Homing (12 page)

The radio which had been playing light music quietly in the corner spoke suddenly with its usual authority: “
This
is
the 
BBC
 
Home
Service.
Here
is
the
News
,”
it said crisply, and Evadne rose at once to turn up the volume. Virginia realized they had all been sitting motionless, hardly breathing, while they listened to Mab. She watched anxiously while the announcer’s dreadful formula: “
The
defence
of
Warsaw
continues….
” brought them ruthlessly back to the present, and she saw Mab come into focus without visible effort, unaware of what she had done before them all in those few moments of revelation. It was like sleepwalking, thought Virginia, and might have been difficult to adjust to if it had had some other awakening.

Here was the most complete evidence of Mab’s secret world that anyone had yet witnessed, and while the announcer’s voice flowed on, Virginia sat staring at the radio cabinet, pretending to hear, hoping that when the News finished they need not return to the subject of Williamsburg that evening. Memory was stirring in Virginia now, bringing up long forgotten family legends—had anyone ever told Mab, she was wondering, that Julian’s Tibby was supposed to have been present during Jamestown Battle, must have seen the lanterns and heard the wounded? Jeff probably knew the story, he might have mentioned it to Mab long ago, so that it became embedded in her subconscious
…. Fitz would remember it too, and might have told Evadne….

When the News ended Mab had apparently forgotten where they had left off, and it was possible to divert the conversation, perhaps a little feverishly, while Evadne helped her gather up the pictures and postcards, and Mab made no objection to leaving it all behind in the drawing room when her bedtime came. Unconscious of having unnerved them all, she kissed everybody good night and went upstairs.

Evadne went with her, casually, an arm around her waist, left her at the door of the room Mab was sharing with Virginia to make room for the guests, and returned at once to the drawing room with the photographs of the portraits. Entering on a silence, she laid them without comment in front of Virginia, who at once said, “Good Lord!” and sat staring at them.

“I still say she could have read it—about the surgeons and the horses, even,” Stephen insisted, striving for sanity. “She has memorized dozens of history books by now.”

“She could have,” Evadne conceded generously. “And what history book says that you could always hear the river against the bank when the wind was up?”

“Now, listen to me, the both of you,” Virginia said firmly. “We
must
be sensible about this. Jeff might have told her about the river—”

“Except that he wasn’t there either, before the sea-wall went in—which happened to be about 1900,” said Evadne.

“He might have heard about it from somebody like Fitz, then, when he was there as a boy,” Virginia argued. “Fitz goes back to 1900. Did you talk to Jeff about this while you were in London?”

“No. Frankly, I didn’t have the nerve in front of Sylvia.”

“Why not?”

“Mummy, you’re losing your grip,” Evadne said kindly. “Sylvia is Jeff’s wife. And Tibby was Julian’s. And Jeff is Julian. Somehow I came over all self-conscious about the whole thing. Mab is just a kid now. But she’s going to grow up. We don’t want to plant any ideas. Anywhere.”

“Mother goes so far as to suggest it might be better if Mab never saw Williamsburg,” Stephen said. “She feels it would be asking for trouble.”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” Virginia sighed. “Do you think anything we do or don’t do will make much difference in
the long run? The trick has already been played on Mab. Call it heredity. We can’t undo that.”

And they all went off to bed, not knowing, because Evadne had been afraid to ask, that Jeff was the first to see that Mab was cast in Tibby’s mould.

I
N VIEW
of repeated official warnings against bringing evacuated children back to London for Christmas, Virginia felt obliged to set an example and leave Mab behind when she made an early shopping trip in December.

Furious German threats of secret weapons and blood baths and even of an actual invasion of England had come to nothing at all, and there had been only false alarms in London so far. But when a week before she planned to start, Russia fell upon Finland there was a general impression that the somnambulistic pause in the war since Poland surrendered might be at an end.

