Homing (8 page)

Melchett returned with a pale stemmed glass on a silver tray beside a dish of almonds. She cast a disparaging eye on the gardener’s achievement, and when Virginia had taken the glass Melchett set the tray on a table and went to tweak the dark masking draperies into more seemly folds in the gardener’s wake.

“We turned out the whole house, madam, while you were away,” she announced. “Upstairs and down. Might as well start the war with everything tidy and shipshape, I said to Ivy.”

“Well, yes—why not,” Virginia agreed, sipping. “That was very thoughtful of you, Melchett.”

“There wasn’t time, the other war,” Melchett reminded her, snapping on more lights. “But this one keeps hanging fire, you might say. We may as well get down to it now, it’s the only way to teach ’im.”

The cricket party took place the next day in perfect weather, proceeding with a sort of dogged frivolity along its usual course. Everything went off exactly as planned under the firm guidance of Charles Laverham, who was one of those so lightly referred to by Virginia as old crocks, and who as lord of the manor of Cleeve since the last war was confidently relied upon to see that the next one was not allowed to spoil the fun.

And still the slow-motion crisis dragged on, with the whole world balanced on the knife edge of rumour and suspense. As the days ticked by, Ambassador Henderson flew to London, and flew back to Berlin. Hitler was said to be locked in his room, fuming and dangerous—and possibly hesitant for the first time. The obstinate, battered hope that not even Hitler could face the consequences would not quite expire.

But when on Thursday the BBC announced that evacuation of the children would begin early on Friday morning, September first, “as a precautionary measure” everyone felt again the familiar sick crunch in the middle and recognized it for plain
old-fashioned
Fear. Somebody in Whitehall knew something—smelled something—sensed something. “It’s no good their
saying
now that war is not inevitable,” Virginia muttered. “
Somebody
is already sure.”

All over England that Thursday night the pitiful
travel-kits
of the children were checked through again, packed and
repacked
for the zillionth time—toothbrush, facecloth, change of underwear (if possible), extra chocolate, some comic books or a favourite toy, gasmask—the inevitable gasmask…. All over England children were sleeping in their own beds for the last night for who knew how long, and parents creeping in for
another
look stood wretchedly wondering once more if it were really for the best to send them away.

These doubts mostly vanished at breakfast time on Friday, when the first BBC bulletin began with the ominous words: “
There
is
grave
news
this
morning….
” Hitler had finally thrown the lever, and the German war machine had been rolling across
the Polish border since dawn. Open towns and refugee trains in Poland were being bombed from the air.

England stiffened again, and resolutely surrendered its children to the trains and buses which were to carry them to safer areas in the countryside. There were tears. But most of those were on the faces of the people who saw them go.

As the news from Poland worsened during the day, and
censorship
and blackout were announced to begin at once in England, there still remained a question—the British Ambassador had not left Berlin—England was still not at war.

“If anyone had told me the day I left London that one week later we would still be waiting for the other shoe to drop!” Virginia exclaimed when Charles and Rosalind Laverham arrived at Farthingale for a nightcap drink and a conference late on Friday evening.

“Not much like last time, is it!” said Charles, who had been in the Household Cavalry then. “I stepped into the club one day for a quick one before dinner, and
Bang!
I was in France!”

“No radio then,” said Virginia. “Sometimes I almost thought this war would talk itself to death before it happened.”

“Too late for that now,” Charles said. “They’re bombing Warsaw. You can’t take back a bomb and say it was no such thing.”

“Then why aren’t we at war?”

“My dear, we are.”

“It doesn’t say so on the BBC.”

“The House is sitting. We’ll get it on the late news tonight, no doubt.”

They all glanced at the radio, which was playing what the BBC called “light music” softly in a corner. It was seldom turned off any more, but it seemed to tell them very little.

“Well, we were lucky today at the reception centre,” Rosalind said, stifling a yawn. “Fewer children than we expected. I wonder how many other places could say the same. Somebody must have got our missing ones, which would swamp them. And it may all even up tomorrow.”

“Thirty-nine babies in that nursery school that’s taken Overcreech House,” said Virginia with a shudder. “One matron, and how many girls to help?”

