The Caxley Chronicles (28 page)

She loved the chattering children in their blue and white checked overalls. The day seemed one mad rush from crisis to crisis. There was milk to be administered, potties to empty, dozens of small hands and faces to wash, tears to be quenched, passions to be calmed and a hundred activities to take part in.

She loved too, the atmosphere of the old premises. It was an agreeably proportioned building with high arched windows along each side. Round the walls were dozens of large wooden hat pegs used by Quakers of past generations. The floor was of scrubbed boards, charming to look at but dangerously splintery for young hands and knees.

Outside was a grassy plot. In one half stood a dozen or so small headstones over the graves of good men and women now departed. There was something very engaging, Joan thought, to see the babies tumbling about on the grass, and supporting themselves by the little headstones. Here the living and the dead met companionably in the autumn sunlight, and the war seemed very far away indeed.

A steep flight of stone steps led from the road to the top of the grassy mound upon which the meeting house stood. An old iron lamp, on an arched bracket, hung above the steps, and Joan often thought what a pleasant picture the children made as they swarmed up the steps beneath its graceful curve, clad in their blue and white.

Her mother came on two afternoons a week to help with the children. Three afternoons were spent at the hospital, for Winnie did not want to tie herself to a regular full-time job, but preferred to do voluntary service when and where she could. There was her mother to consider and the evacuees. Winnie determined to keep Rose Lodge running as smoothly as she could, and only prayed that the proposal that it should be turned into a nurses' hostel would be quietly forgotten.

She found the small children amusing but thoroughly exhausting. The nursing afternoons were far less wearing.

She said as much to Joan as they walked home together one afternoon, scuffling the fallen leaves which were beginning to dapple the footpath with red and gold.

'I suppose it's because I was trained to nurse,' she remarked.

'Rather you than me,' responded Joan. 'It's bad enough mopping up a grazed knee. Anything worse would floor me completely.'

They turned into the drive of Rose Lodge and saw old Mrs North at the open front door. She was smiling.

'You've just missed Edward on the telephone. He's as pleased as a dog with two tails. He's posted at last to—now, what was it?—a flying training school in Gloucestershire.'

'Well,' said Joan thankfully, 'there's one happy fellow in Caxley tonight!'

E
DWARD ARRIVED
at the flying training school on a disspiritingly bleak October afternoon. The aerodrome lay on a windswept upland, not unlike his own downland country. In the distance, against the pewter-grey sky, a line of woods appeared like a navy-blue smudge on the horizon; but for mile upon mile the broad fields spread on every side, some a faded green, some ashen with bleached stubble and some newly-furrowed with recent ploughing.

Edward surveyed the landscape from a window by his bed. His sleeping quarters were grimly austere. A long army hut, with about ten iron beds on each side, was now his bedroom. A locker stood by each bed, and the grey blankets which served as coverlets did nothing to enliven the general gloom.

But at any rate, thought Edward hopefully, he had a window by his allotted place and the hut was warm.

There was an old man working some twenty yards from the window where a shallow ditch skirted a corner of the aerodrome. A row of pollarded willows marked the line of the waterway, and the old man was engaged in slashing back the long straight boughs. His coat was grey and faded in patches, his face lined and thin. He wore no hat, and as he lunged with the bill-hook, his sparse grey hair rose and fell in the wind. It reminded Edward of the grey wool which catches
on barbed wire, fluttering night and day throughout the changing seasons.

He seemed to be part of the bleached and colourless background—as gnarled and knotty as the willow boles among which he worked, as dry and wispy as the dead grass which rustled against his muddy rubber boots. But there was an intensity of purpose in his rhythmic slashing which reminded Edward, with a sudden pang, of his grandfather Sep Howard, so far away.

He turned abruptly from the window, straightened his tunic, and set off through the wind to the sergeants' mess.

He entered a large room furnished with plenty of small tables, armchairs, magazines and a bar. The aerodrome was one of the many built during the thirties, and still had, at the outbreak of war, its initial spruceness and comfort.

