‘My name,’ said the Dutchman, ‘is Johanes Van Lorn.’ The voice was surprisingly firm after the obvious nervousness of its owner. ‘My home is in the town of Rotterdam. Or it was. There is nothing left now.’
A murmur of sympathy moved around the audience. Mrs Spofforth said loudly to the vicar, ‘His English is as good as yours, isn’t it.’
‘The Germans bombed us, destroying everything. I took my family out into the fields to escape. To a place where we once used to go fishing on the canal. Then the tanks came, the Panzers, and the German soldiers. It was very bad. There was artillery shooting and I became separated from my family, from my wife, from my son, from my uncle and some other people we were hiding with. Now . . .’ The tone faltered. ‘Now . . . I do not know where they are. I went back to the place to look but I could not find them. I pray they are safe.’
A dumb but tangible sadness came from the hall. Someone began sniffing. Men stared with leaden faces at the upright and impressive figure on the stage. Robert coughed with English embarrassment and asked imperatively: ‘Mr Van Lorn, what advice do you have . . .? Have you any . . . er, tips . . .?’
The Dutchman turned. ‘Advice?’ he said. ‘If the Germans invade?’
‘Yes. If they invade.’
It seemed that the white face became whiter. ‘Run,’ he answered. ‘Run away.’
Fourteen
ALL NIGHT AND every day now they waited, a wait of eagerness, the unskilled, unfit, unknowing amateurs, willing, daring the enemy to attack. To a man, the Local Defence Volunteers were desperate to shoot at a German, or some suitable substitute. Accidents and misunderstandings were not infrequent.
The professional soldiers, who knew better, were dogged with dismay by the prospect of invasion. France was tottering, the English sea was watched, the cliffs patrolled, the trenches dug, the road-blocks and concrete pillboxes planted into the ground. Sometimes defence works had to be dug up again and relocated to face the right direction. Ringlets of barbed wire were looped along the beaches and roads. The skies remained summery and mostly clear of intrusion. For a while, an uncanny, unforeseen and almost mocking peace settled across the land. Tents sat like mushrooms on the open moorland in the forest and the regular army that had returned so tattered from Dunkirk healed its wounds and rested its feet.
Soldiers sat and lay in the emerald meadows while units were being replanned, transport, supplies and weapons found. Feet, raw from the long trudge to Dunkirk, healed with the aid of vats of Valderma ointment. The men did not constitute a fighting force.
But with the odd serenity that had spread over the land, there was a certain sureness, a contrary lightness, a feeling of knowing what had to be faced and what needed to be done.
France was still fighting, so was Norway, but each with a diminishing faith. With a grim sense of relief the British had come to realize that they would soon be alone, the boundaries of war visible and unmistakable – the cliffs and beaches of their own island.
At Binford the Local Defence Volunteers brought the re-claimed punt gun up the river to cover the crossroads leading to Lymington, Lyndhurst, Southampton and Christchurch. It lay among the rushes, the fierce, elongated weapon mounted on its shallow boat, its muzzle like a baleful eye. Robert’s LDV men cut away some of the reeds and willow branches to improve the field of fire. At the same junction they had a booby trap, a coil of barbed wire fixed to the garden roller which normally saw service in the cricket field. The roller was perched and pegged on a ramp and could be pushed across the road pulling behind it the opening concertina of barbed wire on the approach of an enemy vehicle.
‘Excellent,’ enthused Robert, crouching on a slight hill behind cover of gorse at midnight. ‘Absolutely first class. Let’s try it again. Bring it back and give it another shove.’ Four men – Wilf Smith, his brother Malcolm, George Lavington and Tom Bower – tugged the roller back across the road and up on to its ramp. A screech owl sounded. Standing above them Robert felt younger, fitter, more essential and more important than he had for years. ‘Good. Grand, chaps,’ he enthused. ‘Up she comes. Watch those barbs, Tom. They’ll have your trousers off!’ The men had steadied the roller. ‘Right,’ said Robert firmly. ‘Let her go – now!’
The heavy roller seemed to relish its military role. Released, it performed a frisky jump, like a freed horse, and trundled blithely down the ramp, on to the road and across it, stretching out the barbed wire coil behind it.
