‘But Dan and Timmy? You’re going to have to make decisions about them.’
‘They’re such babies yet. Well, Dan’s not such a baby. He’s starting at the Dame school in the village after Christmas. Did I tell you that? He and Alistair are going together … That was another decision made for me …’
‘But are they going to grow up British or American?’
‘You sound like Uncle Pete. He can’t bear the thought that good Fenton material might be getting watered down over here. He’s made a real case of it. He’s sort of fixed on Richard as the real hook to bring me back to Boston. He says Richard must come to Boston. He can have the finest teaching. He, Uncle Pete, will personally see to it. Richard can live in his house. It seems Richard can have anything he wants, so long as he brings me and the boys along with him.’
‘And don’t you think Richard should go? He would have much more to do than he has here …’
‘I know it. Now don’t you ‒ for God’s sake ‒ don’t you start putting pressure on me. Even Uncle Charles tries. I know he doesn’t want me to go, but he feels it’s his duty to urge me to. He says I should do it for the boys. And I think it won’t hurt the boys for a little longer to have things a bit hard. A year in a village school won’t hurt Dan. Timmy’s thriving on his baby rations. He looks like a lean little tiger. What’s wrong with my staying here? Why is everyone trying to get rid of me?’
She turned away from him, ‘Oh, damn, it’s getting dark already and I haven’t fed the hens. Help me get the blackout frames up, will you. God, how I hate these early twilights. I hate the thought of the winter to get through. it’s only November, and I’ve been getting up in the dark for weeks. I hate to think about January …’
‘By January you could be back in Boston.’
‘Are you trying to push me too?’ she said angrily. ‘Leave me alone, will you?’
She left him to put up the blackout frames alone, and stamped outside. Damn them all, she thought. The forces that pushed and pulled each way. Was she really, she wondered, holding Richard back here? Would he go if she agreed to go with him? She felt useless, and alone, and guilty. Guilty of what? Guilty of drifting, of letting events carry her along. Guilty of keeping her children in what was thought to be a place of danger. Guilty of putting off the return to that empty house in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the house that she and Lloyd had made together, the house where she could never possess him again. She did not think it was that grave in the churchyard, along with the English Fentons, which held her. She seldom went there, nor did she feel it a place of pilgrimage. She was conscious that she did not mind, though, that Dan was starting school in the village where his father was buried. She did not mind her children growing up in a place where what their father had done was a respected and admired thing. In Boston they might think that Lloyd Fenton had been an idealistic fool; in England he had been a hero.
These were the things she could not say in the letters to Liz and Uncle Pete.
Chapter Six
The planes came in low at Pearl Harbor very early on that Sunday morning, and the first blips on the radar were reported; there was, however, no duty officer to act on the report. It wasn’t until the sounds of the explosions in the harbour, where the strength of the American Pacific Fleet was anchored, began to roll through the valleys of the island that anyone began to take notice. The news was beamed out immediately to the mainland United States. Radio programmes were broken into to give it. An excited, almost incoherent gabble of voices tried to give each detail as it was received. Out of the confusion, only one thing was clear. The United States had been attacked by a force of Japanese bombers. The losses were very heavy. It was almost, but not quite, a mortal blow.
This was what Anna and Mikhail heard as they switched on the bedside radio. They were two hours ahead of Honolulu time. Mikhail had been to the kitchen and brewed their strong, hot tea. It was strange how they both preferred it to the American coffee which had for so long been a staple of their lives. But this was Sunday morning ‒ the morning to sleep late, to lie in bed, to drink tea slowly, to make love, and then, as an afterthought, to switch on the radio. They gripped each other, as many people did that day, on hearing the news. Mikhail slammed his hand down on the bed. ‘Anna, they have to find me a place. There has to be one for me.’
‘For you! You’re crazy. You’re too old.’
‘You can’t be too old when you can use your hands like I use mine. I can fix any engine that exists. Any fool can drive them. It needs a genius to fix them. I tell you, Anna, there has to be a place for me.’
She looked at him, and the coldness froze her face and her voice. ‘You mean you want to go off somewhere ‒ go off and fight?’
‘You’re crazy. No man wants to go off. No man wants to go off and leave what I’ve suddenly got. Not when I’ve got something I never expected to have. I’ve got you, Anna. I’ve got a life. I thought it was all fixing engines. If I have to go back to fixing engines for a while, just so that I can come back to you, then I’ll go. The sooner the better. You know, in Russia we hung about a lot. We talked. We wasted time. We said how it would be in the future. Well, here in America this whole country has done that in these last years. We always knew it would come, but we didn’t want to think about it. Not plan about it. Now it’s here. So ‒ for a while I have to go and fix engines, motors, anything that needs fixing. I don’t pretend I’m still that young kid who rode a horse for the Tsar. I’m not going to win any medals, Anna. I’m just offering to fix their god-damn engines and get it all over with, so I can come back to you and get on with being the biggest Ford dealer in L.A. Don’t you ever forget it, Anna. The biggest Ford dealer in L.A.’
