by Amy Myers
Yves, of course, realised the reason for her question, and came over to her desk to talk to her quietly. ‘I will return in time, cara. We will spend Christmas together, never fear. I have no choice but to go now.’
He told her that King Albert had been impressed by Lord Lansdowne’s courage in writing to the British press that he believed the Allies should negotiate peace terms now. The Belgian government was split on whether to seek a separate peace for themselves now, or to pursue the ‘Death or Glory’ policy the Allies would undoubtedly favour. ‘The Allied plans for 1918 need the Belgian army to stand firm,’ he explained.
‘Plans?’ she echoed hollowly. ‘Are there any?’
‘Certainly there are!’ Luke had come in without their noticing. ‘Lots of them. Everyone has his own, that’s all.’
‘My plan,’ Caroline announced firmly, ‘is to spend Christmas at the Rectory, preferably with both of you, even if—’
‘Felicia doesn’t come,’ Luke finished for her, as she barged into dangerous waters. ‘If she doesn’t, I’ll volunteer to stay here, though. Someone has to man the barricades.’
He was right, of course. War no longer stopped for Christmas – if it ever had. Trains carrying troops one way might indicate a lull in German strategy; carrying them the other could signpost a coming offensive, or, almost worse, prior knowledge of Allied plans. Every day Field Marshal Haig had the benefit of new intelligence gained from the increasingly successful secret organisation La Dame Blanche, operating within Belgium, and which took its name from the ghost of the White Lady said to herald the downfall of the Hohenzollerns. If only the legend would prove true!
This autumn it had risen, phoenix-like, from the ashes of its predecessor, which had been controlled by Caroline’s former army intelligence boss in Folkestone, and which had been betrayed from within. The new La Dame Blanche offered their services not to Folkestone, but to the Secret Service Bureau, whose organisation in Holland, run by Captain Landau, had leapt at the opportunity.
The network of agents was increasing rapidly, after an initial problem when La Dame Blanche had insisted not only that they should organise themselves on military hierarchical lines, but that they should be a recognised part of the British army. The latter requirement was the hitch, but it looked now as though Yves and Landau had managed to achieve a good old English compromise, whereby they declared oaths of allegiance, and were issued with identity discs, which were to be buried in the ground until the war was over. Everyone seemed happy at the moment.
Caroline looked on each new batch of intelligence as another hammer in the enemy’s coffin; after all, her sister Felicia’s life might depend on some stray snippet of information that allowed C, as the head of the SSB was known, to deduce German intentions.
Felicia and their Aunt Tilly, her father’s younger sister, ran an advanced first-aid post on the Flanders Front, and had been heavily engaged all autumn, for the fighting had been aggravated even more than usual by the winter rains and mud. The offensive was over, but somehow Caroline thought it unlikely that her sister would take leave at Christmas this year.
‘I don’t know why I set such store on Christmas,’ Caroline remarked, cross with herself for caring so much.
‘You’re a rector’s daughter,’ Luke pointed out. ‘It’s the family business.’
Surely it was more than duty that called her back? Something more even than Ashden. It was the image of the Rectory itself. In her mind’s eye, it never changed: Mrs Dibble always stood at the kitchen table stirring Christmas puddings, Mother was working in her ‘glory-hole’ boudoir or floating round the Rectory organising her family in her own disorganised way, Father sat in his study, his door and heart ever open for his family’s problems.
Another factor, she recognised, was that in her disappointment over Yves’ absence, though she tried to live in the certainty of the moment, she knew that the inevitable final farewell to Yves would have to be made someday. That was what made these temporary separations all the more difficult to bear. However hard she tried to convince herself that the war effort was gaining from what deep inside she saw as a waste of precious fleeting time for herself and Yves, the mutiny inside her rumbled on.
‘I have to leave now, Caroline.’ Yves came round to her side of the desk, bent over and kissed her.
Why had he done that? She instantly panicked. He never kissed her in the office. Was he going back to his wife already? Happiness, like raisins, never came unadulterated – perhaps that’s what made it happiness? With much effort she managed to joke: ‘I hope the Germans know it’s Christmas too.’
