Octavia's War

by Beryl Kingston

  * * *

  It was a quiet, misty morning and the girls were sleepy. Lizzie was stifling a yawn as she walked into Smithie’s study and didn’t seem her usual cheerful self at all.

  ‘I’m sorry it’s so cold in here,’ Octavia said, when they’d both settled into their chairs beside the limited warmth of the fire. ‘That fire will take presently. It’s just being a bit slow this morning.’

  Lizzie looked at it and didn’t say anything.

  ‘Well now,’ Octavia said. ‘It’s St Hilda’s for you, isn’t it?’ She expected to be answered with a smile and an agreement and was alerted when Lizzie winced. ‘What is it, my dear?’ she asked. ‘Is there a problem?’

  There’s nothing for it, Lizzie thought. I shall have to tell her. ‘I don’t think I shall be able to go,’ she said.

  Octavia was instantly on full alert. This has something to do with her love affair, she thought. I must handle it carefully. ‘Why is that?’ she asked. ‘Are you having second thoughts about the course?’

  ‘No, no,’ Lizzie said. ‘It’s nothing like that.’ Then she stopped and tried to gather her courage. ‘I just don’t think I shall be able to go to university after all.’

  ‘Because?’ Octavia prompted.

  ‘Because Ben wants us to get married. Oh, I know I’m young and I know Pa won’t approve because he’s set his heart on me going to St Hilda’s but that’s how things are. It won’t be long before he gets sent to Africa. I mean, there’s no secret about it. They all know it. He reckons it’ll be early summer, June or July probably, so his next long leave will be embarkation leave and he’d like us to get married before he goes. That’s only right when you think what he’s got ahead of him. I mean, he could be wounded or killed. There’s no knowing what will happen once he’s out there.’ The thought brought tears to her eyes and she had to swallow hard before she could go on. ‘I can’t put my education before that, now, can I? It wouldn’t be right.’

  Octavia didn’t argue with her. It wasn’t the right moment. ‘No, my dear, when you put it like that, it wouldn’t be. Have you talked it over with him?’

  Lizzie had to admit she hadn’t. ‘But there’s nothing to say really, is there? If he’s going out to join the Eighth Army and he wants us to get married, that’s all there is to it.’

  Not if I have my way, Octavia thought, and she rolled up imaginary sleeves and prepared to make as good a case as she could. ‘Do I take it that you don’t have any objection to St Hilda’s per se?’

  ‘Oh no,’ Lizzie said at once. ‘I mean it’s a wonderful place. It would be a privilege to go there. I know that. No, I’m not against it at all. If I could marry Ben and go there, I’d go like a shot. But I couldn’t, could I? I mean, they don’t have married students at Oxford, do they?’

  So far so good, Octavia thought. ‘I have to admit I’ve never heard of any,’ she said. ‘But that is not to say it’s impossible. I see no reason why they shouldn’t. It’s just that no one has asked the question before. You’re a pioneer and St Hilda’s is a pioneering college. I can remember how they welcomed speakers from the WSPU.’

  Lizzie smiled at that, for the first time since she’d entered the room. She liked the idea of being a pioneer. It made solutions seem possible.

  Octavia pressed home her advantage. ‘If you will take my advice,’ she said, ‘you won’t do anything precipitous. Things change all the time during a war, habits, opinions, lifestyles, even in the most entrenched sectors of the establishment. What was thought to be totally out of the question in peacetime becomes an imperative when we’re at war. You’ve only got to look at the suffragette movement to see that. We campaigned for women’s suffrage for years and years but it wasn’t until we were needed for war work that we finally got the vote. I would say press on with your application, visit St Hilda’s and see what it has to offer you, attend your interview, sit your Higher Schools and make up your mind to get the highest grades you can and then bide your time. Make your decision as late as you can. There’s no rush.’

  ‘Well…’ Lizzie said, thinking about it. It sounded sensible, just so long as Smithie understood that there was no question about whether she would marry Ben or not. ‘I shall marry him sooner or later,’ she warned. ‘That’s a given.’

