‘And in the meantime people are being slaughtered.’
‘’Fraid so.’
She got out of bed and went to stand at the window so that she could look down at the garden, where it was peaceful and moon-washed and nobody was being gassed to death. She was very near tears. They couldn’t just ignore this awful thing. They had to do something about it. After a while she remembered the bombing campaign.
‘Are we going to bomb the camps?’ she asked. ‘Is that what this new offensive is about?’
‘Good God, no,’ he said. ‘That would be doing their dirty work for them. We don’t want that.’
She supposed not. ‘But something should be done, Tommy. We can’t just stand by and let them kill people in their thousands. It’s inhuman.’ She was crying now at the enormity of it. ‘They must do something.’
He got up and came to stand behind her, wrapping his arms round her as if he was protecting her. ‘Don’t cry, Tikki-Tavy,’ he said. ‘It’s not your fault.’
‘Something should be done,’ she wept. ‘It’s just too dreadful to think of all those people being killed and our useless leaders sitting on their hands doing nothing. Can’t they see how abominable it is?’
He held her close and let her rant until she’d cried the worst of her anger away. ‘I hate this war,’ she said, blowing her nose.
He tried to soothe her. ‘I know, my darling, I know.’
‘It’s an abomination, Tommy. A total and utter abomination. It diminishes us. It makes us less than human. We sit back and let these dreadful things happen and we should be doing everything and anything to make them stop. I can’t bear it. It strips away our basic human instincts. We’re capable of such good and we allow these obscene people to get their own way and rule our lives.’
‘We’ll defeat them in the end, Tavy,’ he said. ‘It’s just a matter of time.’
It was probably true but it didn’t comfort her. ‘But how many victims will have to die before we do?’ she said.
He turned her in his arms and smoothed her damp hair out of her eyes, very gently and tenderly. ‘If I could change the world for you, I would,’ he said.
‘I know,’ she relented. ‘You’re a dear man.’
‘Then come back to bed,’ he said. ‘Your hands are like ice and I don’t want you catching pneumonia on top of everything else. What would your pupils do without you?’
She was returning to her senses. ‘They would cope,’ she told him, shivering back to the bed. ‘They’re trained to be resilient.’
They had a lot of practice at being resilient that winter. It was extremely cold and the rations were smaller than they’d ever been. Cook did her best with what little there was, producing roly-poly puddings and spotted dick and stews, which were mostly vegetable but were at least filling, and she made sure that every girl had a pot of jam or marmalade once a month and her own individual ration of butter and sugar, doled out once a week, all carefully marked with their names, but she knew their diet was meagre and dull and often complained to Octavia about it. ‘Not that there’s much you can do to help us, Miss Smith,’ she said. ‘I do know that. But it helps to get it off my chest.’
Lizzie never complained. Food was the least of her worries that January. What was troubling her was the war in North Africa. The Germans had been pushing the Eighth Army further and further back towards Egypt. They’d reached a place called Benghazi already and Ben said the closer they got to Cairo the sooner his brigade would be sent out as reinforcements. He’d taken her news without much comment, beyond saying ‘Lucky you!’ and, although it was upsetting, his attitude was understandable. The thought of him being sent to Africa filled her with such foreboding that an education at St Hilda’s seemed unimportant by comparison. She agonised until his daily letter arrived and followed the news every day, pouring over the papers for the least little detail. When the invitation to Mark’s wedding turned up she barely noticed it and didn’t answer it for more than four days, which was rude of her and rather silly, because putting it aside meant she missed how important it was. When she finally got around to writing a reply and read it for the second time she realised that it was a godsend. If Pa can agree to Mark getting married, she thought, and he obviously has, then he can’t very well say no when I ask him if I can get married too. Sauce for the goose, sort of thing. I’ll wear my pretty frock and that nice hat he likes and I’ll catch him at the right moment and ask him sweetly, like Ma used to do. Easy-peasy.
Thank you for your invitation, she wrote to her brother. I shall be there with bells on.
