The Caxley Chronicles (32 page)

'I agree,' said Bertie. They paced the path slowly. Edward noticed that Bertie's limp was more accentuated these days and remembered, with a slight shock, that his uncle must now be over fifty.

'After all,' continued Edward ruminatively, 'you can't call the Norths a deeply religious family—and Joan and I, for all we're called Howard, take after the Norths in that way. I can't truthfully say I'm a believer, you know. There's too much to accept in church teaching—I boggle at a lot of it. But for those who really are believers, well, it's probably better to go the whole hog and be a Catholic. You know where you are, don't you?'

'Meaning what?' asked Bertie, smiling at Edward's honest, if inelegant, reasoning.

'Well, if Joan is as luke-warm as I am, and yet she recognises that Michael has something in his faith which means something to him, then she may be willing for the children to be brought
up in the same way. I just don't know. I've never talked of such things with her.'

They turned in their tracks and made their way slowly back. A kingfisher, a vivid arrow of blue and black, streaked across the water and vanished into the tunnel made by the thick-growing chestnut trees.

'Lucky omen!' commented Bertie.

'In love or war?' asked Edward, gazing after it.

'Both, I predict,' said Bertie confidently, limping purposefully homeward.

It was at the end of that same week that Michael and Joan mounted the stairs to the flat and told Winnie and her mother that they were engaged.

Edward and Bertie were back on duty, Michael was moving to the coast the next day with his unit. The young couple did not blind themselves to the risks of the next few days. The casualties would be heavy, and it was likely that the army would bear the brunt of the attack. But nothing could dim their happiness, and Winnie and old Mrs North were glad to give them their blessing.

When at last Michael had gone and Joan returned, pink and a little damp-eyed from making her farewells, Mrs North spoke briskly the thoughts which were shared, but would have been left unuttered, by Winnie.

'Well, dear, I'm very happy for you. I've always liked Michael, as you know, and as long as you face the fact that there will be a new baby every twelve months or so, I'm sure it will work out well. You'll stay C. of E. I suppose?'

'No, grandma,' replied Joan composedly. 'I shall become a Roman Catholic, like all those babies-to-be.'

'Pity !' said the old lady. 'Well, you know your own business best, I suppose. Sleep well, and remember to take that ring off whenever you put your hands in water. Goodnight, dears.'

She put up her soft papery cheek to be kissed as usual, and went off to bed.

Winnie looked at her daughter. She looked tired out. Who wouldn't, thought Winnie, with all she had been through, and with Michael off to battle at first light? And yet there was a calmness about her which seemed unshakeable. Just so had she herself been when breaking the news of her engagement to Joan's father. Please, she prayed suddenly, let her marriage be happier than mine! And happier than Edward's! It was the first time, she realised suddenly, that she had admitted to herself that Edward's marriage was heading for the rocks. Were they all to be doomed to unhappiness with their partners?

She put the dark fear from her and kissed her daughter affectionately.

'Bed, my love,' she said.

It was Sep, of course, who felt it most. Joan told him the news herself the next day. She found him pottering about in his bakehouse, stacking tins and wiping the already spotless shelves.

She thought how little the place had changed since she was a child. The same great scrubbed table stood squarely in the middle of the red-tiled floor. The same comfortable warmth embraced one, and the same wholesome smell of flour and
newly-baked bread pervaded the huge building. And Sep too, at first sight, seemed as little changed. Small, neat, quiet and deft in his movements, his grey hair was as thick as ever, his eyes as kindly as Joan always remembered them.

'Sit 'ee down, sit 'ee down,' cried Sep welcomingly, pulling forward a tall wooden stool. 'And what brings you here, my dear?'

Joan told him, twisting Michael's beautiful sapphire ring about her finger as she spoke. Sep heard her in silence to the end.

'I know you can't approve wholeheartedly, Grandpa,' said Joan, looking up at his grave face, 'but don't let it come between us, please.'

Sep sighed.

'Nothing can,' he said gently. 'You are part of my family, and a very dear part, as you know. And you're a wise child, I've always said so. Do you remember how you comforted me when your dear grandmother died?'

