Songs of Spring (9 page)

As March had begun, so had increased tension. German HQ, they had discovered, had shifted from Kreuznach to Spa, nearer the Western Front. It could be an ominous sign. Germany had been fighting a defensive war, leaving the grand scale offensives to the Allies who were trying to push the enemy line back. That could not last for ever, although sometimes it seemed it would. However, now the indications of a coming German offensive were growing stronger by the day.

The reports they received were usually a few days old, since they had to wait for them to be decrypted and passed
on to them from the central office of the SSB. GHQ were first in line for the decrypts, and they came second.

‘Another report from Fourmies,’ Luke observed.

Yves’ head shot up. Fourmies was the important train-watching post inside the French border, and one of the closest to the front. Significant movements observed there might indicate the enemy had its eye on the Arras–Cambrai section of the front, rather than that further north near Ypres. And
that
in its turn suggested an early strike since Yves had told Caroline that the ground in the Belgian sector in the Lys Valley would be too wet before mid April to sustain an offensive.

The work La Dame Blanche was doing was now invaluable. The Allied intelligence services were aware that the enemy was using dummy military installations to blur the picture when RFC reconnaissance planes swept over the lines but trains carrying troops were impossible to conceal, or to deploy on deceptions when manpower must be as critical on their side as on ours. Britain was at crisis point, and there was talk of raising the conscription age to fifty. The enemy, on the other hand, seemed to be lowering theirs. It was reported many of the dead and wounded were no more than fifteen or sixteen.

When Caroline and Yves reached home that night, they heard the sound of laughing, followed by a feminine squeal. Ellen? Was she entertaining someone in their sitting room? This was strictly forbidden without special permission in view of their jobs and the use of the offices in the rest of the building. Yves raced ahead, with Caroline after him, to find it was indeed Ellen, although it wasn’t exactly a sweetheart
teasing her. There lounging on the sofa, reading
Punch
, feet up, puttees unwound and RFC cap flung carelessly on the table, was George, and Ellen, somewhat red-faced, was sitting chastely some way away.

‘Admiring your own work, George?’ Caroline enquired sweetly. George’s cartoons appeared frequently in the magazine.

He grinned. ‘If I don’t, no one else will. It was Ellen laughing at them, actually.’

‘So we heard,’ Caroline said drily. ‘What was he doing to you, Ellen, or daren’t I ask?’

‘Entertaining me.’

Caroline decided not to speculate on what form George’s entertainment took nowadays. It didn’t sound as though it had been restricted to showing her his photographs, half a dozen of which lay scattered on the table. She picked one up, to see a group of three uniformed men, one of whom was George, and three WAACs, with their arms round each other’s shoulders, laughing their heads off. Odd to think that George, her baby brother, now had a life of his own apart from them, of which they knew nothing. They feared for him all the time, and yet there were moments like that captured in this photograph.

‘To what do we owe this honour?’

‘I’m over here on official business, leaving dear old Blighty tomorrow, and heading for my little grey home on the Western Front. I thought I’d pop in in case the balloon goes up and I go down.’

‘Don’t jest about it.’

‘All one can do, dearest Sis. Even you can’t ignore the
fact I’ve been on borrowed time for the best part of a year now. It only needs the Red Baron’s circus to spot my trusty SE5a and down goes baby, cradle and all.’

‘Or down von Richthofen goes.’

‘Yes. That would be a lark.’ He considered this. ‘I’d get another gong for that all right.’ He already wore the DSO, a fact he had concealed from the whole family until the summons for its presentation at the Palace had arrived last autumn. ‘Father and Mother would burst their buttons with pride.’

‘Have you been to the Rectory?’ Caroline asked eagerly.

‘Just for a day to see Felicia and say hallo. Official business, as I said. I needed a word with Isabel, anyway,’ he added carelessly.

‘Whenever you use that tone of voice, I know there’s something you want to keep from Father.’

‘There is, as a matter of fact,’ he admitted. ‘As well as the business, I wanted to see a chum, so I told the folks I only had a forty-eight-hour leave.’

‘A girl sort of chum?’

‘You could say that.’

