Octavia's War

by Beryl Kingston

  Octavia looked up, pushed up her glasses and stretched her back, surprised at how stiff she’d become and how much her neck was aching. ‘I’m writing my credo, Em,’ she said.

  ‘Well don’t write it all night,’ Emmeline said.

  But now that she’d begun, Octavia couldn’t stop. There was so much she wanted to say and she was hot with energy and couldn’t wait to get it down on paper. She knew from her years in the classroom that it is better to have too much information than not enough. When the whole thing was written she would get Maggie Henry to type it for her and send a copy to Kathy Ellis and Brian and they could sort out what they needed. Meantime she would make a list of all the topics she felt she ought to tackle. Things that get in the way of learning. The value of praise and the destructive power of blame. Ways to spark a pupil’s interest. What do we mean by discipline? It was nearly one o’clock before she decided that she really was too tired to go on writing any longer.

  From then on she wrote whenever she had an opportunity, which wasn’t as frequently as she would have liked with Christmas rushing upon them and the school abuzz with preparations. She bought her gramophone and a collection of records, wrapped presents and wrote cards and tried to enter into the spirit of the season but her mind was never far from the book.

  On Christmas Eve, Tommy arrived bearing a hamper to say that he was throwing himself on their mercy because he was all on his own. ‘Lizzie’s gone to her friend Poppy’s for Christmas,’ he said, ‘and Mrs Dunnaway’s deserted me and gone back to Gloucester in my hour of need. I’m an orphan of the storm.’

  ‘We can’t have that,’ Emmeline said, helping him out of his coat, ‘and in all this cold too. Come in and have a drink, you poor, lorn critter.’

  The poor lorn critter entertained them royally that Christmas, pulling crackers and carving their precious turkey at the Christmas table, leading the dance during the afternoon, telling impossible ghost stories round the fire in the evening. When the children had been sent to bed, despite very loud protests, and Emmeline had restored a little order to the drawing room, they sat round the fire and roasted chestnuts and discussed the war.

  ‘It can’t be very much longer now, surely,’ Edith said.

  ‘We’re being held up by the weather,’ Tommy told her. ‘It’s pretty impossible in the Low Countries by all accounts. Drifts four feet deep in some places. Once the spring comes and the tanks can get moving again, we shall cross the Rhine and then it won’t be long before it’s over.’

  That was Ben’s opinion of it too. This is the worst winter I’ve ever known, he wrote to Lizzie. If it isn’t bloody snowing, it’s freezing fog and we can’t see more than a foot in front of our faces. The Jerries lay fresh mines on top of the snow and wait for the next fall to cover them up. Crafty buggers. We’ve lost two men that way. I hate this war. I feel as if I’ve been stuck in it for ever. Love you, love you, love you. Can’t wait to get home.

  Lizzie and Fiona followed the news every day, sitting in their kitchen with the wireless on the table between them, listening to every word. The German break-out, which was being called the Battle of the Bulge, was finally being contained and Fiona said she thought they’d be pushing the Germans back ‘any time now’ but Lizzie was thinking of Ben fighting in the snow with the Germans laying mines he couldn’t see and aching with that terrible, crawling anxiety.

  ‘In one way, I shall be quite glad to get back to school,’ she said. ‘At least when I’m working I don’t have time to worry so much.’

  Fiona leant across the table and patted her hand. ‘Soon be over once the spring comes,’ she said. ‘You’ll see.’

  On New Year’s Day, while Em and her daughters were clearing the table and doing the washing-up and the children were playing Pit, Octavia sat by the fire and started to write the section on ‘Things that get in the way of learning’. She didn’t finish it until term had started and by then the Battle of the Bulge was over and the Germans were retreating again.

  ‘I’m so slow,’ she said to Emmeline. ‘At the rate I’m going, the war will be over before I’ve finished.’

  ‘It’s not a race,’ Emmeline said.

