Octavia's War (20 page)

‘Shush! Shush,' he soothed. ‘We all cry. It's all right. Cry it all out.'

She cried until there were no more tears left. Then she gave him a bleak smile, found her handkerchief and dried her eyes.

‘Was it very recent?' he asked.

‘Six months ago.'

‘Ah! No wonder you're crying.'

‘Did you…?'

‘Over and over and over,' he said. ‘I thought I'd never stop.'

‘Did she…? Was she killed?'

‘She had consumption,' he told her. ‘She was the skinniest thing you ever saw. Quiet and gentle and terribly skinny. I was twelve when she died. But you never get over it. Not really. You just learn ways of coping.'

‘Yes. That's what Matron says. “It doesn't get better, it gets different.” My God. Matron! I'd better be getting back or she'll be sending out a search party.'

‘I'll walk you to the gate,' he reassured her. ‘I know a short cut over the common.'

‘Will it take long?'

‘No time at all,' he said. Unfortunately.

They followed the next footpath companionably, digesting what they'd just been saying to one another. It seemed amazing to him that he'd been holding her in his arms.

‘Look,' he said eventually. ‘I know this isn't the way to go on but I've only got ten days' leave and two of them are gone already and then I shall have to go back to Salisbury Plain. Can I see you tomorrow?'

‘What are you doing on Salisbury Plain?' she asked, avoiding his question.

‘Driving a tank,' he said, dismissing it as if it wasn't important. ‘Exercises. That sort of thing. Can I see you tomorrow? Please.'

His urgency was so touching it had to be answered. And besides, he'd been so kind to her she could hardly turn him down. ‘It would have to be after supper,' she said. ‘I can't cut meals two days in a row or they'll smell a rat.'

‘After supper would be fine.' Any time at all would be fine, just so long as he could see her again. ‘We could go to the Gaumont. What time shall I call for you?'

Tommy and Octavia were finishing their evening in the Wheatsheaf Inn, drinking cognac, and enjoying a precious hour on their own before they had to go back to whispered caution in Ridgeway. It was one of the most comfortable pubs in the area and he'd chosen it with some care, finding a quiet corner where they wouldn't be noticed or interrupted and ordering her favourite drink as soon as they were settled.

She wasn't fooled by his attentions. ‘You're so transparent when you want something, Tommy,' she teased. ‘And it won't wash.'

‘Now, that's where you're wrong for once,' he said. ‘I'm not after anything.'

She grinned at him. ‘No?'

‘No,' he said firmly. ‘Actually I've got something to give to you. A present.' And he took it from the inner pocket of his jacket, wrapped and flat in brown paper and laid it on the table in front of her.

‘Heavens!' she said. ‘It's not my birthday.'

‘I can't wait for your birthday,' he told her. ‘Open it.'

It was a thin book of poetry and to his delight she was surprised by it.

‘Poems?' she said.

‘Couldn't resist it,' he told her. ‘Well actually, couldn't resist the one on page nine. It says everything I want to say to you.' Then he waited hopefully while she found page nine and read it.

She was touched by it. ‘Tommy, my dear man,' she said. ‘That's perfectly lovely. I never knew you liked poetry.'

‘I do when it's written for me,' he said. ‘And it is, isn't it?'

‘It's written for both of us.'

It was the perfect moment to ask her. ‘You will come on holiday with me, Tavy, won't you?'

‘I'll ask the staff what they think about it,' she temporised.  ‘I can't say more than that. It will all depend on what they say.'

‘Can't you just tell them?'

‘No, I can not,' she told him, returning to her cognac. ‘We work as a team. I will tell them and, if they're agreeable to it, I will come with you. You'll have to be satisfied with that.'

‘Fair enough,' he said and crossed his fingers. They were sensible women. They wouldn't let him down. 

Octavia fell in love with Grenada, even before she'd sailed into St George's Bay. It was the luscious scent of it, drifting across the sea towards her as their launch approached, and the sight of those lush green mountains silhouetted against the cobalt sky and those amazing white beaches. She'd never seen sand so white in the whole of her life, nor sea such a dazzling peacock blue.

‘It's a paradise,' she said to Tommy.

He grinned at her, standing beside her at the ship's rail. ‘It's not bad, is it.'

She laughed at his studied insouciance. Sometimes he was so English. ‘Well, it beats Eastbourne.'

‘You'll have to stay indoors in the middle of the day,' he warned. ‘This is actually the wrong time of the year to make the most of the place because it's too hot in high summer. But it is lovely. I'll grant you that.'

It was also peaceful and a long way away from rations and bombs and all the appalling things that were going on in Europe and Africa.

‘I can quite see why the Americans want to keep out of this war,' she said to Tommy as they finished their first dinner on the island. ‘That was absolutely delicious. I haven't eaten a
banana split for years. I'd forgotten such food existed.'

‘Don't get too used to it,' he told her. ‘We've only got a fortnight.'

‘A fortnight!' she said happily. ‘Two whole weeks of good food and warm weather and idleness. I shall go home a changed woman.'

‘I can't imagine you changing,' Tommy said, ‘or being idle come to that. You're not the sort of woman who lies around on a beach all day. You've got too much go.'

