It was a combination of factors that encouraged Paul to prepare for the worst. He had never forgotten Franz Zorndorff’s infallibility in these matters, nor the fact that even Franz’s nerve had been shaken by his visit to the Continent just before his death. Then there were Simon’s letters, full of a kind of desperate bitterness against the democracies for continuing the farce of non-intervention in Spain, when it was obvious to a child that the war was being won for Franco by Germany and Italy. There was also his deep distrust of waffling politicians like Chamberlain, who behaved like startled chickens in the face of any demand for a show-down but perhaps his most unnerving conclusions were those reached after reading books like Koestler’s Spanish Testament, and other first-hand accounts of life in Spain, Italy and Germany, sedulously fed him by his daughter-in-law Rachel, with whom he had formed a regular postal-link since Simon had sailed away on the coaster, Hans Voos. Until then, notwithstanding the war to end wars, Paul’s politics had been largely parochial and his overall policy had been to conserve most of his energy for use in a purely local sphere but now, as the months went by, he found his sympathies inclining more and more towards the militant Left and he began to wonder if, after all, there might not be something to be said for Simon’s theories. When men he respected, like the dapper Anthony Eden, resigned from the Government in protest against a policy of weakness towards Mussolini, he found himself chafing under the smart of humiliation but he had come to realise that his anxieties were not shared among the Valley people, not even by men whom he would have expected to favour a stronger line at Westminster. Henry Pitts, for instance, openly laughed at his fears and made him feel a little like old Horace Handcock, the ultra-patriotic gardener, when he admitted the true purpose of the new fuel-storage tank.
‘Giddon Maister,’ Henry had said, ‘whatever be thinking of? You dorn honestly reckon Old Fritz wants another basinful, do ’ee? Why, damme, I mind the poor toads I swapped fags with between trenches, the day us stopped popping off at ’em, and I dom care ’ow much that bliddy Hitler rampages, I’d lay a pound note to a farden ’ee worn’t get they into the firing-line again! They got more bliddy zense, I c’n tell ’ee! and as for the Eyeties—Gordamme, you baint zayin’ youm scared o’ they, be ’ee?’
Smut Potter, it seemed, held similar views but in this case they were fostered by the policy of playing down his French wife’s anxieties regarding a resurgence of the hated Boche, who had already robbed her of a husband. Marie Potter was one of the few people in the Valley who shared Paul’s disposition to fear the worst, as he discovered when he called at the Coombe Bay bakery on the morning soon after Hitler’s invasion of Austria. She was building a pyramid of cakes in her window and emerged thinking his shout from the bakery was that of the representative of a wholesale sugar firm with whom she did business. When he saw, in the adjoining store, mountains of bagged sugar and remarked on it she only said, with a frown, ‘It will disappear one morning and then, poof. No cakes! No business! No cash to carry to the bank! Today they are glad enough to sell it in bulk. Tomorrow they will sell it by the half-kilo, M’sieur!’
He talked to her of current affairs and was surprised to find that unlike himself, who was no more than uneasy, she was convinced that Germany would invade France within a matter of months.
‘There is no doubt in my mind,’ she said, ‘the Boche will come seeking revanche, and my people will be the first to suffer; as always!’
‘You’ve got the Maginot Line, Madame,’ he reminded her but she said ‘Poof again, as if the new fortifications were made of sugar-icing. He said, with a shrug, ‘Well then, if they do come I daresay we will give them another thrashing. After all, we managed it well enough the last time.’
‘At a cost!’ she said, buttoning her heavily moustached lip. She had great respect for him, not because he was her landlord but because he had the Croix de Guerre, and she did not berate him for lack of realism, as she did every other Englishman who came here talking politics.
