Overnight, Pearl Harbor galvanised virtually unanimous American public and political support for the Allied war effort. There was profound shock, and a sense of outrage that Japan had attacked without a formal declaration of war. On Monday 8 December the United States of America declared war on Imperial Japan. Recruitment offices all over the country stayed open throughout the night as tens of thousands queued to join up. On 11 December Germany declared war on the United States.
The speed at which the US armed forces recruited and mobilised troops, and with which the United States shifted its economy on to a war footing, was astonishing. In 1939 the US Army numbered 100,000 men. By 1945, 14.5 million Americans were in uniform.
The attack on Pearl Harbor was part of a wider strategy to advance Japan’s interests in southeast Asia. It had been making inroads into European-controlled areas in Thailand and the Philippines throughout 1941. But the Allies were totally unprepared for Japan’s attack on Malaya on 8 December. It took the advancing Japanese Army two months to push the Allies up the Malayan peninsula to Singapore, site of the supposedly impregnable Royal Naval base, which it captured in just over a week along with 80,000 British, Indian and Australian men, who were enslaved in Japanese internment camps for the rest of the war. Churchill described the fall of Singapore as the ‘worst disaster’ and ‘largest capitulation’ in British history. It triggered total war in the Pacific.
Tilly had spent the last two and a half years hoping that the States would afford her a place of safety. Now the Japanese had brought the fight to America. The Wendell family had been urging Catherine to join them for eighteen months; she had always refused, feeling her place was in her adopted home country, with her immediate family. But she and Porchey were immensely grateful to have American relations who could offer a refuge to their daughter. Except that, at the beginning of 1942, it seemed there were fewer and fewer refuges left anywhere in the world.
Churchill urged the country to hold steady, and there were determined efforts in every sphere to keep morale up. At Christmas, three weeks after Pearl Harbor, Porchey’s friend Sidney Beer and his wife came to stay at Highclere. Beer was an obsessive music fan, a generous patron of the arts and an excellent amateur conductor, as well as being a wealthy impresario and racehorse owner. One evening, listening to gramophone records over port and Stilton, Sidney told Porchey he was going to do his bit by funding an orchestra. Good as his word, that year he formed the National Symphony Orchestra. With his own contacts and those of his friend Malcolm Sargent, the most famous English conductor of his era, Sidney’s orchestra comprised some of the best musicians then working in London. Many of the wind players performed in between their duties in the RAF Central Band or the various Guards’ bands.
Highclere continued to be a hive of activity. Porchey plugged away at the Claims Commission, making endless rounds of inspections of his area, taking a sandwich lunch and a Thermos of tea to have in the back of his car. He had been assigned a driver, Trooper Bloss, who was a Yorkshireman of extreme adaptability and mildness of temper. He was adept at swapping rabbits shot on the estate for a parcel of contraband lamb chops under the counter at a local butcher’s. He was also sanguine in the face of Lord Carnarvon’s irritation when he repeatedly got lost as they were trying to find the site of some complaint that needed investigating. On one occasion, when they had circled helplessly on unmarked roads outside Devizes for what felt like hours before Porchey recognised something and managed to navigate them in, Bloss remarked to a furious Lord Carnarvon that if His Lordship had known the way all along, he could perhaps have said so.
Porchey was extremely fond of Bloss, who proved his worth repeatedly. It was his suggestion that they mount a small red and blue pennant (the colours of Highclere Castle’s flag) on the Vauxhall, with the happy result that army convoys thought the car belonged to a general and moved their vehicles to one side when Porchey swept past. Bloss would load for Henry when he went out to shoot for rabbits or other game at Highclere. His bluff Yorkshire humour tempered young Lord Porchester’s natural enthusiasm for the coming fight with some down-to-earth common sense. Bloss’s attitude was that duties must be done, but you might as well try to stay alive. Porchey’s advice was similar: he reminded his son that ‘a live subaltern was better than a dead Victoria Cross’.
In June a division of Canadian troops arrived to train at Highclere. They caused Miss Stubbings no end of headaches as they drove across crops and left piles of empty petrol cans and trees cut down to no purpose across the park. The number of men billeted at the stud was now stretching the capacities of the local utilities; the estate’s water reservoir was perilously low.