‘What are we going to do tomorrow?' she said, proving his point.

He had an excursion planned for almost every day – ‘somewhere where we can keep out of the sun' – and the first was to a sulphur pool at the top of the highest mountain on the island. ‘It's supposed to have magical powers,' he told her. ‘If you bathe there it will heal all your aches and pains and cure all your diseases and give you your heart's desire for good measure, or so they say.'

They set out early next morning when it was relatively cool, in a pony and trap which ambled them past fields of spices and bananas and coconuts, and through several shanty towns, which Octavia found decidedly shocking. One or two of the rough wooden houses looked fairly new but most were dirty and decaying, and the sight of such extreme poverty distressed her. They were all built on wooden stilts and all roofed with corrugated iron, some of it new and painted bright red, but most of it rusty and rotting. Snotty-nosed children played on the bare earth in front of the verandas or squatted on their haunches eating bananas or slices of melon or chunks of coconut, and a variety of mongrel dogs ran among the stilts, yapping and wagging their tatty tails.

‘Yes,' Tommy said, catching her expression. ‘That's poverty
for you. It's the same the world over. There were villages like this in the Balkans.'

‘Something should be done about it,' Octavia said.

‘But not by you,' he begged, ‘and certainly not while we're on holiday. Save your strength for climbing the mountain.'

It was a very long haul and a very hot one, for now they were away from the plain and climbing through a tropical forest where perpetual rain dropped water down their perspiring backs and made the earth paths sodden and slippery. It was quite a challenge and, when the path diminished to a narrow track, it got worse. Then there were streams to negotiate as well as earth paths, and the way across was over extremely slippery stepping stones. Eventually they passed a long waterfall, tumbling snow-white against the tropical green, and found themselves beside a small, steaming, olive green pool that smelt strongly of sulphur. They had arrived.

Octavia was disappointed with it. ‘Is this it?' she asked. ‘It's a bit on the small side.'

Tommy was already stripping to his swimming shorts. ‘You can't expect size and magic powers,' he said, looking around for the least damp spot where he could put his clothes.

She took off her frock and her shoes but she was still dubious. ‘How are you supposed to get in?' she said.

‘You jump,' he said. And jumped.

The water was warm and soft and obviously full of sulphur. Within minutes it had stained their fingernails and swimming costumes bright orange.

‘What do you think?' he said, swimming beside her and putting an orange palm on her arm.

‘Extraordinary.'

‘Now,' he said, smiling into her eyes, ‘we shall both be granted our heart's desire.'

‘Which one?' she teased.

‘How many have you got?' he teased back.

‘Two,' she said, suddenly serious. ‘But they've both been granted already.'

‘I've only got one,' he said, ‘and I've got to wait until Christmas to know whether that's going to be granted. Isn't that right?'

She leant towards him in the velvety water and kissed him lovingly. ‘Right and proper,' she said.

That night they dined on turtle soup, grilled fish, melon and mangoes and went for a stroll round the harbour afterwards to walk off their excesses, and the next day they travelled into the interior to see a mangrove swamp and a grove full of humming birds, whirring among the blossoms like flying jewels. Every day brought another excursion and more pleasures. It wasn't until their holiday was more than half over that Octavia thought about her school and her colleagues and wondered how they were getting on. And that was because Tommy had a telephone call.

They'd been sitting over coffee in the bloom of the evening talking about the day's events when a waiter came quietly up to tell them that Major Meriton was wanted on the telephone. ‘That'll be the conference,' Tommy said. ‘Shan't be a tick.'

He returned to their table looking pleased with himself.

‘I was right,' he said. ‘That was Tubby. Just got ashore. Apparently, it's all gone rather well. They're issuing a joint statement tomorrow.'

‘Now perhaps you can tell me who “they” were,' she said. ‘And where they met. Or shall I guess?'

There was no harm in telling her about it now. The conference was over and they were on their own together under the stars, where no one could possibly hear them and they couldn't be accused of careless talk. ‘Winston Churchill
and President Roosevelt,' he said. ‘But you worked that out a long time ago, didn't you?'

‘And they met at sea, presumably.'

‘In Placentia Bay,' he told her, ‘just off Newfoundland, on a British battleship and an American cruiser. You were right about neutral waters.'

‘So now what will happen?'

‘I'll be able to tell you that when I've read the statement. It'll be in the papers tomorrow.'

Talk of news and newspapers made her think of the school and all the people in it still struggling on in the thick of things. ‘I wonder how they are in Woking,' she said, frowning.

‘They'll be fine,' he told her. ‘Don't worry about them.'

But she was feeling guilty. ‘I haven't even
thought
about them till now.'

‘Good.'

‘It's not good,' she said sternly. ‘Anything could have happened.'

‘Could you have done anything about it if it had?'

‘Not if I wasn't there, no.'

‘Well, there you are then,' he said and smiled at her. ‘If there's one thing the first war taught me, it's that you can only be responsible for the men and the action where you are. Everything else is beyond your control and the sensible thing is to put it out of your mind and concentrate on the job in hand.'

