Frances had never heard Major Crabbe speak so much before—he had a quiet, deliberate way of speaking which gave weight to his words.
“The whole English-speaking world,” said Elise thoughtfully. “All of us pulling together. It sounds marvellous—would it be possible, Ned?”
“Why not?” he asked. “Our interests are identical. We believe in the same things; we want the same things—peace and decent behaviour and a fair chance for every one. There couldn’t be another war—ever—if the thing could be made to work. Churchill and Roosevelt between them could keep the whole world in order.” He rose and knocked out his pipe. “That’s what I think, anyhow,” he said. “I don’t pretend to be a politician or an economist . . . but . . . that’s what I think.”
“Are you going back to the camp?” asked Elise in surprise.
He nodded. “I’ve got to go back,” he said. “I just want to have a peep at Jennifer.”
“Don’t waken her,” said Elise, looking up and smiling.
Frances went up to bed in a thoughtful mood. She felt cheered by what Major Crabbe had said; she felt as if she could see a break in the dark clouds of war. She remembered everything that he had said, but one thing especially stuck in her mind and she knew that she could never forget it. “We want . . . decent behaviour,” Major Crabbe had said. Frances thought that the phrase epitomised all that we were fighting for.
One of the pleasant features of Cairn was the fact that it was a good place for sleep. There was no need to woo sleep in Cairn: one dropped off peacefully the moment one’s head touched the pillow and slept solidly until the morning. One night, however (it was shortly after Major Crabbe’s statement of faith), Frances experienced a very peculiar dream. She was in a railway station—a small station situated on a main line—and she was waiting for a train to London. The train was approaching rapidly and she was aware that this was the train she must catch; she waved her hand to make it stop (waved her hand to the engine-driver as if the train were a bus), but the train did not slacken speed. It approached and thundered through the station at express rate, and the noise was so loud that it woke her. She woke suddenly with a start but the noise of the train still filled her ears, roaring away into the distance, and after a few moments she came to the conclusion that the noise was real and that it must have been an aeroplane flying over the house. She sat up in bed and rubbed her eyes and looked at her watch—it was half-past one.
Just then there was a knock on the door and Elise looked in. “Frances,” she said in a whisper. “Frances, are you awake? Did you hear it?”
“Yes,” replied Frances. “It seemed pretty near.”
Elise came in; she was in her dressing-gown and her hair was in a net. “I think I shall take Jennifer down to the cellar,” she said. “Do you think I should? Perhaps it’s silly to disturb her—”
“I don’t know,” Frances said.
“Perhaps I should just let her sleep,” said Elise doubtfully. “I suppose the chance of another bomb dropping in Cairn is very slight—what do you think?”
It was unlike Elise to be undecided, to ask for advice. Frances considered the matter carefully: she thought the risk was slight, but it was there—somebody in Cairn might have been careless and left a crack of light showing—she did not feel that she could take the responsibility of advising Elise to leave Jennifer where she was. “I think you should take her down,” said Frances at last. “It’s better to be on the safe side. I’ll put on some clothes and come too—there’s another one.”
The second plane roared overhead and sped away, and Frances leapt out of bed and dressed as quickly as she could. When she went into the nursery she found Elise and the nurse making their final preparations. They rolled Jennifer in blankets and as they did so she opened her eyes and smiled at them. “Good-morning Mummy,” she said in a sleepy voice.
“Good-morning, darling,” said Elise tenderly, “. . . but it isn’t time to get up yet.” She gathered the bundle into her arms and led the way downstairs. The nurse seized the mattress and Frances took the pillow and the rest of the blankets and followed quickly.
The little procession went through the hall and into the kitchen premises and down a steep stone stair. Frances saw that there was a light in the cellar—Mrs. MacNair and Annie were there before them.
“There you are!” exclaimed Mrs. MacNair. “I heard you getting up and I knew you would be bringing the wee lamb downstairs. We can lay the mattress on the floor; there is no draught and it is a fine dry cellar, so she will take no harm. . . . Och, the wee creature, she’s smiling at me!”
