Dover Beach

by Leslie Thomas

  Cartwright told them: ‘Well, we’ll get through as much of the programme as we can. It might be difficult. We had an air raid here yesterday . . .’

  They were thrilled. Sarah Durrant said: ‘Here? The radio news said there was action in the English Channel.’

  One of the other women whispered: ‘How exciting.’

  ‘It was offshore, most of it. The Germans attacked a convoy of merchant ships,’ he told them confidingly. ‘One bomb was dropped on Dover and they shot up the place a bit, but fortunately they mostly missed. The casualties were on the ships.’

  ‘Would you . . . would you prefer it if we returned to London?’ asked Sarah. The faces clouded.

  Cartwright was about to say that he would, but the women quickly chorused in disagreement. He said instead: ‘At your own risk, I’m afraid. If the Germans come back we’ll have to get you under cover like everybody else.’ He tried an assured smile. ‘But . . . for the moment . . . I’ve arranged coffee at the Marine Hotel.’

  Furniture and boxes were piled in the hotel foyer. There were mounds of dusty rubble and a tangle of curtains on the floor, windows were without glass. A space had been cleared for the reception desk and a fair, slim girl, wearing a green summer dress, rose from behind it. ‘Good morning. Bonjour mesdames, monsieur. I am Giselle.’

  The American women surveyed their surroundings with curiosity and a little misgiving. The foyer lights began to flicker, went out, then came on again.

  ‘The Marine Hotel is not usually like so,’ said Giselle spreading her slim hands. ‘We have been visited by the Boche.’

  The jaunty feather in the hat of one of the women had become bent as though it was part of the damage. Catching sight of herself in a cracked mirror she left it as it was. She took out a notebook and wrote savagely. The others with some nervousness continued to look about them.

  ‘Coffee is served in the lounge,’ said the French girl trying to be bright. She smiled towards Cartwright. ‘As reserved by monsieur, le commander. But please to go through the dining room today. The usual way is . . . poof! . . .’ She blew out her cheeks.

  Still wishing they had not come, Cartwright ushered the busy party through the dining-room door. One of the long patterned-glass panels was missing from it, and the windows facing the street were boarded with plywood. The women wriggled with excitement, took out cameras and began busily to take photographs. ‘Is this permitted?’ asked Sarah cautiously.

  Cartwright said wryly: ‘I can’t see why not. But it probably isn’t.’ He led them through the dining room and into the lounge with its drapes and red velvet chairs.

  A woman in an apron was ineffectually flapping around with a feathered mop. ‘Years of dust came up . . .’ She began to cough. ‘Charlie will get the coffee. They’re trying to put back the ceiling in the kitchen.’

  She brushed each chair a little more emphatically before each guest sat down. The dust rose. They covered their noses.

  ‘How far away was the bomb?’ Sarah asked.

  Eagerly the others leaned forward. ‘Can we see the hole?’ asked the smaller of the trousered women.

  The cleaner said: ‘It finished our Co-op.’

  ‘About two hundred yards on the other side of the road,’ said Cartwright. ‘Fortunately it was the shop’s early closing afternoon and the place was empty except for the cat.’

  Every American eye was on him. ‘Which hasn’t been seen since,’ he added. The feathered woman wrote briskly in her book. They grouped in a half-circle. The cleaner continued flapping.

  ‘As I told you earlier,’ Cartwright said earnestly, ‘I honestly didn’t expect you to turn up as arranged today. After yesterday’s events I imagined someone in London would have . . . well, warned you.’

  Sarah, sitting next to him, said quietly: ‘We wanted to come.’

  ‘Up to yesterday, it’s been pretty quiet here,’ he continued. ‘As far as direct attacks have been concerned, well, there haven’t been any. And it’s been more or less like that over the whole country. Nothing much has happened this side of the Channel, anyway. In America they’ve been calling it the phoney war, haven’t they?’

  ‘The bore war,’ added one of the women.

  Cartwright continued: ‘We had begun to wonder if it would ever get started. Even while it was all happening in France, the evacuation of Dunkirk and the rest of it, here it has remained peaceful, apart, that is, from the Dunkirk troops being landed here. Yesterday the quiet was shattered. Two ships were sunk just outside Dover harbour and, as you can see around you, the town itself was attacked.’

