The Caxley Chronicles (25 page)

'You're no gardener, Edward! I forgot. Too bad to hold you up. Come and say "Hello" to the family before you set off.'

His Aunt Kathy was beating eggs in a big yellow basin. Her dark hair was tucked into a band round her head so that she looked as if she were wearing a coronet. How pretty she was, thought Edward, as slim and brown as a gipsy! No wonder Uncle Bertie had waited patiently for her all those years. He remembered Grandma North's tart comments to his mother on the marriage.

'I should've thought Bertie would have had more sense than to marry into the Howard family. Look what it brought you—nothing but unhappiness! And a widow too. Those two children will never take to a stepfather—even one as doting as dear Bertie. I can see nothing but misery ahead for that poor boy!'

'"That poor boy" is nearly forty,' his mother had replied with considerable vigour, 'and he's loved her all his life. Long faces and sharp tongues won't harm that marriage, you'll see.'

And all Caxley had seen. Bertie and Kathy, with her son and daughter by her first husband, were living proof of mature happiness, and when a son was born a year or so later, the little town rejoiced with them. Even Grandma North agreed grudgingly that it was all running along extraordinarily smoothly and put it down entirely to Bertie's exceptionally sweet North disposition.

'Where are the children?' asked Edward.

'Fishing,' replied Kathy, smiling. 'Unless you mean Andrew.
He's asleep, I hope. He woke us at four this morning with train noises—shunting mostly. It makes an awful din.'

'That boy wants to look forward, not backwards,' observed Edward. 'He wants to get his mind on aeroplanes.'

'I think one air fanatic in the family is enough,' commented Bertie, handing over the key to the garage. 'Off you go. Have a good day.'

And Edward departed on the first stage of his journey westward.

'It would never surprise me,' said Bertie to his wife, when Edward had gone, 'to hear that Edward had decided to join the R.A.F. His heart's in aeroplanes, not tractors and binders.'

'But what about our business?' queried Kathy. 'I thought you'd planned for him to become a partner?'

'I shan't press the boy. We've two of our own to follow on if they want to.'

'But
flying,'
protested Kathy, sifting flour energetically into the beaten eggs. 'It's so dangerous, Bertie. Edward might be killed!'

'He might indeed,' observed Bertie soberly. And thousands more like him, he thought privately. He watched his pretty wife at her work, and thought, not for the first time, how much there was which he could not discuss with her. Did she ever, for one fleeting moment, face the fact that war was looming closer and closer? This uneasy peace which Chamberlain had procured at Munich could not last long. There was menace on every side. It must be met soon. Bertie knew in his bones that it was inevitable.

'What a long face!' laughed Kathy, suddenly looking up from her cooking. 'You look as though you'd lost a penny and found a halfpenny.'

She crossed the kitchen towards the oven, shooing him out of the way as if he were one of the children.

'It's time this sponge was in,' she cried. 'Don't forget Mum and Dad are coming to tea this afternoon. You'd better get on in the garden while the sun's out.'

She paused briefly by the window to gaze at the shining morning.

'Isn't it lovely, Bertie? When it's like this I can't believe it will ever be any different—just sunshine all the time. Do you feel that way too, Bertie?'

'I don't think I'm quite such an incurable optimist,' answered Bertie, lightly. 'More's the pity maybe.'

He made his way back to the mower, his thoughts still with him. The grass was still too wet to cut, he decided. He would take a stroll along the towpath and watch the river flowing gently eastward beneath the cloudless sky. There was something very comforting about flowing water when one's spirits were troubled.

He turned left outside his garden gate, his back to the town, and limped steadily towards the tunnel of green shade made by a dozen or so massive chestnut trees, now lit with hundreds of flower-candles, which lined the banks some quarter of a mile away. The sunshine was warm upon his back, and broke into a thousand fragments upon the surface of the running water, dazzling to the eye. Just before the dark cavern formed by the chestnut trees, the river was shallow, split by a long narrow island, the haven of moorhen and coot.

