Homing (19 page)

The Dutch had lasted four days.

When Bracken’s three minutes were up they returned to the drawing room and sat down rather limply where they had been before, while the BBC light music which followed the News burbled gently in the corner.

Mab pressed her hands together and kept her eyes down, striving to conceal even from Virginia the mixed relief and apprehension which possessed her. He was safe, as late as this morning. But there was nothing said about his coming away from the war in France. Almost by accident he had got caught in it, and being Jeff he would stay on the story, which was the British sector of the Belgian Front. And the secret hope that she and Sylvia had shared that Jeff might by good fortune write the war from England was lost.

Virginia, also with something to hide, was thinking that when the German Army established itself on the Dutch coastline as they were now free to do, they would be less than two hundred
miles by air from London, whereas the German cities were still as far from British bases as they ever were. But surely the French Army was still formidable? Surely the Belgians would hold? Surely Hitler must still fight a whole campaign across the Channel before he could spare planes and troops to invade England too? Unless he risked everything all at once in one colossal knockout blow …

Louvain, Liége, Namur, Dinant—all the old, haunted, dreadful names again, till people who could remember 1914 began to feel as though they were living in one of those vivid dreams where everything has a weird familiarity—I have been here before—I have already done this—how—when—who am I….

Jeff was reporting now from Boulogne, where the correspondents had been (they felt) unfairly and too hastily shunted as the British Army continued to fall back to protect its exposed right flank facing the crumbling French divisions around Sedan. Boulogne was being bombed, as the Germans came nearer.

Cambrai, Péronne, St. Quentin…. The British front line continued to withdraw as the French continued to reel back upon them, and the Germans kept on coming. General Gamelin was replaced by General Weygand. Churchill’s broadcast on the Sunday night left England both stimulated and aghast. The Maginot Line was turned, he said, making no bones about it—the French had nevertheless promised to fight to the end—(how else?)—and finally, said Churchill, would come the battle for what he called Our Island—blood, toil, tears, and sweat. Winston knew how to talk to his countrymen.

Arras, Amiens, Abbéville….

“The men who fought in the old war and are treading the same ground in this one must feel like ghosts,” Virginia said to Rosalind on Tuesday afternoon, when she and Mab had bicycled over to the Dower House for a Red Cross working-party and stayed on to have a drink after the other members had scattered homewards in time for the six o’clock News.

“The old war,” Rosalind said thoughtfully, turning her glass. “Have you noticed how often we say that? Almost with a fondness, because this one is so much more terrible.”

“And have you noticed,” said Virginia, “that instead of being frightened or discouraged everybody is suddenly full of beans? Old Mrs. Thingummy this afternoon, with the feather in her hat—instead of beetling off to the back of Wales, she’s been getting out her father’s cutlass, or whatever, and wants to make
kerosene bombs! And darling Winifred organizing the First Aid Post all over again, and apparently visualizing streams of refugees arriving from our own coast towns! And the men—old crocks and babes-in-arms drilling with rook-rifles and spears! Aren’t people wonderful?”

“Does it seem to you,” Rosalind began a little too casually, “that the French are keeping very quiet?”

Virginia stared at her.

“Well, there’s not much news—I mean, how do we know they aren’t reacting the same as we are?”

“I don’t know how I know,” said Rosalind.

“You mean you think they’re going to let us down?”

“I can’t help wondering.”

“
What
an idea!” said Virginia, shocked.

“I know. I shouldn’t have mentioned it,” Rosalind agreed guiltily.

“Jeff mentioned it, ’way back at Christmas time when he was here,” Mab said, having been very silent all afternoon, and they both looked at her in surprise.

“To you, maybe,” said Virginia. “What did he say?”

“He said there must be something we didn’t know about the French. I didn’t think much about it at the time, there were so many other things going on. But if Mr. Churchill had to go over to Paris just to prop them up a few days ago—”

“Was that why he went, do you think?”

“Well, it looks that way,” Mab said apologetically.

