Читать книгу The Battle Within - Philip Gibbs - Страница 8

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Mrs. Haddon heard the eight o’clock news on a May morning which will be for ever famous in history as the date of a great British victory after years of defeats.

She had come down to breakfast with Pearl shortly after half-past seven though she had had a poor night. That was because of a heavy drone in the sky which had started at eleven o’clock and continued for an hour. Almost every night now she heard that droning note, like monstrous bees above the hive of the world. Our bombers were going out again to raid the Ruhr or some other target of the night. Her son Peter would be with them. He had been over the Ruhr ten times and over Bremen and Hamburg and Dusseldorf and Duisberg. Always he had come back again, though on one night forty-three bombers had failed to return, and on another night thirty-five, and on another night twenty-four, as announced day after day by the B.B.C. in a passing, casual way, slightly hurried in order to slur over those losses by immediate reference to some other news cheering to the heart of the British people. They spoke about the loss of machines and never of the number of young men inside the machines—Peter’s friends—he had trained with many of them—who had perished like moths in a furnace.

Last night Mrs. Haddon had had one of her attacks of horror, which she hid from her husband and Pearl and from all the friends who thought her so brave and gay. While that droning was on she had pressed her hands to her ears, unable to undress or to stop a fit of trembling. She had prayed for Peter but without faith in prayer. Why should Peter be saved while all the other boys were being killed? What was the good of praying except for the courage of her own soul to bear this agony of fear? Of course Peter would be killed like the others. She couldn’t expect a special miracle though she went on praying. Peter would be like a moth burnt in the furnace fires with his blue eyes and his strong young body. The only thing that could save him was a quick ending to the war and that idea was just foolishness. It might go on for two years, three years. Peter would be killed long before then.

Mrs. Haddon had a photograph of her son on the chest-of-drawers by the side of the dressing-table. There he was, with his laughing eyes and mouth and the little faint marks of his freckles. It was rather a mistake, she thought, to have it there. It might be better if she put it away in a drawer.

“I have to get on with my job,” she thought. “I’m a doctor’s wife and the mother of Pearl. Lots of women come to me for comfort and courage. I must pull myself together. I must go on pretending to be brave any gay and, oh, so very spiritual. They say how spiritual I am when Peter makes me a coward and I have no faith.”

She pulled herself together and stopped that fit of trembling and tried to check her morbid thoughts. But she didn’t sleep much. She could hear her husband snoring softly in the next room. Once she thought she heard Pearl moving about her room. Pearl had seemed a lot happier lately. Something had been lifted from her mind—perhaps the memory of Karl was beginning to fade. She hoped so. Poor Pearl had no love in her life. Like so many other women in this village she was starved of love.

Mrs. Haddon saw the dawn come after a short spell of half darkness. She had pulled her black-out curtains before getting into bed, and now the light came again through the open lattice window of this old house. With the light came glad music. It was the song of thrushes greeting a new day of life blithesomely. What did they care about the drone in the night sky? They had their mates and their fledgelings.

“I must do a bit of gardening today,” thought Mrs. Haddon.

She heard Pearl presently in the bathroom. Then she heard her go downstairs, fill the kettle and turn on the wireless as usual. May Brown was doing her physical drill, half singing her commands to the tune of “Boys and Girls Come Out to Play.”

Mrs. Haddon dressed and, after washing, looked at herself in a Queen Anne mirror on the dressing-table.

“My eyes look awful,” she thought. “I look like an old hag after this sleepless night.”

She dabbed her eyes in cold water again, touched her cheeks with a little rouge and went down to the breakfast-room just as Pearl brought in the tea.

“Hullo, Mother,” said Pearl. “You’re looking very beautiful today.”

Mrs. Haddon laughed.

“Go along with you,” she answered. “I feel like a toothless witch.”

“Sausages or Spam?” asked Pearl, to whom every minute counted at this hour of the day.

“Oh, I couldn’t face sausages,” said Mrs. Haddon. “I’ll make the toast.”

The Dean of St. Paul’s was doing his bit for “Lift up your hearts.” He was talking about the need of faith in Jesus Christ. Mrs. Haddon listened to him attentively. She liked his way of speaking, but wanted to ask questions. Why didn’t Christ reach out His Hand to save these flying boys. If He could work miracles, why not now? It was all very puzzling. Jesus had wept over Jerusalem. Did He weep over London, or Coventry, or Essen in the Ruhr?

Pip ... pip ... pip ... pip ... pip ...

She poured out a cup of tea for Pearl and called to her “Eight o’clock, Pearl.”