It was probably true but it was a harsh doctrine nevertheless. She tried to argue against it. ‘You're not going to tell me you don't worry about your family.'

‘I think about them,' he admitted, ‘naturally, and I wonder how they are, especially Mark and Matthew, but worrying is pointless.'

‘What about Lizzie? Don't you worry about her?'

‘Good heavens, no,' he said. ‘Lizzie's no problem. She's a straightforward, sensible, little girl and she's in a safe place, getting on with her studies, heading for Oxford. No problem at all.'

He might not have spoken so cheerfully if he could have seen his straightforward, sensible, little girl at that moment, for she wasn't in a nice safe place getting on with her studies, she was on Horsell Common holding hands with a young man he'd never seen and never heard of.

It was a soft summer evening just as it had been every evening for the last eight wonderful days and Horsell Common was swathed in the soothing half-light of a languorous dusk. Lizzie was caught up in a dream of sensation and bewildered delight, enjoying every minute of the time they spent together but, in a peculiar and uncharacteristic way, not quite able to believe that it was actually happening, as if her ability to think was lagging behind the uproar of her senses. They'd talked about so many things – their families, her Pa, his Aunt Min, the war, their hopes and ambitions – it was hard to remember that they'd only met a mere eight days ago. She felt as if she'd known him all her life. And in all the time they'd been together the promise of kisses charged the air between them, he wondering,
could I?
she hoping that he would.

They had reached the sand pits and the grassy knoll where they usually sat and talked. But this time he stood where he was and went on holding her hand, looking down at her from his lovely height and so close she could feel the warmth of his body.

‘I wish I didn't have to go back tomorrow,' he said.

The electricity between them was so strong it was making
it difficult for her to breathe. ‘Me too,' she said huskily.

‘I'll write to you every day,' he promised. ‘You will write back, won't you?'

She felt as if they were exchanging vows. ‘Yes.'

‘Oh, Lizzie,' he said, ‘my darling Lizzie.'

‘Yes,' she said again. And this time the small, breathed word was a permission.

He kissed her, at first gently and then, when she responded – how could she not respond? – with more and more passion until they were both breathless.

Above their heads the stars shone steadfastly and somewhere across the common a nightingale began to sing, jug, jug, jug, teroo.

‘Darling Lizzie,' he said. ‘I think I love you.'

Tommy and Octavia were impressed by the Atlantic Charter, which was published in full in the papers the next morning and which they read at breakfast on the veranda, she because of the altruism of its sentiments, he because of the cunning of its diplomacy.

‘You've got to hand it to Roosevelt,' he said, pouring himself more orange juice. ‘He's a first-rate politician. A declaration of the – how does he put it? – “joint war and peace aims of the US and the UK” will make it harder for the isolationists to resist.'

‘Will they join in the war though?' Octavia asked.

‘No,' he had to admit, ‘but it's a good first step. They can't fail to accept the peace aims, nobody could, and if they accept them publicly they will be assumed to be accepting the entire package. It's very clever.'

The peace aims
were
good. There was no denying it. The Allies would seek ‘no aggrandisement, territorial or other',
there were to be ‘no territorial changes that do not accord with the freely expressed wishes of the people concerned', they would seek to ensure ‘the enjoyment by all States, on equal terms, of access to the trade and raw materials of the world', they would establish ‘a peace in which all men can live out their lives in freedom from fear and want', they believed that all the nations of the world ‘for realistic as well as spiritual reasons, must come to the abandonment of the use of force'.

‘You can't fault it,' Octavia said. ‘They've even made provision for a new League of Nations. Just look at this.' And she read the words aloud. ‘
Since no future peace can be maintained if land, sea or air armaments continue to be employed by nations which threaten, or may threaten, aggression outside of their frontiers, they believe, pending the establishment of a wider and more permanent system of general security, that the disarmament of such nations is essential.
It's superb.'

‘It is, but we must remember all the other audiences it's been written for and hope it doesn't fall on deaf ears,' Tommy said. ‘Is there any more coffee?'

‘You're such a cynic,' Octavia said, taking the lid off the coffee pot.

‘And you're such an idealist,' he said, signalling to one of the waiters for attention. ‘We make a good pair.'

It gave Octavia quite a jolt to fly back to Croydon and pick up her life again in wartime Britain. After a fortnight's colour and luxurious living in Grenada, London looked shabby and uncared for. Now, heading for Woking on a dirty train with its windows obscured by sticky tape, she noticed how uniformly grey and grubby everything was, how tired people looked, trudging about the streets, and how many bomb sites there were. She couldn't avoid seeing them, for they were covered
in the bright pink flowers of the fire weed that people called London Pride. It seemed sad to her that a weed should be the only patch of living colour in the whole place. In a few weeks we shall be into the third year of this war, she thought, and we're no nearer to winning it than we were at the beginning. If only the Americans would come in and join us. That would make such a difference. But it wasn't likely and she had to face it. We must go on living on our inadequate rations, she thought, and enduring the blackout and skimping and saving and making ends meet until we're strong enough to invade France and start the long battle to push the Germans back to Germany. It felt like an impossible task.