If the Canadians were not terribly popular with Miss Stubbings, she was probably the only woman for miles around to feel indifferent to their charms. For many of the young nurses and teachers attached to the nursery school (to say nothing of local girls and the Highclere maids), the Canadians were very welcome indeed. Taking their charges for walks through the village or to church on a Sunday afforded plenty of opportunity for interaction with handsome young men in uniform. Before long, their possibilities for assignations received a significant boost thanks to a change of routine up at the castle.
The bombing campaign against Britain was ongoing, despite the failure of all-out Blitz. Hitler needed to secure Britain’s surrender, and the sooner the better. So blackout continued to be a way of life for all Highclere’s residents. The castle was never deliberately targeted by the Germans, but they seemed to think the old lime kilns at Burghclere, just four miles from the Castle, were an arms dump, so plenty of bombs fell on the estate.
One night, after the Home Guard had cranked up the siren for yet another air raid and the nursery school staff had frantically shepherded their charges all the way down from the castle’s turrets to its cellars, the decision was made to move the children’s sleeping quarters. Their cots were set up in rows in the Library. Most of the teachers and nurses remained in their bedrooms on the top floor of the castle, but a den with a sofa was established in the northeast corner turret of the Library’s gallery, and every night a single member of staff took a turn to keep watch over the children. The turret’s windows were easily wide enough to admit a soldier determined to meet his girlfriend, the main thing was to slip quietly across the gravel and avoid the night watchman Stratford, and his dog. The new sleeping arrangement was judged a complete success, much better for everyone.
In between the occasional love affair, the nursery school staff were run off their feet and often cold, tired and hungry. In the wake of the move, the children’s playroom had to be shifted to the Dining Room. (From now on the family took their meals in what had been Catherine’s sitting room.) Restrictions on coal meant that it was hard to keep their bedrooms warm at night, and hot water either for themselves or the children was often in short supply. Baths were shared, with the cleanest going first and the grubbiest small child going last.
Feeding the children continued to be a challenge, both in terms of logistics at mealtimes down in the servants’ dining hall, and in getting hold of enough supplies. Monsieur Pascal had been succeeded by Monsieur Pavillard, who brought in his son and had two additional ladies to help as kitchen maids. The school’s presence meant that Highclere’s kitchen staff had been receiving extra rations ever since January 1940, but by the summer of 1942, the entire household must have looked back on those early days of rationing with longing. At first it was just bacon, butter and sugar that were restricted. Gradually more and more items were added to the nation’s coupon books. By the mid-point of the war, virtually everything was rationed: milk, cheese, eggs, tea, jam, biscuits, breakfast cereal, sweets, canned fruit and all meat including offal and sausages. The only things that were—in theory—freely available were fresh fruit and vegetables, fish, game and bread, though in practice most people’s ability to get hold of fish and game was very limited: by 1945 supplies had dropped to just 30 per cent of their pre-war levels. Highclere residents were lucky on that score: the estate’s market garden kept them in carrots, potatoes and spinach, and its woods and downlands kept them in rabbits and game, from partridges to venison. The efforts of Highclere’s gamekeepers and the wily Trooper Bloss were very much appreciated. So too were the members of the Women’s Land Army, who worked in the market gardens and up at the stud, looking after the few remaining horses and staffing the farm.
On 23 August the Axis powers launched an offensive to gain control of Stalingrad in the southwestern Soviet Union. It would prove to be probably the single most decisive battle of the war; even at the time, everybody knew it was a strategic showdown. Churchill and Roosevelt had no confidence that the Russians would be able to hold the Germans off, but Stalin staked his country’s survival on the battle.
Two days later there was shocking news for Catherine and Porchey. Catherine was sitting down to listen to the wireless at her cottage in Windsor. Gar had come to visit and the two were just about to have tea when the headlines were announced. The Duke of Kent was dead, killed in a tragic accident in Scotland when the Sunderland flying boat he had been travelling in, on his way to inspect RAF bases in Iceland, had crashed into a hillside in thick fog.
Catherine was distraught. She had seen the Duke and Duchess of Kent only two weeks previously, when she had gone back to London to stay for a few days at her house on Wilton Crescent. Princess Marina had given birth to Michael, her third child, on 4 July, and Catherine had been anxious to congratulate her old friends in person. Now Prince George was dead, leaving Princess Marina with a six-week-old baby and two other children.
