Andrew Wareham - The Balloonatics - A Tale of the Great War

“Shot on hush-hush service, Charlie. I literally can say no more than that.”

“Then mum’s the word, old bean! They say that London is crawling with spies – all of these refugees from Servia and wherever as well as the Belgians – no way of telling who is listening to what! Must rush – shouldn’t be here, Sister Effie’s birthday, couldn’t miss it, just buying her some chocolates on the way, must be back in Town for six!”

She ran for her car, rocketing out into the thin stream of traffic and heading for the family home.

“Modern manners! Might do for her family but not, I think, for mine, Peter!”

“No, Mama. There is a good heart underneath the affectations – but not for one of us!”

He did not say that a night in Charlie’s company would do Geoffrey a lot of good. He did not think his mother would approve.

“Bustling and busty! Not our sort at all, Peter!”

He agreed, not saying that it made her a remarkably good handful in bed. He did not think his mother would approve of that either.

A week and he was bored. Ten days saw him ordering Oadby to pack.

“Take the cases back to Polegate, Oadby. I shall follow by way of Shoreham, will be in for dinner.”

Less than three hours later he was knocking on the door in Shoreham, was welcomed with a substantial degree of enthusiasm, Josephine smiling her delight, the grandparents making him welcome.

“Broken your arm, Naseby?”

“Took a bullet to the shoulder, sir. Stupid business in Belgium – Intelligence making a mess of things!”

“When did they ever do anything else, Naseby? I presume you must not say more about it.”

“Should not have said so much, sir.”

“Thought so. Always the same – make a complete mess of everything they touch then announce it is all top secret and no questions to be asked. You read these spy stories and think they are infallible creatures, powerful in their back rooms; the fact is very different when you actually come in contact with them. Couldn’t organise a… Never mind, Naseby! You know what I mean.”

Peter nodded, he had heard the expression frequently in the Navy.

“You hear this stuff about the Great Game, Naseby, and you wonder just what it’s all about. I never did any time in India – served in the West Indies and Africa but never posted out to the Raj. Talking to others who spent their years there, this business of spying across the North West Frontier is very much overblown by the newspapers and the books. Bunch of theatrical types dressing up as wogs, if you ask me!”

Peter knew exactly what the old man meant by ‘theatrical types’ – Oscar Wilde had done the world of drama few favours by his public escapades.

They talked a little before the pair walked out slowly to take lunch, making as far as the restaurant at the harbour to enjoy lobster. As threatened, the photograph was prominent on the wall in a massive oak frame. The waiter was almost overcome that his hero should have been wounded in another action, was inclined to make far too much of it, ordering Josephine to take good care of her man.

“Are you ‘my man’, Peter?”

She asked the question lightly, wonderingly almost.

“If it is your wish, Josephine, most certainly so.”

“Oh! What an emphatic way to express the business of romance. Possession, each of the other… It implies that I am ‘your woman’, does it not?”

“So it does. I hope it might.”

She was silent a few moments, a mouthful of lobster giving her time to think.

“How very strange it is. I must write to my father, inform him that I am in proud possession of a suitor, a bold naval officer. I have mentioned you already, of course… Are you proposing to me, Peter, in a roundabout fashion?”

“I had intended to wait until your birthday to do so. I have wished to marry you almost since first I met you.”

“What an excellent thing! I feel the same. I accept, without reservation. Better to wait until the birthday to make everything official – I think my grandmother would wish me to delay a while before making a formal commitment. She is wise in such matters, I suspect. A betrothal party and a birthday in one… Will your family be able to come, Peter?”

“They will. We might have to delay the official party to a Saturday to allow for the demands of the bank – my father and brother are remarkably busy just now and he must attend some committee with Mr Asquith every week, unfailingly. I know nothing of it, am told that wartime finance is incredibly complicated and that my father is integral to it. My brother Geoffrey understands it all – he is very clever – I am no more than a sailorman. We can arrange well beforehand to go into Brighton to speak to a jeweller and settle on a ring – the best London houses all have branches in Brighton. I shall talk to your grandfather when we get back to the house.”

The old gentleman was not at all surprised that Peter should wish to speak with him.

“I am standing as guardian in absence of her father, of course, Naseby. Normal for the Diplomatic – made the arrangements soon after her mother died. Sad business that. They were out in Athens at the time. She picked up one of the local fevers and was gone in less than a week. One of the risks, I suppose… Lovely girl – you would have liked her, Naseby. Not to worry, done and dusted, all long gone. You have my formal permission as guardian to seek my granddaughter’s hand in marriage, which I gather you have already done. You want to take her into Brighton to pick up a ring – makes sense. Some quality places there. What about money, Naseby? I should imagine you are more than able to support a wife?”

“I can live, just, on my naval income and have a thousand a year settled on me, sir. I think we can survive on that.”

“You can. The more because you have no need to buy a house. Josephine has a small farm from her mother, supposed to come to her at twenty-one. That can be organised to be hers on marriage. Not so far from Portsmouth, in fact.”

“Kept in her name, I think, sir. What she does with it then is hers to determine.”

“That’s the modern way of doing things, Naseby. Makes sense to me.”

“And me, sir. My father says that Asquith has agreed to give women the vote as soon as the war ends. No general election till then, so it don’t matter at the moment. That being the case, no sense to keeping to the old ways of the husband being the keeper of the family finances. On that topic, finances, that is, I doubt I will stay in the Navy after the war. Seen too much of the way it’s run for my liking, and it’s getting little better. Polishing the brass and going on cruises won’t do for me, sir. I don’t know what I shall do, obviously. My father will have some useful advice, I expect.”

“I must imagine so. Going to make money, are you, Naseby?”

“Possibly, sir. Work for my living, certainly. Peacetime service in the Navy is a lot of things, sir, but work is not one of them, not for the officers.”

“Same in the Army, as I recall. A lot of flapping and flustering but I don’t recall ever working four hours in a day for most of the year. A couple of weeks out on Salisbury Plain, on manoeuvres, each year, but even that was at half-pace. Different out on campaign, but in twenty years in, I cannot have been actually near a firing line for more than a dozen days. Wartime, now, is not the same!”

“It is not, sir. For the Navy, up at Scapa Flow is just an extended peace of brass and bull; elsewhere, the North Sea and Channel, it’s action stations all night, every night. They tell me they are busy in the Med and we know they are submarine chasing in the Atlantic. For the small ships, a different world. For the balloons as well. I do not think I can go back to the days of keeping a smart ship and ignoring everything else.”