Octavia's War

by Beryl Kingston

  ‘Oh well, in that case ma’am, perhaps you’d be better to come in again on Monday and see the headmistress.’

  He’s easing me off the premises, Octavia thought. ‘I shan’t be here on Monday, I’m afraid,’ she explained. ‘I’m only here for the day, getting my bearings so to speak. I shall be moving to Woking some time in the future.’

  The explanation satisfied him but he watched her until she was back in her car. She approved of his vigilance. He’s a good school keeper, she thought. He takes his duties seriously. Fancy mistaking me for a parent! I must look more motherly than I thought. But there was no time to consider her appearance, motherly or not. Now she had to find an estate agent and see what properties were available for rent.

  By the time she finally drove home late in the afternoon, she was tired and hungry but well pleased with herself. She had the details of seven large houses in her handbag, and there were pictures of all of them in her camera, three that would suit her family and four that were big enough to be turned into schools. If the school they were evacuated to was too small, the LCC would have to be persuaded to rent a house for them as well. Or two if need be. Now, her next task was to tell the staff. This war was coming and it was her job to see that they were all prepared for it.

  Emmeline had spent a happy afternoon with her grandchildren. She hadn’t had any refugees since the middle of September, so it really looked as if Mrs Henderson was right and Hitler had closed the borders. She felt sorry for the poor things who hadn’t managed to get out but she’d been glad of the chance to get her house back into some sort of order just the same. She and Janet and Mrs Benson had given the place a late spring-clean and now everything was spotless, which was just how she liked it, and that afternoon it had been so warm they’d had tea in the garden, which had been another treat. She and the three older children had played croquet on the lawn while Edie was indoors feeding the baby, and they’d all enjoyed it very much. It had been so normal, as if there wasn’t a war coming, and Arthur wasn’t in the Territorials and Johnnie wasn’t in the RAF. So when Tavy came home with details of the sort of houses they would have to stay in if they were evacuated she was none too pleased.

  ‘Yes,’ she said crossly, flicking a glance at them. ‘I’ll look at them later when I haven’t got a dinner to cook.’

  ‘Would you like a hand with it?’ Octavia offered.

  ‘No thank you,’ her cousin said, stiffly. ‘I can manage.’ And retreated to the kitchen as though it was a fortress.

  ‘Oh dear,’ Octavia said to her father.

  ‘She can’t face it, Tavy,’ he sighed.

  Octavia sighed too and sat down in her chair rather heavily. ‘It’s been a day for disappointments,’ she said and told him about the hutted school.

  He listened with his usual quiet attention but without the concern he’d been feeling for poor Emmeline. The one thing he could be sure of with Octavia was that, however hard the difficulties she might have to face, she would press on until she found an answer to them. It was a great source of pride to him. ‘So what will you do?’ he asked.

  She put her bundle of specifications on the coffee table between them. ‘Get the LCC to rent one of these,’ she said.

  He smiled at her. ‘Of course,’ he said and leant forward to pick them up and look at them.

  By the time she held her next staff meeting, Octavia had her plans in order. She plunged straight into them as soon as the more mundane matters had been dealt with.

  ‘Since the bombing of Guernica,’ she said, ‘I don’t think there’s much doubt that we are heading for a war with Germany. I wish I could say otherwise but I’m afraid I can’t. Mr Chamberlain may speak of appeasement but behind the scenes the fact is we are preparing for war. Plans are already drawn up to evacuate the children from London, as I daresay several of you know.’ Many of her colleagues nodded at that, for they were following events as closely as she was. ‘Very well then. You won’t be surprised to know that I spent Saturday in the town that our school will be evacuated to. I can’t tell you where it is because it’s all very hush-hush, as they say, but as soon as I’m officially notified you will know too. For the moment, all I can tell you is that it’s a small, quiet town not really all that far from London and the school whose premises we shall be expected to share is extremely small. So we have some detailed planning to do. We shall all need to know exactly which books in our subject libraries are essential and which could be temporarily left behind, we shall need to have syllabuses for the next year written and run off and stored because we could find printing them difficult – at least for the first term or so – and we shall need to choose our prefects with particular care. They will have a considerable burden to carry.’

