by Lilian Harry
She caught Andrew’s eyes on her now and knew that he understood what she was thinking. He gave her a little nod and said, ‘Come on, darling, you must be dying to see our new home. And Hughie’s getting tired. You’ve had a long train journey. Let’s be on our way, shall we?’
‘You mean you don’t want to sit here making conversation with me,’ Tubby said mournfully. ‘Well, I don’t blame you. I know I wouldn’t want to hang about with my pals if I were old Andy here, with a lovely wife to take home.’ He picked up his tankard again. ‘Run along, children. Enjoy yourselves. Don’t worry about poor old Tubby, left here all alone to cry into his ale.’
‘If you’re here all alone it’ll be for the first time,’ Andrew told him heartlessly, tossing back the last of his own beer. ‘We’ll not be halfway up the street before you’re flirting with the barmaid. Come on, Alison, let’s leave the old phoney to drown his sorrows. You’ll be seeing plenty of him, more’s the pity.’
‘You certainly will,’ Tubby said, winking at Alison. ‘I’m expecting a permanent invitation to chez Knight once you’re settled in. Parties every night, that’s what Andy’s promised us.’
‘You’ll be welcome any time,’ Alison said sincerely, getting up to follow Andrew to the door. She looked down at him and their eyes met for a moment. ‘You know that.’
The village street was quiet. A couple of women stood outside the little shop across the road, holding baskets over their arms as they chatted. The sides of the valley rose towards the blue sky, the trees tinged with auburn and gold. It seemed impossible to believe that there was a war on; that not far away, in another country, people were killing and being killed; that her own husband, whose arm she was holding now, would soon be back in the thick of it, risking both his life and their happiness; and that without those risks, taken by so many young men, all such happiness and freedom, and the very peace of this tiny village, might be lost for ever.
She glanced again at Tubby, remembering the last time they had met, only a week or two ago, before he and Andrew had been moved from Manston in Kent to this newer airfield in Devonshire. Then she turned back to her husband.
‘Let’s go and look at the house,’ she said. ‘Let’s go and see where we shall be living.’
Chapter Two
‘RAF Harrowbeer?’ John Hazelwood frowned slightly, as if trying to remember something. ‘Where’s that?’
‘It’s near Plymouth,’ Ben said. ‘On the edge of Dartmoor. They were going to build Plymouth Airport there but they hadn’t got round to it when the war started, and now they’ve put an RAF station there instead. D’you know it, Dad?’
‘I know where it is. I used to go out to Tavistock on the bus when the regiment was at Crownhill, in Plymouth. A friend of mine was vicar at the church there.’ John had been an Army chaplain before retiring to become a vicar in the Hampshire village of Ashdown. ‘Isn’t it somewhere near Yelverton?’
‘That’s right. Funny sort of place – not what you’d expect of a Dartmoor village at all. It looks more like a spa, with Georgian houses all round a big village green.’ He grinned. ‘The ones on the south side are mostly shops, and guess what they’ve done? Taken off the top storeys of every one, so that the planes won’t hit them on take-off ! They look like a collection of shacks now, while the houses on the other side are still all right.’
‘Is it an operational airfield?’ his mother asked. She already had two sons serving – Ian, who had followed in his father’s footsteps and joined the Army as a chaplain, and Peter, now a Lieutenant-Commander in the Royal Navy, while her daughter Alexandra was a VAD nurse in a naval hospital near Portsmouth. All were facing danger, either from fighting or bombing and, like so many other mothers, she lived in dread of the orange or brown envelope that would bring a telegram telling her her son was missing or dead. She caught herself up and shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, that’s a silly question. Of course it’s operational. Don’t take any notice of me. I hope you’ll have good accommodation, anyway.’
Ben laughed and John looked at his wife with understanding and took her hand. ‘He’ll be better housed and fed than a lot of people in their own homes. The Services look after their men – if only because they’re valuable pieces of equipment!’
‘Like a plane or a lorry,’ Ben said, grinning. ‘They’re not going to let me go rusty, Mum, don’t worry.’