‘I’m not sure Ludendorff does, but I do.’
She promptly stood up and saluted him. ‘Then au revoir, mon capitaine.’
As soon as he had gone, the office seemed desolate with just herself and Luke. She could hardly see over the top of the pile of reports today. Gathered from different sources, they all needed to be checked for duplication. This had proved a major problem, since if GHQ or C received two or three reports each with the same information, they were naturally inclined to believe it true. In fact, owing partly to the complications of the many smaller organisations that existed in Belgium, partly to the letter-box system they used to smuggle the reports over the frontier to Holland, and partly to the increasing use of pigeons to carry intelligence, the agents often overlapped, with the result that one report could find its way by several different means to London. If that information was wrong, and false credence was given to it, it could have devastating consequences.
‘For want of a nail, the shoe was lost …’ as Benjamin Franklin once said, and Luke said all the time.
Caroline took a deep breath and picked up the first report. Luke glanced up and saw her face.
‘Don’t look so glum. You’re in luck. Yves has given me strict instructions to cheer you up while he’s away.’
Margaret plodded steadily back through the Rectory garden. The sooner the war ended and she could get a new coat, the better; this one was only fit to be torn up for dog blankets, and even Ahab would turn up his nose at it soon. She’d been queuing for an hour at the butcher’s. She thought longingly back to the days before this war had started: when Mrs Dibble of the Rectory telephoned, the orders were round here before she’d hung the receiver up. Now there were no more delivery boys. They were too busy delivering bullets and shells to the enemy.
Her face sank into its now customary lines of bitterness. Christmas and no Fred. Christmas and no Joe. At least Joe was alive – somewhere. Italy, his wife Muriel had worked out from their private code. She wouldn’t even see his kiddies this Christmas, as Muriel was taking them to her parents.
Margaret knew only two things about Italy: firstly it had come down in the world since the time of Julius Caesar, and secondly you got there by crossing over the Alps. Hannibal had done it by elephant, but she presumed even Field Marshal Haig must have thought of some better method by now. Though judging by the mess on the Western Front, she couldn’t be too sure. She tried to picture Joe on an elephant – ridiculous, maybe, but it put off having to tell Mrs Lilley the bad news.
It was all very well the government telling everyone to eat roast fowl at Christmas, but were they going to provide them? The most she’d been able to wheedle out of Farmer Sharpe was the promise of one capon. How was that going to go round goodness knows how many at the family table and nine or ten in the servants’ hall? What’s more, Wally Bertram said he could only let her have two pounds of sausage meat and a small joint of beef. He was getting above himself. Meat was so scarce, he claimed, that he was only opening in the mornings now. In Margaret’s opinion, he wanted his afternoon nap. What happened to service for the customer?
The net result was that she was going to have to tell Mrs Lilley that Oscar would have to go after all. She remembered the day he arrived as if it were yesterday. Percy had shouted in the middle of her pastry – if you could call it that. ‘Daisy!’ (That was Percy’s pet name for her.) ‘Look what
I’ve got.’
She’d looked up and shouted right back. ‘What’s that dirty animal doing here?’
There, trotting along at Percy’s side at the end of a piece of string, was a pink piglet. In her kitchen.
Percy was disappointed at her lack of enthusiasm. ‘Seb Mutter gave him to me for helping him muck out his sties. The government says we should all fatten up our own pigs, so here he is.’
The piglet had given a confirmatory squeal, before she hustled both of them out, with orders to build the animal a sty of its own. The Rector had named him Oscar after that playwright, because he seemed to have literary leanings. On his very first day in his new sty he was found to be eating his way through a copy of The Strand Magazine with evident enjoyment, while leaving the rest of the pile, composed of parish magazines, untouched. The heap was in the adjoining workshop and Percy had left the door open by mistake.
Oscar had grown not only in size but in the family’s affections. Not to mention Elizabeth Agnes’s heart. Every day she trotted down to see Oscar. If the next time she saw him he was in the oven – even Margaret flinched at the consequences. Now there seemed to be no choice.