  The staff were nodding at that too, for the house officers and prefects ran the school house system and that could be a cohesive force if the girls were going to be dispersed in strange homes all over a strange town. But their newest entrant, a quiet and rather diffident young woman called Mavis Brown, who taught History and Geography, was worried. She looked up at her headmistress, mutely requesting permission to speak.

  ‘Mavis?’ Octavia encouraged.

  ‘I realise I probably shouldn’t say this, being the newest – um – the most recently appointed…’ Mavis said, blushing, ‘but what I’m wondering is, are we going to continue with syllabuses? I mean it’s going to be very difficult, isn’t it? Maybe we should try something a bit easier. I mean with a war coming and evacuation and everything.’ She was finding the famous Dalton system very hard going, much worse than she’d expected and, from what Miss Smith had just said, it looked as if being evacuated was going to make it ten times harder.

  Octavia was rather taken aback. She knew there were bound to be reservations and worries and that some of the staff would find it hard to produce a year’s worth of syllabuses because they were used to working a term at a time but she hadn’t expected the system to be questioned. ‘What do the rest of you think?’ she asked, looking round at her team. She could have answered Mavis herself but it would come better from her colleagues.

  Morag Gordon spoke first, after adjusting her long cardigan and pushing her glasses up her nose while she got her thoughts into order. ‘This is all perfectly true, Mavis,’ she said. ‘Preparing syllabuses of all the work we propose to do for every pupil in every subject for a full year, maximum and minimum, will take a bit of doing, but syllabuses are the key to the system we run here. If we are going to go on expecting our pupils to take responsibility for all the work they do, we must provide them with syllabuses. They must know exactly what the work is to be well in advance of the lessons that will, if we’ve planned them well enough, trigger the interest that will set their research going. That is the essence of the system.’

  ‘We can’t let Herr Hitler bully us into changing our system,’ Phillida said. ‘It’s bad enough the way he bullies the Jews. We saw that when we were in Berlin, didn’t we, Helen?’

  ‘Yes, we did,’ Helen Staples said firmly, ‘and it was absolutely appalling. We need to stand up to the man. I don’t think we should change a thing.’

  ‘Even if it means a lot more work?’ Octavia asked, smiling, because she was so sure of the answer.

  Helen and Phillida replied with one voice. ‘Yes. Of course.’

  ‘We shall need young women who can think for themselves more than ever if we’re going to war,’ Mabel Ollerington said. ‘There is a regrettable tendency for governments to tell us what to think when we’re combatants. I can remember that from the Great War. It is understandable but nevertheless regrettable. We must nourish the critical faculty in every way open to us.’

  ‘I don’t write syllabuses,’ Joan Marshall said, which was true because she taught Games and PE, ‘but I’m with the system every inch of the way. I don’t think we should change a thing.’

  And no more we will, Octavia thought. Not if I have anything to do with it. But she spoke calmly. ‘Is that the general opinion?’
>
  It was and even Mavis agreed with it when she saw how strongly it was being supported.

  ‘Of course it would help us if we knew how long we’ve got,’ Alice Genevra said.

  ‘It could be months,’ Morag told her. ‘It could be years. It all depends on that wretched man and what he does next.’

  That wretched man kept rather quiet that winter, except for giving a speech in which he claimed that there was no room for independence in the rearing of children and that in future, every German child would grow up knowing only Nazi values.

  ‘Odious little man,’ Octavia said to her father.

  ‘He is afraid of anyone who can think for himself,’ J-J said. ‘That is the mark of a dictator. Everybody has to agree with him or run the risk of being sent to a concentration camp.’

  ‘Exactly so,’ Octavia said. ‘He’s an odious little man.’

  But Christmas was coming and baby Joan was crawling about and Johnnie had written home to say he’d wangled some Christmas leave, so she put the coming war out of her mind for the holiday. After that the spring term was so busy she barely had time to think of anything beyond the needs of the day.

