Come the Hour (12 page)

‘Oh Charlie,’ she said.

He took her hands in his. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I’ve every intention of coming through this, but if I don’t …’

Her eyes filled with tears. ‘No Charlie,’ she said, ‘don’t even say it. We’re not at war yet.’

‘If I don’t, you’ll look after the parents, won’t you? Especially Mum.’

‘Charlie. Please!’

‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘It won’t happen. I only said if.’ She let go of his hands and walked down to the bottom of the garden. He could see her shoulders shaking. He went after her and put his arm around her. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It was a daft thing to say. It won’t happen. Come on, no tears. Let’s go in. Don’t let Mum see you crying.’

He thought suddenly of Kurt. What was he doing now? Joining up probably, like everyone else. What service would he be in? The German air force, perhaps? He’d be fighting Kurt – what a crazy thought. What a bizarre, stupid world.

His parents and Mrs Parks were still in the kitchen. ‘There’s no point in me going back to Cambridge,’ Charlie said. ‘Even if I’m not called up yet.’ His mother was about to protest, he could see that, but his father intervened.

‘I think you’re right, Charlie,’ Dan said, ‘unless there’s a miracle. You’d better write to your college. I expect they’ll have some system of letting you finish your degree afterwards.’

‘If I want to go back,’ Charlie said.

Nora and Sara took the bus to Paddington station. ‘I don’t want to go, Mum,’ Sara said. ‘The school isn’t closing. The teachers are going to carry on.’

Those that will still be there, Nora thought darkly. Those that haven’t been called up.

‘Your friend, Kathy, is going away, isn’t she?’ Nora was trying very
hard not to cry, but it was a struggle. She could feel the tears pricking, and she didn’t want Sara to see. ‘I’m not having you in any danger. I wouldn’t be able to go on.’

Sara stared out of the window. She was filled with an overwhelming anger, anger at the Germans, anger at the thought of having to leave her mum, losing her place at school, and dread that everything was so messed up that she could never get it back. Other dreads she couldn’t really imagine – bombs dropping, houses falling down, people being hurt or killed. That didn’t seem real. Having to go away was real. And her father going away to be a sailor or a soldier. She couldn’t imagine her dad harming anyone. All because of the Germans. Why couldn’t somebody just stop them?

‘I just want to be at home with you and Dad,’ she said. ‘Not with strangers. And I’ll worry about you if I’m not there. I don’t care what happens.’

‘Well I care.’ Nora took Sara’s hand. ‘You’re everything in the world to me, Sara. Just do it for me, so I’ll know you’re safe. I’m sure they’ll find you somewhere nice to stay.’

‘Suppose I don’t like them, or they don’t like me?’

‘They will.’ She took a pound note out of her handbag. ‘Here, take this. Hide it somewhere. Just in case you ever need it.’

Sara held it in her hand. She had never had a whole pound before, just for herself. It seemed unreal, just like everything else that was happening. ‘Where shall I put it?’

‘Put it in one of your books for the moment. Find a good
hiding-place
when you get there.’

They arrived at the station. Nora couldn’t believe what she was seeing. A constant stream of children was moving over the footbridge to the mainline station. The noise was loud and disturbing – a noise, Nora realized, she had never heard before – the sound of hundreds and hundreds of confused and frightened children. A friendly voice, intended no doubt to be comforting, was repeating over the loudspeakers, ‘Hello children. Please go quickly to the train and sit down. Do not play with the doors or the windows.’ The platforms were teeming, tiny five-year-olds were looking bewildered, many of the older children were crying, mothers were crying, some of the older boys were
misbehaving
,
running about, jumping and wrestling. There was a pungent smell, the burning coal and oil and steam from the engines, and here and there were little groups of children who, Nora thought, wrinkling her nose, could do with a good wash. The ladies from the WVS, in their dark-green uniforms, were trying to bring order to the apparent chaos.

What a mess, Nora thought. What a heart-breaking mess. The children had their gas-masks slung over their shoulders, carried battered cases or bags for their little possessions, and a teddy bear, a doll. The little ones had labels with their names and home addresses; just, Nora thought, like little abandoned parcels, being posted God knows where. She had never imagined in all her life that she would see scenes like this.

