A Presumption of Death (4 page)

It wasn’t much consolation, thought Harriet, that this was only practice, when the real thing was looming over them all.

‘Tell you something,’ said George Withers suddenly. ‘Just as soon as we got a thaw, I’m going to put up me own Anderson, and not have to hang around here with all you lot!’

He had caught the mood, and Harriet suddenly became concerned – a whole group of people in the grip of misery locked up together for hours would certainly be bad for morale and could turn really nasty – when, as often happens in this tight little island, a man for the moment, a woman for the moment emerged.

The chairman of the Paggleham Women’s Institute got up on Constable Baker’s orange crate, and began to speak.

‘Well, as you can all see, we’ve got to do something about this,’ she said. ‘Even if it’s only for a few weeks, and as a matter of fact I don’t see why we shouldn’t settle in here for the rest of the war, and not bother with Anderson shelters. As some of you already know, I’ve drawn up an outline plan. We need bunks. People can bring their own blankets. We need a few trestle tables and a primus stove to make tea and hot soup, and some paraffin heaters to get a bit of a fug in here on a cold night. We need coat hooks for all those gas-mask holders, and perhaps the schoolchildren can paint some pictures to cheer up the walls a bit. We need volunteers. Lots of volunteers.’

‘Bert Ruddle is doing bunks for the Methodists,’ said George Withers.

‘I could fix up some bunks,’ offered Archie Lugg, ‘if I had some help. I’ve got a lot of spare timber from that row of sheds we took down when they put an airfield on a bit of Datchett farm.’

‘I’ll give you a hand,’ said Mr Puffett. ‘We can do as well as that Bert Ruddle, I’m sure.’

‘Splendid, both of you. Thank you.’

‘I’ve got quite a few folding chairs,’ someone offered. ‘And some card tables. We used to have a bridge club days gone by.’

‘I’ll get in a first-aid kit,’ offered Harriet. ‘Dr Jellyfield will advise me what to put in it. And how about a shelf of books? I’m sure we could contribute to that.’

‘Thank you, Lady Peter.’

‘See here, missus,’ said Mrs Hodge. ‘We got three rooms here. We could have a quiet room with bunks for people to sleep in, and a room with cards and that for them as can’t sleep, and a room for the kiddies.’

‘And I think I could offer, on behalf of the Women’s Institute, to get in emergency supplies: candles, and biscuits and tea . . .’

‘Jes’ like a picnic!’ said Mrs Baker. ‘The kiddies will be in the seventh heaven.’

But the kiddies were not enjoying it much now. Bredon, Harriet was glad to see, was quietly playing in a corner with his cousin Charlie, and young Sam Bateson. They were making an airfield in the dust of the floor and landing their toy aeroplanes on it.

They were not making whirring and roaring sounds to go with it.

‘It’s very quiet, Mummy,’ Bredon offered, ‘because it’s flying secret missions.’

‘Good,’ said Harriet. ‘Good boys.’ Paul had fallen asleep on her lap.

But few of the village children were asleep. They were over-excited, and getting cold and fretful. Trying to sleep on the floor with only the odd blanket that had been brought with them was not easy, but the sound of children wailing quickly gets on one’s nerves. And those adults who had come straight from the dance in the hall had not even got a blanket. They were left standing, or sitting on the bare floor. The practice appeared to be going on far longer than anyone had expected.

‘This is all a bit previous, if you ask me,’ Roger Datchett observed. He farmed on the opposite side of the village, and had furthest to come. ‘It’s like having those pesky London children all over the place. I mean, it’s not as if there has been any bombing yet.’

‘There was a Heinkel shot down not so far from here, last week,’ said Constable Baker.

‘And plenty more where that come from,’ added the landlord.

‘Anyone heard that all-clear yet?’ asked Mr Puffett.

Nobody had.

‘Only I thought tonight’s effort were just to see how quick we could all get down here,’ Mr Puffett said. ‘Not to keep us here all blooming night. I haven’t brought me pipe.’

‘You can’t smoke a pipe down here, Tom Puffett, even being as if you had remembered it,’ said Mrs Ruddle. ‘Them pipes smells something horrible, and it won’t be safe along of paraffin heaters.’

‘Won’t be any more dangerous than candles, you silly besom,’ retorted Mr Puffett.

