by Amy Myers
Perhaps Miss Havisham in Great Expectations looked something like Grandmother, sitting spider-like in the midst of her web. Spiders must presumably look attractive to their prey, and so did Grandmother. Most old ladies of eighty-two were shrunken in size if not in character. Not Grandmother. Most old ladies of eighty-two had lined faces mellowed into wise compassion. Not Grandmother. Most old ladies of eighty-two had long since retired into black silk and lace gowns. Not Grandmother. She was as tall and imposing as the days when she had alternately terrorised and intrigued Victorian society; her features, if standing out more sharply, only impressed more deeply; and her gown, today royal blue, proclaimed she was still an active force in the world. How, Caroline wondered, not for the first time, had Aunt Tilly stood it all these years?
‘Am I to understand, Caroline,’ the deep voice had harshened with age, the steel beneath the velvet glove more nakedly displayed, ‘that you are living alone in Dover?’
‘Working, Grandmother, and in a hostel with other VADs.’ It was a small hotel on the front, nestling by the White Cliffs, which had been commandeered for the emergency now Dover had been declared a military area.
‘Working?’ The word was invested with deep horror and disgust. ‘Unchaperoned?’
‘Yes, Grandmother, and no, Grandmother. I am chaperoned by thirty VAD colleagues.’
Grandmother never wasted time on lost causes, but always moved promptly to the next. She could give a fine lesson to Sir John French in how to conduct a war. No retreats for her.
‘Is Buckford House not good enough for you?’ she enquired.
‘It is outside the Dover restricted area, and I would have too far to travel on night duty.’
‘Night duty? You roam the streets?’
‘There is expected to be a great influx of Belgian as well as British casualties, and our VAD will then be mobilised, so it is quite possible I shall do night duty. It depends what I am assigned to do. I doubt I will be roaming the streets, though many girls are volunteering now as women policemen, or for Special Patrols.’
‘You forget what is due to your station in life.’
‘I remember my duty to others.’ Caroline smarted at being told yet again of her ‘station in life’. War did not take note of ‘stations’ – as the Rolls of Honour published almost daily testified.
The Dowager gazed at her, always a move calculated to intimidate. ‘You are by nature a wayward girl, Caroline. It is not a quality to be welcomed in a woman.’
Grandmother was clever. There was no mention of Mother, which would antagonise Caroline, but only the slightest implication that such inherited traits could not be from her Grandmother’s side of the family.
‘I’m sure you would like to know, Grandmother, that Aunt Tilly is recovering well from her latest imprisonment, according to her last letter.’ Caroline held her breath, half regretting her own descent to strong-arm tactics.
There was a pause. ‘I shall expect you every Sunday, Caroline.’
‘I’m afraid that will depend on my hours, though naturally I should be delighted to come when I can.’ There was some truth in this, for, despite the tension between herself and her grandmother, she enjoyed the opportunity to see her cousins, one of whom, Angela, still lived at Buckford House.
‘Inform your superior that the Dowager Countess of Buckford has requested your attendance.’
‘I cannot do that.’
The still-elegant hand tightened on the arm of the chair. ‘It is distressing that my grandchildren are prepared to grant me merely one visit a year.’
‘You would not expect Charles to attend every Sunday.’ Her cousin was in the army, stationed at Dover Barracks.
‘He is a gentleman, Caroline.’
‘And I am a woman, and at work as he is.’
‘Bandaging and serving tea like a common waitress is not work. It is self-delusion and self-gratification. What kind of example is that?’
‘An excellent one, I hope.’
‘It is not the way things are done in England.’
‘Have been done, Grandmother. Times are changing.’
Caroline left, having consumed the ritual dry seed and Madeira cake. She found to her surprise she was shaking. When she was asked for her pass so that she might enter the Dover restricted area, it felt as though she were emerging from prison into freedom.