  They listened intently. He was conscious that his uniform was not well fitted; his face was too gentle for a soldier. The one with the notebook had stopped writing but still had a poised pencil. Another with a camera put it on the table. ‘Frankly,’ said Cartwright, ‘I am responsible for your safety and even now I have a sneaking feeling that you should have reboarded the train and gone straight back to London.’

  ‘That would have been a big disappointment,’ said Sarah firmly. Her companions nodded and adjusted the Union flags in their lapels in turn.

  ‘We were invited,’ said one.

  ‘Right,’ said Cartwright attempting to sound pleased. ‘But, with your permission, I will make this a short tour, have lunch and get you on the train. According to the rumours the Luftwaffe prefer to make their raids in the afternoon. They don’t like early starts.’

  Nobody smiled. ‘So,’ he said, ‘I will start, as I usually do with these visits, by explaining that my name is Robin Cartwright, I have the rank of Captain, and I am a professional archaeologist who has been called up – appropriately into the Royal Engineers.’ He tapped the regimental flash on his shoulder. ‘In the British army the engineers are called sappers because they dig trenches and tunnels, and that’s what I do in civilian life – dig. They sent me here because there are miles of caves and holes in the Dover chalk, some of which are still being excavated by the military, and I’m supposed to ensure that they don’t dig up and throw away anything the British Museum would want preserved.’

  ‘Have they done that yet?’ asked one of the women. ‘Found anything exciting?’

  Cartwright smiled over his almost cold coffee. ‘Nobody’s been looking very hard,’ he said. ‘I volunteered for the armed services when the war started but, to be frank, once I was in the army they had no idea what to do with an archaeologist. Once I’d finished my basic training and my officer’s course they sent me down here and mumbled something about me being useful.’

  The Americans remained intent. Charlie came in and gathered the coffee pots and cups. He looked disappointed that little coffee had been drunk. ‘A lot of the kitchen ceiling fell down,’ he muttered.

  ‘So,’ continued Cartwright, ‘we can see a few things on the tour. The Roman lighthouse, the place where Bleriot’s plane came down after he became the first man to fly across the Channel, and perhaps Dover Castle, if they’ll let us do any of these following the events of yesterday.’

  ‘Then the store,’ the lady with the crooked hat feather reminded him. ‘The bombed store.’

  ‘That will be the first stop,’ he promised. ‘Then we’ll be back here for lunch, providing there are no warlike interruptions.’

  ‘Because we were coming here,’ said Sarah Durrant, ‘we all read “Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold. It’s the most moving poem. He must have been very famous in this town?’

  ‘Not very, not at the time,’ he smiled. ‘It’s said he only passed through on the way to France – on his honeymoon. Unfortunately just now that beach is covered with obstacles, barbed wire, and it’s mined. We can see it but we can’t step on it.’

  ‘And the white cliffs?’ asked Sarah close to him. She paused: ‘Of Dover.’

  ‘To see them properly we would have to go out to sea. That’s not permitted either. I’m sorry. As everybody tells you – all the time – there’s a war on.’

  There was a silent and small crowd on the pavemen
t opposite the mounds of rubble that had once been the Co-op, waiting as if they expected something else to happen. Some of the angled roof timbers jutted from the debris like the prow of a wrecked ship. Various groceries which had remained visible after the bombing had been taken away in Co-op vans to forestall rain or looters. ‘Wonder where the cat went?’ a girl asked her mother.

  ‘Straight up in the air, I ’spect,’ mumbled a man.

  The six American women had grouped at the edge in respectful silence before Cartwright suggested they should go to see the Roman lighthouse. ‘That’s another ruin,’ put in the man. ‘Dover’s full of ’em.’

  A woman said: ‘And there’ll be a few more yet.’ People laughed.

  Doris Barker had collected the weekly rations for herself and her son Harold from Leeston’s grocery shop in Snargate Street. They were not heavy in her basket. She had gone early because of a swift rumour that the dispossessed Co-op customers would, on the instructions of the local food office, be taking their ration books to Leeston’s. She paused at the group viewing the bombed site and looked about to make sure Harold was not there when he should have been at school. He was not. The American women were moving away, following Cartwright.