Once again the chairman of the Women’s Institute came to the rescue. ‘That’s a good point you are making,’ she said, beaming at the two of them. ‘We’d better see if there’s room in one of these side-caves for a smoking-room. And we’d better see if there’s some kind of lantern that works without a naked flame.’

‘Davy lamps,’ said Constable Baker. ‘They use them down mines. Against fire-damp,’ he added.

‘I wonder where we’d get them?’ said the chairman, making notes.

‘Isn’t that all-clear
ever
going to go?’ asked one of the land-girls. ‘I’m just busting for a pee . . .’

‘You mind your language, my girl!’ cried Mrs Hodge. ‘There’s decent people down here.’

‘Well, how are we going to manage in that regard?’ asked the vicar. ‘I mean, if it were a real air-raid, it might be prolonged beyond what flesh and blood can bear . . .’

‘Buckets of earth, vicar,’ said someone sitting near the wall. ‘Buckets of earth, and a spade. It’s what we used behind the front line at Mons. Quite wholesome as long as you shovel a bit of earth in after yourself.’

‘I think I’m going to put my head out and see what’s happening,’ said Mr Gudgeon. ‘It’ll be closing time in a minute.’

‘That’s right, landlord. Get us out of here in time to have another drink!’ said Mr Puffett.

Mr Gudgeon climbed his steps, and opened the heavy wooden doors to the bar. They heard his footsteps across the flagstone floor, and they heard the street door open, creaking on its hinges. They didn’t hear the all-clear. Instead they heard the dull grinding sound of aircraft.

‘Gawd-strewth, Baker, are you sure this is just practice?’ someone said.

‘This is getting a bit out of hand, Simon,’ said the vicar’s wife softly to her husband. ‘Can you do something?’

‘What do you suggest, my dear?’

‘A sing-song? I’m sure the Methodists are having a sing-song in their cave.’

‘Excellent idea. Now who can find us a note?’

‘Mr Puffett might have his accordion with him,’ Mrs Goodacre suggested. ‘That box of his looks rather large for a gas mask.’

An expression of pain crossed the vicar’s countenance, but he mastered himself and went across to talk to Tom Puffett.

Tom had indeed got his squeeze-box handy. The vicar stood to beat time. He had hauled his favourite choir-boy to stand up and take the lead.

‘
Abide with me; fast falls the eventide
 . . .’ the boy began.

‘No, no, dear!’ cried Mrs Goodacre. ‘No, Simon – something cheerful!’

‘Well I’m not sure that I know—’

‘Think of something!’ Mrs Goodacre commanded. ‘Something you boys sing out of church . . . anything!’

‘Anything?’ the boy said. A conspiratorial grin of great wickedness lit his countenance. He lifted his heavenly ethereal treble, and sang:

The company gasped, and then began to laugh. They roared with laughter; a sort of hysterical mirth possessed them, they swayed and held on to each other, laughing till they cried.

Mr Puffett put huge elbow grease into his horrible harmonium, and the boy’s lovely voice soared above the racket:

It turned out that this lamentable ditty was rather well known, for when Puffett struck the note again the whole company offered a hearty repeat performance.

‘Well,’ said Mrs Simcox as the finale died down, ‘I’ll tell you one thing, vicar. I’ll bet my life the Methodists aren’t singing
that
 !’ Whereupon gales of laughter rang round the vaults again.

‘I ought to reprove that boy,’ said Mr Goodacre. ‘What a disgrace.’

‘Not this time, vicar,’ said Harriet quietly. ‘Can’t you feel how he’s changed the atmosphere down here?’

‘Do you really think so, Lady Peter? Can I really let it pass? Such language! And women present!’

‘The women laughed too, vicar. And do you know, I rather think that while we laugh we can’t be beaten.’

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Ah.’

And while he was thinking about it, to change the subject, Harriet said, ‘Talking of scandals, will somebody point out to me this scandalous land-girl everyone is talking about. Which is she?’

‘Wendy Percival, you mean?’ said Mrs Goodacre. ‘The one they’re calling Wicked Wendy?’

‘However do you know that, my dear?’ exclaimed Mr Goodacre.

‘Ways and means, Simon, ways and means. Well, now you come to mention it I can’t see her. I haven’t seen her at all tonight. That’s odd; I would have expected to see her at the dance, now you come to mention it. Rather her sort of occasion with all those good-looking airmen around.’

