Dunkirk Spirit

by Alan Pearce

  ‘Well, if that were the case,’ said the Padre, stiffening. ‘I can only say that, too, is a direct consequence of colonisation. Left to their own devices, their lives would be dramatically different and I dare say better.’

  ‘But how can you say that, sir?’ smirked the midshipman. ‘The clergy has always been at the forefront of colonisation, converting the heathen and spreading the Word.’

  The Padre held up his hands. ‘Yes,’ he announced. ‘Yes, you are right. And they, too, have a lot to answer for. But my point is that the system of Empire as a whole is misguided. I am sure many people leave England with the best of intentions. But when they get out there, and start considering themselves better than the black man, the power often goes to their heads.’

  Binky found himself wanting to explode. The image of his daughter Gertie sprang to mind. Why did so many people have to highlight the bad over the good?

  ‘You only have to take the example of Australia,’ continued the Padre. ‘The aboriginal people are arguably the most civilised on Earth if you choose to judge them on their relationship to the world around them. Left alone, they would be living in perfect harmony with nature in a veritable garden of Eden, just how God intended.’

  ‘Like the monkeys,’ suggested Binky.

  ‘No, not like the monkeys! Not like the monkeys at all!’ insisted the Padre. ‘But my point is, what has the Empire given them?’

  ‘Medicine, modern technology, roads, railways, schools,’ listed the Commander.

  ‘Yes, education,’ added Hockley. ‘And the chance to better themselves.’

  Now the Padre shook his head. ‘How about loss of pride, alcohol addiction, and the Child Welfare Act?’ he asked.

  ‘The what, sir?’ asked Hockley

  ‘Do you not know that aboriginal children are being forcibly taken from their parents every day of the week?’ asked the Padre to blank expressions. ‘Here we are fighting the Nazis and at the same time defending our own unjust laws.’ He tightened his jaw. ‘From the very beginning, we have treated those poor people appallingly. We have systematically disrupted their lives, stolen their land, and currently we are trying to separate their children from their family and culture!’

  ‘But that’s to help assimilate them, sir.’

  ‘Is it, Mr Hockley?’ asked the Padre. ‘Can you honestly say their lives are better for it?’

  Hockley’s mouth was dry and he sipped at his tea. He resisted the urge to look at his watch. ‘Well, most anthropologists would see them as amongst the most primitive people alive,’ he argued. ‘Surely, in the long run, they will be glad to be brought up to our level.’

  ‘And what makes you think our level is so desirable? Just look at the world around you! The world is a mess and we only have ourselves to blame.’

  Hockley shrugged and looked at his watch.

  ‘What do we have?’ asked the Padre, gathering momentum. ‘Mass unemployment, hunger, miserable overcrowding, TB and polio, so many unwanted babies. Is that why we fought the last war?’ He became swiftly animated. ‘What happened to the houses we were promised, the better living conditions, the land fit for returning heroes?’

  ‘But that’s not why they actually fought the last war,’ insisted Hockley.

  ‘Oh, no?’ asked the Padre. ‘What did they fight it for?’

  ‘Well,’ mused Hockley, scratching his head. ‘To fight German aggression.’

  ‘And why do you suppose the Germans were so aggressive?’ The Padre spread his arms. ‘I shall tell you why. It was because they saw colonisation as a mark of progress. They, too, wanted their place in the sun. They saw it as their right as white men. Aside from a few tiny bits of Africa, they were denied their empire and had to find another way to flex their muscles.’

  ‘It that what they are doing now, sir?’ asked Hockley, letting a shower of sand settle.

  ‘In a way, they are. If we had not treated them so shabbily at the end of the last war they would not have spent the last twenty odd years nursing a festering resentment. We should have helped the German people get back on their feet instead of bleeding them dry and laying the foundations for the radical government they have today. Only then could we count ourselves civilised.’

  ‘And what?’ asked Binky, giving up on his search for a cigarette. ‘I suppose you would prefer to live the life of an aboriginal bushman, would you? Living off berries and bugs!’ The Commander scoffed.