  ‘Look at them lot then,’ said a woman called Kath Fox who she knew but did not like. Reluctantly she walked with her along the pavement.

  ‘Nice slacks,’ said Doris.

  ‘Yanks,’ persisted the sharp-faced woman. ‘Showing theirselves off down ’ere, done up like dogs’ dinners. My old man says they’ll take their bloody time before they come in the war. Like last time.’

  They neared the new Belisha beacon street crossing. ‘Shame they can’t have the orange lights on the top now,’ said Doris attempting to change the subject. She calculated how long she would need to walk with the woman. ‘Quite cheery I thought, like balloons.’

  ‘That bloke Belisha’s made plenty of money out of them,’ said Kath Fox sullenly. ‘Another Jew.’

  As they paused at the crossing a platoon of soldiers marched along the street, goaded by a stiff-backed sergeant, the peak of his cap only just above his nose, in his hand a short drill stick. ‘Squad . . . squad . . . halt!’ he bellowed. Taken by surprise the soldiers pulled up untidily. The two women watched but remained at the kerb.

  ‘Ladies,’ breathed the sergeant. ‘I ’ave ’alted these fine fighting men to let you cross the road.’

  The women with their shopping baskets hurried over. Doris waved a modest thanks. The sergeant bawled: ‘Squad . . . squad . . . By the right . . . quick march!’ He thrust his stick under his arm and the parade clip-clopped forward.

  ‘Soldiers,’ sniffed Kath. ‘Call them soldiers. Poor little buggers. Some of ’em look like they’ve got rickets.’

  ‘They are a bit on the scrawny side,’ agreed Doris cautiously. ‘Maybe the army will build them up, fill them out a bit.’

  Kath put her head confidingly close. ‘Now, them Storm Troopers, them Germans what you see on the pictures, on the news, they look like real soldiers. Jaws sticking out under their ’elmets and trained bodies. That’s what I like, trained bodies.’

  Doris was measuring the distance to the next corner where she knew she could turn off. ‘Where’s your old man?’ asked the other woman.

  ‘In the army,’ said Doris. ‘Africa.’

  ‘Fighting the Wops, soon he’ll be,’ sniffed Kath. ‘All they’re good for is selling hokey-pokey.’ She confided: ‘Mine’s trying to keep out of it. Disabled, or ’e’s going to make out ’e is. Says we can’t win anyway now, so you don’t want to be in bleedin’ uniform ’cos you’ll only get shot.’

  Doris was thankful when they reached the corner. She walked down Seaview Crescent alone, wondering whether she ought to take Harold and get out of Dover. Some people had already gone. There were empty houses. Dover was in the front line and she had a sister in Northampton, in the safe middle of England.

  Her house was one of a terrace with a rack of bay windows dipping down towards Dover Beach. She had never read the poem, and had never heard of Matthew Arnold, although the town was her birthplace.

  She unlocked the door and as she opened it peered at her face distorted in the knocker, giving the brass a rub with her sleeve although it did not need it. Walking straight through to the kitchen she put the kettle on the gas and her rations into the food cupboard, small packets of tea, butter, margarine, and a pound of sugar. She wondered if she ought to bake a cake for her husband in prison. The last had been a month ago. It was all that was left between them. Her cakes and Harold.

  She turned the knob of the wireless set. They usually lived in the tight kitchen. It was warm in the winter and it kept the front room tidy. The everyday Music While You Work programme was being broadcast and the band was playing ‘I Remember You’. The kettle joined in insistently and she put a single spoonful of tea, levelled off carefully with her finger, into a teapot on whose side there was a faded picture of Buckingham Palace and the words ‘A Gift from London’. There was a knock at the front door.

  Cotton almost filled the frame. ‘Sorry to barge in,’ he said. He showed his card. ‘I’m a policeman. Detective Sergeant Cotton.’

  ‘What’s he done?’

  Cotton grinned. ‘Nothing very serious, don’t worry. Is he your only one?’

  ‘He’s quite enough.’ Doris allowed herself to return the smile. ‘Come on in.’

  She poured him a cup of tea. ‘I’ve cut out sugar for the duration,’ he said.

  ‘Just as well, the amount we get allowed.’ She handed the cup to him. ‘What’s my Harold been up to?’

