Page 112 of The Gathering Storm (Morland Dynasty #36)
‘I can’t see the British people going along with it,’ Lennie said. ‘They might send the children, perhaps. But can you imagine Londoners, for instance, running away with their tails between their legs?’
‘You’d never get Londoners to go to the country for any reason,’ Polly said, with grim humour. ‘Give up their pavements and streetlights and pubs and cinemas for fields full of cows?’
She had been worrying for days about James, from whom she hadn’t heard in weeks. France was safe enough at the moment, but if war broke out, would he be able to get back?
Alec, Bibi and Mimi got home from school, gas-masks slung around their necks – the school was insisting that the children all carry one – and Polly intercepted them and sent them straight up to the nursery for tea.
Alec wanted to hear if there was anything on the wireless, but she didn’t want the little Lohmanns to hear any more unsettling bulletins.
She promised to come up after tea and play a game of Ludo with them.
They had hardly gone up the stairs when the station taxi rattled over the drawbridge, pulled up outside, and the dogs rushed out in a flood to engulf it.
Polly was passing through the hall, and followed Barlow to the door, and her heart lifted when she saw James climbing out.
There were cases tied to the roof, as well, which was even more heartening.
‘You’ve come home!’ she cried, running down the steps to hug him.
He hugged her tightly but briefly, and put her back just as she noticed someone else getting out of the other side of the taxi, where Barlow had hurried to open the door.
A young woman in a beige raincoat over beige trousers, and a shapeless felt hat on her short, dark hair.
James held out a hand to her, and when she reached his side, he said, strangely formal, ‘Polly, this is Meredith. Meredith, my sister Polly.’
Meredith’s hand was as hard and strong as Polly’s, though with fewer calluses.
‘How do you do? Welcome to Morland Place.’ She looked quizzically at James. ‘Is this the Meredith you met on your Canadian trip, all those years ago?’
‘The very same,’ James said, with a rueful grin. Helmy had found him and he was holding off his ecstatic advances with his free hand.
‘I can’t believe you haven’t mentioned me since then,’ Meredith said to him.
He looked embarrassed. ‘There wasn’t anything to tell, was there? Not until now.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Polly demanded.
‘Meredith and I – well, I’ve been wanting to marry her for years, but she would never agree, until now.’
Polly looked from one to the other, delight dawning. ‘You’re engaged to be married?’
‘Um, not exactly,’ James said. ‘We stopped off in London and did the deed. Meredith is Mrs James Morland now.’
‘We had everything in place to get married in the American Embassy in Paris,’ James said.
‘You know, birth certificates and so on. But things were getting more and more sticky over there, and I started to worry that we were going to be marooned. You remember, Pol, Papa telling how all those Americans got caught there last time? The Germans were massing at the Polish border, and we’d moved everything of Hélène’s that she wanted moving, plus everything of all of her friends, so there was nothing really to stay for.
Then Hélène said, “For God’s sake, go!” So we went. ’
‘I’m terribly glad you did,’ Polly said, though with a doubt in her voice.
James heard it. ‘What’s wrong? Aren’t we welcome? I’d offer to take ourselves off to an hotel, but the fact is that we’re stony broke, haven’t a bean between us. Spent our last sous getting married. We can sleep on the nursery floor, and we don’t eat much.’
‘Don’t be silly, of course you’re welcome,’ Polly said. ‘I wouldn’t forgive you if you went somewhere else.’
Lennie understood. ‘I think what your sister is worrying about is that, now you’re back in the country, you’ll be eligible to be called up when conscription starts.’
James shrugged. ‘Oh, well, can’t help that.’
‘Unless you went back to the States,’ Lennie said. ‘You could still get out.’
James and Meredith looked at each other. ‘We don’t want to do that,’ she said. ‘We talked about it, and we want to be here, carrying on the fight.’
‘It would be very feeble of us to run away,’ James said.
Lennie grinned. ‘Exactly how I felt when the last war broke out. I was visiting here, and definitely didn’t want to go home and miss it all.’
Alec was ecstatic that his uncle had come back.
James was flattered, until his nephew said, ‘Well, Uncle Lennie is American so he can’t fight, and Mummy’s a girl and they don’t, so I’d have no-one to tell the other boys at school about.