‘I do, George.’ Good luck to him. He was nineteen now, and with what everyone perceived would be a short lifespan. Live for the day was the attitude of most young men of his age, and London was full of them. In George’s shoes she wouldn’t want to go back to the Rectory either, which would be clouded by their fears for him. George had a loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and now he’d found himself a Thou beside him singing in the wilderness. Omar Khayyám’s attitude was right, even if Father would not agree.

‘What did you want to talk to Isabel about? Babies?’

‘Not Pygmalion likely. It was official business actually. The government has plans to set up a fleet of cine-motor cars and send them round the country with propaganda films, including war cartoons. Like that film of Bairnsfather’s,
A Better ’Ole
. They asked me to chip in, so I wanted to ask Beautiful Bella what went down best in villages.’

‘I don’t understand. What have cars to do with it? Why not send the films to the cinemas?’

‘Because, nit-head, not many villages have generous folk like Swinford-Browne donating cinemas. The cine-motor cars carry portable screens and set them up wherever they can find.’

‘Propaganda to join the services, I presume. Don’t you think there’s been enough of that?’

‘No, I don’t. The point of propaganda is to get the war won. Everything’s propaganda in a way. If you
don’t
keep the home flag flying, you’re simply doing the enemy’s propaganda for him.’

Yves laughed. ‘Come and work for us, George.’

‘No, thanks. Sitting in an SE5a beats a Whitehall chair any day.’

The next morning, 9th March, there was more bad news. ‘The Germans have begun a bombardment all along the Western Front,’ Luke reported, torn between anxiety and excitement that at last it had happened.

‘The offensive has
started
?’ Caroline’s stomach contracted. George would be leaving for the front at this very moment.

‘Probably not. This is the preparation for it.’

‘It won’t be long though. The Germans won’t want to risk too many Americans coming into the ranks.’

‘That’s hardly likely,’ Yves commented wryly. The American involvement in the war was causing much dissension. Few of the 120,000 combat troops in France were yet in combat, despite all Haig and Clemenceau’s pleas. The problem seemed to be that the Allies wanted to integrate American divisions under their own command, whereas Pershing wanted to have them under his sole control. The US commander had visited Haig and King Albert in January, and Yves had returned with a funny story. Pershing’s train had arrived at Adinkerke ten minutes early, catching the General still dressing; he was only halfway through putting his uniform on. Poor King Albert had been left at Adinkerke Station with himself and his officers at full salute for ten minutes. He didn’t say a word when Pershing finally appeared.

‘You know Pershing. He’s immovable,’ Luke replied to Yves’ comment.

Less than two weeks later, Pershing did move, offering troops for the emergency. On the 19th, they had intelligence reports from prisoners and deserters that the offensive would begin on 21st March – a delightful spring present, as Luke described it when he told them. But all the advance knowledge in the world wouldn’t have been able to influence the outcome of this offensive. Its momentum was now carrying all before it, as the Germans swept forward, not in the south as the British and French had hoped, but in the St Quentin area – where George’s squadron was stationed.

Even at this grim time there were treats. One of them should have been this evening, the 23rd, as Simon, Tilly and Penelope had invited Yves and herself to dinner in Norland Square. Even Field Marshal Haig had ‘treats’. On the very day of the outbreak of the German offensive, his first son had been born. Caroline’s treat was doomed, however. She had noticed that Yves was avoiding her eye during the afternoon and instantly divined the reason. ‘You can’t come this evening, can you?’

‘I am sorry, Caroline.’

‘Oh,
Yves
!’ She couldn’t help the cry of dismay. ‘Everyone must have some time off.’

‘Not tonight,’ he replied quietly. ‘We have just heard the British are retreating to the Somme, and that the Germans are shelling Paris. Many people have been killed there.’

‘
Paris?
But that’s miles away.’

‘Long-range guns.’

‘Even so—’ Caroline broke off. Surely, oh surely all the fighting so far could not have been in vain. Could the Germans take Paris, and win the war so easily? All the discipline in the world could not prevent that sick fear churning in her stomach.

