Come the Hour (5 page)

The atmosphere seemed to darken. Tessa looked at the boys. As she watched, something seemed to pass amongst them, a thought, a stillness.
They sat in silence, unmoving, but slowly a hardness crept into their faces, and a kind of resolution, lips pressed together, jaws clenched. Each of them seemed to change before her eyes, to grow, to age. They didn’t move, but they seemed to join closer together in some kind of unspoken connection – a male connection, unavailable to the girls. Then they glanced at each other and the moment passed. They dived into the pool and raced up and down its length, laughing and splashing.

On the way home Tessa said, ‘You didn’t say much to me about Berlin. You just said it was fun, boating on a lake and going to a nightclub. You didn’t say anything much about all the rest.’ Charlie shrugged. ‘You won’t upset me, you know,’ she went on. ‘I’m not frightened of it. Well, not more than anyone else.’

‘I didn’t want to say anything to you, or especially Mum,’ he said. ‘It’s only my impressions, after all.’ He thought for a moment. ‘They seem to be thriving, getting the country together, but there’s something wrong with it, Tessa. Something bad. You can’t speak your mind, you can’t criticize your own government, or vote them out. They’re arming themselves to the teeth. It doesn’t bode well.’

They walked on. ‘What about Kurt?’ she said. ‘What does he think?’

He glanced at her quickly. ‘I don’t know really. He didn’t say. His father’s a red-hot Hitlerite, and there’s this thing about the Jews. They’re blaming everything on them – throwing them out or putting them in labour camps. They’re all terrified. I don’t think Kurt likes it, but he’ll have to do what he’s told. They don’t stand for any opposition.’

‘We’d be on opposite sides.’

‘I know.’ He glanced at her again. ‘Did he ever say anything to you? Did he ever say that he liked you?’

She coloured a little. ‘No, but I sometimes wondered.’

‘Did you like him?’

‘Charlie,’ she said, exasperated, ‘I’ve got six years of training ahead of me. I’m not remotely interested in anything else.’

‘Just as well,’ he said.

August drifted into September, and still the country held its breath. Pickfords came to take the twins’ trunks to Cambridge and Amy watched them go, feeling bereft. They had to leave home sometime, she
knew that, but now there was so much danger, so much rumour of war, she begrudged every day that they would be away from her.

She went to visit her father. She took a train to Bromley and walked down the familiar streets of her childhood and into the house where she had been born.

Her father came out of the sitting room and held out his arms. ‘Lovely to see you, my dear.’

She kissed his cheek, the skin thin and soft. He looked well, she thought, still sprightly, doing well for his seventies. ‘Are you well, dear?’ she said. ‘No problems?’

‘I’m fine. Mrs Jones is still looking after me – feeding me up.’

They sat down in the sitting room that she remembered so well. It had never changed, still had the Victorian air that her mother had left behind.

‘How’s Dan?’ he said, ‘and the twins?’

‘Very well. Looking forward to Cambridge.’

‘Fancy them both going,’ he said, ‘and Tessa doing medicine. Family tradition now for the girls.’ He smiled, a dozen little wrinkles gathering around his eyes. ‘I suppose things are a bit easier for girls now – not quite such a struggle as it was for you.’

‘And for you,’ she said. ‘I know what sacrifices you had to make.’

‘I was glad to do it,’ he said. ‘You know that.’

‘It’s still a fight,’ she said. ‘Cambridge still won’t give women proper degrees. They do all the work and the exams and then get something called a titular degree. Other universities accept the girls as proper undergraduates. I don’t know why Cambridge is still holding out.’

‘At least she’s there,’ he said.

Amy had a sudden memory of her patient, Mrs Lewis, and her little girl – Sara, was it? That little girl, obviously intelligent and studying hard and mad keen to do medicine, and hardly any chance at all. Tessa was lucky.

Her father took her hand. ‘What’s happening, Amy? What’s going on in the world? What does Dan think?’

‘He thinks nobody really knows. It all seems to depend on what Germany does.’

‘Once again,’ he said.

She looked around the room that held all the memories of her growing up with her father, after her mother died. It had been her home until she married Dan. But she had not been here during the Great War. She had been in France, in all that horror and pain.

