INDIFFERENT HEROES Read online

  Mary Hocking

  INDIFFERENT

  HEROES

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  To Herbert Cowl

  Chapter One

  December 1939

  At any other time, Alice Fairley would have been overcome by the poignancy of the school carol concert. She was acutely sensible to poignant occasions. The war, however, was too newly begun to permit of backward glances at past ways of life; so she looked with dry eyes at the girls sparsely distributed in the hall beneath. Although she had only been in the WRNS for two weeks, it was difficult to imagine what it had been like to be a pupil of the Winifred Clough Day School for Girls.

  Yet for ten years she had been a pupil here, popular, but unremarkable in her achievements; although one of her teachers had told her that she had a gift for expressing the English language. Class photographs showed her as a podgy child, with a good-humoured face and long, plump pigtails. Her face was thinner now; and although the corners of the mouth flicked upwards, apparently amused, some memory of recent illness lingered in the eyes.

  The school, too, had had its vicissitudes. Only a third of the pupils was present, the remainder having been evacuated to Dorset, where they were presumably joining in a carol concert conducted according to the alien traditions of their host school. The Headmistress spent much of her time travelling between the separated parts and trying to preserve the identity of the whole.

  Miss Blaize, that Wagnerian figure who had ruled the lives of the pupils for so long, appeared much tested by her experience. ‘My dear, I do believe she’s crying!’ Daphne Drummond whispered to Alice when, with a sound as of wind stirring the topmost branches of a forest, the depleted ranks rose to sing bravely, ‘Wake, oh wake, for night is flying’. Alice could see her sister, Claire, towards the back of the assembly, her face alight with that rapt wonder which she could assume with the striking of the first chord of music, while lesser mortals were taking a deep breath. She was one of the few people whom Alice knew who could sing and look like an angel at one and the same time.

  As the triumphant music was flung out – in exultation at the release of cramped limbs and the knowledge that the term was now practically over – a closer examination of Miss Blaize’s creviced face would have revealed something more extraordinary than tears. Miss Blaize, gazing from cavernous eye-sockets upon the pupils for whom she had had such high hopes, thought of the doomed culture which they represented, and was aware of the tide of evil surging beyond the walls of the building. She raised her head, eyes burning, and braced herself to take the shock, like a great liner going down with all its lights blazing.

  Alice and Daphne were in the gallery, which was allocated to the Old Girls on this occasion. The concert had finished earlier than usual, at half-past three. It was a dull day and the light was fading already. Alice and Daphne helped two members of staff to put up the black-out at the windows. Irene Kimberley, who had been sitting on the far side of the gallery, joined her friends. She was the most intellectually able of the three girls and was now at London University. The staff, however, made little distinction in their greetings. Although academic success was important, the school cherished all its pupils. The teachers were interested to learn that Alice was now a Wren, and that Daphne was learning to drive so that she could ‘do ambulance duty if nothing more exciting turns up’.

  ‘You must be the first of our pupils to join up,’ the history mistress said to Alice. ‘Why aren’t you in uniform?’

  ‘The Wrens haven’t got uniforms yet; there’s been some sort of hitch.’ It would have been the only time she had ever been demonstrably first in anything at school. Appropriate, perhaps, to finish as she had begun, without creating undue attention.

  Soon after four, the three girls made their way out of the building, secure in the belief that they would never return, since the war was going to change everything. They had little notion of what would happen to them, but the idea that they could ever again be subjected to the tyranny of routine was inconceivable. Even more inconceivable to Daphne and Alice would have been the idea that the school, on which they were now turning their backs, had shaped them for the rest of their lives. They imagined themselves to have sloughed off its influence like an old skin.

  The street was dim; darkness seemed to come much earlier now that there was so little street lighting. It was a murky evening. ‘No celestial firmament on high tonight!’ Irene said as they strolled towards Holland Park Avenue.

  ‘Do Wrens serve at sea?’ Daphne asked Alice.

  ‘I don’t think so. Not at present, anyway.’

  ‘I suppose it will be the same in all the services. The men will do the exciting things. I want to learn to fly. How am I to manage it?’

  ‘I think you may have to modify your ambitions.’ Irene spoke tartly, conscious of her exclusion from the world of action.

  ‘This is one time when anything is possible,’ Daphne retorted. ‘And I propose to take full advantage of it.’ She was a trim, compact young woman, not noticeably more vigorous than her companions. An acceptable scholar in the Winifred Clough mould, but capable, on occasions of her own choosing, of surprising staff and fellow pupils. She had a mental alertness combined with physical agility which could produce startling results on the sportsfield – no rounders match could be considered lost while she had still to bat. Her friends had little doubt that she was well able to suit actions to words.

  Irene said, ‘Flying would probably be rather dull once you had done it a few times – like driving a bus.’ She walked hunched forward, her chin muffled in a long woollen scarf; she had been to the library before attending the concert, and had books tucked under one arm. She was very small and Alice thought she looked like a fourth-former.

