Elizabeth moved quietly towards the old gardener and took his elbow in her hand. He did not respond immediately but continued staring aghast at the scene. When he did turn and saw who it was his mouth trembled. ‘Oh, Mrs Lovatt,’ he whispered. ‘All my bees is dead. That smoke killed they all.’
Elizabeth had to reply. She tried to comfort him. ‘The pumpkins are all right, though, aren’t they, Josh? Your prize pumpkins.’
‘Aye,’ he nodded solemnly. ‘That’s a relief at least, Mrs Lovatt. Glass’ll be a bit blackened but I’ll clean it off tomorrow.’
Elizabeth could hardly prevent herself crying. She did not trust herself to speak. ‘Good job t’weren’t one of they big bombs,’ sighed Josh. ‘Blown everything down that would, greenhouse and all. Wouldn’t need to dig the garden again after one of those. Do the job for me, wouldn’t it?’
She attempted to smile at his joke. Robert came bundling back through the smoke. ‘Can’t do much here,’ he announced. He saw Josh and his wife. ‘Oh . . . damned hard luck, Josh,’ he said patting the old man’s arm. The wife lifted her wax-like head from the blanket and acknowledged the sympathy with a nod. She still did not look towards the flames. ‘We’ll see that everything is done, don’t worry,’ Robert told them confidently. He glanced towards Elizabeth. ‘What about tonight? We must get you some accommodation.’
‘’Tis all right, sir,’ said the old lady with unexpected firmness. ‘My brother-in-law . . .’ she indicated Josh, ‘’is brother, that is. Gone to get his wagon. We’ll go over there tonight with them.’
‘Good, good,’ nodded Robert. He turned quickly to his wife. ‘We ought to get over to Lampard’s. See what’s happening. Peter Dove’s just come from there and he says they’re all right, nobody hurt, but the house has caught it.’ He took her elbow. Josh thrust out his heavy hand and the old lady a thin collection of fingers and both Elizabeth and Robert shook with them.
‘Goodnight, Josh,’ said Elizabeth as she went towards the car. ‘Goodnight, Mrs Millington. You escaped, that’s the main thing.’
‘’Tis the bees,’ Josh called after her. ‘That’s the trouble of it.’
‘All his bees died,’ explained Elizabeth as she climbed into the car and Robert clambered in the other side.
‘So I believe,’ said Robert. ‘Blessing in disguise really. Bad enough having a bombing without having a million angry bees zooming around.’
Elizabeth started the car and pulled around the fire engine and the other vehicles in the littered street. Hob Hobson was outside his shop. His wife was throwing buckets of water everywhere. ‘Sparks!’ he called to them as they went by. ‘Can’t be too careful about sparks.’
They thought Millie would be at the Lampards because her house was only a brief distance through the trees. The car wriggled down the heavily scented lanes, the cow parsley giving off its odours in the dark, and turned by the river to see the glow reflected in the night water.
They turned into the drive, between the rhododendrons, in time to see the whole blazing roof of the fine house collapse into its inside, like a man’s head falling into his body. ‘Oh, bloody hell,’ muttered Robert. ‘What a ghastly sight.’
Elizabeth felt tears streaming unchecked down her cheeks by the time they left the car. Now there was no hurry even, for there was nothing to be done. The Lymington firemen, their fire engine straddling the lawn, were standing back, black with sweat, knowing that they were defeated; they could not save the house.
Millie came through the smoke towards them, wiping her eyes with the back of her hands. Elizabeth offered her a handkerchief. ‘You look like a child who’s been crying,’ she said gently.
‘It’s just the smoke,’ said Millie.
A glowing red and yellow cone now crowned the house, shot with sparks and issuing smoke. The windows burned orange and one by one fell in. The trio walked forward. The heat of the fire came to meet them like an unseen barrier. On the lawn, behind the fire engine, among a few pieces of belongings, the Lampards stood holding hands like castaways.
