Summer's End (29 page)

‘There will be war, I know it. The bicycle shop has already run out of oil, and the Lettices' stock is severely depleted. Mrs Dibble had great trouble in obtaining haricot beans. The Sharpes tell her they have sold all their cheese in
advance
, and Mrs Marden tells me even Harrods is running out of provisions. Women are taking
dustbins
in to fill with stores. And most of our sugar comes from Germany and Austria. I shall speak to –'

The Rector interrupted, seized by sudden fear. He could not do what he might have to do for Ashden if Elizabeth, his strength and love, were not at his side in spirit as well as physically. The wheels of the Rectory had to continue turning smoothly, but there was more to that than the simply material. He too was beside himself with anxiety over Isabel, but there were other calls on him – and therefore on his wife.

‘Elizabeth, come back to me.'

She turned at last. ‘I don't know what you mean, Laurence.' But she did, and had not the strength to face it. For the first time in twenty-seven years, the interests of Ashden, the Rectory and motherhood were not as one. There was no clear path for her, and God had chosen to flicker His lamps so that they danced confusingly over all.

‘If the store runs out of beans,' Laurence continued doggedly, ‘we shall gather dandelions, if of sugar, we shall use honey and glucose, and if the bicycle shop of oil we shall make candles – together, Elizabeth. But what shall I do, what will Ashden do, if
we
run out of hope and purpose? You have chosen your own wise path, here, my love, avoided essentially purposeless commitments in a greater need, but if war comes, Elizabeth, the whole of Ashden will be our family and it needs you as well as me.'

‘I cannot, Laurence, I might not have the strength,' she pleaded.

‘Together we do, my love, you and I and God.'

She took a deep breath and tried. ‘I hear dandelion leaves are extremely nutritious.' She thought she would not mention to Laurence that Mrs Dibble had successfully obtained the last sack of potatoes from Farmer Lake.

Always Isabel. No one thought of
her
, Phoebe sulked. Even now Isabel was married, she was still managing to dominate the conversation. It was all: ‘how will Isabel get home from Paris' and never ‘how will Phoebe get
to
it.' She was still determined to go to finishing school. No rotten Kaiser was going to stop her. It simply wasn't fair. Anyway, she consoled herself, the hullabaloo would probably be over in a week or two, and there would be plenty of time to travel to Paris in September. Meanwhile how was she going to exist through boring August?

Somehow, Caroline reflected gloomily, she and Reggie seemed to have got squeezed between the concentric circles she so blithely dreamed up only a few weeks ago. So far from being concentric, they now appeared to be on a head-on collision course.

The whole village, confident that fair weather would continue for ever, and planning to embark on its usual bank holiday occupations of cricket (either discussion of the Oval match or playing in Ashden's), lazing outside the Norville Arms, at the Tunbridge Wells fair, or on a day trip to the seaside, was prepared to indulge also in ever-mutating discussion groups on the war news. Views ranged, so far as Caroline had heard, from expectation of imminent invasion by hordes of German troops in horned helmets, up to those prepared to set off today to fight the foe with hop-dogs or hammers, and down to those who suggested Great Britain should mind its own Pygmalion business and get on with the harvest. Tension grew as news filtered through of naval reservists having already left the village. The two Tilbury brothers had departed yesterday, and what were their wives to do now? Nothing about pay, nothing about allowances, just report for duty.

But Caroline listened with only half an ear; the other half, the more prominent of the two, told her that today she would see Reggie. There had been no sign of him yesterday, but she had not expected it, for he had warned her that his mother had commanded all three to attend what should have been Daniel's last Sunday luncheon in the Manor. When he arrived earlier than she expected, Caroline ran downstairs eagerly. They had been planning a trip to the seaside, but to her disappointment he had different ideas. ‘I thought we might get news of Isabel quicker,' he said to her ingenuously, ‘if we went up to London, and called on Father.'

She acquiesced, but she had longed for a day away from Ashden, and with Reggie, not surrounded by the crowds of London, especially at such a time. Moreover, he suggested travelling by train not motor-car, and she was dressed for the seaside,
not
London, in a light blue voile gown which had seen several seasons but remained a firm favourite. Elegant it was not, comfortable it was.