Edward fetched himself some tea, bought some cigarettes, and made his way towards a chair strategically placed by a bronze radiator. He intended to start the crossword puzzle in the newspaper which was tucked securely under his elbow. There were only five or six other men in the mess, none of whom he knew. But he had scarcely drunk half his tea and pencilled in three words of the puzzle before he was accosted by a newcomer.

'So you're here too?' cried his fellow sergeant pilot. Edward's heart sank.

There was nothing, he supposed, violently wrong with Dickie Bridges, but he was such a confoundedly noisy ass. He had met him first during voluntary training and found him pleasant enough company on his own, but unbearably boastful and excitable when a few of his contemporaries appeared.
When parties began to get out of hand you could bet your boots that Dickie Bridges would be among the first to sling a glass across the room with a carefree whoop. He was, in peacetime, an articled clerk with a firm of solicitors in Edward's county town. Rumour had it that their office was dark and musty, the partners, who still wore wing collars and cravats, were approaching eighty, one was almost blind and the other deaf. However, as they saw their clients together, one was able to hear them and the other to see them, and the office continued to function in a delightfully Dickensian muddle. Edward could only suppose that with such a restricting background it was natural that Dickie should effervesce when he escaped.

Edward made welcoming noises and made room on the table for Dickie's tea cup. Typical of life, he commented to himself, that of all the chaps he knew in the Volunteer Reserve, it should be old Dickie who turned up! Nevertheless, it was good to see a familiar face in these strange surroundings and he settled back to hear the news.

'Know this part of the world?' asked Dickie, tapping one of Edward's cigarettes on the table top.

'No. First time here.'

'Couple of decent little pubs within three miles,' Dickie assured him. 'But twenty-odd miles to any bright lights—not that we'll see much of those with the blackout, and I hear we're kept down to it pretty well here.'

'Better than kicking about at home,' said Edward. 'I would have been round the bend in another fortnight.'

'Me too,' agreed Dickie.

Edward remembered the two old partners in Dickie's professional life and enquired after them.

'They've both offered their military services,' chuckled Dickie, 'but have been asked to stand by for a bit. If they can't get into the front line they have hopes of being able to man a barrage balloon in the local park. Even the blind one says he can see
that?

Edward, amused, suddenly felt a lift of spirits. Could Hitler ever hope to win against such delicious and lunatic determination? He found himself warming towards Dickie, and agreeing to try one of the two decent little pubs the next evening.

Back at Caxley the winter winds were beginning to whistle about the market square, and people were looking forward to their first wartime Christmas with some misgiving. The news was not good. A number of merchant ships had been sunk and it was clear that Hitler intended to try to cut the nation's lifelines with his U-boats.

Cruisers, battleships and destroyers had all been recent casualties, and there seemed to be no more encouraging news from the B.E.F. in France.

The evacuees were flocking back to their homes and the people of Caxley folded sheets and took down beds wondering the while how soon they would be needed again. Petrol rationing, food rationing and the vexatious blackout aggravated the misery of 'the phoney war'. In particular, men like Bertie, who had served in the First World War and were anxious to serve in the present conflict, could get no satisfaction about their future plans.

Sep Howard had added worries. His supplies were cut down drastically, and some of his finest ingredients, such as preserved
fruit and nuts, were now impossible to obtain. It grieved Sep to use inferior material, but it was plain that there was no alternative. 'Quality,' or 'carriage trade,' as he still thought of it, had virtually gone, although basic fare such as bread and buns had increased in volume because of the evacuees in Caxley. His workers were reduced in numbers, and petrol rationing severely hampered deliveries.

But business worries were not all. His wife Edna was far from well and refused to see a doctor. Since the outbreak of war she had served in the shop, looked after the six evacuee boys, and run her home with practically no help. She attacked everything with gay gusto and made light of the giddiness which attacked her more and more frequently.

"Tis nothing,' she assured the anxious Sep. 'Indigestion probably. Nothing that a cup of herb tea won't cure.'

The very suggestion of a doctor's visit put her into a panic.