Robert put his big arm around Joan Lampard and she looked at him briefly before collapsing against his shoulder and sobbing. Millie moved to the other side of her and stroked her bent head. John Lampard, his face fixed, but his mouth trembling turned to Robert and said quietly, ‘First the boat, then this, eh, Robert?’
‘You’ve been unlucky, John,’ answered Robert inadequately.
There came a deep rushing sound from the house as if something were trying to get out. It was only a fire noise. The walls burned and peeled.
John Lampard said, slowly, but firmly, ‘Three and a half centuries that house has been there. And now it’s gone in half an hour.’
During those days, there was hardly an hour when there was not fighting high overhead. Vapour trails curled like tangled wool and the smoke of battle mixed with the August air. Burning planes fell to earth. Sometimes a parachute would appear, like a single, suddenly opening flower.
Three days after the incendiary bombs had dropped on the houses of John Lampard and Josh Millington, the two areas now standing like some used sacrificial sites, a Junkers bomber crashed on open forest ground a mile from Binford, providing an immediate spectacle for the village boys who were playing Germans and English in the bracken nearby.
The Luftwaffe pilot, attempting to belly-land the plane clear of trees, succeeded in striking the only building for miles, a stone barn used for storing winter feed for the wild ponies. The Junkers bounced and rolled over like an acrobat as it slid across the bumpy land. The boys, after the initial amazement, set off in a cavalry charge across the uneven ground, being joined by some village girls who were washing their dolls’ clothes in a forest stream.
Elbows and bare knees flying, Tommy Oakes, in his green uniform, led the charge, smacking his thigh like a horseman urging his steed. He was the most agile boy in the district and he reached the edge of the area before the others. The plane was lying peacefully, a wisp of smoke, but nothing more, trickling from its starboard engine, the propeller blade bent as a scimitar.
‘Wait! Everybody stop!’ shouted Tommy squeakily as the posse of twenty children piled up behind him. He held out his skinny arms.
‘Bullets,’ said one of the boys pointing, wonder in his voice. ‘Look at all them bullets lying about.’
‘And there’s a German’s boot,’ whispered another. ‘I wouldn’t mind ’aving that.’
‘That’s mine,’ said Tommy decisively. ‘I saw it first.’
‘Why don’t we get them?’ asked one of the girls impatiently. ‘Nobody’ll know.’
‘Bombs,’ announced Tommy darkly. ‘Whole bloody thing could blow up. Us with it. Don’t you listen to anything they tell you?’ He glared at the girl, Kathy Enwright, who was pale and in love with him, although she had never said so.
She regarded him wispily. ‘I see. Sorry,’ she said.
‘We better wait till somebody comes,’ said Tommy. He looked closely towards the wrecked plane. ‘Don’t think there’s anybody left in there. Not living.’
They stood in their semicircle, with the girls slightly behind the boys, watching the black-crossed bomber lying like a floored elephant. ‘There’s a man on the shed roof,’ said a small voice from the rear. ‘Lying on the roof. I reckon he’s dead.’
As one they turned and looked at the boy, Georgie Mainprice, who had come with the news. Short as they were, the winter-feed barn was out of their sight, over a slope towards Binford. ‘’Ow d’you reckon he’s dead?’ asked Tommy Oakes.
‘He ain’t movin’,’ replied Georgie solemnly. ‘I shouted up and then I chucked some stones up at ’im. I ’it ’im on the ’ead wiv one, but ’ee didn’t move.’
The gaggle of children wheeled and went riotously down the slope. As soon as they had cleared the ridge they saw the man clearly, on his face, lying like someone putting the tiles right. Tommy was in the van quickly and led the eager charge to the foot of the barn. There they stopped, a little way fro
m the building, where the ground still canted enough to provide them with a gallery. They stood, silent and enthralled, at the sight of the prostrate man in a flying suit.
‘Must ’ave fell out of the plane,’ said Tommy.
‘Wonder ’ee didn’t go right through the roof,’ put in Gordon Giles, who everybody called Franco. ‘That ’ole roof is rotten.’