Here Bertie paused to rest his leg and to enjoy the sparkle of the fretted water and the rustling of the willow leaves on the islet. The shallows here were spangled with the white flowers of duckweed, their starry fragility all the more evident by contrast with a black dabchick who searched busily for food among them, undisturbed by Bertie's presence.

The mud at the side of the water glistened like brown satin and gave forth that peculiarly poignant river-smell which is never forgotten. A bee flew close to Bertie's ear and plopped down on the mud, edging its way to the brink of the water to drink. A water-vole, sunning itself nearby, took to the stream, and making for the safety of the island left an echelon of ripples behind its small furry head.

The change in temperature beneath the great chestnut trees was amazing. Here the air struck cold upon Bertie's damp forehead. The path was dark, the stones treacherously slimy and green with moss. There was something dark and secret about this part of the Cax. No wonder that the children loved to explore its banks at this spot! It was the perfect setting for adventure. To look back through the tunnel to the bright world which he had just traversed was an eerie experience. There it was all light, gaiety and warmth—a Kathy's world, he thought suddenly—where no terrors were permitted.

But here there was chill in the air, foreboding, and a sense of doom. He put a hand upon the rough bark of a massive trunk beside him and shuddered at its implacable coldness. Was this his world, at the moment, hostile, menacing, full of unaccountable fears?

He was getting fanciful, he told himself, retracing his steps. It was good to get back into the sunshine, among the darting
birds and the shimmering insects which played above the kindly Cax. He would put his morbid thoughts behind him and return to the pleasures of the moment. There was the lawn to be cut and the dead daffodils to be tied up. He quickened his pace, advancing into the sunshine.

In the market square the bells of St Peter's called the citizens of Caxley to Matins. Under the approving eyes of the bronze Queen Victoria whose statue dominated the market place, a trickle of men, women and children made their way from the dazzling heat into the cool nave of the old church. The children looked back reluctantly as they mounted the steps. A whole hour of inaction, clad in white socks, tight Sunday clothes, and only the hat elastic wearing a pink groove under one's chin to provide entertainment and furtive nourishment, loomed ahead. What a wicked waste of fresh air and sunshine!

Septimus Howard and his wife Edna crossed the square from his bakery as the bells clamoured above them, but they were making their way to the chapel in the High Street where Sep and his forbears had worshipped regularly for many years.

Automatically, he glanced across at Howard's Restaurant which occupied the entire ground floor beneath Edward's abode. The linen blinds were pulled down, the
CLOSED
card hung neatly in the door. His son Robert had done his work properly and left all ship-shape for the weekend. It was to be hoped, thought Sep, that he would be in chapel this morning. He was far too lax, in Sep's opinion, in his chapel-going. It set a poor example to the work people.

Edward's presence he could not hope to expect, for he and
his sister Joan were church-goers, taking after the North side of the family. Not that they made many attendances, as Sep was well aware. He sympathised with Edward's passion for flying, but would have liked to see it indulged after he had done his duty to his Maker.

The congregation was sparse. No doubt many were gardening or had taken advantage of the warmth to drive with their families for a day at the sea. It was understandable, Sep mused, but indicative of the general slackening of discipline. Or was it perhaps an unconscious desire to snatch at happiness while it was still there? After the grim aftermath of the war, and the grimmer times of the early thirties, the present conditions seemed sweet. Who could blame people for living for the present?

Beside him Edna stirred on the hard seat. Her dark hair, scarcely touched with grey, despite her seventy years, curled against her cheek beneath a yellow straw hat nodding with silk roses and a golden haze of veiling. To Sep's eye it was not really suitable headgear for the Sabbath, but it was impossible to curb Edna's exuberance when it came to clothes, and he readily admitted that it set off her undimmed beauty. He never ceased to wonder at the good fortune which had brought into his own quiet life this gay creature, whose presence gave him such comfort.

Now the minister was praying for peace in their time. Sep, remembering with infinite sadness the loss of his first-born Jim in the last war, prayed with fervent sincerity. What would happen to the Howards if war came again, as he feared it must? Robert, in his thirties, would go. Edward, no doubt, would be called up at once to the Royal Air Force. Leslie, his absent son
whom he had not seen since he left Caxley and his wife Winnie years earlier, would be too old to be needed.

