Octavia's War (23 page)

‘They sounded like orders to me.'

He recognised that he'd gone too far and hastened to backtrack. ‘They weren't meant to be, honestly,' he said. ‘They were only suggestions. She
must
be told. I mean, we both know that. But that's all. The way you tell her is up to you. Naturally. Just so long as you make things clear to her.'

Octavia looked at the set of his jaw and found herself wondering, not for the first time, how a man so sensitive and delicate in his private life could be so uncompromisingly heavy in public. ‘No, Tommy,' she said, gathering her strength to oppose him. ‘This won't do. You're asking me to sit in judgement on her. You want me to scold and bully. And you'd better know, here and now, that I won't do it. That's not the way I work.' She paused considering what she ought to say next. ‘I'll tell you something,' she said at last. ‘I've got a personal motto on my desk. I must show it to you sometime. It says
Don't judge, try to understand.
That's the way I work and the way the girls expect me to work. It's the way I shall work this time too. I won't do it at all, unless you accept that.'

‘My stars, Tavy,' he said, with grudging admiration. ‘You are a tough nut.'

‘I have to be,' she told him. ‘I'm a headmistress. And while we're at it, don't expect me to do anything for at least a day or two. I've only got a week till the start of term and there's a lot of preparation to do.'

He gave her his melting smile. ‘You're the boss,' he said.

It was actually four days before Octavia had completed all her pre-term chores and by then the staff were beginning to return, new books were being delivered and both her school houses were in disarray. Nevertheless, the time had come. She'd thought out a possible approach. She was more or less ready. So Lizzie was sent for, made comfortable in the visitor's armchair, and welcomed with a smile and an easy question.

‘Tell me Lizzie, what would you say if I were to tell you that you are quite likely to be chosen as head girl next year?'

Now it was Lizzie's turn to smile. The question wasn't exactly a surprise, even though she hadn't expected it at that moment. But to be honest she hadn't been thinking about school very much at all over the last few weeks. ‘I'd be pleased,' she said, and then thought she should add, ‘and honoured of course.'

‘I'm not making any promises, you understand,' Octavia told her. ‘It will depend on the way the staff vote, but I would say you were the front runner.'

As an answer seemed to be expected, Lizzie said, ‘Thank you for telling me.'

‘I usually forewarn my likely senior prefects,' Octavia said. ‘I think you need to be prepared.' Then she paused and looked at Lizzie for several thoughtful seconds. ‘And now,' she said, ‘there is something else you can tell me.'

Lizzie settled into her chair and waited. Smithie's study was such a nice homely place to be, with its chintz curtains and the red chenille cloth on that little round table and the
rows of books on the wall and Smithie's slippers waiting by the fireplace in case she got her feet wet in the garden. ‘Yes, Miss Smith,' she said. ‘Of course.'

‘I gather your young man is in a tank regiment,' Octavia said. ‘Is that right?'

The question was such a shock that Lizzie didn't know what to do or say. The homely room was splintering all around her, the books spinning from the walls, all order and comfort shattered. Oh my dear, good God! she thought. My dear, good God. Her first instinct was to deny it but there was something so calmly implacable about Smithie's gaze that she couldn't do it. In any case she'd see through a lie straight away. She always did. But how does she know? How could she possibly know? The room stopped spinning but now it had become a cage, holding her where she was to suffer and endure. She could hear birds chirruping out in the garden – lucky things – and the flop, flop, flop of someone's footsteps on the floorboards outside the door. The silence in the room was beginning to be oppressive. What could she possibly say? She had to say something. She couldn't just sit there. In the end, she said yes and was then painfully aware that she was blushing.

‘I ask,' Octavia said gently, ‘because your father came down last Saturday to take you out and he was very upset to find that you'd already gone and that you'd told Cook that you were spending the day with him. It gave him quite a shock.'

‘I shouldn't have done that,' Lizzie admitted. It was always best to admit your faults when you were dealing with Smithie. ‘It was wrong.'