Octavia wasn’t at all sure whether she ought to be there at all. She was spending that weekend in Wimbledon, back in her own neglected home, with a pale sunlight making patterns on her dusty kitchen table and revealing how extremely dirty the windows were, and the sight of it was making her feel unsettled. Of course, there wasn’t time to do any housework and very little point because it would all get dusty again as soon as she turned her back on it, and it certainly wasn’t like her to be houseproud, but she felt guilty to be neglecting the place and aware that Tommy’s house would all be in apple-pie order.
‘About this wedding,’ she said, pouring a second cup of tea and thinking that at least the tea cups were clean.
‘Buy a new hat,’ he said, stirring his tea.
‘Never mind a hat,’ she said sternly. ‘I don’t think I ought to be there.’
‘Can’t see why not.’
‘Because a wedding is a family affair and I’m not family.’
‘But you will be,’ he said, giving her his most devilish grin. ‘Time to give ’em a foretaste, don’t you think.’
‘You might give them a shock,’ she said. ‘Have you thought of that?’
‘You worry too much,’ he said. ‘They’ll love you. And anyway, it’s a wedding. There’ll be far too much going on for anyone to be shocked. Trust me. Just buy a pretty hat. That’s all you need to do.’
She bought the hat – although with serious misgivings. It was all very well for Tommy to tell her not to worry. He took things so easily – or at least he did when it came to family matters. It was different when he was at the Foreign Office. He obviously planned everything down to the last little detail when he was there but when it came to his children, at the very time when he should have been thinking everything through most carefully, he didn’t think at all. There were times when she found him really quite hard to understand.
But there was no time to brood on it. She sent a letter of acceptance, put the hat away on top of the wardrobe and got on with the term. In a few weeks the applications for next year’s first form would be coming in and she wanted to be ready for them, especially as one of them could be young Barbara. She and David had both sat the scholarship examination that year and Edith had been watching the post with fidgeting anxiety.
‘I do so want her to pass,’ she said to Octavia. ‘I know there’s nothing we can do about it if she doesn’t but I do so want her to. It could be the making of her.’
It was the first time Octavia had really appreciated what a once-in-a-lifetime chance the examination was. Until then she’d simply interviewed all the applicants on the list the LCC had sent her, chosen the best and most suitable ones and thought no more about it. Now Edith was making her consider the ones who failed. There can’t be very much difference between the children who pass and the ones who have to accept failure. They’ve all been considered bright enough to enter. When this horrible war is over I must put my mind to it.
Meantime there was work to be done and girls to be interviewed, among them Barbara Ames, to her mother’s damp-eyed relief. Octavia was pleasantly surprised to see how overawed she was when she came to the school. She sat by her mother’s side, round-eyed and shy, and answered every question politely, calling her ‘Miss Smith’ instead of ‘Aunt’, like the sensible, well-coached child she was. When Edith led her out of the room she was still solemn.
‘She’ll do,’ Octavia said to Maggie a
nd she put a firm tick by Barbara’s name.
Emmeline wasn’t anywhere near so discreet. ‘Well?’ she asked, when Octavia finally came home that afternoon. ‘What’s the verdict?’
Octavia gave her the thumbs-up. ‘But don’t say anything until it’s official,’ she warned.
‘You know me,’ Emmeline said. ‘Soul of discretion, me. The tea’s made.’
The next day’s news brought a disappointment. Dora phoned in the evening to say that David hadn’t passed. She sounded cross and irritable and when her mother tried to comfort her by saying he could always try again when he was thirteen, she snorted.
‘He can see out the year,’ she said, ‘and then he can come home. It’s quite safe now and he might as well be taught in the emergency school as stay down there not learning anything. I always said that school was no use.’
As Tommy and Mark had predicted, the war was taking a new turn. At the end of March when the first tentative daffodils were trembling in the flower-beds at Ridgeway, Bomber Command launched its new bombing offensive with raids on Lubeck and the mighty Krupps works at Essen. Two days later, the port of Le Havre was bombed too and Matthew Meriton phoned his father to say that his squadron had put up a jolly good show there and had shot down eight German fighters – and was called a stout feller, which was very high praise.