  First of all, they had to have a gas mask drill, which the girls made a great joke of. Then, they were given instructions as to what they would have to do when evacuation was ‘imminent’ and told that further and more detailed instructions would follow ‘in the event’. And then when the staff were scrambling to write the last of their syllabuses, news came through that the German army had invaded Austria, apparently ‘by invitation’ of the new Austrian leader, Seyss-Inquart, who had pushed his predecessor aside only the previous day.

  ‘Now we’re for it!’ Joan Marshall said, flexing her muscles, as if she were about to oppose the invasion single-handed. ‘They won’t let him get away with this.’

  But nothing was done and three days later triumphant German troops escorted their Führer through Vienna in a precision of jackboots, tanks and field guns, to what was described as tumultuous applause. There was newsreel footage of young girls in national dress throwing flowers into Hitler’s car and shots of young people waving and cheering. Austria was now part of the new German empire and all of it done without a shot being fired.

  Within a week the German newspapers were bragging that Austria was being given ‘a spring cleaning’. Jewish judges had all been dismissed before they could protest and Jews were now banned from all the professions. It was soon plainly obvious that another vicious pogrom had begun. The plebiscite that followed in April was a foregone conclusion. Ninety-nine per cent of the Austrian population, no less, voted in favour of Hitler’s annexation of their territory.

  ‘Of course they have,’ Octavia said, giving her copy of The Times an angry shake. ‘Who would vote against him? They wouldn’t dare. Mr Chamberlain must take action now. He can’t go on appeasing the man for ever.’

  Mr Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement was discussed with more and more heat at every dinner party she and her father gave during the following winter. Tommy, playing the statesman, did his best to point out that their Prime Minister was doing everything he could to avoid another war and argued that his actions were understandable if not exactly admirable. Emmeline took his side every time, saying none of them wanted to see another bloodbath like they had last time. Frank Dimond, on the other hand, had no doubt at all that a war would come sooner or later, and said that the sooner it came the better.

  ‘Jews are being rounded up all over Austria,’ he told them passionately. ‘Rounded up and sent to concentration camps. Are we to sit by and let it happen? We must take action. Or be branded moral cowards.’

  ‘Better a moral coward than dead,’ Emmeline told him fiercely. ‘We lost enough young men in the Great War. A whole generation blown to pieces. Are we to go through all that again?’

  ‘We must hope not,’ Elizabeth Meriton said gently. ‘If there is a peaceful and honourable way for these difficulties to be resolved, I’m sure Mr Chamberlain will find it.’ And she changed the subject in her usual deft way. ‘Have any of you been to the new cinema in Victoria? I’m told it’s very splendid.’

  Meantime, Octavia thought, we go on waiting and worrying and none of us getting anywhere. It’s dreadful to have to face it, especially for poor Em, but Frank is right. This war will come, sooner or later, no matter what we think about it.

  As it did.

  Chapter Five

  Being Miss Smith’s secretary at the famous Roehampton School was a position of considerable responsibility. Maggie Henry, who’d held it for more than fifteen years, was totally devoted to it and never stopped bragging to her friends about her Miss Smith – she always spoke of Octavia as her Miss Smith – who was the most wonderful woman alive and an absolute inspiration, although she did occasionally add that there were times when she thought her heroine worked too hard. Take this last week as an example.

  It was all very well saying it couldn’t be helped because they were all waiting for this dratted war to be declared. She knew that. Everybody knew it and they had known it ever since Hitler started arresting Polish shipworkers in Danzig for some unaccountable reason and arguing about some place called the Polish corridor, that no one had ever heard of. Provocation, that’s all it was, although why he should want to provoke a war with Poland over a small port and a little bit of land was beyond her comprehension. But there you are, he did, and he’d done it. And now there were German storm troopers swarming into Poland and Mr Chamberlain had sent him an ultimatum about it, which everybody knew he’d ignore, and they were all waiting for the war to start and her school was waiting to be evacuated, and life was altogether extremely difficult.

