Octavia's War (11 page)

‘According to Mr Chivers, Friday the 10
^th
of May,' Octavia told them. ‘It's a sensible choice. It will give us the weekend to settle in and then we can start teaching there on Monday. We'll let the juniors have a day off and ask the seniors to help us, as I'm sure they will. We can transfer the subject libraries from Woking school on Saturday, as that's one of our days. I'll order a couple of vans and if the weather holds we can have a picnic in the garden. It should be quite a red-letter day.'

Although she didn't know it then, it wasn't just a red-letter day for the school but an historic one too. It was the day Hitler poured his storm troopers into Holland and Belgium. Not that any of them knew it while they were transferring their books and taking possession of their spotless classrooms. It was a perfect summer's day and such a joy to be in a building that was theirs and theirs alone, that they simply gave themselves over to the pleasures of occupation. They had a picnic lunch out on the lawn, and afterwards the girls returned to the classrooms with the teachers they were helping and set up the desks and chairs. Then, because it was still light, they were allowed to explore the building.

Lizzie and Poppy were thrilled with it, especially when they found that there were dormitories in the attics.

‘Who's going to stay here?' Poppy wondered.

‘Me for a start,' Lizzie said. ‘I've always wanted to go to a boarding school only Pa wouldn't have it. Oh I say! Look in here, Poppy. They've got a little window seat. I tell you what, I'd love to live in this room. We could sit in the seat and play cards or read or anything we liked. It would be our own world. Let's ask, shall we?'

‘Who?' Polly asked

‘I've no idea,' Lizzie admitted, sitting in the window. ‘We'll find out on Monday.'

But by Monday the world had changed and when Smithie took her first crowded assembly in their freshly painted hall, her mood was sombre.

‘The next few weeks will be difficult for all of us,' she said, ‘and particularly for those who have fathers or other relatives in any of the armed services. We must help one another in any way we can. Miss Brown will put maps of Belgium and Holland and Norway on the wall in this hall and we will keep you all up to date on everything that is happening. If there is anything that is worrying you, speak to your house officer or your form mistress, or to me. Don't worry on alone.

‘Now, we will say special prayers for the civilians and servicemen who are caught up in this new invasion. Then we will sing ‘Lord behold us with your blessing' because whatever is happening in Europe, we are making a new beginning in this house and that is what we sing when we are making a new beginning.'

‘It's bad, isn't it, Lizzie?' Poppy said, as they filed out of the hall.

‘Looks like it,' Lizzie admitted. ‘Not to worry though. I'll phone Pa and see what he says.'

It was the most disappointing call she'd ever made. For a
start he wouldn't tell her anything about the war, although she asked him three times, and then he said he was afraid he wouldn't be able to get down to see her on Sunday and that upset her, because he hadn't come the previous Sunday either.

‘Sorry about that, little one,' he said, ‘but there's a lot of work to do. We'll come down and see you as soon as we can. I promise.'

‘This war is getting in the way of my life,' Lizzie complained to her friend. ‘If my own father won't tell me what's going on I despair!'

‘At least you can phone him up and talk to him,' Poppy said. ‘Which is more than I can. My dad's in France somewhere and he only ever writes to Mum. You should count yourself lucky.'

Lizzie was chastened. Having a father in France was no joke. Hadn't they been saying prayers for the people in France and Holland and Belgium that very morning? ‘I'm sorry about that, Poppy,' she said. ‘I was being selfish. I wasn't thinking. It's just I want to
know
.'

‘You can always read the newspapers,' Poppy said.

‘They don't tell you the half of it,' Lizzie sighed. ‘You can read everything they've got to say in ten minutes.' Which was true enough, for newspapers were restricted to four pages now so as to economise with newsprint and, as they usually put in a few pictures, it didn't leave much room for text. ‘I'm sick of trying to glean things.'

‘What else can we do?' Poppy asked.

‘If we lived at Downview,' Lizzie said, ‘we could get a wireless and listen to that.'

But for the moment picking up snippets was the only method of gathering information that they had and the
snippets were decidedly unsatisfactory. The first one Lizzie found made her really cross.

‘Look at that,' she said to Poppy, pointing at the offending article. ‘The Germans say they've invaded Holland and Belgium
to protect their neutrality
. Did you ever hear such wicked nonsense? They're such liars! I'll send my army into your country and make you all do as I say and then you'll all be neutral. Neutral, my Aunt Fanny! They won't dare to speak. That's what'll happen. Especially if they're Jewish, and there are lots of Jews in Amsterdam. Pa told me.'

The news next day was better. There had been a
twenty-four-hour
debate in the House of Commons and at the end of it, Mr Chamberlain had lost the vote and resigned. ‘Good job too!' Lizzie said. Now Mr Churchill was going to take over.

