From the edge of her eye Millie observed James, taking in the scene, distant as a stranger, looking about him, at his family, at the heads along the pews like fairground coconuts, and then up and around at the shell of the church itself. Now there were people standing in the aisles and at the back of the church. The vicar peeped around the screen like an actor sneaking a preview of the audience. James wondered how long it was since those lettered tablets and solid memorials on the walls, those carved heads, lost for words, had looked down on a congregation of such volume. Some of those bygone faces were probably there, in life, occupying the same pews on the last occasion; the Thanksgiving for the Armistice that ended the Great War, the end of the War to End all Wars, as they called it. Or perhaps, before that, gratitude for the Reliefs of Mafeking and Ladysmith.
At eleven o’clock, the bells above, as if tired, were reduced to a single, diminishing, call. The Reverend Clifford Pemberton moved across the chancel, his surplice like a sail. A luffing movement brought him to face his congregation. ‘Our first hymn on this Whit Sunday we will sing while the choir is in procession,’ he intoned. ‘It is not really a hymn for Whitsun, but today, I know, aware of the dangers that beset us and our beloved country, we will sing it with deep meaning and a new vigour.’
Elizabeth sensed Robert bracing himself. She knew it would be ‘I Vow To Thee My Country’. Robert loved the hymn fervently, and was only slightly put out when Mr Purkiss, the organist, told him that the tune was composed by Gustav Holst. It was the words that mattered and they had been written by an Englishman, on his deathbed, and besides Holst was actually born (he discovered to his relief) in Cheltenham. The name of the tune – Thaxted – had a good English ring anyway.
Now the burnished cross held by Josiah Evritt, the vicar’s churchwarden, travelled down the aisle at the van of the choir. Josiah was the loudest and flattest singer in the parish, whose voice was always first to advance on the altar.
‘I vow to thee my country
All earthly things above . . .’
Eyes were reverently closed as he bellowed by, followed, two by two, like cruising swans, by the men of the choir, manfully trying to retrieve the tune.
Then trod the younger choristers, scrubbed and brushed, Georgie Mainprice, Gordon Giles, whom they called Franco, Billy Hobson from the shop, Davie Burton, the apple-faced boy from Burton’s Farm, and the others. Tommy Oakes, his wolf-cub green under his cassock, his yellow-braided cap rolled in one hand, tried to dig something from his ear with the other. Their young voices followed the deep tones of the men.
‘And there’s another country
I’ve heard of long ago . . .’
They journeyed down the congregational valley, past the families, the friends, past the members of the parish council; some choirboys angelically rounding their lips to the words, some with scarcely controlled smirks as they passed the little girls of the village, in their fresh dresses and hair ribbons. The girls, in return, blushed, looked down at their hymn books, or stifled giggles. Millie watched and smiled as she remembered. It was as it had ever been.
Josiah was now bawling from his pew like a man imprisoned in the stocks. Frank Purkiss rolled his eyes into the mirror above the organ keyboard. He was glad when the rest of the choir had taken their places.
‘That lays upon the altar
The dearest and the best.’
Elizabeth felt the church’s presence more than any of her family. She was even slightly ashamed of it. Now she closed her eyes as she sang, making the hymn into a prayer.
It was not even God, for in thoughtful moments she acknowledged, if only to herself, that all this might not only be falling on deaf ears, but possibly no ears at all. Walls had ears, as the posters warning against careless talk endlessly warned, but did God have them?
No, it was the being of the church; it was the old, comely toughness of the wooden pew rail in front of her; it was the threadbare hymn book in her gloved hand; it was the tatty piece-of-carpet feel of the hassock when she knelt. It was the white frieze of the choir, the singing and the music wandering up and above their heads along the pale stone columns and flying beams; the truculent brass eagle carrying on its back the bulky Bible, open like spreading hands for the first lesson, which her husband was to read. It was her husband himself, stuffy old Robert, her sons and her daughter-in-law, and her neighbours in that village. It was the carved screen, the flowers clean on the altar, the embroidered banners of the Sunday School, the Mothers’ Union and the Missionary Society. It was the pulpit, drilled by three bullets during a Civil War skirmish, the holes still to be seen. Once, as a girl, she had climbed into the pulpit when she thought no one was around and, crouching, looked through the bullet holes. To her astonishment she had seen her own mother come into the church and kneel and pray, and quietly cry. The memory moved her even now and she still did not know the reason for the tears.
