Octavia's War

by Beryl Kingston

  Not quite as good as spending the whole day in bed would have been, but good enough. ‘Blissful,’ she said.

  ‘The other thing is…’ he began and then stopped. Maybe he was rushing her and he didn’t want to do that.

  ‘What other thing?’ she said.

  Her expression was encouraging, wasn’t it? She was smiling. Looking happy. He took a necessary breath and plunged into the unknown. ‘How would you like to get engaged?’

  He knew as soon as the words were out of his mouth that he was rushing her because her face changed. Now it was clouded and anxious. ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘I’m at school. I mean, you can’t be engaged when you’re at school, now can you? Anyway I’ve got to be discreet. I promised Smithie.’

  He persisted because she wasn’t exactly turning him down. ‘But would you like to?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘’course I would. You know I would. Only I don’t see how we can.’

  ‘Then I can buy you a ring?’

  That was possible. ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you’ll wear it at Christmas?’

  That was possible too. She could wear it on her finger when she was with him and hang it on a ribbon round her neck under her jersey when she was at school.

  ‘We’ll buy it on Christmas Eve,’ he said. ‘First thing when I get back.’ And kissed her to seal the bargain.

  It wasn’t until she was inside the hall at Downview that Lizzie realised exactly what she’d promised. An engagement means we’ll be getting married, she thought, and heaven only knows what Pa will say if I tell him that. And I shall have to tell him sooner or later. It’s not something you can keep a secret. He’ll go bananas. Fortunately, she didn’t have much chance to dread it because Miss Marshall bumped into her on the stairs and Miss Marshall was full of some plan to make a bran tub for Christmas and was bubbling with excitement. ‘I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow morning,’ she said. ‘You’ll help us with it, won’t you.’

  ‘Yes,’ Lizzie said, vaguely, ‘of course.’ She didn’t really care about bran tubs and Christmas but you couldn’t say no to Miss Marshall when she’d got a bee in her bonnet and, anyway, she was suddenly very tired and needed to go to bed.

  ‘Good show,’ Miss Marshall said. ‘See you at breakfast.’

  She was even more excited at breakfast than she’d been the previous evening. ‘You’ll need a group to help you,’ she said, ‘to wrap up the presents and decorate the tub and that sort of thing. I should think about four or five but if more of them offer you can always use them. There’s a wood-yard in Horsell. I’ve got the address. I suggest you go down on Monday morning and see what they say. You’ll need a wheelbarrow to get it back here, of course, when the time comes, but we’ve got one in the garden that should do. What larks, eh?’

  After a weekend of delicious but achingly unsatisfied lovemaking, Lizzie was tired on Monday morning and could have done without a trip to a wood-yard. But she’d given her word, so she and Polly gathered their team and all eight of them set off through the damp air to find the yard. It was at the bottom of Brewery Road, just past Horsell Moor, and they knew they’d come to the right place because they could smell the wood even before they walked through the gates.

  There was a boy in overalls walking across the yard with a cigarette between his lips. He was a bit taken aback to see a gang of schoolgirls chattering towards him but when Lizzie told him why they’d come, he took his cigarette out of his mouth and told her she wanted Bert. ‘He’s the foreman,’ he explained. ‘I’ll get him for you. Hold on a tick.’

  Bert was a long time coming and after a while the juniors sat down on a pile of planks to wait for him. Iris had bought a tube of Horlicks tablets, which they passed round like sweets. Poppy stamped her feet and put her hands in her armpits and complained that she was getting cold. Lizzie thought of Ben and wondered what he was doing. She was so lost in her thoughts that she didn’t notice the foreman’s arrival and looked up to find that he was standing right in front of her, a tall, thick-set man, with a kind smile and eyes as brown as Ben’s.

  ‘How can I help you, ladies?’ he said.

  The juniors giggled at being called ladies and Lizzie explained their errand.

  His answer was immediate and practical. ‘You can have as much sawdust as you want,’ he said. ‘Have you got a tub? No. Try the hardware shop. They’re the ones. Get your tub, bring it back here and we’ll fill it for you. I’ll tell Tom to look after you. OK?’

  ‘What a nice man,’ Poppy said as they left the yard. ‘So what do we do now?’

