Homing (18 page)

W
HAT WITH
Finland’s surrender in March, and Denmark overrun in a single day in April, and Norway going under before your eyes as May came in, it got so you dreaded to turn on the radio each morning. Virginia had a portable in her bedroom, and Mab usually joined her there for early tea. Together each day they learned what Virginia called the Worst, before they faced the world downstairs. After dinner each evening in the drawing room the nine o’clock News awaited them again, inevitable as doom.

Spring had come in with a rush, after the coldest winter in living memory. Easter was in March, and it seemed as though everybody but Michael had four days’ leave, and got about with hoarded petrol and did reckless shopping and noted—with an inward prickle of apprehension—that the crocuses were out, and it was Time.

A.R.P. tightened up, after the winter’s sag. Gasmasks were dusted off, though nobody carried them any more. The Lowlands braced themselves again, obstinately refusing Allied offers of what was tactfully called “preventive aid” and clinging desperately to their forlorn and futile neutrality.

When the blow fell, on April ninth, it was the usual shock. Hitler had gone for Norway instead.

“Caught on the wrong foot again,” said Virginia crossly. “Everybody’s in France, watching the other mousehole!”

Everybody but the Fleet, which at once began to distinguish itself and take punishment. Michael was there, on a destroyer—not one of those that were sunk at once. And Mona’s chin was well up.

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” she said.

But it wasn’t enough. Poland had gone down before sheer crashing weight and numbers, rolling in over a flat defenceless
countryside. In Norway Hitler uncorked a new technique—the back door, the dagger from behind, wholesale blackmail and treachery and murder, the Fifth Column. Once more the free world had to watch, angry and impotent, while a brave, bewildered nation went down fighting. Courage was not enough in Norway either, and neutrality was a delusion. If Norway had not been so busy being neutral while Finland was defending itself last winter, Bracken said, she might have stood a better chance now. Neutrals wanted to have it both ways. But even now, if Belgium and Holland could learn quickly from Norway’s dreadful lesson …

Finland had held out one hundred and three days against the Russians. After twenty-five days the Norwegian Government was evacuated by British ships under heavy fire, and British troops were admitted to be falling back towards their embarkation ports from impossible positions. The country was lost.

“We will never win this war with Chamberlain in Downing Street!” cried Virginia, and there was acrimonious debate in the House along the same lines, and shouts of “Resign!” But the stubborn, unspectacular, pathetic old man would not concede defeat.

“Who else is there?” Mab asked, for it was hard to remember a time when Neville Chamberlain had not been Prime Minister.

“Winston,” said Virginia without hesitation.

“But he’s got the Admiralty!”

“They should move him up. He could run this war single-handed better than Chamberlain and his whole blithering Cabinet put together!”

“But I thought they said he was wrong when—”

“Of course he’s been wrong sometimes!” Virginia interrupted impatiently. “They all make mistakes! But I’d rather have Winston at Number Ten making
his
kind of mistakes than put up any longer with Chamberlain’s howlers!”

“Was it a howler to try to help Norway?”

“
No
, we had to do
something
!” (Nobody could discuss Norway any more without shouting, Bracken said.) “But somehow it wasn’t done
right
! I don’t know, but we’ve got to do better than this! There’s got to be a change, this won’t do at all!” Virginia rose briskly and rang for Melchett. “Let’s have some tea—port wine—Ovaltine—what’ll it be? I need something to brace me up, don’t you?”

“I’d like some hot tea,” said Mab. “And some cinnamon toast.”

“All right. Whatever you say!”

“I’m cold,” said Mab, rubbing her fingers and hunching her shoulders. “And it’s too late to start a fire.”

Melchett came, and the order was given. As she turned to go, she hesitated.

“Perhaps you ought to know, madam, that one of the Bank young ladies has had bad news from Norway.”

“Oh, dear. Which one?”

“Miss Merton, madam.”

The one called Claudia, Virginia thought. The one who wept all the time anyway. Her boy. It would be.

“Is he—does she know—?”

“He’s dead, madam.”

Melchett went away to get the tea.

