Since the early nineteenth century the Crockbourne Hunt had met in the stable yard of the Red Rover at noon on Boxing Day. Country people came from miles to see it: the steaming horses, the jostling hounds, the huntsmen with their pink coats and faces. The coats were fading now – the master had one elbow patched – the horses had been labouring on the farms, and the pack was diminished. ‘Not killed a fox since afore the war,’ said one of the village men.
‘’Bout the time of Munich,’ agreed another. ‘When Chamberlain met old ’Itler, for all the good that did.’
‘Give us time, di’n’t it, time to get a bit ready.’
Spectators came in carts and traps and on quivering bicycles to stand in their thick, shabby coats and their winding scarves and winter hats, their breath clouding the air. It was a day of heavy hoar-frost, hanging pink from trees glowing in the low, muffled sun. No hunting horn was sounded because, like the ringing of church bells, the blowing of trumpets had been prohibited under the Defence of the Realm regulations and, even though the law had now been altered, the horn itself had since been lost.
‘I wonder if we’d be doing this if the Germans had come,’ said Margaret. Her small sons were with other children giggling at the horses discharging their cloudy droppings. A bent man appeared and with difficulty scraped the rounded pieces with a coal shovel into a bucket. ‘For my rhubarb,’ he told the children, displaying the steaming contents. ‘We ’ave custard on ours,’ said a village man. It was a familiar joke but the people laughed, even some of the children.
Familiarly Margaret’s hands went out to Martin and his to her. ‘I think the Germans would rather shoot things than hunt,’ he said.
‘Jews,’ she replied. She looked guilty and said: ‘I didn’t mean it to sound so glib.’ She added quickly: ‘Are you going up to the Americans’ party at the Grange tonight?’
‘We certainly are,’ said Martin. ‘It’ll be a change from pontoon.’
‘We play whist,’ she sighed. ‘Every Boxing Day since I was five.’
He said: ‘Where is your husband?’
‘In Italy, with the Eighth Army.’ She halted. ‘That’s what I tell people, anyway. But I’m lying. He’s a conscientious objector. He doesn’t approve of fighting.’
‘Nor do I.’
‘But you’re prepared to fight. Not him. Anyway, he’s in a reserved occupation, he’s a schoolteacher.’
‘There have to be schoolteachers,’ he said. ‘Nine out of ten people in this country are civilians.’
‘Counting the women and children,’ she said. ‘Clifford is quite open. He could say he’s in a reserved occupation, but he owns up to being a conscientious objector.’
‘It takes a sort of courage to do that,’ he said.
Her eyelids lowered. ‘Men go to prison for it,’ she said. ‘He was quite prepared for that. The tribunal asked him ridiculous questions like: “If a Hun were about to bayonet your sister, would you stop him?” But he said he didn’t have a sister. They asked him about his religious convictions and he said he didn’t have any of those either, he was simply against war and killing. In the end they gave up on him. As he was in a reserved occupation anyway they probably thought that was a good way out.’
The hunt began to stir; the master raised his hand, gave a call and they trotted out of the yard in a lazy cloud of steam. ‘Don’t look as if they could even frighten a fox, do they?’ said Martin.
‘Worn out, weary,’ she nodded. ‘Like the rest of us, the whole country.’
‘It’s been long enough,’ he said. ‘Four years and the rest.’
‘I’m looking forward to tonight. It’s ages since I’ve been to a party. I may get horribly drunk. I may go off with a Yank.’
‘So where is your husband now?’
‘He’s got elderly parents. He’s with them. It’s better that way for both of us. My father, with his stories of the First World War, can’t stand Clifford anyway. He’d prefer me married to a gallant guards officer.’ She smiled wearily. ‘He believes the only good German is a dead one.’
‘A lot of people do – especially fathers,’ he said.
At a quarter to six they were ready, sitting by the low fire with their coats on their laps. Martin had changed into uniform. His mother had washed and ironed his air force shirt. Geoffrey Paget leaned across and fingered the edge of the greatcoat. ‘They do give you a good coat these days,’ he said. ‘And shoes.’