Am I doing the right thing, she thought? She looked around her, really, really frightened. The bombs didn’t seem real – not yet – but these dreadful scenes, frightened children, sobbing mothers, these were real and terrible. It’s Hell, she thought, Hell come to earth, families torn apart, children leaving. But anything – anything – was better than Sara being hurt.

Sara looked up at her mother’s distraught face and knew that she would have to go. She flung her arms around her. ‘Oh Mum!’

Nora hugged her, holding her tight. ‘Fill in that post card right away and let us know where you are. And write to me. I’ll come and see you. I promise.’ Sara nodded miserably. ‘Help the little ones if you can.’ She watched Sara disappear into the maelstrom, her satchel and gas-mask over her shoulder, her little case in her hand. The satchel dragged her shoulder down – books, books. She turned away in despair.

Amy had been at the station since early morning, just waiting in case she was needed. So far she’d treated a couple of grazed knees and a mother who had fainted. She was surprised that more of them hadn’t fainted. It was unspeakably stressful. Those little five-year-olds would break your heart, whole classes together with their teachers, most of them looking around for their mothers.

She saw Nora across the heads of the children, and saw her distress. She made her way to her through the throng. ‘Mrs Lewis, isn’t it?’

Nora was startled. ‘Oh, Doctor Fielding.’ She paused, and took a deep breath. ‘I’ve just been saying goodbye to my Sara.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ Amy said. ‘It must be terrible for you.’

Nora was crying, blinking, trying to hide it. ‘I expect it’s worse if you’ve got really little ones.’

‘Sara sounds like a sensible girl,’ Amy said. ‘She’ll be all right, I’m sure.’

‘She’s mad at me,’ Nora said. ‘She didn’t want to leave her school. She wants to be a doctor – I told you, didn’t I?’

‘Yes, I remember,’ Amy said. ‘Did she get the
Gray’s Anatomy
?’

Nora nodded. ‘She’s taken a bit of it with her.’

A train pulled out of the station, steaming and clanking, and the platform began to clear a little. Nora began to shake. Her face drained.

‘Come to the tea room with me,’ Amy said, ‘and have a cup of tea. I could do with one myself.’ She spoke to one of the green-clad ladies to tell her where she would be if she were needed.

They walked along the platform to the tea room and Nora sat down shakily at one of the small wooden tables. It was cluttered and messy with used cups and saucers. Amy ordered tea at the counter. She watched as Nora got up to clear the table, carrying the used cups to the counter, then as she borrowed a cloth to wipe the top. She obviously liked things neat and tidy.

‘We haven’t had a minute to clear,’ the woman said behind the counter. ‘It’s been pandemonium this morning. Those poor kids.’

Amy brought the tea. ‘Are you going to stay in London, Mrs Lewis?’ she asked.

Nora nodded. ‘It’s Sara – her school. She might be able to go back to it one day. She wouldn’t want me to move.’

‘Will your husband be with you? Is he in a reserved occupation?’

‘No. He’s a carpenter. He wants to volunteer for the Navy.’

‘You’ll be on your own, then?’

Nora looked down at her cooling tea. ‘Yes, I’ll be on my own. Too much time to think.’ She sipped her tea. ‘I’ll probably get a job. I’ll need the money.’

Amy was thoughtful. ‘What did you do before you were married? Did you have a job then?’

‘Yes,’ Nora said. ‘I was in service when I was fourteen. Then when I
got older I was a sort of under housekeeper.’ She gave her first little smile. ‘We had a very good cook. She taught me a lot.’

I wonder, Amy thought. Getting a new housekeeper wasn’t going to be easy. She’d think it over, perhaps make some excuse to visit Mrs Lewis’s house to see what it was like. She might not want that sort of job. There would be lots of work going. Still it might be an idea worth thinking about.

They finished their tea. ‘I’d better get back,’ Amy said. ‘Will you be all right now?’

Nora nodded. ‘Yes, thank you, Doctor.’

Sara left the train with a group of other children, shepherded by a green-clad lady. This station was very small, she thought, only two lines, and a level crossing. She looked around her. Beyond the station were green fields and woods, and sheep and cows. It seemed terribly quiet.

They were led down the village street. The village seemed to be very small, after London. The fields came right down behind the houses and she could hear the sheep calling. But where’s the school, she thought? Where am I going to school?

They came to the school, a small, low building with BOYS over one door, and GIRLS over the other. Ancient, she thought. Totally ancient.

