Winter Roses (15 page)

‘Whether we like it or not, George must go into the forces. However, one does hear such terrible rumours about the speed with which new pilots are killed, wonderful work though they are doing, I do wish he’d joined the Army as Father wanted. However, as soon as he got his aero certificate, he went to London to sign on and that was that, and he is waiting for his papers now. Between you and me, Caroline, we were lucky to keep him so long. Lady Hunney let the cat out of the bag – and
never
tell your father: the reason Sir John paid for the flying lessons is that he caught George trying to enlist a year ago, and bribed him to change his mind. Laurence’s annoyance over the lessons was misplaced. We owe a lot to Sir John. At least you, my rock, are still in England, Caroline. And Isabel too of course …’

And Isabel too of course. Caroline laughed. She had received only one short scrawled note from her sister, informing her how busy she was running the cinema and all about the imminent great anniversary celebration. She was bursting her buttons with pride at showing
The Battle of the Somme
. Although there was still fighting at the Somme, the film covered the first two months of the battle, and had been rushed out to cinemas and parish halls around the country. It displayed live scenes from the battlefront in order that those at home could appreciate what their loved ones were achieving, and her parents approved of Isabel’s choice. But Caroline did not, for she had seen it.

Margaret selected her best felt hat. Mrs Isabel was loaning her the cinema for her cookery talks, so the least she could do in exchange was to attend the anniversary celebration film. Myrtle was looking after Elizabeth Agnes and Lizzie’s baby, because Lizzie wanted to see the film too, and so did Agnes. Her Jamie was out at the Somme, and Lizzie felt perhaps where Frank was, out east, might be something like France too. She and Agnes were getting on ever so well, although both of them had their prickly side, as Margaret well knew.

Even the Rector was coming to the cinema this evening, his first ever visit. Mrs Lilley had told him they had to support Mrs Isabel, and Margaret suspected that he’d secretly been longing to see what all the fuss was about, and was only awaiting a suitable picture to do so. Master George was coming and Miss Phoebe. It was a real Rectory family outing. Usually family only mixed with servants in
church, and it was a funny old world when picture houses could be compared with the Lord’s dwelling.

Percy was coming too, and she had to admit she was glad. She could talk to him, knowing they were both thinking of Fred. He was out in France – suppose he was at this Somme place? It wasn’t likely he or Joe would turn into a hero like Jamie, or like the men they’d be bound to show in the film, but seeing soldiers going over the top would remind her all too vividly that Fred was there somewhere. It would be like being at the front with him.

She marched down the central aisle behind the Rector to the reserved seats. First, Mrs Isabel was going to make a little speech, then there’d be a nice short Charlie Chaplin film to start off with. Then would come
The Battle of the Somme
.

Agnes was so white she had to lean on Lizzie’s arm to help her home. Crying too, and no wonder, Margaret sympathised. Jamie Thorn had been through that lot, and even worse was back there now, medal or no medal. A little circle of metal on a ribbon wasn’t going to save him from a German shell. She took Agnes’s other arm, more to steady herself than the girl. She couldn’t deny it had been a shock.

‘Don’t you worry now, Agnes.’ Margaret tried hard to find encouraging words, but how could she say those films always showed you the worst of it, when everyone knew the government thought they were showing the best of it?

Anyway, no words could make them forget what they’d felt like, seeing that film. Wounded soldiers in hospitals wearing nice white bandages were one thing; staggering all over the battlefield with their eyes out and blood running and
the bodies lying there dead, was quite another. The worst of it was that that film was out to show how much our boys were achieving.
Achieving?
She’d seen precious little sign of it; there was precious little sign of anything, except stumps of trees and holes in the ground they called trenches.

‘Oh, Margaret—’ Agnes slumped down at the kitchen table. That showed how upset she was. She didn’t often dare call her Margaret. ‘I never knew. Jamie tried to explain, but I never imagined it like that. Them trenches aren’t fit to keep a rat in, let alone my Jamie.’

The buzz of anticipation as the film started had turned to shock as they saw the wounded staggering through the trenches to get help. Where was the marching off to glory now? Master Reggie had died somewhere like that. Margaret’s eyes filled with tears, for Reginald Hunney, for Tim Hubble, for Joe, for Fred, and any mother’s son caught up in the hell of war.

‘What can I do?’ Agnes whispered. ‘What can we do, now we know?’

