Rule Britannia (21 page)

“It’s gone on like this since four this afternoon. We had a lovely silent hour, he even went to sleep in the chair while I held my breath, and then the telephone rang, his damn secretary from London. Don’t ask me what it’s all about. Zurich… New York… I’m not sure he didn’t even say Brazil. Anyway, he’s got to get back to London right away.”

“Oh no!” Emma’s spirits sank to zero.

“Darling, I’m as disappointed as you are. I know he’s maddening, but we both adore him.” Mad, of all people, had tears at the corners of her eyes. “We don’t see him often, that’s it, I suppose. Well, it can’t be helped. How was it at the farm? Are Jack and Mick back yet?”

“No,” said Emma, “but Mr. Willis has turned up to help.”

“That’s a relief. Dear Taffy. I don’t know what we should do without him.”

Joe slipped from the room, saying there were things to be done, though Emma guessed it was because he thought they wanted to be alone with Pa.

“The children have behaved like angels, bless them,” said her grandmother. “Dottie started to make the Christmas puddings, far too early, I’m sure, and she allowed Colin and Ben to help, she deserves a halo.”

“What about Andy and Sam?”

“They made a new hutch for the squirrel, the old one was smelling so dreadfully, one could hardly go into their room. The trouble is I don’t think the squirrel gets on terribly well with the pigeon, they don’t seem to see eye to eye.”

The patter in the cloakroom ceased and Pa came into the room. “I knew it was a mistake to leave London,” he said. “Everyone’s going round in circles, people completely losing their heads. USUK and Brazil at loggerheads over the new currency arrangements, I see myself flying out there to help sort things out. And some bloody fool put a bomb on the steps of the American Embassy, no damage, they found it in time, but it’s bad for propaganda. Emma darling, I can’t find my bedroom slippers, what did you do with my bedroom slippers?”

She hadn’t done anything, they were under the bed. She helped him sort his few belongings, pack his hairbrushes, his electric toothbrush, and suddenly she put her arms round him and held on to him.

“I don’t want you to go,” she told him.

“How very sweet of you,” he said, surprised, “how very touching. Darling Emma, how delightful it is to have a grown-up daughter, one doesn’t always realize it, this constant pressure. We must see more of each other. I wish you would come to Brazil, you’d love Brazil. Did you sort out your farming friends? I’m sorry I couldn’t do more for them. Out of the question.”

Typically, he didn’t wait for a reply but ran downstairs again two at a time, and was back in the music room drinking black coffee.

“This will sustain me until I’m through Exeter,” he said. “Once Exeter is past I enter civilization. I might snatch a sandwich off old Digby-Stratton, he’s only a few miles from Honiton, it depends on the time, and whether there are these confounded roadblocks everywhere… Emma, if the operator rings to say the Brazilian Embassy is on the line, tell them to cancel the call, I’ve left… No, no, mother beloved, I don’t want a Bath Oliver biscuit, it would give me indigestion hunched over the wheel, I must get organized, I must leave you.” He folded his arms round his mother and his daughter at the same time, hugging them to him. “If I do have to fly to Rio tomorrow and am out of touch for a few days, don’t let me return and find you both in prison. These are stirring times—put a foot wrong, and anything may happen. You have my office number, and if there’s a genuine crisis tell my secretary to contact me, but I shall be in conference continuously… Don’t forget to take your heart pills, take things easy, control those horrible children… I must go, I must go…”

Mad stood at the front door watching as Emma accompanied her father down the drive, and this is all repetition of yesterday, Emma thought, only it was then, with his visit ahead which might have lasted the whole weekend, and it isn’t then anymore, it’s now, and he’s going, and nothing has been achieved. It’s worse in a way than if he had never come at all, because one had got used to the thing of not seeing him. He was kissing her once again, then climbing into the car and roaring up the drive, the headlights pausing at the gates and shining upon them. Then no more. It was all over. Pa had gone.

Mad was standing before the fire in the music room. She had picked up an old picture postcard of herself from the mantelpiece and was studying it. It had been taken years ago when she was young. The face that launched a thousand ships, her husband used to say. The eyes were very large, the hair rather full, framing the rounded cheeks. Vic, aged about three, a sturdy replica of herself, sat on her knee. Emma went and stood beside her, then put her arms round her grandmother.

“It’s still awfully like,” she said.

“Of him, or of me?” asked Mad.

“Of you both.”

