On 7 September 1940, Operation Loge began. Fortunately the phoney war had given people time to make shelters, although the Underground would not be opened at night for a further two weeks.
Some say that the Blitz was Hitler’s hyperbolic revenge for an RAF raid on Munich, but it was a hyperbole very much diminished in its effects by the fact that the British had already built dozens of fake airfields and industrial sites. Germany’s bombers were too small, and methods to confuse their navigation beams had been discovered and put in place. Above a childless London there floated hundreds of barrage balloons, and almost no lights twinkled below, on account of the elaborate and strongly resented blackout procedures.
Perhaps the oddest thing about the Blitz is that, just like the Zeppelin raids of the previous war, it had the opposite effect on the British that Hitler and Goering had confidently expected.
One night in January of 1941 at The Grampians, only Cookie and Mrs McCosh were in residence, and hitherto the latter had, very much against her inclinations, obeyed the apparently direct command of the King to take shelter during raids. She was now a very old lady, suffering from bouts of immense passion and confusion, who had, as her long life had unrolled, become more and more herself until she resembled her own caricature. Like the late Queen she dressed entirely in black and made a cult of her deceased husband. Her own patriotism and royalism had, if anything, become more fanatical, and her stated reason for hating the Germans was that the Kaiser had declared war against his own family in the previous conflict, and thereby vitiated his entire nation forever, rather as the original sin of Adam and Eve had corrupted humankind.
As the bombers thundered over The Grampians and the bombs crumped in the distance, Cookie and Mrs McCosh sat together in the Anderson shelter with only one candle between them, and sipped on cocoa that they had made on a Primus. The air was heavy with the fumes of methylated spirit and candlewax, but on this day Mrs McCosh’s mind was unusually clear. They were dressed in overcoats and hats, and would have looked very like each other had Cookie not been wearing a scarf, whereas Mrs McCosh wore a fox-fur stole with its glass eyes glinting in the yellow light. The candle flame cast heavy shadows, and the flesh of their ancient faces glowed golden yellow. Sitting on the edge of the narrow truckle bed, Mrs McCosh calmed her trembling fingers and played the violin to her cook, who, over the years, had become completely familiar with her employer’s repertoire. Mrs McCosh played ‘The Swan’, the ‘Meditation’ from Thaïs, and three pieces of Kreisler’s, concluding with ‘Schön Rosmarin’. The old lady swayed and made the strings sing quietly and intimately, on account of the confined space, and Cookie listened raptly with sentimental tears gathering at the corners of her eyes. Afterwards, there was nothing for the two old women to do but talk.
‘I probably shouldn’t play Kreisler,’ said Mrs McCosh. ‘I strongly suspect him of having been German.’
‘And how is Miss Rosie, madam? Back at Netley?’
‘Yes, so I hear. A letter came this morning. It seems to be a more comfortable place than it was in the last war. Very much less crowded, apparently.’
‘Wasn’t they fun, the old days, madam, when Miss Rosie and the others were all little, and Master Daniel and Archie used to come over the wall, and the Pendennis boys came in and out of the blue door, and the littl’uns were like a tribe of savages?’
‘And Bouncer was still alive. And the master. Those were our salad days, Cookie.’
‘It’s cold, isn’t it, madam?’ said Cookie. ‘Do you think it’ll be fine tomorrow?’
‘I dare say it may be, Cookie, but personally I have always loved this time of year, whatever the weather.’
‘Me too, madam. It’s so nice when the russets ripen up, and there’s the blackberries, and the first fogs, and the little shrews come out to die, and you find their little corpses on the paths, and the rosehips are turning red, and suddenly all the flies have gone from the larder.’
‘I have written to the King, Cookie, to advise him on some strategies for winning the war.’
‘You should have sent it to Mr Churchill,’ said Cookie. ‘The King will only pass it on to him, won’t he? I mean, it’s Mr Churchill in charge of winning. You could have saved His Majesty some bother.’
‘I understand that Mr Churchill is half American,’ said Mrs McCosh. ‘I am not entirely sure that I approve of him. And the Dardanelles were hardly a triumph. And Mr Churchill sees His Majesty every week, you know. I am certain that his best ideas actually come from that quarter.’