There were several women already waiting in one of the classrooms, plump, kindly-looking women. ‘Oh, the poor children,’ one of them said. Sara looked more critically at the other children. Some of them looked poor indeed, with their ill-fitting clothes and battered plimsolls. The little ones looked tired out and some of them were crying for their mothers.

‘These ladies are going to look after you, children,’ the WVS lady said. ‘Now, ladies, which one do you want?’

The little ones went first, hugged and clucked over. Sara was the oldest and the last. ‘It looks as if you’re mine,’ the woman said. ‘My name is Mrs Brooks. What’s yours?’

‘Sara Lewis.’

‘Come along then, Sara.’ She led Sara to a house on the edge of the village. It seemed to be bigger than most of the others, and had a big
garden. She took Sara up to her room. It was a nice room, Sara thought, flowery paper on the walls and a rug on the wooden floor.

‘I think you’ll be comfortable here,’ Mrs Brooks said. ‘I’m glad I’ve got you. I don’t think I could have coped with little children – I’ve never had any of my own.’

‘It’s very nice,’ Sara said. ‘Thank you.’

‘Put your things away, and then come down to tea. There’s just you and me at the moment. Is there anything you want?’

‘I just want to know where I’m going to school,’ Sara said. ‘I have to go to school.’

Mrs Brooks smiled. ‘Of course you do. I expect it’ll be the village school, though I don’t know how they’ll cope with all these new children.’

Mrs Brooks went downstairs. Sara sat on the edge of her bed. Mrs Brooks seemed very nice, but not the village school! What was she going to do? She took the pound note out of her satchel and put it under the mattress.

On 3 September the family gathered round the wireless to hear the Prime Minister’s statement at 11.15. They knew what was going to happen. Everyone in the country knew now.

Mrs Parks was crying. ‘We know what he’s going to say,’ she said. Amy took her hand. The words fell, spreading and staining, like drops of blood. ‘This country is now at war with Germany.’ They played the National Anthem. The family sat for a few moments in silence.

Charlie felt emotion stir, strong enough to bring the start of tears, hurriedly controlled, emotions of patriotism, loyalty, a desire to prove himself. That’s it, he thought. I’ll probably be called up tomorrow.

‘I must ring Granddad,’ Amy said. ‘He’ll be devastated.’

Dan got up. ‘We all need a drink,’ he said. ‘Get the glasses, Tessa. We’ll have some champagne. We’ll drink to our country, to England, and the rest.’ He brought the bottle from the cellar, undid the wire and eased off the cork. He poured the wine. He stood up, holding his glass. ‘To us,’ he said. ‘To our country, to our fighting men, including Charlie, and to victory.’

Before they had time to taste the wine the loud wailing of the local
air-raid siren began to howl, up and down, up and down, echoed by others, one after the other, chilling the blood. They gasped, looking at each other, shocked and anxious.

‘Good God,’ Dan said. ‘Already? They don’t lose any time, do they? They must have been just waiting for this. Into the cellar everyone.’ They trooped down the cellar steps. Dan switched on the light. ‘What a mess down here,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to clear it out, Charlie, make it fit to live in. We might be spending a lot of time down here by the sound of it.’ They perched on bags and boxes, silent, listening. Amy wondered whether anyone could actually hear her heart beating. Her body was tense, waiting for the next sound, sounds she remembered from the war in France: the drone of aircraft, the crashing roar of antiaircraft guns, the scream of a falling bomb.

Ten minutes later the siren started again, the long continuous note of the All-Clear. There was a sigh that seemed to come from all of them, from the house itself. They trooped up the steps again.

‘False alarm,’ Dan said. He handed round the champagne again. ‘Can you believe it? I wonder what bloody idiot decided to go for a little pleasure flight today, of all days. Set the whole country off. Lucky if he didn’t get himself shot down.’

So it’s begun, Amy thought. All over again. Blackout – fortunately they’d got the curtains made – rationing, danger, air raids, crouching in the cellar, and awful, painful goodbyes. Oh Charlie!

A
my opened her eyes on to a new world, one that she had hoped she would never see again. Dan was already awake.

‘Mrs Parks will be going,’ she said. ‘I’ll have to find someone else, very soon.’

‘Tessa’s home for a few weeks yet,’ Dan said. ‘She can help.’