  Daphne left them at Notting Hill tube station. Alice was going to the home of her sister, Louise, in Holland Park. Irene, who lived near by, walked with her down the tree-lined avenue. They had walked here often in the past, when it had seemed that Irene had the brighter future. Today, she wondered if academic success was what she wanted. She was perceptive enough to know that the time for decision is not long. Unlike her friends, she was aware that the person she would be for the rest of her life was already shadowing her.

  ‘How does Louise feel about all this?’ she asked. ‘You in the Wrens and Guy in the Army?’

  Alice had not considered Louise’s feelings. But Irene remembered that, not so many years ago, they had envied Louise, who was so attractive that life would surely shower her with favours. Then, Louise had attracted Guy, become pregnant, disgraced her family, and married in haste. Now, whatever excitement might be ahead for her sisters, Alice and Claire, Louise would be tied to the Home Front and the care of her two children. Her youth had been over and done with so frighteningly quickly! Irene supposed Alice had not noticed because Louise was her sister and, the Fairleys being a close family, they grew into these things together, day by day. In three years’ time, I shall be nearly twenty-two, Irene told herself, and I shall have done all my growing up in school and college. Does that make me better off than Louise?

  ‘You will write to me, won’t you?’ she said to Alice.

  ‘I shall write so much you’ll get tired of reading the letters,’ Alice responded warmly. ‘However many people I meet, I shan’t make any friends like you and Daphne.’

  �
�You’ll meet far more men than I shall.’

  Alice hoped so, since this was a chapter in her life too long deferred.

  She parted company with Irene at the corner of Norland Square. For the first time, she found the darkness unpleasant and longed for the familiar light of the lamps. She had been ill in recent years: a breakdown occasioned by the disappearance in Germany of her friend and neighbour, Katia Vaseyelin. It had been Irene as much as anyone who had helped her through this nightmare period when she had not wanted to go out of the house, or to meet people. Irene had been understanding but not invariably sympathetic; and Alice had learnt that one of the tasks which friends perform for each other is to mark the boundaries of behaviour. Without Irene’s occasional crisp disapproval, she doubted whether she would have come through so well. Now, as she saw her friend’s figure swallowed up in darkness, panic threatened her again. A few dimmer lights had been installed in the main road, but the side street into which she ventured nervously was a black hole. At one time, this strange new darkness in the city would have excited her; but since the disappearance of Katia, the unknown no longer drew her so trustingly forward. There was always the fear that she might glimpse, out of the corner of an eye, something grotesque being hurried out of sight.

  Her pawing hand touched a hard surface. Involuntarily, she apologized, and then, her fingers coming to the gaping mouth, realized it was a pillar box. She laughed shakily, and, steadying herself with a few deep breaths, walked on, rehearsing how she would make an amusing story of this encounter when she got back to the Wren cabin tonight. The others would have stories to tell, too. She looked forward to seeing them again. They were the people who were important to her now.

  She remembered the day, two weeks ago, when her call-up notice had come. On that same day, people all over the country, whom she had never met, had received the same call. In towns and villages of which she had never heard, they, too, were preparing to leave their homes for the place of assembly. Here, they would be kitted out for their journey. For them, as for the pilgrims taking the road to Samarkand, the great gates would open and they would pass on their way, no longer strangers, but people joined in a common enterprise, with their own exclusive language and rules for the road. How eagerly she had set out! The old life had fallen away as the sleepers ran together behind the train. Now, the strangers were already comrades: a new landscape stretched indefinitely ahead of them. As she thought of this, she felt a thrill of excitement and forgot about Katia—and Irene, too. Her family and friends belonged to a world on which she had turned her back.

  It was, however, a family party which Louise was giving. Now that Guy and Alice had joined up, who knew when they might be together again? Family meant Louise and her husband Guy; the Fairleys; and Ben Sherman. There had been some argument as to whether in England Ben would have been considered a relative. ‘But it’s not an English relationship,’ Louise had pointed out. ‘It’s Cornish.’ Cornish relationships, it had been agreed, were as intricate as those recorded in the Book of Numbers.

  Guy’s parents were not present. Mrs Immingham had not got over the fact that her son had had to marry Louise. Her intractability suited Louise well enough, and harmed only herself and her husband.

  It was Louise who opened the door to Alice. ‘Hallo, Dumpling!’ She was plumper than Alice now; but dominance established in childhood tends to remain unchallenged, so that Louise would always have a special licence to comment adversely on her sisters’ appearance, because she was the attractive one. ‘You can read a story to James and Catherine,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid you’ll be a great disappointment to them, though. They were longing to see Aunt Alice in uniform.’

  If they were disappointed in their Aunt Alice, their father must have delighted them. Old Grandmother Fairley said to Ben Sherman, ‘What about Guy, then? Don’t he look handsome?’ She sounded huffy, as though the King’s uniform was something Guy had designed for himself for reasons not entirely meritorious.

  As she said this, Guy happened to look across at them. He smiled. Ben thought the smile slid like icing down a cake. But then Ben, who had no time for social niceties, was not a great smiler.

  ‘What’s ’e done to get a pip?’ Grandmother Fairley asked, revealing more military knowledge than Ben had given her credit for.