“I couldn’t see for babies. Not enough, you may be sure.”

“Have your Bank people arrived?” Virginia asked.

“Only five or six, so far. The advance guard. I thought I just couldn’t bear it last year when Charles arranged with the Bank
to take over Cleeve, and they started putting in fitted basins and electric fires and partitions and blocking out windows. But I see now it was all for the best. The Bank is at least adult!”

As Charles and Rosalind had occupied the Dower House since 1917, the dislocation at Cleeve was relatively slight, except for the heartbreaking alterations to the elegant
seventeenth-century
manor house which had been completed during the past summer so that it could house offices, a canteen, and the loftier personnel. All the spare rooms at the Dower House and at Farthingale, as well as at the village inn, had been taken as billets for the smaller fry, some of whom had already arrived, escorting the lorry loads of records and files. Secretaries, typists, file clerks, and other underlings were arriving tomorrow. And in the village they would be expected to cope with more children, and more pregnant mothers with the ominous pink cards which meant that anything could happen any minute.

“Perhaps the delay on the declaration here is to get our children away before there is any excuse to bomb our railways and reception areas,” suggested Rosalind, who was never afraid to face facts.

“That will take three days at least,” Charles said. “Have you heard anything direct from London?”

“Three minutes on the telephone with Bracken yesterday,” Virginia replied. “We try not to use it, of course. They can’t get Berlin now, except by shortwave and only some of the time. They don’t know if Johnny will be allowed to go on broadcasting from there. I wonder if his American has disappeared into Warsaw again as Bracken thought.”

“What American?” Charles asked, and Virginia’s eyes came to rest on him, puzzled and grave.

“Do you remember Tracy Marsh?” she asked, and Charles’s reply was just a fraction of a second slow, and then all he said was, “Yes.”

“He
was
Intelligence, wasn’t he, in 1918—behind that bona fide captain’s uniform?”

“What makes you think of him now?” asked Charles.

Melchett came in with the tray of glasses and sandwiches which she placed on a coffee-table in front of Virginia beside the tray of decanters, and went away again. At a hospitable gesture from Virginia Charles rose at once to deal with the drinks, and while he measured and poured the silence lengthened.

“Oh, all right,” said Virginia with a sigh. “I mustn’t ask
questions about Tracy Marsh—even now. Have you ever heard from him since he left here before the Armistice?”

“Soda?” said Charles, her glass poised at the syphon.

“Just a splash, dammit.” She accepted the glass from his hand and glanced at Rosalind. “I thought Charles was out of it for good,” she complained. “Is he going to clam up again this war too?”

“There aren’t enough of them who can remember what he can,” Rosalind said with her unshakable serenity. “Too many of them died. So they want him back.”

“I’d have you know I’m an extremely valuable antique,” Charles said with dignity, presenting his wife with her glass. “Beginning Monday, I am to be mounted in a glass case in an office in Whitehall—or its evacuated equivalent.”

“Oh, but Charles, we need you here!” Virginia cried in
dismay
, for it was always Charles they ran to about the wardening and the observers’ post and the gas lectures and the billeting and the clinic and the maternity home—well, Rosalind there, but behind Rosalind, Charles, steady and patient and kind and
knowing
; even without a war they couldn’t get along unless Charles was at Cleeve to be run to.

“There are things still imprinted in the mouldy recesses of my ageing brain,” Charles explained, “which may conceivably be of some use to a Government which finds itself at war with
Germany
—again.”

“But—is Rosalind going up to London with you?” Virginia looked from one to the other with compassion, for the Laverhams were never apart.

“No. She’s got things to do here. A good many more things than she had before I was called back.”

“Well, I do call that hard luck,” Virginia said to Rosalind. “I do think, at Charles’s age—”

Charles bristled.

“I’m no older than Churchill!” he said.

“Will he come back now?”

“Bound to. Can’t run a war without him at the Admiralty. Even Chamberlain knows that.”

“Well, this
is
like old times,” Virginia said thoughtfully. “And there’s Oliver in London gone into wardening because the War Office doesn’t want any gaffers from 1914.”

“The term is dug-outs,” Charles corrected gently. “Remember Buffy?”