Elise put her baby on the mattress and tucked her in firmly with the blankets. “It’s all right, Jennifer,” she said. “Go to sleep, darling. Mummy will pat you.” She knelt down and patted Jennifer soothingly. . . . In a few moments Jennifer’s eyes were shut and she was breathing quietly and easily.
“The wee pet!” said Mrs. MacNair. “Och, she is a good bairn. It was just as well to bring her down—she will be quite safe here. Mr. MacNair says there is several feet of stone in the roof of the cellar—it is very safe.”
The cellar was a long-shaped vault with arches and alcoves. It was warm and dry and the walls and the roof were of solid stone and tremendously thick. At the other end of the cellar there were wine bins—some of them full of bottles—but there was no wine in the outer part where they intended to sit. Mrs. MacNair had brought down some chairs during the last raid and had left them there, and some wooden boxes as well. She began to arrange them conveniently.
“If somebody had told me when I married Mr. MacNair that I would be spending some of my nights sitting in this cellar I would have thought they were mad,” declared Mrs. MacNair forcefully, “but now it seems a natural thing to do. We will have a cup of tea. I put the kettle on as I came through the kitchen.”
“I’ll infuse the tea,” Annie said.
“Are you frightened to go up?” asked Mrs. MacNair. “I can do it myself if you are frightened.”
“Och, I’m not frightened,” declared Annie. She went up the stairs and disappeared.
“She is a good girl,” Mrs. MacNair said. “A wee bit scatter-brained, maybe, but her heart is in the right place. I am hoping she will not lose it to one of the soldiers,” added Mrs. MacNair with a smile. “There will be a lot of hearts lost in Cairn before the war is finished—so there will.”
“There’s another plane,” said Jennifer’s nurse suddenly.
They listened. The plane approached rapidly. The noise of its engines grew louder and louder, reverberating through the vaulted cellar till it sounded like the noise of half a dozen express trains.
“I think there are several of them,” said Frances, raising her voice so as to be heard through the din.
“Mercy!” exclaimed Mrs. MacNair. “Mercy me, it sounds as if it was coming in at the door—”
Fortunately, however, the plane—or planes—did not attempt this somewhat difficult feat but passed overhead and roared away into the distance, and a few moments later Annie came down the stairs with a tray of tea-things.
“That was a near one,” she said cheerfully. “The whole place shook with it-—you wouldn’t hear it down here.”
“We heard it,” said Mrs. MacNair dryly.
Frances was surprised at Annie’s sang-froid, for she remembered that Annie had been horror-stricken at the idea of living in London and at the thought of bombs (“I’d be scared all the time,” Annie had said), but now the test had come and Annie was not scared at all; she was sitting on an old wooden box with a cup of tea in one hand and a biscuit in the other and was chatting in a friendly manner with Jennifer’s nurse. “It’s quite an easy pattern,” Annie was saying; “you slip one and knit one and pass the slipped stitch over. I’ll give you the pattern tomorrow if you would like it—”
Some people were like Annie, thought Frances; some people thought they would be frightened but were not frightened at all, and there were other people—like Aunt Zoë—who were
exceedingly brave in anticipation but who failed to maintain their courage when the testing time arrived. Frances wished that she knew enough about psychology to understand the reason of these different reactions to danger. It would be interesting. Her own reaction—now that she thought of it—was of a third type. She was a little frightened in anticipation and a little frightened when the test came, but fortunately she was able to control her fear. She pushed it into a corner of her mind and barricaded it in. This left her mind perfectly clear and free to function properly. Of course, one had to keep an eye on the barricade, thought Frances, smiling to herself at the absurd simile; one had to see that it was holding firm and keeping the fear-beast from bursting out and making a nuisance of itself . . .
Mrs. MacNair was talking to Elise. “I wakened everybody,” she was saying. “Mr. MacNair gets the yellow warning, of course, because he is in the Home Guard, but when the red came through I went round and wakened everybody, and small thanks I got for my trouble. Mary—that’s the cook—turned over in her bed and grunted when I told her that the Jerries were here—she is a wee bit deaf, of course—and the others were not for moving either, but I felt I had done the right thing, for I could not take the responsibility of letting them sleep. If anything happened I would never forgive myself.”