The Duke of Kent’s funeral took place at St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, on 29 August. His widow was inconsolable; most of the congregation was in tears. Both Porchey and Catherine attended, and though Catherine was devastated, she said afterwards that she had found it impossible to cry at the time. It was all too dignified and it was so impressive the way the Royal Family stood united in grief. Later, though, she wept uncontrollably, firstly for the loss of her friend of twenty years’ standing, who had been her champion and seen her through the dark times of her divorce and Geoffrey’s death. She also cried for the loss of Geoffrey, whom she had not been able to bury; one of the many millions of war dead who lay where they fell.
By the time of the Duke of Kent’s death, Catherine had been in Windsor for a little over a year, volunteering in canteens near Slough and spending time with her son. She’d made the decision to delay her return to London until after Henry had finished first school and then his military training. The plan was that he would join the Blues and Royals, the Royal Horse Guards, in the summer of the following year. Most of his courses would take place in barracks close to Windsor.
Catherine tried hard to be cheerful, but between the death of one of her dearest friends and the sense that she was in limbo, waiting for Henry to join up and be deployed, the autumn of 1942 was a long struggle against melancholy. Porchey did his best to distract her by taking her on visits to the cinema. Her correspondence with Pen was always a tonic for her spirits. Penelope was still thriving at Foxcroft but more and more insistent that she must come home. She would be eighteen in March of the coming year, and she wanted to celebrate her birthday with her parents and her brother, before Henry left for the war. She hadn’t seen any of them for more than two years. Porchey and Catherine were still wary about the dangers of allowing her to come, but they were desperate to see her, and Pen’s argument that she couldn’t possibly miss Henry’s send-off carried a lot of weight. Three years of war had taught them all that the opportunities to embrace the people one loved must be seized.
Pen had been taking a secretarial course as preparation for finding useful work when she returned to Britain. Porchey wrote to her that he was immensely proud of her determination to contribute to the war effort. In his day there would never have been any suggestion that girls of their class should seek employment, but the war had changed everything. All women between twenty and thirty without children were required to carry out war work. Penelope was still too young to meet the age requirement, but she had no thought of waiting two years for her name to come up on a recruiter’s list. She, like her brother, was full of patriotic energy. Two years in the States without her parents had also made her independent. Apart from her desire to do her duty for her country, she must also have relished the prospect of a job in London, her own money and the freedom the two things would bring. She couldn’t wait to get back.
Catherine wasn’t alone in feeling low that autumn; Porchey was also badly hit by the death of the Duke of Kent. The two men had been comrades in arms in their youth, in the days of trips to the theatre and evenings at the Embassy Club, but they had relied on each other in more weighty matters, too, whether at Porchey’s wedding to Catherine or his attempt to plead on George’s behalf with Edward VIII during the abdication crisis.
Porchey decided he wanted company, and in September and October a steady trickle of visitors came to Highclere. There were no big house parties, but Jeanne was frequently there, and several old friends—who were in need of time away from London and the stress of war work—took Porchey up on his offer of peace, quiet, some early shooting and a good meal cooked by Monsieur Pavillard.
Harcourt ‘Crinks’ Johnstone was one of the most prominent Liberal politicians in the National Government. He had unexpectedly returned to government in 1940 (despite the fact that he was not a Member of Parliament at the time), thanks to his friendship with Churchill, who considered him an extremely able man and appointed him Secretary to the Department for Overseas Trade. Two months later the irregularity was cleared up when Johnstone was elected MP for Middlesbrough West. He was renowned for his love of good living and spent much of September 1942 enjoying the hospitality of Highclere. The following month Alfred Duff Cooper also came down briefly for a couple of days away from his desk. The three men had known each other for twenty years and the company of old friends was just what Porchey needed to lift his mood.
In November there was a massive boost to Allied morale and prospects when General Bernard Montgomery and his men secured a decisive victory over Rommel at the Second Battle of El Alamein. This was the turning point in the Western Desert Campaign, which Montgomery had long ago correctly predicted would be a war of attrition similar to the battles of the First World War. Monty had proved to be just the injection of energy and confidence the 8th Army needed. He was also an extremely astute and able commander, much to the surprise of Churchill, who had only reluctantly appointed him.
El Alamein was the Allies’ first decisive victory over the Axis powers on the ground and the last battle fought solely by the forces of the British Commonwealth without American input. Churchill briefly forgot his dislike of Montgomery and allowed himself to be jubilant. Back at Highclere and throughout Britain the church bells were rung in celebration. It didn’t take long for the Prime Minister’s acerbic wit to reassert itself, though. After his capture, General von Thoma was taken back to Allied HQ where, to the subsequent disapproval of the British public, he dined with General Montgomery. Churchill remarked, ‘I sympathise with General von Thoma: defeated, humiliated, in captivity and … dinner with Montgomery.’
