Page 85 of The Gathering Storm (Morland Dynasty #36)

So now there was a child to worry about, he thought, as he lay in bed that night.

His promise to Samuel to get Hannah and Cynthia out, if there should be trouble …

This Czech business – all of Europe was expecting war.

He hadn’t told her, but the Czech government had already rejected the idea of ceding the Sudetenland.

He thought about getting his wife away in her delicate condition: surely such a flight would be the very definition of stress.

And if it was later in the pregnancy, even worse.

Or if somehow matters were delayed, if it happened after the baby was born …

Getting the two women and a tiny baby away, probably Samuel as well …

And how could he let her go without him?

It was his duty to protect her, and a tiny baby even more so.

If it came to it, he would have to take them, not send them.

Leave England in her time of peril and save his family.

He remembered how people had spoken of those who had fled to America to avoid the last war …

He didn’t want to be branded a coward. But he had a duty to take care of his dependants …

She stirred beside him, sighing in her sleep.

He froze until she had settled again and was breathing steadily.

And then he thought, A baby! He would have a son to follow him, to follow Samuel in the business – Samuel would be pleased.

Or a daughter to wind herself around his heart and enslave him to the tenderest of loves, a father’s for his daughter.

It was how Samuel must feel about Cynthia.

That request to him now made absolute sense, and he felt for Samuel that, fearing his own weakness, he had had to ask it.

Inwardly he renewed the promise to the old man.

I will take care of your treasures, whatever it takes.

* * *

William L. Shirer, son of a Chicago lawyer, had broadcast, from London, the first eyewitness account of the Anschlu? , after he had fled Vienna where he had been reporting for CBS.

Now he was in Berlin, and the newsroom at the Messenger was poring excitedly over his report of the 27th of September, which had just come in over the wire.

‘“A motorised division rolled through the streets at dusk, heading for the Czech border,”’ Dickins read out to the assembled staff. ‘Timed to catch the hundreds of thousands of Berliners pouring out of their offices on the way home, Shirer supposes.’

‘Sounds likely,’ said Palmer. ‘Hitler’s nothing if not the showman.’

‘Ah, but Shirer says it didn’t work this time,’ said Dickins, reading on. ‘He says they ducked into subways, refused to look on, and the few that did stop at the kerb and look did so in utter silence – not a cheer to be heard.’

Digbeth was looking over his shoulder now. ‘He says Hitler is reported as being furious. He says a policeman came up and told him and the others standing at the kerb to go to the Wilhelmplatz because Hitler was on the balcony reviewing the troops. But nobody moved.’

Dickins resumed reading. ‘He says, “I went down to have a look. Hitler stood there, and there weren’t two hundred people in the square.” He says Hitler looked grim, then angry, and soon went inside, leaving the troops to parade unreviewed.’

‘So what was it about?’ Basil asked.

‘Shirer says it was a demonstration that the German people are dead set against war,’ said Dickins, dropping the report on his desk.

‘Well, that’s good, isn’t it?’ Basil said.

Rosco, another senior reporter, spoke round his cigarette, rolling it to the corner of his mouth. ‘I wouldn’t get too excited, young ’un. It might be a setback, but old Adolf won’t let a lack of public enthusiasm stop him.’

‘He rode to power on a wave of adoration,’ Palmer said, ‘but now he’s there, he’s got sharper weapons to hand.’

Another wire came in shortly afterwards. ‘Mussolini’s offered to broker an international conference to settle the Sudeten issue. In two days’ time. In Munich. Between Germany, Britain, France and Italy.’

‘Not Czechoslovakia?’ Jimmy Cutler queried.

Rosco grunted. ‘Who cares what they think? They’re as good as finished. The Germans have had military plans in place since May to roll up Czecho completely.’

‘But if Hitler’s agreed to talk, it must mean he wants to avoid a crisis,’ Basil suggested.

‘He’ll be furious at being made to back down,’ said Dickins. ‘I’m not sure an enraged dictator is good for anyone’s health.’

But for the moment, the crisis seemed to have been averted.