‘Yes. It was,' Octavia said. ‘And you must put it right.'

‘I will,' Lizzie said. ‘I promise. Was he very cross?'

‘Furious.'

Lizzie winced.

‘I gather he's rather special, this young man of yours.' Octavia said, smiling at her.

‘Yes. He is.'

Time to prompt. ‘He's in a tank regiment.'

‘Yes.'

‘Does he drive it,' Octavia encouraged, ‘or is he one of the crew?'

‘He drives it,' Lizzie told her. ‘He doesn't talk about it much. He's waiting to be sent out to Africa.'

‘Then he's very special.'

‘Yes,' Lizzie said, miserably. ‘Oh, Miss Smith, I know I shouldn't have said what I did about being out with Pa. I mean, I know it was wrong, I knew it at the time, but I didn't know what else to say. I had to see him. We can only see one another when he gets leave or a weekend pass and I miss him dreadfully when he's not here. He's the nicest man I've ever met. Really kind. And we've got so much in common, and he's such fun, and gentle even though he
is
a tankie.'

‘So if I were to say the sensible thing to do would be to obey your father and promise never to see him again…?'

An honest answer was necessary and possible. ‘I couldn't do it. I really couldn't. I think I love him. And I know you'll say I'm too young, but I'm not. And anyway, even if I am, it's too late to say it now.'

‘You'll be seventeen in a few weeks,' Octavia said reasonably. ‘A lot of young women are married by the time they're seventeen, especially these days. Juliet wasn't fourteen when she met Romeo.'

Lizzie realised that she was staring and that her mouth had fallen open. She made an effort and managed to close her mouth but she went on staring. She was too amazed to do anything else. She's giving me permission, she thought. She's
actually sitting there giving me permission. She's as good as said it's all OK.

‘You will have to put things right with your father, of course,' Octavia said, ‘and the sooner the better, but I see no reason why you shouldn't continue to go out with your young man. You must be discreet about it, naturally, as I'm sure you will be, and you must let me know whenever you are going out, as a matter of course, and who you are going with, no matter who it is. It need go no further than these four walls but while you are a pupil of the school – and I hope you will continue to be a pupil until you've sat your Higher Schools Certificate – somebody has to be responsible for you, by law, as I'm sure you understand.'

‘Thank you,' Lizzie said huskily. ‘Thank you very much.'

‘That's all settled then,' Octavia said. ‘I shall see you on the platform on the first day of term.'

So Tommy got his apology which was so lovingly and humbly written it healed his damaged opinion of her in the short time it took him to read it. And Ben got a long and much more loving letter in which she told him how absolutely extraordinary Smithie had been and how she couldn't wait to see him again. And the new school year began in its familiar way, with ‘Lord behold us with thy blessing', Smithie's welcome to the first-formers and the introduction of the new English teacher, who was a buxom sort of lady called Mrs Trench. When it was time for the junior prefects to be given their red sashes and the senior prefects to be helped into their black gowns, Lizzie found she had quite a lump in her throat and when her name was called to receive her special badge as head girl the cheers were so loud and so happily prolonged she was quite overwhelmed. This is such a good school, she thought,
beaming at the girls below her in the hall, and I will do my very best for it.

However, despite Tommy's delight at the apparent conversion of his errant daughter and Lizzie's happiness in her new charmed life and Octavia's satisfaction at a delicate matter well handled, in the rest of the world matters were not going well. The war news was bad on every side. In Russia, Leningrad had been surrounded and was under siege and German troops were advancing along a front that stretched for over three hundred miles and were pushing inexorably towards Moscow. In North Africa, the Afrika Korps were besieging Tobruk and had pushed to within striking distance of Egypt and the Suez Canal so that Ben said he didn't think it would be long before his lot were sent out there to join the beleaguered Eighth Army. Newspaper commentators made much of the valiant defence that was being put up by the half-starved people of Leningrad and praised the extraordinary valour of the British troops that they were now calling the Desert Rats, but they couldn't disguise the fact that the Germans were winning.