‘I expect so, madam.’
‘Cookie?’
‘Yes, madam?’
‘You have been very good, you know.’
‘Very good?’
‘Yes, Cookie. You have been very staunch. A faithful servant for a very long time. I hardly think of you as one.’
‘Me neither, madam.’
‘You have seen us through thick and thin.’
‘Well, you could see it just as easy the other way round. I’ve had a sort of family, haven’t I?’
Mrs McCosh patted Cookie’s hand. ‘How good of you to say so.’
‘Not at all, madam.’
‘I am leaving you money in my will, you know.’
‘I know, madam, you have often told me, practically every day, but it would be quite all right with me if I were to pop me clogs first. Perhaps you could send my effects to my sister in Shropshire.’
‘It’s “my” not “me”, Cookie. “My clogs”, not “me clogs”.’
‘Quite so, madam.’
‘Precision in speech is important, Cookie.’
‘I’m sure it is, madam.’
‘The bombers are returning,’ said Mrs McCosh. ‘I can hear the engines getting louder again.’ She reached out for her Britannia air rifle that had brought about the demise of so many dozens of indecently copulating pigeons over the years, and which had first seen action against the Kaiser’s Zeppelins.
‘Don’t go out, madam. You know there’s no chance of hitting one, and if you do it’ll be like water off a duck’s back, and there might be more bombs.’
‘I am quite confident of getting one, one of these days, Cookie.’
‘Yes, madam, but that thing’s only got a few yards’ range, and you still shouldn’t go out. You know what His Majesty said.’
‘Indeed, Cookie. He has no more loyal subject than me, as you know, but on this occasion I feel that I may make an exception, as neither you nor I is very likely to tell him, and I am only doing my duty. Make sure you shut the door behind me, for your own protection. I shall return very presently.’
Mrs McCosh put ten lead pellets in her mouth for reloading, opened the door of the shelter and ducked out of it. On the lawn she breathed in the crisp air, and felt the droning of hundreds of bombers vibrating in her own bones. She raised the air rifle to her shoulder and fired upwards against the shadows, then reset the spring and opened the breech, removing a pellet from her mouth to place in it.
High above her, a young German aircraftman from Cologne finally worked out why the bomb hatch of his Heinkel had not opened, and informed the pilot. The pilot’s opinion was that it was better to leave the bombs somewhere in England, rather than carry such a heavy load home again at greatly reduced speed, and so the bomb hatches were duly opened, and a long stick of bombs released.
For the second time in a century, the glass of The Grampians’ conservatory was shattered.
By the time Cookie found Mrs McCosh, still clutching the Britannia, in the rose bed by the blue door where she had been thrown by the blast, she had already bled to death, her head cracked against the wall and her neck sliced through by a plate of glass. Cookie could see the heavy pool of blood glowing thickly in the darkness, and she took off her scarf and patted at it, as if by this she were doing something to be helpful to the dead woman.
Cookie knelt down and placed her head on her mistress’s chest. ‘Oh, madam,’ she said, ‘I did tell you not to go out.’
Cookie took the air rifle from her mistress’s hands, and raised it up against her shoulder as a last stray bomber passed above. She had never fired a gun before, but she pulled the trigger and felt the sudden kick against her collarbone.
She propped it carefully against the blue door, and manoeuv-red her heavy body down next to that of Mrs McCosh, lying beside her amongst the roses. She held her mistress’s rapidly cooling left hand to her cheek, weeping quietly, trying not to get prickled, and confusedly working out how many years they had been together in this house. It must have been something like fifty.
‘Just think, madam,’ she said, at last, ‘you’ve gone out in exactly the same way as your friend Myrtle, all those years ago. In 1917.’
When the all-clear sounded, she went out through the house to try to find help, and it struck her that when Mrs McCosh went to her funeral, she ought to have that gun on the top of her coffin. Yes, she should, she should have that there gun on top of the coffin, where it rightly belonged, and there ought to be a union flag.