‘Will he be better?' Poppy asked. ‘I mean, will he know what to do?' Politics was really baffling sometimes.

‘Let's hope so,' Lizzie said. ‘At least he's a fighter. He fought in the Great War. Pa told me. And he's been on and on for ages about rearming.'

That first week in Downview was like something out of a previous life. It was so good to be there with all their friends around them, eating dinner in house groups again, talking to their first-formers, having lessons in their own classrooms and studying in a hall, instead of trying to write essays in their cramped bedroom or wandering round the town looking for somewhere quiet where they could read in peace. That in itself was a daily pleasure. And yet the papers were full of battles and surrenders and retreats.

By the weekend they were reporting that the Dutch had asked for an armistice and that Queen Wilhelmina had left The Hague and taken ship to London with her family and the Dutch gold reserves. And nine days later the Belgian army
surrendered and the German army invaded France.

The maps in their new school hall were informative but very alarming, with arrows marking the points at which the Germans had invaded and charting the speed of their advance. Every day brought changes and every change was for the worse. As her father still wasn't telling her anything, Lizzie made it her business to check the maps every morning, concentrating hard, her face anxious, with Poppy standing quietly beside her looking equally worried. From the way the arrows were extending, it looked as though the British Expeditionary Force were retreating towards the English Channel and the Germans were encircling them.

‘It looks awful, Lizzie,' Poppy said. ‘I mean, it's worse than it was yesterday. Why aren't they heading for a port? I mean, that's where they should be going and then we could send troop ships and get them home. If they end up on a beach somewhere, they'll all be captured, won't they?'

‘The nearest ports are Calais and Ostend,' Lizzie told her. ‘If we lose them, they
will
be on the beaches.'

‘And what will happen to them then?'

‘God knows!' Lizzie said.

Those last days of May were acutely painful to Octavia Smith. It was an agony to think that the British army was being defeated, worse to know that they were going to be caught in the noose the Germans were so obviously pulling tighter and tighter around them, worst of all to have to face the fact that most of them were going to be captured. She was full of passionate energy, which was how she always reacted in a crisis, wanting to do something to change things or at least to make them better, and knowing only too well that it was beyond her power to do anything at all. She missed the good sense of her father and the comfort of her own house; she ached for all her pupils who had fathers in France; she grieved for poor Edie who hadn't heard a word from Arthur since the fighting began and was now so tense with anxiety that she squabbled with poor Emmeline every time she phoned; and she was torn to anguish by the beauty of the apple blossom.

When she'd first moved into the house in Ridgeway, the trees had been heavy with fruit, and when Emmeline had finally joined her, they and Janet had set to work to harvest the crop. She'd thought what fine trees they were and how lovely they would look in the spring. Now she stood in the garden in the clear light of a May morning and wept because
the delicate pink and white blossoms were so fragile and young and vulnerable and soon to fall. ‘Dear God,' she prayed, ‘save our soldiers. They're fighting a war that is none of their making and they don't deserve to die in a trap.'

Knowing that nothing could be done to save them dragged her down in the long days of waiting. She kept up her spirits at school for the sake of the girls and the staff but by evening she was drawn with fatigue, and when the phone rang, she answered it dully, merely repeating her number.

‘Tavy, my dear,' Tommy's voice said. ‘I've got some news for you. Keep it under your hat until it breaks because it's all hush-hush at the moment.'

There was so much excitement in his voice her heart leapt. ‘Of course,' she said. ‘That goes without saying. What is it?'

‘There's a plan afoot for getting the army off the beaches,' he told her. ‘Totally foolhardy but it just might come off. They're mobilising all the little boats they can find, mostly in the south-east, but they're searching further afield as I speak: pleasure boats, fishing boats, anything that can sail across the Channel and pick up a few men. Troop ships can't get ashore, you see, not on an open beach, but
they
could, and even if they only manage to take off a few, that's better than none at all. There should be quite a flotilla, if it all goes according to plan.'

It was imaginative, daring, a last hope, but a very bold one. It lifted her spirits simply to hear about it. ‘Thank God!' she said. ‘When are they going?'

‘Tomorrow.'

Alvar Liddell, the BBC newsreader, broke the news the next afternoon, in his usual calm and measured way. ‘A fleet of small ships especially mobilised for the purpose has been evacuating troops from the beaches at Dunkirk throughout
the day. Several thousand men are already on their way back across the Channel and the evacuation is planned to continue. The men are reported to be in good spirits.'