And yet, and yet… What was he thinking about, that plump little boy? Had it been laid out for him, planned, that he would grow up to become a burly middle-aged man tearing about in jets to Brazil and believing, or kidding himself, he could control the finances of millions? And that lovely sensuous woman, his mother, with the smile at the corner of her mouth and the looped tresses falling about her face, did she know then that she would live to be seventy-nine, an eccentric, rather imperious old woman? When the photograph was taken the world, if far from secure, still held some measure of stability, and Hitler’s war had not been launched. Later, the little boy, of an age to understand, would have heard Churchill’s famous phrase about fighting on the beaches, in the streets. Today the country had been taken over, annexed, by another power, with—at least according to the statement of the little boy of the photograph, now grown to full maturity—the consent of almost the entire population. The fighting on the beaches had been done by a boy of seventeen, throwing his marine opponent in a Rugby tackle, and by a child of twelve, not in a street but on a plowed field, who, turning killer, destroyed the same opponent with a bow and arrow.

Mad put the photograph back in its place on the mantelpiece. “I had a funny feeling when I saw him go just now,” she said.

“What do you mean?” Emma asked.

“Oh, nothing, just…” Mad spread out her hands in the familiar gesture. “I feel it may be a long time before I see him again.”

Emma did not answer. She was wondering whether old people found that time went slowly or, on the contrary, much too fast. It was going fast at the moment because so many things seemed to be happening every day. If the crisis hadn’t come, would her grandmother have had the same sense of boredom, of frustration, that she herself had known during the past weeks? Or did Mad, because of being eighty very soon, want every day to drag, almost to stop still, because each moment must, by the nature of things, bring her closer to the end?

“Pa will only be a few days out of the country,” Emma said in reassurance, “and then he’s bound to come down for your birthday. We must make a thing of that, crisis or no crisis.”

Mad shrugged contemptuously. “My birthday,” she scoffed. “Who cares about birthdays at my age? We’ll do something when the moment comes to amuse the boys, but the real question will be, shall we have anything to celebrate?”

Jack Trembath and Mick were allowed to return to the farm on Sunday morning. It was a special concession, so the camp commandant told him, because of his livestock and the essential nature of his work on the land. He must be prepared to answer further questions should the need arise. The proceedings had been conducted not by Colonel Cheeseman, who had left for Falmouth in the warship during the storm the preceding day, but by his deputy, a Colonel Tucker, who was altogether tougher. One of the first things the farmer did was to come up to Trevanal and report in person.

“I want to thank you,” he said to Mad as soon as he entered the room, “for letting Joe come down and take my place. I don’t know what Peggy and Myrtle would have done without him, or you either, for that matter,” he added, turning to Emma. “Just being there, and talking to them, was what counted.”

“You thank us?” Mad put out her hand and pulled him down beside her on the sofa. “What can we say to you? I don’t think either Emma or I got much sleep last night wondering what they were doing to you. As for your poor wife…”

“Ah well, it’s over,” he said. “We’ll think no more of it. And it might have been worse. I wouldn’t have minded, you know, had it been our own chaps in charge down there at Poldrea, sticking us up against a wall and treating us like vandals or something, but what got my goat was to have this Yankee with an accent like a sheriff from some Western film, rasping out questions. I lost my temper at home, that’s what did it, no doubt, and I took care to keep a hold on myself when they got us in custody.”

“Where did they put you?” asked Mad.

“Why, they’ve taken over all Poldrea harbor,” he told her. “You know the offices of the port authority? Well, that’s their headquarters now. I was glad…” he lowered his voice, although the door was shut, “I was glad Mick knew nothing. If he had he might have broken down. They rap the questions at you thick and fast, it’s darn confusing, and for a lad of his age you couldn’t expect him to stand it. But don’t you worry,” he tapped Mad on the knee. “They didn’t get a damn thing out of either of us. And never will.”

Emma remembered her grandmother’s remark on Friday evening about the Celts and the Saxons, and Mr. Trembath might have read her thoughts, for he smiled to himself a moment and then he said, “The old fellow from the wood turned up trumps, didn’t he? Maybe the Cornish and the Welsh have more in common than I thought. Let someone come in from overseas and try to push us around, and they’ll get more than they bargained for. He was down at the farm first thing this morning, Peggy tells me, beat your Joe to it by a short head. Oh, he’s a tough one, all right. Glad he’s on our side and not on theirs.”

“Our side,” said Mad, “that’s the way to talk. I wish there were more of us.”

“Don’t you worry,” replied Jack Trembath, shaking his head. “There’s plenty around here who gave the Yanks a welcome when they first landed but’d be glad now to see them go. Oh, not all, I grant you. There’s some, and I’m naming no names, who’d sell their birthright for easy money, the let’s-fleece-the-Yanks-brigade, same as they fleece the Midlanders, but others, who’ve got a spark of fire left in their bellies, they’re not going to take foreign rule lying down.”