  ‘Of course,’ Octavia said, ‘and good will come of it. We need young women like you to show that it is possible to marry and have a career. Change doesn’t usually come of its own accord. We need someone or something to give it a push.’

  So it was settled. Lizzie would go ahead with her application, sit her examinations, do everything according to her original plan, but not lose sight of the possibility that she might marry at any time. When she finally said, ‘Thank you, Miss Smith’ and left, Octavia was exhausted. She stayed where she was beside the fire and lit a cigarette to give herself a chance to recover before she had to take her next study period. As she drew in her first calming lungful of smoke she began to make plans. She wouldn’t tell Tommy what had been said. It would only upset him and then there would be ructions and that wouldn’t do at all. She wanted Lizzie’s life to be as calm as possible in the weeks ahead. But thinking of Tommy and remembering what she’d been saying here in this room only a few minutes ago made her feel ashamed. ‘We need young women like you to show that it is possible to marry and have a career.’ What a hypocrite she was being. I must make my mind up and set a date and tell him, she thought. I can’t put it off any longer. I will do it as soon as I get home.

  But she got home to two letters that took her mind away from weddings and dates for the rest of the evening. The first one was a happy note from Janet announcing the birth of her baby.

  ‘There you are,’ Emmeline said. ‘Didn’t I say it would be January? What did she have?’

  ‘A boy,’ Octavia told her, handing her the letter. ‘A canny lad, so she says. They’re going to call him Norman. She’s staying with her mother because her husband’s at sea and she can’t get the pram up and down the stairs on her own.’

  Emmeline said that was very wise. ‘She was always sensible even if she did get herself into trouble, if you know what I mean.’

  That made Octavia smile because she knew so exactly what her cousin meant. But the smile was frozen as soon as she opened her second letter because this one was from Mr Mannheim and the news it contained was so grim as to be almost unbelievable.

  My dear friend, he wrote,

  I hope you will forgive me for unburdening myself to you again but I feel I must pass on this news to everyone who might be able to help. It is necessary that these terrible things be revealed. To conceal them would be to condone them as I am sure you would agree and these are horrors that should never, never be condoned.

  To put the matter briefly, there is news coming out of Germany that what they are now openly calling ‘the Jewish solution’ has become a full scale programme of mass extermination. It is terrible to write such words, hard to believe that there are human beings who would do such inhuman things, but there are such men. One is the man in charge of the programme. His name is Rienhard Heydrich. He is second in command to Himmler of the Gestapo. According to my informant, who I must tell you is usually reliable, he has plans to kill all the Jews now under German rule in Europe, which is to say over eleven million men, women and children for they do not spare the young. There are now several concentration camps built and in action with gas chambers equipped for the killing and crematoria to dispose of the bodies. It is hard for us to comprehend such ruthless enormity but I fear that news of what they plan is true. Do please send this letter on, I beg you dear friend, and forgive me for bringing such distressing things to your attention. There are days when I am half mad with the terror of the things I hear. We live in evil times.

  Octavia lit a cigarette and smoked as she tried to digest the horror on the page. Her senses were roaring at her that this simply couldn’t be true, that no man could be so totally inhuman. But her reason was telling a different story. Mr Ma
nnheim was a truthful man. He didn’t exaggerate. He was careful to check his facts. If he said this was so, it was only too horribly likely that it was true. I’ll show it to Tommy, she decided, and see what he says. If Mr Mannheim has heard it, he might have had wind of it, too.

  ‘News from America?’ Emmeline asked, sending a warning glance in the direction of her granddaughters.

  Octavia handed the letter across. ‘We’ll talk about it after dinner,’ she said, speaking lightly so as not to alert the children. Barbara was already looking up with a question on her face. ‘Do you need a hand in the kitchen?’

  ‘No, that’s fine,’ Edith said. ‘We’ve done most of it. Can I see it after you, Mum?’

  They talked about it until late into the night, anguishing that such a monstrous thing could be planned, let alone put into action. ‘What makes them so cruel?’ Emmeline said. ‘They can’t be born that way. I mean, to be planning to kill eleven million people, it’s obscene.’