In the spring of 1938 news came that Simon was a prisoner-of-war, captured at a place called Teruel and Paul, learning of this through Rachel, who got it from a source she would not disclose over the telephone, asked what they could do to help the boy. She said there was only one thing they could do, contact the local Member of Parliament and ask him to make representations to Franco’s people at Government level, for she understood some kind of machinery had been established for exchanging non-nationals captured by one side or the other. Paul saw the new MP without much hope but was cheered by the kindness and cordiality of his reception. Major Harries, MC, who had recently taken Sydney’s place as Member for Paxtonbury, was a retired gunner and it might have been Ikey’s association with the Artillery that helped for they had served together as subalterns in India, and later on the Western Front. Paul said, when he was introduced, ‘It’s only fair to tell you, Major, that I’ve been opposing your party all my life but I daresay you’re aware of that already.’
‘You’re one of my constituents whether you like it or not,’ said the ex-gunner cheerfully, ‘so don’t let’s hear any more of that! I’ll do what I can and be glad to! I’ve been watching that bloody business closely and frankly, irrespective of any political views your son holds, I think he’s right when he says the Italians and Germans are flexing their muscles for something a little more ambitious! I’m in a minority up there, of course, just as anyone is who heeds Churchill’s warnings!’
Paul found himself warming towards the man and over lunch at The Mitre repeated Zomdorff’s warnings and spoke of his own modest insurances against war. The Major approved wholeheartedly: ‘I was in Germany six months ago,’ he said, ‘and I was scared stiff by what I witnessed. It goes against the grain to be forced, on pain of being rough-housed, to have to salute that little bastard, but that’s what happened to me while I was watching a procession in Bremen. I’ll do everything I can to get your boy turned loose and if I’m successful I’d like the privilege of hearing a first-hand account of his recent experiences.’
Major Harries was as good as his word or better. He rang Paul within the week saying that contact had been established with the British Consul in Burgos, and that negotiations had already begun. ‘Don’t expect rapid results,’ he warned, ‘you know how long it takes a Spaniard to make a decision but we have ways and means of putting some heat on so maybe the boy will be home for Christmas. He’s unwounded, I’m told, so that’s something to be thankful for!’
Paul thanked him and ’phoned Rachel, inviting her down to await further developments, but before she arrived he had another ’phone call from the Member to say that a batch of about a dozen British prisoners were being sent home via Gibraltar, and that Simon might well be among them.
Rachel arrived the next day, looking close to breaking point Paul thought and Claire packed her off to stay with Mary at Periwinkle. There had always been a close link between Rachel and Rumble Patrick after Rachel had personally delivered the boy in Hazel’s cave one summer evening, in 1913. She was still staying there when Simon arrived, weighing about nine stones and suffering from the after-effects of three months in a verminous Spanish gaol in daily expectation of being marched out and shot with batches of Basques and Catalans. He was stunned, Paul thought, by the miracle of his delivery and it was during their wordless drive across the top of the moor from Paxtonbury that Paul said, ‘You owe your release to a Tory, Simon. He went to a great deal of trouble and wondered if you could find time to see him and give an account of what happened over there.’
Simon said, with a tired smile, ‘Major Harries? I’ve already seen him. He met us and gave us lunch at Tilbury yesterday!’ and when Paul exclaimed Simon added, stifling a yawn, ‘Soon it won’t be a question of Tories, Socialists and Liberals, Gov’nor, just for and against—those who oppose the clock being put back a thousand years, and those with nothing else in mind! There won’t be any neutrals. Everyone here will have to step to one side of t
he line and that’s what I intend to stress when I lecture.’
‘Before you dive back into the mill-race you’ll damn well get some rest and put on a bit of weight!’ Paul said, gruffly. ‘Rachel means to see to that and I intend to back her up!’
‘Oh, sure, sure,’ Simon said, ‘I’ll get fit first. That’s obligatory if I’m to do any good, but I’m not “cured” as you might say, just confirmed! I daresay it sounds vainglorious but I wouldn’t have missed it and I don’t regret a bloody day of it! At least I’ve satisfied myself I was on the right tack. How about you?’
‘We’ll discuss that when you’ve had a good meal and ten hours’ sleep,’ Paul said, ‘Doctor Maureen is waiting to give you a good going-over. However, just for the record, I’m on your side of the line and so are a minority of thinking people, although not many hereabouts.’