Amy sighed. ‘She can help with the housework, but I don’t know about cooking. There’s a woman – a patient – that I was wondering about. She used to be a housekeeper before she married. I might pop in and see her – see what she’s like at home.’

‘Good idea,’ Dan said.

‘Her husband will be called up, so she might be thinking about a job. Her little girl has been evacuated. She’s the little girl I told you about – the one who wants to be a doctor.’

‘Oh,’ Dan said. ‘That might be interesting.’

‘I don’t know,’ Amy said. ‘All the children. It’s unbelievable. God knows what’s going to happen now.’

He put his arm around her. ‘Don’t, darling. You were so strong last time. Don’t give up now.’

‘I didn’t have children last time,’ she said.

He held her close. ‘We’ll get through,’ he said. ‘We’ll all get through. Have faith, Amy.’

Amy drove to the Harrow Road. It was strangely quiet without the children, without the laughter and the shouts and the running about. All the life seemed to have gone out of the world and the streets were silent and empty. The morning surgery was packed. Most of the
women wanted contraceptive advice. ‘I don’t want to get pregnant now,’ they said, one after the other. ‘I don’t know how I’ll manage as it is with my husband away, and I don’t want to bring another child into all this.’

The mothers were anxious and strained and some of them were openly crying, desperately missing their children, afraid for the future. She found that it needed all her control not to cry herself. Which is worse, she thought, to say goodbye to your little children who need you so much, or to say goodbye to Charlie and all the other boys, knowing the danger they were facing, wondering if she would ever see him again?

After the surgery she did her home visits. There were very few children to see; very few of the mothers had chosen to keep them at home and the false alarm siren on the day war was declared had frightened everyone to death. She saw three of her old ladies, living in the tenements, all anxious and alone. ‘What am I going to do, Doctor?’ they said, one after the other. ‘How am I going to manage?’ It was going to be one of her jobs, keeping a regular eye on them. The lady with the pigeons was unperturbed. She looked at the photograph on her chest of drawers. ‘Perhaps I’ll see my boy again sooner than I thought,’ she said. The pigeons looked down on her, silent and broody as ever. Lucky pigeons, Amy thought. They can just fly away, find a nice safe place and forget it all.

She drove to Mrs Lewis’s house. She felt guilty, coming to Mrs Lewis’s home like this to check up on her housekeeping, but there was really no other way to find out. And anyway, Mrs Lewis might not want the job.

Perhaps, she thought, she would be better advised to go to an agency, but things were in such confusion. She would prefer someone she knew, even slightly, and someone who lived close by and knew the area. Mrs Lewis could even live at home if she wanted to. She seemed so devoted to her daughter, so determined to give her a better life. She was obviously a woman who was thoughtful and caring.

She arrived at the house and parked outside. The knocker was polished, she noticed, the windows shining and the doorstep scrubbed clean.

She knocked at the door. Nora opened it, obviously surprised to see the doctor there. Amy watched her face tighten suddenly in panic. ‘What’s happened?’ she said. ‘What is it? Is it Sara?’

Amy was momentarily shocked that she could have upset Mrs Lewis so easily and so much. She should have realized that her immediate response would be to assume that something had happened to her daughter. ‘No, no,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry if I frightened you, Mrs Lewis. I’ve just come to see if you are all right. You seemed so upset at the station. I was just passing, so I thought I’d pop in.’

’Oh.’ Nora smiled, a relieved, a worried smile, and opened the door wide. ‘Come in, Doctor.’

I should have realized that it would upset her, Amy thought. The whole atmosphere, everywhere, was of fear, expecting bad news, expecting the worst. The country had changed at a stroke, peace and safety gone in an instant. Any bizarre, imagined catastrophe could turn out to be true.

Nora led Amy into the kitchen. It was tidy and spotless, the lino shining with shellac polish. ‘I’m all right,’ Nora said. ‘It was just saying goodbye to Sara, and seeing all those children – all those little ones. It’s so cruel. It’s so wicked.’

‘You’re right,’ Amy said. ‘It is cruel and wicked.’

‘Sit down, Doctor.’ Nora said. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

‘I’d love one,’ Amy said, quite truthfully. That morning had been very stressful, very emotional, very cruel. She watched as Nora warmed the teapot, measured in the tea, poured on the boiling water, and got out two fine china teacups and a milk jug and sugar basin. ‘Don’t go to any trouble, Mrs Lewis,’ she said.