  ‘What I can’t understand,’ Edith said, ‘is why we don’t invade France and push the Germans out and free the prisoners and have all this awful business over and done with. What are we waiting for? We should stop all this messing about in Africa and invade France, that’s what we should do.’

  They were hideous thoughts to take to bed and they kept Octavia awake for far too many hours, wondering how many Jews would be killed in the gas chambers before the Allies could save them and whether there was anything else she could do to help, apart from sending the letter on to Mrs Henderson. I’ll talk to Tommy about it on Wednesday, she thought.

  But the next morning he phoned just as she was leaving for work to tell her that he wouldn’t be able to get down to see her for several days. ‘Something’s come up,’ he said.

  ‘Serious?’ she said, reading the tone of his voice.

  ‘’Fraid so. We’ve had some alarming reports from our sources in Germany.’

  ‘About the concentration camps?’

  ‘Ah! You’ve heard too.’

  ‘Mr Mannheim told me. I was going to show you his letter.’

  He sighed. ‘So you see how it is. There’s a conference being planned. We’re all going to be hard at it. I’ll be down as soon as I can get away. Give my love to Lizzie.’ And he was gone.

  Octavia sighed too as she hung up the receiver. Mr Mannheim is right, she thought. We live in evil times.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Lizzie travelled to Oxford in her most recalcitrant mood, planning rebellion all the way, determined not to like the town or the college. I shan’t fit in there, she brooded, as the winter fields drifted ethereally past her criss-crossed window. It’ll be hateful. I know it will. I’m doing this as a favour to Smithie, that’s all, and to please Pa, of course, and it’s just plain stupid. I don’t want to go one bit. I want to marry Ben and live in our own home, not be stuck in some academic backwater.

  By the time she pulled in at the station, she was ready to turn straight round and go back again. But as the next train wasn’t for an hour and there was a crowd streaming out of the station and heading off towards the town, she decided to follow where they led. She might as well take a look now she was here. It was a long way to come just to do nothing and it wouldn’t make the slightest difference to the way she felt. So having sorted it all out in her head, she walked into the High Street – and was bewitched.

  She ambled the length of the street, walking slowly because she had plenty of time, stopping to succumb to the tempting windows of a bookshop, or to admire the Gothic stonework of a church, or to peer through an opened doorway into a grassy courtyard where black-gowned figures were walking and talking. Despite herself she was calmed by the grace of the town, charmed by the honeyed colour of its ancient stones, jollied along by a jingle of cycle bells as young men and women swept past her, black gowns billowing. It was quite a different place from the sombre monochrome of the photographs she’d seen. They’d looked stuffy and antiquated. This town was full of young people enjoying themselves. By the time she’d crossed Magdalene Bridge and reached the gates of St Hilda’s she felt thoroughly at home.

  And St Hilda’s had the welcome mat out for her. There was a uniformed porter standing in his lodge who addressed her as Miss Meriton, told her that her interview would be ‘in Hall’ and came out to show her the way; the grounds were like a well laid out park, bordering the river where she could see a line of brown punts waiting for custom; there was a magnificent pine tree to give shade to the house in summer and a low brick wall to mark the border between the lawn and the river bank; and the house was everything she could have wanted. It stood four-square to the river bank, secluded and secure in elegant grounds, an imposing Edwardian building with high gables and high arched windows. She liked it at once and knew she would be privileged to be living there, and when she was met at the door by a middle-aged woman in a suit that was so like the sort of thing Smithie wore, what was left of her preconceptions simply melted away. From that moment on she was pleased by everything she saw, the tiled hall, the two interconnecting common rooms with their imposing fireplaces and their expensive carpets – what style they have here! – the panelled dining room, the splendid oak staircase which reminded her of a lesser Downview, the quietly understated elegance of the principal’s study to which she was finally escorted for her interview with Miss Mann.

