Rule Britannia (19 page)

“Fuck off,” said Ben, clapping his hands.

The captain, to his credit, flung the missile aside and wiped his eye, then strode from the room without a word, Emma in close pursuit.

“I’m terribly, terribly sorry,” she said. “Please understand that the children are a little out of hand.”

He went straight along the passage to the small boys’ bedroom, not deigning to reply, looked at it, and passed onto the next room in the passage. Sam was feeding the squirrel. Andy wasn’t there. Emma knew instinctively that despite the gale he had climbed out onto the roof and had entered the forbidden chimney overhead. Sam looked up. The captain, perhaps unable to meet the cross-eyes, turned away. Before they left the room Emma looked at Sam and her lips framed the one word, Andy. Sam nodded.

“You need some help with the squirrel,” she said aloud.

Sam nodded again, he understood what she meant. Andy must be alerted as soon as it was safe to descend. The search party took rather longer over the third room along the passage, after Emma had explained that these were the quarters of the two older boys.

“Terry is the one in hospital,” she said. “My grandmother and my father have gone to fetch him home.”

“Yeah, we know about him,” replied the captain, “he’s been seen in hospital. Where’s the other boy?”

“I expect he’s in the basement. He usually is at this time.”

Joe was, in fact, busy chopping wood, axe in hand, hair falling over his forehead.

“Ah,” said the captain, “how old are you?”

“Nineteen,” replied Joe, looking enquiringly at Emma.

“This is Captain Cockran, Joe,” she said. “He’s been searching the house. I don’t quite know what for.”

“Drop that axe,” ordered the captain, “and stand over by the wall there, your hands above your head. Look lively, now.”

Joe, always a slow thinker, blinked. The captain jerked his head to the two marines, who strode over, seized him by either arm and threw him against the wall.

“Look out!” shouted Emma. “What are you doing?”

“Keep out of this,” said the captain. “We’re not going to hurt him, we just want to ask him a few questions. Search him, corporal.”

They started feeling Joe up and down, turning out the pockets of his jeans.

“Keep still, can’t you?” said one of them, kicking Joe on the shin.

Joe turned a blank, astonished face to the marine beside him.

“What am I supposed to have done?” he asked.

The marine flicked him across the mouth, not aggressively, but it undoubtedly stung. Joe’s face turned a dull red, and instinctively he lowered his left arm to ward off a further blow. The other marine wrenched it back again above his head and kicked him on the shin for a second time.

Emma, beside herself, darted forward to intervene, but the officer seized hold of her wrist and turned her round. “See here, little girl,” he said, “you run away upstairs out of it.”

“You don’t understand,” she said. “Joe’s done nothing. Lieutenant Sherman knows that. Why the hell don’t you get on the telephone down to the camp and check?”

“Lieutenant Sherman is on duty today on board ship,” he answered. “We’re minus one marine, and it’s my job to find out all you know. The local boys are giving us plenty of trouble and we’re not standing for it.”

Emma shook herself free. “Joe has never been in trouble in his life. He scarcely leaves the house or the garden.”

The two marines had fastened an iron grip on Joe and she realized that if she screamed, which was an instinctive response, the children would hear from the playroom above and come running to the basement. They would be pushed aside in the same brusque fashion, and if Andy should hear… Andy mustn’t hear, Andy mustn’t know.

“Get up out of it, Em.” Joe managed to speak, and she saw for the first time his mouth was bleeding. “I’m all right.” He stood still against the wall with his hands above his head, as the marines had told him.

Emma left the cellar and ran up the little stairway that led from the basement to the front hall. At the top of the stairs she collapsed and burst into tears. She could hear Folly whining and scratching at the double doors between the library and the dining room. She went through to her, still crying, and picking the old dog up sat with her on the sofa. Useless to call Dottie, worse than useless to call any of the four boys. She had never felt more helpless, more alone. Five, perhaps ten, minutes went by, and then Folly, with her curious dog sense despite her deafness, pricked her ears. It was the car returning, the familiar blast on the horn. She leaped from the sofa and ran down to meet them. Pa was helping Terry to the ground, Mad was handing him the crutches. Terry looked up, smiling all over his face.

“Won’t your lootenant leave you alone for one moment?” he sallied, pointing to the American jeep with a crutch.

It was not the moment for joking.

