Daughters Of Eden: The Eden Series Book 1 (41 page)

‘Not far enough, Billy,' Kate said as they all watched Mrs Alderman taking a freshly baked loaf from the oven. ‘To judge from what they're doing to London.'

‘Blimey!' Billy said, half rising in his seat. Returning his egg spoon to his saucer he started up from his chair and went to the window. ‘Blimey, listen to that.'

‘Billy,' Marjorie groaned. ‘What have I told you about saying—'

‘No! Blimey! Listen!' Billy cried, now running to the side door and pushing it open. ‘Listen to that!'

Reluctantly they all followed him, and stood outside in the courtyard looking up at the cause of the noise, as all over Eden Park windows were being opened and people were peering up at the skies as the rumble of heavy aircraft grew louder and louder.

‘Blimey!' Billy cried. ‘Look, everyone! Jerry!'

He didn't need to point. Everyone could see well enough. Everyone could see that the sky above them was full of aeroplanes, hundreds and hundreds of heavy bombers and their escorting aircraft coming from due south and headed north for London.

‘Do you think this is it?' Marjorie said to Kate, shielding her eyes with one hand against the sun for a better sight of the invaders. ‘I suppose this has to be it.'

‘I suppose it does,' Kate agreed, shading her eyes and frowning anxiously. ‘I don't see any of our lot.'

‘They'll be back defending their airfields! They got to!' Billy cried. ‘They got to! Sergeant Briggs says Jerry bombs 'em to smithers whenever they go on sorties!'

‘Well, if we're going to stand a chance,' Marjorie said quietly, ‘they're going to have to chance it and go after Jerry. Or there won't be any London left.'

‘Sergeant Briggs says—'

Mrs Alderman turned on Billy.

‘Will you hush your mouth about Sergeant Briggs, Billy Hendry. Much he knows. He only stands about the front door earwigging, that's all he does.'

She went back to her kitchen range in high dudgeon, while Marjorie and Kate, with sinking feelings, stood staring up at the crowded skies above them.

From his office window Major Folkestone too watched the skies. Up there somewhere would be his youngest brother, all of nineteen years old, and his brother's best friend – the Little Chaps, the family had always called them. Now the little chaps were fighting for this other Eden, this jewel set in the silver sea, this England. If he was truthful he knew that he had little hope that either of them would come through, and yet because he loved
them he had so much hope for them too. Since he was a praying man, he prayed, and yet somehow too, because he was also rational, he could not help wondering who might be listening.

That weekend, as previously arranged, Poppy was due to attend the house party being thrown by the Duchess of Dunedin in one of the several houses she had scattered around the British Isles. Mercifully as far as Poppy was concerned this was not the one in Scotland or, even more mercifully, the large estate she had in Yorkshire not far distant from Poppy's short-lived marital home of Mellerfont. The estate to which they had all apparently been invited was in Gloucestershire, but even so in these days of restricted travel it still meant a long and possibly difficult journey for Poppy, seeing as she neither had a car of her own nor indeed drove. Elizabeth Dunedin had originally arranged a lift down for Poppy, but at the last moment this fell through, leaving Poppy no choice but to travel down by train on the Friday.

‘Don't worry, my dear,' her hostess had reassured her in a final telephone call before she left for Paddington Station. ‘I've deputised a chum to travel with you. Great friend of mine – Elsie Lightwater – she's great fun and you two will have no end of a hoot travelling by PT.'

‘PT?' Poppy had enquired.

‘Public Transportation, duck. Quite a real experience nowadays, one hears. We'll have great big drinkies waiting for one on arrival, never fear!'

The journey was every bit as difficult and uncomfortable as Poppy had been led to expect, the
train leaving over an hour late and packed to the corridors with soldiers and airmen returning to their bases. Poppy and her travelling companion, a tall extremely elegant woman who was already fairly drunk by the time they boarded the train, were unable to find a seat anywhere and became crushed against each other and several strangers in the corridor of what should have been a First Class coach, but due to the increasingly difficult travel conditions was now an unrestricted zone.

