The Storms of War (13 page)

‘What about lessons?’ she asked.

Mr Janus stroked Emmeline’s hair. ‘Perhaps we could all read some poetry. Yes. Let us sit outside and read poetry.’

Emmeline nodded against his chest.

‘I think we should go now,’ said Celia.
Before anyone finds us,
she wanted to add,
before Mama or Jennie comes up to Emmeline’s room and finds her not there.

‘If you say so, Miss de Witt,’ shrugged Mr Janus. Celia saw Emmeline smile. In that moment, she thought, they had both crossed over to another side, together, without her.

It rained that afternoon, so they sat in the schoolroom to read poetry. Celia was relieved – Verena would be angry if she saw the three of them outside. Mr Janus read them ‘The Lady of Shalott’ and Browning. Emmeline listened and took some of the parts, Celia too. At five, he was due to walk back to the next town, where he was lodging. ‘Tomorrow, ladies,’ he said, although Celia knew he was not speaking to her. She trotted after Emmeline, talking about poetry. On the stairs, her sister turned around. ‘Celia, you don’t have to follow me, you know. Don’t worry, nothing will happen now.’

That evening, Emmeline did not come to dinner, but Verena reported that she had been content when Jennie took her tray up. Her mother squeezed Celia’s hand under the table.

‘I heard you and Emmeline talking about poetry,’ said Rudolf. ‘I was always a great admirer of Browning.’

She knew she was being thanked, that they were pleased and thought she was the one responsible for Emmeline’s smile because she had talked about poetry, distracted her from thoughts of Sir Hugh. Celia felt a hot shame that she was being wrongly chosen, and still more that the truth was something she could never tell her parents, not ever.

At dinner, Rudolf was talking about the factories. Mr Lewis was saying they had had a surge in orders for meat pies and sausages.

‘That is excellent news, husband.’

‘Prices are soaring. I expect people think there will be shortages. And the soldiers need supplies. Mr Lewis is going to the War Office to discuss the contracts with the army.’

‘That would be a fine thing. A contract with the army to supply meats.’

‘Yes, apparently they are frantic for new suppliers. Mr Lewis thinks we may be lucky.’

Celia had only seen her father’s factory once. He had given her a tour, but she had begged him to take her out after ten minutes or so. The smell of meat was so strong. He patted her hand, said he spent most of his time in the office or meeting with people who wished to buy his meats, rather than in the factory itself. That made Celia feel better. The thought of the factory, the smell of blood and bone and the dripping carcasses, was too horrible. She was glad he hardly went near it. They had five shops – three in London – and even they were too much for her. When she was younger, the other girls teased her: ‘Your papa is a butcher!’ She hated herself for wishing he sold something else for, as her mother said, it was good work, honest work. His office was piled up with account books, correspondence, evidence of his industry. The meat they were eating had to come from
somewhere.

‘Surely you should go to the War Office yourself to discuss such a matter, husband.’

‘Not for the moment. Mr Lewis considers it better that I stay here. After all, there is all that business about registering and if we do that, then we won’t be able to travel.’

‘Yes, husband, but they don’t mean you. They mean waiters in London, that sort of thing. I remember we had a rather odd one in the Savoy once.’

‘Are you sure they don’t mean us, Papa?’ asked Celia.

‘They will have to take Queen Mary first.’

Celia stared at her plate. She had a cruel thought in her head. Why couldn’t her father just be English? Then they would have none of this; she could read articles about the poor Belgians and the terrible Kaiser and it would all be clear in her head. But if her father was English, then she would not be Celia – she would be someone else. And if you said the Germans were evil, that made Hilde and Johann evil too, and how could that be right? Surely, she thought, surely, if they just asked the Kaiser to stop? Sarah’s voice rang in her head:
teach the Kaiser a lesson.

Before this year, Celia had been secretly a little proud of being
German. It was something that made her more exotic, more interesting than the other girls at school, those like Gwendolyn and Marion who never went anywhere in their school holidays. It explained why she was tall; one teacher had said that Germans always had height. She had seen it as making her more English, not less; it made her more like Queen Victoria. The Queen’s mother had hurried away from Germany so that Victoria could be born, just in time, at Kensington Palace; she had read it all in a book. Her and Albert’s eldest daughter, Princess Victoria, was her favourite, good at lessons, married a German. The Queen shook so much at the wedding that they could not take her photograph; she wept even though she was happy. And now the Princess’s brother was King and the Queen was dead, her son the Kaiser. It was too interlinked, too confused.