‘Let’s get ’im down,’ suggested Billy Hobson. He was usually a timid boy and he was enjoying the bravado. Some of the girls were looking at him. ‘Get a rope around ’is leg and we can tug ’un down,’ he went on. ‘I never seen a dead Jerry.’
‘Can’t,’ announced Tommy firmly.
‘Who says?’
‘I do,’ replied Tommy facing him. ‘You got to have respect when ’ee’s dead, see. And he might be booby-trapped.’
‘You think you know every soddin’ thing,’ blurted Billy, angry at being diminished. ‘Just ’cos you wear those cub’s togs. You ain’t even in the cubs.’
Tommy closed with him and the two boys suddenly began to grapple. They rolled down the bank punching blindly, the others shouting, the German on the roof, for a moment and in a moment, forgotten. As they stood up, apart, breathless, flushed and scratched, Kathleen Enwright appeared on the bank above them. Nobody had noticed she had not been with them.
‘I brought you the boot, Tommy,’ she called as she began to walk down. ‘For your souvenirs.’
Tommy flushed with pleasure. ‘You shouldn’t ’ave,’ he said. ‘But I’ll take it.’
He ignored the grimacing Billy and walked up the slope towards the little girl. She held up the shin-length green flying boot like a prize and handed it to him modestly.
‘Thanks, Kath,’ he muttered deeply. He took the boot from her. ‘That’ll look good. I got a German belt already. Franco’s seen my German belt.’
Franco nodded confirmation.
‘There’s something inside,’ mentioned Tommy. He turned the boot upside down and shook it firmly. Something like red wadding tipped out on the ground and the children crowded round to look.
‘It’s a bit of foot,’ whispered Kath. ‘Look, I can see the toenail.’ She began to cry and turned and ran away.
By now Millie had made herself stop counting the planes in. She purposely turned her back on the mess window or the little open door of the room they used as a library, so that she could not see the Hurricanes coming back. The squadron was flying up to ten sorties a day now and almost every day someone failed to return. She resisted counting the engines as they shuddered overhead to come into the runway.
August continued with many cloudless days. Good invasion weather, people said wryly. But the sea remained clear of enemies, the German stayed on his opposite conquered shore, and the only battles were joined in the sky.
Millie was arranging books in the library when the first flight of the morning returned. She had been around the mess and the recreation room picking up volumes left lying about by the young men. Often they were left open, face down on the grass outside the operations room when the pilots were called to take off on the approach of raiders. The titles said much. The Thirty-Nine Steps, How to Become an Accountant, The Beano Annual, Highways and Byways in The Levant, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Great Cricketers of the Twenties and Fanny Hill. The last named had not, she was certain, originated in the station library, but she had found it abandoned on the grass one day and claimed it with a smile. From then on it was borrowed every day. Now, as she took it with the others into the shady library room, she opened it at the page where one of the pilots had left a lemonade straw as a marker. ‘ “I saw, with wonder and surprise, what? not the plaything of a boy,” ’ she read aloud, ‘ “not the weapon of a man, but a maypole!” ’ Millie giggled to herself and replaced the straw in the page.
The noise of the fighter engines faltered and one by one died on the tarmac outside; she went to the door now and saw by their jovial demeanour that they had all come back. There was shoulder slapping and banter as with boys changing classrooms at school.
One pilot turned his head and paused as he saw her framed in the door. He turned off from the rest and she could see by his chubby shape that it was Graham. He had taken off his flying helmet and his sweat plastered his hair. With a shock she realized how haggard he was.
‘Come for a nice book,’ he announced cheerfully. ‘Got something adventurous? Biggles or Percy F. Westerman. I could do with a bit of excitement.’
She saw how ironic the joke was. ‘See the conquering hero comes,’ she recited cheerfully. ‘Have a good morning?’
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Survived it anyway.’ He began to read along the spines of the books. ‘Now let’s have a look. Something to keep me out of trouble . . .’ He glanced up at her. His eyes were misty and black-rimmed. ‘Occupied.’
Millie picked up a book: ‘How to Become an Accountant,’ she announced. ‘What about that?’