‘It’s no trouble.’ Nora poured milk into the jug.

‘I don’t take sugar,’ Amy said.

‘Neither do I.’ Nora sat down at the table. ‘I told you about Sara, didn’t I? She didn’t want to go. She didn’t want to leave her school. But I couldn’t risk …’

‘Of course you couldn’t,’ Amy said. ‘You did the right thing, at least until we know what’s happening.’

Nora was close to tears. ‘You’ve got children, haven’t you, Doctor?’

‘Yes,’ Amy said. ‘My girl is a medical student.’ She paused. ‘And my
boy is joining the Air Force. He’s a pilot.’ Nora’s silence was more expressive than words could ever be. ‘What will you do?’ Amy said. ‘Are you still planning to stay here?’

‘Yes,’ Nora said. ‘My husband’s already volunteered for the Navy. I want to be here for Sara – when she comes back.’

‘I feel just the same,’ Amy said. ‘I’m not leaving my home either.’

‘I don’t know what to do about her now,’ Nora said wearily. ‘Maybe I should tell her to forget it all – all this being a doctor. My husband’s against it. How could we ever manage it? And we don’t know how long this war is going to last. He says I’m just fooling myself, and her. But she’s so set on it. I don’t know what to do. What would you do?’

‘Let her try,’ Amy said. ‘Maybe it won’t work out, but at least she should try. We don’t know what’s going to happen. We’ll all have to cling to our hopes for the future. Things might be different after the war.’

‘And when will that be?’ Nora said. ‘It’s only just begun.’

Amy drank her tea and got up to go. ‘Don’t make her give up her dream,’ she said. God knows, she thought, it might be all we have. ‘I’ll look out some more books for her. At least she can feel she’s learning something.’

‘I don’t know what kind of school they’ll put her in,’ Nora said. ‘She’ll go mad if it’s no good.’

Amy got into her car and drove past the rows of houses. She could see people at the windows, taping up strips of brown sticky paper to stop flying glass, and making sure the blackout curtains met in the middle. A man in a steel helmet with ARP on the front rode past her on a bicycle, his gas-mask over his shoulder. Air Raid Precautions. Gas precautions. Everyone had a gas-mask now. Everyone was obliged to take it everywhere. The streetlights had already been shut off, making this great blacked-out city a strange, fearful place to be at night. She drove home through the silent, childless streets.

She went to visit her father. ‘I can’t believe it, Amy,’ he said. ‘Not again.’ He looked older, she thought, defeated and lost. ‘Come and live here, Amy, away from London.’

‘I can’t, Father,’ she said, ‘I’ll be needed there.’

His eyes filled with tears. ‘It’s just the same,’ he said, ‘all of you in danger. It’s the same nightmare, all over again.’

‘You can come and stay with us if you like, Father,’ she said, ‘but you’ll be safer here in Kent, away from any bombing We’ll keep in touch with you, all the time.’

‘It isn’t right,’ he said. He was trembling. ‘Not again. And Charlie in the Air Force. Not again.’

We are walking a tightrope, Amy thought, waiting for them to come and shake us down. Everyone expected the onslaught to start at any moment, but still they didn’t come. The Germans didn’t come. But they were there – oh yes, they were there. On the 18 September, the aircraft carrier,
Courageous
, was sunk with a loss of 500 lives, and the Glasgow liner
Athena
was sunk with 112 lives lost.

‘And we’re dropping leaflets on Germany,’ Dan said. ‘Leaflets! And our esteemed air minister has refused to bomb the Black Forest on the grounds that it’s private property!’

It seemed that death would not wait. Dan was horrified at the number of road accidents in the deep blackout. The surgeons were already working long hours, and the wards were filling up.

‘This is just road accidents, Amy,’ he said. ‘Just the beginning. We’re moving the theatres down into the basement, the cancer hospitals are burying the radium. They’re even killing the poisonous snakes at the zoo. And look at this advertisement in the paper. They’re asking people to send in their binoculars. We haven’t even got enough binoculars. We’re just not ready for this.’

Then, filtering through from the hospital grapevine, he heard a rumour of some dreadful mistake, some hideous mix-up involving the Air Force: British planes shooting at each other, a pilot killed. He didn’t know the details, and apparently it was totally hush-hush, but something had gone terribly wrong. He very deliberately kept it from Amy. The details would leak out sooner or later. She didn’t need to know now.

