A Presumption of Death Read online

  Talking of darkest England, what one wants on the shops at night is not just a sign saying ‘Open’, but something to show what they’ve got inside. They’re allowed a little light on the goods, but if one’s driving along one can’t possibly see whether a pile of vague little shapes is cigarettes or chocolates or bath buns or something to do with wireless sets; and it doesn’t help much to see just ‘J. Blogg’ or ‘Pumpkin and Co.’ unless you know what Blogg or Pumpkin is supposed to be selling.

  My dear, this letter is full of shopping and nonsense, but I’ve made up my mind that we just mustn’t worry about Peter because he disappeared so many times in the last war and always turned up again more or less safe and sound. He’s got quite a good instinct of self-preservation, really. And he’s not stupid, which is a comfort, whatever Kingsley has to say about being good and letting who will be clever, though I don’t see how you can be clever just by willing. Peter always maintains that Kingsley said ‘can’, not ‘will’, and perhaps he did. I only hope he still has Bunter with him, though if he’s gone into any queer place in disguise I can’t think what he can have done with him, because if ever a man had ‘English gentleman’s personal gentleman’ written all over him, it’s Bunter. I had a letter from him yesterday, so discreet it might have been written from Piccadilly, and conveying the compliments of the season to all the Family, with a capital F.

  We’re looking forward to seeing you all for Christmas, germs permitting. I hope you won’t mind our being overrun with evacuees and children’s parties – Christmas tree and conjurer in the ballroom, with charades and games after supper – I’m afraid it will be rather noisy and rampageous and not very restful.

  Always your affectionate

  Mother

  PS: I’m sorry my English is so confusing. It was Bunter, not Peter, who wrote the discreet letter, and Peter, not Kingsley, who has Bunter with him – at least, I hope so.

  Lady Peter Wimsey to Lord Peter Wimsey, somewhere abroad. (extract)

  6th February, 1940

  . . . This is the coldest winter anyone can remember. The Pag has frozen solid, and all the children and the land-girls have been skating on the village pond, looking like a scene painted by Brueghel. There is no coal to be had for love nor money, which is more to do with the freeze-up than the enemy. Troops are being used to dig snow off the railway lines. I’m afraid the vine in the glass-house will die, but other than lining the glass with newspaper – it is already elaborately criss-crossed with sticky tape, as are all the windows of the house – I can’t think what to do about it. We have no fuel to spare for a heater; as it is we are carrying branches home from Blackden Wood, and spending most of the day in the kitchen, where Mrs Trapp keeps the range going splendidly, and it’s always warm.

  In all this chill we need a hot topic, and that is provided by the land-girls. Seven of them are working at Datchett’s farm and five at Bateson’s. John Bateson has lodged them in the outbuildings just beyond our kitchen garden, you know – the range that was the stable yard and tack rooms before this house was split from the farm itself. They all seem rather jolly to me, and incredibly hard-working. John Bateson seems rather hard on them: I heard him the other day saying, ‘You’ve come here to do a man’s job, and you’ll just have to get on with it!’ They have been kitted out for work with awful fawn aertex shirts, grey slacks and green pullovers but they wear silk stockings and lipstick when off duty, and have rapidly acquired a reputation for being ‘fast’, which has all the young men buzzing round like wasps at a honey pot. There’s no shortage of young men to buzz round, because we have two airfields between here and Broxford, and some sort of hush-hush military establishment in the Manor House, requisitioned from the squire, and full of youngsters in mufti fond of dancing and the flicks when off duty. This is all rather a lot to swallow for the older people, who shake their heads over it all till their necks must ache!