Millie too found reassurance in the sameness of the church and the service. As they recited the familiar responses she turned her face a degree towards James and saw that his eyes were wide, scarcely blinking, and his lips silent. She wondered what would happen if the Germans arrived and conquered them. Would they still come to church in this same cosy, sure way? Were the defeated people in Belgium and Holland at church that Sunday? Were the people in Germany at church? Had Hitler or Dr Goebbels ever been to church? For some reason she thought of a song popular before the war, called ‘Even Hitler Had a Mother’. It was banned then because it was said to be insulting to a foreign head of state, but now it did not matter any longer and it was on the radio again. She had heard that Dr Goebbels, the Nazi Propaganda Minister, had said in a speech that Germany’s cause was God’s cause. Did the commander of a Panzer division believe that Christ was at his shoulder, did the Nazi paratrooper pray before he jumped?
‘Today, in our prayers . . .’ The vicar’s voice came as if he were speaking through a tube. ‘. . . We especially remember our brother Stanley Garnet Mountford, known to all of us, whom we have lost at the hands of the enemy . . .’
Elizabeth glanced at Robert. ‘Garnet,’ muttered Robert from the side of his hand. ‘Named after Sir Garnet Wolseley, Zululand, eighteen-seventies.’
The vicar went through the prayers like a man taking a careful meal. He prayed for the world and the village, for peace and deliverance from the arrow that flew by day and the terror by night. They sang ‘For Those in Peril on the Sea’ in memory of Sonny, and Peter and Lennie Dove, who until that day had only been in the church at weddings and funerals, stumbled over the words.
Robert strode out, his heavy feet bumping on the frayed stones and clanking on the memorial brasses of the aisle, to read the lesson, Psalm 23; Petrie, the coastguard, with his strange, foreign, north-eastern voice, read the second lesson from St Paul’s Epistle to the Corinthians. It was when the vicar had climbed into the pulpit, announced his text and begun his sermon that he looked down and noticed that Bess’s grandmother, Mrs Spofforth, was wearing her gas mask.
The good words died in his throat. She sat motionless, the black snout protruding challengingly towards him, four rows from the front. She must have only just put it on because others in the pew were only beginning to realize, staring at her from the sides. Bess, horrified, her face scarlet, put a hand out towards her grandmother, but the old lady pushed it away. Whispering and sniggering filtered through the congregation and some behind were stretching, half standing, to see the sight.
Through tight teeth Bess pleaded: ‘Take it off. Get it off, please.’ A muffled ‘No’ like an explosion of wind, came from within the mask followed by a waggle of the head which set the heavy nose of the respirator wobbling like the snout of an ant-eater.
The vicar decided to plough on, turning his eyes away from the rebellious woman and continuing to speak to the flanks of the congregation and, above her head, to those at the back. Then, he was grateful to see, the woman’s granddaughter was taking positive action, prising the rubber from the old la
dy’s face and with a strong young arm confiscating the mask, pushing the old lady from the pew and ushering her along the side of the nave. Vivid-cheeked, Bess got Mrs Spofforth through the door and out into the churchyard. The girl was in angry tears. Her grandmother was unrepentant. She sat incorrigibly on a gravestone, a stone angel peering over her shoulder, and grumbled: ‘It was choking me. That bloody incense he uses was choking me.’
Bess propelled her from the churchyard and down the grass hill to where her car was parked. She bullied her into the vehicle. When the grandmother made to resist she twisted the old lady’s wrist, so she squawked with pain. The car jerked angrily forward. It went down the brief hill, under the trees, and clattered through the stones and low water of the village ford.
‘Incense,’ muttered Mrs Spofforth again. ‘Choking me.’
Bess glowered in the driving mirror. ‘There was no incense,’ she snapped. ‘With all those farm people there it was probably cow shit or turnips or something.’
‘Dung, if you please young lady. Dung.’