Despite the breakthrough, the desert war sputtered on into the following year. Rommel, ill and exhausted, fell back to Fuka and was finally allowed to leave Africa on 9 March. Only when his successor General Hans Jürgen von Arnim was captured along with 230,000 troops on 13 May 1943 could General Montgomery declare that the job was done and turn his attention to his next campaign, the one in which young Henry would serve: the invasion of Sicily and the battle for Italy. Elsewhere in North Africa a joint Anglo-American force had launched Operation Torch on 8 November. The object was to take control of Vichy-French North Africa (Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria), thereby consolidating the Allies’ grip on the region and drawing more troops away from the Eastern Front.
That Christmas, the moment that Catherine had been dreading for years finally arrived. Henry had left Eton and put his name down for the Army.
Catherine worried that she would be unable to bear the strain. She had lost her beloved husband in the opening months of the war, one of her dearest friends when the Duke of Kent perished and had been separated from her daughter for two years. She tried to keep busy with her voluntary work and to take comfort in her faith and the support of her many friends but she was very fragile. There were millions of women like Catherine all over the world, wondering how they would find the strength to brace themselves for the possibility of more tragedy.
Porchey tried to be stoical, as was his way, but he too had hoped against hope that his son would not have to fight. Now, as the number of people pulled under by the tow of catastrophe grew ever larger, it was plain that Henry was going to have to do his bit. Despite American involvement, the war looked set to drag on for years.
In January of 1943 Henry turned nineteen. He would start officers’ training in the summer but, for now, he decided to spend some time with his father at Highclere. Porchey had invited friends for a few days’ shooting and Henry was looking forward to going out with them, but there were other attractions, aside from sport.
Monica Sheriffe, one of Porchey’s great racing friends, was coming to stay and had announced that she intended to bring her new best friend. Elvira de la Fuente Chaudoir was Peruvian, extremely chic, and an inveterate gambler, who was particularly fond of the casinos of London and the south of France. She was born the daughter of a Peruvian diplomat and had been brought up in Paris. Highly intelligent but easily bored, she made a brief marriage to a Belgian exchange trader but decided in 1938 that running away with one of her many rich lovers to gamble in Cannes was much more fun than life in dreary Brussels. When the Germans invaded, she and her friend escaped to England, where Elvira was turned down for a position with De Gaulle’s Free French government in exile on the catch-all grounds of being ‘unsuitable’. MI6 didn’t think she was unsuitable at all, and in 1940 she was recruited over a game of bridge at Hamilton’s in Mayfair.
Elvira was perfect spy material. Thanks to her Peruvian passport it was relatively easy for her to move through Occupied Europe. Her father’s diplomatic status helped there, too. She spoke fluent French, English and Spanish and was attractive to both sexes. Above all, she had the overwhelming advantage of appearing more stupid than she was. Elvira looked like a well-connected party girl, which indeed she was, but she was also brave, resourceful and smart. MI6’s deputy director, Charles Dansey, sent her off into France with the express purpose of attracting the Germans’ attention and making her into a double agent. By the time Henry met her at Highclere, she had been laying false information trails for the Germans for nearly two years. He was fascinated by her, and thoroughly enjoyed her indiscreet conversation and losing to her rather heavily at bridge.
At the Casablanca Conference in January 1943, Churchill, Roosevelt and De Gaulle met to decide the Allies’ strategy for the next phase of the war in Europe. With the Battle for Stalingrad reaching a climax, Stalin was unable to attend. The leaders agreed that they should move their focus to southern Europe. The other priority was dealing with the U-boat threat in the Atlantic. In December 1942, Bletchley Park cryptologists had broken the latest generation of the German naval Enigma code. Extra resources in the form of aircraft and escort boats were committed. The Allies also took the fight into the German ports. The combined results of all these strategies were fast and impressive: the seven million tonnes of Allied shipping that were sunk in 1942 were three million in 1943, one million in 1944 and less than half a million tonnes in 1945.