  ‘Over-patriotism,’ he said. ‘Him and some of his pals. They’re out to defeat the Germans.’

  ‘What does that mean? They’re only kids.’

  He nodded but said: ‘Yesterday, when the air raid was going on, I found them on the ridge – you know, above the town – and I brought them down in my car to get them home. That bomb cracked the windscreen.’

  Doris put her hands to her face. She said slowly: ‘He didn’t tell me that. He did say that some man had given them a lift home and dropped them at the end of the street. But he didn’t say the police. He was all excited about the bomb, but I didn’t realise . . .’

  ‘Where’s his father?’

  ‘Maidstone jail,’ she said looking straight at him. ‘Three years for burglary. Harold thinks he’s in the army in Africa.’

  Cotton could see how hard it was for her. ‘The point is,’ he said carefully, ‘Harold’s got some idea of taking on the Germans on his own, or with his mates anyway, a ginger lad and a Polish refugee boy. And they could get hurt even if it’s not by Jerry. These Local Defence Volunteers – Home Guards as they call them – don’t know what they’re up to. They’re more dangerous than the Germans. All they want to do is to fire their weapons and if they see someone crawling in the grass they’re as likely as not to take a pot-shot.’

  Doris said: ‘I’ll tell him not to do it but he’s so keen. The three of them spend half their time in our air-raid shelter. They say it’s their headquarters. But they’re only playing.’ There was a sound from the front door. ‘That’s him,’ she said. ‘You tell him. He’ll take more notice of you.’

  Harold came down the passage disentangling himself from his school satchel and pretending to be a landed paratrooper escaping his harness. ‘Any biscuits?’ he said. He saw Cotton and his face altered. ‘Oh, ’ello.’

  Doris said: ‘I think you ought to thank this policeman for looking after you in the air raid yesterday.’

  The boy pulled a face. ‘It was ’im nearly got us killed,’ he said. ‘We was all right where we was, up on the ridge, but he made us come down in ’is car.’

  Cotton put his head in his hands and nodded. ‘He’s got a point,’ he said, looking up and studying Harold. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘’S all right,’ said the boy pleased at the apology. ‘You didn’t know.’

  Cotton, suppressing a grin, glanced at the mother. �
�But I’ve come to tell you,’ he said to Harold, ‘that you and your mates had better stop thinking you’re the resistance. Roaming around like you are.’

  Harold picked two biscuits from the round tin decorated with a Highland scene which his mother put on the table. She reminded him: ‘Harold,’ and he handed the tin to Cotton who took one of the biscuits. ‘That’s nice,’ he said biting it.

  ‘She makes them,’ said Harold.

  ‘As long as I can get the stuff,’ said Doris. ‘How long that will be God knows. There’s no onions in the shops now, you know, because they can’t get them from France. We should grow our own onions. We’ve got gardens.’

  Her son looked at the clock on the dresser. ‘Football this afternoon,’ he said. ‘S’posed to be. But the ball’s punctured and there’s no master to take us.’ He glanced cagily at Cotton. ‘So we go over and make out we’re playing, like pretending – except we haven’t got a ball. The head can see us from the school but he don’t realise there’s no ball.’

  ‘Anyhow, you’ve just got to pack it up,’ said Cotton firmly. ‘This fighting the Germans. They haven’t turned up yet.’

  ‘I wish they’d ’urry up,’ said Harold.

  ‘You’ll get yourself shot,’ said Cotton pointing his finger like a gun.

  Doris put her hand to her mouth and whispered: ‘Dead.’

  Cotton said reasonably: ‘What do you think you could do with your bows and arrows and bread knife against a Panzer division?’

  Harold said seriously: ‘When I give the signal I can call out a hundred kids in Dover. We could ambush them and cut telephone wires and that.’

  ‘Probably ours,’ pointed out Cotton.

  ‘We could do things,’ Harold insisted. ‘We’ve planned it all in the shelter out at the back. Honest. I can’t let out our plans. A hundred kids. And the grammar school’ve got their own unit. If they get in with us they’ll want to be the officers. They’ve got an Officers Training Corps, and they’ve got uniforms and they had some rifles but the LDV blokes came and took them away.’

  Doris leaned forward, her lips tight. ‘He’s got a gun,’ she whispered.