She pulled herself together, as she entered the kitchen. She stopped short in shock. There at the table Agnes was sitting over a cup of tea chatting to Lady Buckford!
‘Good morning, your ladyship,’ Margaret managed to say through stiff lips. When the Rector’s mother had come to live with them, there had been ructions and the whole household had been upset. Now it had all settled down, and she and Lady Buckford had come to an understanding. But that didn’t give her the right to push herself into her kitchen.
‘Have a cup of tea, Mrs Dibble.’ Agnes leapt up hastily, seeing Margaret’s reaction.
‘I hope you will forgive this intrusion,’ Lady Buckford said, sounding more like she assumed it rather than hoping, in Margaret’s opinion. ‘But it is kitchen business.’
‘Yes, your ladyship?’ Margaret did not give an inch.
‘My son, Lord Buckford, tells me he has leave over Christmas, and will naturally be spending it in Wiltshire with Lady Gwendolen. However, he proposes to call here on Christmas Eve with his gift to me.’
‘Yes, your ladyship.’ Margaret was busily calculating whether an earl could be fed on vegetable pie, should he stay for luncheon.
‘His gift is two large turkeys, three capons and a goose from the Buckford House Farm. They are all at your disposal.’
Margaret was flabbergasted, unable to say a word even of thanks, but Agnes promptly burst into tears.
‘What are you crying for, girl?’ Lady Buckford was taken aback at this reception of her news.
‘Oscar’s safe.’
The days were passing slowly, and Caroline had to restrain herself from pestering Luke for news. If there had been any, he would have told her, good or bad. Her greatest fear – unlikely though it was – was still that Yves had gone himself into occupied Belgium, either on a mission (and there had been talk of dropping agents in) or to see his wife. If he did so and were caught, he would be shot as a spy. He never spoke of Annette-Marie. Caroline would hate it if he did, but she hated it when he did not. She told herself that to have his arms around her was enough, for war brought a time span of its own, but now that she lacked them, anxiety was biting deep.
In the week before Christmas Luke suddenly announced: ‘I’m taking you out tonight. Theatre and dinner. Yves’ instructions.’
‘You mean he’s not coming back for Christmas?’ Caroline was immediately suspicious. She knew that Yves was worried because the enemy had been putting a lot of effort into propaganda in the Flemish-speaking part of Belgium, which considered itself hard done by compared with the French-speaking areas. There were some deserters from the free Belgian army, and, worse, inside occupied Belgium much more co-operation with the Germans. Had Yves gone in himself to find out the truth of this?
‘I don’t mean anything of the sort, and I’m surprised at you. Where’s your stiff upper lip?’
‘Wobbling. The gum they sell nowadays isn’t up to much.’
All the same, she was pleased at the break, even if Luke’s choice of theatre wasn’t hers, and even if there was yet another of the thick fogs that were characterising this December. They went to the Comedy Theatre in Haymarket to see the Charlot revue, and when they came out into the darkness of wartime London, she found her spirits had lifted. Fun and froth were no bad thing when you wrestled all day with reality.
Soho was no longer the home of so many small Italian-run restaurants, for many of their owners and their sons had returned to join the Italian army when Italy declared war against Austria-Hungary.
However, Luke had winkled out one still run by the owner’s wife and daughters, which pleased Caroline greatly for with Yves she usually went to one of the coffee bars or restaurants around Piccadilly Circus, which had been virtually taken over by the French and Belgian military. On special occasions they went to Gambrinus, Belgian-owned, but less ‘discovered’ by the troops. The restaurant was packed with uniforms of course, which was hardly getting away from work, but so was every restaurant in London, and a small intimate restaurant was much nicer than the large hotels. Moreover the food would be better, even if they did have to gobble it because of the ten-thirty closing time imposed by wartime law. The Italians were more efficient at making do than big hotels who specialised, it seemed to her, only in providing less, as a way of coping with food shortages.
Not everyone was in uniform. She glanced round the crowded room, seeing one civilian at least, though he was dining with a khaki-clad WAAC. Whom she recognised.