'You asked me then to choose wisely when I got married,' nodded Joan. 'I remember it very well. Do you think that I've chosen unwisely after all?'

'You have chosen a good man; I have no doubt of that,' replied Sep. 'But I cannot be happy to see you embracing his faith. You know my feelings on the subject. It is a religion which I find absolutely abhorrent, battening on the poor and ignorant, and assuming in its arrogance that all other believers are heretics.'

'Michael would tell you that it is the one gleam of hope in the lives of many of those poor and ignorant people,' replied Joan.

'Naturally he would,' responded Sep shortly. 'He is a devout Catholic. He believes what he is told to believe.'

He turned away and stood, framed in the doorway, looking with unseeing eyes at the cobbled yard behind the bakehouse. The clock on the wall gave out its measured tick. Something in one of the ovens hissed quietly. To Joan the silence seemed ominous. Her grandfather wheeled round and came back to where she sat, perched high on the wooden stool.

'We'll say no more. There must be no quarrels between us two. You will do whatever you think is right, I know, without being swayed by people round you. But think, my dear, I beg of you. Think, and pray. There are your children to consider.'

'I have thought,' replied Joan soberly.

'And whatever your decision,' continued Sep, as though he had not heard her interjection, 'we shall remain as we've always been. I want you to feel that you can come to me at any time. Don't let anything—ever—come between us, Joan.'

She rose from the stool and bent to kiss the little man's forehead.

'Nothing can,' she assured him. 'Nothing, grandpa.'

But as she crossed the market square, and paused by Queen Victoria's statue to let the war-time traffic thunder by, her heart was torn by the remembrance of Sep's small kind face, suddenly shrivelled and old. That she, who loved him so dearly, could have wrought such a change, was almost more than she could bear.

On the night of June 5 in that summer of 1944 a great armada sailed from the English ports along the channels already
swept clear of mines. By dawn the next day the ships stood ready off the Normandy coast for the biggest amphibious operation of the war—the invasion of Europe.

Edward was engaged in attacking enemy coast-defence guns, flying a heavy bomber. As the first light crept across the sky, the amazing scene was revealed to him as he flew back to base. The line upon line of ships, great and small, might have been drawn up ready for a review. A surge of pride swept him as he looked from above. The fleet in all its wartime strength was an exhilarating sight. Edward, for one, had not the faintest doubt in his mind that by the end of this vital day victory would be within sight.

Excitement ran high in the country. News had just been received of the liberation of Rome under General Alexander's command, but people were agog to know what was going on across the strip of water which had so long kept their island inviolate.

At midday the Prime Minister gave welcome news to the House of Commons. 'An immense armada of upwards of four thousand ships, together with several thousand smaller craft, crossed the Channel,' he told them and went on to say that reports coming in showed that everything was proceeding according to plan. 'And what a plan !' he added.

It was the success of this vast enterprise, on sea and land simultaneously, which gripped the imagination of the country. Napoleon had been daunted by the Channel. Hitler, for all his threats, had been unable to cross it. The success of the allied British and American armies in this colossal undertaking was therefore doubly exciting.

The inhabitants of Caxley kept their radio sets switched on,
eager to hear every scrap of news which came through. Joan longed to know where Michael was and how he was faring. There must have been heavy casualties, she knew, and the suspense was agonising.

The Norths and Howards knew where their other fighting men were. Bertie was stationed not far from Poole, and Edward was based in Kent. They did not expect to hear or see much of the pair of them in these exciting times, but the fortunes of Michael, now somewhere in the thick of things in Normandy were the focus of their thoughts.

As the days went by they grieved for Joan watching anxiously for the postman's visits. There was sobering news during the next week, about stubborn enemy resistance at the town of Caen. It was apparent that failure to capture this key-point would mean that a large force of allied troops would be needed there for some time. Could the enemy make a come-back?

One sunny morning the longed-for letter arrived and Joan tore it open in the privacy of her bedroom. She read it swiftly.