Poppy resigned herself to a long and uncomfortable journey, but not her companion, who finally elbowed her way to the door of the nearest compartment and stood glaring at the male occupants until two of the older men felt compelled to offer her and Poppy their seats.

‘Thank you!' Elsie Lightwater said loudly without a trace of gratitude as she quickly took her seat, indicating for Poppy to do likewise. ‘I really thought good manners had died with peace. Didn't you?'

Poppy as Poppy would of course have been happier to remain standing in order to rest vital troops, but as Diona de Donnet she had a different role to play so sank into her vacated seat with a loud sigh and round agreement with the atrocious woman with whom she had been lumbered. Elsie Lightwater, imbued with that peculiar sense of utter insularity which denotes either the highly insecure or the furiously foolish, continued to hold a loud and totally inane conversation with Poppy at the top of her strident voice until finally and mercifully as far as everyone else was concerned – including Poppy – she suddenly fell into a stupor.

‘Blimey,' a young soldier in one of the corner seats sighed. ‘If that's what we're bloody fighting for, I'm desertin'.'

The carriage exploded with suppressed laughter, leaving Poppy feeling ever more isolated.

The house party was not at all as Poppy would have imagined, for although the other guests were standard house party fare the rest of the residents of the large, Regency house were certainly not.

‘We're chock a block with expectant mothers from cockneyland,' Elizabeth Dunedin explained with a laugh as she welcomed her guests into her estate manager's exquisite little eighteenth-century house half a mile from the main house. ‘At least we ain't got the army in as yet – we're doing all we can to stop that little one. Far too much of value in the house to have Tommy vandalising it, so Henry's pulling every string available to get our parturient guests removed as soon as poss, so one can move back in. As if a war's not dreary enough, but to be without everything is too bad. Not a stick of furniture that isn't stored, or a painting that isn't the same.'

Given the precarious times, Poppy was amazed to find that there were half a dozen other guests staying, not to mention her loud-voiced travelling companion. The list was much as if the regulars of the Stanley had been plucked out of the bar and set down in the wartime countryside. Lord Lypton was there, predictably enough; John Basnett, a singularly tall and languid gentleman who talked, drank and smoked non-stop, together with his all
but silent and vastly overweight wife, and Scott Meynell.

‘If I'd known you were here I wouldn't have come,' Poppy murmured to him, which made Scott quickly turn away, whether to smother a smile or to look furious she wasn't sure.

The initial talk at dinner that night was of the victory the RAF had won against all odds over the Luftwaffe, the climax having come a few days earlier when the vast armada of German bombers that had finally taken to the air to strike what had been hoped to be the decisive blow against the capital were all but knocked out of the skies by seventeen squadrons of the Royal Air Force.

But far from there being any sense of celebration at the dining table, there was an air of unease, as the Dunedins' house guests aired their opinions about the progress of the war.

‘Not going to please the Führer much,' Lord Basnett scoffed. ‘Operation Sea Lion was meant to pave the way for the invasion, don't you know.'

‘Didn't even know such a thing had such a name,' Poppy droned. ‘You
are
clever.'

‘Johnny here has friends in all sorts of very high places,' Elizabeth Dunedin informed her. ‘Johnny here is a much travelled fellow.'

‘Some might even say a
fellow
traveller,' Lord Lypton said, hooding his eyes at Poppy in what she thought he must imagine to be a sexy fashion as he looked at her. ‘Although which carriage he's in is sometimes debatable.'

‘Come off it, Lyppy,' Basnett laughed. ‘I'm not the only fellow here who knows the man. You met him too.'

‘Not as often as thou, Johnny. Three times now, is it not? Or maybe four?'

‘One's been mighty fortunate to have been invited, that's all,' Basnett replied, having drained a whole glass of wine in one draught. ‘Not sure the housepainter's quite as honest as he makes out – you know, one wouldn't feel
quite
at ease turning one's back – while Goering – different fish altogether. Goering's a gent, do you see. Goering would fit in perfectly well and happily here – different sort of chap altogether. Ribbentrop – well, not quite so sure, but Goering – got a lot of time for our Hermann.'

‘Got a lot of time for a lot of people, our Johnny,' Lypton said generally, drumming the table in front of him rhythmically with his fingers. ‘Had a lot of time for our Neville, right? Great admirer of NC, our Johnny.'