One of the things everyone found hardest to bear was the loss of easy communication and travel. One felt utterly cut off. Virginia said she thought she would burst if she couldn’t get up to Town and see and hear for herself what was going on and what people were saying.

“You can’t but feel that somebody must know something if you could only shake it out of them,” she said to Rosalind, who drove her to the station the day she left, and who on her return would be released from their mutual duties to spend Christmas in London with Charles. “Just wait till I catch Bracken, he’s been to Paris and Geneva, where Johnny and Camilla came to meet him, and it can’t
all
be Hush-hush!”

“I suppose you can’t blame people for manufacturing rumours to fill up the vacuum the BBC creates,” Rosalind agreed.

“What now? That little man with the Ray again?”

“Now there will be five hundred bombers every fifteen minutes for twenty-four hours, to knock out our ports and railway centres,” Rosalind recited solemnly as they drew up in the station yard.

“Wouldn’t they get in each other’s way? England’s a small country.” Virginia kissed her and stepped out of the car.
‘Who starts these things—fifth columnists? Thank you for the lift. Keep an eye on Mab, won’t you? I’ll get hold of Charles at once and bring him up to date on things here. And I’ll be back Thursday, if you could arrange to meet me.”

“I will. And bring me a siren suit,” said Rosalind, waving her off.

Virginia found London emerged from its first buttoned-up tension of waiting for raids, and except for the blackout and the sandbags and the taped windows and the A.A. guns in the parks, the West End was pretty much itself in a weird sort of way. Theatres and cinemas were re-opening with earlier, staggered hours, and Bracken had got tickets for them to see
Design
for
Living
at the Savoy. Restaurants were busy and people got about somehow, even at night, when the moon assumed an importance it had not enjoyed for generations.

And yet to Virginia’s loving eyes, London was tired, strained, and trying only to behave sanely while living in a bad dream.

Wearing a war correspondent’s uniform for the third time in his life, Bracken had just returned from the Continent and British Headquarters near Arras, which he said was full of obliging lady spies in wait for foreign journalists at the Hôtel Moderne. He had found Rheims prosperous and gay in the possession of an RAF bomber contingent. Johnny at Geneva said that Germany was dreary, bitterly cold, and severely rationed, and that despite Hitler’s success in Poland there was little enthusiasm for the war.

“By the way,” said Bracken to Virginia at dinner on her first night in Town, “it was Tracy Marsh in Warsaw.”

“Bound to be,” said Virginia without blinking.

“They seem to have lost him now, though. He went back there and has not been heard of since the surrender. He could have got out through Romania with the remnants of the Polish Government, Johnny thought, but in that case he should have turned up in Paris by now. Ambassador Biddle is there, so I inquired on my way back, and they had no news of him. Everybody very cagey. Nobody knew what he was up to in Poland, or said they didn’t. Must have been a Government job, though. Johnny said not to mention it. Biddle said the same. If he’s alive, we can’t help. If he isn’t—we can’t help.”

“No,” said Virginia, not looking at him. “Why didn’t they use gas in Poland, do you think?”

“There was no necessity. German mechanized equipment was
paralysing enough. The Poles had cavalry instead of tanks—
horses,
mind you, against the Panzer troops! And a handful of old-fashioned planes against the Luftwaffe.”

“Then you think gas might still be a last resort, if they couldn’t win any other way.”

Bracken hesitated.

“We can’t assume they won’t use it here, trying for a quick decision, if that’s what you’re asking,” he said. “England is a different proposition altogether. They can’t get at it, except by air.”

“Yes,” said Virginia, finding that she had very little appetite. “I see.”

Bracken had no patience with the fashionable attitude that it was a dull war, and the bluff-krieg type of mentality pained him. He knew that good use was being made in England of the time during which the Germans failed to carry out their promised attack. And Virginia was impressed when she visited the various members of the family at their posts in London.

