Elizabeth Elgin - Where Bluebells Chime

Nor petrol, Julia thought. All her June petrol coupons used, and more than a week to go before she could get any more. Only a thimbleful left in the tank.

‘I’ll have to start riding my bike,’ she said, out of the blue. ‘Do me good, I suppose …’

‘It would. And you could tell yourself you were helping the war effort, saving petrol.’

‘I wouldn’t be saving anything, just eking out my ration. Thank goodness I drive a baby Austin. Your pa’s Rolls would guzzle up a month’s ration in two days!’

‘Pa put the Rolls in mothballs ages ago, and you know it. His eyes are getting worse, though he won’t admit it. He’s going to have to give up driving before so very much longer.’

‘But he’d be virtually marooned at Pendenys without a car,’ Julia protested. ‘He’ll just have to get a pony and trap. Mother had one in the last war; got quite good at it.’

‘And you, I seem to remember, were always to be seen biking furiously along the lanes,’ he smiled fondly.

‘Mm. Me and Alice both. We used to ride in the dark in winter – we had to. It was the only way to get to Denniston when we were –’

She stopped abruptly, her cheeks pinking. When she and Alice had been probationer nurses, she’d been going to say; when she’d been married to Andrew, that was, and desperate to get to France to be near him.

‘A long time ago, darling.’ Nathan accepted the glass she offered. ‘Woman – you’ve drowned my whisky!’

‘Sorry – only way to make it go further.’ She settled herself on the floor at his feet, leaning her back against his chair. ‘How old is the man who’s dying?’

‘Seventy-six next …’

‘It’ll be a long pull, then, when he goes.’ Seventy-five slow, sombre peals on the death bell; one for each year of his life.

‘No. No more passing bells. There was a letter from the Diocese office this morning. Bell ropes are to be tied up as a precaution. And we’ll have to stop the church clock striking, too. No more bells nor chimes – only for the invasion, if it comes.’

‘You mean not for anything ?’ Church bells and the chiming of the church clock were a part of their lives.

‘Only if the invasion comes. The military will tell us when to ring them. As a warning, you see – to let people know …’

‘Then let’s hope we never hear them till it’s all over and we’ve won!’ What a chiming of bells there’d be then! When we won. There were some old miseries, Julia frowned, who said it would go on far longer than the last one did, especially as there seemed to be no stopping Hitler. ‘Will it last four years, Nathan? Is Drew going to be away all that time?’ The best years of his life, away from Rowangarth?

‘Barring miracles, Julia, I think he might. There’s even talk of women being directed into war work soon – compulsory, so they say. They might even send young women, if they aren’t married, into the armed forces.’

‘ Send them, Nathan? But they can’t! Oh, my Lord! Tom Dwerryhouse’ll go berserk if they call Daisy up!’

‘But, sweetheart, there’s a lot of young women in the Forces already.’

‘Yes – but they are volunteers, there because they want to be or because they feel they should be. But the powers that be can’t take young girls from their parents and put them into uniform, dammit! And some of them are so innocent they don’t know how babies get there – or get out!’

‘ They can, Julia. They can do anything they want if they think it’s justified. It’s done under the new law – the Defence of the Realm Act. They’re using it, now that Italy has declared war on us, to round up people here they think might have Italian connections or sympathies. They’ll intern them, just as they did to Germans living here when war broke out.’

‘And serve them right, too,’ Julia snorted. ‘Italy declaring war on us when we were on our knees, almost, after Dunkirk! Kicking us when we were down, that’s what! Mussolini is a pig! And I think I’ll have a whisky, too, and a cigarette. I need them!’

‘Yes. I think you’d better,’ Nathan said; said it softly and strangely so that Julia turned sharply.

‘Why?’ she demanded. ‘Have you some more miserable news for me?’

‘Depends on how you look at it, I suppose. It’s why I was so late tonight. I called in on Pa. It’s been on the cards for some time; this morning it was definite. They want Pendenys Place …’

‘ Taking it, you mean? Commandeering it – lock, stock and barrel?’

‘Under the Defence of the Realm Act, they told Pa. But only Pendenys. The stock and the barrels Pa has a month to shift out. They’re letting him have the tower wing – what’s left of it, that is – to store all the stuff in. He’s getting a removal firm from Creesby to do it for him, then he’s got to hand the place over. They’re taking the stable block and the garages, too – even the kitchen garden.’

‘But what do they want Pendenys for – a hospital?’ Julia downed her drink almost at a gulp, so agitated was she. ‘What on earth can they do with it?’

‘I don’t know anything except that They want it, so there’s nothing anyone can do about it. Pa isn’t all that much bothered – or won’t be once the place has been emptied and everything locked up safely. He’s going to Anna, to look after her and Tatiana at Denniston, he says.’

‘But Anna’s got Karl to look after her! Your pa should come here to Rowangarth.’

‘Where you and Aunt Helen have me to look after you. And Denniston House isn’t far away – you above all should know that.’

‘Mm. About ten minutes by bike,’ Julia agreed.

Nathan drained his glass, setting it on the table at his side. ‘Pa seems to think Pendenys might be used for the Air Force – maybe for offices or accommodation for Holdenby Moor. It isn’t far from the aerodrome, when you think about it. But I’m not so sure. All the visits were made by army people and they seemed more concerned with its seclusion and how easily it could be made secure.’

‘For something hush-hush, you mean?’

‘Maybe for a bolt hole for high-ups in the Government or the Civil Service if the invasion happens.’

‘Or maybe for exiled foreign royals – perhaps even for our own, if they start bombing London.’

‘Lord knows,’ Nathan shrugged.

‘And He’ll not tell us,’ Julia pointed out irreverently and not at all like the wife of the vicar of All Souls’. ‘Hell, but I hate this war! They’ve taken Drew and we’re waiting here for Hitler to make up his mind when he’s coming! What are we to do, darling – and don’t say, “Pray, then leave it in God’s hands.” The Germans will be praying, too, and it looks as if it’s them God is listening to at the moment! No platitudes, Nathan Sutton, or I’ll thump you!’

‘All right – then how if we both have another Scotch? Just a small one …’

Julia gazed at her empty glass, then turned to smile at her husband.

‘You know something, Vicar – that’s a very good idea. And what the heck? We can only drink it once!’

She held out her hand for his glass, then walked to the table on which the near-empty decanter stood, frowning as she tilted it.

The Army – or whoever – was welcome to Pendenys, great ugly, ostentatious place that it was. Only Aunt Clemmy and her precious Elliot had liked it and they were both dead and buried.

Then she permitted herself a small, mischievous smile just to think of Aunt Clemmy’s ghost, weeping and wailing at the front entrance, cursing the dreadful, common people who had dared to take her beloved Pendenys Place.

But what on earth did they want it for?