The Caxley Chronicles (30 page)

Edward and Angela arrived late on Christmas Eve. He had
three days' leave and they had been lucky enough to get a lift down in a brother officer's car, three jammed in the back and three in the front. They were to return in the same fashion on Boxing Night.

They were in great good spirits when they burst in at the door. It was almost midnight but old Mrs North insisted on waiting up and the two women had a tray of food ready by the fire.

'If only I had a lemon,' cried Winnie, pouring out gin and tonic for the pair, 'I think I miss lemons and oranges more than anything else. And Edward always says gin and tonic without lemon is like a currant bun with no currants!'

'Not these days, mum,' said Edward stoutly. 'Gin alone, tonic alone would be marvellous. To have the two together in one glass in war-time is absolutely perfect.'

'And how do you find domestic life?' Winnie asked her daughter-in-law.

'Wonderful, after those awful days in the W.A.A.F.', said Angela. 'I potter about in my own time, and it's lovely to compare notes with the other girls who pop in sometimes when they're off-duty.'

She went on to describe the two rooms in which she and Edward now lived in the village near the aerodrome. Life in the services had obviously never appealed to Angela and her present circumstances, though cramped and somewhat lonely, were infinitely preferable.

'If only Edward hadn't to go on those ghastly raids,' claimed his wife. 'I stay up all night sometimes, too worried to go to bed. Luckily, there's a phone in the house, and I ring up the mess every so often to see if he's back.'

'You'd do better to go straight to bed with some hot milk,' observed Winnie. 'It would be better for you and far better for Edward too, to know that you were being sensible. It only adds to his worries if he thinks you are miserable.'

'I'm surprised you are allowed to ring up,' said Mrs North.

'Oh, they don't exactly
like
it,' said Angela, 'but what do they expect?'

Edward changed the subject abruptly. He had tried to argue with Angela before on much the same lines, and with as little effect.

'Shall we see all the family tomorrow?'

'Bertie and Kathy and the children are coming to tea. They're bringing your grandfather too. He misses grandma, particularly at Christmas, and they will all be together for Christmas dinner at Bertie's.'

'And there's just a chance,' added his grandmother North, 'that Aunt Mary may look in. She starts in pantomime one day this week, and may be able to come over for the day.'

Edward stretched himself luxuriously.

'It's wonderful to be back,' he said contentedly. 'Nowhere like Caxley. I can't wait for this bloody war to be over to get back again.'

'Language, dear!' rebuked his grandmother automatically, rising to go up to bed.

Before one o'clock on Christmas morning all the inhabitants of Rose Lodge were asleep.

All but one.

Edward lay on his back, his hands clasped behind his head,
staring at the ceiling. Beside him Angela slept peacefully. He was having one of his 'black half-hours' as he secretly called them. What hopes had he of survival? What slender chances of returning to Caxley to live? Losses in Bomber Command were pretty hair-raising, and likely to become worse. He could view the thing fairly dispassionately for himself, although the thought of death at twenty-four was not what he looked for. But for Angela? How would she fare if anything happened to him? Thank God there were no babies on the way at the moment. He'd seen too many widows with young children recently to embark lightly on a family of his own.

The memory of his last raid on Kiel came back to him with sickening clarity. They had encountered heavy anti-aircraft fire as they approached their target and the Wellington had been hit. Luckily not much damage was done. They dropped their load and Edward wheeled for home. But several jagged pieces of metal, razor-sharp, had flown across the aircraft from one side to the other, and Dickie Bridges was appallingly cut across the face and neck.

One of the crew had been a first-year medical student when he joined up, and tied swabs across a spouting artery and staunched the blood as best he could. Nevertheless, Dickie grew greyer and greyer as the Wellington sped back to base and it was obvious that something was hideously wrong with his breathing. Some obstruction in the throat caused him to gasp with a whistling sound which Edward felt he would remember until his dying day.

As they circled the aerodrome he was relieved to see the ambulance—known, grimly, as 'the blood cart'—waiting by the runway. Sick and scared, Edward touched down as gently
as he could and watched Dickie carried into the ambulance. He knew, with awful certainty, that he would never see him alive again.