‘Car coming!’ called Willy Cubbins, concealed at a bend in the road. The boy was frequently used as a look-out now because he appeared to have conquered his sleep-walking and his legs did not seize up, as did the legs of the older men, during long prone periods under cover.
‘Car, Mr Lovatt!’ he echoed, peeping over the top of the gorse. ‘Mr Lovatt, car . . . !’
It was too late. A Morris van took the bend at a good rate just as the barbed wire was uncoiling over the road behind the roller. The vehicle wobbled briskly and charged into the wire like an elephant into a trap. A twanging, a scraping, a squealing of brakes, and finally two bangs, the first as the roller and the side of the vehicle bounced against each other, the second as a front tyre punctured on a rusty barb. Like shadows, the Local Defence Volunteers rose from their dark background.
‘Halt,’ ordered Robert. ‘Who goes there?’
There was a scuffling, a scrambling in the dark, the car door was forced half open, but caught noisily by the wire. A face, livid in Robert’s torchlight, appeared. ‘Halt,’ ordered Robert again.
‘Halt?’ returned the man vehemently, still half in, half out of the van. ‘Halt? I am fucking halted! Look at my bleeding van. What are you stupid bastards playing at? You could have killed us.’
‘You’re lucky we didn’t open fire,’ intoned Robert. He turned his torch down to the riverbank revealing the elevated mouth of the huge punt gun. It was levelled at the vehicle. ‘Identity card, please.’
Furiously the man pushed the door against the wire and managed to shift it another few inches. It was still impossible to get out. A girl’s voice came from within the vehicle, attempting to calm the man. ‘Bert, Bert, don’t.’ His arm went back and pushed her away. ‘There’ll only be bother, Bert.’
‘Identity card, please,’ repeated Robert.
‘Sod off! Playing bloody soldiers at this time of night.’
‘It’s this time of night that spies are abroad,’ answered Robert, as if quoting Shakespeare. Moving towards him he flooded the man’s face with his torch. The man glared through the entangled wire.
‘Spies! Do I look like a fucking spy? Do spies go around with bits of stuff in their vans?’
‘Thank you very much,’ bawled the girl from within. ‘Bit of stuff am I? Just watch your mouth, mate.’
‘I take it you’re from London,’ commented Robert mildly. ‘What are you doing in this area?’
‘Came down to play on the beach,’ retorted the man.
‘Identity card, if you please.’
‘I haven’t got my bloody identity card. Nor my gas mask. Nor my stirrup pump. Anything else? Blimey, don’t you lot have bloody fun!’
There was a movement from the rear and Robert saw that Purkiss was peering through the window of the van with his torch pointed down. ‘I’ll tell you what he has got, Mr Lovatt,’ he said. ‘A dead cow.’
Almost by tradition, the day of the Binford Fête was fine. The sun warmed a blameless morning and the people of the village were about early, doing their shopping and their chores in time to go to the sports field where the event was always held.
On that same Saturday, across the English Channel, the metallic German armies were advancing towards an undefended Paris. Off the Norwegian coast the aircraft carrier Glorious was sunk by three German pocket battleships, the Hipper, the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau. Not one of the carrier’s aircraft was on patrol at the time and so no warning was given. The Glorious was trapped with two escorting destroyers which were also sunk by the swift German s
hips. Of fifteen hundred British sailors, only forty-six survived.
Hob Hobson was one of the early arrivals at the sports field. The sun fell in golden columns through the elms, and the grass, mown the day before, was pungently sweet. Some of the coloured stalls had been erected overnight but Hob, who always organized the bowling for a pig, liked to set up the canvas and skittles for his attraction first thing in the morning. Obtaining the pig this year had been impossible, Hob said, owing to the food regulations, so he was giving an IOU which could be redeemed for two pigs on the cessation of the war with Germany.