That night in her room Caroline was able to look out over the calm night sea. She was alone, for her room mate Ellen, a loquacious young lady from London, as Caroline had dubbed her, was still on duty. Across there was France; you could see it on a fine day. Some people said they could hear the guns of battle here in Kent, and game birds as far as Sussex were unduly disturbed this year. Somewhere in the middle of the whirlpool was Reggie. She had heard nothing from him for two weeks, and feared that he had been involved in the battle on the River Aisne. The newspapers had extolled it as a great victory. Paris had been saved, and von Kluck and his German army were in retreat. That had been ten days ago, and it was the beginning of October now. Had it been a victory? So much must be omitted from these reports and what was left might therefore turn truth into falsehood. One truth was Daniel lying paralysed in the home he’d left so confidently less than two months ago. And what was she doing to help other Daniels? Her valuable role here had so far consisted of going from door to door begging for saucepans, china, blankets, anything to equip the makeshift hospitals awaiting their first patients. So far the neat iron bedsteads with their pink, blue and yellow bedspreads were mostly unoccupied; but soon it would be a different story.
It seemed men were fighting all over the world now, not just in France. Russia was fighting Austria and Germany in the east. Turkey had come into the war, and so had Japan. Men from the Dominions were being drawn in, Canadians into France. South Africans were fighting Germany for her colonies in Africa, Indians protecting the Persian Gulf, and Australians and New Zealanders defending Egypt. And not only on land. At sea too there was bitter fighting, where Britain had always assumed her position impregnable.
Where her own heart lay, on the Western front, the Germans had not been beaten. They were running not for their border, but for the Channel ports, to which Antwerp was the key, and the British and French were racing to outflank them and get there first. Sir John French had issued orders for the army to start digging trenches so that they could hold the line from the Swiss border to the Channel to prevent the Germans breaking through. It sounded so simple, but it meant in reality casualties, tragedy and grief. Moreover securing the Channel ports was the key to preventing the invasion of England. Here at Dover the prospect seemed more real than in Ashden. Caroline decided she would redouble her efforts to teach herself to drive. As a nurse she would be mediocre; as a tea dispenser, useful; but as a driver invaluable. She would never be as dashing a driver as Aunt Tilly, but nevertheless after a fashion she could drive already, and this gave her great satisfaction. It was a small contribution to support those men in the trenches – and one in particular.
CHAPTER TWELVE
By mid-October. Caroline was at last becoming used to this ‘new’ Dover. When she was a child, she had found the town a wonderful place, partly because to walk up the cliffs and to Dover Castle, or down to the harbour where the Calais packets and other shipping docked, was an escape from the rigours of ordeal by Grandmother Buckford, and partly because every step spoke of a long and venerable history. The grey solidity of Dover Castle reminded her of the sketch in her Schoolbook of the ancient Pharos whose light had guided Roman ships to Britain to supply the occupying forces; and the harbour of the stiff-necked picture of Queen Elizabeth to whom it owed its eminence as a port, reluctantly though her purse had been prised open.
Caroline’s early memories of Dover were of vast hordes of navvies incessantly working on enormous blocks of stone for the new naval harbour. Impressive though it was, she had seen few ships of war anchored there. Packets and steamers came and went, and merchant seamen were still in the vast majorit
y. Now Dover had mobilised itself, it must surely come into its own. Signs of war were evident everywhere. Restrictions were placed on civilians, a trench system had been dug around the town in case of invasion, cliff paths were closed to the public, and guns were sited on the pier ends. Destroyers and submarines were known to be positioned across the Straits, and further off cruisers with reassuring names like Cressy and Aboukir. The Astra-Torres and the Parseval airships floated like giant sausages across the sky.
Last night, Tuesday 13 October, VADs all over the south of England had been mobilised to meet the crisis of the vast numbers of wounded Belgian troops and civilian refugees expected today after the fall of Antwerp on the 10th. She might have been among them, Caroline realised with shock, if she had gone to Antwerp as originally planned. How long ago that decision seemed, yet it was only three weeks; those three weeks had transported her to a life so different it might as well have been Antwerp. That she was coping reasonably well was thanks to Ellen, who offered amazed and amused help when Caroline, to her shame, discovered just how much she had been dependent on the Rectory staff.
Caroline had slept deeply that night, but she stirred to hear the heavy thump on the door. It didn’t succeed in raising Miss Loquacious from London, and Caroline had had to shake her,
‘Wake up, Ellen! We’re mobilised.’