  ‘Actually, I would,’ said the Padre.

  ‘And is anybody stopping you?’ asked the Commander. He pulled himself off the carrier’s front fender.

  The Padre went quiet. There were, in fact, many people stopping him; the Bishop of Guildford, John Macmillan, for one and the Governor of New South Wales for another.

  ‘And aside from pointing out your country’s shortcomings, what mark have you ever made on the world?’ continued Binky. ‘What stand have you ever taken for your fellow man?’

  The Padre did not want to say. The image of himself only the year before, placard in hand and chained to the Governor’s mansion gates, sprang to mind. So did a few of the newspaper headlines. The native Australian sense of humour had ensured that no one was in any hurry to cut him down and he had been left to bake in the sun for most of the day. He had seriously embarrassed a number of people he considered friends and he had created a whopping great scandal for the Church.

  ‘I have done my bit,’ he announced.

  ‘Well, that restores my faith in mankind,’ declared Commander Babbington. He ran his tongue around his furry gums and looked to the heavens. ‘Come on Sago! Let’s go find some bloody cigarettes.’

  The Commander finally found some dry cigarettes amongst a pile of clothes on the seafront. He extracted one from the packet, sniffed at the foreign tobacco and sat down on the promenade.

  ‘Hey, you soldier!’ he called to a man clutching a bottle and swaying in a doorway. ‘Where did you find that champagne?’

  At first the drunk tried to wave the Commander away. ‘It’s mine,’ he hissed. ‘Go find yer own.’

  ‘Look,’ said Binky, calmly. ‘I don’t want your bottle. I don’t even want a sip. I just want to know where you found it and are there any more?’ He smiled at the soldier hopefully.

  ‘In that house.’ The man waved uncertainly into the distance. ‘The one with the poster of the tart on the wall.’ He staggered out of the doorway and pointed with the bottle up a side street. ‘The corner house.’

  The cellar of the house had been ransacked but behind an upturned oak rack the Commander discovered in all nine bottles of vintage Moët. ‘Just the thing to take home to Babs,’ he mused. ‘But there’s no way I can carry nine and what a damn shame it would be to leave them for the Huns. What do you say Sago? Do dogs like champagne?’

  Little Sago stood up on his hind legs and waved both paws in excitement at the Commander. But Binky would have to wait to find out. The next shell to land did so plumb on the roof of the house with the poster on its wall. The shell exploded on impact and sent the third, second, and first floors crashing down into the cellar.

  06:30 Sunday 2 June 1940.

  Kent County Constabulary, Dover

  ‘So, miss. Your name, date of birth, and address, please.’

  ‘Are you serious?’ Kitty felt her shoulders sag. ‘Haven’t we been through all this before?’ She pressed the back of her hand to her temple. ‘I have this terrible sense of déjà vu.’

  ‘You speak French, do you, miss?’ asked the detective.

  ‘Just a smattering, you know. One of the benefits of an expensive education.’

  ‘Answer the questions in English, please. Name?’

  ‘Lady Diana Mosley.’

  The detective sat rigid. ‘Shall we cut the comedy?’

  ‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Will it get me into trouble?’

  ‘You are already in enough trouble, miss, so I suggest you just answer the questions.’

  Kitty sighed. ‘I just wonder,’ she said. ‘What
kind of trouble I am supposed to be in. As I see things, I have simply been doing my job. You have a letter in that file from M-O explaining who I am. You also have the copies of my reports and I have now de-coded them all three times for you. Are you ever going to charge me with anything?’

  ‘All in good time, miss. Now, you said yesterday that you were particularly keen to be on your way today. Why is that?’

  Kitty brightened but kept her features still. She spoke slowly and precisely. ‘As I have said before, my prime role here is to observe for M-O the evacuation of the children from the south coast. That is happening this very morning. I would very much like to see it.’

  ‘And can you also see, miss, just how useful that sort of information might be to an enemy?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Can you not see that it would be particularly interesting to an enemy to witness our evacuation procedures?’ The pugnacious M55B raised his eyebrows and then sat back, folding his arms. ‘You may have noticed from the newspapers that the Germans are using the refugees on the Continent to clog the roads and hamper our men. Is this making any sense to you?’