The evening News after dinner did nothing to hearten them. Virginia turned with a sigh from the map hung up on the wall—Archie’s map from the old war, where twenty-six years ago the same French towns had been marked with the same little red pins. It had looked bad then too. In 1918, even, it had looked the worst, just before the tide turned towards what became the November Armistice. The Germans would finally have to stop for breath this time too—neither men nor machines could keep the pace. They would run out of bridges and petrol soon. Unless there was something one didn’t know about the French….

Somehow by the twenty-first of May the German Army had swung clean round against the British right,
away
from Paris. And with Abbéville gone, Boulogne was next.

That night at bedtime Mab put out the light in her room, opened the blackout curtains and the window, and slid to her knees with her arms along the sill and her face buried from the
full moon which streamed down over the fragrant garden. It was not praying, it was not crying. She stayed there a long time, and then rose, chilled and stiff, and got into bed.

It was quite a while before she could keep her teeth from chattering. Finally she dozed, exhausted, and roused to confused sounds below, the motor of a car, doors closing, voices—she sat up, holding her breath, trying to hear more above the thumping of her heart. Noel was erect on his cushion in the corner, rumbling in his throat, glancing at her for a clue—a sharp, nervous bark escaped him as they listened, and she hushed him with a quick word….

Running footsteps came down the passage, some one tapped at her door and opened it briskly.

“Mab! Wake up! He’s here! He’s got back safe, come and see!”

It was Sylvia. Generous, loving Sylvia, sharing the first hours of Jeff’s return by coming to Farthingale, and where had they got the petrol? She was closing the window and the curtains, and Mab reached for the bedside light and a dressing gown.

“He was asleep on his feet when he got to London—the correspondents had a very lively time at Boulogne and were taken off by the Navy in one boat as the Guards landed from another, bombs coming down all over the place!” Sylvia was saying. “He and Bracken talked while he changed and had some food, and then I put him into the back seat of the car to sleep while I drove—you never saw such a
thing
as the trip we’ve just had getting here, they’ve got road blocks and barbed wire the whole way from London, and they kept waking Jeff up and shoving a light into his face to make sure I wasn’t carrying a German spy unawares! It took both his Press pass and my face, besides our identity cards, to get us here. At one road block they said nobody but an American girl would have thought she
could
get out of London tonight, and what was the hurry, and I said Jeff had to rest fast and get back on the job. And at another they said, ‘Give us a song, Miss Sprague!’ and I said, ‘Hush, you’ll wake my husband, he’s just back from Boulogne,’ and Jeff stuck his head out and said, ‘Careless talk!’ and everybody was very jolly, and I sang ’em a song since Jeff was awake anyhow, and here we are! Bracken’s given Jeff a few days off to pull himself together and do a story on the L.D.V.s down here, and Evadne found some one to take my duty at the Animal Post so I could get away too.”

By now she had bustled Mab, dazed and delighted, to the staircase, and with the dog in a joyful scamper behind they ran down to the drawing room to find the lights all on and Virginia in a dressing gown administering a scotch and soda to Jeff, who looked pretty much at the fag end, in spite of a bath and a shave and fresh clothes in London.

Without a second thought Mab flung herself headlong into his arms and he swung her clean off her feet and set her down again in their standard greeting after overseas absence, and Sylvia said, “I’m starving, let’s go and scramble some eggs. Oh, I forgot, there’s a war on,
are
there any eggs?” And Virginia, who was still shaking because she had been quite sure it had to be German parachutists knocking up the house at that time of night, said there was some nice meat paste which would make sandwiches and that would have to do.

And with the characteristic family disregard for the clock they all adjourned to the kitchen to have a snack.

Boulogne went on the Thursday, and from then on the news became more hair-raising every day. On Sunday the
Observer
so far abandoned the national policy of understatement as to come out with a headline which said:
Britain
At
Bay.

Jeff spent a night out with the L.D.V. patrol under the searchlights and the waning moon, got his story, and went back to London with Sylvia. When he had gone and it was too late, Virginia realized she had not asked him what to do about parachutists if they came, and Mab discovered that she had had no chance to talk to him without a lot of other people milling around. The whole visit had been like seeing somebody off on a journey—you think of all the things you meant to say after the train has pulled out. And there was no knowing when he would get another chance to come to Farthingale.