  But there were times when it felt like one, especially when there was so much going on at school that she was too tired to write or when she was woken in the night by the sound of yet another rocket and couldn’t sleep again afterwards and was exhausted in the morning. Trivial news items triggered her into irritability. The BBC had been in the habit of preceding their news bulletins by playing the national anthems of all the Allied powers and suddenly all sorts of obscure nations, like Ecuador, Paraguay, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, decided to jump on the bandwagon and declare war on Germany and they wanted their national anthems played too. A new one was added to the list at every bulletin and playing them all took longer and longer.

  ‘It’s downright ridiculous,’ Octavia said. ‘Where were they when we were fighting the Germans all on our own? I didn’t notice them rushing to join us then.’

  But at least it was a sign that the end was coming and it was one of many. The German prisoner of war camps were being liberated one after the other and much too slowly to suit Edith. But in fact it wasn’t very long before she had her hoped-for letter from Arthur to say that he was free.

  I can’t come home just yet, though, he wrote. We’ve got to stay in hospital for a little while because they kept us a bit short of rations and we need building up. Not to worry. I’m not ill or wounded or anything, just a bit on the thin side.

  Edith was very upset and complained bitterly about it. ‘We fed their damned prisoners,’ she said. ‘Years and years. We should have tried starving them, if that’s the way they were going on.’

  ‘Look on the bright side, Edie,’ Dora said. ‘At least he’s free and he hasn’t been hurt and he’ll come home when they say he can. See if I’m not right.’

  In February, while Octavia was busy writing the section on discipline, Tommy was sent to Yalta in the Crimean for a Big Three conference between Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin. He left in a bad mood saying that they were going to carve Europe up between them and that Uncle Joe would get the lion’s share. ‘The victors dividing the spoils,’ he growled, ‘and we’re not even over the Rhine yet.’

  The Rhine was crossed five weeks later. From then on everything was sped up. Ben wrote to tell Lizzie that they were fairly charging through Germany and had covered a hundred miles in one day. The rockets stopped coming. The Russians and the Americans were racing to be the first to enter Berlin. The German army in Italy finally surrendered and without his German protectors Mussolini was hung by the partisans and his dead body strung up by the heels outside a garage for everyone to see, like a dirt-smeared side of pork. And there were rumours that Hitler had committed suicide.

  ‘Look sharp,’ Emmeline said to Octavia when she read the news, ‘or it’ll be over before you’ve written the last word.’

  ‘It’s written,’ Octavia told her with great satisfaction. ‘I wrote it yesterday evening.’

  But she was wrong. There was still one more thing that had to be said.

  At the end of the week, when the daffodils were brightening the garden and there were birds nesting in the hedges and Octavia was feeling pleased with herself and her efforts, Tommy arrived to tell her that she must come to the pictures with him to see the newsreel.

  ‘It’s a terrible, terrible film,’ he told her, ‘but I think we should see it. Particularly in view of all the things that the Mannheims have told us.’

  It was even more terrible than she feared and expected, for it was filmed at a place called Belsen and Belsen was one of Hitler’s death camps. She sat in the dark cinema smoking for comfort and watched as skeletal men in filthy striped shirts and tattered trousers were fumigated to get rid of their lice, and shuddered as desperately thin children squatted on the ground too weak to stand, or lay on their sides as if they were dead, their shaven heads and huge eyes made grotesque by starvation, and groane
d with horror as piles of the most pitiful dead bodies she had ever seen were shovelled into the dark earth of huge communal graves. At the end of the film she wept with pity and anger because this was a cruelty obscene beyond belief. And that night she added a postscript to her book.