She felt a sudden chill. There were ghosts here still. She thought they had gone to their rest, but they were re-emerging now, whispering and beckoning, ghosts of those dreadful years of the war, of 1914. There were ghosts of the people she had loved and lost in France, of the tears she had shed on her father’s shoulder, tears for all the suffering and the dead. She took her father’s hand.

‘How can anyone even think of it?’ he said.

She looked at him dumbly, for a moment unable to speak. She could see her memories reflected in his eyes.

She pressed his hand. ‘It’ll be all right; we just have to hope for the best.’

‘You could leave London,’ he said. ‘You could come here. London would be the first place they’d attack. Sometimes I wonder whether the aeroplane should ever have been invented. It seemed such a wonderful thing at the time. We didn’t know they would be used for this.’

‘Let’s just wait and see, shall we?’

They had tea together, then she travelled home again. Where would anyone be safe? Her father in Bromley; her own family in Holland Park? There was no hiding-place now. Perhaps her father should stay in Kent if war happened. He’d probably be safer there than in London.

She ran her usual clinics. Mrs Lewis came again.

‘Doctor,’ she said, ‘Do you remember that I told you that I have a little girl, Sara? She wants to be a doctor.’

Amy nodded. ‘Yes, of course.’

‘I don’t really like to ask….’

‘What, Mrs Lewis?’

‘Sara wonders if you have any old medical books that you don’t want. She’s mad keen. Only anything that you’d throw away.’

‘Well yes, I have. I’ve an old
Gray’s Anatomy
that she can have. It’s falling to bits, but I think it’s still readable. I’ll bring it in next time I come and you can pick it up.’

‘Thank you so much. She’ll be thrilled to bits.’ She hesitated. ‘My husband says it’s pie in the sky. Do you think I should put her off? My husband says it’s impossible and it’s not right to encourage her because she’ll only be disappointed. I don’t know what to do for the best.’

Amy felt her emotions rise, rebellion, fury, the memory of her own difficulties in the past, just because she was a woman. To be bright and eager and then disadvantaged by being a woman was bad enough. To be held back by poverty and class was just as bad. There should be a way for the country to use these bright young minds. ‘I don’t think any child should be discouraged,’ she said. ‘We don’t know what’s going to happen, do we? Let her study, Mrs Lewis. Let her at least try. If I find any other books I’ll bring them in.’

After Mrs Lewis had gone she sat for a moment, reflecting. They hadn’t had much, but somehow her father had raised the money for her training. He was like Mrs Lewis – determined that his only daughter should achieve her ambition. Nothing would have put her off doing medicine. Perhaps things would change, the slums, poverty, wasted lives. Things must change. No one knew what was going to happen. The future was another country.

She and Dan had dinner alone as the twins were off somewhere with their friends. ‘I saw a woman today in the clinic,’ she said, ‘a really nice woman. Her husband works in a furniture factory. Working class, whatever that may mean. Her little girl wants to be a doctor. She asked me if she should tell her to forget it; there’s no possibility that they could afford it. I told her to let her try. What do you think?’

‘I agree with you,’ he said. ‘Let her try, let her have her dreams.’ He pushed away his plate. ‘I sometimes feel as if something or someone is stirring the whole damn world around like a great big mess in a great big pot and nobody knows what’s going to come out at the end of the chaos. God knows, it might even be better. The little girl might get her chance….’ He didn’t finish the sentence. She looked at his face, serious, grim. He wouldn’t voice the alternative.

After dinner she and Dan listened to a concert on the wireless, Beethoven’s late quartets. Between items the concert was interrupted by the soothing voice of the announcer. They both unconsciously sat up
straighter. What now? The announcer read the latest, urgent news. Mr Chamberlain, the Prime Minister, and Monsieur Daladier, the French Prime Minister, were going to Germany again to discuss the situation in Europe. Herr Hitler had also invited Signor Mussolini.

‘Oh Dan!’ Amy took his hand. ‘At last. Surely they’ll come to some kind of agreement.’

He squeezed her hand, his face solemn. ‘I hope so.’

‘You don’t sound convinced.’