‘All right. Dung. But dung isn’t incense.’
All the Lovatt family went back to Robert and Elizabeth’s house after church, a former habit that had become discontinued with James and Harry gone. Now they gladly, and naturally, assembled there again. Elizabeth had a rabbit pie in the oven. Harold Clark, Clakka as he was called, caught them and sold them at ninepence each, taking them around the village hanging from the handlebars of his bicycle like redskin scalps.
As Harry poured the drinks, so the aroma of the pie drifted in from the kitchen. Robert Lovatt had remained at the gate talking with Josh Millington about the garden. When he came in through the french windows and Elizabeth appeared from the kitchen, they all at once realized that again on a Sunday they were together as a family. The realization brought smiles and a slight embarrassment. It was James who raised his glass. ‘Let’s drink to ourselves,’ he suggested seriously. ‘We’re not often together now and who knows when the next time will be.’
‘Next Sunday, unless they cut our leave,’ offered Harry, and they laughed with a kind of relief. ‘Or we’ve lost the war.’
Robert raised the toast: ‘The Lovatts,’ he proposed. ‘May we be brave.’
‘And happy,’ added Elizabeth hurriedly, as if she feared her husband might start to sing the National Anthem or ‘Rose of England’ or ‘I Vow To Thee My Country’. There were several possibilities.
‘And free,’ compromised Robert. ‘The Lovatts.’
‘The Lovatts,’ they chorused.
‘God bless them,’ added Harry, partly to cover the embarrassment of the intimate moment. ‘May they prosper.’
‘May they survive,’ added James. His glance took in each of them.
‘Stop it, James,’ warned Millie, smiling, touching his elbow. ‘No messages of doom today. The news was better this morning, remember. You said so yourself.’
‘Ah, yes,’ said James formally, as if reading a communiqué. ‘The front line is holding. There’s even been the odd counter-attack. The British are side by side with our Dutch and Belgian allies. And to add to our conquest of Iceland we have now successfully invaded Curaçao and Aruba.’
‘And where might they be?’ asked Elizabeth. ‘I didn’t hear the news this morning. I was skinning a rabbit.’
‘West Indies,’ her husband told her heavily and with a defensive glance at James. ‘Only Dutch colonies. Important oil refineries. We had to walk into Iceland to stop the Germans getting there first and sitting right above our heads.’
‘One cold place and two hot places,’ commented Millie curiously. ‘Shall we put the news on?’
They all had been aware that it was time for the bulletin, but each had, for once, hesitated to mention it, as if they were pushing it away, not wanting it to spoil their assembly.
‘Suppose we’d better,’ said Robert. Harry was nearest the set and he switched it on. The announcer was already speaking. ‘. . . heavy German attacks in Holland and Belgium have forced allied troops to fall back to prepared positions. Heavy casualties have been reported.’
‘Whose heavy casualties?’ asked Harry.
‘When they phrase it like that, it’s ours,’ said James.
Their father’s expression hushed them. ‘Mr Churchill is to make a statement in the House of Commons tomorrow on the war situation. He is expected to offer France further British reinforcements and aircraft to the British Expeditionary Force. The French Prime Minister has described the German invasion of the Low Countries as a stab in the back but has assured Frenchmen that they have six million men under arms, ready to meet any German onslaught.’
James replenished their drinks and they sat silently through the rest of the bulletin. Outside the bright sun shone mockingly on the May garden. A bumble bee came in through the open window and busied himself with the flowers in a vase on the sill. Robert turned the set off. Millie ushered the bee out. ‘Josh Millington says that he can get an extra sugar ration because he keeps bees,’ said Elizabeth going towards the kitchen. She returned and picked up her drink, taking it back with her.
Each of them was aware of the dark feeling, only a shadow so far, that was moving across their safe, contented, unconsciously smug English existence. An unease was present in that traditional room in the house that they had all known throughout their lives. They had always thought that freedom and safety were theirs by right.
‘I wonder what Churchill will say?’ muttered Robert looking down into his drink.
‘He’ll think of something,’ replied James sourly. ‘He usually does.’