‘I don't believe this is your idea,' she said glumly on the way to the station.

He grinned shamefacedly. ‘Pa hasn't been able to telephone, and we don't feel we should interrupt him by telephone, so Mother has despatched me to call in and find out when she can expect to see him again. What a question at such a time!'

‘With
me
?'

‘Accompanied by Daniel was her suggestion. But Daniel's so furious he can't go to Greece, I told him to push off and find Felicia.'

‘Lucky Felicia, if he's in that mood.'

‘She has a good effect on him. He becomes a more reasonable human being when she's around. Haven't you noticed? In fact, he
behaves
like a human being, and not like a young Apollo.'

‘Does he want to marry her?' Caroline asked bluntly.

He hesitated. ‘Daniel is set on travelling. I think he has some idea of rushing round the world and coming back to claim her like Jacob and Rachel in the Bible.'

‘Jacob waited fourteen years.'

‘Only because he got palmed off with the ugly sister. No danger of that now I've – ouch!' He dodged as she whacked him with her handbag.

‘Is your mother still speaking to you?' she deemed it safe enough to venture.

‘Yes.' He seemed surprised. ‘Why?'

‘Our engagement,' she reminded him, taken aback.

‘Mother is the best Lord Nelson I ever met. She doesn't like it happening so she assumes it isn't. Her blind eye is so confident she's not even annoyed about it.'

Caroline felt dismissed, a woman of no consequence, and somewhat cross with Reggie, although she could think of no logical reason why this should be so.

The train from Tunbridge Wells was late and already full. Only with difficulty did she manage to squeeze into the compartment, and
Reggie was left standing all the way to Victoria. At East Grinstead, even more people crowded in, and at the thought of another hour and twenty minutes at least ahead, her heart sank. She tried to pretend it was fun, but the heat soon sapped energy, and she was glad when they arrived and could take some refreshment. That too was a struggle, for Victoria was packed with naval servicemen, and still lots of foreigners, judging by the babble of French and German. They weren't even at odds with each other, preoccupied with their individual problems and their own leave-takings, special trains running, heartbreaking scenes of women clasped in foreign husbands' and sweethearts' arms. Caroline wondered if any of them was Mrs Dibble's Lizzie's Rudolf. The crowd was swelled by holiday-makers whose trains had been cancelled, taken over by the Government for troops. They were easy to spot for they, like her, were in seaside attire, boaters, blazers, light summer dresses. It was as if Brighton Pier had been dumped in Victoria Station by a large wave. Most of them, it seemed to her, were making for St James's Park, just as she and Reggie were. She was used to seeing the Park full of nannies out with their charges in perambulators, now it was swamped by holiday-makers, sweethearts and sightseers, pulled there by the general humming of the air.

‘Exciting, isn't it?' Reggie hugged her, as they at last found a bench to sit on.

‘Yes.' She meant it. It was hard not to be infected by the energy that seemed to be flowing through the crowds around them. ‘Do you think we'll be drawn in, Reggie?'

‘I don't think it will come to that. The Kaiser is a madman, so they say.' Reggie put on a funny face, placed his forefinger under his nose, jumped up and strutted along the path, goose-stepping, to the amusement of strollers-by.

‘Don't joke.' She caught his arm in sudden alarm and he sat down again. ‘It
is
serious.'

‘We don't make it better by long faces.'

A burly young man walked by with his arm round his lady-love, and she found herself longing to feel Reggie's round her again, but he seemed preoccupied. She felt she was at the back, not the forefront of his thoughts, and it alarmed her.

‘A soldier and his lass,' he observed.

‘He looks more like a plumber to me.'

‘I meant me.'

‘You?'