“For God’s sake come quickly,” she said to Pa. “Some marine thugs are down in the basement beating up Joe. You’ve got to stop them.”

Everyone stared at her, astonished. Mad, with her arm about Terry, turned abruptly, and would have fallen had he not supported her instead.

“Who? What?” exclaimed Pa. “What on earth are you talking about?”

“The marines,” sobbed Emma, the tears flowing again, “not any we know. Going from house to house asking questions. They’ve searched all the rooms, turned everything upside down, now they’ve put Joe against the wall in the cellar.”

Pa turned to Terry. “Can you manage the steps?”

“Yes, yes, go ahead.” The smile had vanished from the boy’s face.

Pa took hold of his daughter’s arm. “Don’t get hysterical,” he said firmly. “I warned you this is the sort of thing you’ll have to expect. Probably no more than a routine check, they have to do their duty, I’ll deal with them… In the cellar, you say? Why the cellar? What’s Joe been up to, was he being obstructive, was he surly?”

“No,” Emma shouted, “Joe didn’t do a thing. He was chopping the wood, they just seized him and flung him against the wall…”

“All right… all right… Keep calm, my darling, you stay here, wait for Terry and Mad, look after them. In the basement, you say, I’ll go immediately.” He called over his shoulder as he descended the stairs, “Go into the music room, all of you, and stay there. Shut the door. Whatever you do don’t let Mad follow me.”

Her grandmother and Terry were advancing slowly up the garden path. “Don’t hang on to me,” he was saying impatiently. “I can make it better on my own. Let me just catch one of those buggers with the end of this crutch…”

“No,” said Mad, “Vic and I will cope. This isn’t your battle.”

“It bloody well is,” he said, “if they try to rough up Joe.”

Emma had composed herself and was standing by the front door. “We’re to wait in the music room. Pa says so. If any of us interferes it will make things a million times worse. I’ve tried it, I know.”

They followed her into the room and she closed the door.

“Who are they?” asked Mad. “A different lot, you said? Not Lieutenant Sherman?”

Emma explained what had happened from start to finish. “They’ve done no damage,” she said, “I almost wish they had. It was the cool, offhand way they set about it that finished me. Picking up your walking sticks one by one in the hall, going through the coats in the cloakroom…”

“By what right?” cried Terry. “What are they after?”

“I don’t know,” said Emma. “They didn’t say.”

And suddenly she remembered that Terry didn’t know the truth about the dead marine. He did not share their secret. He was as ignorant as Pa. Oh God, she thought, if only we could present a common, guiltless front, but we can’t, we can’t…

“I think Pa will cope successfully,” said Mad. “We laugh at his bluster among ourselves, but I noticed that when he showed his pass it produced instant results, we were literally waved through the roadblocks.”

“If you ask me,” Terry said, “the marines have all got the wind up. One of ’em arrived at the hospital and wanted to put me through some sort of third degree, but Dr. Summers saw them off. What
is
all this anyway about Corporal Wagg having gone missing? Who bloody cares? He’s probably curling up with one of the local scrubbers. As long as it isn’t Myrtle I don’t mind.”

“He’s been missing,” said Mad, “for about thirty-six hours.”

“Good luck to him,” said Terry.

Presently there was a sound of voices. Pa was entering the hall by the basement staircase, and the marines were with him. Nobody spoke in the music room. Emma, standing behind the curtain by the French window, watched Pa, the officer and the two marines walk down the garden path and through the gate. Pa was talking, but she couldn’t hear what he said. The officer clicked his heels, saluted and climbed into the jeep, followed by his men. Then the jeep turned and went up the drive. Pa came back to the house. Mad crossed the room and opened the door.

“Well?” she asked.

“No problem, no problem,” replied her son. “Routine check, as I thought. They’re damned angry about their missing marine. Joe’s not hurt, a bit bruised, he needs to wash his lip with disinfectant.”

“Suppose it happens again when you’re not here?” asked his mother.

“It won’t, it won’t. Unless, of course, you go and do something stupid.”

Terry’s anger seemed to have subsided. He appeared preoccupied. He raised himself with an effort and swung to the door.

“I’ll go and see Joe,” he said quietly. “Thanks, Vic, for bringing me home. Glad you saw those buggers off.”