Dickie Bridges died as they were getting him ready for a blood transfusion, and next day Edward sat down with a heavy heart and wrote to his crippled mother. He had been her only child.

Damn all wars! thought Edward turning over violently in bed. If only he could be living in the market square, sharing his flat with Angela, starting a family, flying when he wanted to, pottering about with his friends and family in Caxley—what a blissful existence it would be!

And here he was, on Christmas morning too, full of rebellion when he should be thinking of peace and goodwill to all men. Somehow it hardly fitted in with total war, Edward decided sardonically.

He thought of all the other Christmas mornings he had spent under this roof, a pillowcase waiting at the end of the bed, fat with knobbly parcels and all the joy of Christmas Day spread out before him. They had been grand times.

Would this be the last Christmas for him? He put the cold thought from him resolutely. His luck had held so far. It would continue. It was best to live from day to day, 'soldiering on', as they said. Enough that it was Christmas time, he was in Caxley, and with Angela!

He pitched suddenly into sleep as if he were a pebble thrown into a deep pond. Outside, in the silent night, a thousand stars twinkled above the frost-rimed roofs of the little town of Caxley.

T
HE NEW YEAR
of 1941 arrived, and the people of Caxley, in company with the rest of the beleaguered British, took stock and found some comfort. The year which had passed gave reason for hope. Britain had held her own. Across the Atlantic the United States was arming fast and sending weapons in a steady stream to the Allied forces.

Even more cheering was the immediate news from Bardia in North Africa where the Australians were collecting twenty thousand Italian prisoners after one of the decisive battles in the heartening campaign which was to become known as the Desert Victory.

'The longer we hangs on the more chance we has of licking 'em!' pronounced an old farmer, knocking out his cherry wood pipe on the plinth of Queen Victoria's statue in the market square. He bent painfully and retrieved the small ball of spent tobacco which lay on the cobbles, picked one or two minute strands from it and replaced them carefully in his pipe.

'Not that we've got cause to get
careless,
mark you,' he added severely to his companion, who was watching the stubby finger ramming home the treasure trove. 'We've got to harbour our resources like Winston said—like what I'm doin' now—and then be ready to give them Germans what for whenever we gets the chance.'

And this, in essence, was echoed by the whole nation.
'Hanging on,' was the main thing, people told each other, and putting up with short commons as cheerfully as possible. It was not easy. As the months went by, 'making-do-and-mending' became more and more depressing, and sometimes well-nigh impossible. Another irritating feature of war-time life was the unbearable attitude of some of those in posts of officialdom.

It was Edward who noticed this particularly on one of his rare leaves in Caxley. It occurred one Saturday afternoon when the banks were closed and he needed some ready money. Luckily, he had his Post Office savings book with him and thrust his way boisterously through the swing doors, book in hand. Behind the counter stood a red-haired girl whose protruding teeth rivalled Miss Taggerty's.

Edward remembered her perfectly. They had attended the same school as small children and he had played a golliwog to her fairy doll in the Christmas concert one year. On this occasion, however, she ignored his gay greeting, and thrust a withdrawal form disdainfully below the grille, her face impassive. Edward scribbled diligently and pushed it back with his book, whereupon the girl turned back the pages importantly in order to scrutinize the signature in the front and compare it with that on the form. For Edward, impatient to be away, it was too much.

'Come off it, Foof-teeth!' he burst out in exasperation, using the nickname of their schooldays. And only then did she melt enough to give him a still-frosty smile with the three pound notes.

There were equally trying people in Caxley, and elsewhere, who attained positions of petty importance and drove their neighbours to distraction: air raid wardens who seemed to
relish every inadvertent chink of light in the black-out curtains, shop assistants rejoicing in the shortage of custard-powder, bus conductors harrying sodden queues, all added their pin-pricks to the difficulties of everyday living, and these people little knew that such irritating officiousness would be remembered by their fellow-citizens for many years to come, just as the many little kindnesses, also occurring daily, held their place as indelibly in their neighbours' memories. Friends, and enemies, were made for life during war-time.