Emma shifted uneasily in her chair. She was thinking of Pa. And Mad evidently had been reminded of him too, because, with a slight alteration in her voice that only her granddaughter could recognize, she said, “I suppose we ought not to consider it foreign rule. It’s supposed to be a union, isn’t it? My son was trying to explain it all to us. I don’t understand finance, never have. But it seems without this union we’d be finished, a bankrupt nation. By the way, I was so sorry he couldn’t do anything about preventing the marines taking you away. We, Emma and I, felt very badly about it. The truth was, my son Vic knew nothing about the marine and what had happened. We didn’t tell him.”

“Didn’t tell him?” Jack Trembath looked surprised.

“No. You see, Vic in his work as a banker is closely associated with the government and all this business of USUK. Indeed, he is very much for it, encourages everything that is happening. So if we had told him the truth I really don’t know…” Mad was genuinely searching for the right words, which she had never done in the past when she had forgotten her lines and anything impromptu had sprung to her lips. “I really don’t know what he would have done. He might have felt it his duty to tell the Americans the marine was dead, and how he died.”

The farmer was silent. He seemed shocked. He shook his head again slowly.

“That’s awkward for you,” he said at last, “very awkward. Things have come to a pretty pass when a woman can’t ask advice from her own son. I don’t blame him, mind you, he’s got to work for the government, and if this is the way they feel the country should be run, and they can’t do it without the Yankee troops, why…” He rose to his feet and smote one fist upon the other. “I just can’t take it, that’s all. And when that boy Andy drew his bow last week, by God, you know I’d have been proud if my Mick had done it instead. It was the first blow struck in defense of this country, and I honor him for it.” He stood staring at both of them. “There now,” he said, “I’ve said my piece and I’ll go. And don’t you forget, if there’s anything I can do for you and for your boys any time of the day or night, I’m ready.”

Later in the day Joe reported to Emma that he had seen two marines, and police with Alsatian dogs, crossing the plowed field to the grazing ground below the stile.

“I was up in the shrubbery,” he told her. “They didn’t see me. They were following the trail all right that Mr. Willis led. They must have gone down to the beach afterwards. Whether they’d lose the scent down there I just don’t know. After all, it’s three days, isn’t it? The tide must have covered where he went.”

“Do the others know?”

“Only Terry,” he said. “I thought it best, by the way, to tell Terry the lot last night when we went to bed. I knew if I didn’t Andy couldn’t have kept it dark for long.”

“What did he say?”

“He was pretty shaken. More than I had expected him to be. Not so much the killing, but the fact that Andy did it, and, what was more, did it for him. He said if the marines had been British he’d have felt almost bound to go and tell them and take the blame on himself. But since they were Yanks, and invaders, and after the way they’d roughed me up, and Mr. Trembath and Mick, he’d be prepared to get hold of the bow and arrow and shoot a dozen more himself.”

There’s an expression for it, Emma thought, they call it snowballing. Someone starts something, and it gathers impetus, and more join in, and then there’s an avalanche, and people or property or causes are destroyed.

The school bus waited for the boys at the top of the hill the following morning. It was decorated with a USUK flag, so Terry reported—he had swung himself up the drive to watch the departure. His own technical school was still closed. “Too many of us in custody, I shouldn’t wonder,” he said grimly.

Mad suggested that she and Emma should go down to Poldrea to do the shopping. Emma would have preferred to go alone; Mad let loose in the supermarket could be a danger. However, nothing would dissuade her, and they set forth in the car, past the roadblocks still in position, passes inspected, and so along the beach road to the town. Emma was allowed to drive because, so it was grudgingly admitted, someone with a supposedly weak heart should not be seen at the wheel. When they arrived to park opposite the supermarket they found a line of cars parked all along the road, and a queue of people stretching round the corner of the street waiting to go inside.

“I’m not surprised,” observed Mad. “They’re all hoping to stock up before supplies run out. Thank the Lord for our beetroot. I’ll take my place at the tail of the queue while you find somewhere to park.”

Emma had to circle the narrow streets of Poldrea before she squeezed her car into a private turning near the Methodist chapel. As she walked back along the street she bumped into Mr. Willis coming out of Tom Bate’s fish shop.

“Oh, hullo,” she said. “Nice morning for once.”

He made her a sweeping bow. “Nice morning it is,” he replied, “for those of us alive to enjoy it.” One eye closed behind the spectacles and the side of his mouth twitched. “Pity it blew so hard last night—our friend fetched up on Kellyvardo rock instead of being taken out to sea as I’d intended. Wedged in among the winkles. You’d never credit it, would you?”

Emma was silent. Mr. Willis could be referring to one thing only. Kellyvardo rock was a reef about a hundred feet in length that was only uncovered at low tide. Marked with a pole, it was a hazard to shipping between Poldrea harbor and the anchorage beyond.

