Page 101 of The Gathering Storm (Morland Dynasty #36)

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The April weather was unexpectedly benign, and Richard was busy with the finishing of the holiday village site.

The chalets were all built and only wanted painting, the sanitation units were just waiting to be furnished and connected, and the construction of the public buildings was well in hand.

They would be ready for a summer opening – ironically, considering the low rumble of expectation about a war coming.

If they went to war, there was little chance anyone would be going on holiday.

And what would he do then? Unused, the buildings would deteriorate, to say nothing of having no return on his investment.

The last war had gone on for four years.

One day he received a letter from the Air Ministry, asking him to attend for a meeting.

He didn’t tell Cynthia, knowing she would jump to the conclusion that it would be something bad.

She’d seemed a little happier after seeing Mr Young, and her appetite had improved, but she still turned away from him in bed, and he knew her recovery was fragile.

He’d tell her afterwards, when he knew what it was about.

He thought it must be something to do with procuring or hiring motor vehicles.

When he presented himself at Adastral House on Kingsway, and gave his name, the porter at the desk looked him up on a list, and told him he was to see the Administrator of Works and Buildings, and summoned a messenger boy to conduct him there.

The administrator, a pleasant-faced but worn-looking man in his fifties, sat Richard down, offered him tea, and told him kindly that the Air Ministry was going to requisition his whole holiday camp site.

‘It’s ideal for our purposes,’ he said. ‘As you know, the east coast will be one of the first targets for enemy aircraft.’ He didn’t name the enemy – Richard gathered that the Air Force, at least, had no doubt they’d be fighting the Germans in the near future.

‘The land in Lincolnshire is flat and we’re building several new airfields there.

Your holiday camp will provide us with accommodation for the officers, and administration and works buildings. ’

‘Holiday village,’ Richard corrected automatically.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Not holiday camp, holiday village.’ Samuel had been insistent on that point.

The administrator gave him a strange look. ‘If you wish.’

‘So,’ Richard went on, ‘do I have any choice?’

‘I’m afraid not. That’s what “requisition” means. There will, of course, be compensation. And it will be returned to you at the end of the emergency, either restored to previous condition, or with a grant for you to restore it.’

‘The emergency? The war, you mean?’

‘We call it the state of emergency,’ he insisted politely.

When he got home that evening, he knew at once something was up. Cynthia met him in the hall, and Hannah and Leah were behind her, waiting in the doorway of the sitting-room.

‘What is it?’ he asked at once, Nevinson’s Holiday Villages forgotten. ‘What’s happened?’

She took a shaky breath. ‘A man came to the door just a little while ago. He had an armband. He said he was the warden for this building.’

‘What sort of warden?’

She wrinkled her brow. ‘He did say. Something about air raids.’

‘Air Raid Precaution? ARP?’

‘That was it,’ Hannah said. ‘He had the letters on his armband.’

‘I didn’t know anything about it,’ Cynthia said. ‘Air raids, Richard?’ She looked tearful.

‘If there’s a war,’ he said.

‘He asked how many were in the household,’ she went on. ‘Adults, children and babies. I told him four adults. And he left those. ’

She gestured with her head, and he saw, on the hall table, a stack of four square-ish cardboard boxes. He took the top one and opened the lid. A black rubber face, with a hose for a snout and big round glass eyes, like the head of a nightmare pig, glared balefully at him. ‘Gas masks.’

‘He said everyone in the country would be given one eventually, but they were starting with London and the Home Counties because that was the most likely target. For gas attacks. He said we had to practise wearing them so as to be ready. We tried them on—’

‘It’s not easy,’ Hannah said. ‘There’s instructions on the box, but it’s not easy to get it on.’

‘The smell is terrible,’ Leah blurted out.

‘It’s hard to breathe,’ Cynthia said. ‘You have to drag the air in. It tastes of rubber and it makes you feel sick. Oh, Richard! Gas?’

‘It’s just a precaution,’ he said helplessly. ‘It might never happen.’

She walked away from him abruptly, went into the sitting-room. He was still in his coat and hat. Hannah, a little shame-faced, said, ‘She’s upset, that’s all,’ and helped him off with them. Then she hustled Leah towards the kitchen. ‘I’ll get supper on, now you’re home.’

Richard went into the sitting-room, where Cynthia was standing, her back to him, apparently studying the fire in the grate. ‘Darling,’ he said hesitantly.