Margaret looked up to see the Rector and Mrs Lilley coming through the tradesmen’s entrance into the kitchen, and didn’t even register at the time this was unheard of. She just said: ‘I’ll make a nice cup of hot milk all round.’

The Rector sat down at the kitchen table, and Mrs Lilley came to help Agnes get the cups down. ‘Are you all right, my dear?’ she heard Mrs Lilley ask.

Silly question really, Margaret thought, but Agnes seemed to appreciate it. ‘Yes, madam.’

‘No,’ Rector said quietly. ‘We’re none of us all right, Elizabeth, not after that. I think, Mr Dibble, that Agnes and
perhaps all of us are in need of a drop of your medicinal brandy even more than prayer.’

Percy went to get the bottle as though this were the most natural thing in the world, but it wasn’t, and Margaret knew it. All they had left was three inches in the last bottle of pre-war stock, saved for the Christmas pudding and medical emergencies. Margaret didn’t say a word. She poured a cup of hot milk out for everyone, and Percy added a dash of brandy to each one, except hers of course. His wife looked him full in the face.

‘I’ll take a dash of that brandy, Percy, if you’d be so good.’

Next day she wondered whatever had got into her, but then it hadn’t been like taking strong liquor, since it was in hot milk, and whether it was the milk or the brandy, she’d slept like a baby and the devil didn’t interrupt her dreams in his delight at her wickedness. She didn’t dream at all, not even about the film.

Her good night’s sleep strengthened her, which was just as well, for Mrs Isabel was in a rare taking. Mrs Lilley had gone to East Grinstead and it was all Margaret could do to get Mrs Isabel off to work.

‘How could I know, Mrs Dibble?’ she wailed, still sitting at the breakfast table when Margaret went in to clear the dishes. ‘I thought they’d be pleased, getting such an up-to-date film.’

‘So did the government,’ Margaret pointed out. ‘You’ve nothing to reproach yourself with, Mrs Isabel.’

‘I kept thinking: what about my husband?’

It was the first time Margaret had ever heard her talk about Mr Robert since he left for the war two years ago.
‘He’ll be all right.’ Meaningless words, and she knew it. For all her faults, Mrs Isabel had her father’s intelligence, and would know them for what they were.

‘He’s nearly finished his observer’s training now. What if he gets sent out there? Aeroplanes get shot down so easily. I don’t wonder my parents are so worried about George.’

Margaret had no reply, for Mrs Isabel was right.

‘No one spoke to me last night,’ Isabel mourned. ‘No one will ever come to the cinema again. Father-in-law will never speak to me again. He’s never forgiven me for staying here. He only agreed because Robert put his foot down for once. He’ll close the picture palace down and I’ll have to go to East Grinstead. And I won’t, I
won’t
.’

Margaret was vastly relieved at this torrent of woes. That was more like Mrs Isabel, thinking of herself. ‘He likes that purse, that one, so fill it. Next week show a Charlie Chaplin and a Mary Pickford, Mrs Isabel,’ she suggested, ‘and offer half-price seats in the daytime to anyone who has a loved one at the front. You’ll be packed out all day.’

‘That’s a brilliant idea, Mrs Dibble,’ Mrs Isabel said admiringly. The tears vanished immediately as her enthusiasm returned. ‘But I can’t wait till next week; I’ll start tomorrow if I can get the films by then. I shall close the picture palace today.’

‘No, Mrs Isabel. You keep
The Somme
running till the end of the week. That’s my advice.’

‘But I can’t. You saw how appalled the audience was.’

‘Yes, we’ve all had a shock, but it’s not like it’s not happening. We have to face up to it. You mark my words, everyone will be wanting to see it now when they hear
about it from their neighbours. They’ll be queuing all down Bankside. The newspapers are all too fond of telling us everything’s in the garden’s lovely; we thought it couldn’t be, and now we
know
it isn’t.’

So much was going on that Margaret had forgotten all about what else happened last night. When they got back Myrtle had said the baby was running a temperature, and Lizzie took her home immediately.

‘We had another scare too,’ Caroline’s mother wrote. ‘Lizzie Dibble’s baby was running a temperature and Dr Marden is worried it might be diptheria. We won’t know for a few days, and he’s calling in daily. November is the peak month for it, he says. That cottage of hers stuck out in the wilds must be very unhealthy. Percy’s going to do some more work on it to keep the damp out, and Lizzie has promised to keep a better fire.’