‘It needs a miracle to save those poor Russians now,' Emmeline said, setting the paper aside with a sigh. ‘And I can't see that happening.'

She was wrong. The miracle began at the end of November when the German High Command discovered how punishingly cold the Russian winter could be and how poorly equipped they were to deal with it. With temperatures of 27 degrees below freezing, the German tanks ground to a frozen halt and it wasn't long before the storm troopers were freezing alongside them. The Russians were used to extreme winters and quickly adapted to this one, issuing thick winter greatcoats and fur-lined hats to keep their troops warm and using horses to deliver their supplies and sledges to transport their heavy
guns. Within days the German impetus had stopped; within a week the Russians had begun to push them back. It was the first good news in a very long time.

But there was shocking and unexpected news to come. On a quiet Sunday evening at the beginning of December when the juniors at Roehampton Secondary School were busy making Christmas cards for their families and Lizzie was perched in her window seat wondering what she could get to give Ben for a special Christmas present, and Tommy and Octavia were sitting down to dinner with Em and Edie, the teleprinters in New York began to rattle out some alarming information. By the next morning the papers were full of it. Three hundred and sixty planes of the Japanese Air Force, flying from six aircraft carriers, had launched a violent and unprovoked attack on Pearl Harbour, the American naval base in Hawaii. The raid had lasted for two hours and in that time five battleships and fourteen smaller ships had been sunk, two hundred aircraft had been destroyed and over two and a half thousand men had been killed. The pictures in the papers showed huge black clouds billowing over the stricken ships and eye witnesses spoke of how sudden and terrifying the attack had been. It was, in every sense of the words, an outrage, especially as the Japanese ambassador in Washington had been meeting the American Secretary of State at the very moment the raid had been taking place.

That evening President Roosevelt called an emergency meeting of his cabinet, together with leading members of Congress. By the next afternoon the USA was officially at war.

‘And about time too,' Emmeline said. ‘Now we can get on with the Second Front and invade France and get our poor Arthur out of that prison camp. Oh, I know what you're going
to say, Tavy. It's awful for all those poor young men being killed, absolutely dreadful, and I'm very, very sorry for them, but if it shortens the war…'

‘I'm afraid we may find it will make the war drag on even longer,' Octavia warned. ‘We shall have to fight the Japanese now as well as the other two.'

‘Well, if that's your opinion of it, don't say anything to Edie, that's all,' Emmeline said. ‘She's counting the days. What a Christmas we shall have with them on our side. It's going to make all the difference. Dora and John are coming and young David, which will be nice for him, poor little man, stuck out there in the country all on his own, and Johnnie says he'll try, but you never know with Johnnie. Tommy'll come, of course.'

‘Yes,' Octavia said. ‘He's determined to come. He says he wouldn't miss it for worlds.' But she was thinking of the real reason for his determination. On Christmas Day she would have to give him the answer he'd been waiting for. She couldn't put it off any longer. She'd promised and now she would have to do it. The trouble was she was no nearer to knowing what the answer ought to be than she'd been when their affair began. There was so little time for serious thought, her days were too full and her nights too exhausted. She'd struggled with the problem whenever she could, pausing as she brushed her teeth in the morning to consider her reflection in the mirror and wonder whether she really wanted to be a married woman with all the effort that that entailed, standing, coffee cup in hand, looking at the pile of marking on her desk and wondering whether she had room in her life for a husband. A lover, yes. That was almost pure pleasure. But a husband? Oh Tommy, she thought, what
am
I going to say to you?

Perhaps it was just as well that Winston Churchill had
other plans for Major Meriton that Christmas.

‘He's off to Washington for talks with FDR,' Tommy said when he rang her that evening. ‘We've been planning it all day. It's going to make rather a mess of Christmas. I
am
sorry. We shan't be back until the New Year.'

‘We shall miss you,' Octavia said.

‘Look after my Lizzie for me,' he said.

‘Of course. Don't worry. She'll be fine.'