  ‘I can see what you are driving at,’ said Kitty. ‘But the Germans can read newspapers, too.’

  ‘You do appreciate the need for society to be vigilant, do you not, at such a time as this?’

  Kitty nodded.

  ‘Because any decent, patriotic person would understand the necessity for precautions such as these. They would see them as a necessary part of defending our freedoms.’

  ‘Freedoms?’ she asked. ‘You mean detention without trial, and such like?’

  ‘You are not being detained without trial, miss. You are simply helping us with our enquiries.’

  ‘And what if I don’t want to help you any more?’

  ‘Then we may have to keep you a little longer.’

  ‘Detain me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘With or without a trial?’

  ‘Miss, I trust it has not escaped your attention, but this country is at war. We are head to head with Nazi tyranny and if it means asking some people lots of questions, then so be it.’

  ‘But I am talking about the denial of our basic rights.’

  ‘Rights, miss? Do you think the Nazis give a hoot about rights?’

  ‘But we should give a hoot about imprisonment without trial and the effective suspension of Habeas Corpus. I was always brought up to believe that the right to a fair trial was one of the very cornerstones of our democracy.’

  ‘And so it shall be again, miss. Just as soon as the current emergency is over. You do understand?’

  ‘I understand. What I do not understand is why we have to lose our rights just because we are fighting a country with even fewer rights? Surely, the whole point is to defend our freedoms, not cast them aside at the first threat to democracy.’

  ‘You see, it’s partly your attitude.’ The detective shook his head. ‘You come across all Bolshie, demanding this and demanding that.’ He lent forward and rummaged through the file. ‘Now, here, you see.’ He held up a small sheet of paper. ‘I have a report here where you were heard to question this country’s ability to defend itself.’

  ‘Oh, really?’

  ‘And here’s another one,’ he said. ‘Where you question the need for government supervision of the Press.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘And what are your views on censorship?’

  ‘There shouldn’t be any!’

  The detective laughed. ‘You just don’t get it, do you?’

  ‘Yes, I get it,’ scoffed Kitty. ‘You believe that it is necessary to restrict the flow of information in wartime to safeguard our security.’ She lent forward and smiled. ‘And I say it is much better to give all the facts you can – short of secrets – so people know what’s going on and can form opinions of their own.’ She sat back and puffed out her ample chest. ‘It’s called democracy. The thing we are supposed to be fighting for.’

  ‘I know what it’s called, miss.’ The detective looked back up. ‘I just wonder if you know how hard people in this country have fought for that freedom.’

  ‘I do know, and I know that those same people would not want to see it trampled underfoot so lightly.’

  ‘And what about rumours?’ he asked suddenly. ‘The ally of the Nazis. You want to see all that reported, do you? Create panic?’

  ‘No, of course not.’ Kitty tried to laugh. ‘And M-O is not in the habit of regurgitating rumours. We gather opinions.’

  ‘And what about the Press?’

  ‘Well, no responsible newspaper is going to rush out and print rumours. They would lose all credibility in no time.’ Now she shook her head. ‘But you are doing no one any favours saying on the wireless that we have shot down hundreds of German aeroplanes to the loss of none of our own. It’s crazy! Only fools would believe that.’

  Kitty grinned, showing the neatness of her teeth. She crossed her legs. ‘But tell them what’s going on and you will still have their support. In fact, they will support you all the more for being kept informed. It makes us feel like we’re all in this together.’

  The detective sat impassive, his head moving from side to side. Kitty took a deep breath and sat forward, clasping the edge of the desk with both hands. ‘You know, I’ve seen the difference it can make. I have seen this week what a little openness can achieve. People are very angry at the Nazis and they are determined not to go the way of Poland and Belgium.’

  The detective continued to shake his head. ‘And if I had my way, miss, I’d wait till it was all over and then tell you who’d won.’ He nodded like Oliver Hardy and scrapped back his chair. ‘Alrighty,’ he declared, standing up. ‘That will do for now.’