On 2 February Stalin was vindicated when the remnants of the German Army that had been holed up in the city of Stalingrad in a state of siege since the end of November 1942 finally surrendered. The Battle of Stalingrad was extraordinarily brutal. Somewhere between 1.7 and two million combatants died, as did countless civilians; but it was also, in the end, effective. It brought to a definitive stop Hitler’s campaign to defeat the Soviets. The war in Russia had been the Führer’s number one priority; now the Axis powers had lost in both North Africa and on the Eastern Front.
In Newbury, Highclere’s nearest town, no one felt that the Nazi powers had been shaken or that war was receding. Quite the opposite. On the afternoon of 10 February, the town was bombed with the loss of fifteen lives; three of the casualties were children. The bombs fell very close to the school by St John’s Church; the whole area was devastated. Up at the castle they heard the faint sound of explosions. By now everyone was familiar with the sound of a hit, and from the maids in the kitchens to the teachers up in the schoolroom, there was a sickening sense that it had been a big one.
Mrs Stacey lived with her family in one of the estate cottages, The Pens. On that day she had been visiting her sister in Reading and was just setting off from Newbury station to bicycle home when she heard the explosion. As she approached St John’s Church she saw the smoke and broken glass blown out of the windows and asked a policeman what had happened. ‘Jerry paid us a visit,’ came the answer. And then the information that made her heart practically stop beating. ‘The council school was bombed.’ Two of her boys attended the school.
Trying to control her rising nausea and her useless legs, which seemed to have turned to jelly, she cycled furiously. The place was mayhem; the fire service was battling to put out the conflagration. Other desperate parents were milling around looking for their children. It was half an hour or so past the end of the school day and most of the school’s pupils had already set off for home when the bombs fell. But there would have been stragglers. Mrs Stacey clutched the arm of a teacher whose face she recognised. Where were her boys? They left before the attack, the teacher assured her, before wandering off in a daze. Powered by her need to believe, Mrs Stacey pedalled homewards, past Wash Common down the Andover Road, into the woods and at last through the park and along the muddy track leading to her little cottage. There they were, both of them shaky and tearful, but unharmed. Sobbing with relief, Mrs Stacey hugged her children to her. It was at least five minutes before she could pull herself together enough to make tea for them all.
Three of her sons’ schoolmates were not so lucky. Two of their teachers who were still working when the bombs dropped were also killed. Forty-one people were injured, twenty-five of them seriously. It seemed likely that the German bomber simply wanted to unload his unused bombs so he could get home faster.
Just over three weeks after the bombing, Henry Lord Porchester set off to Newbury to learn a very useful trade. A local garage, Wheeler’s, had been turned into a military training centre for vehicle mechanics. It was Porchey’s idea for Henry to attend. While he was waiting for the officers’ training courses to start in the summer, he needed something useful with which to occupy himself. And a skill such as vehicle maintenance would be a good complement to his other training courses. Henry was keen to do whatever might come in handy in the field and readily agreed. He passed out three months later as Vehicle Fitter Class II.
A week after Henry started at Wheeler’s, the Carnarvon family had the best reason to celebrate in more than two long years. Penelope was home. She had been so determined to make it back in time for her eighteenth birthday, but in the end it simply wasn’t possible. Cousin Arthur had been lucky to secure any passage for her and Doll; everyone thought that it would be summer before they returned. Arthur was full of scepticism about the wisdom of crossing the Atlantic at all: even though the situation was stabilising, it was still fraught with risk of attack by U-boats. But Pen had been pushing to go home for months and Porchey and Catherine finally gave in to her pleas and agreed. The only tickets Arthur could obtain were to Lisbon in Portugal. From there Pen and Doll flew with BOAC back to an airfield just outside Bristol. This last leg of the journey was also fraught with stress. In theory both Allied and Axis powers respected Portugal’s neutrality, but in reality several civilian planes had been brought down by the Luftwaffe over the Bay of Biscay in the first few months of 1943. Pen and Doll were extremely relieved to land at Bristol and board a train to London.
They must have chattered all the way up to town, delighted to be back on British soil, to see the landscape they loved, to be among their fellow countrymen again. But it would surely also have been shocking to see the evidence of bombing as they passed through Reading and the strain on people’s faces. At Paddington, Penelope scanned the crowd for her mother’s face. She had promised to meet them and Pen could hardly bear to wait another second. Catherine was tearful as she caught sight of her daughter and ran the last few steps to embrace her. Two and a half long years had elapsed and so much had changed. She had lost her beloved husband and then worried almost out of her mind that her daughter too would be killed on her journey back, but now here she was—taller, more confident, so much more grown up, and laughing as the two of them clung to one another.
