and nearly all the girls were going back to London to spend the holiday with their families. They might be evacuated but the school traditions hadn't changed. Despite everything, Christmas would be celebrated in its usual joyous style.

‘Just so long as we don't have to cope with rationing, that's all,' Emmeline said. ‘I'd like to ask the girls to join us – that's all right, isn't it, Tavy? – and I can't do that if they won't let me buy any meat.'

She was cheered when she managed to order a goose and a sirloin of beef from the local butchers, even though he warned her to make the most of it because it could be the last. And her life improved even further when Edith wrote to say that she and the girls would love to come and to ask if they could stay for the holiday, and Dora wrote that she and David would be all on their own because John couldn't get back, so they would love to come too.

‘We shall have a house full,' Emmeline said.

‘Just as well we've got all those bedrooms,' Octavia said.

‘We can use Janet's too, of course,' Emmeline said, happily making plans. ‘She's going back to Gateshead for Christmas. She asked me this morning if it would be all right.'

So the beds were made up, a cake was baked and iced and a pudding was steamed, presents were bought and wrapped, and a Christmas tree hung with baubles was set in the window so that they could be piled beneath it in the traditional way, and finally the dining room and the drawing room were draped about with paper chains so that, although Octavia's
map still dominated the main wall, by dint of framing it with tinsel it was reduced to just another decoration.

‘Now,' Emmeline said, surveying the room with great satisfaction, ‘we're ready.'

Edith and her three little girls arrived surprisingly early on the first morning of the school holiday. They'd caught a bus to Guildford and come on by train from there. When they rang at the bell, Octavia and Emmeline were still in their dressing gowns drinking tea by the fire.

‘We've been on a toboggan,' Barbara told them, as she was ushered into the hall. ‘It went a hundred and twenty miles an hour.'

‘Fancy,' Emmeline said. ‘Let's have you out of that coat and then you can come and sit by the fire. I expect you'd like some tea, wouldn't you? Or a cup of cocoa. What do you think, Edie?'

‘I don't mind what we have,' Edie said, hanging up her coat and hat, ‘just so long as it isn't old Mother Hemmings cag-mag. I've had that woman up to here. You'd never believe how bossy she is.'

Emmeline grimaced. ‘Oh dear.'

‘You know how Joanie likes her little bottle to settle her at night,' Edith said, peeling the baby out of her woolly coat. ‘We've had ructions about that from the first night. She's on and on at me the whole time. How I'm spoiling her and I'll deform her mouth and how I should make her grow up. It's more than flesh and blood can stand.'

‘Well, you're here now,' Emmeline said, ‘and she can have as many bottles as she likes, pretty dear. We've got a little cot for her in your room. And two little camp beds for Barbara and Maggie.'

‘Which will be a darn sight more comfortable than what
they've been sleeping in at old Mother Hemmings,' Edie said. ‘I tell you, Ma, if I have to stand much more of that woman, I shall put on my hat and coat and walk out.'

‘I hope you won't go doing anything silly,' Emmeline warned. ‘You don't want to end up back in London.'

Edie looked mutinous so Octavia moved to intervene. ‘Come and sit by the fire and get warm,' she said, taking Maggie's hand, ‘while your Gran makes that cocoa.'

It was a wise suggestion for the fire soothed them. And so did helping Gran prepare the lunch. By the time they'd had their first meal together, sitting round the table in a well-warmed dining room, Edith seemed to have forgotten her grievances.

She remembered them again when her sister arrived on Christmas Eve, but there was so much going on by then that there wasn't time to dwell on the behaviour of old Mother Hemmings. The cousins hadn't seen one another since they were evacuated and they all had tales to tell.

‘We went on a toboggan,' Maggie said, ‘and it went a hundred miles an hour. Geoff said.'

‘That's nothing,' David told her. ‘Me and Martin went skating. On a pond. An' if the ice had cracked we'd have fallen in and been drowned dead.'

‘Just as well it didn't then,' Octavia said.

‘But it might've,' David said. ‘And we'd have been drowned dead.'