‘Phoebe!’ she yelled joyously before she could stop herself, to the great interest of the restaurant.
What on earth was her sister doing here when she was supposed to be driving motor transport on the Western Front? Mother hadn’t said anything about her getting leave.
Phoebe promptly turned bright red in the face. A suspicious sign, thought Caroline warily. She excused herself to Luke, and rushed over to hug her youngest and, in the past, most troublesome sister. Phoebe did not look pleased. ‘Caroline, this is Billy Jones. Billy, one of my elder sisters,’ she introduced him crossly.
Billy Jones? Now she recognised him, from his pictures at any rate. He was the popular Cockney music-hall star, and presumably Phoebe had met him in her work for the actress Lena Ashwell, who organised concerts and plays for the troops in France, and used WAAC transport. The first thing that struck Caroline was how small he was, as he stood up to shake hands. He was even shorter than Phoebe. The second thing was that she rather liked the look of him. He had twinkling brown eyes and a small moustache – and he looked comfortably at ease with Phoebe as if he’d known her some time.
‘Pleased to meet you, Miss Lilley. Why don’t you join us?’
She realised that Luke had already come to her side, and of course, she belatedly remembered, he had met Phoebe at the Rectory last Christmas.
‘We’ve been to the Charlot revue,’ Caroline opened the conversation while her mind threw up one question mark after another.
‘Nice revue, bad news for music hall,’ Billy pulled a face. ‘People like more variety now. More legs and dancing and more foreign fancy acts. Home-grown cockney singers are out of fashion.’
‘Not you, Billy,’ Phoebe said.
He reached out and squeezed her hand.
Caroline could not resist asking the obvious question. ‘Do Mother and Father know you’re here?’
Phoebe and Billy exchanged a quick look. ‘No, it’s going to be a surprise,’ Phoebe said defiantly. ‘I’m going there for Christmas and Billy is coming too.’
‘Oh. Does Mrs Dibble know about it?’ Phoebe was all too apt to disregard the practicalities of life.
‘No, but she’ll cope,’ Phoebe assured her happily. ‘You won’t warn them, will you, Caroline?’
‘I won’t say a word,’ Caroline promised. Where, she wondered, though dared not ask, was Phoebe
staying tonight? After all, she was still a child. Well – twenty, she rapidly calculated, but she’d never had much common sense and had leapt from one disaster to another in her emotional life. Please, oh, please, she made a silent prayer, let this not be another.
‘Mother says you two are living together,’ Phoebe said brightly.
‘That’s not quite as it sounds,’ Luke said easily, before Caroline could reply in heated terms. ‘There are four of us. Yves Rosier, myself, and our batwoman Ellen, and, as your mother says, our assistant WAAC Sergeant Lilley.’
Phoebe giggled. ‘What fun.’ She shot Caroline a curious look.
Victoria Station was pandemonium with noise and thousands of uniformed bodies, as the leave trains came in and disgorged their passengers, mingling with the thousands attempting to reach their homes in time for Christmas. Not one of them was Yves. Caroline had heard nothing from him, and here she was alone to catch the Tunbridge Wells train, as Luke wasn’t coming either. Felicia had elected to stay at her post so that Tilly could come home. Much as Caroline loved her aunt, she minded this very much, although she knew she was being unreasonable. At least Isabel would be there – Isabel was always at home, and despite her mannerisms and annoying little ways, the thought of seeing her brought one warm glow at least. Phoebe would be there, but no George who was flying with 56 Squadron on the Western Front, no Felicia – and now no Yves. Santa Claus was being extremely remiss this year in his gifts for Caroline Lilley.
As the train chugged its slow way through East Grinstead towards Hartfield and then Ashden, she tried valiantly to cheer herself up. There would be no transport to meet her, for Poppy, their old horse, had long since died, and probably no familiar faces either. Mother and Mrs Dibble were too busy nowadays to stroll up to meet anyone for the pleasure of their company. Caroline hauled down her suitcase, and tried to convince herself she was going to enjoy the walk. Despite the biting cold, it was a homecoming – and it was Christmas.