A Gathering Storm(48)

At the end of March, Beatrice went home to Cornwall. On the evening of 26 March, the family listened to the devastating news that Hitler’s troops had invaded Czechoslovakia. Beatrice’s father leant forward and turned off the wireless. ‘Well, that’s it then,’ he said, his eyes blazing with a strangely satisfied light. ‘Even Chamberlain can’t ignore that.’

‘What do you think he’ll do?’ Delphine asked, her dark eyes huge in her pale face with its halo of prematurely greying hair. ‘There’s still a chance, isn’t there? He wouldn’t attack France or us. Why would he do that? Why should we have to fight him?’

Hugh Marlow took out his pipe and started to pack it with tobacco. ‘We can’t stand by and watch, my love, as he ravages other nations,’ he said. ‘It’s a moral principle, as simple as that. And it could be us next.’





Chapter 11


‘Never mind the people of Czechoslovakia,’ Beatrice Ashton told Lucy. ‘Never mind the inexorable road to war. For Angelina, it was as though nothing had happened.’ She rooted about in a shoebox and brought out a small packet of letters, one of which she extracted and passed to Lucy.

‘This was all she could think about when Prague fell under the jackboot.’

Lucy took the sheets of folded paper, the top one engraved with an address in Queen’s Gate, Kensington. The letter was written in her grandmother’s rounded hand, quite easy to read.

Darling Bea,

Two nights ago, I was presented!! It was the most exciting night of my life. You should have seen my dress – apricot and silver brocade with the most darling little buttons and a long shimmering train and a feather headdress that was a nightmare to put on. Aunt Alice lent me the lace gloves she wore when she was presented to Queen Mary. I really felt like a princess. We drove in the Hamiltons’ car to the Palace, and the crowds, dearest, they pressed up against the windows to look in – quite alarming it was, yet exciting at the same time. There were dozens of other girls and we all had to stand in a group in a huge echoing room, till the King and Queen arrived, then wait simply ages until our names were called. There was so much to remember to get right. I was terrified I’d make a mess of my curtsey – you know how clumsy I can be, and my dance teacher had quite despaired – but I don’t think I wobbled too badly. The King looked well enough, if a little stern, I thought, but the Queen was very sweet and gracious and asked about my father, whom she remembered meeting once at a dinner. And next Tuesday is my dance and I’m a bag of nerves. I wish you could be here, Bea, and not at your mouldy old school. It’s all so thrilling. I hardly think about Carlyon one bit, though of course I miss the dear horses and I miss you, my darling.

Lucy handed it back to Beatrice. ‘I see what you mean. I suppose she was still very young. She told me once about being presented. She made it sound as though it was one of the greatest experiences of her life.’

‘You’re a kind girl and you’re right, I’m not entirely fair to her,’ Beatrice said, replacing the pack of letters in the box. ‘Our lives had to go on in the usual way, after all, and those debutantes all felt that it was their turn, their moment. It was what they’d been bred up for. It’s all too easy to be disapproving, looking back. My parents took a great interest in the political situation. Many people weren’t so well informed. But as the year waxed on there was such an odd atmosphere – on the wireless or when you talked to people. It was as if we knew we were walking towards disaster but could do nothing about it.’

‘I read somewhere that that sort of situation can make people eager to grab life and live for the moment,’ Lucy said.

‘I suppose that’s it. The danger imparted an urgency to everything. And so the debutantes danced and flirted, and I, who was only able to read what Angie wrote about it, I missed it all.’


July 1939

For two months now there had been no letter from Rafe, just a postcard of Nelson’s Column that arrived at school at the end of June with a Hope all well, having a splendid time, will write soon scrawled on the back which falsely raised her expectations. She wrote back to him immediately, a long gossipy letter about her school life, and looked every day after that for a reply, but there was nothing and she was cast down. Then term ended and her father came to fetch her.

Home was dull. Her parents were pleased to see her, of course, but they’d got used to being without her. Delphine was using Beatrice’s bedroom as a storeroom. There was a strange winter coat mothballed in the wardrobe, and a stack of Parisian fashion magazines – her mother’s private weakness – under the chest-of-drawers. Bea found one or two acquaintances to play tennis with, and exercised the horses for old Harry, but with the Wincantons away, St Florian’s felt empty.