The next morning,
The Times
was more forthcoming. ‘British troops,' it said, ‘are fighting a desperate rearguard action on the French coast around Dunkirk as German troops finally move in and surround them. The first men of the B.E.F. to be picked off the beaches arrived home yesterday. They told how they had been bombed and machine-gunned as they waded out to the ships. One private described how he had walked over thirty miles to the beaches with a bullet in his foot, another reported that the British artillery had put up a mile long barrage on one sector in an effort to stop the German advance. The Germans had advanced right into it and must have taken tremendous casualties. Despite everything, seven thousand men have been rescued in the first day alone and the evacuation is continuing.'

‘Well it's not much,' Emmeline said, ‘but it's a start.' The phone was ringing into her thoughts, alerting her to the possibility of more news. She eased herself to her feet. ‘That could be Edie,' she said.

It was Dora, and she was in a state of high excitement. ‘Isn't it wonderful, Ma,' she said. ‘My John's been posted to Dover. I had a letter this morning. He says it's the best thing he's ever seen. Ever so big and hardly planned at all. They just gave the skippers fuel and charts and let them get on with it. Imagine that! It's his job to refuel them as they come in. They've been coming in and out all day long, he said, and there are still new ones arriving. Isn't it just the most wonderful thing?'

‘Have you heard from Edie?' Emmeline asked.

‘I went to see her yesterday. They're all right. No news of Arthur yet but, like I said to her, you wouldn't expect it, not
yet awhile. I mean there's a lot of men to rescue.'

‘Ring me as soon as you know anything,' Emmeline said.

‘'Course,' Dora said. ‘Chin up!'

The first troop train pulled in at Woking station later that morning, full of exhausted soldiers on their way to London. News of its arrival spread through the town like the ringing of bells. People went down to the station at once, some with urns to make tea, some with packets of postcards so that the men could write home, some simply to stand in the Broadway and cheer. Poppy and Lizzie went down with the rest, for as Poppy said, ‘I might see my dad. You never know.' In fact there were so many people there it was hard to see who they all were, but the two girls handed out postcards and gathered up the completed ones and felt they were being useful. They were shocked by how dirty and exhausted the soldiers were and much impressed by how brave they'd been and, although they were late back for their next study period, nobody rebuked them. ‘You've been on war work,' Miss Gordon said.

By the time the third train arrived, everybody was organised. The WVS were there to hand out tea, sandwiches and cigarettes, there were hundreds of postcards stacked in cardboard boxes, ready and stamped, and several senior girls, including Lizzie, Poppy and Mary, had been commandeered to act as interpreters for the French troops. It was, as the three girls told one another at the end of the day, a humbling experience.

The days passed, more trains arrived at their station, somebody calculated that they were handing out four hundred postcards every day, and as people all over England held their breath, the numbers taken off the beaches continued to rise. The newspapers and the BBC bulletins kept a daily tally –
ten thousand, a hundred thousand, a quarter of a million, and hopes and hearts rose with the figures. But there was still no news of Arthur, and Emmeline was irritable with anxiety, especially when the weather was bad.

‘If we're going to get our boys off those damned beaches,' she said, ‘we need sunshine and a calm sea, not all this wind. They're such little boats, Tavy, they're not built to withstand storms.'

‘They're not built to withstand dive bombers, either,' Octavia pointed out, ‘but they're doing an amazing job just the same.' What was happening on that French beach was beginning to look like a miracle. The total number of men who had been rescued was reported to be over three hundred thousand, and laden trains were still passing through Woking station where most of her senior girls were waiting to help them and interpret for them. It surprised her that the German army seemed to be holding off. The Luftwaffe went on strafing the beaches and bombing the ships, despite the most valiant efforts by the RAF, but the Panzer divisions had come to a halt. And thank God for that, whatever the reason.

‘A few more days,' she said, ‘that's all we need.'

By now messages were beginning to filter through to the many waiting relatives. Poppy's father had been taken back to England on the third day and had sent postcards to his wife and daughter as soon as he landed. Poppy wept with relief when hers arrived. She simply couldn't help it. After seeing all those weary, blood-stained soldiers in the trains and knowing what horrors they must have gone through, it was miraculous to think that he'd got home safely.

‘He isn't injured or
anything
,' she said to Lizzie.

Lizzie hugged her and said she was so, so glad but secretly, and like the realist she was, she was beginning to wonder
what would happen next. Once the British Expeditionary Force have pulled out, she thought, there'll be nothing to stop the Germans conquering the whole of France, the way they've conquered Holland and Belgium. And then what will happen? They could invade us too and we wouldn't be able to stop them.

‘I'm glad I'm not in the fifth form,' she said, ‘taking their exams with all this going on. At least we can skip lessons if we like and go down to the station to help, but they're stuck.'