  ‘Go and see if we can buy a tub,’ Lizzie said, ‘and if we can, we’ll go back to Downview and get the wheelbarrow to put it in. Come on.’

  It took them all morning and Iris said it was the best fun ever, even though pushing the loaded wheelbarrow up the hill was jolly hard work. They had to take it in turns to do it, working in pairs because it was so heavy. But the excitement when the tub was set up in the hall made all the effort well worthwhile.

  ‘We’re the heroines of the hour,’ Iris grinned.

  ‘Never mind that,’ Poppy said, taking off her gloves and examining her fingers. ‘I’ve got chilblains coming.’

  But Christmas is coming too, Lizzie thought, and I’m going to meet Aunt Min.

  * * *

  Emmeline and Octavia had a full house that Christmas for, although Tommy wasn’t with them, Dora and John and David were so they sat nine to the table and, without Tommy’s contribution to the feast, Emmeline was hard put to it to provide sufficient food for them all. The rations had been increased over the Christmas period as they usually were and Dora provided biscuits and a bottle of port wine, but even so it was short commons and Emmeline felt guilty at her impoverished table.

  ‘I’d kill for a turkey,’ she said to Octavia. ‘Chickens are all very well but they don’t go anywhere near far enough.’

  But it was a happy meal notwithstanding the shortages. Octavia had made crackers out of brown paper covered with painted stars and party hats out of brightly painted newspaper and every last scrap of food was eaten and pronounced first rate. In fact, when David had finished his slice of Christmas pudding he licked the plate, to his mother’s consternation.

  ‘David! David! Whatever are you thinking of?’ she rebuked him. ‘We don’t lick our plates. It’s bad manners.’

  But to everybody’s surprise, John encouraged him. ‘You lick away all you like, son,’ he said. ‘Never let nothing go to waste. That’s my advice. Food’s too precious to waste.’

  ‘That’s all very well,’ Dora said, ‘but what about manners?’

  ‘Manners don’t come into it no more,’ John told her. Was this really their quiet John standing up to Dora? ‘There’s many a good man been torpedoed to get that lot on your plate. If you’d seen some a’ the things I’ve seen these last few years you’d never waste another mouthful in your life and you’d be licking your plate an’ all.’

  So David went on licking his plate until he’d polished it clean and, greatly daring, the three girls followed his example and licked theirs too. And Uncle John patted them on the head and said, ‘That’s the style!’ Then the port wine was produced to finish off the meal and toasts were drunk to their new allies and absent friends, and when they’d sat by the fire for an hour or two, ‘to let their food go down’, Octavia got out the gramophone records and they danced and giggled for the rest of the afternoon.

  It wasn’t until it was midnight and she was finally in bed that Octavia had time to think of Tommy and Lizzie and to wonder what sort of Christmas they’d had, and by then she was so tired she fell asleep in the middle of her thoughts.

  Ben Hardy came to collect his darling halfway though the afternoon on Christmas Eve and by teatime he’d bought the ring and they were engaged. Lizzie thought it was the prettiest ring she’d ever seen, made of tiny diamonds set round a central amethyst like the petals of a flower, but it cost the unheard of sum of £14 and seeing so much money being ha
nded across the counter worried her.

  When they were out of the jewellers and walking towards the fish and chip shop, he stopped to take the ring from its box and put it on her finger. ‘You do like it, don’t you?’ he said. That anxious expression of hers was worrying him.

  ‘It’s gorgeous,’ she said, gazing at it. ‘I shall wear it all my life. It’s just…’

  ‘Just what?’ he asked. ‘Go on, Lizzie, spit it out. What’s worrying you?’

  ‘It was so much money,’ she said. ‘It makes me feel like a gold-digger.’

  He gave such a roar of laughter that passing shoppers stopped to peer at him. ‘Oh that’s priceless!’ he said. ‘You, a gold-digger! The idea! No one could ever think that.’

  ‘But it was a lot of money.’

  ‘I’ve been saving up.’ They’d reached the chippie. ‘Cod and two penn’orth?’ he asked and teased, ‘It’s OK. It won’t break the bank.’