  ‘Can I go?’

  ‘You can go back to your cell, miss.’

  ‘Why are you keeping me?’ Kitty’s voice turned shrill. ‘This is madness!’

  ‘Just as soon as we can confirm your story with the Mass-Observation people.’ The detective stood in the doorway, clutching his file. He gave Kitty a parting appraisal and a quick smile. ‘I’ll give them a tinkle first thing tomorrow morning. Check your bona fides. I sure you understand, miss.’

  07:14 Sunday 2 June 1940.

  Snowdown Station, Southern Railways, Kent

  Plans are underway for the large-scale evacuation of some forty-eight-thousand school children from the east and south-east coastal towns. Many will be going to Wales and the Midlands. Nearly ten-thousand of these children had originally been evacuated from their homes in London and are now moving again. Parents should bear in mind that in the areas evacuated today, schools will remain closed.

  And lastly, a reminder to listeners that the station calling itself ‘The New British Broadcasting Station’ is, in fact, being broadcast by the enemy. The Ministry of Information reports that, following a series of scientific tests, it has been established that the broadcasts originate from inside Germany.

  ‘So tell me,’ asked Hubert Hawksley. ‘Given that the railways must be going flat out already with all the unexpected military traffic, how confident are you that they can simultaneously evacuate so many thousands of children?’

  ‘Sorry, can you repeat the question,’ asked the train driver. He accepted the mug of tea from Margaret and helped himself to a biscuit.

  Hawksley repeated the question. The driver huffed as if offended. ‘We have the finest railways in the world!’ he declared. ‘D’you know how much money the companies have spent over the last ten years?’

  Hawksley shook his head.

  ‘Over three-hundred-million quid!’ declared the driver, rubbing his tired eyes. ‘That’s how much! Huh!’

  Hawksley scribbled into his notebook.

  ‘Thousands of miles of new track, the finest coaching stock, and don’t forget the Mallard – world speed record, no less!’ He tapped his pockets in search of his tobacco pouch. ‘Old Hitler and Mussolini, they might think they can make the trains run on time, but I’ll t
ell yer we can still teach ‘em a thing or two.’

  ‘But my point is,’ said Hawksley. ‘This must have surely caught you on the hop?’

  The driver guffawed. ‘Don’t make me laugh! The politicians and the Army, they’re the ones caught on the hop. The railways has always been prepared. And we’ll take this in our stride, same as we always do.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Hawksley. The facts may have flowed a little too fast for his shorthand but he had his quote and was happy. He turned away from the driver and his engine and looked across the tracks to the station.

  ‘Oh, the little darlings,’ declared Margaret. ‘Just look at their sad little faces!’

  She waited in the car park to the sound of blackbirds in the trees. The haze was burning off and it promised to be a magnificent summer’s day. Margaret pressed both hands to her heart and sighed deeply. She watched as the teachers ushered up their charges, attempting to assemble the infants and their scant baggage into orderly lines.

  ‘Good morning,’ smiled Margaret, approaching one of the teachers. ‘I am Mrs Carmichael of the WVS.’

  ‘Hello, Jean Walters,’ smiled back the teacher. ‘Saint Thomas’s.’

  ‘Well, I must say,’ said Margaret. ‘They are all surprisingly well behaved.’

  ‘You think so?’ asked the teacher. ‘You should have seen them half an hour ago!’ She laughed. ‘But once we got on the bus, and got shot of the mothers, they calmed down.’

  Margaret looked at the children. ‘Some of them are tiny, aren’t they? And with their great big gasmasks!’

  ‘Five is the youngest. We’ve had a few “I want my mummies” but aside from some tears and runny noses, they’ll be all right.’

  ‘Five minutes everyone!’ called the stationmaster from the platform. ‘The next train has just left Shepherd’s Well.’

  ‘Oh, dear,’ exclaimed Margaret. ‘How is that for timing? You don’t mind waiting out here do you? It’s just that this is such a small station and we have another train full of soldiers arriving any minute.’