And he himself, at seventy-three? Thank God, he was still fit and active. He could continue to carry on his business and the restaurant too, and he would find time to work, as he had done earlier, for the Red Cross.

What dreadful thoughts for a bright May morning! Sep looked at the sunshine spilling lozenges of bright colour through the narrow windows across the floor of the chapel, and squared his shoulders.

He must trust in God. He was good and merciful. A way must surely be found for peace between nations. That man of wickedness, Adolf Hitler, would be put down in God's good time. He had reached the limit of his powers.

He followed Edna's nodding roses out into the sunny street. Someone passed with an armful of lilac, and its fragrance seemed the essence of early summer. Opposite, at the end of one of the roads leading to the Cax, he could see a magnificent copper beech tree, its young thin leaves making a haze of pink against the brilliant sky.

It was a wonderful day. It was a wonderful world. Surely, for men of faith, all would be well, thought Sep, retracing his steps to the market square.

But despite the warmth around him, there was a little chill in the old man's heart, as though the shadow of things to come had began to fall across a fine Sunday in May in the year 1939.

A
S THE SUMMER
advanced, so did the menacing shadow of war. It was plain that Germany intended to subdue Poland, and Caxley people, in common with the rest of Britain, welcomed the Prime Minister's guarantee that Britain would stand by the threatened country. The memory of Czechoslovakia's fate still aroused shame.

'Hitler's for it if he tries that game again with Poland,' said one worthy to another in the market square.

'If we gets the Russians on our side,' observed his crony, 'he don't stand a chance.'

There was a growing unity of purpose in the country. The ties with France, so vividly remembered by the older generation who had fought in the Great War, were being strengthened daily. If only the Government could come to favourable terms with Russia, then surely this tripartite alliance could settle Hitler's ambitions, and curb his alarming progress in Europe.

Meanwhile, plans went ahead for the evacuation of children, the issue of gas masks, the digging of shelters from air attacks, and all the civilian defence precautions which, if not particularly reassuring, kept people busy and certainly hardened their resolve to show Hitler that they meant business.

The three generations in the Howard and North families faced the threat of war typically. Septimus Howard, who had
been in his fifties during the Great War of 1914–18, was sad but resolute.

'It's a relief,' he said, voicing the sentiments of all who heard him, 'to know where we stand, and to know that we are acting in the right way. That poor man Chamberlain has been sorely hoodwinked. He's not alone. There are mighty few people today who will believe that evil is still abroad and active. But now his eyes are opened, and he can see Hitler for what he is—a liar, and worse still, a madman.'

Bertie North, who had fought in France as a young man and had lost a foot as a result, knew that the war ahead would involve his family in Caxley as completely as it would engage the armed men. This, to him, was the real horror, and the thought of a gas attack, which seemed highly probable, filled him with fury and nausea. Part of him longed to send Kathy and the three children overseas to comparative safety, but he could not ignore that inward voice which told him that this would be the coward's way. Not that Kathy would go anyway—she had made that plain from the start. Where Bertie was, there the family would be, she maintained stoutly, and nothing would shake her.

Only two things gave Bertie any comfort in this dark time. First, he would return to the army, despite his one foot.

'Must be masses of paper work to do,' he told Sep. 'I can do that if they won't let me do anything more martial, and free another chap.'

The second thing was the attitude of mind, in which the young men most involved faced the situation. Bertie remembered with bitter pain the heroic dedication with which his own generation had entered the war. High ideals, noble sacrifices,
chivalry, honour and patriotism had been the words—and not only the words—which sent a gallant and gay generation into battle. The awful aftermath had been doubly poignant.

Today there was as much courage and as much resolution. But the young men were not blinded by shining ideals. This would be a grim battle, probably a long one. There was no insouciant cry of 'Over by Christmas', as there had been in 1914. They were of a generation which knew that it was fighting for survival, and one which knew too that in modern warfare there is no real victor. Whatever the outcome it would be a long road to recovery when the war itself was past.