‘A better fire.’ Caroline finished giving Yves the gist of the letter, as they walked along the seafront towards Sandgate. ‘Father says he’ll take that for his sermon next week. Not just “keep the home fires burning” but “keep a
better
fire”.’ The wind whipped round her legs where the boots ended and the skirt didn’t quite begin, a reminder that winter was setting in fast. Unthinkingly, she asked a question. ‘Do you have texts for sermons like that in Belgium, Yves? Are you a Roman Catholic?’

‘Yes.’

‘I wish you could hear one of my father’s, but I suppose you cannot even attend a service in a Church of England.’

‘It is heavily frowned upon. At one time I would have
thought that important. No longer. I attend many church services in Folkestone, besides those of Our Lady Help of Christians.’ He seemed very relaxed today, even though there was still a formal twelve-inch space between them. She decided to risk another cautious question, as she skirted round three children leaping around on jumping poles.

‘You never talk of your home in Belgium, Yves, and very little about what is going on there.’

He replied after a moment: ‘We often choose not to talk. The Belgian people you meet here are constantly wondering what is happening to their families. What they read in the
Franco
-
Belge
is terrifying enough. Do you still read it?’

‘Of course. I buy it regularly – thanks to you, sir—’ she dropped a curtsy to him in the middle of the path to a chorus of approving shouts from a passing group of Tommies. If he wanted to steer the conversation away from himself, she supposed it was his right.

‘Then you know about the deportations, the executions, the closure of theatres and restaurants, the lack of food, the constant snuffing out of any resistance. If we celebrate our Independence Day, they forbid it; the girls dress in our national colours, the men wear rosettes, and that is forbidden. We plant red and yellow flowers on our balconies in black-painted pots, and that too is treason.’

He said ‘we’, identifying himself with his fellow citizens. She risked going further.

‘I read that Dr Bull was rearrested and tried, and this time found guilty and imprisoned. Do you know him? He sounds a remarkable man.’

‘Yes. I knew Miss Cavell, also Philippe Baucq, who died
with her, and Louise Thuliez, the Countess of Croye – the entire organisation.’

‘Is that when you got that scar?’

‘Sometime about then,’ he replied guardedly. ‘However, unlike them, I am alive and free.’

‘Only physically.’

He shot a look at her. ‘Perhaps. As you too.’

She didn’t want to think of Reggie, and unfairly resented his intruding into her private domain.

‘Do you have links with
La Libre Belge
– that is the main secret newspaper in Brussels, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’ His voice was clipped, and she was illogically pleased to have annoyed him.

‘Is that how the
Franco
-
Belge
published here gets its news of what’s happening in Brussels? Do the couriers bring over copies?’

He stopped abruptly. For a moment she thought he was furious with her for overstepping the boundary he had tacitly laid down. To her amazement, however, he was shaking with laughter. He took her gloved hands in his, swinging her round to face him.

‘So, Caroline, what is this? Has Governor-General von Bissing found himself a Grand Inquisitor?’

‘I am a secret agent,’ she informed him loftily. ‘I’m entitled to ask questions.’

‘Secret agents are solemn gentlemen who walk by night with hats tipped over their eyes to avoid notice. They are not beautiful young Englishwomen with dancing brown eyes and brown curls that will not quite obey their owner.’

One of her hands automatically freed itself to push the
recalcitrant curl back under the hat, but he captured it again before it reached its destination.

‘Please leave it. It is your free spirit, Caroline.’

She had wanted the barrier broken, but now that it was, she was tongue-tied. Perhaps he saw this, for he dropped her hand, and partly to her regret, and partly relief, returned to neutral ground. ‘You are right, Mademoiselle Schwarzteuffel. That, for your information as a secret agent, is the nickname of the hated military inquisitor in Belgium, von Bergam, in charge of the treason trials.
La Libre Belge
publishes news – to the great annoyance of the German Governor-General – about the progress of the war, especially of British or French victories for this raises morale in the city. It moves its location for every issue, and so far the Germans have never caught the editor, though the distributors are often arrested. My friend Philippe Baucq was one of them. It also pokes fun at our unwelcome visitors to Belgium, and that they cannot abide. It is a good method, for he at whom you laugh is already conquered in the mind.’