He got up and stood beside the fireplace, looking into the fire, now burning low. ‘What about Austria and Czechoslovakia? I don’t know what use treaties are. Hitler seems to think he can ignore them whenever he likes.’

She began to feel cold. The evening was chill after the warm day, but she knew that the chill was more than that. It came from within her. ‘You’re still worried, aren’t you?’

‘We wouldn’t be ready, Amy,’ he said, ‘any more than we were last time. Do you know what the Germans have been doing? They were forbidden to train an air force after the war, so they’ve been training glider pilots – just for sport, they say. So now they’ve got hundreds of trained young pilots and all they have to do is convert them to powered aircraft. We haven’t got anything like the number. Mr Churchill’s been warning about it for months.’

Tears sprang into her eyes. ‘I don’t think I can bear it again, Dan.’ Dreadful images of the trenches almost overwhelmed her. ‘I can’t bear to think of Charlie.…’

He sat beside her and put his arm around her. ‘He’ll be all right,’ he said, but his voice was grim. ‘He’ll be all right. Nothing has happened.’ He pulled her towards him. ‘Are they ready to go? Got their clothes and books and what have you?’

She took a deep breath, trying to wipe the images from her mind. ‘Yes. I’ve been sewing nametapes on for ages. The house is going to be very quiet.’

‘They’ll be home for the holidays, and they’re only in Cambridge. It isn’t far away.’

She couldn’t stop her thoughts. ‘Has Charlie ever talked to you about the war?’

‘Not really,’ he said. ‘Even if he did, how could one ever describe it? Why would one want to?’

‘He told Tessa that he doesn’t want to kill people.’

‘No sane person wants to kill people,’ he said, ‘except, perhaps, for the Germans bombing Guernica. That was utterly brutal, unnecessary killing.’

‘And the Spanish,’ she said, ‘and the Italians and the Japanese. There’s killing going on all over the world. How can they do it?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’ve never been in that position. But I know one thing – if an enemy soldier had ever come anywhere near you in France I’d have put a bullet in his brain without thinking twice. It’s in all of us, I suppose, to defend your own.’

‘I hope to God he never has to.’

‘So do I.’ He held her close and kissed her hair. ‘You mustn’t worry so much.’

The day after was strange, an atmosphere everywhere of tension, and of hope. Mr Chamberlain was in Munich, talking to Herr Hitler. It seemed like the last chance.

‘I hope Mr Chamberlain gets it right.’ Amy said. ‘What a dreadful responsibility. Everything depends on him.’

‘I hope he kicks Hitler’s behind,’ Dan said sourly.

Next day Dan came home early. He was home when Amy came back from her evening surgery. He met her in the hall, holding up an evening newspaper. ‘Look, Amy. Have you seen this?’

‘Oh darling, I know,’ she said. ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’

Dan looked doubtful. ‘One can only hope so.’

The photograph of Mr Chamberlain half-filled the front page. He was smiling and holding up a piece of paper – the agreement he had signed with Herr Hitler. ‘I believe it is peace for our time,’ the headline said. Amy read the article, her eyes shining. Mr Chamberlain seemed to have pulled it off – no war. He had appeared on the balcony at Buckingham Palace with the King and Queen, to almost hysterical, cheering crowds. That night Amy slept without moving or dreaming. The dreadful nightmares didn’t come. She woke refreshed and relieved.

It didn’t last. That evening Dan was sombre and quiet again.

‘What’s happening now?’ Amy said at dinner. ‘What’s this in the evening paper?’

‘The Germans are going into Czechoslovakia tomorrow,’ Dan said, ‘taking the Sudetenland. That’s just about half the country.’

Amy was shocked. ‘Why? I thought we’d made an agreement.’

Dan looked grim. ‘That, apparently, was part of the agreement. It’s a disgrace. We’ve thrown the Czechs to the wolves. I only hope it was worth it.’

S
ara sat beside her mother on the bus on the way to her first day at school. She was, with a little self-conscious pride, wearing her new uniform, blue dress, blue blazer, hat with a yellow hatband, and carrying her new leather satchel. The only things that were not new were her shoes, and her mother had polished those to a high shine. She glanced at her mother from time to time and Nora gave her a bright smile in reply. She was wearing, Sara noticed, her best suit and a hat with a little feather in it – dressed up for the occasion.