  We have just lived through a war, she wrote, in which many ordinary human beings have shown amazing courage and fortitude under appalling conditions. But we must not forget that there have been others who have committed almost unbelievable atrocities, especially in death camps like Belsen and Buchenwald and Auschwitz. We need to look at these people and understand them if we are to prevent such terrible things from happening again. As teachers we know how much our pupils need to be appreciated, to feel that they are wanted and valued and to know that they are loved but, also as teachers, we should never forget that Belsen is what happens when people are taught to hate. The Germans were told in a steady drip, drip, drip of poisonous propaganda that the Jews were a lower race, that they were responsible for everything that was wrong in the German state and that they deserved to be killed, and Germans who were already full of hatred for a variety of reasons and who needed someone they were allowed to hate found a hideous cause. After what was discovered at Belsen, we cannot avoid the knowledge that a deep-seated long-lasting hatred is powerful, self-justifiying and utterly cruel. Now, more than ever, we need to ensure that we teach our children in such a way that they know they are themselves loved, that they are loving to others and that they are allowed and encouraged to think things out for themselves. We cannot afford to do anything less.

  Four days later, in a school house in Rheims, the German General Alfred Jodl surrendered unconditionally to General Montgomery and Eisenhower’s Chief of Staff, General Walter Bedell Smith. The war in Europe was over.

  Chapter Thirty

  It was such a glorious summer day, that day of the victory parade, a day of smiles and sunshine, with paper flags all along the route, fluttering like flowers, and roaring cheers rolling and echoing along the Mall, a day to be really happy, despite all the dreadful things that had happened in the last six awful years, because the war was over at last and although they knew the peace was going to be difficult, they would never, never, never have to fight another one.

  Octavia stood on the pavement with her family around her and cheered with the rest as the long columns of servicemen and women marched past, Americans, black and white, chewing gum and wearing their tin helmets, Australians in bush hats, Sikhs in turbans and splendid beards, British sailors with their blue collars flapping in the breeze, British airmen in their distinctive air force blue, British soldiers marching in well-drilled precision, men and women from the ARP and the fire service, nurses in full uniform, capes and all, the parade was endless and every marcher in it was proudly applauded.

  Dora was intrigued by the logistics of it. ‘It must have taken some planning to get all this lot into London just for this one day,’ she said. ‘I wonder where they’ve put them all.’

  ‘In tents, duck,’ the woman standing next to her said. ‘All over all the parks they are. You should see ’em.’

  ‘Fancy,’ Dora said and she looked round at the others. ‘Shall we go and have a look, when the parade’s over? What do you think?’

  Edith and the children were all for it and so was Emmeline but Octavia said she’d have to be getting on to the Albert Hall. ‘I mustn’t miss the concert,’ she told them. ‘The choir would never forgive me. And nor would my dancers.’

  ‘I thought you were going to some reception with Tommy,’ Emmeline said. ‘You mustn’t miss that.’

  ‘It’s all taken care of, Em,’ Octavia said. ‘He’s going to pick me up at the Albert Hall when the concert’s over and you know what a stickler he is for being on time.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ Emmeline said. ‘You wouldn’t want to miss the reception.’

  Octavia wasn’t particularly keen on this reception, and wouldn’t have minded missing it, if she was honest, but she’d agreed to it because he’d seemed so keen for her to be there and she couldn’t very well go back on her promise now. Besides it was a special day.

  ‘Here’s some more Yanks coming,’ Edith said, peering down the Mall. ‘I do like their helmets.’

  When the last of the marching men and women had passed them by and the long parade was over, Octavia said goodbye to her family and took the Tube to South Kensington. Exhibition Road was swarming with happy people all going in the same direction and all in a state of chirruping excitement. It’s going to be a very good concert, if this is the audience, she thought, and she quickened her pace.

  The great circular bulk of the Royal Albert Hall looked grubby and a bit battered, like every other building in London, but it was very definitely welcoming, as the crowds streamed into the various doors and attendants took their tickets and showed them the way. And once inside the hall, the atmosphere was sizzling. The members of the London Symphony Orchestra were already drifting onto the stage as she entered, carrying their instruments and greeting one another as they moved to their places, and the massed choirs of London schoolchildren were taking their seats too, in long multicoloured ranks below the organ, chattering and excited and peering out into the vast auditorium to see if they could catch sight of their families. There was such a happy buzz about the place that it lifted Octavia’s heart simply to hear it.