“I think you were right,” nodded Elise. “I wouldn’t have come down if it hadn’t been for Jennifer. You can take risks for yourself but you can’t take them for other people.”
Two more planes had passed while they were having tea, passed over and gone, but now there was a different sort of noise. They stopped talking and listened.
“There are several planes wheeling about—” began Frances.
“. . . and that’s machine-gun fire,” added Elise.
“They’ll be fighting!” exclaimed Annie with shining eyes. “It will be one of our own. . . . Och, that’s fine! I’ve been sitting here listening to them going over and wishing I could get at them with my own hands.” She rose as she spoke and made for the stairs.
“Where are you away to?” cried Mrs. MacNair.
“To see—” replied Annie, disappearing with a swirl of her skirts.
“I think I’ll go too,” said Frances, rising. “We shan’t see anything, of course, but still—”
“In the name of fortune!” exclaimed Mrs. MacNair.
There was quite a crowd of villagers on the terrace above the harbour and Frances joined them, for the terrace made an excellent grandstand. Every one was gazing out to sea. The noise was terrific now—the noise of engines zooming and the clatter of machine-guns. In the bright moonlight and against the curtain of dark-blue sky there was a spirited dog-fight taking place: two planes—no, three—whirling, diving, climbing, and jinking round each other, mingling trails of white vapour and tracer bullets. . . . They overshot each other and banked steeply . . . and climbed and dived again. It seemed incredible that they could manoeuvre like that without colliding with each other in mid-air. . . .
Someone—a woman—seized Frances by the arm and said:
“Can ye see them? Which is oors?”
“Oors is the fighter—the wee yin,” said a man’s voice close by.
Suddenly something fell. It was a small object—or so it seemed—it dropped down into the sea and sent up a fountain of spray . . . and almost immediately one of the planes began to lose height . . . it was falling quite slowly . . . turning over and over as it fell . . . it looked like a dry leaf fluttering through the air.
“It’s one o’ the Jerries,” said the man who had spoken before, and Frances, glancing at him, saw that he had a small telescope glued to his eye.
“Are ye sure, Ben?” demanded the woman. “Ye’re not just saying it—”
“It’s a Jerry,” repeated the man. “It’s a dommed Jerry–but I’ll need to get out the boat all the same. . . .”
“Will I come and help ye?” asked a fisherman with a snow-white beard.
“I’ll be quicker mysel’,” declared the first man. He shut his telescope with a snap and ran down the steps.
“Take care the other Jerry doesn’t machine-gun ye, Ben!” cried the woman in anxious tones.
“He wouldn’t, would he?” Frances exclaimed.
“Aye—wouldn’t he? It wouldn’t be the first time—”
The pilot of the other bomber had his hands too full to pay any attention to the fate of his comrade, or his would-be rescuers; he circled round pursued by the fighter; he banked and dived, firing short bursts . . . suddenly he broke away and came zooming towards Cairn harbour with the fighter on his tail. The two planes screamed overhead and they were so low that they almost seemed to touch the chimneys of the hotel, so low that the little group on the terrace flung themselves on the ground . . . and now they were past . . . now they were merely two specks disappearing over the hills, and the roar of their engines and the staccato clatter of machine-guns died away in the distance.
It was over so suddenly. One moment the noise and the tense excitement of battle, and the next moment silence and the calm night. The bomber which had fallen into the sea had almost disappeared by this time. One wing, sticking up above the water, was all that remained of it. The boat had already left the harbour and was pulling out towards the wreck, but Frances did not think it would be in time. “They have collapsible boats, haven’t they?” she asked.
“Aye, but they don’t seem to be using it,” replied the old fisherman.
They waited—it was the last scene in the drama, a silent, melancholy aftermath of battle. The little boat from Cairn reached the spot where the plane had sunk. It circled several times; it paused there, rocking gently on the swell . . . then it turned and made for the shore.
