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Angela Margaret Thirkell
Published by Good Press, 2021
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Miss Bunting looked after her with some displeasure. A young woman of Lettice’s age oughtn’t to say she didn’t want to go anywhere, even if she was a widow. There was Lady Peggy Mason in the last war, who had lost two husbands and married a third before the Armistice, and one would hardly have guessed she was a widow even for the brief periods when she was. But it was no good expecting Lettice to be like Lady Peggy, who was as hard as nails. Besides Lady Peggy wasn’t really what you would call race, not with that very common grandfather on her mother’s side, and Lettice was County right through.
“If only Lord Richard were alive,” said Miss Bunting aloud to herself. But Lord Richard was not alive; at least he had last been seen at Calais and by this time no news must be bad news and sure news: and so many of Miss Bunting’s pupils were dead now, and so many more would be dead as time went on. Two wars do not keep one’s old pupils alive. Miss Bunting sometimes had a dream that she flew—not in an aeroplane but with invisible wings—to Germany and alighting in Hitler’s dining room just as he was beginning his lunch, stood in front of him and said, “Kill me, but don’t kill my pupils because I can’t bear it.” The dream had always tailed off into incoherence, but it came again and again, and Miss Bunting had a sneaking feeling, which she condemned firmly as superstitious and even prayed against on Sundays, though not with real fervour, that if only she could keep asleep till Hitler answered, the war would somehow come to an end. But so far she had always woken too soon.
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