The Dearest and the Best

by Leslie Thomas

  The Government of occupied Denmark, with a tardy sense of occasion, announced that it was resigning from the League of Nations. With a July budget in Britain Sir Kingsley Wood, the Chancellor, put income tax up to eight and sixpence in the pound, duty was increased on tobacco and beer. Leaflets were showered on the beleaguered island outlining a ‘Proposal for Peace’ and ‘A Last Appeal to Reason’ by Adolf Hitler. These too were much prized as souvenirs by children and some were raffled or auctioned for service charities. Winston Churchill sniffed and put the proposals aside. Fearing the worst, the management closed the famous aquarium at Brighton on the Sussex coast and the fish were sent to be eaten at local hospitals.

  The hot summer still lay across England as July became August. At ten o’clock on a close morning Elizabeth walked into Binford and arrived at the shop to find Hob Hobson fixing a cardboard advertisement to one side of his window, a call for Britons to purchase Carter’s Little Liver Pills. It said sagely: ‘Wartime Living Affects the Liver.’

  She smiled through the window and Hob climbed down and came to the door. ‘I reckoned it would make a change,’ he said rubbing his chin and considering the addition. ‘Can’t get much display stuff like that now.’ The village moved on its placid course about them, sunlight on the street, windows open, flowers in the boxes, old Josh cutting his hedge with all the intensity of a barber. His head bobbed up and down like a man uncertainly taking cover. Hob’s shop doorbell tinkled as it always did when there was a touch of breeze. Gates, the gaitered gamekeeper, trudged head down along the pavement with two of his dogs at heel.

  From the south came a long sound, a collective cadence none of them had heard before. The village scene became still, eyes turned to the sky; the note increased to a deep and dangerous drone and across the horizon of the roofs appeared a great armada of German planes.

  ‘They’ve come for us,’ muttered Hob. ‘This is it, Mrs Lovatt.’

  ‘God help us,’ answered Elizabeth staring upwards.

  People hurried into their gardens and into the street to gaze at the formations, spread across the sky like the crosses in a cemetery.

  ‘Wonder where they’re going,’ shouted Gates above the noise. Hob’s window began to rattle and he put his hand out to steady the glass.

  Children miraculously appeared in the street, congregating excitedly in the open. Elizabeth’s first thought was to shout to them to get under cover, but then she saw Alan Stevens, the schoolteacher, appear at the door of his house. He looked up grimly. When he looked down again his face was sad. He saw Elizabeth was watching. ‘They’re going over,’ he said. ‘They won’t bother with us.’

  Tommy Oakes and the Mainprice boys were dancing with excitement in the street. ‘Dorniers, sir,’ shouted Tommy towards the schoolteacher. ‘And that lot’s Junkers! Look at them, sir. ’Undreds of them.’

  ‘It’s the bees that’s going to be the danger,’ called Josh Millington across the barricade of his hedge. ‘I get worried about the bees.’

  The first planes were moderately high, but a second wave moved ponderously in the sky, below the summer clouds, their black and white crosses clear, their engines louder.

  ‘Where’s the guns?’ demanded Charlie Fox trotting comically sideways down the street, his eyes on the sky. He held a steel helmet above his head, like a man shading his face from the sun or perhaps leading cheers. ‘Where’s the anti-aircraft guns? Where’s our planes?’

  ‘Where’s the si-reeeeens,’ called his mother loping after him, wiping her hands as if she might be needed. ‘What’s the use of having si-reeeeens, if they don’t let them off? Lot of good that is!’

  As if responding, the siren began to sound across the forest from the police station where PC Brice had belatedly pressed the button. He had waited until the instructions had arrived from the central defence point, as were his orders. The sight of a hundred undoubtedly German bombers could not be acted upon until confirmed by higher authority. It might have been a trick. Now the wail sounded, derisorily faint under the noise of the enemy’s engines.

  The formations passed leaving bright silence across the village. The birds sounded again, unperturbed. Dogs which had barked, stopped. The children chattered, looking up, waiting for more planes. Alan Stevens came to the school wall. Elizabeth walked across to him.

  ‘You’ve seen that sort of thing in Spain, I expect,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid so. That was like going back in time. My wife died in an air raid.’

  ‘Yes, I was sorry to hear.’

  ‘We don’t have an air-raid shelter, even for the children,’ he said helplessly. ‘This has been designated a “safe” area. I’m supposed to send them home – out in the open – in case of attack.’