The knock on the door came briskly. A round-faced American soldier with a pinkish complexion stood beneath the porch. ‘You folks all ready for the party?’ He saw they were. ‘That’s fine. We’ll all have such a good time. Forget the war.’
They followed him into the darkness. ‘Good heavens,’ Emma said mildly. ‘They’ve sent a whole lorry.’
There was a semblance of a moon over the truck’s tarpaulin. ‘Sorry, people,’ said the GI. ‘It’s all we could use. Unless maybe a Sherman tank.’
There was a short ladder and they climbed, the older pair with difficulty, into the dark back of the vehicle. There were laughing shadows along benches and as they felt for seats there were greetings and jokes. A torch shone around. Humphrey Timms, the chairman of the parish council, was wearing evening dress with a stiff wing collar. The doctor, Ralph Macaulay, wore his kilt. Emma, as she climbed in, had put her hand on his naked knee. ‘Oh, so sorry, doctor,’ she said.
‘It’s a fine knee,’ he laughed.
The American soldier came to the rear. ‘Everybody aboard okay?’
He startled them with a springing leap like an acrobat from the ground and over the metal tailboard. He tumbled inside and sat on the floor in the dark. ‘Berlin, here I come,’ he said.
They joined in the joke and, encouraged, he produced a torch and shone it on his own face, round and young, surmounted by a cropped fringe of ginger hair. ‘I’m Wal,’ he said. ‘Private First Class Walter Barrows, US Army. Pleased to meet y’all.’
Hands reached out and shook his. His torch caught the starched shirt front of Humphrey Timms and after a surprised jolt moved on to the thin, defiant knees beneath the tartan of Dr Macaulay.
The American breathed audibly. ‘That’s cute,’ he said. ‘That’s real cute.’
Betty Forsyth, who had lived in the village for eighty years, began to ask him something and he shone his torch towards her. She covered her eyes and he took the beam hurriedly away. ‘Were you able to see the meet of our hunt today?’ she said.
‘Sure,’ said Wal. ‘We hunt where I come from, ma’am. Georgia. We go coon hunting. With dogs.’
There was an uncertain silence. Then Betty asked carefully: ‘What exactly does coon hunting entail?’
Wal said: ‘It’s not easy. That racoon is a mean critter.’
Everyone laughed.
Standing half a mile from the village in its two hundred acres, Crockbourne Grange was one of the stately houses requisitioned by the British government on the first working morning of the war. On that Monday, 4 September 1939, as soon as the civil servants, with their uniform bowler hats and umbrellas, had marched with new resolve into their Whitehall offices, orders, plans and contingencies which had been in readiness for months, even years, were energetically, and without a second thought, put into operation. Mansions with expansive grounds, schools, hotels, sports clubs and some golf courses were appropriated under the emergency regulations, many standing empty for months before a use was found for them, if it ever was. Seaside hotels were evacuated of their guests, some elderly and with no other home.
‘When they came back, just for a day, and when her saw the state of the place,’ Wilks the taxi-driver related, ‘Lady Marion were lost for words. And she weren’t often that, sir.’
Lieutenant Miller listened to him in the high-ceilinged hall. A piled wood fire was crackling in the marble fireplace. Those villagers who lived close enough to come on foot were just beginning to arrive. The American peered up into the recesses and shadows. ‘Must have been some place to live.’
‘Got very dusty,’ said Mrs Wilks. Her husband added: ‘Four ’undred years the family been ’ere.’
‘By the end of next year maybe they’ll be able to come back,’ said Miller.
Wilks was tight in his best pre-war suit. ‘Never come back now, sir,’ he said. ‘Sir George died in Plymouth in the raids. Bomb dropped while they were at their tea, and he choked on a sausage. They got ’im to ’ospital but there was a lot of casualties from the bombing and by the time they could deal with him he was a goner. All bread these wartime sausages.’
‘And ’im a peer of the realm,’ said Mrs Wilks sadly.
‘His family can come back here, can’t they?’ said Miller. ‘The place will be put right.’