Every day the British Army was pushed back in a diminishing semi-circle around Dunkirk, their backs to the sea. It was plain now that Hitler cared less to take Paris than to take that Army where it stood, and then try for London. England was his objective, not France. England he hated, France he could deal with. And he still did not comprehend that the easygoing English now meant to have his head if they never had anything else again.

One woke each morning dreading what the day would bring. One kept one’s face on straight and ate and smiled and answered when spoken to, and performed the necessary tasks of living, and the additional jobs imposed by the effort to meet whatever might be coming, and regained the privacy of one’s room at night with a relief too profound for tears. And above all, one faced perpetually the threat of the Unknown. How would it come? When? Where? and let me not disgrace myself….

So far as possible no one deviated from the normal routine, in order not to give Hitler the satisfaction. Small social engagements were faithfully kept, family anniversaries were soberly observed, shopping, queueing, working-parties, local entertainments, all proceeded as usual. Virginia had arranged early in the spring for Mab to have tennis lessons from one of the young women at the infant school who had been a games-mistress. It made something definite for Mab to do, Virginia maintained, and for the uprooted games-mistress it meant a little welcome pocket-money. Twice a week Mab walked or bicycled to the village and from there a penny bus ride took her to the gates of Overcreech House where the infants and their attendants were housed, and she returned home the same way in time for lunch, after a workout on the neglected tennis court which had seen such gay parties in Virginia’s not too distant youth.

On the twenty-eighth of May Mab arrived back from her tennis lesson breathless, and flung herself at the silent radio in the drawing room. When it responded the midday News had gone by. She snapped it off and ran for the stairs, where she encountered Virginia on the way down for lunch.

“They’re saying in the village that Belgium has quit!” she cried. “Without any warning! They say that leaves our Army uncovered on the left! They say we’re going to bring them back in rowboats!”

“Good Lord, I missed the News!” Virginia looked at her watch. “Who told you this?”

“Some people in a queue at the grocer’s, first. Then I asked at the Post Office and they had heard it too. Old Mrs. Pelham says King Leopold ought to be put up against a wall. He
asked
for our Army, didn’t he!”

“When it was already too late.”

“Jeff was worrying about the French!” said Mab. “And here it’s the Belgians instead! What if—” They were descending the stairs hand in hand towards the dining room where the table
was laid for lunch, and fresh flowers filled the vases, and sunlight sparkled on the silver and mahogany. “What if the French should cave in
too
?” said Mab.

“Oh, it’s not possible!” said Virginia sanely. “We’re so cut off down here, for tuppence I’d run up to Town on the 2.10 and ask Bracken what on earth is going on!”

“Oh, do let’s! We could spend the night with Dinah and see
Gone
With
the
Wind
!”

“Not a good idea, I’m afraid,” Virginia said hastily, abandoning her impulsive jaunt to Upper Brook Street. A second evacuation was already being talked of. “Oh, well, we shall know soon enough, I expect, if we stay right here.”

Belgium had lasted eighteen days.

For a matter of hours, then, England staggered and groped. Their Army was trapped between the Germans and the sea, with both flanks uncovered. They had been let down, right and left. Then slowly the word began to spread, even down in the West. There were trains full of weary, cheerful troops, unshaven, still damp and sandy from the Dunkirk beaches, but safe home again—the miracle of the little boats had happened, the inspired civilian rescue of an army had come off. Dunkirk had passed into history.

What next? Everyone felt a little silly to mention it, but the invasion of England was probably next.

The weather was still heartlessly beautiful the day Mona’s letter came—very brief, too unemotional. With several days of his leave still to run, Michael had fallen in with some Navy cronies who had got hold of a Dutch skoot lying in the port of London—and when it headed for the Dunkirk beaches in the fleet of small craft which flowed towards the sea, often without charts or instruments, Michael was aboard. German dive-bombers machine gunned the decks off La Panne and he was killed, though the skoot survived and stayed afloat to bring back her load to Dover.