But as always in war, one attack led to another and another. In April the Germans decided to retaliate by bombing some of England’s most beautiful cathedral cities; first Exeter, then Bath, then Norwich and York. The papers called them the Baedeker raids and printed shocking pictures of the damage they’d done. And Emmeline got the letter she’d been dreading ever since Johnnie joined up.
She knew it was bad news as soon as she saw the envelope because although it was addressed in Johnnie’s familiar handwriting it was so scruffily written that her heart contracted at the sight of it. Her hands were shaking so much it took her several fumbling seconds to open the envelope and when she’d read the letter she lifted her head and howled in anguish.
‘I knew this would happen,’ she wept. ‘Didn’t I say so? I never wanted him to fly those horrible Spitfires in the first place. I said so at the start. I did, didn’t I, Tavy. First Squirrel and then Podge and now my Johnnie.’ The tears were torrenting down her cheeks, making her look haggard and distraught. ‘Oh my poor Johnnie. My poor, dear Johnnie. I can’t bear it.’
Edith had picked up the letter and was reading it, while her daughters watched her and didn’t say a word. ‘It’s all right,’ she said to them. ‘He’s not dead. Just wounded, that’s all.’
‘That’s all!’ Emmeline cried. ‘All! What are you talking about? He’s been wounded. Don’t you understand? Wounded. They get terribly wounded in a war. They die of wounds. You don’t know the half of it.’
Edith gave her a warning look but she was too far gone in her distress to see it and went on weeping, rocking backwards and forwards in her chair.
‘He’s in hospital, Ma,’ Edith said, passing the letter to Octavia. ‘Which is the best place. And we can go and visit him. I’ll phone them up and find out when the visiting hours are and we’ll go the minute we can. Today if it’s possible. Don’t cry. It’ll be all right. Really. Now I’ve got to get these girls to school or they’ll be late and that would never do, would it, girls? Not when it’s the last day of term.’ And she gave Octavia a look which was responded to and shepherded her children upstairs to the bathroom.
While she was out of the room and Emmeline was still weeping and rocking, Octavia phoned the hospital. By the time Edie came downstairs again, she had the address and the visiting hours written on the notepad and ready for her.
‘There it is,’ she said. ‘He’s in the burns unit and you can visit him this afternoon. I’ve written it all down. Don’t worry about Joanie. She can come to Downview with me for the day. That’ll be nice won’t it, Joanie. You can see our garden. And I’ll pick the girls up this afternoon. Don’t worry. They’ll be all right.’
‘Thanks,’ Edie said, and the word was heartfelt. ‘There you are, Joanie. You’re going to the big school. Aren’t you the lucky one. I’ll be back directly, Ma. Don’t worry. Aunt’s got it all under control.’
‘I don’t know what the world’s coming to,’ Emmeline wept. ‘I really don’t.’
It was a difficult journey to Tonbridge Wells, because they had to take a train into London and then travel out again but they arrived at the hospital in plenty of time and found the burns unit without any trouble at all because the wards were so clearly marked. Emmeline was appalled by it. All those young men burnt until their flesh was like raw meat or bandaged up, which was even worse because she had no idea what horrors were underneath the bandages. Edith did her best to smile at them as they passed their beds and one or two smiled back but her mother passed them frozen-faced.
Johnnie was in the end bed, lying on his back with his eyes tightly shut, his face pale as putty, a cradle over his legs and both hands heavily bandaged. He opened his eyes as he heard their approach and instantly became bright and cheerful, saying, ‘Hello you two. Nice to see you.’ But he didn’t fool either of them.
‘Oh, Johnnie,’ Emmeline mourned, ‘my poor dear boy. Look at the state of you.’
Her sympathy annoyed him. ‘I’m fine, Ma,’ he said and his voice was tetchy. ‘Don’t fuss. I’m doing OK.’