But now you’re here, and you’ll go off and fight, and kill hundreds of Germans, and I can talk about that. It’ll be swish!’
‘What a bloodthirsty young ruffian you are,’ James said dispassionately.
In the early hours of the 1st of September, the German army invaded Poland from three different directions, with one and a half million men, panzer divisions and a relentless bombing from the Luftwaffe.
It was a Friday. The children went to school, everyone tried to get on with their work as usual, and the hammering from the chapel roof continued with even greater urgency.
Polly went into York to talk to her staff at Makepeace’s.
The ARP warden had visited her two weeks before to ask her what arrangements she had made for their safety in an air raid.
Makepeace’s had a cellar, but the warden had recommended that she got steel and wooden props put in place to support the ceiling as an extra safety measure.
Now she addressed the staff to make sure they knew what to do if the air-raid siren went off; that they knew the difference between the warning and the ‘all clear’; and that they all had their gas masks with them.
The young men from the gentlemen’s departments she shook hands with, telling them that when they were called up, everyone would be tremendously proud of them; they shuffled and blushed.
She wondered how she would stretch her female staff to cover their jobs, and what gentleman customers would think of being served by girls.
That evening, it was announced on the news that the Prime Minister had addressed the House of Commons at six o’clock.
The newscaster read out his speech. ‘“It now only remains for us to set our teeth and to enter upon this struggle, which we ourselves earnestly endeavoured to avoid, with determination to see it through to the end. We shall enter it with a clear conscience, with the support of the Dominions and the British Empire, and the moral approval of the greater part of the world.”’
And the late bulletin said that Sir Neville Henderson had handed an ultimatum to Ribbentrop at 9 p.m., which declared that unless the British government received satisfactory assurances that Germany was prepared to withdraw from Polish territory ‘His Majesty’s Government will without hesitation fulfil their obligation to Poland’.
The newscaster said that the French ambassador delivered an identical note one hour later.
‘So the die is cast,’ Lennie said.
‘What does that mean?’ Ethel asked. She was knitting again, and the more agitated she got, the faster the needles moved.
‘It means that if Hitler doesn’t withdraw from Poland, we go to war,’ James explained. ‘And he won’t, so we will.’
Further bulletins described various attacks and bombings on Poland. The Polish forces were no match for the German military machine.
That night, Polly lay in Lennie’s arms, and said, ‘We’re for it, aren’t we?’
‘I think so,’ he said.
She pressed closer. ‘It sounds stupid, but I’m almost glad the waiting’s over. It’s been going on for so long. At least now we know what we’re facing.’
He held her, and kissed her hair.
‘What will happen to us?’ she asked, after a while.
He didn’t answer at once. It was an impossible question, anyway. She meant them, him and her, but also their household, their family, and she also meant the neighbourhood, York, England. All of them.
‘We’ll be all right,’ he said.
‘Do you really think so? I can’t help thinking that it’s going to be as bad as last time, and look at all the people we lost.’ He had nothing to say to that. Then she said, ‘But the Lady didn’t cry. So we’ll survive, won’t we?’
‘We’ll survive,’ he said.
Saturday was a waiting day. ‘It’s like Holy Saturday,’ Polly said, and strangely only Ethel really understood her, being an old- fashioned churchgoer.
There was nothing to do but wait. She knew the children felt the atmosphere, so she took them over to Twelvetrees, where Jessie did her bit to entertain them, giving the little Lohmanns a riding lesson on a quiet horse, letting Alec take one over the jumps.
They stayed for lunch, and then while Jessie went off to do things, Catherine and Ottilie played a protracted game of Monopoly with them.
The Lohmanns had never played before, so it kept them thoroughly absorbed.
Their English was now quite idiomatic, but they learned a few more words while playing the game.
Polly collected them and took them home for baths and supper.
She had a telephone call from Emma, who chatted about her children, and sounded oddly disjointed.
‘I just wanted to know you were still there, I suppose,’ she confessed at last. ‘Everything is so strange. I somehow feel that if Morland Place is still there, if it’s all right, we’ll come through. ’
‘Like the ravens at the Tower of London?’ Polly said.
‘Oh, yes – and goodness, what’s going to happen to them? Will they have—?’
‘Taken precautions to make sure they survive? I’m sure they will,’ Polly said.