She turned. There were tears on her cheeks. ‘I can’t bear it,’ she said.

‘Nobody wants a war. But if it comes, we have to be ready.’ She shook her head – It’s not that . ‘What is it?’ he asked gently.

‘I don’t want a baby if there’s going to be a war,’ she blurted out. ‘What kind of a life would there be for it?’

‘There’ve always been wars, but people go on living, babies go on being born.

More than ever, when times are bad, we need hope.

A new generation.’ She shook her head again – this time I don’t agree .

‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘What do you want?’ She looked at him with hopeless, miserable appeal, and he had to guess. ‘Do you want to go to America?’

‘Oh, Richard!’ she said, and then she was crying properly.

He took her in his arms and let her cry into his collar.

‘You want to go to America? Soon?’ She made a noise of assent.

‘Then you shall go.’ She made another sound.

He was getting good at interpreting. ‘Of course, your mother and Leah too. That was always the plan.’ She murmured against his wet neck.

‘I will take you myself,’ he said. ‘It will only need a few days to arrange. Don’t worry, darling.

The war is still a long way off.’ Though he didn’t know, of course. Did anyone know?

‘You’ll take us?’ she said, detaching herself and dragging out a handkerchief.

‘Of course.’

‘And you’ll stay too?’ His hesitation was her answer. She emerged from blowing her nose to stare.

‘I can’t abandon the country now,’ he said. ‘If the war comes, I’ll be needed.’ He was thirty-eight, in the prime of life. ‘I’ll have to fight. They’ll need everyone they can get. We have to keep the Germans out. We have to defeat them.’

‘You’ll leave me there?’

‘I’ll see you settled. You’ll be all right. And when the war’s over, you can come back. I’ll come and fetch you.’

She turned away from him again, stared at the fire, picked up the poker and prodded it a little. With her back still turned, she said, ‘I’ll stay with you. Mummy and Leah can go.’

She turned at last, and searched his face. It came to him that this was a deciding moment, but he had no idea what to say or do. He had no idea even what he was feeling. He said hesitantly, ‘It’s up to you.’

He saw something die in her face, and knew he had not said the right thing, whatever that might have been. ‘I’ll go, then,’ she said. ‘Mummy will need me. I think Daddy would want me to take care of her.’ She turned and knelt down to put more coal on the fire. ‘Will you stay here, or go to Ealing?’

‘Here, I suppose,’ he said vaguely, still trying to think it out. ‘I’ll have to sell the Ealing house. We can’t keep leaving it empty. We can buy somewhere else after the war.’ She said something, but he didn’t hear through the rattling of the fire-shovel. ‘What was that?’

‘I said, when can we go?’

‘On Monday? Will that give you enough time to pack?’

‘Yes, thank you,’ she said. She stood up, brushing her hands off, and said, ‘I’d better go and see if they need help with supper.’ And she went.

He didn’t know what had just happened, but he felt he had crossed a line – whether starting or finishing he couldn’t say.

She hadn’t even poured him his evening glass of sherry. He had to get it himself.

James came in out of the chilly April rain, shook himself off, and went into the canteen.

The small former factory near the station, which they had taken over as headquarters, was warm inside, and the canteen was steamy with smells of food and cigarettes.

He received a tin plate of sausage and bean stew and a tin mug of coffee, and went and sat down at one of the long trestles.

The canteen was full, but he got himself onto the end of one of the benches and saved the space next to him.

He saw Emil come in, and waved to him; but Emil stopped just inside the door, in deep conversation with Tante Lotti. Eventually, they came over together.

‘James, we have to talk to you,’ Lotti said. She took the space at the end of the bench; Emil stood at her shoulder.

‘Has something happened?’ he asked. He hoped it was nothing that would require a lot of talk. He was starving, and the food in front of him smelt good. He hadn’t eaten since their early breakfast.

Emil said, ‘I’ve had a cable from my father. He wants me to come home.’

‘Oh,’ said James, blankly.

‘Things are becoming dangerous,’ Lotti said.

‘You know that your government has signed a pact with Poland, guaranteeing their independence? Well, yesterday Britain and France extended the guarantee to Romania and Greece. It has absolutely infuriated the Führer. He was quite deranged with rage, they say. He said if England wanted war, it should have a war, one of destruction beyond imagination. He said no English town would be left standing.’

‘But that’s just—’ James began.