Other early arrivals left deep footprints in the dew; Charlie Fox who was running the beer tent appeared, rolling a barrel like a carpet across the grass. The cricketers were jealously fencing off their stretch of green wicket so that no one would set foot on the sacred twenty-two yards, while other players set up the beat-the-batsman sideshow. Flags looped around the ground, hardly a movement from their tips, and this year the flags of the Allies were hung in a brave display over the horticultural tent where some of the largest marrows, greenest beans and most tender potatoes in the South of England were displayed for judgement, surrounded by vivid flowers from country gardens. Ben Bennett’s New Forest Arcadians were booked from lunchtime and there were to be races and other contests for children and grown-ups. The air-raid wardens were giving a display of gas-resuscitation, there was to be a Punch-and-Judy show and a man from the First World War who had one leg and lived in an adjoining village had promised to bring his barrel organ on the condition that he was positioned on the distant side of the field from the band. They had clashed in the past.
A family dog show had been organized and the National Savings Tent was walled with stirring war pictures; artillery-men kneeling like worshippers around their field gun, a fighter pilot laughing confidently in his cockpit, a minesweeper watch-out silhouetted against a northern sunset. There was to be a baby contest with ten jars of cod liver oil as the prize and a tug-of-war had been arranged between a village team and some of the soldiers recently evacuated from Dunkirk. These soldiers had also volunteered to act as stewards and to help with the many sideshows. They were returning to life. The vicar had expressed some misgiving about using the white tents which were normally spread over the sports field, since he feared they might catch the eye of an enemy raider. A suggestion at the Parish Council that they should be marked with the Red Cross was vetoed as it smacked of cheating. The soldiers were of the opinion that it would be worthless to attempt to camouflage the tents as that would make them a sure target. The skies had been quiet, however, and a compromise was decided, the tents being placed as far as possible beneath the swelling green of the midsummer trees, but not so far as to look to any flying German like anything but a village fête.
By ten o’clock, when the sun was well clear of the trees and the tea urns had arrived, there were busy figures scattered throughout the field, hammering tent pegs, heaving ropes, setting up coconuts, made of wood now but realistically carved by a man in the forest. The same man was giving a display of charcoal burning, an ancient art in the region, almost forgotten but now revived by the necessity of war. A suggestion that the local gypsies should be encouraged to man the lost property tent had not been taken seriously.
Robert, wearing his service revolver holster stuffed with cardboard, and three of his LDV men had arrived, manhandling the tea urns transported by Millie’s horse and trap. They trotted with them as if they were trench mortars. They then set about erecting their own display, several genuine rifles, an arrangement of enamel soup plates, face down and said to have the appearance of anti-tank mines, a coil of barbed wire and their tommy-gun. This display of power was to be exhibited before a banner which proclaimed: ‘The Binford Local Defence Volunteers Are Ready for Hitler.’ A demonstration of making a Molotov cocktail, the useful home-made bomb developed by the Finns in their war against the invading Russians, was abandoned on advice from PC Brice who thought local boys might use the recipe. Robert was privately relieved because no one in the unit knew, for certain, how to make one.
Children came down to the field and ran around in excitement. The little girls wore print dresses and the boys flannel shirts and flag-legged shorts with belts fastened with a snake buckle. It was rumoured that a man was bringing two donkeys from Christchurch, a rare attraction because normally at this time of year they were occupied giving rides on the beach. Now the beach was silent with barbed wire.
Noon shone over the forest and its fringe of villages and fields; serene sun lay everywhere. When Alan Stevens left his house behind the school the village was empty and dusty. He walked to the sports field. At the gate he took in the amateur scene and saw the LDV sideshow at the distant end, near the pavilion. He walked that way.
Robert saw him when he was half the field away. ‘Here’s our conscientious objector,’ he muttered. Purkiss, who was smoothing out the creases in the warning-to-Hitler banner, turned and studied the sports-jacketed figure coming towards them. ‘I hope he hasn’t come to advise us to surrender,’ sniffed Robert.
Stevens halted a few yards distant and looked at the meagre display of weapons and then the vain boast plastering the banner. ‘Good morning,’ he said to the glowering Robert. ‘I wondered if you needed some help.’
‘Help?’ inquired Robert suspiciously. ‘What sort of help?’
‘Help with the stall. Help with defending the country. Anything.’
‘You want to join the LDV?’ responded Robert brusquely. ‘Why don’t you go off and join the army?’
‘The army won’t have me. I’ve got a hole in my lower chest. From a bullet.’
Robert swallowed his disbelief. ‘A bullet? Where did you come across a bullet?’
‘In Spain,’ Stevens told him. ‘In the civil war. With the International Brigade.’