  So cod and two penn’orth it was, and when they’d eaten it and licked every last trace of grease from their fingers, they went to the local dance hall, which was a pink confection known as the Ata, where they danced quicksteps and foxtrots on the famous sprung floor and admired the way their ring sparkled in the light from the glitter ball and held one another breathlessly close through every waltz. They had to leave early so that she would be back at Downview at her appointed time and there were too few moments for kissing but she didn’t mind. She would have to keep her beautiful ring hidden away while she was in the school house but she didn’t mind that either. They were engaged and tomorrow was Christmas day.

  It was dank and cold and trying to rain, the sort of day for sitting indoors by the fire with your family opening presents or throwing a big school party with lots of games and presents in a bran tub, or if you were newly engaged, walking beside Horsell Moor with your fiancé and taking off your glove so that you could look at your ring. And suddenly realising that you knew where you were.

  ‘I came down this way on Thursday,’ Lizzie said. ‘Me and the others. We were getting sawdust for the bran tub.’

  ‘I know.’

  That was a surprise. ‘How do you know?’ she said. ‘Did I tell you?’ She hadn’t, had she? She’d have remembered if she had.

  ‘I have my spies,’ he said, laughing at her.

  ‘No seriously. How do you know?’

  They’d reached a line of small, terraced houses, backin on to the canal, with grey slate roofs and prettily patterned brickwork and a warmth of smoke rising from the chimneys. ‘Come and see,’ he said, leading her to the house in the centre of the terrace. ‘This is where I live.’

  There were faces looking out of the downstairs window, all wide eyes and welcoming smiles and the door was opened before he could knock. Then they took two steps into a room crowded with more people than she could count, all talking at once saying ‘come in’ and ‘make yourself at home’ and ‘pleased to meet you’ and Lizzie smiled until her jaw ached as she tried to work out who they all were, looking from one to the other. But it was all a blur. She had an impression of a crowded table in the middle of the room set about with a collection of chairs, a fire blazing in the hearth, paper chains strung across the room from side to side, a black and white dog sitting on the hearth, watching the action as she was, turning its head from side to side. And she turned her own head to look for Ben and found herself staring at the broad shoulders and amiable face of the foreman from the wood-yard.

  ‘Good heavens!’ she said. ‘Bert!’ and then corrected herself. ‘I’m sorry, I should have said Mr Hardy.’

  ‘Bert’ll do fine,’ he said. ‘I knew it was you last night. The minute he told us about you, I said to Min, “That’s the girl that came to the yard. Couldn’t be two as pretty as that.” Didn’t I, Min?’

  She was blushing but nobody minded, and a tall, smiling woman came and stood beside her husband and took her hand and led her to the table. ‘Never know’d him so sure about anything,’ she said. ‘The minute our Ben said long blonde hair. There now, if you’ll sit here and make yourself comfy and then Ben can sit beside you and I can dish up. I’m so glad you could join us. We’ve been dying to meet you.’

  There was a scramble as they all sat down and then the blur resolved itself into individuals. She was introduced to ‘my brother Bob’ who was tall and gangly and smiled at her shyly, and ‘my cousin Heather’ who was very like her mother with the same brown hair and grey eyes, and, as her heart steadied, she recognised that there were only five of them after all, not dozens, and a serving plate containing two plump chickens was carried proudly into the room and Bert said grace and the meal began.

  After so many Christmases at home with just her and Ma and Pa on their own in their vast dining room, this crowded, happy meal was a revelation. Passing the vegetables was like some complicated dance, carving the chickens was a splendid ritual, offering a glass of Hock made it an occasion. As they ate and talked and questioned, she watched and answered and warmed to them. They were so loving with one another and so happy to be together. ‘Happy Christmas,’ she said, joining the toast. And it was. It was. Pa could be as cross as he liked, but she was engaged and there was nothing he could do about it and Ben’s family had welcomed her.

  Tommy came home from his trip to the States saying he was totally exhausted. ‘We’ve been hard at it, dawn to midnight every blessed day,’ he complained to Octavia, when he came down to visit her. ‘I don’t know where Winnie gets the energy from. I need to marry and settle down and get a bit of peace in my life.’