‘So are you, Lyppy,' Basnett replied, piqued. ‘Can't say he isn't a friend of your family too.'

‘Chamberlain never spent quite as much time
chez moi
as he did
chez toi
, old lad. But then there's no accounting for taste, is there?' He smiled and looked at Poppy. ‘No accounting for people's tastes – particularly the taste of politicians.'

‘Chamberpot just liked what Johnny laid on for him, that's what,' Elizabeth Dunedin remarked. ‘You're just jel-jel, Lyppy. Always prone to attacks of green eye, our Lyppy.'

‘I just cannot understand, Lizard, why Neville and Halifax of all people should use Johnny here as the means of communicating to Hitler the views of the government.'

‘The government that
was
, Lyppy,' Elizabeth
reminded him. ‘We have a new boy at the helm, remember?'

‘Let me put it this way, Lizard. The views that matter. If things go the way they should we should still be able to get the peace we all want very soon. New boy or no new boy.'

‘No new boy hopefully,' Basnett said without thinking, earning himself looks of reproof from both Lypton and his hostess. ‘Sorry!' he said gaily, as if he had just given away a small surprise instead of something important, particularly bearing in mind the gist of the secret message that had been placed in Poppy's tin of Black and White cigarettes.

Basnett continued to regale the dinner party with an account of how the democratic press was a constant thorn in Hitler's side and how the Führer had told him that Chamberlain should throw journalists into a concentration camp.

‘Only if you put all your press chappies likewise, I told him.' Basnett laughed. ‘Fair's only fair, dash it. Put your chaps in a camp and we'll all be the merrier for it. Know what he said? Know what Hitler said to me?
I vill put zem in ze zame camp! I vill put zem in ze zame camp!
How about that, eh? How about that?'

This anecdote re-established Basnett's credibility until, overcome by drink, he gradually disappeared under the table. His outsize wife had already retired.

‘Good riddance,' Lypton said, lighting a cigarette and staring with contempt at where Basnett had been seated. ‘Don't know why you tolerate the idiot, Lizard. I really don't.'

‘Because, Lyppy, he has oodles of dough,' his hostess replied in a tired voice. ‘Remember?'

‘I was quite interested in what he said about Hitler though,' Poppy drawled. ‘About Hitler getting shirty about what the press says about him over here.'

‘You think he has a bit of a raw deal, do you?' Lypton wondered idly.

‘He's done wonders for the German economy already, so one's told,' Poppy replied. ‘And for their employment. Pity the same can't be said for this lot over here.'

‘Singing our song, my dear,' Elizabeth said with a glance to Lypton. ‘Isn't she, Lyppy? Told you she was one of us.'

After the gentlemen had rejoined the ladies and a few idle hands of cards had been played, Lypton sat down at the piano and revealed himself to be a surprisingly adequate musician. Poppy came over and watched him.

‘Well done,' she said, clapping almost silently after Lypton had finished playing a Schubert impromptu. ‘That was rather good.'

‘Do you play, Diona?' Lypton enquired.

‘Not as well as you, no.'

‘Can you read?'

‘A bit.' Poppy shrugged, as if it was of no real consequence.

‘Try this then.' Lypton produced a Chopin nocturne and set it open on the piano music stand. ‘You take the right hand.'

It was a piece Poppy knew, but even so she played well enough to have been able to sight read
it. By now, a lovely young woman and a handsome man playing beautifully at the piano had the attention of everyone in the room, not least Scott, who was the first to lead the applause when they had finished playing.

‘Good,' Lypton said, turning to look at Poppy. ‘You played that very well.'

‘Ta muchly,' Poppy said in her best mock cockney.

‘In fact I'd say we make rather a good duo.'

‘Would you?'

‘Wouldn't you?'

‘Who knows?'

Poppy smiled briefly, and got up from the piano, happy that she now had the man she had marked eating out of her hand. She was also happy when on returning to her room to go to bed she discovered when checking the contents of her handbag that her membership card of a certain international Fascist party, so kindly supplied to her by Jack Ward, had been put back in its holder.