The following day Porchey took his beloved daughter to dinner at the Ritz and they toasted her eighteenth birthday in champagne. That weekend they travelled together to Highclere and Penelope wept as they drove past London Lodge, which had been damaged by a stray bomb, and caught the first glimpse of her childhood home.
Safely back in England, Penelope started to look around for employment. Before long she found an administrative post at the Foreign Office, which she had thought sounded a rather glamorous place to work, though in reality the job was mundane with very long hours. It didn’t pay much, either, but Penelope was happy. She had moved into Wilton Crescent, and Catherine was making preparations to join her later in the year when Henry finished his training.
Henry was in exuberant mood. His much-loved sister had returned, considerably more grown up but just the same unflappable and sweet-natured soul she always had been. He knew that she had wanted above everything to see him before he left for the war, and he was deeply touched. Once his mechanics course finished in early summer, he was itching to get on with training.
In the first week of August, Henry and several of his closest friends from school arrived at the Acton Recruiting Office to enrol in the Blues and Royals. Part of the household cavalry, the Blues are regarded as the senior regiment in the British Army, thanks to their status as the monarch’s private bodyguard.
During the war, abbreviated training courses were run so as to maintain a steady supply of newly qualified officers. Henry and his friends were about to embark on a punishing schedule of highly compressed information and skills training. Their first port of call was Combermere Barracks, Windsor, where the regiment were instructed in the use of armoured vehicles and combat. From there they would be sent to Caterham, to Pirbright and finally to the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, all close to Windsor. Henry had an exceedingly tough few months ahead of him, and Catherine wanted to be on hand for any brief time he could find to slip away for tea, toast and chat. Penelope frequently came down from London on Friday afternoons after work. Despite her anxiety about Henry, Catherine was happier than she had ever been since Geoffrey’s death. With her two children teasing one another over toast and their mother’s homemade jam, she felt a surge of hope for the future.
Scarcely three months later, Henry Porchester was awarded the Belt of Honour, presented to the most promising cadet of his class. As Catherine watched him command the passing-out parade, she was so incredibly proud that she almost forgot that it could only be a matter of weeks at the most before her son was sent abroad. For now, Henry and his class were posted back to Combermere Barracks.
A graduating officer cadet is typically designated a Second Lieutenant, but in the Royal Horse Guards, in his first most junior rank he is referred to as a ‘cornet’. Henry Porchester had achieved the goal, passionately wished for, of his last three years. He had distinguished himself in training and was facing the beginning of his military career with steadiness as well as enthusiasm. Less than two weeks later, he got the call he had been waiting for. The new officers of the Blues were shipping out to the Middle East to join their regiment and await the expected order to deploy to Sicily and thence to mainland Italy.
Henry was granted short leave to say goodbye to his family and went first to see Catherine and Pen, who begged a day off from the Foreign Office in light of exceptional circumstances and travelled from London to Windsor. She planned to stay overnight with her mother, whom she knew would be in need of encouragement.
Both his mother and his sister wanted Henry to have something of theirs to take with him into battle. Catherine gave her son one of her old watches, a hip flask and a map case; Pen gave him a chain. When the time came for him to leave, everyone did their utmost to be brave but, afterwards, when her boy had disappeared from view, Catherine cried. She felt that all her happiness was in the lap of the gods.
From Windsor, Henry made his way to Highclere to say goodbye to his father. Porchey’s present was his advice on how to handle active service, dispensed as the two men rode side by side around the estate. One imagines that though Henry must have been grateful to his father, he struggled to pay full attention. Everywhere he looked he saw his family’s heritage, his inheritance. What would happen if, unimaginable thought, he didn’t come home?
When they got back to the castle the light had faded to dusk and father and son took a drink in the Library. Porchey handed him three letters of introduction to friends of his in Cairo, and then it was almost time for Henry to go. He went to say goodbye to the estate and household staff, shaking hands with each person, receiving the curtseys of the women and the hand-clasps and back-slaps of the men—only the old men, now, whom he had known all his life. The last thing he did was fetch his semi-automatic Winchester .22 rifle from the gun room. His father embraced him for a second and then Henry set off, back to barracks to pick up his kit and be on the road to Glasgow and the troopship SS Leopoldville, bound for Alexandria.
Porchey stood at the main entrance to the castle and watched his son and heir walk away. Then he turned to go inside and Pell closed and locked the door behind him.