  After Smithie’s untidiness and open exuberance, she found Miss Mann neat and contained and distant and was perplexed by how little she said, although her questions seemed shrewd. It wasn’t until she offered that it would be possible for some of next year’s students to take their degrees in two years instead of the usual three that Lizzie gave her full attention to what was being said. Two years instead of three sounded like very good sense, if it could be done. It would mean that she and Ben could marry in two years’ time, always providing Pa gave his consent once she’d graduated, and he’d have to do that, surely?

  ‘How would you feel about such an eventuality?’ Miss Mann was asking.

  ‘I would consider it a challenge and hope to rise to it,’ Lizzie said.

  Octavia was pleased to hear how well the interview had gone and felt sure that Lizzie would be accepted, which, after a few busy days, she duly was.

  ‘It’s a feather in our Lizzie’s cap,’ she told the school at that morning’s assembly, ‘and an honour for our school.’

  The cheers were so rapturous they made Lizzie blush. It was a lovely warming moment and, as she stood smiling at her admirers, she thought that if she could get Ben to understand what a good thing this was, she would never ask for anything else in her whole life ever again.

  The letter of acceptance had arrived at just the right time for Tommy too, because he was coming down to visit at last. It had been an exhausting fortnight with far too much work for him to do so it was pleasant to sit round Octavia’s table and enjoy the company and drink a toast to Lizzie’s success. It had to be in beer because wine couldn’t be had for love nor money, but it was a toast just the same and they all said ‘cheers’ and meant it. After the meal he talked about Oxford and what an ideal place it was if you were a student. Then he told them he had another bit of good news.

  ‘Had a letter from Mark this morning,’ he said. ‘Apparently he’s going to get married.’

  ‘How lovely!’ Edith said.

  But Octavia asked, ‘Who to?’, thinking of Ben and Lizzie.

  ‘Girl called Joan, apparently. Another Joan, Edith. She’s a WAAF, which is how he met her.’

  ‘What’s she like?’ Emmeline asked.

  ‘No idea,’ Tommy admitted. ‘Haven’t met her yet. She’s bound to be all right though. I mean, Mark’s got his head screwed on. He wouldn’t pick anyone who wasn’t. At any rate, it’s all set.’

  ‘And when’s it going to be?’ Octavia asked.

  ‘The Saturday after Easter.’

  Emmeline and Octavia exchanged glances, both thinking the same thing.

  ‘Bit of a rush,’ Tom
my admitted, ‘but there’s a reason for it. All hush-hush, so you mustn’t breathe a word. Bomber Command has got an offensive planned. Munitions factories, air bases, goods yards, that sort of thing. It’s to cripple the German war effort and soften them up before the Second Front. Anyway, my two will be involved in it, providing fighter cover, so Mark wants to get married before it starts. Understandable given the circumstances.’

  They agreed that it was and Edith said they were being very sensible, ‘because you never know what’s going to happen’ and Emmeline smiled and nodded and wondered whether they would invite Tavy to the wedding, thinking, I bet Tommy will arrange it if he can. Octavia was still anguishing about the concentration camps and she was wondering whether Bomber Command intended to bomb them too and what would happen to the inmates if they did. It was obvious that Tommy wasn’t going to mention them at the moment so she would have to ask him later.

  It was past midnight before she got the chance and then he was reluctant to tell her what he knew.

  ‘It’s an evil business,’ he said. ‘Do you really want to talk about it now?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said firmly. ‘We owe it to those poor devils to check our facts and find out everything we can.’

  He gave a resigned shrug. ‘Well then,’ he said, ‘there are at least six camps up and running to our certain knowledge and we think there are more planned. They’re killing people by the thousand. We estimate that there must be hundreds every day. And it’s not just Jews, although they form the bulk of the killings. They’re persecuting other groups too, gypsies, communists, homosexuals. It’s all quite hideous.’

  ‘Then they’ll have to speed up the Second Front, won’t they,’ Octavia said.

  ‘Can’t be done,’ he told her. ‘A full scale invasion will be an enormous undertaking. The logistics are formidable. It’s being planned now but the military don’t reckon they can have it ready until late next year at the earliest. Winnie wants to get the Eyeties out of the war first. Clear the decks, sort of thing.’