‘Are you eating your beef, Celia?’ said Verena. ‘Plenty of children would be glad to have it. Especially in Belgium.’

What did Michael think? she wondered. Practising to fight against Germans, and yet he was one? Her head was spinning. She looked at her father and felt, for a moment, a flash of pure resentment against him.

Seven years ago, Rudolf had bundled her into a carriage, collected Tom from the next street corner and told them not to tell Verena. They travelled all the way to a giant glass building that he said was the Crystal Palace, surrounded by what looked like thousands of people. ‘Do you remember from your book about the Queen?’ Rudolf said. ‘We are here to see a show I saw advertised in
The Times.
It’s about the future of the English village. They say it is very good.’ Past the ticket barrier were rows and rows of seats around which Celia realised was a whole life-sized model of a village, with actual flower beds planted with tulips, a duck pond, a church, and shops selling what looked like real bread, meat and haberdashery. There were people there, milling around, women taking down the bread and passing it over to be bought, men sauntering around the pond. Two women chatted over a perambulator and four girls played hopscotch in front of the
shops. Over the top of it was a network of wires, supported by thick posts on each corner.

‘I wish we could go down and play with them,’ Celia said to Rudolf. He did not seem to hear.

A man with glasses had folded his newspaper and stood up. ‘Welcome to our village,’ he said, and walked over to stand by the women with perambulators. ‘It is the summer of 1907,’ he called out. ‘People in Englandsfield are enjoying a fine Saturday afternoon. The children look forward to their future. And then something arrives on the horizon.’

Celia clutched her father’s hand. ‘Papa!’ From the top of the wires at the side, three great model aeroplanes dropped down. ‘Oh, nice machines!’ said Tom, with satisfaction. The people in the village looked up and began to cry out. ‘God save us!’ a woman wailed. A great explosion of smoke appeared on the green. Some girls at the front were shrieking.

Celia was ashamed of her earlier panic. ‘This is a very silly play,’ she said, more bravely than she felt. The children in front of her were pretending to be scared, she thought.

There was the sound of trumpets. A group of soldiers arrived on the village green. ‘We are German,’ they shouted. ‘We are coming for you!’

Rudolf smiled broadly. ‘We Germans are always the bad man in the pantomime!’ He grinned happily around at the other spectators. And yet, Celia thought, they were not laughing. People were still as stone, their faces afraid or shouting insults.

There were two more explosions of smoke on the green. ‘I think they are meant to be bombs,’ said Tom. ‘You can look up, Celia, no one is injured.’

She lifted her head. The planes were still hanging. The people in the village were still crying, the women clutching each other as they sheltered by the sides of the shops. Then she jumped. ‘Here they come again!’ The planes were swooping down. ‘Most ingenious,’ said Rudolf, peering up.

From the other side of the seating there was the sound of marching, and men’s voices counting out the steps.

‘Here come the army,’ sighed Tom. Thirty or so men in uniform marched in formation through the streets and on to the green. The German soldiers turned and fled, shouting, ‘We have been discovered!’ in thick accents that Celia thought did not sound German at all.

The British raised their guns into the air. ‘The Germans will not come back,’ called one, turning around so that all sides of the audience could see him. ‘Never again will English children feel afraid of German planes or armies.’ The people around Celia were jumping to their feet and clapping, cheering and shouting. ‘Hooray for Britain!’ Tom tugged her up. ‘Come, Celia,’ he said. ‘We must join in.’ She tried to call out with them, her voice weak and cracked in her ears. She heard other words. ‘The Kaiser can lick my boots!’ ‘Kill the lot of them!’

Rudolf remained sitting, entirely still and straight, looking out. ‘Mr de Witt,’ said Tom. ‘You must stand up.’ Rudolf looked up, bewildered. It was as if, Celia thought, he did not know Tom at all. Tom pulled his arm, not gently, and Rudolf got unsteadily to his feet. ‘Shout it,’ Tom hissed into his ear. ‘Shout hooray!’

Rudolf did. Celia heard his voice, even shakier than her own. ‘Hooray! Hooray for the King and the army!’

On the way back, Rudolf patted her knee. ‘It is a play, little one. Do not think of it. Admittedly, I thought it was about the English village, but it was only a play.’

Celia had forgotten it, put it out of her mind, but now she thought about it again, felt it more important than she had remembered, looked back at that day and saw herself saying to her father: we should not stay here. We should go somewhere else! But where? They could not go to Germany – and where else was there? America, with Jonathan Corrigan? She pushed the idea from her mind.