Astonishment arched over Robert’s large face. ‘Good God, you were, were you?’ Distrust caused him to pause again. ‘Not a Communist as well, are you?’
‘No, I can’t say I am,’ said Stevens firmly. ‘Now, do you want some help?’
Like the leader of a gang of boys, Robert turned to Purkiss and the others. ‘Shall we let him join?’ he asked from the corner of his mouth. ‘He might be useful.’
‘Knows more than any of us, I don’t doubt, sir,’ suggested Purkiss. ‘Ask ’im if he can make a bomb.’
Robert said: ‘Can you make a bomb?’
‘Up to a certain size.’ Stevens smiled at their school-yard faces. Walking into the area, he lifted the Union Jack at the entrance and it draped across his shoulder. Casually he picked up the tommy-gun.
Robert blenched. ‘Steady on with that,’ he warned. ‘It’s the only one. Don’t go and break it.’
Stevens snapped the weapon into its components with three sharp movements. He squinted down the barrel.
‘What do you think?’ asked Robert. ‘Is it all right? Haven’t sent us a dud, have they?’
‘Better than nothing,’ said Stevens unconvincingly. ‘It’s an improvement on peashooters. It’s not going to stop the German army, though.’
Robert looked at him solidly. ‘Do you want to join the Binford Local Defence Volunteers?’ he inquired dramatically. ‘Or are you merely here to criticize?’
Stevens nodded. ‘If you’ll have me.’
The big elderly man stepped forward and they shook hands. ‘Right,’ said Robert. ‘You can help to put the banner up. I’ll get you an armband as soon as I can. Elizabeth is running up a few more.’ He paused, then whispered confidingly: ‘It’s not that tommy-gun that’s going to stop the German army, Mr Stevens. It’s the people.’
Major-General Sound, a great army revolver in a polished chestnut case on his shining belt, opened the fête, standing on a platform of beer crates overlaid with bunting and backed by the fluttering flags of friendly nations. Privately he thought, and not for the first time, that the Union Jack flew more bravely, with more animation even in the mildest breeze, than the banners of other
nations, even those who were allies.
While the Dunkirk survivors and the combined LDV and police teams were sweating at the tug-of-war rope that afternoon, Harry went with his mother into the horticultural tent and saw Bess, her face framed by flowers, at the end of one of the long tables. His mother was intent on Kathy Barratt’s tulips which she grew in window-boxes at the telephone exchange. He touched her hand to excuse himself and moved along the blooms until he reached Bess.
He stood behind her, his chin brushing her shoulder as he looked over it. She smiled privately. ‘Who can this be creeping up on me?’ she whispered in her mocking manner.
‘I thought how fetching you looked among the flowers,’ he answered. He lightly flicked the stem of an early rose. Mary Puller, the butcher’s wife, pushed his hand briskly aside.
‘That’s my Anthony Eden,’ she said haughtily. ‘Highly Commended.’
‘Yes, he is,’ replied Harry. He and Bess walked on. Harry was aware that his mother was noticing him through the stems and petals, from the far end of the tent. He looked briefly her way and smiled. She turned away.
‘It’s very close in here,’ said Bess. ‘And it smells like an undertaker’s.’
‘Do you want to take a stroll?’ suggested Harry. ‘I’ll tell you all about Dunkirk.’
‘I’ll take a stroll if you promise not to,’ she answered with a brief, patient smile. Beneath her flowered dress her hips and her breasts showed. ‘Do you have to ask your mother?’ she suggested. ‘Do you want us to sneak out by different exits?’
He made a face. ‘That won’t be necessary,’ he said unconvincingly. ‘I’m a big boy now.’
‘Ah, yes, you’ve been to Dunkirk. All right, let’s go for our walk.’
He kept his eyes directly on the tent flap and moved her towards it. Ben Bennett’s New Forest Arcadians were playing in the sunshine, ‘Rose of England, Thou Shalt Fade Not Here’. Harry saw his father standing almost to attention, listening to the lifting tune, and he felt a sharp, foolish affection for him. All around, the fête tinkled in the bright day. Everyone in the village seemed to be there and many from the surrounding forest hamlets and even as far afield as Lymington.
The Dearest and the Best Page 26