Howard's Restaurant continued to flourish despite shortages of good quality food stuffs which wrung Sep's heart. Robert failed his medical examination when his call-up occurred. Defective eyesight and some chest weakness sent him back to running the restaurant. Secretly, he was relieved. He had dreaded the discipline and the regulations almost more than the dangers of active service. He was content to plough along his familiar furrow, fraught though it was with snags and pitfalls, and asked only to be left in peace. He said little to his father about his feelings, but Sep was too wise not to know what went on in his son's head.

The boy was a disappointment to him, Sep admitted to himself. Sometimes he wondered why his three sons had brought so much unhappiness in their wake. Jim's death in the First World War had taken his favourite from him. Leslie, the gay lady-killer, had betrayed his trust and vanished westward to live with someone whom Sep still thought of as 'a wanton woman', despite her subsequent marriage to his son.

And now, Robert. Without wife or child, curiously secretive and timid, lacking all forms of courage, it seemed, he appeared to Sep a purely negative character. He ran the
restaurant ably, to be sure, but he lacked friends and had no other interests in the town. Perhaps, if marriage claimed him one day, he would come to life. As it was he continued his way, primly and circumspectly, a spinsterish sort of fellow, with a streak of petty spite to which Sep was not blind.

His greatest comfort now was Kathy. He saw more of her now than ever, for Bertie was away in the army, and she and the children were almost daily visitors to the house in the market square. She grew more like her dear mother, thought Sep, with every year that passed. She had the same imperishable beauty, the flashing dark eyes, the grace of movement and dazzling smile which would remain with her throughout her life.

Yes, he was lucky to have such a daughter—and such wonderful grandchildren! He loved them all, but knew in his secret heart that it was Edward who held pride of place. There was something of Leslie—the
best
of Leslie, he liked to think—something of the Norths, and a strong dash of himself in this beloved grandson. He longed to see children of Edward's before he grew too old to enjoy their company. Did his wife, that beautiful but rather distant Angela, really know what a fine man she had picked? Sometimes Sep had his doubts, but times were difficult for everyone, and for newly-weds in particular. With the coming of peace would come the joy of a family, Sep felt sure.

And for Joan too, he hoped. She was a North, despite her name, if ever there was one, and the Norths were made for domesticity. There flashed into the old man's mind a picture of his dead friend Bender North, sitting at ease in his Edwardian drawing-room, above the shop which was now Howard's
Restaurant. He saw him now, contented and prosperous, surveying the red-plush furniture, the gleaming sideboard decked with silver, smoking his Turk's-head pipe, at peace with the world. Just as contentedly had Bertie settled down with Kathy. He prayed that Joan, in her turn, might find as felicitous a future in a happy marriage. It was good, when one grew old, to see the younger generations arranging their affairs, and planning a world which surely would be better than that in which Sep had grown up.

Joan was indeed planning her future, unknown to her family. She was still absorbed in her work at the nursery school and as the months of war crept by it became apparent that the chances of joining the W.A.A.F. became slighter.

For one thing, the numbers at the school increased rapidly. As local factories stepped-up their output more young women were needed, and their children were left in the care of the school. And then the Viennese warden was asked to take over the job of organising nursery work for the whole county, and Joan, trembling a little at such sudden responsibility, was put in charge.

She need not have worried. Despite her youth, she was well-trained, and had had varied experience. Allied to this, her equable North temperament and her genuine affection for the children, made her ideally suited to the post. Two women had been added to the staff, one of them being Maisie Hunter who had arrived at the beginning of the war as an evacuee at Rose Lodge and who had remained in the neighbourhood. She was a tower of strength to Joan. The second teacher was a wispy
young girl straight from college, anxious to do the right thing, and still with the words of her child-psychology lecturer ringing in her ears. Joan could only hope that face-to-face encounters with healthy three-year-olds would in time bring her down to earth a little, and give her confidence.