But Emmeline ploughed on. ‘What’s up with your leg?’ she said.
‘Got a bit burnt. That’s all. You know how it is when you prang the old kite. How are the kids?’
Emmeline didn’t want to talk about the children. They were unimportant compared to seeing him injured and not knowing exactly what was wrong with him but his face was shut, the way it used to be when he got into trouble with his father as a boy, and he obviously wasn’t going to tell her anything. So she told him about the scholarship and how Barbara had passed and he said he was glad to hear it and closed his eyes again.
‘Let him rest,’ Edie whispered. ‘Stay here with him and I’ll go and find Sister or a doctor or someone. Won’t be long.’
She was nearly half an hour and when she came back, her face was shut too and her brother was fast asleep.
‘Well?’ Emmeline asked.
‘They’re very pleased with him,’ Edie temporised. ‘They say he’s a fighter. I’ll tell you all the details when we get home.’
‘How long can we stay?’
‘Another twenty minutes,’ Edie said, looking at the wall clock.
‘We’ll just sit here then shall we?’
They sat until the tea trolley arrived and a nurse with a nice kind face came along to wake him up and feed him bread and butter and tea in a cup with a spout. Emmeline winced to see that he couldn’t use his hands at all but to Edie’s relief she didn’t remark on it, and after a while the bell was sounded and they had to say goodbye and leave.
‘We’ll come again soon,’ Emmeline promised as she kissed him.
He was being bright again. ‘Look forward to it,’ he said.
They waved all the way to the door and Emmeline didn’t say anything until they were halfway along the corridor. Then she took Edie’s arm and gave it an urgent shake. ‘Now tell me what they really said,’ she ordered.
‘Well,’ Edith said slowly. ‘His hands are burnt, as you saw. They’re giving him salt baths to help them to heal and they said they were quite hopeful. He might need surgery to repair them where they’re sort of pulled into claws but they’re hopeful.’
‘And his legs?’
‘They’re not so good,’ Edie said. ‘They were badly burnt. He was trapped in the plane you see and they burnt while they were trying to get him out.’
Emmeline was anguished beyond caution. ‘How badly burnt?’
‘They had to amputate one of them, I’m afraid. He’s lost his right leg below the knee.’
‘Oh, my dear, good God!’ Emmeline said. ‘My poor, poor boy. What will he do now?’
At that mom
ent he’d turned his face into his pillows and was weeping like a child and the nurse with the kind face was rubbing his arm which was the only part of him she could reach to offer any comfort.
‘I’m finished,’ he wept. ‘It’s all over with me.’
‘No it’s not,’ the nurse said. ‘You’re healing nicely.’
‘It is. It is. I shall never fly again.’
She countered that too, speaking gently. ‘You will if you want to.’
He lifted his head to glare at her. ‘With a tin leg?’
‘Douglas Bader flew again. And he’s got two.’
That was true but he was too down to respond to it. ‘I might as well be dead. They should have left me where I was.’
‘Don’t talk rubbish,’ the nurse said. ‘They were good brave men and they got burnt too, I’ll have you know. Two of them were treated here.’
Until that moment he hadn’t thought of his rescuers. ‘Badly burnt?’
‘Hands mostly. We looked after them.’ And as he seemed to be recovering, ‘Now then, what do you want for supper?’
‘Sorry to belly-ache,’ he said.
She smiled at that. ‘It’s all right.’
‘No,’ he told her seriously. ‘It’s not. I shouldn’t burden other people with my troubles. You’ve probably got enough of your own.’
‘Burden all you like,’ she said. ‘That’s what we’re here for.’
He was looking at her, still with that serious expression on his face. ‘I know you’re Nurse Jones,’ he said, ‘but what’s your Christian name? If you don’t mind telling me, that is.’
‘Gwyneth,’ she said. ‘And before you ask how I came by it, I’m from Glamorgan.’
‘Gwyneth,’ he said and smiled at her. ‘That’s a beautiful name.’
‘So what are you having for supper? Rissoles, or fish pie?’
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