‘Anyway,' Barbara said, determined not to be outdone, ‘it wasn't a hundred miles an hour. It was a hundred and fifty. An' if we'd fallen off we'd have broken all our legs.'

‘Who'd like a mince pie?' Octavia asked.

‘Oh, it
is
good to be back together again,' Dora said.

Despite the cold and the war, they had a happy family Christmas and ate well and sat around the fire afterwards to play all the old family games and tell one another all the old family stories. And although the adults were privately wondering where they would all be in a year's time, Edie kept quiet about old Mother Hemmings and nobody mentioned the future at all. What was to come would come and they would have to endure it as well as they could. For the moment, it was enough that they were enjoying themselves together.

The war began in earnest on the 8
^th
of April, to Emmeline's consternation. ‘If this isn't bad timing, you tell me what is,' she said to Octavia, pushing that morning's
Daily Herald
across the kitchen table towards her. ‘That wretched man's invaded Denmark. Just look at it. And just when Edie's gone back to London.'

Octavia put down her tea cup and glanced at the headlines. She was due to meet the Chairman of Governors at half past eight to inspect the house they'd finally decided to rent for the school and she was running late. There wasn't time to read the paper. Not that it mattered. The news was what everyone was expecting. It was alarming and unwelcome but it wasn't a surprise.

‘Wouldn't you just know it,' Emmeline mourned. ‘Just when my Edie's taken those poor little children back to London. I knew it was stupid. I did warn her.'

‘I know,' Octavia said, putting on her hat. She was torn by her cousin's anguished expression but she couldn't stay and let her talk. She couldn't even say a few commiserating words or they'd be stuck in the kitchen for hours.

‘I told her over and over again.'

‘I know.'

‘They never listen.'

‘I'll be back as soon as I can this afternoon,' Octavia said, ‘and then we'll see what we can do. I daren't stop now, Em. I'm late already.'

Emmeline sighed heavily. ‘This damned war,' she said. ‘I did so hope it wouldn't start.'

There wasn't the faintest chance of that, Octavia thought, as she took her bicycle out of the garage. Never has been. Not once we allowed Hitler to invade Czechoslovakia and Poland. We should have stood up to him then, instead of kowtowing to him all the time. It's a bit late now. And she went pedalling off towards Horsell Rise and the steep incline of Kettlewell Hill. I hope to God our Mr Chivers has found us something suitable, she thought, as she pushed uphill. We're going to need a good roomy house more than ever now. If they bomb London it'll have to be school and home rolled into one.

Mr Chivers, the Chairman of Governors, was a quiet, unassuming man in his early fifties, not much more than five foot six in height, with a round pale face, round pale eyes, rather sparse grey hair which he kept tidy with Brylcreem and a tendency to stoutness that gave him a rather barrel-like appearance, especially from a distance. He was waiting by the gate of a large house on the corner of Grange Road, gazing out over Horsell Common, and from the patience of his stance it looked as though he'd been waiting a long time.

‘I'm so sorry I'm late, Ralph,' Octavia said as she cycled towards him.

‘Not to worry, dear lady,' Mr Chivers said. ‘You're here now. This is Downview. Shall we proceed?'

They proceeded into the front garden and stood looking up at the house. It's a sizeable place, Octavia thought, Victorian of course and built to last. The three windows on the first floor
were flanked by white shutters, which was a pretty touch, and there was a Venetian window in the slight bay between them which probably marked the turn of the stairs. Downstairs there was a wide bay window to the left and a line of lesser windows to the right and beyond them an extension that was almost as wide as the original house and looked as though it had been added later.

‘Is the front door at the side?' she asked.

It was and although it had an elegant porch it stood rather incongruously between two very tall brick chimneys, both of which were embellished with a coat of arms and one of which was marked by the date of its construction – 1888.

‘It's the same age as I am,' Octavia told her old friend.

‘A good omen, perhaps,' he said, producing a key from his pocket. ‘Shall we go in?'

There was something about the eccentricity of the place that appealed to Octavia's sense of adventure. She propped her bicycle against the nearest chimney and Mr Chivers opened the door and they went in, he standing courteously aside to let her enter first.