  The other big news is that the Anderson shelters have arrived – at long last; Broxford and Lopsley have had theirs for weeks – and of course the ground is frozen so hard that nobody can dig the holes in the gardens required to erect them. Mr Gudgeon – you remember him, the landlord of the Crown – has made his cellars available as a public shelter. It turns out the Crown is much older than it looks above ground; it has a warren of vaulted powerfully ancient-looking undercrofts, which surely must have been part of an abbey before the Reformation, and although the handiest part, down some stairs behind the bar, is full of beer barrels, there are positively spacious catacombs further in. Gudgeon will throw these open to the villagers. The president of the Paggleham Women’s Institute was talking of providing comforts – built-in bunks, paraffin heaters, tea-kettles, a library of second-hand books, communal blankets – when, behold and lo! a difficulty arises: the Methodists of Paggleham will on no account be herded into a public house, not even as a matter of life and death. Mr Gudgeon, rather magnanimously I thought, offered to close off his beer barrels so that one could reach the safety of the vaults without even catching sight of a stave or hoop or spigot, but it will not do. In Paggleham not even Hitler will cause a Methodist to be caught sight of entering a public house.

  There matters rested for several days until someone remembered ‘The Cave’, an excavation in the chalk of Spring Hill, used, I am told, in the Napoleonic War as a munitions store, and seemingly deep enough for safety, and large enough for the congregation of the Chapel. Mrs Ruddle’s Bert is duly at work fitting it out with primitive bunks; never let it be said that Church folk or the Godless had an easier berth than Chapel folk . . .

  I can’t help thinking that in practice, when we get an air-raid, everyone will rush to the nearest point of safety, and we shall have ecumenical havens, one each end of the village.

  As Hitler has not yet obliged us with an actual peril, our excellent ARP committee has ordered a rehearsal on Saturday night, when an air-raid will be supposed to take place. It has to be Saturday, as everyone is available then, and nobody wants to imitate the horrible inconvenience that might attend a real air-raid.

  Since there is to be a dance on Saturday next week in the Village Memorial Hall, and we don’t want to disappoint the brave fellows from the airfields all around, the practice is timed for just after the dance, and we shall see if the Methodists’ cave is near enough to be reached in time. The cave would be nearer than the Crown for Talboys, of course, but I have promised to help Mrs Goodacre with the refreshments for the dance, so it will be the vaults for us this time. Dear Peter, how petty all this must seem to you, reading this letter, if you ever get it, in the middle of something much more world-shattering, and in danger for which no artificial rehearsal is necessary. But it’s all the news there is from our parish pump. God keep us from having anything more interesting to write to you about! . . .

  One

  It is through chance that, from among the various

  individuals of which each of us is composed,

  one emerges rather than another.

  Henry de Montherlant, Explicit Mysterium, 1931

  ‘Whoever, for example, Lady Peter,’ said Miss Agnes Twitterton, ‘is that?’

  ‘You do have a point, my dear,’ said Mrs Goodacre, the vicar’s wife, who was standing with the two women behind a trestle table at one end of the Village Hall, pouring out Miss Twitterton’s parsnip wine into rows of assorted sherry glasses. ‘There was a time, as you say, and not so long ago, when we would have known everybody we could possibly meet here – when any stranger was a seven-day wonder – and now here we are organising a village hop, and we don’t know half the people here. They could be anybody; indeed I expect they are.’

  Harriet looked around. The shabby little hall, with a dusty dais at one end, had perhaps fifty people in it. About half were young men in uniform, rather outshining the youthful farm workers and shop-boys in civvies. The uniform blotted out whatever they may have been like in peace-time; no better than the rest of the company, most likely, and possibly much worse, but khaki
and air-force blue gave them now the status of heroes.

  It’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ ‘Chuck him out, the brute!’

  But it’s ‘Saviour of ’is country’ when the guns begin to shoot.

  ran through her mind. The notorious land-girls were much in evidence, with their city skills in make-up and nice dresses. Harriet did not in fact know everybody, far from it. Had the assembly gathered the older people of the village she might have done better; she had spent long enough here to know most of them. But unlike the true villagers she didn’t expect to know everybody; she was used to the crowded anonymity of London.

  ‘One shouldn’t think the worst of newcomers,’ she said mildly. ‘You don’t want to sound like Mrs Ruddle.’ She smiled to herself at the memory. ‘When Lord Peter and I rolled up here on our very first night as man and wife she took one look at us, and declared we were no better than we should be!’

  ‘You must have been wearing that magnificent fur cloak of yours,’ said Mrs Goodacre. ‘One associates fur with loose morals very easily these days, because of the cinema.’