“They’re drooned, I doot,” said the woman who had spoken before. She sighed and added: “Maybe they’ve mothers waiting for them at hame.”
“That’s war,” declared the fisherman with the snowy-white beard. “Their deaths lie at Hitler’s door, like the deaths of millions of other folks more innocent than them . . .”
CHAPTER XXIII
Saturday was the day fixed for the Home Guard manoeuvre. It was a day of brilliant sunshine and soft showers of rain. Tommy came over about seven o’clock, and she and Frances had dinner together at the little table in the window.
“It’s a great night for Cairn,” declared Annie as she brought in their fish and put it before them on the table. “They’re all on the hop—the whole lot of them. It’s a great thing for the Home Guard to be going manoeuvring with real soldiers. Donald Fraser’s almost beside himself. He was in the bar a wee while ago, but he wasn’t there for a drink. He’s wanting to keep a clear head for the night’s work.”
“What did he come for?” asked Frances, smiling at Annie’s excitement.
“It was for advice,” replied Annie seriously. “Mr. MacNair is his Section Leader, and Donald was wanting to know whether he would take his old gun or his new one. They’ve given him a grand new gun from America and Donald’s as proud as punch, but he likes the feel of his old gun better—it’s more friendly, so he said. Mr. MacNair said he could take which he liked but he wasn’t to fire at all. He was to remember it was just a game, Mr. MacNair said.”
“Goodness, I hope they won’t shoot each other!” exclaimed Tommy in some alarm.
“They’ve been told not to,” Annie pointed out.
The object of the exercise was to give the Home Guard a test of efficiency and to see whether a force could land anywhere in the vicinity and make its way to Cairn Castle without being observed and intercepted. As it was impossible to land from the air, it had been agreed that the soldiers from the camp (who were taking the part of the enemy) should be allowed several hours free from observation to get to their positions. At zero hour the exercise would begin and the Home Guard would sally forth to find them. Alec had explained all this to Frances and had then asked, somewhat ingenuously, if she knew where the soldiers intended to “land.” Fortunately Frances was able to reply
with perfect truth that she had not the slightest idea.
“Do you know where they’re going to ‘land,’ Tommy?” inquired Frances when Annie had gone away.
“No, Midge wouldn’t tell me,” she replied. “Midge was very secretive about the whole affair—he seemed pleased and excited about it.”
“Excited!”
“I know it seems absurd, but I know Midge so well. . . . I suppose it will be rather fun . . . hide-and-seek is rather fun, don’t you think so?”
Frances had never played hide-and-seek in her life, for it is impossible to play it alone, so she was not in a position to judge whether or not the game would be fun played on a large scale. She did not reply to Tommy’s question because she was thinking of Captain Widgery and trying to imagine him enjoying a game of hide-and-seek with the Home Guard, trying to imagine him becoming excited over the prospect. She found this quite impossible to imagine—it was out of character. Barry and Mark might enjoy the exercise—and even Guy—but not Captain Widgery. . . .
“What are you dreaming about?” Tommy inquired.
“Nothing,” said Frances hastily.
It was such a lovely evening that they decided to go for a walk along the cliffs. Frances was anxious to show her friend St. Kiaran’s Chapel, and there would be plenty of time to go there and back before dark. The sun was declining westwards, making a golden path across the sea, and the shadows of the two girls were long and thin, spread out upon the grass.
“I’m worried about Guy,” said Tommy suddenly. “He used to pop in and see me quite often, but I haven’t seen him for days.”
“Perhaps he’s busy.”
“Perhaps,” agreed Tommy doubtfully. “But he isn’t too busy to go up to the Thynnes, or to take Angela to the pictures at Rithie.”
Frances was silent for a few moments—she remembered the tennis match.
After a little Tommy continued: “I used to like Angela. She was rather a dear until she got spoilt by too much attention. Her mother is a fool—hasn’t the slightest control over her and encourages her to be silly. I used to think she would be the very person for Guy, but I don’t think so now.”
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