‘You don’t sit still long enough to go rusty,’ Olivia Hazelwood said. She looked at him with resignation. ‘I can see you don’t regret having joined the RAF, anyway.’
Neither John nor Olivia had wanted their youngest son to volunteer so quickly, but Ben had refused to wait until he was called up. He had signed on the moment he left school at eighteen, his ambition right from the start to be a pilot, and he’d passed his training with honours. Since then, he seemed to have led a charmed life, coming through unscathed where many of his friends had been killed or badly injured. He took it blithely for granted, never dreaming how many sleepless nights his mother had spent, thinking of him and her other children and wondering which she would lose first.
Her son’s eyes glowed. ‘Mum, it’s the best thing I ever did. You can’t imagine what it’s like – being up there, above the clouds, all on your own in the sky. It’s like being in another world. I can’t think of anything better, I really can’t. And to be able to do that and have a crack at the Germans – well, I still have to keep pinching myself to make sure it’s true. And the others are a grand bunch – all about the same age as me, nineteen or twenty. We’re all dead keen to get down to Harrowbeer.’
‘Well, make the most of the time you’ve got with us, won’t you,’ Olivia said quietly. ‘Have you told Jean where you’re going?’
‘Haven’t seen her yet. I came straight in to you. Is she around?’
‘She’s taken Hope down to the Suttons’. Why don’t you go and meet her? I expect she’ll be on her way back by now – it’s almost Hope’s teatime.’
‘Might as well.’ Ben uncoiled his long body from the armchair and loped out through the French windows. His parents watched him cross the garden and let himself out through the tall wooden gate set in the stone wall, and then looked at each other.
‘Oh, John,’ Olivia said, her voice trembling a little, ‘he’s so young. Just a child, still. And the way he’s talking about the others being young as well – doesn’t he realise, even now—?’ Her voice broke and she put her fingers to her lips as if to control their quivering. ‘Doesn’t he realise that it’s because so many have already died?’
John Hazelwood squeezed her hand. ‘I know, my love. But that’s the way the young have always been. They all think they’re invincible, even when there’s overpowering evidence that they’re not. Ben is quite confident that nothing will happen to him, and perhaps that’s his protection. After all, he’s been flying for two years now and nothing has happened to him. As for us – we have to put our faith in God.’
‘And how many others have done that?’ she asked bitterly. ‘Hundreds – thousands – who have done just the same and yet still been killed. You’ve been in the Army, John – you served in the Great War. You know just how much protection God gives!’
There was a brief silence. Tears slid down Olivia’s cheeks. Her husband lifted his head and met her anguished eyes.
‘John, I’m sorry. I never meant to say that …’
‘It’s all right,’ he answered quietly. ‘You’re not the only one to ask such questions. And the only answer I can give you is to remind you of the way in which His own Son died – one of the most cruel and agonising of deaths. There’s no more I can say than that.’ He paused, then added, ‘I had to remind myself many times in the trenches. Watching fine young men die in the most squalid circumstances. Trying to give them strength. Writing to their families … Many, many times.’
‘But you still kept your faith,’ she said. ‘You never lost it.’
‘Didn’t I?’ he said ruefully. ‘Well, I think I mislaid it a few ti
mes! It was certainly very hard to find. But there was nothing I could do but act as if it were still there – and one day I woke up and found it back, as strong as ever. The dying, the killing, the suffering – they’d almost destroyed it. But the courage and the cheerfulness and the stubborn, stalwart faith of some of those young men – they were what saved it. And saved me as well. After that, I could go on and do my job, and feel in touch with my God again.’
‘And now you never question it.’
‘Oh yes,’ he said, ‘I question it. When I hear about the bombing and think of all those innocent people killed, when I think of all that terrible suffering, happening all over again, I can’t help questioning it. But it’s always happened, hasn’t it? There have always been wars. And what’s the use of a faith that falters when it doesn’t understand? I ask my questions, just as we all do, and then I remind myself again of the Cross. And somehow that helps me to go on.’