‘I’ll mobilise tomorrow,’ Ellen muttered, for once far from loquacious as she heaved herself over and went back to sleep, much to Caroline’s exasperation. Excitement had brought her instantly wide awake. She dressed rapidly as instructed, with short dashes over to Ellen’s bedside to prod her into reluctant movement. Accompanied by a still yawning Ellen, she had hurried downstairs expecting to find a hive of action. In fact, the superintendent was sitting calmly at her desk, detailing duties for the morrow, and then sending them back to bed. Too excited to do so for the moment, Caroline had gone out briefly into the dark night to listen to the lap of the waves pounding on the shore, watching the stars above the dark sea, conscious of a sort of hum, whether actual or imagined, of activity and tension in the town. Here a laugh, a whistle, the murmur of voices, the pinpricks of torches as late wanderers worked their way along past the blacked-out windows.
When she returned to bed she had been too wide awake to fall asleep easily and this morning her movements were lethargic. Not yet an adept enough driver for an ambulance, she was detailed for: general assistance to the wounded; helping stretchers off the ships and on to trains or into ambulances; helping serve tea and soup at the station; and assisting the walking wounded into motor transport for the tented hospital camp. The harbour area now seemed as foreign as France itself, with strange uniforms on all sides, foreign tongues being spoken, harbour workers wearing badges to proclaim their identity lest they were handed white feathers for not being in the forces, Red Cross workers, policemen, and a tea van, yet overall a general purposefulness had instilled its own order. The first ship of the new mass influx had docked twenty minutes ago, and the gangplank had been erected. From the decks refugees, civilian and uniformed, hung over the sides for their first glimpse of what must look to them a strange land. A stir among the groups of workers standing outside the Red Cross supply depot aroused Caroline’s attention; the first stretcher was being borne off, and she hurried to her duty position to guide it to the convoy of waiting ambulances.
Later that evening, free for the first time in twelve hours and having missed the hostel dinner, she went out with Ellen in the drizzle into Dover town to find a restaurant, and was too tired to disagree when Ellen eagerly entered a small smoky fish and chip shop where the other occupants were all harbour workers. Their uniforms, Caroline realised, gave them protection, and awarded them a respect that otherwise could not surely have been counted on.
She had thought she had become inured to the sight of wounded soldiers, but she had not. Not when they came stretcher after stretcher on to home soil or, in the case of Belgian troops, safe soil. Not when in their wake came a steady trail of anxious faces whose eloquent eyes told of the tragedies they had witnessed. And not when the walking wounded, hobbling on crutches, cracked jokes about their ordeal.
When the plate of greasy fish and chips arrived, the look of it revolted her, but the taste of the fish and the solid potato content of the chips calmed her and made her feel better.
‘I’ve never been in a café like this. The most Ashden runs to is tea and ices in a corner of the newsagent’s.’
Ellen looked amazed. ‘What do you do with yourself in a place like that? You said you never worked.’
‘Not as you did.’ Caroline suddenly wondered what she did do all day in the Rectory. She could hardly claim the Manor library occupied a lot of her time.
‘I suppose there’s a pub in your village. That where you go?’
Caroline laughed. ‘No. Remember my father is the Rector.’
‘No slipping out for a quick port and lemon, eh? The pubs around Shadwell would go broke if we was all like you. Mind you, I don’t go near some of ’em. You got to look after yourself in Shadwell, no one’s going to do it for you.’
Caroline looked at her thin elfin face, full of energy, and had no doubts that Ellen could ‘look after’ herself.
‘Mind you,’ Ellen swept on, ‘I’d like to live in the country.’
‘You’d be bored in two seconds.’
‘Do you keep cows?’
‘Not us.’ Caroline envisaged an indignant cow wandering around the Rectory gardens, and Percy’s face if asked to milk it. ‘Only a dog and a few chickens for fresh eggs.’ Even the hens were newcomers, another Dibble ‘beat the rising prices’ solution.
‘I never seen a cow before I come on the train to Dover. Big, ain’t they? I always wanted to go hop-picking, but Dad and Mum never would, lazy devils. Sounds fun.’