Next day, Celia sat in Emmeline’s room. Verena and Rudolf had gone to register at the police station. Verena said the police wouldn’t care that they were two weeks later than the due date. ‘I am the daughter of Lady Deerhurst and Rudolf is exempt as a
creator of industry. We’ll get there and they’ll send us away, just you wait.’

Celia watched Emmeline as she took out the gowns ordered for the honeymoon and her life as Lady Hugh and put them in the trunk she had used for school, throwing in silk and lace and lamé, uncaring, until they looked like one great sea monster trying to get out of a box. They dragged it outside the door. ‘I will ask Smithson to take it to one of the storage rooms,’ Emmeline said, crossly. ‘I don’t wish to see any of it.’

‘You might use it again.’

‘If
I choose to marry, it will be all out of fashion by then. I will have to have another set. And you don’t want them, do you?’

‘They wouldn’t suit me.’

Emmeline cocked her head. ‘True. You are not right for pale colours. Dark blue and dark red, pink are what pale girls like you should wear. Even black.’

Celia couldn’t help herself. ‘Do you think so?’

‘Definitely. Dark blue and dark pink. Or black.’ They continued with the gloves and the stockings. ‘I want none of it,’ Emmeline said.

Celia threw handfuls of gauze into another box. ‘What if Sir Hugh changes his mind?’ As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she regretted them. Emmeline stopped, brought her hands to her face. ‘I’m sorry, Emmeline, I’m sorry.’

Emmeline shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’

‘He might,’ said Celia.

‘But I think Michael was right. People see us as Germans.’ Emmeline dropped a pair of evening gloves into the box. ‘If the war hadn’t broken out for another few months or so, I would be married to him.’ She seized up an evening bag and threw it aside.

‘But the war will be over in a few months and everything will go back to normal. Then Sir Hugh will write to you and be different.’

‘Maybe.’

‘Yes.’ Celia turned to the shawls because she could feel tears starting in her eyes. ‘Do you think he will come back?’

‘Who? Michael? Of course he will!’

‘But he’ll go to fight soon. He might die.’ She held up a peculiarly fine cashmere shawl, pink and white, that Emmeline had been most fond of. She thought of asking for it, then stuffed it quickly in the box.

‘No, no, that’s what the working men risk. Men like Michael will be in charge of the planning, so he will be safe.’

Celia turned her attention to the hats. ‘But I don’t think he’s an officer. Mama isn’t sure. We don’t even know where they are.’

‘But why would he just be fighting with the ordinary men? That’s impossible.’

‘Why hasn’t he written, then?’

‘Perhaps they don’t let them send letters. I don’t know. But Celia, he’ll be back before you know it, back at Cambridge, same old Michael.’

‘Tom is there too.’

Emmeline tossed a hat in the box. ‘He is a servant, Celia, remember. We can’t talk about him in the same conversation as Michael.’

Celia felt an old flash of anger with her sister, the feeling that had flooded her when she was sitting in the garden and Emmeline had laughed at the idea of Tom at her wedding.

‘Don’t think about him, Celia. All very well to play together as children but you are a young lady now. And don’t worry about Michael, he will be back soon. Now pass me that straw hat.’ Celia threw it over with ill grace. Only the thought of Emmeline, her thin legs balancing near the edge of the roof, the nightdress caught around her body, held her back from arguing. Unkind words about Mr Janus rose up in her, but she squashed those too.

‘Well, I want them both to come back,’ she said, quietly.

‘Whoever said they wouldn’t? At least they are doing something. At least they are out there and feeling alive, rather than putting clothes in boxes.’

We’re missing you a lot,
Celia said to Tom and Michael in her head.
I wish you’d come home. We’re doing a play you might like.
She could think of nothing to ask him, so she started again about herself,
knowing it was not really polite to do so.
Mama and Papa went to register and the policeman was angry with them that they didn’t do it before. He said he’d have to mark Papa’s file for the War Office. Papa said they have to say that sort of thing to sound stern.

Every day after that, Emmeline called at the schoolroom. Sometimes she listened to Celia’s lessons, other times they recited poetry or plays together. Celia told herself that Emmeline was simply looking for company, but her heart was flooded with guilt. Emmeline came down to dinner, calm and smiling, and Verena clutched Celia’s hand under the table, squeezed it, all gratitude. Celia blushed, miserably.