‘Are you all right?’ Nora asked.

‘Yes,’ Sara said. ‘I’m fine.’

‘Not nervous?’

‘No.’ Her mother looked nervous, she thought. Maybe she was herself, a little bit. She wondered how clever the other girls would be. It was a different sort of school altogether, girls who had all been clever enough to pass the exam. Where would she fit in? Would she be able to keep up?

They had both been to the school before, when Sara had been interviewed by Miss Jenkins, the headmistress. The headmistress was tall and thin and spoke a bit like the announcers on the wireless – what Dad called a plummy accent. Her mum’s voice had changed a bit when she spoke to the headmistress, got a bit more careful, not like she talked at home. Her dad didn’t seem to care, but her mum had changed the way she spoke since they came to London. She said parth instead of path and barth instead of bath, and she was getting Sara to do the same. She seemed to think it was important.

She had other things to think about. Inside her satchel were her new
books, the ones they’d had to go to a special shop to buy: Maths and French and Latin. She stroked the smooth leather of the satchel. She seemed to see her way now as down a long, clear road. She didn’t see any obstacles. If she worked hard enough she would get there. Surely, if you worked very, very hard, and wanted something very, very much, it could happen? She had a simple belief that she could do anything.

Her mother took her in through the gates. The school yard was thronged with girls in blue and some of the younger ones had their mothers with them. None of the other mothers seemed to be as smartly dressed as hers, Sara thought. They were just in cotton dresses and a cardigan and no hat. She saw her mother looking at them.

They went into the entrance hall. A teacher was waiting there with a list in her hand. ‘All new girls come to me,’ she said. She already had a small group around her – several girls, all neat and wearing new clothes. She looked nice, Sara thought, nice and smiling.

‘This is Sara Lewis,’ Nora said.

The teacher smiled. ‘Just leave her here then, Mrs Lewis. Say goodbye to your mother, Sara.’

Nora looked as if she was going to kiss her cheek, Sara thought, but Nora changed her mind. ‘I’ll be here at four o’clock,’ she said. ‘Have a good time.’ She turned at the door and gave a little, nervous wave.

Sara looked around her, breathing in the atmosphere. The old building seemed to have a sense of things happening, of purpose. It had its own smell, of a nice kind of age and chalk-dust and furniture polish. A wide staircase led to the upper floors and down into the basement. She glanced around the other new girls. Were they all terribly clever? Would she be the dunce of the class? She wasn’t used to that.

Older girls stood in groups, talking and laughing, carrying lacrosse sticks and tennis rackets and satchels full of books. Some of them looked really grown up; sixth form girls, she supposed. One of them passed close by and she could smell the familiar scent of her shampoo. Her mother used it; ‘Friday night is Amami night’ was printed on the bottle. I’m here, she thought, I’m really here. They’re going to teach me everything. Excitement bubbled up and made her shiver.

They were shepherded to the locker room to leave their hats and blazers and change into their indoor shoes. She had worn hers around
the house at home for a bit, partly because it gave her a secret thrill, and partly to make sure they didn’t creak or anything. Her mother’s slippers creaked – you could hear them all over the house. That would have been terribly embarrassing. Her father had hammered little metal segs into the heels of her outdoor shoes so that they wouldn’t wear out so quickly. They made a little tapping noise but she didn’t mind that; that was outside and no one would hear.

‘Come along, girls.’ The locker doors clattered and banged and they followed the teacher to their form room. The teacher stood in front of the neat rows of desks.

‘Find a desk, girls, and put your books inside.’

Sara managed to get a desk on the second row. She was determined that she wasn’t going to sit at the back. Back row kids at her old school fidgeted and giggled and the boys pulled hair. At least there weren’t any boys here, thank goodness. They just spoiled everything. Amidst the whispering and banging of desk lids she put her books away: English, French, Latin, Maths, History, Geography – and Science. She tucked them in as carefully as if they were newborn babies.