'He'll have me in hospital in two shakes, and I'd die there! Don't you dare fetch a doctor to me, Sep.'

It was as though, with advancing age, she was returning to the gipsy suspicions and distrust of her forbears. She had always loved to be outside, and now, even on the coldest night, would lie beneath a wide-open window with the wind blowing in upon her. Sep could do nothing with the wilful woman whom he adored, but watch over her with growing anxiety.

One Sunday evening they returned from chapel as the full moon rose. In the darkened town its silvery light was more welcome than ever, and Edna stopped to gaze at its beauty behind the pattern of interlaced branches. She was like a child still, thought Sep, watching her wide dark eyes.

'It makes me feel excited,' whispered Edna. 'It always has done, ever since I was little.'

She put her hand through Sep's arm and they paced homeward companionably, Edna's eyes upon the moon.

It was so bright that night that Sep was unable to sleep. Beside him Edna's dark hair stirred in the breeze from the window. Her breathing was light and even. A finger of moonlight glimmered on the brass handles of the oak chest of drawers which had stood in the same position for all their married life. Upon it stood their wedding photograph, Edna small and enchantingly gay, Sep pale and very solemn. The glass gleamed in the silvery light.

It was very quiet. Only the bare branches stirred outside the window, and very faintly, with an ear long attuned to its murmur, Sep could distinguish the distant rippling of the Cax.

An owl screeched and at that moment Edna awoke. She sat up, looking like a startled child in her little white nightgown, and began to cough. Sep raised himself.

'It hurts,' she gasped, turning towards him, her face puckered with astonishment. Sep put his arms round her thin shoulders. She seemed as light-boned as a bird.

She turned her head to look at the great glowing face of the moon shining full and strong at the open window. Sighing, she fell softly back against Sep's shoulder, her cloud of dark hair brushing his mouth. A shudder shook her body and her breath escaped with a queer bubbling sound.

In the cold moonlit silence of the bedroom, Sep knew with awful certainty that he held in his arms the dead body of his wife.

***

In the months that followed Sep drifted about his affairs like a small pale ghost. He attended to the shop, the restaurant, his chapel matters and council affairs with the same grave courtesy which was customary, but the spirit seemed to have gone from him, and people told each other that Sep had only half his mind on things these days. He was the object of sincere sympathy. Edna Howard had not been universally liked—she was too wild a bird to be accepted in the Caxley hen-runs—but the marriage had been a happy one, and it was sad to see Sep so bereft.

Kathy was the one who gave him most comfort. If only Jim had been alive, Sep thought to himself! But Jim, his firstborn, lay somewhere in Ypres, and Leslie, his second son, was also lost to him. They had not met since Leslie left Winnie and went to live in the south-west with the woman of his choice.

Sep would have been desolate indeed without Kathy and Bertie's company. He spent most of his evenings there when the shop was closed, sitting quietly in a corner taking comfort from the children and the benison of a happy home. But he refused to sleep there, despite pressing invitations. Always he returned through the dark streets to the market square, passing the bronze statue of good Queen Victoria, before mounting the stairs to his lonely bedroom.

As the days grew longer the news became more and more sombre. The invasion of neutral Norway in April 1940 angered Caxley and the rest of the country. The costly attempts to recapture Narvik from the enemy, in the weeks that followed, brought outspoken criticism of Mr Chamberlain's leadership. Events were moving with such savagery and speed that it was clear that the time had arrived for a coalition government, and on May 10 Mr Churchill became Prime Minister.

Earlier, on the same day, Hitler invaded Holland. The news was black indeed. Before long it was known that a large part of the British Army had retreated to Dunkirk. The question 'How long can France hold out?' was on everyone's lips.

'They'll never give in,' declared Bertie to Sep, one glorious June evening in his garden. 'I've seen the French in action. They'll fight like tigers.'

The roses were already looking lovely. It was going to be a long hot summer, said the weatherwise of Caxley, and they were to be proved right. It did not seem possible, as the two men paced the grass, that across a narrow strip of water a powerful enemy waited to invade their land.