  ‘OTC plus six months’ service. Then, of course, he has that certain blend of shy, deprecating charm which is generally supposed to conceal essential qualities of leadership.’

  ‘Who can you be talking about?’ Louise had joined them.

  ‘Your husband.’

  Ben did not think Louise had cause to object. She had once said of him in his hearing, ‘He is bound to do well at the Bar with his natural capacity for rudeness.’

  Louise laughed. ‘You’re just jealous.’

  Which irked, because he had once loved her. He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I’m not interested. If they want me, they will have to come and get me.’ He had a promising career ahead at the Bar, and the war was an infernal nuisance. Even so, if it had to be, it had to be; and he was not best pleased that Guy should have been commissioned before he himself was out of civilian clothes. He narrowed his eyes, studying Guy and trying to visualize how he would look with a bit of mud and blood on that immaculate uniform. He had to admit that, pointed in the right direction and told to fire, Guy would probably acquit himself as well as the next man. England was moving into an era where want of self-interest and common sense would be highly valued. Guy Immingham was undoubtedly of the stuff of which such heroes are made.

  Grandmother Fairley, now so frail that she could barely move a foot without having to pant for several minutes, had drawn on that reserve of energy which she kept for things she really intended to do, and had bullied her daughter, May, into bringing her here in a taxi. She had been enjoying herself up to now, but felt that insufficient attention had been accorded her by Judith Fairley, her daughter-in-law.

  ‘Where’s your mother, then?’ she said to Louise.

  ‘Do you want her?’ Louise beckoned to Judith.

  ‘This is a sad day for you,’ the old lady said accusingly when Judith joined her. ‘It don’t matter about me. I’ll be in Glory soon. It’s all the young ones that worry me.’ She gazed at them without evincing strong liking.

  ‘I expect they’ll manage well enough.’ Judith could never refrain from disagreeing with her mother-in-law.

  The old lady turned away to take a sandwich proffered by Guy. ‘I’m surprised at you going before you have to,’ she said. ‘What about your poor children?’

  ‘He’s doing it for his wife and poor children,’ Judith said briskly, thus preventing Guy from saying the same thing more sententiously. He smiled at her. He was very happy. He had found life in an accountant’s office increasingly difficult. Now he had a greater sense of purpose and a renewed belief in himself. The uniform played no small part in this, not because it enhanced his lanky good looks – he was not vain – but because it gave him that sense of belonging which he had had at school.

  ‘Our hope is that Guy and his comrades will not be let down by mismanagement at home.’

  All eyes turned to Stanley Fairley, who was at his most portentous, bushy eyebrows almost, but not quite, masking pebbly eyes full of foreboding, lower lip thrust forward. The voice crying in the wilderness, however, is often least heeded by those best placed to hear it. The boys at his elementary school might accord grudging respect to his utterances; the congregation at the Methodist chapel might be forced, beneath his searching gaze, to examine the state of their souls: Stanley Fairley’s dear ones regarded him with expressions ranging from affectionate tolerance to barely concealed impatience. For many years letters had issued from his home in Shepherd’s Bush to the Prime Minister, the News Chronicle, the Methodist Recorder, warning of the danger posed to European civilization by Adolf Hitler. There had been times, as his children grew older and more daring, when they had complained of ‘having Hitler for breakfast, tea and supper’. T
here was no need now of such warnings; but Stanley Fairley was not the man to relax his vigilance because events had proved him right.

  Judith said, ‘Not Neville Chamberlain today, my love.’

  ‘Not Neville Chamberlain at any time, if I had anything to do with it.’

  ‘But you won’t get rid of him this afternoon,’ Louise said. ‘And it is probably the last time we shall all be together this year, if not the next.’

  Her easy assumption that their separation could be measured in months silenced him. He talked a great deal about the First World War, but it was usually the amusing episodes which he recounted – his feelings when he had passed his plate up too late for a second helping of Christmas pudding; the time when the makeshift platform collapsed, just as the general was telling them all to ‘bear up’. The darker memories could only have been shared with his old comrades, nearly all of whom had been killed. Ben, sorry to see him silenced, said, ‘All this must bring back memories.’

  ‘I went through Ypres, Passchendaele and the Somme,’ Mr Fairley informed Ben, alert eyes waiting for the reaction as though it was the first time he had ever divulged this fact.

  ‘You’ve seen it all before, then?’ Ben affected surprise. He was fond of Mr Fairley and saw no harm in humouring him.

  Louise said to her mother, ‘We’re in the trenches now! We’ll be knee deep in mud for the rest of the evening.’

  It was Claire who put a stop to Stanley Fairley’s war reminiscences. She arrived from school with a stack of music under one arm, and immediately took centre stage. ‘We got the phrasing all wrong, it was awful,’ she said dramatically, as though the carol concert, and her own performance as a member of the choral society, must be uppermost in the minds of all present. ‘You’d think it was simple enough.’ She sang a few bars, ‘ “What child is this, who laid to rest, on Mary’s lap is sleeping . . .” ’ She had a notably pure voice.

  Her father looked tenderly at the earnest little face framed by the abundant red hair. He heaved a sigh, the full force of his emotion now concentrated on the family gathering.