A terrible chasm opened before her. Reggie and Daniel both had OTC experience. Suppose in due course they had to join in this war? Worse, suppose they
wanted
to? With alarm, she remembered Reggie's thwarted desire for an army career. Surely the Regular Army would be enough to protect Britain? And, if not, the Reserves and the Territorials? After Lord Haldane's reforms, its organisation and manpower must be quite adequate to protect France and Belgium against Germany, formidable though Germany's army was said to be. In Ashden Caroline's feet had felt securely on the ground. Here, she felt thrown out of her depth, at one moment sucking at an ice cream (forbidden in Ashden) as though this were Margate on a perfect bank holiday, and at another in the midst of a major crisis. What was worse, it affected
her.
Reggie might go. Was that why he was so preoccupied, so exhilarated? She recalled all the times he had spoken so wistfully of how he had wanted an army career. Suppose that was why he was here, to beg his father to let him go to war? Daniel would be here now; he could run the estate, Reggie might argue. She fought to subdue panic so that Reggie should notice nothing, and concentrated on the crowds around. Everywhere they lined the streets, watching the motor-cars passing in to Downing Street, or towards the Houses of Parliament, and Whitehall. All those people locked in conference on a scorching hot day like this. Did the Kaiser not take time for a summer holiday, she thought irrelevantly, to distract herself.

Half-way through the afternoon, the crowds began by a sort of osmosis to head towards the Mall, and hearing a whisper: ‘His Majesty', they followed, caught up in the surging mass. They arrived at the Mall just as the open car went by carrying King George and Queen Mary with the Prince of Wales. Caroline found herself waving and cheering with the rest, a lump in her throat; it was impossible not to be moved by this symbol of their own great country and Empire. His father's work for peace in Europe may come to nothing, King George seemed to be implying, but I am still here, and here I shall remain.

Reggie grabbed the latest edition of a newspaper as soon as the motor-car had passed. ‘Shall we stay on this evening, Caroline?' he asked casually. ‘I'd like to try to see Father, and I don't feel I can
barge into the War Office at the moment. He's staying in Queen Anne's Gate with Lord Haldane and Grey, too, the Foreign Secretary. It's possible he may have news from Paris. Look, I can whizz into my club and telephone him to see if we can meet him, and I can telephone your parents.'

Caroline hadn't even given a thought to what her parents might be thinking. Now she did: a late train home, and just possibly no train home if the situation deteriorated. A few days ago it would have mattered so much, her being alone with Reggie. Now it seemed immaterial. She was not ‘with Reggie'; he had slipped from her; he was hearing not the birdsong in St James's Park but some siren voice calling him to the Colours, thousands upon thousands at his side, all marching in pursuit of some vague concept named honour.

‘It's worrying, all this talk of war,' Agnes said primly, trying to think of something to say, when there was so much needed saying.

‘Won't affect us, will it?' said Jamie solidly, lying back on the grass with his hands behind his head. ‘Never does in the country. Wars and politics are for townsfolk, not us. But it's us keeps the country going while they get on with their games.'

She laughed at him. ‘What if another William the Conqueror strolls in?'

‘The Tommies can deal with him, while we get on getting corn in, and shoeing horses. They still have to be shod and, before you say it, Aggie, I know there aren't so many now. I don't want to work in a shop all my life. They'll all be motor-forges soon. I reckon that's what I'd like to be, a motor-forger.'

‘You're daft, Jamie Thorn.' She leaned over and, greatly daring, tickled his nose with a piece of grass. ‘You've never ever even been in a motor-car, I'll be bound.'

‘I have so. Lots of times. Anyway, you don't have to have kissed a girl to know you'd like to. Or that you'd enjoy it.' He grinned wickedly. ‘Only I weren't going to say kissed.'

‘Jamie Thorn, I'm surprised at you.'

‘No, you're not, Aggie.' A pause. ‘It's very quiet here. No one about.'

‘Apart from boats up and down the river, and them fishermen over there.' Something in her chest seemed to be hammering at her.

‘We could move further back, get out of the heat, among the trees.'

A longer pause. ‘It
is
a little warm here,' she admitted. She jumped to her feet and began to gather up their belongings, following his rigid back into the woodland. It felt strange beginning to undress before Jamie, until she saw he was as shy as she was. That made her feel a little better. ‘Do we have to take off everything, Jamie?' she managed to blurt out.

The thought of it made him so hard he had to turn away.

‘Be quick, Aggie,' he almost choked. ‘Just … just.' He couldn't say it as he fumbled with his trousers and when he looked round there was a neat pile of calico and Aggie sitting down hugging her skirt round her knees. Somehow that made him even harder, and he sat down by her side. ‘Sure, Aggie?'