  ‘Perhaps it will be finished by the time the August holidays are over,’ said Elizabeth. She realized how ambiguous it was. ‘I mean, perhaps there won’t be as many raids as we think. After all, at the start of the war we thought we’d all be bombed or gassed out of existence in twenty-four hours.’

  ‘I think this time they’re serious,’ he said surveying the sky, vacant now except for the blue of summer. They could still hear the planes and the sound of gunfire like distant thunder.

  A shout came from the village crossroads and Elizabeth turned to see her husband approaching, red-faced, at a respectable trot followed by four of his Home Guards. It was difficult for her to contain the smile. God forbid that he would ever have to confront a stormtrooper. Robert was waving the unit tommy-gun. The others had a rifle and three shotguns between them.

  ‘See the blighters?’ Robert demanded furiously as if a personal insult had been perpetrated. ‘See them?’

  ‘We could scarcely miss them, dear,’ responded Elizabeth.

  Her husband appeared hurt. ‘No time for jokes, Elizabeth,’ he admonished. He glared accusingly at the sky. ‘Swine,’ he said. ‘Flying over here like that. And not a single damned gun fired at them. Where are our defences, I’d like to know?’

  ‘They’re firing now,’ said Stevens as the explosions grunted in the distance.

  ‘Too late! Now’s too late,’ retorted Robert. ‘Pick them off as they cross the coast, I say. They came in just as they pleased. Without a by-your-leave.’ He turned to the other men, and then back at Stevens. ‘If we could get the punt gun on top of the church perhaps we can get a pot shot at the swine when they come back.’ He looked around with wild hope of support.

  ‘The vicar would hardly agree to that,’ pointed out Elizabeth mildly. ‘Not on the church.’

  ‘Best place,’ asserted Robert. ‘Catch the blighters by surprise. Always used churches in Flanders. So did the Huns.’

  Stevens said nothing but shook his head either in disagreement or disbelief. Elizabeth added quietly, ‘It’s not Flanders now, Robert. This is Hampshire and it’s nineteen-forty.’

  Her husband huffed sulkily. ‘That’s the bloody trouble,’ he said. ‘Nobody knows how to fight a war any longer.’ He turned to his puzzled followers. ‘We’ll get up the hill,’ he said decisively. ‘We’ll wait for them. If they come back low enough we might just wing one with a lucky shot.’ He turned to Stevens. ‘You keep an eye on things here, sergeant,’ he suggested. ‘We’ll handle this.’

  He turned and stumped back up the street with his men. The villagers dumbly watched them go. Robert led his volunteers to the summit of the middle hill of the three like sails and there they waited submerged in the gorse for the bombers to return. From the far distance they heard the returning planes. When the raiders did appear they were flying at ten thousand feet. Howling with anger and frustration Robert rose on top of the hillock and fired a single token round of defiance from his pathetic little tommy-gun.

  On that morning, 14 August – Eagle Day, so called by Hermann Goering, the fat Marshal of the German Air Force – fleets of bombers began systematic attacks on airfields and other defence installations in the south and south-east of England. Joanne Schorner heard from Washington that a
colleague in Berlin had noted Goering’s prediction. ‘He says that he will eliminate the Royal Air Force in four days, at the most a week,’ she said levelly to James.

  ‘I don’t think the RAF would agree with that,’ replied James. It was nine o’clock on a warm, grey London evening. The bombers had not come in strength near the capital up to then, apart from one raid when, due to faulty navigation, they dropped high explosives on Cripplegate in the City, bombs intended for oil installations several miles east.

  The two sat in St James’s Park by the metallic lake. She had waited for him to finish his duties and they walked under the unstirring trees to the lakeside where they sat, a little apart, with few people about and only the plopping sounds of water birds disturbing the park stillness. Behind them a battery of guns had begun their vigil, their noses raised as if smelling the sky, and the balloons were flying at their highest stations, far up in the fading day.

  ‘It’s like the eye of the storm here, don’t you think?’ she suggested. ‘In London.’

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘It’s uncanny. But it will come.’

  Joanne said: ‘I had our Geneva correspondent contact John Colin’s mother.’ James quickly looked sideways at her. She continued to study the tin water of the lake. Five flying ducks seamed the water as they landed.