In the quiet room, which was so suddenly cold, Mab and Virginia looked at each other in silence. Somebody killed. First blood for the house this war. It had moved much closer, in one tick of the clock. The long, horrifying casualty lists of the other war had not yet begun. By Christmas in 1914 they had lost half a million men. Now it was starting again.

“I suppose it’s wrong to be glad it wasn’t Michael,” said Mab finally. “What shall we do?”

“What
can
we do?” Virginia threw out her hands. “She’ll be giving Anne Phillips a bad time, though.”

“We might send them up our tea when it comes,” Mab suggested practically.

“Brandy, more likely. Perhaps I should take it up myself.” Virginia stood a minute, gazing blankly at the empty hearth. “We should have had a fire tonight,” she murmured. “It’s this war—you go without common comforts—no more this—no more that. Well, there’s still some brandy.” She moved with decision towards the door. “You go ahead with your tea when it comes. I won’t be long.”

When Melchett returned with the tray Mab was still sitting motionless, her hands pressed together in her lap.

A week ago Jeff had gone out to France, wearing a correspondent’s uniform. Just a routine job, he said—Paris, Nancy, Arras, Luxembourg—it was a sort of joke that everybody went to Luxembourg, where you could watch the guns in France firing while you drank your coffee on the hotel terrace. The tourist’s
war, said Jeff with sarcasm. But after months on the diplomatic run, writing think-pieces in London, he was thankful for any change. A group of them had all gone together—like a guided tour, said Jeff. British Headquarters were very fussy about who saw their war, and the French had wound themselves up in a web of red tape in Paris which was even worse. Still, it was a step in the right direction, said Jeff. Mab and Sylvia were only thankful that it was a step across the Channel instead of north-ward, towards Norway. He would be perfectly all right in France, they had assured themselves.

Mab thanked Melchett for the tea and said Good night as usual, but made no move towards the tray. The mere fact that an unknown boy had got killed in Norway did not mean that Jeff was any less safe in France than he had been while that boy was still alive. But it brought the war in. It made the war a member of the household, even though Claudia Merton’s Harold was not one of the family. It set you counting up the ones that belonged to you—Michael somewhere off Narvik, Roger at an East Coast aerodrome, all those at their posts in London, Jeff on his correspondent’s beat—and everybody knew he was not the kind to write the war from the Ritz bar in Paris….

Virginia came in, looking puzzled.

“I’ll never understand that girl. She’s been snivelling for weeks and now she keeps saying, ‘I knew this was going to happen, I knew he was going to die!’ Perhaps a little more faith might have saved him!” She sat down and began to pour out their tea.

“Sylvia says we can only lose him if we let go and get frightened,” Mab agreed, staring down at her cup, and Virginia gave her a compassionate glance.

“Jeff’s all right where he is,” she said gently. “There’s precious little shooting in France so far!”

The next day brought a message from Mona. Michael had been wounded, not badly. He was in London, and if they could both get leave might they come down for the Whitsun weekend? Virginia replied cordially that Mab would give them her room and double up in Virginia’s and everyone was more than pleased.

And so on that Friday morning when Virginia woke and turned on the early News, she and Mab sat up in bed staring at each other while the neat, precise voice of the BBC announced in its pear-shaped tones that Amsterdam and Brussels had been bombed at dawn, and the German invasion of the Lowlands had begun.

Churchill was moved up in a hurry then, and by nine o’clock News time that evening he was Prime Minister. Well, now we’re for it, everybody said. Winston will show ’em. And then—inevitably—everybody chuckled.

It was another oddity of an odd war that when the long-awaited attack finally came, Michael should be safe at Farthingale with his arm in a sling, and Jeff, the non-combatant, should be missing. He had been in Paris on the Wednesday, doing his regular weekly broadcast. He had found Paris still eating well, going to the theatre, cheating on its blackout, hoarding its manpower—and criticizing the British for what happened in Norway. Jeff’s French was too good. He heard too much. He was riled at Paris. More than he could say out loud.

So far as Bracken knew, Jeff was to have left Paris with a group of correspondents on Thursday for a motor trip to the British sector. He was due to report from there on the Saturday, visiting the fighting squadrons of the RAF and spending a night among the blockhouses of the British Line facing the Belgian frontier. Therefore the first news of the invasion must have caught him at British Headquarters near Arras, where there was conceivably a lot going on.