  ‘Yes, I was,’ said Harriet. ‘And I’m glad to say I can tell you who that is, Miss Twitterton. That is Flight Lieutenant Brinklow.’

  ‘Well, if you say so,’ said Miss Twitterton. ‘But that’s just it! We know his name, but we know nothing about him. He could be any sort of villain, for all we know – he could even be a German spy!’

  ‘As a matter of fact I think he’s a war hero,’ said Harriet. ‘He is here recuperating. His fighter plane was shot down and he baled out and was injured slightly. He can’t go back on active duty until his shattered ankle has mended, so he has taken Susan Hodge’s cottage – the one just opposite the churchyard gate – for a month of quiet in the country.’

  ‘He’s very good-looking,’ said Miss Twitterton dubiously, as if the officer’s looks made this history improbable. She was certainly right in that. Flight Lieutenant Brinklow was tall and blond, with brown eyes and a candid manly address. He was not dancing – presumably his ankle made that impossible – but was standing surrounded by a group of pretty girls and brother officers, looking perfectly at ease.

  ‘You are very well informed, Lady Peter,’ said Mrs Goodacre. ‘As the vicar’s wife I am not often pipped at the post with the gossip. You are becoming quite a villager!’

  ‘You forget I was born here,’ said Lady Peter mildly. ‘But there’s no mystery about it. The poor man is on sticks, and so he needed a bed brought down the stairs to the dining-room, and Susan Hodge asked a couple of the land-girls at Bateson’s farm to help her do it, and it got stuck halfway down, and they had to heave it back upstairs again, and take it apart. One of them told Mrs Ruddle all about it, and what Mrs Ruddle knows is soon common knowledge.’

  ‘One of those airmen,’ observed Mrs Lugg, who was making up the fourth hand at the refreshment table, ‘is even better looking.’

  ‘That,’ said Harriet with a mildly triumphant note in her voice, ‘is Peter’s nephew, Gerald Wimsey, home on leave for three days, and staying with us.’

  ‘Do you mean Lord St George?’ asked Miss Twitterton. ‘The one who will one day be a duke?’ A maiden lady somewhere in her forties, Miss Twitterton had become acquainted with the Wimseys on their very first evening in the village, and was almost too interested in the family, including those she had heard mentioned only once or twice.

  ‘Yes, the very man. But he likes to be plain Flying Officer Wimsey for the moment. He tells me everyone in the RAF just mucks in without distinction. Nothing counts but your service rank. So plain Jerry Wimsey it is.’

  At that moment the band-leader struck a chord, and plain Jerry Wimsey stepped up to the microphone, as the band – a rather under-rehearsed group, including most of the Salvation Army’s brass players from Pagford – broke into ‘Dreamshine’. Jerry began to sing in a light tenor voice of great sweetness, sounding so like his Uncle Peter that Harriet flinched inwardly.

  Under a shining moon,

  And to a tender tune . . .

  Harriet watched the couples foxtrotting round the floor, holding each other as closely as lovers, in an aura of yearning which surely had something to do with the times as much as the people.

  . . . We danced the night away,

  And at the break of day

  We found the world had changed . . .

  She was aching to be dancing herself, provided only that she could be dancing with Peter – Peter somewhere far away and in danger – and, cross with herself for being so easily touched by a trivial tune, but Jerry was singing beautifully, she sternly turned her attention to sandwiches and the tea-urn. Obviously yearning made young people hungry, for the plates were emptying fast. The little cornflour cakes that Mrs Trapp had provided had already gone. And now Harriet felt touched by that: all these grown-ups eating cakes like children at a birthday party, when the times ensured that it was only too likely to be a wake for some of them, especially those in uniform, and you could hardly blame them if they snatched things – cakes, girls – while they had the chance.

  ‘Fancy a turn about the room, Aunt Harriet?’

  Here was Jerry, having resigned the microphone to a sexy-looking young woman, holding out his arms to her. She allowed herself to be steered away from slicing dense and rubbery fruit cake, and propelled into the throng. Jerry held her just a little too close, pressed his cheek against hers a little too much – the gesture was pointless without Peter there to be stung by it – but Jerry was always living on the edge, pushing his luck.