Irrationally, disappointment over the evening predominated by the time evening came, and ate at her all the way to Bayswater on the Central London Railway. It was a wearisome journey by Underground, whereas Yves could easily have commandeered a car. He didn’t even suggest she took a cab. Caroline felt aggrieved, though she knew she was being ridiculous. The loss of his company for one evening was a small price to pay besides that being
paid by most people in the country. She fumed at the slowness of the train, irritably riffling through the pages of
The Lady
early spring fashion number. She stared savagely at an advertisement for a holeproof corset (guaranteed if the supports gave way or a hole in the fabric developed). She didn’t believe it, and did it matter in the great scheme of things anyway?

When the train ground to what seemed a permanent halt at Queen’s Road, she leapt out and decided to walk the rest of the way. By the time she arrived at Simon’s house, she was windswept but better humoured. She was put in even better humour by the unexpected guest.

‘Surprise!’ Isabel, by now considerably enlarged round the waist, came to greet her just as George had done at Christmas.

‘Why didn’t you warn me?’ Caroline was half laughing, half crying.

‘You’d have told me not to come, just like Mother, Father, Uncle Tom Cobley and all. But here I am, and no Zeps, white traders or American soldiers have got me yet, despite Grandmother’s darkest forebodings.’

The evening was a pleasant one and at the end of it Simon, Tilly and Penelope tactfully withdrew so that she could talk to Isabel alone. ‘How are things in Ashden?’ Caroline asked brightly, meaning how are things at the Rectory.

Isabel of course didn’t realise that. ‘The William Pear had another go at shutting down the cinema, but the parish council made it clear it was a weapon with which to fight the war and that we’d splash it all over the newspapers if he
closed it. He shut up like a goldfish, silly little man.’

Isabel much disliked her father-in-law, who now lived in East Grinstead, but, much amused, Caroline reflected that she would not have talked of William in such terms several years ago.

‘They’re beginning to take an interest in Swinford-Browne Junior, more’s the pity,’ Isabel continued gloomily. ‘I suppose Robert
had
to tell them, just in case—’ She stopped, but it was obvious what Isabel was thinking.

Observation balloons over the Western Front had probably the most dangerous job in the RFC, and if Robert were shot down in flames, the Swinford-Brownes would descend in force on Isabel – not for her own sake, but to commandeer their grandchild. It was not a pleasant thought and Caroline decided it was time to change the subject.

‘Tell me about home,’ she commanded.

Isabel grimaced. ‘You wouldn’t believe the stuff Mrs Dibble is trying to pour down my throat to “do me good”, in between admonitions that no lady should work while she’s expecting, especially the Rector’s daughter. I asked her who was going to run the cinema with no young gentlemen to do it, and she couldn’t answer that one. Perhaps she should consult Fred.’

‘
What
did you say?’ Caroline was startled.

Isabel went red. ‘I’m sorry, that just slipped out. There’s rather a barney on at home.’

‘Over me?’

‘Not this time. Over Mrs Dibble. You’ve been temporarily replaced as the black sheep. Did you know that according to Father, there actually were some human black sheep?
It was a tribe who got vanquished by the white sheep in ancient times out East somewhere—’

‘Isabel!
Tell
me!’

Her sister giggled. ‘All right. I shouldn’t have said anything, though. Poor old Mrs Dibble has been reading
Raymond
and now believes Fred’s his best friend up above.’

‘Oh.’ Caroline understood immediately what the fuss was about. Everyone knew about
Raymond
.

‘Father found out – not through me, honestly,’ Isabel explained. ‘Mrs Dibble mentioned it to him herself. He raised the roof about it.’

Oh
really
. Caroline was infuriated. Father might believe he could control his children’s every thought, but he shouldn’t try to do the same for Mrs Dibble. She was free to believe what she liked.

She had always had a double-sided religion in fact. For Sussex born and bred Mrs Dibble, the land of superstition and fairies existed side by side with God’s word, and in Caroline’s opinion,
Raymond
was only an extension of this dual belief.

‘It’s developing into a battle royal,’ Isabel was in her stride now. ‘Mrs Coombs, who lent the book to Mrs Dibble, has been going round the village raising support to hire a charabanc to visit a medium in Tunbridge Wells. About twenty bereaved parents went off there ten days ago, leaving Father tearing his hair out.’

‘But if it gives them comfort and does no harm, is it any concern of his?’