‘And so we have to let Ben go,’ she said. ‘And Ian, and Peter, and Alexandra. I just want to protect them, John. I want them to be back in their prams, like little Hope, where I can keep them safe. I know it’s stupid – we brought them up to be independent and strong, and we have to let them go. But it’s so hard, and it seems hardest of all with Ben. He’s our baby.’
‘Not any more. He’s a grown man now, and we can be proud of him. Try to think of it that way, my love. We can be proud of them all.’
‘I am,’ she said, and smiled at him. ‘And I’m proud of you, too. You’re my strength, John. And I won’t ask that question again.’
‘Ask it as often as you like,’ he said, and leaned across to kiss her.
Ben sauntered along the lane, his hands in his pockets, whistling a snatch from Glenn Miller’s ‘In the Mood’. He glanced up through the dark, coppery leaves of the beech trees at the sky and thought about flying. It really was, as he had told his mother, a different world up there. Looking down on the countryside laid out like a colourful map far below, spotting the things you knew so well on the ground, soaring like a bird and throwing your plane around the sky in a tumble of aerobatics. It was the biggest and best game in the world and he could still hardly believe his luck at being allowed to play it. He had never, in all his life, been so happy as he was when he was in the sky.
He knew, of course, that there was a serious side to this too. The skills he had developed, the handling of an aeroplane in all conditions, even the ‘circus acts’ – the somersaulting, flips and rolls – were all part of a deadly purpose: that of engaging with an equally skilled enemy, seeking to kill and avoiding being killed. Already, Ben had seen squadrons leave the aerodrome in strict formation and return in a ragged skein, like hunted geese. He had seen pilots come into the mess, red-eyed with exhaustion, ridden with anxiety for their friends who had not come back. He’d watched them as they waited for the phone call that would tell them that someone had come down safely miles away and would be returning, or that they were injured but alive. He’d seen their shock as they received the news that some would not be coming back; he’d seen the look on the face of a pilot who had watched his own best friend spiral into the sea in a ball of flame. He’d suffered it all himself, in the past two years – the exhaustion, the shock, the grief. He knew just what it was all about.
But it was all quickly covered up; it had to be. Next day, perhaps sooner, they would be called into the air again. They could not afford either the time or the energy for grief or fear. It must all be buried while they got on with the job of fighting the war.
‘Ben!’
He came to with a start and found that he had been standing quite still, staring up through the coppery canopy at the infinity of blue. A young woman was walking towards him with a small girl trotting beside her. He grinned and waved.
‘Hello, Jeanie. How are you? And how’s my little Hope?’ He squatted down and held out his arms and the toddler broke into a lurching run and fell into them. He swung her in the air, and she squealed and laughed.
‘Do you remember me, sweetheart?’ he asked, holding her above his head. ‘Do you know your Uncle Ben?’
‘Well, she should do,’ Jean remarked. ‘You’re her godfather, after all. Anyway, it’s not that long since you saw her.’
‘It’s three months.’ He set her down gently on her feet and touched the little girl’s smooth cheek with the tip of his finger. ‘And she changes every time I see her. I can’t believe she’s the same tiny thing she was when she was a baby, all red and wrinkled.’
‘She never was!’ Jean said indignantly. ‘She was never wrinkled.’
‘Well, red, anyway.’ He turned and they began to walk back to the vicarage together. ‘And how is everything with you, Jean?’ he asked. ‘Are your mum and dad really all right now? Are they happy about Hope?’
‘I don’t know about happy, exactly. Having a baby without being married – well, you know what people can be like. And they always told me I’d be out of the door if I ever brought trouble to the house. But they’ve come round to the idea now, and nobody could be cross with Hope, could they?’ The little girl caught both their hands and laughed with pleasure as they swung her between them. ‘I mean, look at her. She’s the sweetest baby there ever was. And they know Terry and me were going to get married. If it hadn’t been for the war and him going off so sudden, we would have done. And if he hadn’t been killed …’ They were silent for a moment, then she went on more brightly, ‘It’s your mum and dad who saved us – having me out here and letting me stay at the vicarage and all that. I honestly don’t know what I’d have done if it hadn’t been for them.’