‘Flats,’ sniffed Wilks. ‘Turned into flats this will be. You just see.’ He looked a touch discomfited. ‘Well, you won’t see, will you, sir, because you’ll be back ’ome in your own country. But that’s what will ’appen. Flats. The eldest boy Rupert, he died in France, beginning of ’ostilities, and there’s a girl, Rosemary, I ’member her when she went to school. I used to pick ’er up from the station when she came back for ’olidays. She’s far away, safe in New Zealand, nice and quiet. Whether she’ll ever come back, I doubt. This country won’t be the same again. Never.’
The walls of the hallway were stark; the paintings had been removed, the big chandelier was gone. The Americans had lit a Christmas tree with a few lights in a corner. Three young soldiers began to assemble a drum-kit. From outside came the sound of heavy wheels on gravel.
‘The trucks,’ said Miller, making to go out. He shook hands with Wilks and his wife. ‘Thanks for the history.’
‘We’ve got plenty of that,’ said the taxi-driver. ‘’Istory.’ He frowned at the bare walls. ‘But we may ’ave come to the end of it.’
Four US Army trucks were on the weedy gravel of the drive. Some pre-war peacocks in the park still remained, and they began wailing.
Martin helped his mother from the steps set against the tailboard of the lorry. His father descended and stood on the grave, trying to survey the front of the house. There were splits and slits in the blackout blinds. ‘Jerry would see this easy from twenty thousand feet,’ said fat Bertie Cook.
‘You tell ’em, Bert,’ said Mrs Cook. ‘You’re an air-raid warden.’
‘Rescue Section,’ he said, as if she did not know. ‘The Yanks don’t know about war, nothing, not yet.’
‘If they don’t know, ’ow do they reckon to win it?’
‘Cos there’s more of ’em,’ he said.
The villagers, in their ancient coats and heavy hats, entered the Grange with anticipation. After Dunkirk, when the Germans were expected to land next morning, it had been a hurried assembly base for the shreds of the British Army escaped from France. Their tents had filled the grounds that summer. It had been hot and the Germans never came. As the weeks went on towards a bronze autumn, the sunburnt soldiers helped with the harvest, played football and cricket, and swam in the river like scouts or schoolboys in camp. Later, part of a fresh division, new from Canada and eager to fight, had been quartered there; they had played baseball and had filled the Red Rover pub and the church. Many had left their bodies on the French shore after the blundering amphibious raid on Dieppe in 1942. The Crockbourne people never knew who had died or who had lived but they remembered them.
People were crowding the cavernous hall now, admiring the soaring wood fire. The three young soldiers who made up the band began to play, not very well, on drums, maracas and saxophone. A boy who looked too frail to be a soldier, shook the maracas, and began to sing mournfully about buying a paper doll instead of having a real girl.
Some avid young girls gathered around the dais and swayed to the lament, their eyes on the scanty singer as he swirled the maracas. The other players, a plump pink youth, pinker as he blew into the saxophone, and the drummer, eyes ringed with melancholy, cast glances at the girls.
‘They forgot to invite the village lads,’ pointed out Dr Macaulay.
‘Busy tonight, doctor, I ’spect. Telling their jokes down the pub,’ said Bert Cook.
The doctor smoothed his sporran and took in the youths on the platform, wondering how they could be expected to fight real German soldiers. Geoffrey Paget caught his gaze and muttered: ‘Don’t look very threatening, do they, doctor?’
Margaret came through the door, escorted by a fleshy American sergeant who had contrived a special journey in his jeep to pick her up. He entered behind her with proprietorial pride. Four soldiers, two of them black, all wearing white jackets, took trays of drinks around the village people, chanting: ‘Chow coming up.’ Trays of food appeared, American food.
‘They does theirselves well, these Yanks,’ said Mrs Cook, biting swiftly around a doughnut.
Margaret led her fussy escort to the group where Martin and his parents were standing with Miller and the doctor. ‘Sergeant …’ She paused, then remembered in time. ‘… Smith kindly offered to bring me. Dad’s not well. He’s got flu. I had to get my children to bed.’
Martin noted the cloud briefly crossing Sergeant Smith’s face. The American said: ‘Kids come first.’
Lieutenant Miller asked: ‘How long has this house been occup— used by the military? We found some traces, things written on walls.’