Harry said: ‘At least he’s pugnacious. He’s got some fighting spirit.’ He caught the glance of his ally, Millie; she smiled at him. He was wearing his number two uniform which he had not worn since he went back to report at Portsmouth. His mother had proudly sent his number one to the cleaners in Lymington, just as she had once sent his best school blazer there. Now, with a subconscious attempt to look pugnacious himself, he thrust his hands into his naval pockets. The left hand immediately came into contact with the three discs of the drowned sailors, Thurston G., Smith D., Wilson N. – three men in a boat, as Millie had called them. He had forgotten to hand them in.
On Monday, 13 May, after ten days of fine weather, the sun was clear again across the spotless southern counties of England. The New Forest was in its slender, first greenery, and early on that day, the Whitsun Bank Holiday Monday, visitors began to arrive at the small town stations and make their way into the trees, clutching children and picnic baskets. Reliable English kettles bubbled in many a glade and the tablecloths were spread by brown streams and under the boughs of hoary oaks. Along the coast the beaches were populated, although not with the crowds of a year before, and the striped shops were trading in teas and ice-cream. Trousers rolled and skirts held above knees, the English ventured into the chilly Channel on the distant side of which German soldiers were falling by parachute into France and heavy German tanks were cracking the pavements of the Belgian city of Liège. A great fortress, Eben Emael, which defended the city, and was said to be impregnable, was taken easily by troops who landed by glider on its flat roof. War was different now.
James was behind the hedge in his small garden at ten o’clock, phlegmatically pushing a peaceful hand-mower over the lawn. Holidaymakers in cars went by on the road, the passengers howling at donkeys which had come to graze against his borders, and Millie was putting bedding plants in the window boxes. At eleven she made some coffee and took a cup to him in the garden. The sun was climbing and his face was damp.
‘This is ridiculous, Millie,’ he said, thrusting the machine away. ‘This is bloody ridiculous. What are we all doing? I’m mowing the lawn, there are people mooching about in cars, laughing at the donkeys, and the world’s afire under our backsides. For God’s sake, why aren’t we doing something?’
From the house the telephone sounded. She went indoors and a few moments later put her head out of the cottage window. �
�God must have heard you, James,’ she called. ‘It’s Philip Benson. He’s calling from London.’
James wiped the sweat from his hands and went into the house, ducking under the low lintel. The coolness of the living-room dropped over him like a hood. He picked up the telephone earpiece. ‘Philip, yes, I’m here.’
‘Good, I’m so glad I found you. Are you doing anything of great importance?’
‘Of great national necessity,’ emphasized James. ‘I was cutting the lawn.’
‘Sorry, but can you come up to London? Right now, I mean. I could send a car for you if necessary.’
‘It must really be important.’
‘It is. Churchill’s making his statement in the House this afternoon and I want you to be there.’
‘Why me?’
‘You’re going to work for him, James, that’s why.’
Seven
ONLY ONE SEAT was vacant in the Chamber of the House of Commons that hot holiday afternoon. James, from his place in the elevated gallery, wedged between expectantly leaning people, could see it below. The air was tight. Whispering politicians and eager people crowded together with anxious ambassadors to see Winston Churchill, a man who had been commonplace and available for so many years, now abruptly elevated to the status of someone who could work at least one big miracle.
Churchill entered the chamber at two-thirty, an anti-climax, for he simply walked in like a person who is a little late but is not concerned by his lateness. James had never seen the real man before. He looked smaller than he had imagined. In photographs and in the cinema newsreels his visible arrogance, his width of face, heaviness of neck and shoulder had made him appear larger than life. Now he seemed to be a minor figure from which to demand so much. The talk from the benches ceased and the galleries were hushed at once, but nothing extraordinary took place, just the neatly padding feet of Britain’s last hope making their way towards the front bench. It was the Labour Opposition who began cheering first, led by the clerkish Attlee and the quiffed Morrison, once the new man’s enemies. The rousing sound, with its insistent echoes of a badly behaved school, rose raucously to the ancient ceiling which had looked down with equanimity on so much of the country’s history. Some Conservatives joined in, but they were late and less compared with the Opposition. Having reached his seat Churchill looked about him and blinked as if surprised at the attendance.
The Dearest and the Best Page 11