'My darling Joan,

All's well here. Tough going, but not a scratch, and a grand set of chaps. We are constantly on the move—but in the right direction, Berlin-wards. The people here are being wonderful to us.

I can't wait to get home again. Look after yourself. I'll write again as soon as I get a chance.

All my love,
Michael'

Joan sat down hard on the side of the bed and began to cry. There was a tap at the door and her grandmother looked in.
Tears were rolling steadily down the girl's cheeks, splashing upon the letter in her hands.

A chill foreboding gripped the old lady. In a flash she remembered the dreadful day during the First World War when she had heard the news that Bertie was seriously wounded in hospital. The memory of that nightmare drive to see him was as fresh in her mind as if it had happened yesterday.

She advanced towards her granddaughter, arms outstretched to comfort.

'Oh, Joan,' she whispered. 'Bad news then?'

The girl, sniffing in the most unladylike way, held out the letter.

'No, grandma,' she quavered. 'It's good news. He's safe.'

And she wept afresh.

I
T WAS
the beginning of the end of the war, and everyone knew it. Perhaps this was the most hopeful moment of the long conflict. The free world still survived. Within a year Europe would be liberated, and two or three months later, hostilities would cease in the Far East. Meanwhile, a world which knew nothing yet of Belsen and Hiroshima, rejoiced in the victory which was bound to come.

It was the beginning of the end too, Edward realised, of his marriage. Things had gone from bad to worse. No longer could he blind himself with excuses for Angela's estrangement. Indifference had led to recriminations, petty squabbles, and now to an implacable malice on his wife's part. Edward, shaken to the core, had no idea how to cope with the situation now that things had become so bleakly impossible.

Any gesture of affection, any attempt on his part to heal the breach was savagely rebuffed. Anything sterner was greeted with hysterical scorn. If he was silent he was accused of sulking, if he spoke he was told he was a bore.

It was about this time that an old admirer of Angela's appeared. She and Edward had been invited to a party at a friend's house. There was very little social life in the small Kentish town where they were then living, and Angela accepted eagerly. Edward preferred to be at home on the rare occasions when that was possible. He dreaded too the eyes
which watched them, and knew that the break-up of their marriage was becoming all too apparent. But he went with good grace and secretly hoped that they would be able to get away fairly early.

It was a decorous, almost stuffy, affair. About twenty people, the local doctor and his wife, a schoolmaster, a few elderly worthies as well as one or two service couples, stood about the poorly-heated drawing-room and made falsely animated conversation. Their hostess was a large kind-hearted lady swathed in black crêpe caught on the hip with a black satin bow. She was afflicted with deafness but courageously carried on loud conversations with every guest in turn. As the rest of the company raised their voices in order to make themselves heard, the din was overwhelming. Edward, overwrought and touchy, suddenly had a vision of the leafy tunnel of chestnut trees which arched above the Cax, and longed with all his soul to be there with only the whisper of the water in his ears.

As it was, he stood holding his weak whisky and water, his eyes smarting with smoke and his face frozen in a stiff mask of polite enjoyment. The doctor's wife was telling him a long and involved story about a daughter in Nairobi, of which Edward heard about one word in ten. Across the room he could see Angela, unusually gay, talking to an army officer whom he had not seen before.

They certainly seemed to enjoy each other's company, thought Edward, with a pang of envy. How pretty Angela was tonight! If only she would look at him like that—so happily and easily! The tale of the Nairobi daughter wound on interminably, and just as Edward was wondering how on earth he could extricate himself, he saw Angela's companion look
across, touch Angela's arm, and together they began to make their way towards him.

At the same moment the doctor's wife was claimed by a faded little woman in a droopy-hemmed stockinette frock. They pecked each other's cheeks and squawked ecstatically. Thankfully, Edward moved towards his wife.

'Can you believe it?' cried Angela, 'I've found Billy again, after all these years! Billy Sylvester, my husband.'

'How d'you do?' said the men together.

'Billy has digs at the doctor's,' Angela prattled on excitedly. Edward wondered if he had heard all about the daughter in Nairobi, and felt a wave of sympathy towards the newcomer.