Caroline thought of the elaborate precautions taken against thieving hop-pickers in Ashden, and the amount of abuse and blame for every tiny incident hurled at them, and felt ashamed. To Ellen Ashden was as much of a dream as escaping from it had been to Caroline. And now they had met here in Dover on common ground.
‘How did you come to train as a VAD?’ she asked.
Ellen shrugged. ‘My mum died and I didn’t fancy looking after Dad, so I hopped it. I said to myself, Ellen, if you’re ever going to get out of this place, here’s your chance. If I’d gone on working in that sweatshop of a factory, I’d never have got out.’
‘But we’re not paid, and you had wages there.’ Caroline was all too conscious that she was not being paid. Though her parents had not mentioned it, she knew it must be a struggle for them to support her while she was away from home.
‘I handed over all me wages to Dad, so it’s made precious little difference. My gran gave me a bit, so I thought I’d see the world.’
‘Did you want to go abroad?’ Caroline thought enviously of the opportunities that had seemed so promising for her and had been snatched away by Lady Hunney. Her ladyship had fulfilled her threat to recount Caroline’s iniquities to Reggie. Dover or Antwerp made no difference to Lady Hunney – though she thought perhaps it did to Reggie. In his last letter he had not reproached her, thank goodness, but merely said: ‘I could not bear to think of you over here too. If you knew how much it means to the chaps – and, I confess, me – to think and talk about you all in England’s green fields while we’re stuck in the flat desolation of Flanders, you would realise how glad I am you have stopped at Dover.’
‘Not likely,’ Ellen was saying. ‘They eat snails out there, don’t they, and don’t know what soap’s for. This is as far as I ever want to go.’
Caroline looked round the smoky café, and at the remains of the fish and chips in front of her and the streets of Dover outside, thronged with people. This was not as far as she ever wanted to go, but it was a first step.
Half a mile away and several hours earlier, Jamie Thorn had been sitting at a table opposite Agnes in a similar café in the High Street, only instead of fish and c
hips they were having tea and scones. Agnes was concentrating very hard on her cup of tea. She’d asked for a nice plate of ham, nothing too fatty for her, although she was usually all right in the afternoons. She’d stayed overnight at the Maison Dieu, which the Corporation had opened specially for visitors to the troops. They couldn’t do enough for Kitchener’s First Hundred Thousand when they got here in mid-September, Jamie said. She felt odd being a guest and not working, especially since most of the other guests were well-to-do. But she had decided it was worth the money, and Jamie had been all for her coming to Dover when she swallowed her pride and suggested it. It might be easier to tell him, less real, away from Ashden.
Or so she’d thought until she got here and found Jamie so strange. He didn’t seem to care about Ashden and what was happening there; he was just full of what good sport the army was, and the pals he’d made at Shornecliffe, and the officers and the drill and endless, endless talk of war and how he’d be part of it soon. They couldn’t go up on the cliffs or into the country and anyway it was raining; they had to keep to the roads because the army had closed off all the footpaths. She’d duly admired the old Castle, but not with much enthusiasm. Dover was a rough place compared with Tunbridge Wells, and as for these Kentish folk – what there were of them among the foreigners – give her Sussex every time. Even the countryside she’d seen on the railway train hadn’t been exciting, not like going to London. But Jamie seemed to like Dover. He’d been to the cinema and the pubs, even a music hall where a girl in red spangles led them all in ‘Goodbye Dolly Gray’ and ‘Soldiers of the Queen’. It was a life in which she, Agnes, had no part, and this made her feel awkward. She’d had no opportunity for saying, Jamie, Ruth Horner’s had a baby boy and the whole of the village is saying it’s got Mr Swinford-Browne’s ears. No opportunity to say, Jamie, you’re really going to be a father. He’d forgotten her, that was clear. He was too busy talking about his puttees and khaki uniform, and new rifles called Lee–Enfields. It had no relevance to Agnes and her problem. Well, if Jamie didn’t love her any more, she could not tell him about the baby. Her pride wouldn’t let her. Anguished, she tentatively tried again.