They made love as if it was for the last time. It wasn’t the last time. He was too old to be taken into any of the fighting services. He would hold no rank or command. He eventually got himself into the Navy as someone who would hold a shore job, and one day found himself steaming out of San Francisco on a battleship, bound for the South Pacific. He was there purely to fix the engines which went wrong, to see that the bulldozers which levelled the airfields would function, to command the crew of young men under him. He was part of a Construction Battalion. He was part of the follow-up of Guadalcanal. When the cable reached Anna a little more than a year later she went to meet him in San Francisco. She wasn’t prepared to see him come down the gangplank between crutches; he paused to wave, nimbly balancing on one crutch. On the dockside, he swept her between his arms. She felt his weight on her. ‘Oh, God, Anna Nikolayevna, am I thankful to be home. I found out I wasn’t a hero. Some fool says he’s going to pin a medal on me, but all I want to do is get back to being the biggest Ford dealer in L.A.’
It wasn’t until they drew apart, and she found herself trying to fall into step with him, that she realized that the lower part of one of his legs was missing. ‘Oh, hell, Anna ‒ what does it matter? I’ve still got my hands. I’m still a genius with an engine … I came back, Anna. And I’m going to stay.’
2
When the news of the bombing of Pearl Harbor reached Boston, it was lunch-time on Sunday. The cook at Peter Fenton’s house came rushing into the dining-room, a place she never normally appeared. She had the radio on in the kitchen. ‘The Japs have bombed a place called Pearl Harbor!’ she shouted. ‘They say the Navy’s destroyed! Thousands killed! Does this mean we’re at war, Mr Fenton?’
He put down his napkin and his face was grey as he considered the news, then the colour began to mount in it as the sense of outrage and anger grew. ‘This country is not at war, Hetty, until Congress says it’s at war. But yes, I guess you can count on it that we’re at war.’
He didn’t finish his meal. He went to his study and took a cigar and brandy, and listened to the bulletins for himself. While he listened, he heard his own voice muttering in between the items of news, the fresh details that kept coming. ‘That man,’ he said softly, with all the force of his dislike of the American President, ‘that ma
n and Churchill have cooked this up between them.’ The thought was illogical and malicious, and in a calmer moment he might have acknowledged it. But he was not calm. One of his first thoughts, after the news, had been to count the heads of his grandsons and grandnephews who might be expected to join in this war, which he had feared for so long. How many would live, and how many would die? He thought of Lloyd Fenton, already dead in this cause. He thought wistfully of Lloyd Fenton’s wife. ‘Too late for her now,’ he muttered. ‘She won’t come now. I’ll never see her again.’
3
It was just before six o’clock that winter Sunday when the news was flashed across the Atlantic and reached Europe. At Fenton Field they had gathered, as usual, in the sitting-room, to hear the six o’clock news bulletin. John Manstone had a weekend leave and he was with them. Nicole had just come from helping Henson supervise the children’s supper in the kitchen. She watched nervously as Richard went through the tricky process of pouring drinks. The whisky was so precious, and they always feared he’d spill it, and sometimes he did. But no one ever kept him from the task.
The first news was very sketchy, and Nicole did not grasp the meaning of the first words of the bulletin ‘… reports an air attack on the American Naval Base at Pearl Harbor, Honolulu. Few details are available at present, but it is believed that at least one battleship was sunk, and others damaged. There are reports of many casualties …’
They listened in complete silence. They listened until the end of the bulletin, all the items of home news. There was some comment on the fact that Britain had declared war two days ago on Finland, Hungary and Romania. Nicole wondered what good that would do anyone. They heard the first suggestion that the German tanks were stopped in a 200-mile semicircle around Moscow. It was not until the long winter was over that they realized that this event had almost as much significance as that sketchy account of a bombing raid on Pearl Harbor.
By nine o’clock the news was firmer. The battleship Oklahoma had capsized, the Tennessee was on fire. There was even a suggestion that four of the eight great battleships which rode together in the harbour that morning had been sunk outright and two more extensively damaged. The number of casualties could not yet be estimated.
They had waited almost in a state of suspended animation until this later bulletin, hardly daring to trust it, knowing what it meant, but not wanting to rejoice in the horror and devastation which had been visited on the unprepared giants of the American Navy.
It was Nicole who broke the spell. She had been down to the cellar and come back with a bottle of Gavin’s Glenlivet. ‘I’ve left him another IOU,’ she said to Judy. She went and poured two fingersful into the glasses which had been washed and returned to the side dresser.
‘Well, I’m the only American here, so I’m the one who can say it. It’s come at last. We’re in!’ She handed the glasses around. ‘I suppose I’m drinking to Lloyd now, and wishing there hadn’t been so many times I’d doubted him, doubted that this day would finally come.’ She looked at Margaret’s troubled, anxious face. ‘I remember when we were all here, listening to Chamberlain telling us we were at war with Germany. We drank to victory. But Aunt Margaret was right. What we need is peace.’
She took a long pull at the whisky; for a moment its strength caught her breath, and then the healing warmth crept through her. ‘By God,’ she said. ‘By God, Uncle Pete’s going to be mad!’