  One more dance before we part . . .

  Suddenly singer and band both were drowned out by a horrible cacophonous wailing, eliding sickeningly between two notes. The air-raid warning! The band came to a ragged note-by-note stop. The singer faltered and fell silent. The band-master took the microphone.

  ‘Now don’t panic, everyone. As you probably know this is a planned rehearsal to see how quickly we can all get underground. Our friends in uniform must decide for themselves whether to join the civilians in the exercise, or return to their base; but I’m afraid the dance is over. If you are disappointed to miss the last waltz, don’t blame me, blame the ARP officer, he’s a little quick off the mark. Don’t forget your gas masks, everyone. Just make your way quietly either to the cellars of the Crown, or to the Paggleham Cave. If you have left your children at home with Gran, go and fetch them now, exactly as you would do if this were a real emergency. Thank you and goodnight.’

  There was a jostle of people in the doorways as everyone took coats and gas-mask holders off the hooks. ‘I suppose we can’t clear up tonight,’ said Mrs Goodacre. ‘We’ll have to come back in the morning.’

  ‘That’s all right, missus,’ said the caretaker. ‘I’ll lock up. Just get yourselves under cover before that blinking Hitler gets to you.’

  ‘Oh dear, are you sure?’ said Miss Twitterton. ‘Only since it’s only a practice, you know, we certainly could stay back and see to things . . .’

  ‘No, you don’t, Aggie Twitterton,’ said the caretaker. ‘You’ll spoil the whole thing if you don’t co-operate, and it’ll have to be done again. Off you go with everyone else.’

  Standing in the moonlit road outside the hall, listening to Miss Twitterton apologising repeatedly and explaining that she only thought . . . Harriet found Jerry at her elbow.

  ‘I’ll walk you home, Aunt Harriet,’ he said, smiling at her from a face half moonlit, half in darkness, ‘and help you round up all those kids.’

  ‘There aren’t so very many,’ said Harriet. ‘Only five. But they do seem like a multitude at times!’

  They walked towards Talboys under the brilliant light of a full moon. All the warm comfortable lights that used to shine from cottage windows were now blacked out, and the street lamps, all seven of them, were extinguished, but this icy light was bright enough to show every house and tree, every bridge and pillar-box to anyone who had been looking down on it, taking aim.

  ‘We’ve certa
inly got a bomber’s moon tonight,’ Jerry said.

  As they passed the church the moonlight showed them, clearly pencilled in silver, the silhouette of Mr Lugg the undertaker perched on the tower under his tin hat, doing his turn at fire-watching. Harriet waved at him, and then felt frivolous. But he briefly waved back.

  ‘Aunt Harriet, I suppose you haven’t thought of taking that houseful of yours up to Denver, have you?’ asked Jerry.

  ‘We were there at Christmas,’ Harriet said. ‘We’re only just back.’

  ‘I meant have you considered moving there for the duration?’

  ‘No!’ she said. ‘I have not.’

  ‘There’s such a lot of room up there,’ he said. ‘Bredon Hall is genormous.’

  ‘But they’ve got an entire boys’ school billeted on them,’ she said.

  ‘Even so. And Grandmama would be so pleased to have you; I know she would!’

  ‘I’m very fond of my mother-in-law, Jerry,’ said Harriet, ‘but as to uprooting myself from my own establishment, and plumping myself and all these other people on hers . . .’

  ‘I just thought you might be safer there.’

  ‘But we’re as safe here as anywhere. Hasn’t the government just billeted several dozen evacuees in the village?’

  They walked a few paces further in silence. ‘This entire county is covered in airfields,’ Jerry said. ‘They’ve got to be a target of attack.’

  ‘But so is the district round Denver,’ protested Harriet. ‘I can’t make any sense of this, Jerry. Are you trying to tell me something?’

  ‘I ought not to be,’ he said dejectedly. ‘I haven’t said a word. I just wish you’d think about it, Aunt Harriet.’

  ‘Think about what you haven’t said?’