‘Settle down, girls.’ The class slipped into silence. ‘My name is Miss Hunter.’ She wrote it on the blackboard. ‘I am your form mistress and your English teacher. If you have any problems you come to me.’ She gave out timetables, a list of the school rules: no talking in class, no running in the corridors, the names of the teachers, the head girl, the prefects. Miss Butler, Sara noted, taught science.

There was no waste of time. The morning’s work began with English grammar: the construction of the sentence, nouns, verbs, objects. The atmosphere was quiet and concentrated, no giggling and whispering at the back. She was given her first bit of homework – thrilling.

At break time the girls ate the snacks they had brought from home and drank the little bottles of school milk, warm from standing in crates in the sun.

The girl sitting next to Sara had a freckled face and pigtails. ‘I’m Kathy,’ she said.

Sara smiled. ‘I’m Sara.’

Kathy sucked her milk up through the straw, gurgling up the last drops. ‘Homework already,’ she said.

‘I don’t mind,’ Sara said.

‘My sister can help me if I get stuck,’ Kathy said. ‘She’s here as well. She’s called Lily. She’s in the Upper Fifth this year. She’s nearly sixteen.’

‘I haven’t got any brothers or sisters,’ Sara said. ‘There’s just me.’

Kathy frowned. ‘My mum’s frightened in case there’s a war and Lily has to go somewhere to work, in a factory or something. My dad says that’s silly, she’s still a child, but my mum says they had boys fighting in the trenches in the last war who weren’t any older than that. At least we haven’t any boys.’

Sara didn’t know what to say; she hadn’t really thought about it. Her parents hadn’t said much about a war, though there was sometimes something about it in the
Daily Mirror
. Dad used to start sometimes but Mum always changed the subject. Her mum hadn’t liked it when she was given a gas mask at school. She’d given a shudder and put it away in the cupboard under the stairs. She wouldn’t even let Sara look at it. She’d put it away in the cupboard under the stairs. She hadn’t even got it out of the box.

‘Where do you live?’ Kathy asked.

‘Near the Harrow Road.’

‘We live in Bayswater. I’ll ask my mum if you can come round to tea one day.’

After break they had their first Latin lesson. ‘Latin is dead; bury it,’ one of the girls at the back whispered, while they were waiting for the teacher to arrive.

But I need Latin, Sara thought. Doctors had to learn Latin; they wrote their prescriptions in it. It seemed like her first real, exciting step. Doctor language.

The teacher arrived and they opened the book; Latin, Part One. There was a map of ancient Europe on the first page. ‘
Discipuli pictoram spectate
,’ the text began. The teacher wrote it on the blackboard with the translation underneath: – ‘Pupils, look at the picture.’ The text went on:
ubi est Britannia, ubi est Italia, ubi est Germania
? – where is Britain, where is Italy, where is Germany? So that’s where Germany is, Sara thought, or where it used to be. Her last school hadn’t done much geography, apart from Great Britain and a bit of the British Empire.

Nora was waiting for her in the school yard at four o’clock. She had taken off her suit and hat, Sara noticed, and was dressed in just a cotton frock and a cardigan. ‘Too hot for a suit,’ she said.

They took the bus home. ‘You don’t have to come with me, Mum,’ Sara said. ‘I can get the bus on my own.’

‘Just for a few days,’ Nora said. ‘Then we’ll see. How did you get on?’

‘Fine. The teachers are nice and I met a nice girl called Kathy. And we did Latin.’ At home she changed out of her uniform into an ordinary dress.

Over tea Jim said, ‘So what’s it like, Sara?’

‘It’s lovely, Dad,’ she said. ‘We did Latin.’

‘I don’t know what good that is,’ he said. ‘What are you going to do with Latin?’

‘My teacher says that a lot of English words come from Latin, from when the Romans were here.’ She paused. ‘And doctors use it.’

He gave a grunt. ‘Still going on about that?’

She nodded. ‘I’ve got homework tonight.’

‘It’s a bit soon, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Your first day.’

‘I don’t mind,’ she said. ‘I like it.’

‘Latin,’ he said. ‘The way things are going you’d be better off learning German.’