Charlie stayed at home, sitting around, or pacing about like a caged tiger. He went for walks, watching them manning anti-aircraft guns in
Hyde Park and Holland Park. He wondered what it would be like flying bombers, flying through this barrage, and over a hostile country.

It all added to his impatience. ‘What a waste of time,’ he said. ‘Why don’t they get on with it? I’ll have a lot more training to do. I can’t fight a war in a Tiger Moth.’

‘You can help with the garden while you’re waiting,’ Amy said. ‘Mr Hodge is digging the beds over. We’ll be growing vegetables next year. We’ll need the all the food we can grow. We’re bound to be rationed.’

‘OK,’ he said. ‘It’ll be something to do.’

Amy watched him in the garden in his shirtsleeves, young and strong and full of energy. He’s nineteen, she thought. Only nineteen. His life has hardly begun. But she could see how he had changed, how manhood had come to him already, thrust upon him too soon. He seemed to have filled out more, perhaps he was even a little taller. She remembered Dan in the last war, how he had changed from the diffident, rather shy young man she had first met, to a tough, hardened soldier. Not a fighting soldier: a surgeon, but a soldier nevertheless. Did it change me, she thought? It must have. But the only change she could feel was one of fearfulness, fear that the horrors she had seen in France could come again. How must the French be feeling now, she thought, with the memory of their ravaged country still clear in their minds? Perhaps I’m tougher than I was, she thought. She sighed. Who could tell? She had never imagined that she would ever be tested again. Whatever happens, she thought, we’ll just have to deal with it, like we did before.

Dan found Charlie in the garden. ‘I’ve brought you some lemonade,’ he said. ‘Come and sit down.’ Charlie sat beside him on the garden bench. ‘I think we should have a chat,’ Dan said, ‘before you leave.’

Charlie grinned. ‘What about, Dad?’

Dan smiled briefly. ‘What do you think?’

‘I think I know what goes on, Dad,’ Charlie said. He coloured a little. ‘Theoretically, as yet.’

‘Wars are different, Charlie. The same standards don’t apply. Things get looser, less controlled. One tends to live in the moment, whatever that implies.’

‘Well, let’s not beat about the bush, Dad. You think I’m going to jump into bed with anything that comes along?’

‘I don’t know, Charlie. You might.’

‘Did you?’

‘No, of course not,’ Dan said. ‘But I knew more about the consequences than most. We had to give lectures to the boys about venereal diseases.’

‘And you’re going to give me one now.’

‘Not a lecture, Charlie. Just a warning. At least we have sulphonamides now for gonorrhoea but it doesn’t stop reinfection. Be careful, and use a sheath. And don’t ever ignore the symptoms – pain passing urine and cloudy pee. And syphilis gives you a rash. And don’t ever be too embarrassed to ask me about it.’

‘Dad,’ Charlie said. ‘It’s the last thing I’ll be thinking about.’

Later, in his room, he realized that it wasn’t quite true. He thought about girls a lot. They all did – all the boys. As far as he knew, none of his friends had been to bed with a girl. It was all talk, really, or just a bit of fumbling about in the dark. You were supposed to wait until you got married, which seemed reasonable to him. He was far more frightened of getting a girl pregnant and having to marry her than of getting VD, though he imagined that would be fairly horrible. Not to do it – that was the answer. Wait until you’re married.

He lay on his bed, his hands behind his head. Flying. That was the thing. He must get into fighters. He wanted to fly a Spitfire more than anything – more than girls, even. He tried to imagine being in a dogfight, and couldn’t. It was going to happen though. It was coming. It rather put girl friends in the shade. He sat up, ran his hand through his hair. Am I going to be frightened? Am I going to be able to do it, again and again? He wanted to go at once, wanted to face it at once, get that first time over with. Then we’d see. It was the waiting that was bad.

The summons came at last. Charlie was confirmed in his rank of pilot officer and ordered to report to St Leonards to an Initial Training Wing for further training. Amy and Tessa went with him to the station. It was alive with young men again, carrying their suitcases and gasmasks, saying goodbye to their families. Everything she did seemed to recall the past. She remembered standing on Victoria station, saying
goodbye to her father when she left for France in the Great War. Now she knew how he’d felt. She hugged Charlie close. ‘Telephone tonight if you can, darling. Keep in touch, all the time.’