But Saturday night, when he should have made contact with London, the British Army had hurled themselves forward into Belgium to meet the German advance, and the whereabouts of the Press units had become hazy.

The Saturday papers were full of horrors, and once again a new one—this time Hitler was dropping parachute troops behind the lines among a defenceless civilian population; ruthless fighting men and saboteurs, often wearing civilian disguises or Allied uniforms, and speaking the common tongue, so that they came upon their objectives unsuspected, as it were unseen, and things blew up, and crossroads were held, and false rumour and panic were started like a prairie fire in the rear of the defending army. It was a refinement of the old two-front war—an embroidery on treachery that crisped the nerves.

Suppose, thought Virginia, Germans just suddenly rained down out of the sky into the garden, and walked in with guns. Invasion? But this was Martian.

By Sunday night the whole civil defence system in England
had sprung to attention, and the air wardens—who were unarmed—had been ordered out on a dusk to dawn patrol to watch for parachute landings. But surely the Germans had enough on their hands on the Continent just now? Surely they couldn’t just hurdle the war there and start on England too?

Now, thought Virginia, lying in bed on Sunday night with Mab apparently asleep beside her,
now
I am going to be afraid. I remember now how it feels. I thought I was awfully sensible and not a bit nervous and could cope with the whole thing quite steadily and be a credit to everybody. Bombing didn’t seem very likely down here, and gas didn’t seem very likely anywhere—but parachutists in the garden! What would I do? Should I get out a gun? What if Mab just suddenly met a German coming at her,
what
would
I
do
?
This is nightmare, thought Virginia. This is going to tell on me….

Whitsun was forgotten. Michael and Mona, after less than two days at Farthingale, returned to London for Mona’s stand-to with the ambulance, though Michael’s leave had still two weeks to run. He was furious. The lilacs were out, the weather was perfect, it was going to be a honeymoon. That bloody awful little man Hitler
again.

“It’s like having the war begin all over again,” said Virginia, trying to sound casual. And when once more the raids over England didn’t come—“It’s that same feeling we had last September—as though you’ve stepped down a bottom stair that wasn’t there.”

There was one difference, though, Mab thought. When the war first began they knew where Jeff was.

Useless to comfort oneself now with the capital C for correspondent in gold thread on his cap and the green tab with its gilt legend on the shoulder of his uniform to show he was not a combat man. The dive-bombers screaming down over Belgium wouldn’t notice that. Sylvia in London would be the first to hear when he did communicate, and one could trust her to pass on any news at once. Now was the time, Mab reminded herself, not to let go and get frightened.

On Monday the Dutch Royal Family found refuge in England, safely transported by the British Navy, and there were sinister German references to a “secret weapon”, in use in their swift advance. The same evening on the BBC Mr. Eden appealed for men over and under the military age or otherwise exempt, to form a new force to be called Local Defence Volunteers—for
special training to deal with possible landings of German parachute troops in England.

Virginia’s midriff went cold when she heard. If the Secretary for War was entertaining the same nightmare as her own, things were really bad. But she felt in a way comforted. She was not alone. She glanced at Mab, sitting silent and self-contained on the other end of the sofa listening to the News, and wondered what Mab thought about parachutists—if Mab had room for any anxiety beyond Jeff’s immediate safety.

The telephone rang, and their eyes met, startled and apprehensive, as they both moved towards it. It was so little used these days, this would have to be something important.

It was Bracken, calling from London to say that Jeff had filed a dispatch at Lille that morning, passed through the British censors. He had been as far forward as Brussels and Louvain, which were now behind the new British lines. He had seen the long, agonizing processions of Belgian refugees bombed and machine gunned on the roads by German planes, had seen the smoking, deserted villages they had left behind them—as Tracy had seen in Poland last September. The American Ambassador was still in Brussels. So far, the main German pressure appeared to be on the French Army around Sedan, and the British in their sector to the north were not as yet heavily engaged. Holland was all through, Bracken said—done in by expert Fifth Column and parachute work.