Simon looked across the Sorrel to the watershed as they topped the rise and began the winding descent to the river road. It was a mild spring day and the Valley looked patiently expectant, not yet in its uniform of spring-green but half-dressed, one might have said, in hourly anticipation of its coming-out date.
‘I thought about this place a good deal while I was in Spain,’ he admitted. ‘You mightn’t believe me but it exerts its magic on me as powerfully as on you, although maybe I’m too inhibited to make a fetish of it. It must have been a wonderful place to live in the old, carefree days when you came rampaging down from London.’
‘They weren’t all that carefree. We had our problems, just as your generation has. The main difference was most people were content with three square meals a day, a good night’s rest and to leave it at that!’
‘Ah! “Bread alone”!’ Simon commented. ‘Well, it’s all the poor devils in Spain ask but there are plenty to deny them even that!’
‘No!’ Paul countered, almost savagely, ‘not “bread alone” Simon! A man who wants to be more than a cabbage needs a dream to spread on his bread! Otherwise one might as well take one’s place alongside the cows and wait to be milked night and morning!’ And then, seeing Simon looking at him quizzically, ‘I’m sorry, I made up my mind on my way over to meet you that I’d talk platitudes for at least a day or so,’ and Simon, grinning, said, ‘Well, that comes under the heading of a platitude Gov’nor but I’ll not quarrel with it and I don’t suppose my mother would have done,’ and as they turned on to the river road Paul saw him fumble in his inside pocket and pull out a cheap folder containing the two soiled photographs of Grace he had sent to Spain a month or two after their parting in Falmouth. Impulsively he stopped the car and said, ‘Let me look at those, Simon!’ and Simon handed him the folder and sat silently while he scrutinised the pictures, one a faded snapshot of Grace in the rose garden she had created, the other a formal studio-portrait, taken on their Paris honeymoon, in 1903. He said, handing them back, ‘Environment doesn’t count for a damned thing! You’re as alike as peas in a pod, physically and temperamentally! What’s in the blood stays there!’ and he let the clutch in and pulled back on to the road. They drove the rest of the way home in silence.
Chapter Nineteen
I
Simon and Rachel remained in the Valley until early summer but Paul was relieved they were gone before the Munich crisis set everybody (including constitutional optimists like Claire, Henry Pitts and Smut Potter) by the ears. They came to him one by one, freely admitting their misjudgements but when it was all over, and Chamberlain had returned waving his piece of paper, they joined the tumultuous acclamation of the man who had ‘saved the peace’. Their complacency angered him, although he went out of his way not to show it. Instead he spent long hours in his office, planning, conserving, getting his stock records up-to-date and cautiously adding to his purchases of seed, chemical manures and machinery. His fear was now not so much that there would be a war but that there would not, that he was laying up stock against a day when the Valley lost its identity in an almost bloodless absorption of Western Europe. For that, it would seem, was the alternative that most people preferred, including those he would have classed as rebels in the old society.
He began thinking along these nightmarish lines after a discussion with Smut Potter round about Christmas-time. Smut, carelessly going his rounds, called to him one day as he was crossing Codsall bridge and said, ‘Well, Squire, three months ago I would have bet my favourite twelve-bore to a pound o’ tay us would have been keepin’ Christmas in they bliddy trenches but it’s blown over after all!’ and although it was no more than a casual greeting, of the kind that Smut offered to almost everyone he met between Coombe Bay and Periwinkle, Paul was sour enough to challenge him, saying sharply, ‘It’s a damned pity we aren’t while we’ve still got a few twelve-bores to put to our shoulders!’ and Smut at once lowered his van window, apparently to hear the news that had put so much grit into Paul’s voice.
‘You abben heard nothin’ new, ’ave ’ee?’ he asked. ‘That bliddy Hitler baint jumped the gun, has he?’ and Paul, mollified by the anxiety in his voice, replied, ‘No, I’ve heard nothing new, but I daresay we shall soon enough!’