“Yes, of course. Good old Cousin Buffy in the Hussars!”

“At the War Office now,” said Charles. “Not such an ass, you know, if he
is
my Uncle Aubrey’s son. I’ve got him to thank for this. And you can tell Oliver from me that the wardens may have most of the fun before this is over.”

“Suppose we get thousands of German planes all at once in a colossal raid to start with,” Virginia suggested.

“Not practicable. They’ll come a few at a time, all day long. Nights too. No time to clean up the mess. No sleep. Hoping to wear us down.”

“Charles, darling, how do you
know
?”

“I don’t. Just guessing.” He retired hastily behind his glass. “Nobody knows anything yet. Anybody says he does is just throwing his weight around.”

“Charles, would you answer just one question, yes or no?” Virginia leaned forward, fixing him with an innocent, appealing gaze. “Have you any reason to believe that Tracy Marsh is still alive?”

Once more that fraction of a second’s delay occurred. Then Charles said, “I have no reason to believe that he is dead.”

“And could he be in Warsaw now?”

“I suppose he could.”

“But he’s not a lot younger than you are!”

“Not a lot. Maybe he hasn’t got a game leg.”

“I suppose we’ll never know now,” said Virginia, looking into her glass, and the Laverhams exchanged glances, for everyone had done a good deal of wondering about Tracy Marsh
twenty-one
years ago when he was in London, wounded, after
Saint-Mihiel
, and when he vanished again across the Channel a month before the Armistice.

“Didn’t you ever hear from him?” Rosalind asked
sympathetically
.

“No. No, of course not, I—meant it to be that way. That is—” Virginia flushed and floundered before their eyes. “I mean, I never expected to,” she finished lamely.

“
This is the
BBC Home Service. And here is the twelve o’clock News
,” said the radio crisply into the quiet room, and Virginia rose at once to turn up the volume.

There was no declaration of war.

They sat looking at each other incredulously. Chamberlain had spoken briefly and belatedly in the House, announcing the delivery of a last warning to Hitler by Ambassador Henderson
in Berlin.
“If the reply to this is unfavourable, and I do not suggest that it is likely to be otherwise, His Majesty’s Ambassador is instructed to ask for his passports….”

“Very odd, isn’t it,” said Charles at last. “There wasn’t even any mention of a time limit for Hitler’s reply.”

“Charles, do you
honestly
not know what’s going on?” Virginia said uncertainly.

“No more than you, my dear.”

“B-but that glass case in Whitehall—”

“Ah,” said Charles. “But I’m not in it yet.”

“Well, in that case,” said Virginia, “let’s all have another drink.”

Although they had been spared the additional turmoil of evacuated children and pregnant mothers at Farthingale and Cleeve, owing to the Bank billeting, both Rosalind and Virginia had served at the reception centre in the village and it had been a long, tense day. They were all glad to sit a while, nursing their tall glasses, in a midnight haze of fatigue and bodily comfort. Old, old friends since the turn of the century when Charles came back from South Africa with a V.C., and Rosalind and Virginia were débutantes in a world where that meant something pretty special, they clung now to their mutual memories, and their love for each other’s company enfolded them warmly in a brief illusion of peace and security.

Like every other old soldier, Charles was in a speechless private rage of his own. They had seen to it once, in Belgium, at enormous cost. And now the same old enemy was on his feet again and coming for them. Less than a generation—and the Somme and Passchendaele and Verdun had all gone for nothing. Once more, the main event was London and Berlin.

And this time it would have to be finished. This time there must be no Armistice, while the German Army marched home with banners. This time Berlin must be taken. Germans had always had the gift of offence. But now the Germans weren’t people any more. They were robots. You cannot reason with a robot, and he has no honour. You can only smash him before he can smash you. And you always have to start from behind. He is always readier to attack than you are, because none of the things that matter to you—this kind of room, this kind of women, confiding, casual children, the gentle routine of country life and little luxuries—none of that is comprehensible to robots. And before it could be demonstrated—again—that England could be pushed just so
far, the very thing that England strove to defend must be sacrificed again, in the hope that it could be saved again. We beat ’em once, and we’ll beat ’em again, the old soldiers said. But before that …