Where Bluebells Chime. Elizabeth Elgin
If they got into enemy hands, even the most innocent remark could be a danger. One like, “I’ll send you a picture of a camel when I get there” would be a giveaway; that such-and-such a regiment was being shipped to some place there was sand. Where else but North Africa – and before you know it, a troopship has been torpedoed. And it didn’t stop Andrew and me in our war. We wrote the most passionate things to each other.’
‘Julia!’
‘But people in the censors’ offices are human beings, too. They are only on the lookout for breaches of security. Love letters don’t worry them one bit.’
‘Well, I hope their cheeks are red, for all that!’ Helen donned her spectacles, reaching for her grandson’s letter. ‘You haven’t finished your breakfast. Where are you going?’
‘To tell Alice.’ Alice had a right to know.
‘But can’t you ring her up?’
‘Best not. Got to be careful what you say on the phone. Never know who might be listening in.’
‘But Winnie is the soul of discretion and so was her mother before her!’
Winnie Hallam, who manned Holdenby’s tiny switchboard, never listened in!
‘I know she is, Mother, but a German spy could climb a telegraph pole and tap in on any line he wanted. That’s why telephones can be –’
Scrambled, she had been going to say, but her mother would never understand that vital war telephones were fitted with a device called a scrambler for just that very reason.
‘That’s why we have to be very careful what we say over the phone,’ she amended.
‘But I can’t believe there are spies climbing up Holdenby’s telegraph poles,’ Helen frowned, her voice anxious.
‘There aren’t any. Holdenby isn’t all that important. But if there were, Tom would soon spot them,’ Julia comforted.
‘Yes, of course he would.’ Tom Dwerryhouse’s presence was a great comfort to Helen, especially now that Drew was no longer here. Tom would take great pleasure peppering the behind of a telegraph-pole spy with gunshot. ‘Well, off you go, dear, and tell Alice …’
‘Won’t be long.’ Julia kissed her mother’s cheek. ‘And don’t forget to let Nathan know where I am when he gets back from early communion.’
She closed the door of the breakfast room quietly, then leaned against it, eyes shut tightly.
Dear God, I know Mother is old now, and frail, but don’t let her mind get old, too. I love her too much to let that happen.
Helen, Lady Sutton; always gracious and kind. Always her dearest mother. It would be too awful if her mind got old as well.
Please, God? I’d rather she died than went peculiar …
Guiltily, Julia shook such thoughts from her head, because the war was to blame! It was this awful war that caused so much worry, especially to the old. No one should have to live through one war, let alone two.
‘Time to put the kettle on.’ Gracie Fielding thrust her fork deep into the earth, then mopped her face and neck. They were digging the plot from which the early potato crop had been lifted, making it ready for replanting, and digging was hard work.
Yet already she felt as if she belonged here. It was as if she and Jack Catchpole were shut away from the war by the high, red-brick walls that enclosed the kitchen garden. Even on rainy days there was always something to do, something new to learn.
The tomato house she liked especially. Tomatoes were thirsty plants, Mr Catchpole said; needed more water than most. It had been a thrill to pick the first of the crop ready for the vegetable man who called each morning; tomatoes red-ripe and firm, with the scent of the greenhouse on them and not the sad, soft, ages-old things Mam had to queue half an hour for. Soon Gracie would be given a week of her annual leave and she would take home as many fresh vegetables and apples and pears as she could carry and maybe a rabbit, if she could sweetheart one out of Daisy’s dad. People who lived in the country fared better for food than those who lived in towns and cities. Mam would be tickled pink to get a rabbit.
She filled the little kettle from the standtap outside the potting shed, stirred the fire in the iron grate, added twigs and wood choppings, then set it to boil on the sooty hob.
‘Ready in about ten minutes.’ She took up her fork again. ‘Heard the early news, did you?’ Everyone listened to news broadcasts and read the newspapers from cover to cover; not because they wanted to but because it was their patriotic duty and anyway, people had to know the exact time blackout began each evening and when, in the morning, it ended. Since war came, newspapers were no longer allowed to print weather forecasts, nor were they read out at the end of news bulletins. It wouldn’t do to let the enemy know when conditions would be best suited for their planes to come dropping bombs and incendiaries. Because mark his words, Mr Catchpole had said, there were those living amongst us pretending to be ordinary, normal English folk, who looked just the same as we did and spoke and acted as we did. But they were really spies and loyal to the Fatherland and had nasty, devious ways of getting weather forecasts back to Germany, and hanging would be too good for them when they were caught!
‘News?’ Jack Catchpole paused to lean on his fork. ‘Makes you fair sickened. They’re still bombing our fighter stations down south and we all know what for, don’t we?’
‘But we shot down sixty-seven of theirs.’
‘And lost thirty-three of our own.’ Never mind the Spitfires and Hurricanes. It was really thirty-three pilots we had lost, Catchpole considered angrily.
‘The Air Ministry has confirmed that sixty-seven enemy aircraft were destroyed,’ droned the newsreader, ‘and thirty-three of our fighters failed to return …’
Thirty-three telegrams there’d be this morning. Regretting. And how many more telegrams before Europe came to its senses?
He drove his fork angrily into the earth, breaking down the clods with unnecessary force. Gracie noticed it at once but knew better than to ask what was bothering him.
‘Think the kettle’ll be just about on the boil,’ she said, and headed for the potting shed. He was sitting on his upturned apple crate when she returned with two mugs, determined to cheer him up. ‘Did you hear about Mussolini, Mr C.?’
‘What’s he been up to now?’ Catchpole scowled.
‘We-e-ll, you know he said that all British ports on the Mediterranean would be blockaded by Italian warships …?’
‘You mean the Eyetie Navy might actually put to sea?’
‘Not exactly. They didn’t get the chance. “Blockade us, will you?” said the Royal Navy, and sailed out there and then and sunk an Italian depot ship, a destroyer and one of their submarines!’
‘And serve them right!’ Mussolini was a strutting fool. No one took much notice of him. Talk had it that the Italian people hadn’t wanted to go to war; that Mussolini only landed them in it to get on the right side of Hitler. But Hitler was a different kettle of fish. There was something unwholesome about him; the same wildness in his eyes you saw in the eyes of a mad dog before you had it put down. The evil in that face made Catchpole’s flesh creep. ‘But there’ll be a nasty shock waiting for them Nazis if they try invading Yorkshire.’
‘There will, Mr Catchpole?’
‘Oh my word, yes! Now not a word to a soul about this, mind.’ He tapped his nose with his forefinger and gave her one of his knowing nods. ‘Us have been making ’em all week at the Home Guard. Petrol bombs!’
‘But I thought petrol was on the ration, for cars.’