  Not that it needed to be. The authorities could have made a better fist of this evacuation if they’d put their minds to it. She could have organised it with one hand tied behind her back. It had been a week of bedlam in the school. Absolute total bedlam, with her Miss Smith on the go from early morning to late at night, her brown button boots going tweak, tweak, tweak along the corridors and papers sticking out of the pockets of that old tweed suit, and her fuzzy hair so wild it looked as though she hadn’t combed it for weeks, and the staff packing up their books – there were tea-chests in every room – and the phone continually ringing. It’s a wonder we’re not all exhausted. And now they had the girls sitting about in their winter uniforms for the second day running – and it was so hot, poor things, they must be baking – with their gas masks and their luggage all mounded up round them – and a nice old muddle that was – waiting for the signal to leave. And there were people all over the place checking lists. There was no end to all the lists. Lists of books, lists of the helpers who were going to accompany them and make sure that everybody got onto the train – that nice Mrs Meriton was one of them – lists in the registers of all the girls who’d signed to be evacuated so that they didn’t leave anyone behind. As if Miss Smith would allow that! Even the house officers had lists and were checking that the girls in their group were wearing their name tags and had all got their gas masks and their stamped postcards so that they could write home to their parents at the end of the day. And that dratted phone, brr, brr, brr all the time. Could they speak to Miss Smith?

  There it was again.

  ‘Roehampton Secondary School,’ she said politely. ‘How can I help you?’

  ‘I’m calling from County Hall,’ a man’s voice said. ‘I have a message for the headmistress.’

  This is it, Maggie thought, but she stayed calm and polite although her heart was racing. ‘If you will hold the line, please,’ she said. ‘I will get her for you.’

  It took a little while even though she walked through the throng as quickly as she could, with the girls pulling their luggage out of her way and standing aside to let her pass. She found her heroine in the music room talking to Miss Jones. ‘Excuse me, Miss Smith,’ she said. ‘You’ve got a call.’

  Octavia was alerted by Maggie’s expression. ‘The call?’ she asked.r />
  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Very good,’ Octavia said. And she walked off at such a pace that Maggie couldn’t keep up with her.

  Two minutes later she was standing on the platform blowing her whistle. The crowded hall was instantly attentive.

  ‘Girls,’ she said. ‘I have just heard from County Hall that it is time for us to walk down to the station.’ There was an instant buzz of excitement and apprehension and some of the first-formers looked up at her anxiously. Poor little things, she thought, smiling at them. It will be very hard for them to leave their homes and their friends and come away with us when they’re so new to the school. They hardly know us at all. She held up her hand to still them all into attention. ‘There is no rush,’ she said. ‘The train will be waiting for us. We will leave in our house groups through the foyer, exactly as we did in our rehearsal yesterday, and Miss Henry will be at the door to check with each house officer in turn that everyone in her group is present. Miss Fennimore has our school number and will lead the way. If you will raise your pole, Miss Fennimore, so that we can all see the number. Thank you. If you can’t see Miss Fennimore, you will certainly see our number.’

  Miss Fennimore raised the pole even higher and turned it from side to side so that they could all see it. There was a ripple of laughter. That was better.

  ‘However, before we set off,’ Octavia said, changing the tenor of her voice, ‘I have something to say to you all and I hope you will take it to heart. Read, mark, learn and inwardly digest as our Miss Gordon would say.’ Another ripple of laughter and Miss Gordon waved at them, turning her grey head from side to side so that she could look at them all, smiling. ‘What I have to say to you is this. Nobody can predict what lies ahead of us. Wars are unpredictable by their very nature. There will be good times but there may also be bad ones. The staff and I will do everything we can to ensure that the life and spirit of this school continue as they have always done but there are bound to be changes. I don’t need to tell you that if you welcome change and are not afraid of it, it is easier to cope with. You are strong, resilient young women and all of you are capable of standing on your own feet and thinking things out for yourselves. That is the gift that the Dalton System has given you. You are also generous and compassionate. If there are people in need of help and comfort I know you will give it. But don’t be afraid to ask for help if you need it yourself. Don’t keep your own grief and difficulties hidden. We are all in this new adventure together and we will all help each other.