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘She grabbed the chance,’ she replied. ‘I was really amazed. I think she’s more of a Red Cross lady than a mother. She said she was worried about John Colin being here.’

  ‘As well she might be,’ muttered James. ‘It sounds as if Mrs Perkins is having an engrossing time. And she has agreed that you take him to the States with you?’

  ‘She has. Her lawyer called me today and I’m going to see him tomorrow. I’d like to take at least one little boy out of here before it all starts, James.’

  ‘How soon?’

  She shrugged and, still not looking at him, she said: ‘The sea passage is no good. That ship, the City of Benares, is full. They’re packing all the young kids they can on board. I think, though, I can get two seats on the flying boat. We would be in New York the next day.’

  ‘I see,’ he said. ‘And that will be soon.’

  ‘Right,’ she confirmed. ‘They won’t let out the exact date of departure for security reasons, but I guess it will be towards the end of this month or early in September.’ She moved her hand and put it around his arm at the elbow, squeezing the khaki sleeve. ‘While we’re sitting here like this,’ she recited so quietly he could hardly hear the words. She continued to study the lake but further away now, and the little green-treed islands at its centre. ‘While we’re here, James, I just want you to know that I feel very deeply for you. You’ve made a great difference to my life. There’s something I haven’t told you but which I’ll let you know about in good time. Please don’t ask me now.’

  James felt his throat tighten. He looked at her soft profile, the hair fluffy on the forehead, the serious expression of thought, the faint colour in the cheek. ‘I won’t ask you now,’ he agreed. ‘If that’s what you want.’

  ‘Thank you. That’s good. I’d like us to remember each other very well.’

  Twenty

  ENGINES IN THE skies sounded through all the following days. The high blue was furrowed with creamy trails and gentle puffs of gunfire. From the ground the trails were remotely beautiful changing form, fading like a visible echo long after the fight was finished, the gunbursts like dandelion clocks. Men working in the southern fields straightened up to watch the deadly manoeuvres overhead, machine-gun sounds filtering down as delicate as light rain. Children squeezed their eyes against the sun, standing in light dresses and open shirts in playgrounds, meadows and streets, to watch. Wives paused to follow a stricken plane falling, then turned away with closed eyes as it exploded on the earth. Every day hundreds of aircraft occupied the sky. Bombs straddled the British airfields; defending fighters took off between the yawning craters. In four weeks the German Air Force lost 1,389 planes and the RAF 792. They called it the Battle of Britain. In London newspaper sellers chalked the day’s toll on their placards in the way they proclaimed cricket scores in peacetime.

  Evening closed slowly over Binford on 16 August, a gritty sort of evening, for someone had been burning garden rubbish and the smoke had drifted on the light, late breeze over the neighbouring houses. It mingled with the real dusk, lurking among the trees and gardens of the village. Men had come in from their work and were listening to the wireless news sitting at the meal table. Children were called in from play. Windows were shuttered and near-silence fell upon the houses.

  At nine-thirty a low-flying Dornier, going home early and anxious to jettison its remaining bombs, dropped a stick of small incendiaries, which burst and flamed in the empty village streets. Three also fell in a clutch on to Josh Millington’s cottage and another set the old roof blazing on John Lampard’s long white house down by the estuary.

  Robert, like a man in a farce, rumbled hurriedly from his bathroom, a huge pre-war towel around his bulging middle, almost falling down the stairs, only a minute after the plane had passed. ‘Something’s been hit in the village,’ he called hoarsely to Elizabeth who was making tea in the kitchen. ‘There’s a damned great fire somewhere. You can see the glow.’ Wadsworth, thinking he was going for a walk, stood up and yawned.

  Suddenly white-faced, Elizabeth hurried into the sitting-room, the empty teapot hanging from her hand. She switched off the music coming from the wireless. Grasping his towel with one hand and motioning Elizabeth to turn out the lights, which she was already doing, he padded to the garden door and they both stared out into the deep evening. Above the trees at the foot of their garden a casual orange glow flickered against the dusk. ‘Oh, my God,’ muttered Elizabeth as a prayer.

  Robert turned heavily. They shut the door together as if to stem marauders. Elizabeth turned on the lights. ‘Get Petrie, will you,’ said Robert. ‘I’ll get some clothes on. Then ring the pub, make sure everybody gets out to help.’