Pearl came in from the kitchen with two sizzling sausages on a piece of toast. It was a pity they all went on to the floor, but that was the fault of the Eighth Army and the First. Our troops had entered Tunis and Biserta.

“Mother,” cried Pearl, “it’s our first great victory. How splendid. Well done, the Eighth Army.”

She stopped to recover her breakfast, but neglected the sausages for a cup of tea and another piece of toast.

“Thank goodness,” said Mrs. Haddon in a low voice. “Perhaps after this—”

“What, Mother?” asked Pearl.

“Perhaps it will bring the end of the war nearer,” answered her mother.

“Oh, there’s a long way to go yet,” said Pearl. “But it wipes out the surrender of Tobruk. All my prisoners of war will feel very bucked up when they hear this news.”

She spoke about our prisoners of war as though she were the mother of them all. To her these long rows of cards in which they were registered at St. James’s Palace were human documents of individual men, nostalgic, despairing or just bored stiff.

“It’s just too wonderful,” said Pearl. “All these Germans out there are bottled up in Cape Bon. Montgomery says he has them where he wants them.”

For a moment she stared out of the window as though seeing something far away beyond a Surrey garden. She was wondering whether Karl von Diercksen was bottled up in Cape Bon or whether he lay dead in a shell-smashed tank somewhere in Tunisia. She would never see him again anyhow.

“I must rush,” she said presently. “Good-bye, Mother, until this evening. For heaven’s sake get a little rest. Don’t let all those women worry you too much. They suck your spirit like vampires.”

“Rubbish, darling,” answered Mrs. Haddon. “Don’t lose that bus,” and then went upstairs and saw her husband shaving, through the half-open door of the bathroom.

“Great news, John,” she cried. “Our men have entered Tunis and Biserta.”

“By gum,” answered Dr. Haddon. “Sooner than I expected. Pretty marvellous.”

“How much nearer the end of the war, John?” asked Mrs. Haddon.

Dr. Haddon smiled at her through the lather on his face.

“Oh, don’t jump ahead too fast, old girl,” he answered.

“I was thinking of Peter,” she said. “And of all the Peters who will be blown to bits before the end comes, if it doesn’t come quickly.”

“Keep your mind off it, my dear,” said Dr. Haddon. “It’s not like you to talk morbidly.”

“No,” said Mrs. Haddon, “it just slipped out. Well, it’s splendid news, John.”

“Great,” he answered. “Really good for once. There’s that damn telephone.”

“I’ll answer it,” said Mrs. Haddon.

She always answered the telephone before Lydia Bellairs came in at nine o’clock to take over that duty and make herself useful generally.

There were several telephone calls for Dr. Haddon’s medical aid. Several children had developed high temperatures—a little epidemic of measles. Young Mrs. Birkett was nervous about it. But there were two personal calls for Mrs. Haddon. One was from Mrs. Marlow, the clergyman’s wife.

“Have you heard about Tunis and Biserta? ... A slap in the face for Hitler. I hope those Germans in Africa will be killed in heaps. I hope our boys won’t take a single prisoner. God be praised for a real victory at last. Even Timothy seems fairly elated.”

Mrs. Haddon laughed down the telephone.

“You’re always so bloodthirsty, my dear.”

She declined Mrs. Marlow’s suggestion to make a fourth at bridge that afternoon.

There was another private message. It was from Myra Lehmann, who had recovered from pneumonia after walking into a pond at midnight. She spoke in a low contralto with a slightly foreign accent.

“Should I worry you very much if I came round this afternoon for a little talk?”

“You wouldn’t worry me in the least,” said Mrs. Haddon. “If you would play a little Chopin I should have a treat.”

“Oh, I can’t play now,” answered Myra Lehmann. “Music is dead in me now.”

“I’ll bring it to life again, my dear,” said Mrs. Haddon. “Come along at four.”

She forgot the terrors of the night because of all the things she had to do by day.

She sat at the breakfast table and poured out her husband’s coffee while he looked at his letters and the headings in that day’s Times.

He flicked over one of the letters with a laugh.

“I suppose we shall have to invite the fellow,” he said. “The Americans are rather like the Chinese in their ancestor worship.”

It was a letter from an American sergeant signed Edward D. Haddon. He would very much appreciate the honour, he wrote, of calling upon Dr. Haddon. His family in Massachusetts were descended from the Haddons of Sussex, England, and it would certainly be a great pleasure to him if he might meet an English relative during his stay in the country.

“We ought to be nice to him,” said Mrs. Haddon.

“I expect he’s a rough guy,” said the doctor. “But we ought to hold out a friendly hand. They’ve come a long way to help us win this war.”

The telephone bell rang again. Another patient for Dr. Haddon.