‘In the latrines,’ put in Sergeant Smith.
‘In Polish,’ said Miller. There was an equality between the American officer and the sergeant. Geoffrey Paget noted it, so did the doctor.
‘We have some guys who come from Polish families but nobody has translated it for me,’ said the lieutenant. ‘Maybe they don’t think I’ll understand.’
‘The Poles were billeted here about two years ago,’ said Dr Macaulay. ‘It was rumoured that they wore hairnets in bed.’ He pursed his lips professionally. ‘Although who made that discovery I don’t know.’
‘They certainly did wear hairnets,’ put in Emma Paget. ‘Their commanding officer told me. Colonel Walinski, an impressive chap.’ She turned to Miller. ‘They were a choir, you see, lieutenant. A Polish Army choir. Wonderful singers. We went to one of their concerts in Bridgwater.’
‘Not that you needed to go to a concert because you could hear them marching about the grounds here, singing,’ said Geoffrey. ‘In the middle of the night sometimes.’
‘“Loch Lomond”,’ said Emma.
‘Fine song,’ said the Scots doctor. ‘Even for Poles.’
‘They were very … aristocratic … if that’s the word,’ remembered Emma. ‘Rather … well … haughty. And so smart. Their buttons so bright.’
‘And they wore hairnets in bed,’ reiterated Geoffrey carefully, looking into his glass.
‘They hated only one race more than the Germans,’ observed the doctor. ‘And that was the Russians.’
One of the polite, white-coated black waiters offered the doctor another drink, handing the glass to him with a shy smile before moving away. A tray appeared with thick chocolate biscuits. Macaulay took one. ‘Just like India,’ he mused. ‘Pre-war.’
The musicians had struggled and eventually stopped. ‘We guys just don’t know each other,’ the plump saxophonist shrugged at the clustered village girls. ‘It’s only a scratch band.’ The maracas player was fumbling with some sheet music but it slid to the floor. The girls giggled and gathered it, handing it back with blushes. The drummer said: ‘We gotta find some songs we all know.’
As though they had been lurking outside, a double line of twenty young soldiers appeared abruptly, marched into the room, and in a moment had formed a cordon around the girls. Sergeant Smith said: ‘Okay, you guys. Spread out. Talk to some of these other nice people.’
The girls simpered at them. ‘Go talk,’ the sergeant ordered sternly and the soldiers reluctantly broke the circle, some shifting to other parts of the room but others lingering. ‘And no drinking, men. Coffee and lemonade only. Or there’s sarsaparilla.’
‘We’ll need more than sarsaparilla when we go into battle with those Nazis,’ said one young man, tall and olive-skinned, directly to a village girl. ‘Maybe to die.’ He thrust out his hand determinedly. ‘Benedict J. Soroyan,’ he said.
No boy had ever introduced himself like that to her. She bit her lip, almost made to curtsy, and said: ‘Kate Scratchpole.’
‘I’d be honoured if you called me Ben,’ he said.
The band had found some music they could play and Benedict held both hands out, bowed in a courtly way and invited her to dance. ‘I’m not very good at the quickstep,’ she hesitated.
‘This,’ said the GI dramatically, ‘is called a jitterbug’.
‘But … I can’t … I’ve never …’
‘Let’s try,’ said Ben. He took her hands from her sides, his eyes widened and his feet flew sideways, his knees buckled and his hips swivelled.
‘I can’t,’ repeated Kate faintly. She backed away.
A thin girl in a lace blouse, who had experience of Americans in Bristol, held out her hands. Soroyan took her, whirled her and hoisted her in the air. The others formed a circle and clapped and shouted. Kate Scratchpole thought she was going to cry.
The villagers watched with amazement. As the youth flung the girl over his shoulder her dress flew up to her suspenders. ‘Okay, okay, big star,’ bellowed the sergeant. ‘That’s plenty. Quit.’
The GI slowly let the girl to the floor and looked away from the glowering sergeant. The girl staggered, stood, and straightened her hair moodily.
Margaret approached Martin and asked quietly: ‘Would you like to walk in the cold?’