In fact, the last day of the great sea rescue was June the 4th, which was the second day of the General School Certificate examinations. By the end of the day a total of 338,226 men had been taken off the beaches. There were more still waiting to be rescued but by evening the operation had to stop because the German troops had captured the town.

‘What will happen to the men they've left behind?' Poppy wondered.

‘They'll be taken prisoner,' Lizzie told her, still reading her newspaper. ‘It says here there's a casualty station for the wounded still on the beach. The doctors drew lots to see which of them would stay behind and man it. Now, I call that really brave.'

‘So do I,' Poppy said. ‘When you think what it must be like. Oh, I'm so glad my dad's home and out of it.'

For a few days, the euphoria of the rescue carried them all along. Then Emmeline had two phone calls that brought her down to earth with a jolt. The first was from Johnnie, although he was talking in such an odd way that it took her a little while to realise who it was.

‘Is that you, Mater?' his voice said.

The name made her cringe. He never called her Mater.
Ever. It was always Ma, never Mater. There was something the matter. She knew it at once and her stomach tensed with the dread of what was to come. ‘Johnnie?' she said. ‘Is that you?'

‘Me as ever is,' he said, but his voice was too light, too casual, almost as if he was playing a part. ‘Thought you'd like to know I've been in action.'

She suddenly found it hard to breathe. ‘Action?' she said.

‘Flown my first sorties, old thing,' he said, as casually as if he were talking about a trip in a balloon. ‘Over Dunkirk. Shot down my first Stuka. Absolutely wizard.'

She didn't know whether to praise or commiserate. ‘Oh Johnnie!'

‘Knew you'd be pleased. Bunty bought it, though. That was a poor show.'

Bought what? she wondered, but didn't like to ask.

‘Blighter came out the clouds. He didn't stand a chance.'

‘Oh, Johnnie!' she said again. The conversation was making her feel quite ill. He was telling her about somebody being killed, not somebody buying something. How could he be talking like this, in this silly flippant way? It was hideous.

‘That's war for you,' he said. ‘Still, we're putting on a damned good show. I'll say that for us. Are you getting on all right?'

She told him she was. How could she say anything else? She could hardly tell him about her problems when he'd been talking about his friend being killed.

‘Good-oh!' he said. ‘Must dash.' And hung up.

‘It was horrible,' she said to Octavia that evening. ‘Like talking to a stranger.'

‘I think this is something that happens when the fighting starts,' Octavia said, trying to comfort her. ‘They learn a new way of talking to cover what they're feeling. Think how Algie wrote to us from the trenches.
I am in the pink. I am
ticketty-boo. Please send more jam
.'

‘You could be right,' Emmeline said, ‘but I wish my Johnnie wouldn't do it.'

‘I don't think he's got any option,' Octavia told her. ‘It's probably the way they all talk. A sort of emotional camouflage. It must be pretty terrifying, if you think about it, fighting in the air, knowing they'll be shot down and killed if they make one false move. It's no good making that face, Em. None of us wants to think about it but it's a fact, whether we do or not. You can't blame them for finding ways to play their feelings down. I think it's admirable. And brave.'

But Emmeline's expression made it clear that she didn't want to think about it at all. ‘I hate war,' she said. ‘Changing my Johnnie. As if I haven't got enough to do with all this worry over Arthur.'

‘Edie hasn't phoned then?'

‘No, poor girl. And she's worried sick.'

‘She'll hear soon,' Octavia comforted. ‘It's bound to take time, given the number of men involved.'

In fact, she rang the very next morning, just as Octavia was leaving for work, and she was hysterical.

‘He's been taken prisoner,' she wept. ‘I've just had the letter. Some awful place I can't even pronounce, and God knows where it is or how he is and it's all my fault.'

‘Oh, come on, Edie, be sensible,' Emmeline said, trying to reason with her. ‘You can't help the war.' And she mouthed the news to Octavia who was standing beside her. ‘He's been taken prisoner.'

Edie was wailing. ‘You don't know the half of it, Ma. I knew this would happen. I've known it all along. I should have stopped him before he started. Only we just sort of… I mean, we were…' Her voice was so thick with tears and
distress it was quite hard to understand her. ‘Oh, my poor Arthur. It's all my fault, Ma. It is. All my silly fault. I should never have agreed to it. Only we were in such a pickle. I mean…' She blew her nose and wept and snuffled, while her mother struggled to think of something to say to comfort her. Then the explanation came out with a rush of tumbling words. ‘If I hadn't fallen with our Joan he'd never have gone into the army in the first place. I knew it was a mistake, I've known it all along, but we didn't have any option, not if we were to stay in the flat and not with a baby coming, and now he's in a prisoner a' war camp and I shan't see him for years and years and it's all my fault. All my own stupid, stupid fault. I can't bear it.'