An agreement was signed in the early hours of the 30th of September, allowing Sudeten union with Germany, though there remained many arguments about the exact geographical boundaries of the Sudeten area, and in return Hitler undertook to occupy the areas without invasion from the 1st of October onwards.

Czechoslovakia was told by Britain and France it must either agree, or resist German military might alone. It submitted.

Shortly afterwards Neville Chamberlain met Hitler privately in his personal quarters, and both signed a piece of paper renouncing war between Britain and Germany and agreeing to consult on any major differences that arose between them.

Chamberlain was greeted on his return home by jubilant crowds, overjoyed that the threat of war had passed.

Chamberlain waved the piece of paper as he came down the steps from the aeroplane.

Later, outside 10 Downing Street, he addressed the assembled crowds and pressmen, reading out the agreement, and concluding, ‘My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British prime minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Go home and get a nice quiet sleep.’

That same day, fifteen thousand people protested in Trafalgar Square against the Munich Agreement, but only the Messenger reported it. Other newspapers, and the BBC, suppressed reporting of the event out of loyalty and a desire not to inflame the public mood.

Richard breathed a sigh of relief for the respite, but he did not believe it was ‘peace for our time,’ only a pause to draw breath. He packed a bag of his own, along similar lines to Cynthia’s, and kept it in the bottom of his wardrobe. Just in case.

Polly and Lennie walked up the stairs together and paused at the top where their paths diverged.

The tension had been building all evening, an evening of quiet family occupations, where the drawing-room seemed full of Ethel and John and Harriet and Martin, and Laura – who was more often there now Martin, her half-brother, was at home – yet seemed perversely to make them so aware of each other to the exclusion of the rest that they could almost hear each other breathing.

And now, as they stopped on the landing, that awareness was hot and heavy between them, almost tangible, impossible to ignore.

‘Well,’ Lennie said at last.

They looked at each other, and the question crystallised out of the air. He didn’t ask it, but she answered it. ‘Yes,’ she said. His heart skipped, he swayed minutely towards her. ‘Later,’ she whispered. ‘When the servants are in bed.’ And turned away to her own room.

She lay naked in the dark waiting for him, only the sheet covering her, hearing the small sounds of the last servants going up to bed, the house settling into sleep.

She felt an excitement that was almost painful: every inch of her body seemed hypersensitive, the touch of the sheet almost unbearable.

But underneath that, like a somnolent bass-note, was a sense of absolute rightness.

She seemed to have arrived at a point to which her life had been directed for a long time.

The door creaked uncertainly; there was a peep of light and a dark shape, undefined.

She knew he could see her in that glimmer.

She stretched out her arm, her welcoming hand.

The door closed, the light was gone, and he came to her in the dark.

She could hear his uneven breathing, the thump of her own heart, the rustle of his shed clothes.

And then he was there, with her, and there was that unmatchable moment when skin touched skin for the first time.

She trembled. It had been so long since she had been touched by a man.

She had forgotten these sensations. She remembered now.

He cupped her cheek tenderly with his hand. ‘Polly,’ he whispered. ‘You’re sure?’ After all this time he still could not trust his astonishing fortune.

She took the hand, kissed the palm, drew the arm around her.

She was aching for him. She stretched her whole length against him.

Then they were kissing; she smelt the scent of his skin, tasted his mouth.

She wanted him unbearably. She slid her hands up through his hair, the better to pull him against her.

And then without pause or difficulty he was there, inside her, and she felt every nerve ending swoon at the sensation.

She lifted to meet him, drawing him further in, and they strove together, matching rhythm, matching need, harder and faster.

She wanted everything, everything. There was no sound but their ragged breathing; she clung like one drowning, feeling a great, hot wave of glorious, agonising pleasure build until it overwhelmed her, and she cried out and heard him make the same sound, felt him pulsing inside her; and it was as if they were falling weightlessly into a hot, dark place of silence.

Warm and safe in his arms, she slept, knowing he had drifted off before her, glad he had known he could.

The sentinel part of her mind told her he must go back to his own bed before the servants were up; but when it woke her in the first grey light before dawn, and she lifted her head, she saw his eyes were open.

He was watching her with such a great gladness of love she wanted to cry a little.