  The two of them were sitting in the armchairs on either side of the fire and for the moment they were on their own together, as the children were in bed and Edie and Em were doing the washing-up. But the one thing Octavia didn’t want to talk about was getting married. She still hadn’t made up her mind what to say and her unusual indecision was making her nervous and rather irritable.

  ‘You’d be bored stiff if you had to settle down,’ she said, trying to make a joke of it.

  He understood her motive just a little too well. ‘Give me the try,’ he said. ‘You might be surprised.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ she said. ‘You’re too used to being in the middle of the action.’

  He leant forwards towards her, his hands on his knees. ‘Tavy,’ he said, ‘I’m asking you to marry me.’

  It couldn’t be avoided. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I know.’

  ‘And?’

  She tried to temporise. ‘We’ll talk about it.’

  ‘I don’t need to talk about it,’ he said. ‘We’ve said all that has to be said. All I need is an answer. Will you or won’t you?’

  He was so straight and to the point. But what could she say? She thought for a little and then offered, ‘Well then, the answer is yes, but not yet.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Tavy, what sort of answer is that?’

  ‘It’s the best I can do at the present moment.’

  ‘What’s wrong with the present moment?’

  ‘There’s too much going on.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like getting as many of our girls into colleges and universities as I can, your Lizzie among them. I can’t arrange a wedding in the middle of all that.’

  It was a clever answer, if not entirely honest, and it was unanswerable. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Have it your own way, but I shall ask again.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘And I will tell you. As soon as I can. I promise.’

  He grunted and turned away from her to take out his cigarette case, obviously annoyed.

  ‘Tell me how you got on,’ she said. ‘Apart from being driven to exhaustion.’

  He took a cigarette from the case, tapped it on the lid and lit it. Then he sat back and put his feet on the fender and inhaled deeply. ‘Pretty well, all things considered,’ he said. ‘They should be in action by the end of the spring or early summer at the latest. Everything’s being set in motion. And of course the Yanks are always very hospitable. Poor old Tubby g
ot the short straw this time. He had a very rough ride by all accounts.’

  She was relieved to see how deftly he had followed her suggestion. This is better, she thought. Talking about diplomacy is a lot easier than discussing a possible marriage. ‘Where was he?’

  ‘Moscow.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Went with Anthony Eden,’ he told her. ‘It was a tricky delegation. He says Stalin is a very difficult customer. Wants his own way all the time. Won’t sign any treaty with us or America unless we recognise his 1941 frontiers, which is quite out of the question. I mean, that would give him part of Finland, the Baltic States and Bessarabia, and we can’t have that. Out of the question. And on top of all that, there’s another chap there called Molotov who would keep banging on about when the Second Front was going to begin, and that didn’t make matters easier either.’

  ‘We’d all like to know that,’ Octavia said. ‘I’m on his side. I mean, we’re never going to end this war until we invade France, now, are we? I’m not surprised he’s pressuring you. They want to know when it’s going to happen.’

  ‘They don’t want to know,’ he told her. ‘They want to give orders and have them obeyed. Dictators are bloody hard work.’

  ‘Does that surprise you?’ she asked. ‘These are men who get their own way all the time. They’re not open to compromise like you and me.’

  He gave her his wry grin. ‘I might have accepted a compromise this time,’ he said, ‘but that’s because of Lizzie’s career. I shan’t be so amenable next time round. Be warned.’

  At that moment, Emmeline and Edie came back from the kitchen and, to Octavia’s relief, the subject had to be changed. But the question was still there, charged and unanswered, filling the space between them and sooner or later she would have to tackle it.

  Chapter Twenty

  When Tommy drove off to London the following morning, Octavia was left feeling the most disquieting pangs of conscience. It wasn’t her style to indulge in introspection, there being very little to be said for it and even less to be gained, but that morning she sat at the kitchen table not drinking her tea and feeling troubled and ashamed. She really had treated him extremely badly, poor Tommy. She should have given him his answer at Christmas the way she’d promised. It was ridiculous to be still making excuses. It wasn’t as if she didn’t want to live with him and she loved him almost as much as she’d ever done, given that they were both older and wiser, so she ought to have said yes and agreed to a date. Was it any wonder he was upset? But she’d been right to point out how busy she was going to be. That was true too and they had to accept it. They were both busy. It was the nature of their lives and it was bound to make problems for them.