‘I think you’ve been just as much help to them,’ he said seriously. ‘I know they didn’t want me to join the RAF – not so soon, anyway. I could have waited for call-up. But having you around the place, and now Hope – well, it’s given them something else to think about. I suppose you’ll stay here for the rest of the war now. You won’t want to go back to Portsmouth, although the bombing does seem to have stopped.’
‘Oh, I’ll stop here as long as they’ll have me. Can’t take this little one back to Pompey, with the state it’s in.’ She touched the baby’s soft hair again, her fingers gentle and caressing, and Ben glanced at her face, remembering the pinched misery and fear that had been there when he had first met her. Now there was a tender motherliness in the curve of her cheek, and a calmness and contentment that he hadn’t noticed before.
‘I’ll still work my way, though,’ she added, glancing up and misinterpreting his expression. ‘I won’t take advantage. I’m doing all I can to help your mum, and I’m doing some war work as well. Making scrim and collecting sphagnum moss, like Judy did when she was here. I can do all that. I take Hope along with me, she’s as good as gold.’
Ben nodded. He had met Judy – Terry’s sister – when she was in Ashdown, staying at the Suttons’ farm where her young cousin Sylvie was evacuated while she recovered from the effects of bomb blast. It was through her that Jean had come to Ashdown when Terry was killed and her pregnancy was discovered.
‘Anyway, what about you?’ she asked. ‘You’re still flying Spitfires and Hurricanes all over the sky, and killing Germans for us?’
‘Well, only Spitfires,’ he said with a grin. ‘Actually, that’s why I’m home this weekend – I’m going to a new airfield in Devon. Some of the blokes I’ve been with are going too, but we’re joining a new squadron. I’ve got to be there first thing Monday morning so I’ll be off on Sunday night. Catching a train.’ He stopped. ‘I’m not sure how much I should be telling you.’
‘Go on, I’m not a spy!’ She laughed at him. ‘Still, you’d better not say too much. I know all those posters say walls have ears, but I reckon trees could have as well. And you know that song about whispering grass!’ She glanced around at the woods that lined the narrow country road. ‘I still think it’s a bit creepy out here, you know. The first time I heard an owl, I thought it was a ghost – I was scared out of my wits. And then another night
I was sure someone was being murdered, but your dad told me it was just a fox. What an awful noise!’
‘You’re just a townie,’ Ben said affectionately, and they walked on together, chatting, swinging Hope between them. Now and then they passed someone they knew – a villager or an evacuee – and everyone smiled and said hello, most stopping to speak to the toddler as well. ‘You don’t get that in Portsmouth,’ Ben observed after the fourth person had done this. ‘Nobody even looks at you in a town – it’s as if everyone’s invisible.’
‘Well, there’s just too many people, aren’t there. You can’t say hello to everyone you meet. And people spoke to each other in the Blitz, all right – everyone mucked in then and helped each other. I don’t think townies and country people are any different really, not when it comes down to it.’ They reached the vicarage gate and Ben opened it for Jean to go through. She paused and looked at him. ‘It’s nice to see you back again, Ben. I’ve missed you while you’ve been away.’
Ben sat down on a garden bench and watched her go into the house. It was true that she had brought new life to the vicarage, more than repaying the kindness of his parents who had taken her in when her own parents had cast her off. But even though the baby’s birth had brought her parents round, he couldn’t help wondering what would happen to her in the future. While the war was on, she would have a home here in Ashdown, working as a maid at the vicarage, but what about afterwards? Would she want to stay in Ashdown or go back to Portsmouth? What would her life be then, as a young unmarried mother with a daughter to support?
He thought back to the first months when Jeanie had been with them, arriving a young and frightened girl, grieving over her lost fiancé and carrying his baby. Her parents had been too ashamed to let her stay at home and it had been Judy Taylor, the sister of the boy Jeanie had hoped to marry, who had suggested that she come to Ashdown. It had been here, in this very garden, that Hope had been born under the apple tree.