He smiled wryly. ‘Don’t think I’d finish the course,’ he said taking the book from her and touching her fingers as he did so. He sighed. ‘Anyway, I’m off the hook,’ he said. ‘Twenty-four hours of peace and doing nothing. I’d go to the pictures in Ringwood tonight if I had somebody to go with. It’s The Mummy’s Terror, Mummy as in Egyptian, that is. Not mother sort of mummy. I wouldn’t mind seeing it but I’m scared to go by myself.’
She regarded him, his shoulders sagging under the flying suit and his weariness, the face turned up hopefully towards her. ‘What time does it start?’ she asked.
She went home in the late afternoon, let herself in from the sunlit garden and made a cup of tea. It seemed senseless, somehow, sitting there drinking tea as if nothing was happening. Or lending out books when the readers might never return. She wondered what James might say if she told him she was going to the picture palace in a small town with a nineteen-year-old airman. Not that James was likely to ring. He had not done so for three days. By the time he finished at night it was very late, he said, and he did not want to disturb her. And he would not call her at the air station in case, as he said, they thought she had some fussy husband pursuing her.
The telephone sounded. She took her cup with her and went across the room to answer it.
‘Hello, Millie.’ It was Harry. He sounded throaty.
‘Harry, how are you?’
‘Fine, thanks. Fed up with waiting for Jerry to come.’
‘He’s come,’ she said. ‘He’s overhead every day.’
‘Yes, of course. I meant the real thing . . . well, you know what I mean.’ There was a hesitation. Then he said: ‘You’re all right, are you?’
‘Yes, I’m fine.’
‘Good. I just thought I ought to ring.’
Her lips tightened. ‘You don’t need to feel like that,’ she said. ‘You mustn’t feel so guilty. We’ve joked about it over the years, but you know I’ve always felt that you were somewhere around. And I’ve sensed that it was the same for you. If needed.’
She heard him sigh. He said, ‘I wish I could get things straight like that in my mind.’
Millie answered: ‘It’s all I can think of just now.’’
‘Yes, I see. What are you doing now?’
Surprised at the question she said: ‘Well, I was drinking a cup of tea and then I’m going to get ready to go to the pictures.’
‘Oh, really.’
‘Yes, I’m going to see The Mummy’s Terror.’
Three hours later in the small smoky cinema, grandly called the Regal, in Ringwood, she sat beside Graham, holding hands, while the screen was rent with the cries of horrified archaeologists who had disinterred a ghoul three thousand years old. Halfway through the film she felt a touch on her shoulder and turned to find her cheek against his short curly hair. He was asleep and he gently began to snore.
‘You missed half the picture,’ she said as they were walking towards the bus stop.
‘I would do. Was it good?’
‘Riveting.’
The people coming from t
he cinema soon dispersed and they walked along the old black streets of the little town, theirs the only footsteps. The bus stop was in the market place. She was to get the bus to Lyndhurst where she had left her bicycle. He could get another back to the RAF station.
‘It’s haunted, you know, our billet,’ he said. ‘Some old dear is supposed to walk around with her head under her arm.’
‘Alicia Lisle,’ said Millie.
‘You knew her?’
‘Not personally,’ she laughed. She put her arm into his. He patted her hand. ‘She lived in Moyles Court centuries ago, and when she was in her seventies she was sentenced to death by Judge Jeffreys at Winchester Assizes. They cut off her head.’
‘What for?’
‘Harbouring two priests, if I remember.’
‘People used to have some rum excuses for killing each other, didn’t they?’
The bus was at the stop, its windows blacked out, its engine rumbling. Before it went she kissed him and he said: ‘Thanks for coming to the pictures.’ She boarded the bus and sat, eyes closed, all the way through the dark forest to Lyndhurst.
James realized how strange it was to be walking along a leafy London suburban road, holding the hand of a small boy, while Joanne strolled smiling on the other side of the child. Trees were ruffled above them, leaves and branches sounding like the sea, sunshine mottled the pavement. They had taken the train to an almost deserted Sunday station and were now walking the warm half a mile to their destination.
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