And then she said good night and went to bed. But she lay wakeful in the darkness of her room. Her heart seemed to beat more rapidly, and she was restless. The event had come. The time of waiting was over.
4
The plane was only a small one of the Luftwaffe, and its mission was to fly a German general from a meeting at The Hague back to his base near Calais. He had with him two of his staff members, and the plane carried one gunner. They took off into the gloom of the December night; the flight plan was to keep along the coast all the way, making the most direct route to the airfield near Calais. There was supposed to be a total black-out of all the coastal towns, and right into the heart of France and Germany, but as usual it was not completely effective. The dull waters of the Channel glinted on the right, the faint glow of the coastal cities on the left. There was a low cloud which partly obscured both. They flew in and out of it, bumping a little as they encountered the turbulence.
The pilot never saw the little coastal freighter which had heard the drone of the aircraft engines above. It was low-flying. On the ship’s radio they had received the news of Pearl Harbor, and while they guessed that they now had a new ally in Japan, they also would have a new enemy in America. They were not now nearly so certain as they once were that the war would soon be over, and victory just a matter of time. They were nervous and apprehensive that night, and they did not first check with their radio coastal control as to the identity of the plane above them. The gunner believed he saw the hated marking of the RAF, and he fired. Afterwards he claimed he had had a hit, but the plane continued on, changing direction and heading back towards the coast of England.
The windscreen was crazed, and the pilot hit. He could feel the warmth of his own blood pumping out of him, and in a very few minutes he began to feel the cold and the faintness. The instruments didn’t register, the compass and altimeter swung wildly, uselessly. The three Army men crowded towards the cockpit. They were as helpless as this piece of machinery which suddenly would respond to nothing the pilot did. His hands were on the controls, but he could barely hear the shouted commands, instructions, orders, from these men who couldn’t fly. At the rear the gunner lay tense, waiting for another burst of fire from below. They were far out over the Channel now, the black waters slick and oily. He had not even seen the source of the AA fire which had hit them.
The pilot died just about when the craft crossed the English coast. They met a full barrage of AA fire, and flew on serenely through it, untouched. By now the general had realized which coast they had crossed. He had given up his attempt to shake life into the pilot; he had given up cursing his aides because they were soldiers, not airmen. He was attempting to destroy the papers in his briefcase.
They were past the coastal searchlights and the balloon barrage. The plane droned on over the quiet countryside, slipping past the inner defences. Those alive in the plane could sense that they were very low, too low to parachute. It was seven minutes since the craft had been hit. They hoped that when they came down it would be into a ploughed field or a pasture. But when they hit, it was a building, and the plane exploded on impact.
5
The lonely ringing of the telephone downstairs roused Nicole to full wakefulness. How terrible the sound of a telephone ringing in the lonely hours of the night was when it could bring only bad news. She fumbled her way into the dressing-gown and started downstairs. Was it Ross? … Allan …? Was it Charles? Margaret was at the telephone before her. She heard her terse, strained voice. ‘Yes, Lieutenant-Colonel Lord Manstone is staying here. Do you want me to take a message? You’ll hold on … Very good.’ She turned to Nicole. ‘Quickly, bring John.’
But he was already at the head of the stairs, in his dressing-gown, his hair rumpled, his face heavy with sleep. Andrew was behind him. Even Richard appeared at the door of his room. ‘What time is it?’ he demanded. ‘It feels like the middle of the night to me. What’s wrong?’
John had taken the telephone from Margaret. ‘Manstone here. Yes … yes, it’s you, Beggs. Yes. I left the number … What’s the trouble? What … what? Yes … yes, I understand. I don’t know if it will be possible. I’ll see … I’ll see. Yes, thanks for getting in touch. Good of you.’ Then, finally, in a lower key, ‘Yes, I understand how you feel. Thanks very much …’
He replaced the receiver. Wilks had appeared along the passage leading from the kitchen. He was bundled in an old, heavy dressing-gown. ‘Is there anything I can do, m’lord?’
Strange, Nicole thought, how it was people like Wilks who could always ask the question, and never seem ou
t of place. ‘I don’t think so,’ John’s voice was almost absent-minded, as if he really had no answer to the question. ‘There’s nothing much any of us can do. It’s up to them …’
Nicole moved towards him and shook his arm. ‘For God’s sake, wake up! What’s happened? Can we do anything?’
He shook his head in a dazed fashion. ‘No. Nothing. That was Beggs, the steward at Lynmara. It seems that … well, a plane has crashed, a small plane has crashed into the house. It’s on fire.’
‘Lynmara? ‒ Lynmara’s on fire?’ She stepped back from him. ‘Oh God. Not that too …’ She didn’t herself quite understand what she had meant by saying that. The idea was terrible to her, as if all the senseless waste of this war had found a gathering point in the destruction of a house she had loved.
‘Let’s go,’ she said to John. ‘You have to be there.’ She turned to Andrew. ‘John can borrow the car, can’t he? Is there enough petrol in it, do you think?’
Andrew nodded. ‘Enough, I’d say. You’ll probably find someone to help you out with a bit of petrol when you get there. I’ve a few coupons.’
The Lynmara Legacy Page 46