Page 113 of The Gathering Storm (Morland Dynasty #36)
Later that evening, there was a most unexpected call from Basil. ‘I was just talking to the Aged Ps, and they asked about you. So I said I’d give you a ring. Mum was on the phone to Aunt Molly for an hour today. Everyone’s ringing everyone else, it seems.’
‘It’s that sort of day,’ Polly said.
‘Yes, a transition day. From the state of peace to the state of war.’
‘What have you heard?’
‘Nothing from Germany over the ultimatum – unsurprisingly – so the government’s going to give them a final deadline of tomorrow morning. The French too, but a bit later. And after that – war will be declared.’
‘Oh, Basil!’
‘Don’t be like that. It’s going to be hard – harder than anybody realises, I think – but we’ll come through.’
‘You really think so?’
‘Britain’s been around for thousands of years. Caesar tried to beat us, and Napoleon, and the Kaiser, and they all failed. You don’t think that silly little man with the ridiculous moustache is going to put an end to our magnificent history, do you?’
She laughed shakily. ‘Oh, Basil, you do one so much good.’
‘Please tell the mater that. She thinks my hair is too long, and that I’m not serious enough about things.’
‘Wherever would she get that idea?’
Sunday, the 3rd of September. Not Easter Day, with its triumph and joy and the transcending of death, but a strangely holy day, all the same.
Everyone moved quietly about the house, even the children.
The world seemed to be holding its breath.
The dogs followed Polly, keeping close, sensing the atmosphere.
After breakfast, Lennie got out an enormous jigsaw puzzle and set it up on the dining-room table for the children.
The picture on the lid was an odd one, of three circus workers playing draughts backstage – a clown, a bareback rider in ballet dress and a scarlet-uniformed ring master with waxed moustaches and a whip.
The board was set out on an elephant’s stand from the ring, and a black-and-white dog lay nearby, wearing a clown’s ruff.
Everyone who passed the door went in and looked, and placed a piece or two.
It was the strange background to the day that Polly never forgot.
A little after eleven in the morning, there was an announcement on the wireless: ‘This is London. You will now hear a statement by the Prime Minister.’
It had been announced the night before that the deadline was eleven on Sunday morning, so everyone was hanging around nearby, waiting to hear. Polly urged everyone into the drawing-room, adults, children and servants.
Mr Chamberlain’s voice, with its oddly fluting vowel sounds, came on: clear, but tired, and despondent.
‘I am speaking to you from the Cabinet Room at ten Downing Street. This morning the British ambassador in Berlin handed the German government a final note stating that unless we heard from them by eleven o’clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us.
I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received and that consequently this country is at war with Germany.
‘You can imagine what a bitter blow it is to me that all my long struggle to win peace has failed.
Yet I cannot believe that there is anything more or anything different that I could have done and that would have been more successful.
Up to the very last it would have been quite possible to have arranged a peaceful and honourable settlement between Germany and Poland.
But Hitler would not have it. He had evidently made up his mind to attack Poland whatever happened, and although he now says he put forward reasonable proposals, which were rejected by the Poles, that is not a true statement.
‘The proposals were never shown to the Poles, nor to us, and, though they were announced in a German broadcast on Thursday night, Hitler did not wait to hear comments on them, but ordered his troops to cross the Polish frontier.
His action shows convincingly that there is no chance of expecting that this man will ever give up his practice of using force to gain his will. He can only be stopped by force.
‘We and France are today, in fulfilment of our obligations, going to the aid of Poland, who is so bravely resisting this wicked and unprovoked attack upon her people. We have a clear conscience. We have done all that any country could do to establish peace, but a situation in which no word given by Germany’s ruler could be trusted and no people or country could feel themselves safe had become intolerable.
And now that we have resolved to finish it, I know that you will all play your part with calmness and courage.
‘At such a moment as this the assurances of support that we have received from the Empire are a source of profound encouragement to us.
‘Now may God bless you all and may He defend the right. For it is evil things that we shall be fighting against, brute force, bad faith, injustice, oppression and persecution. And against them I am certain that the right will prevail.’
Afterwards, everyone went quietly away about their tasks. No-one could bear to speak to anyone else, not yet. Polly and Lennie went out into the gardens, and the dogs followed them, unusually subdued.
They held hands, and walked without speaking, their steps taking them round the moat, the swans following at a discreet distance, in case they should happen to have brought bread with them.
The sky was no longer the transparent pale blue of summer, but the opaque, creamy, dense blue of September; the sunshine was more oblique, still warm, but more precious. Autumnal.
At last, after a full circuit, Polly said, ‘It was a good speech.’
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘I’m so glad you’re here,’ she said, the words bursting out of her. ‘I’m so glad we’re married. I keep thinking, what if I’d had to face this alone? I love you so much – I want you to know that.’
He smiled, and teased her gently. ‘Hey, hey, that sounds as if you’re going away somewhere.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I never want to leave this place, or you. I have everything I could ever want here. Let them take it from me if they can!’ she added fiercely. ‘Whatever happens, Lennie—’
‘I know,’ he said.
‘No, you don’t,’ she said. She hesitated. ‘Not entirely.’
She stood still, and the dogs, who had run ahead, came surging back and pushed up close, staring up into her face to see what she wanted, why she’d stopped. She took Lennie’s hands. ‘There’s something you don’t know.’
‘What, darling?’ he asked, slightly amused by her earnestness, not alarmed by the mystery.
‘I wanted to tell you before, but somehow I couldn’t while this was hanging over us, while it wasn’t certain. Now I can. I’m going to have a baby.’
He had no words. He drew her close and held her, and rested his head on her hair.
‘You’re glad, aren’t you?’ she asked, in a shy murmur.
‘Oh, my love, more glad than I can possibly say.’
She made a sound of contentment. ‘It’s right to tell you today,’ she said. ‘Today of all days, there ought to be hope. Here on the very edge, with so much darkness ahead, there has to be hope.’
‘There’s always hope,’ he said.
An aeroplane went by overhead, a fighter plane, high up and fast, scrawling a white line across the blue. But the sky was reflected in the moat, and the swans were the white on that blue, as they had been for hundreds of years.