He nodded to a passerby and then continued, “The pole broke with the force of the gale Saturday. It’s done it before, they don’t drive it deep enough. Tom Bate was fishing out there yesterday, he knows every inch of the place. He keeps a spike in his boat to test the depth around the reef when he cuts his engine, and the seaweed’s fresher there than I get it ashore, so he brings me some in for my plot of ground from time to time.” Mr. Willis paused, and winked at her again. “ ‘Hullo, what’s this?’ says Tom Bate as he pokes something soft near to where the pole had broken away, and he pokes again, and what he jabbed at wasn’t very pleasant, I can tell you. So he started his engine up again and returned to the harbor to report. Not a case of finding’s keepings, was it? No, not this time.”

Emma waited for another passerby to walk out of earshot before she answered. “So the marines know?”

“They know… they know… They kept Tom there in the office most of the day asking questions, so he was telling me, no more fishing for him yesterday. That’s why you won’t find any fresh fish in the shop this morning. Why don’t you go in and ask him?”

Emma shook her head. “I think not,” she said, and then she added, “There was nothing on the news about it.”

“There wouldn’t be,” he answered. “It’s unofficial, isn’t it? The only reason I know is because I came to call in at the shop for my batch of fresh seaweed.” He showed her his bulging bag.

Unbelievably the eye closed once more, then he flourished his bag and crossed the street towards the ironmonger’s. Emma glanced furtively into the window of the fish shop. Dried kipper and salted cod were spread on the slab, and Tom Bate himself was watching her from behind his counter. He was smiling.

“Anything I can tempt you with today, my dear?” he called.

“No. No, thank you very much,” she replied.

She walked along the pavement to the supermarket. Her grandmother had worked her way up the queue and was practically at the swing doors. She was talking to the wife of the bank manager.

“They’re going to call it the ducat,” she was saying over her shoulder, “historical associations and all that, rather like the doubloon. But whether ducats are to be based on the dollar my son didn’t say. I think he’s flying to Brazil to find out. Your husband will know all about it. The ducat, I mean.”

“He hasn’t mentioned it to me,” replied her companion in the queue. She looked bewildered.

“Oh… oh well,” Mad shrugged, “perhaps it’s premature. My son’s a merchant banker, he’s always one step ahead of everyone else.”

Other people in the queue were listening. “I’ve never heard of the ducat,” whispered one woman to another, “nor the doubloon. It’s too bad, just as we had all got used to the decimal currency too.”

“Very hard on pensioners,” grumbled an old man.

“Never mind,” smiled Mad. “Now this rationing has started you and I will get orange juice at half-price like the babies.”

They moved forward through the swing doors. Bedlam was within, people pushing in all directions. The assistants were flustered. There were notices on the counter saying, “Sorry. No bacon, no butter, no cheese.” Customers were filling their wire baskets with tins marked “Not Rationed Yet,” but each tin was up in price.

“We don’t want any of this,” said Mad. “It’s old stock pushed to the front to catch our eye.”

The assistant behind the counter flinched. “I assure you it’s not, madam,” he said, “but you have to understand we have been put out by the new regulations worse than our customers. This rationing’s come into effect so quickly that we just don’t know where we are. We’ve had no deliveries yet, and we don’t know when to expect them.”

Mad jostled her way ahead, her granddaughter at her heels, and finally turned away with a curious assortment of goods ranging from a dozen pallid-looking chops and several pounds of sausages to rolls of lavatory paper and some bottles of orange squash.

“Darling, I don’t think Dottie had any of these on her list,” ventured Emma.

“Never mind,” said Mad, “they’ll come in useful. And we mustn’t hoard. I always remember that from the war, people who hoarded were beyond the pale. What about fish?”

“No,” said Emma. She looked around her. People outside the supermarket were still edging forward. I must lie, she thought. “The shop’s closed. Tom Bate isn’t there.” Yet they would have to pass his shop to get back to where she had parked the car. “I tell you what,” she said hurriedly. “You go along to the chemist’s and I’ll bring the car there and pick you up.”

“But I don’t want anything from the chemist,” Mad protested.

“The boys do. They’re running out of toothpaste. So am I. And you know the soap is better there than it is at the supermarket.”

Emma fetched the car and picked Mad up in front of the chemist’s, and they stopped at the roadblock for their passes to be scrutinized once again. Mr. Libby, the landlord of the Sailor’s Rest, was talking to the marine on duty. He waited for the formalities to finish, then stepped forward and bent his head to the car window.

“Good morning,” he said. “I think I have something that would please you both. I’m not letting on to everyone, mind you.” His tone was confidential. “They deputy commander of the camp here is a most obliging gentleman. What I say is this, if you do your best for them, they do their best for you.” He glanced over his shoulder. “How about a case of Californian wine?” he murmured.

“Sorry,” said Mad, “it’s against my principles.”