A grand tiled hall, as she expected, with a grand oak staircase, expensively easy tread, nicely rounded newel posts, the Venetian window at the turn. A space designed to impress the visitor. Leading out of it a series of sizeable rooms, all of them big enough to withstand a class and to house the subject libraries they needed. The drawing room was splendid, capacious enough to serve as a school hall cum dining room cum study area. What a relief that would be for her beleaguered fifths and sixths.

‘How big is the kitchen?' she asked, and followed as he led the way. Very big indeed with a separate scullery where the washing-up would be done and lots of storage space for all the
china and cutlery they would need. ‘We could have our school dinners here and get back to eating at house tables,' she said. ‘The present arrangement isn't satisfactory at all. The seniors have been asking what can be done about it for weeks.'

Mr Chivers was beaming, his bland face lit by the pleasure of having found such a suitable place. ‘And you still haven't seen upstairs,' he said.

They inspected the house from the capacious cellars to the third floor attics, which were long and narrow with windows in the eaves or, rather oddly, at floor level, but might serve as dormitories with a little rearrangement. There were a lot of girls who weren't happy in their billets and changes took time to arrange. I must give it thought, Octavia decided, as Mr Chivers unlocked the french windows in the drawing room. Then she walked out into the garden.

It was as big as a city park and had been laid out in a similar way, with wide herbaceous borders and a long avenue of yew trees which ran across the lawn from the house to a kitchen garden, where there was a tangle of raspberry canes and a neglected strawberry patch. Round the side of the house, there was actually a tennis court. Octavia stood in the pale sunlight and rubbed her hands with the satisfaction of it all. She could see her girls in this house already, eating their dinner in that fine big room, strolling between the yew trees arm in arm the way they did, playing tennis in the summer and netball in the winter.

‘I gather you approve,' Mr Chivers said.

‘I do indeed,' Octavia told him. ‘This place could make all the difference.'

Mr Chivers beamed like sunshine. ‘There is more to come, dear lady,' he said. ‘This is just the half of what I have to show you. If you care to leave your bicycle here I will take you to the second half in my car. It isn't far.'

The second half was another house and it was almost as big as the first one. It was called Barricane House and looked like something out of a Gothic novel, its three high bays covered in ivy from the ground to the gables and a general air of unloved gloominess about it that was rather off-putting. But the rooms were an excellent size. There were eleven of them on the two floors and nine of them were quite big enough for classrooms, the bathroom could be converted into a row of toilets and washbasins, the kitchen would make a cookery room, and the drawing room had the right light for an art room. In fact it didn't take much imagination to see that if it was cleaned, painted and furnished, this house would make a very good Lower School and give the juniors a base where they could meet one another every day.

‘Yes,' Octavia said, ‘I don't know how you've managed it but you've provided us with almost exactly what we needed. With these two buildings and the occasional use of the science labs in the Woking school and the swimming pool in the town during the summer, we shall do very well.'

This time his beam was melon-shaped. ‘I am glad to be of service,' he said.

That afternoon Octavia held an impromptu staff meeting at Ridgeway to tell her colleagues the good news and show them the plans of the two houses. They were delighted to hear that they were going to have adequate space for their teaching at last and they all asked the same question. ‘When will they be ready?'

‘As soon as Mr Chivers can get the conversions done,' Octavia told them. ‘Possibly a few weeks, possibly a month or so. But we will certainly be in occupation by September.'

Mavis Brown was looking uncertain, as she so often did these days, her wide forehead wrinkled and her blue eyes
troubled. ‘The war could be over by then,' she said. ‘I mean, if Hitler gets what he wants he'll stop, surely. I mean, he's always said he doesn't want to fight us.'

‘Saying's one thing,' Morag told her, ‘doing's quite another. We can't second guess
what
that man will do. I don't think anybody can.'

‘I can't see why he wants Denmark,' Phillida Bertram said. ‘I mean it's not as if they've got anything special.'

‘It's a stepping stone to Norway and the port of Norvik where they ship the Swedish iron ore.' Octavia told her. ‘That's what he wants. Iron for his guns.'