  And the concert was everything that anyone in the audience could have hoped for, happy, inventive, musical and full of life. There were children performing country dances in the arena, bouncing and skipping with cheerful abandon – her own girls danced the sailors’ hornpipe – and the choirs sang ‘Jerusalem’ and ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ and ‘Say not the Struggle Nought Availeth’ and several of the songs that had kept people going through the war. At the end of it she clapped until her hands were sore. We’ve come through, she thought, as she applauded. Whatever happens to us now and whatever difficulties we have to face, we’ve defeated an appalling enemy and come through with our spirits high and that’s something to be proud of.

  She didn’t notice that Tommy was at her elbow until the cheers died down.

  ‘Good?’ he asked.

  ‘Wonderful.’

  ‘Car’s waiting,’ he said. ‘What a day it’s been. Did you see the parade?’

  She told him what she’d seen and how good it had been as they negotiated the curving corridors and found the exit he wanted. There was a taxi waiting outside, which surprised her a bit because she thought he would be driving her to this reception in his own car, but she got in obediently and was rattled away as they talked. They drove along Kensington Gore and Knightsbridge, round Hyde Park Corner, along Grosvenor Place, past the high walls of the palace gardens, edging through the crowds that were spilling off the pavements and wandering in the road, and finally came 472to the end of Buckingham Gate.

  ‘We’ll get off here,’ Tommy said. ‘We can walk the rest of the way.’

  ‘Where are we going?’ Octavia asked, when he’d paid the driver.

  He took her hand, slipped it into the crook of his elbow and patted it. ‘Not far,’ he said. ‘I know a short cut. Come on.’

  ‘Caxton Street?’ she said, noticing where they were going. ‘Is that named after the famous printer or the famous Hall?’

  ‘Both I expect,’ he said. ‘That’s the famous Hall over there. See?’

  It was a tall, rather forbidding building, and looked Gothic, with an imposing front entrance and very high windows. ‘That one?’ she said. ‘Good heavens! Now that’s not a bit how I would have imagined it.’

  ‘We could go in and have a look if you like,’ he offered, casually. ‘It’s rather nice inside.’

  ‘It won’t be open,’ she said. ‘Not today.’

  ‘Oh, I think it will,’ he said and he looked decidedly mischievous. ‘Let’s see, shall we?’

  He’s up to something, Octavia thought, noticing the look. I’ll bet this is where the reception is. So they crosse
d the road.

  The impressive door was open so they went in, he still holding her hand in his elbow. A man in morning dress came forward to greet him.

  ‘Major Meriton,’ he said, holding out his hand.

  Yes, he is up to something, Octavia thought, watching as the two men shook hands. The mischief on Tommy’s face was now too marked to be missed.

  ‘Allow me to introduce Miss Octavia Smith,’ Tommy said.

  The man said he was pleased to make her acquaintance and shook her hand too. Now what?

  ‘If you’ll follow me, sir,’ the man suggested and he gave the merest of bows and led them across the hall to a tall door and through into a room that was full of the scent of flowers. Too small for a reception, Octavia thought, looking at the table and the two high-backed chairs that faced it. Then she realised where she was.

  ‘This is the Register Office, isn’t it?’ she said.

  His face wasn’t simply mischievous now, it was devilish. ‘Yes, I believe it is.’

  ‘Where people get married.’

  ‘I believe it is,’ he said and added, casually. ‘We could get married here if you’d like to.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘We could but it would take a bit of planning.’

  ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘it wouldn’t. We could get married now, if you’d like to.’

  ‘You’re not serious, are you?’

  ‘I’ve never been more serious in all my life,’ he said, while the morning-suited man edged discreetly away from them and seemed to be signalling to someone.

  Are they going to throw us out? Octavia thought, noticing the movement. I wouldn’t blame them. ‘You can’t just get married on the spur of the moment,’ she said. ‘Don’t you have to call the banns or have a licence or something?’

  ‘We’ve got a licence,’ he told her. ‘A special one. It’s all arranged. All you’ve got to do is say yes. And you will say yes, won’t you, Tavy? I’ve waited a very long time. And it’s a perfect day for it.’