  ‘Yes, yes of course,’ Elizabeth replied vaguely, forcing herself to steadiness. She dialled the coast-guard station. ‘There are two fires,’ Petrie told her. ‘One is John Lampard’s house along the river. The other’s nearer you. I’ve called the brigades from Lymington and Lyndhurst. Tell your husband I’ll be at the Lampards’ as soon as my relief gets here. He’s on his way.’

  ‘What’s he say?’ shouted Robert from the bedroom as soon as she had finished. She could hear his elephant steps overhead.

  ‘John Lampard’s is on fire,’ she called up the stairs trying to control her voice. ‘Petrie called the brigades. There’s another fire in the village but he doesn’t know where.’

  ‘Lampard’s!’ bawled Robert. He appeared at the top of the stairs and shouted it down at her as if she were to blame. ‘That’ll burn like tinder. The blighters!’ He was wearing his voluminous, newly issued Home Guard trousers and was buttoning up his flapping khaki shirt. His face was flushed with fluster. Turning back into the bedroom he called, ‘Ring the pub, Elizabeth. Make sure they’re doing something.’

  ‘I was just going to,’ she called back. Kathy Barratt put her through with surprising efficiency. Elizabeth’s right hand which held the earpiece was shaking. Charlie Fox’s mother answered the phone, choked with excitement. ‘Who?’ she managed to say. ‘Who is it? Oh, Mrs Lovatt. Josh’s house is on fire. They’ve hit his roof. Everybody’s there. Charlie told me I’ve got to stay here.’ She sounded as if she hoped Elizabeth would rescind the order.

  Elizabeth said: ‘Keep calm, Mrs Fox,’ and put the earpiece on its cradle. ‘Robert,’ she called up the stairs. He appeared, more or less dressed but with his bootlaces undone, at the top of the stairs. ‘It’s Josh Millington’s,’ she told him. ‘The house is on fire.’

  ‘Help me with my laces, will you?’ he pleaded. ‘Do the left one.’ She tied his left boot while he tied the right. He straightened up and violently buttoned his tunic. ‘Yo
u’d better stay here, Elizabeth,’ he said.

  ‘Certainly not,’ she returned firmly. ‘What will I do here? I can help, I’m sure. I’ll drive for a start. You can’t see a thing.’

  The dog had to be pushed firmly indoors. They hurried from the house and across the garden. The arc of orange filled the front of the horizon now, clearly outlining the elms and beeches. There was the smell of ash in the air. She caught her breath like a sob as she ran towards the car. She climbed into the driving seat and Robert bundled in beside her with such force that he knocked her sideways. ‘Sorry, Elizabeth,’ he grunted. ‘Hurry up now.’

  She had already started the engine and she turned the car noisily on the gravel away from the dark house. The headlights were mere slits but her eyes were accurate and she drove surely through the lanes out on to the main road and down the hill into Binford. From behind they heard a clanging bell and Robert looked over his shoulder to see the wide shape of the Lyndhurst fire engine rolling speedily down the slope.

  The village was thronged with people, most of them standing in dumb excitement, their shapes outlined in the light of the flames that waved through the roof of the stone house. Police Constable Brice, some ARP wardens and several Home Guard men were telling the unmoving spectators to keep back. ‘Back now, back,’ said Brice, then ridiculously: ‘There’s nothing to see. Nothing to get excited about.’ Elizabeth pulled up the car and Robert rushed out, half-tumbling, getting his legs straight and then running towards the blaze. Elizabeth sat helplessly for a moment and then left the car and walked towards the dark crowd of people crowned by the rising flames. The firemen, whose grey engine had pulled past them as they stopped, were pulling out hoses and manhandling their ladders. Her husband’s voice joined the others shouting orders to the watchers to stand back.

  Without hurry she walked towards the scene. The onlookers had been pushed back to the pavement across the road, most of them women with children in their creased nightclothes, watching the blaze as once they used to watch the village bonfire on Guy Fawkes Night; the same round, wondering faces, fingers and thumbs in mouths, skin glowing orange with the reflection of the flames. The men who had been trying to get some of the Millingtons’ belongings from the house now stood back also to make room for the firemen. To her relief she saw that Josh was standing round-backed in the road, tragic and solitary, watching the flames eat his home. His wife, crouched under a blanket, stood a few feet to one side, separate, as if they did not want to discuss the matter. The hoses were pouring water through the gaping roof now and the firemen had scaled the ladders to the upper windows with more hoses. It was plain that not much of the little village house would ever be saved.