Smut looked relieved then and also a little sheepish. ‘Gordamme, you put the fear o’ God into me, Squire!’ he admitted and then, in a puzzled voice, ‘Don’t you reckon us is over it? I had the bliddy jitters backalong but it zeems quiet enough now according to the papers and radio.’
Paul was tempted to stay and preach, to use Smut as a captive audience for his forebodings but he changed his mind, saying, ill-humouredly, ‘Well that’s very reassuring! I’ll sleep a lot better for hearing that, Smut!’ and went his way hands in pockets so that Smut looked after him with concern, wondering what factors were at work to make Squire so crusty these days, and whether his own wife, Marie, had infected him with her non-stop Jeremiads about les sattes Boches but he was not left wondering for long. Winter passed and spring followed and with spring came the pounce on Prague, and after that Mussolini’s grab at Albania, and in the confused weeks that followed they began to drift back to him, bringing with them what he most needed, a feeling of unity and purpose and comradeship, that made him feel less like a prophet of doom stalking the Valley and muttering of wrath to come.
Henry Pitts was the first of the prodigals, declaring that ‘ ’Twas time us stopped the rot’, and Harold Codsall was the next, sending his boy over with the trailer to buy chemical manure against the arrival of a stock he had ordered in Paxtonbury. Then Smut, holding forth in the bar of The Raven one night, declared that ‘only Squire and his boy’ had been right about what would follow Munich and word of this reached Paul the next day by Parson Horsey who confessed, sadly, that sooner or later someone would have to do something about Hitler and that whatever it was would be inconsistent with the charters of the Peace Pledge and the League of Nations. But none of these affirmations brought him as much comfort as Claire’s, who said one night, as they sat by the fire, ‘Did I tell you I had a word on the ’phone with two of your daughters-in-law while you were out?’
‘No,’ he said, without displaying much interest, ‘You didn’t; anything new?’
‘Yes there was,’ she said, knitting her brows, ‘and perhaps you can make sense of it for I can’t and neither, it seemed, could Monica or Margaret, both of whom appear convinced that their respective husbands—our sons that is—have gone raving mad! They’ve joined the Air Force!’
He dropped the book he was reading and stood up with such a jerk that his Boer scar gave him a twinge.
‘They’ve what?’
‘Well, not joined exactly but put themselves on some kind of Reserve. You remember one of their crazes was gliding or flying? Well, now they go up every Sunday and they’re both going on some kind of course for a fortnight. It’s all to do with the scare—you know, flying balloons or something.’
‘The Balloon Barrage?’
‘Yes, that was it, that’s what Margaret said.’
‘Well
I’m damned,’ he said, subsiding, ‘they are about the last two I would have thought to join that kind of outfit at a time like this!’ and suddenly he laughed. ‘I’m not laughing at them but at what old Franz would have said. I hope he’s where he can’t see them wasting their time fiddling about with barrage balloons when the price of scrap is at an all-time high.’
‘What exactly are barrage balloons?’ she asked, mildly, and he told her, adding that the very fact amateurs like The Pair had been enrolled meant that somebody was taking a more serious view than he had supposed.
‘You sound very cheerful about it,’ she said, and he replied that he was, in spite of all it might mean, for even a war was better than watching Europe taken over piecemeal and half the world enslaved without so much as a whimper on the part of the victims.
‘You never used to think like that, Paul. You were always utterly opposed to war, even when everyone about here was war-crazy in 1914.’
‘It was quite different then,’ he said, ‘and it amazes me that everybody doesn’t see it’s different! I still think that last war was an act of madness on everybody’s part—certainly continuing it after 1916 was—but there’s simply no other way of containing that bunch of psychopaths. They haven’t a damn thing in common with the Kaiser’s bunch. Losing to Germany in ’14 or ’15 would have been bad but if we’d agreed to a patched-up peace after a year or so, it would have all been forgotten by now!’ He leaned forward, earnestly, and she was impressed by the note of pleading in his voice. ‘Tell me, Claire, tell me honestly, do you think I’m a nervous old maid laying in all these stocks and building that fuel-storage tank? If you do, then for God’s sake say so and give me a chance to convince you!’
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