‘And after that, if I'm any judge, he'll want Belgium and Holland,' Elizabeth Fennimore said, ‘and then France and all her wine and wheat. He's building an empire, Mavis, and he'll fight anyone who gets in the way.'

Time to intervene, Octavia thought. Mavis was looking terrified and there was nothing to be served by frightening the girl out of her wits. ‘However,' she said, ‘for the moment our task is to plan how we're going to make the best use of our two new buildings. We must draw up a timetable and work out which would be the best site for our individual subject rooms. It's going to take a lot of work, especially for you, Joan. You'll be teaching on four different sites.'

Joan Marshall grinned, like the stalwart she was. Nothing ever seemed to throw her. ‘Well, thanks a lot,' she said.

‘I could help you if you'd like,' Mavis offered. ‘I mean I could take some swimming lessons and netball. If you'd like. If Miss Smith… If I haven't got any History or Geography lessons then, of course.'

‘We will bear that in mind,' Octavia said, ‘won't we, Joan?'

During the next four days the staff set about planning the new timetable, while the news from Europe grew more and more worrying. The Danes capitulated to the German army after a mere twenty-four hours, which was a shock to everybody, and the very next day Hitler gave the order to invade Norway. The landing took place at Norvik, before dawn and in a snowstorm, and despite the difficulties, two thousand troops all specially trained in mountain warfare were got ashore. The next day, British warships sailed into the fjord and attacked the German fleet and three days later, while the Germans were still recovering, British troops landed in Norvik and the German troops took to the hills. To the watchers in Great Britain, the second German war was now inescapably under way.

‘At least it's not happening here,' Emmeline said, when she and Janet and Octavia sat down to dinner that night. ‘That's not much consolation to the Norwegians I know, but they do seem to be holding their own.'

‘Have you heard from Edie?' Octavia asked, helping herself to vegetables.

‘She rang this morning, not that it did any good. She's so pig-headed, Tavy. I told her she ought to come back here where it's safe. But no. She wouldn't hear of it. She says she's going to stay where she is, if you ever heard of anything so silly. She says they're better off in their own home.'

‘Which from her point of view is probably true at the moment,' Octavia said. ‘She hated sharing a kitchen, you know. That was the problem.'

‘And what will she do if they start bombing?' Emmeline said. ‘She'll have to be evacuated all over again and she'll have to share another kitchen then. There's no sense in her.'

In fact there was more sense in Edith Ames than her mother suspected. She and her remaining next-door neighbours had been discussing the best thing to do if the bombing started and she'd made up her mind that she would move all the junk out of the cupboard under Mrs Holdsworthy's stairs and make a shelter there. It would be a bit of a squeeze but it would be better than nothing. The air-aid warden had been round and taken a look at it and he thought it was the best thing. Mrs Holdsworthy said she was going to use the underground at South Wimbledon.

‘Safest place,' she told Edie. ‘Right underground. I mean, stands to reason. My Geoff says if they start their bombing I got ter go straight down the station and see what's what.'

They were surprising themselves by how matter-of-fact they were being, especially as they had no idea what was going to happen next, or when it would happen. Things were moving quickly now that Hitler had started his attacks. They hardly had time to take in one invasion before there was another one. But at least the Norwegians hadn't thrown in the towel like the Danes. They seemed to be putting up quite a fight.

‘And that's something,' Ethel said. ‘Though, course, they got our lads there with 'em an' that's bound to make a difference.'

Edie knew all about that. She'd been watching the papers anxiously in case Arthur got sent there and was very glad when she had a letter from him saying he was still ‘kicking his heels' in France. You stay there, my lad, she thought, as she put the letter back into its envelope. I don't want you getting yourself killed.

All through that April while the builders worked on Octavia's two school houses and Emmeline fretted over her
grandchildren, and Edith kept a careful eye on the news, the struggle in Norway continued. There were days when Octavia found herself sympathising with Mavis Brown and wondering why they were spending all that money and effort on converting these two houses when the Germans might invade. But it was being done notwithstanding and it was being done speedily.

‘With luck,' she told her staff at the end of April, ‘we shall be moving into Downview at the beginning of May.'

‘Do we have a date?' Morag asked.