‘Perhaps she’s took shelter with the Methodists,’ said Mrs Ruddle. ‘They’ll give ’er a warm welcome, I don’t think!’ More laughter.

‘You know, my dear,’ said Mr Goodacre, ‘I really don’t think it is right to call that young woman wicked. It makes me quite uneasy. She may be a little wild, but when you think what turpitude we do hear about, it really isn’t proportional. I don’t think either you or I should countenance it.’

‘What turpitude do you refer to, vicar?’ asked Harriet. ‘That sounds interesting.’

‘Well, we heard the other day,’ said Mrs Goodacre, answering for her husband, ‘of a young pilot in a parish in Lincolnshire who did not return from a mission in the North Sea, and they put him down as missing presumed dead, when all the while he had baled out, I think they call it, and been rescued by a fishing boat. And instead of reporting back to base he just went to London and took a job under a false name, only of course he hadn’t got a ration-book, and so he got into difficulties and had to confess.’

‘Do you think perhaps he was very frightened, and didn’t want to have to fly again?’ asked Harriet.

‘What a charitable view of human nature you have, dear Lady Peter. No, I understand that it was because he was heavily in debt under his real name, and he was hoping to avoid his creditors.’

‘If so, that was indeed turpitudinous of him,’ Harriet agreed.

‘It takes all sorts to make an air force,’ said Jerry, looking up from a copy of
Picture Post
, which he had apparently had in his greatcoat pocket. ‘I’ve even encountered this evening the only man I have ever spoken to who was not impressed by a Spitfire. Actually thought the Luftwaffe had better kites. Amazing.’

‘Who was that, Jerry?’ asked Harriet.

‘Didn’t catch his name.’

‘Quiet, everyone!’ said Constable Baker. ‘I think I can hear . . .’

And as everyone hushed they could all hear it – the steady triumphant level note of the siren sounding the all-clear.

‘And about time too,’ said Mrs Ruddle, heaving her substantial bulk up off the floor with the aid of a sharp tug from her son.

‘Cheer up, Baker,’ said Dr Jellyfield. ‘Perhaps we’ll never have to do it for real.’

The expression on Constable Baker’s face made Harriet suppose that he would far far rather have the village obliterated by enemy bombs than have his work thus converted to yet another form of labour in vain. But people were pressing towards the door now, all at once, carting their possessions and creating a bottle-neck, which it was Constable Baker’s duty to sort out.

Shortly they emerged, burdened by whatever they had brought with them, their gas-mask boxes slung over their shoulders, their sleeping children limp and heavy in their arms, into the still and bitterly cold open air. Suddenly everyone seemed in a good humour. Greetings and goodnights rang out from neighbour to neighbour, and then faltered into silence.

The Crown Inn stood at the widest part of the village street, known as the Square. A horse trough and a couple of flower-boxes graced it, and by day the greengrocer could let his boxes spread over the pavement. The icy moonlight bathed it with an eerie clarity, and now that the moon was high overhead there were no more shadows than at noon. And clearly visible to everyone was a young woman lying on her back in the middle of the street, one hand thrown up, the palm lying empty, her head turned to one side, the taffeta of her slinky dance dress silvered in the moonlight, her gas-mask case beside her as though she had let it go as she fell. She had been carrying a blanket that was still folded over her left arm.

Dr Jellyfield pushed through the little knot of people, and knelt down to take the girl’s pulse. Then he passed his hand over the face, to close the eyes, and stood up.

‘I thought this was supposed to be a dumb-show. Just for practice,’ said Mrs Hodge. She sounded indignant, as if, should there have been any real need for the night’s excursion, she had been cheated.

‘Well, if it was a real raid . . .’ said Mr Gudgeon. Everyone looked round as if to discover the impact of enemy action but not so much as a broken window could be seen. The higgledly-piggledy line of the village houses with their uneven roof lines, crooked chimneys, thatch or slate roofs and pargeted or brick frontages, every detail deeply familiar, stood serenely unchanged. The very idea that they could be at risk, that something could smash such a long-established and ordinary sight as this seemed unreal.

And yet here was someone lying stone still on the cold ground. Harriet knew in her bones who this someone must be. This would be Wicked Wendy, surely; not, after all, safe among the Methodists, but slipping on the icy ground as she ran for shelter, falling, banging her head . . .