Mad watched him through the open door, then turned to her son. “I don’t think he can come to much harm, do you? And anyway, now those marines have gone… How dared they bully Joe! Oh, if only I’d been here!”

“I’m very glad you weren’t,” said Emma. “Pa, yes, but not you.”

Her grandmother ignored the insinuation. “Can’t you get on to somebody higher up?” she appealed to Pa. “Who were those marines, and why didn’t they send the ones we know? Lieutenant Sherman has quite an eye for Emma, and although he’s rather stupid, he’s always very polite.”

“Mother darling, if you think the U.S. forces, or our own forces, for that matter, would arrive with a search permit, rumple chests of drawers and prop up disgruntled nineteen-year-olds against a wall to question them just for the fun of the exercise, then you’re wildly mistaken. I didn’t say so in front of Terry, but I gathered from Captain Cockran that there has been no sign of the missing marine for practically two days. They’re afraid the worst has happened, and someone has done him in. Also the clay authorities have reported stolen gelignite. These marines who’ve just been here were perfectly within their rights to do what they did, though maybe they were a bit tougher with Joe than they need have been, and I’m certainly not going to take it to a higher level.”

Emma glanced at her grandmother. She hoped she would leave it at that. Argument might undo all that had been achieved. Pa already had two little spots of color on his cheeks, which meant he was getting rattled.

“I hadn’t time,” Emma ventured, “to tidy up the bedrooms. There wasn’t much in the spare room to mess about, but they opened every cupboard and drawer of yours.”

She addressed herself to Mad, who rose to the bait. “Come on,” she said, “I may as well see the worst, even if it gives me another heart attack.”

“Now for heaven’s sake be careful,” urged her son. “This excitement can’t be very good. Emma will tidy your room for you and it’s always a shambles anyway, cupboards crammed with faded old jeans entirely unsuitable for a woman of seventy-nine. Where are your pills? Shouldn’t you take your pills? I shall ring Bevil Summers…”

“Shut up,” said Mad. When they reached the privacy of her bedroom she sat down on the bed and surveyed the disorder. “Could be worse.”

“You don’t think,” Emma asked, “that, with everything that’s happening, we ought perhaps to shut up the house and go to London? Pa was saying something of the sort when I was in his room this morning.”

“Go to London?” Mad echoed. “Are you raving?”

“No, seriously… I know we’d both hate it, but wouldn’t we be safer there? You and I in the flat, Joe and Terry to the Trembaths, and…”

Mad went into the bathroom to wash her hands. “Go if you like, Em, I won’t stop you. But nothing in the world would induce me to leave home, or the boys. Besides, Folly would never settle in Pa’s flat. And what would become of Sam’s squirrel?” She dried her hands on the towel. “Oh no, quite out of the question. I couldn’t bear to be without all the boys. And anyway…”

“Anyway what?” asked Emma as she followed her grandmother downstairs, to the sound of the booming gong for lunch. Mad began to whistle under her breath.

“I think it’s all rather fun,” she said.

They sat down five for lunch. Joe and Terry were both present, with Terry, for once, rather silent. Joe’s cut lip was not too obvious, and by a sort of tacit understanding the visit from the marines was not mentioned. Pa, soothed by a gin-and-tonic, held forth on the tremendous advantages that a six-months’ visit to the States might bring to those young enough to seize the opportunity. Jet travel free, and the possibility of a job at the end of it all.

“I’ve seen the brochures,” he told his listeners, “I’ve seen the brochures… Everything taken care of, you can’t fault it, reciprocal arrangements here, but imagine the difference, damp beds and brussels sprouts, it will be a total loss for American youth, but never mind. This is where our British young will score for once.”

The telephone rang and Joe went to answer it.

“Let us hope,” said Pa, “that it is not a further question from thick-headed Captain Cockran.”

Joe returned after a few minutes. He looked white and strained.

“It’s Mrs. Trembath,” he said, “she’s in a terrible state, she’s crying. The marines went to them after leaving here, and they’ve taken Mr. Trembath and young Mick away for questioning. She wants to know if you can do anything.” He looked at Pa at the end of the table.

“Why, of course,” exclaimed Mad. “You know, Vic, the dear Trembaths at the farm, they’re such friends to us all. Go and speak to her at once.”

But Emma, watching her father, saw his expression change, clamp down from the one of joviality he had worn through lunch to something dogged and determined.