Stephen had gone out with a concert party to entertain the troops, and Evadne was alone at their flat, except when Mona used the spare room for a night, so Virginia stayed with her instead of in Upper Brook Street with Dinah and Bracken. Evadne’s warden’s post had stuck doggedly to its routine throughout the autumn, like all the others, in spite of some short-sighted criticism and derision by the sort of people who would be the first to demand service if the need for it arose. Virginia was made welcome when she went round to the basement to see how Evadne spent her hours on duty—Evadne was popular with her associates, especially with Smedley the Post Warden, who had always an eye for a pretty face and was thankful to have the place decorated by her cheerful presence.

Their uniforms had not come yet—they had only a black helmet, which Evadne wore cocked at the Beattie angle, and an armlet and a silver badge, won by a stiff course of First Aid and gas lectures and a detailed knowledge of every house and fire hydrant and dead end in their sector. They were prodded out of their boredom by periodic practice drills staged realistically to test their memory and wits in supposed emergency.

“I don’t really know which is worse,” Evadne said, as they prepared for bed the first night of Virginia’s visit. “Hanging about on duty, knitting, trying to read, making cups of tea, listening to tiresome stuff on my portable radio—or the mock
raids they get up every now and then to relieve the stagnation. An umpire pops along to the post and says such and such a point has theoretically been bombed or set on fire, and we’re supposed to get the right equipment there in the shortest possible time, and pretend to crawl into a burning room with our faces ten inches from the floor and bring out an unconscious casualty, or some such nonsense. You do feel such a fool, and there are solemn post-mortems with the umpire afterwards about what you did wrong and should have done instead. I’ve an idea the bombs aren’t going to do what’s expected of them either. After all, they haven’t rehearsed it with us, they’re going to have ideas of their own about exploding.”

“And how do you get an unconscious person out of a burning room?” Virginia asked, taking an unwilling but fascinated interest.

“Haven’t they told you? Tie his hands together and hook them round your neck and drag him.”

“I see,” said Virginia, repressing a shudder.

“I manage all right with that one. But it’s really too much for old Smedley, though he’d never admit it, and Miss Piggott is too fat. Sometimes I think I ought to leave wardening and get a more useful job. That is, go into the ATS or the Land Army. And then I take another look at the collection of crocks at our post and decide to stay. I’m the only ablebodied one there, as a matter of fact. Tilton can’t see a foot in front of him without his specs and he can’t wear them inside a gasmask, so he’d be next to useless in smoke, or even in the dark. You can’t wear eye-black inside a mask, either, I suppose you know—if it ran and made your eyes water you’d be done. Now,
that’s
a hardship, if you like! I feel very unfinished without it!”

“Evadne—I don’t want to be embarrassing—but may I say I think you’re wonderful?”

“Why, thank you Mummy, it’s nice to hear a little praise for a change,” said Evadne, and put her arms around Virginia for a hearty kiss. “I’m lucky, really, because on our post we get along together very well. Some don’t. The next one down the road is saddled with a woman who happened to see something of the war in Spain, and she never lets them forget it, besides a couple of foreigners who have had a bad time already and are sure to go to pieces. We may be a little on the dull side where I am, but we all pull together and nobody puts on any airs.”

Virginia paid a call too at the Animal First Aid Post, which was manned at all times as conscientiously as the human A.R.P. Things seemed if possible even more futile there as the long lull continued, but there was no slackening of effort in the paper work to publicize their plans and put a stop to the hasty sacrifice of pets which had gone on in the early days of the war.

They were established in the back room of a bookshop, where a half dozen unpaid volunteers like Sylvia had furnished a corner for themselves with donated chairs and a table, and had made pens out of cardboard boxes, a few fruit crates, bits of wire netting, and some empty second-hand birdcages. They had collected assorted drinking bowls and feeding dishes which had seen better days in the kitchens and pantries of their friends, and had stored various kinds of food in all shapes and sizes of tins. They had a cupboard which housed a small supply of medicines and dressings and splints, and the local vet had given them instruction in how to use the remedies he had himself supplied. They had gone round the neighbourhood with a notebook and registered all the animals for a numbered disc to be attached to its collar or cage, and they solicited donations shamelessly.