‘Jim,’ Nora said sharply, ‘that’s enough of that.’ She began to clear the table. ‘You go out and have a walk around for a bit,’ she said. ‘Let your tea go down before you start your homework.’

Sara slipped out of the front door into the street. A group of girls were skipping down the road to her right. She turned left. She wouldn’t be accepted now. A line had been drawn between them. Going to the grammar school had separated her out. They would stare at her now and make remarks about her being la-di-da.

The streets were quiet, almost empty, and she was alone. Sometimes, back home in Trafford Park in Manchester, she would stand out in the street outside their house when the light was fading. Sometimes, then, the light would change to a soft and mysterious shining violet that would colour the long row of dull houses and the long straight, barren road, and turn them into something magic. Sometimes she would be
overcome by a strange feeling, a strange yearning. She wanted something, but didn’t know what it was; she had lost something that she must get back. It wasn’t the same as wanting to be a doctor. It was something different; she didn’t quite know what – something to do with the endless sky and all the things there were to know. She felt it briefly now, but her books were waiting, her new school, her new life. She turned back to home.

She took her satchel up to her room. It felt wonderful, important. She sat at her little table and began. Dad didn’t mean it about speaking German. She opened her Latin book at page one. ‘
Ubi est Britannia? Ubi est Germania
?’

Amy drove the twins to Liverpool Street Station to see them off. She bought a penny platform ticket so that she could go with them to the train. They were early, but the platform was already crowded. Groups of young people, mostly young men, came through the barriers, carrying bags and suitcases, tennis rackets and hockey sticks, cramming bicycles into the overflowing guard’s van, college scarves dangling around their necks. Amy smiled. There wasn’t much doubt about where this train was going; they hardly needed to put up ‘Cambridge’ on the notice board.

The young men stood about in groups, laughing and gesticulating or jumping into the train to stow their bags and jumping out again. The platform seemed to be humming with strength and energy.

Tessa and Charlie found seats and came out again to say goodbye. They both looked excited and happy.

‘Don’t hang about, Mum,’ Tessa said, ‘we’ll be all right now and we’ll see you at Christmas.’

‘Write to me,’ Amy said, ‘and telephone now and again if you get the chance, and look after each other.’

Tessa hugged her. ‘We will. Give our love to Dad.’ They got into the train.

For a few moments Amy watched the young people around her. They are so beautiful, she thought, surprising herself with the word, but it was true. They were beautiful. She felt an ache in her heart and in her throat; she felt as if she were mother to them all. She felt their joy and their freedom and their hopes and plans for the future.

The dark shadow touched her again. Was it true? Was the danger past? Or were these young people travelling into a future that they could never have imagined, or ever wanted.

They all began to climb aboard, doors slammed. The guard blew his whistle. At least, she thought, Tessa and Charlie were away, out of London, out of that possible danger.

The train arrived in Cambridge and unloaded, a scramble for bicycles from the guard’s van, a queue for taxis. Tessa and Charlie shared a taxi and Charlie arrived at his college first. ‘I don’t suppose I’ll see you till the weekend,’ he said. ‘I’ll leave you a note. We could have tea somewhere.’

Tessa arrived at her college and stood in the hall with the other new arrivals, waiting to be told what to do.

They were assigned to their rooms. Tessa’s was small, and looked rather bare. There was an iron bedstead with the bed already made up, a small table, a hard chair and a small easy chair, a chest of drawers and a wardrobe. A fire was laid in the fireplace and a scuttle of coal and some firelighters stood beside it. My home, she thought, for a year at least. They were to meet Miss Pritchard, their hall tutor, at five o’clock in her room.

She unpacked and hung up her clothes, then went out into the corridor to find the bathrooms and lavatory. Another girl was wandering about, looking lost.

Tessa smiled at her. ‘Do you know where the bathrooms are?’

The girl shook her head. ‘I’ve just arrived; just finding my way.’

Tessa held out her hand. ‘I’m Tessa Fielding.’

The girl took her hand. ‘Rita Lane.’

‘I’m reading medicine,’ Tessa said. ‘What about you?’

Rita’s face lit up. ‘Medicine too. That’s great. We can find our way about together.’