Virginia emptied her change purse on the table, and looked round the stuffy, ill-lighted room, crowded with improvised comfort for the helpless creatures who so far knew no apprehension, and felt a stinging in her eyelids.

“I don’t want to sound ridiculous,” she said. “But may I say I think you’re wonderful?”

“Why, thank you!” said the girl who was sharing the shift with Sylvia. “It’s nice not to be laughed at!”

Mona was doing her night duty that week. She had a little the best of it so far, Virginia thought, in quarters in what had been a pleasant upstairs café next door to the garage where the ambulances slept. Tin hats, gasmasks, and rubbery gas-repellent suits hung in redolent rows at the entrance. Inside, except for the cots and sleeping bags which occupied most of the floor space, it was rather like a club, with a table full of magazines and books, a radio always turned on, a small canteen, a dart game, and a few odd chairs, none of them very comfortable.

The girl ambulance drivers, wearing the dark blue sweaters and trousers of the corps, were knitting, reading, and napping when Virginia looked in round midnight. Mona laid aside
Gone
With
the
Wind,
which she said would last out the war if she was careful, and made introductions and asked for news of Gloucestershire and America.

Enrolled in what might become the most exacting and hazardous service of all, Mona maintained stoutly that so far it wasn’t a bad war, even including the occasional yellow signals which meant a stand-to, never knowing if this time it was real. And here too the monotony was systematically relieved by practice runs with make-believe casualties who could never refrain from wise-cracks. A driver had to know her way through the blackout over a large district of London. It would be her duty to stand by the target fires with her car, waiting for a load while more stuff came down, and then dodge through the streets to the nearest hospital, and return as fast as possible to the scene of what was officially known as the incident, for another load.

“But when you can back a loaded ambulance while wearing a gasmask,
in
the blackout,
with
the inspector sitting in the seat beside you,
and
not foul it all up, everything else is easy!” Mona assured her happily.

Virginia asked about Michael, because with the unexpected quiet on the so-called fighting fronts, everybody was hoping for Christmas leave for the forces, even in the Navy, which was bearing the brunt of things as usual.

“Lots of people are planning to get married on Christmas leave,” said Mona, with a sigh. “I don’t know—I haven’t heard for a long time now. But if he does turn up, I’m not going to stand for any more nonsense!”

Nigel at his warden’s post in the Temple was in fairly congenial company, but felt very thwarted and elderly and superfluous. Urged to come to Farthingale for Christmas, he looked haunted and unhappy and said he thought not, thanks. And then, reaching out to her with compunction, “I’d be a death’s head, Mummy. You’ll do better without me.”

Virginia stood clasping his hand in both hers, and swallowed with difficulty before she spoke.

“Nigel, you oughtn’t to be like this. I don’t want to be tiresome—but it’s time you stopped sulking.”

“Sulking!” He stared at her, outraged.

“I’m sorry. One ought to be very careful about words.”

She kissed him, and went away, without withdrawing it.

From there she took a bus to Woolworth’s and bought the
small toys and trinkets for the evacuees’ tree, and then she stopped at Dinah’s WVS office, which was tidy and efficient and more philosophical than the rest, as evacuation still furnished them with plenty of problems to keep them from going stale.

“I feel very frivolous,” she said as she rose to go without taking up more than a few minutes of Dinah’s time. “Doing Christmas shopping while everybody else slaves at a war job. I’ve finished at Woolworth’s and now there’s only the family left to do.”

“There’s not supposed to be extravagance about gifts any more,” Dinah reminded her firmly.

“I know. I thought some Fortnum goodies in bottles and tins for the store cupboards—warm things to wear—and things that are getting scarce like electric torches and batteries—”