Alf and Binnie aren’t the only ones who could be watching, she thought. The Home Guard might be patrolling the woods for Alf’s German parachutists, or the soldier Alf and Binnie’d seen talking to Una still might be hanging about.
In which case the lab would eventually realize that the drop wasn’t going to open and send the retrieval team through somewhere else. Till then, she had more than enough to keep her occupied. Not only did she have the departing evacuees to deal with, but they had to clean and prepare the house for Lady Caroline, who’d written saying she was coming home.
And repair the damage the children had done. “Oh, when she sees the library ceiling!” Una said.
And the Louis Quinze hat stand, and the opera glasses, Eileen thought, and prayed the retrieval team would arrive before Lady Caroline returned, but they didn’t.
Lady Caroline had written that her son Alan would be accompanying her, but she arrived without him, and when Mrs. Bascombe asked when he’d be coming, Lady Caroline told her he’d enlisted in the RAF and was training to be a pilot.
“He’s doing his part to win this war,” she said proudly, “and so must we,” and set the staff to learning the St. John’s Ambulance Emergency Medical Care manual from cover to cover. Which meant Eileen had to sandwich in the memorizing of “Shock: the shutting down by the body of peripheral systems in an attempt to survive,” between attempting to keep the evacuees quiet, apologizing to Mr. Rudman, Miss Fuller, and Mr. Brown for Alf and Binnie’s latest crimes, and taking children to the train.
Georgie Cox went home to Hampstead, in spite of the fact that a nearby aerodrome had been bombed, Edwina and Susan’s grandfather came from Manchester to fetch them, and Jimmy’s aunt in Bristol sent for him, which made Eileen hope that a relative-preferably one who didn’t know them-would send for the Hodbins, but they didn’t. The Hodbins I shall have with me always, she thought resignedly.
Sending the children off took nearly all of Eileen’s time. She had to pack their things, walk them to the railway station, and wait on the platform with them, often for hours. “It’s all the troop trains,” Mr. Tooley said, “and now these air raids. The trains have to halt till they’re over.”
The vicar kindly gave Eileen and the children lifts to the railway station when he could, but he was often busy attending the Invasion Preparedness meetings Lady Caroline had organized. Eileen didn’t mind. Walking back gave her the opportunity to check the drop. When she could escape the Hodbins’ watchful eyes, which wasn’t often.
But today, seeing Patsy Foster off, Alf and Binnie had grown bored with waiting and left, and moments later the train had arrived, so Eileen was able to not only go to the clearing but spend the afternoon there on the off-chance the drop was only opening every hour and a half or two hours.
It wasn’t, and there was still no sign that the retrieval team-or Una’s soldier, or a German parachutist-had been here. What was keeping them? She thought suddenly of the train’s being late and wondered if there was something going on in Oxford, the equivalent of troop trains or air raids, which was causing the delay.
If that was the case, then they might show up at the manor anytime, and she’d better be there. She hurried back through the woods. As she neared the lane, she caught a glimpse of someone standing on the other side of the lane. Eileen ducked behind a tree, and then peered cautiously out to see who it was.
It was Alf. I knew it, she thought. He and Binnie have been spying on me. That’s why it won’t open, but he wasn’t looking into the woods. He was gazing up the lane in the direction of the manor as if waiting for someone. And when she stepped out onto the lane, he jumped a good foot. “What are you doing here, Alf?” she demanded.
“Nuthin’,” he said, putting his hands behind his back.
“Then what have you got in your hand?” Eileen said. “You’ve been setting out tacks again, haven’t you?”
“No,” he said, and oddly, it had the ring of truth. But this was Alf.
“Show me what you have there,” she said, holding out her hand.
Alf backed up against a bush, there was a suspicious thunk, and he held out both hands, empty. “You’ve been throwing rocks at cars,” she said, but even as she said it, she was remembering that Alf had been gazing toward the manor, clearly waiting for a car to come from there, and it couldn’t be Lady Caroline’s Bentley. She was at a Red Cross meeting in Nuneaton, and the vicar had gone with her, so it couldn’t be the Austin. “Alf, who’s at the manor?” she asked.
He frowned at her, trying to decide if this was a trick question. “I dunno. Strangers.”
Finally, Eileen thought. “Who did they come to see?”
“I dunno. I just seen ’em drive by.”
“In a car?”
He nodded. “One like Lady Caroline’s. But I wasn’t goin’ to throw rocks at it, I swear, only clods. I was practicin’ for when the jerries invade. Me’n Binnie’s gonna throw rocks at their tanks.”
She wasn’t listening. A car like Lady Caroline’s. A Bentley. The retrieval team could have practiced on one in Oxford, just as she’d done, and then come through, hired one, and driven it here to fetch her. She took off for the manor at a run.
The Bentley was drawn up to the front door. Eileen started up the steps, and then remembered she was still a servant, at least for a few more hours, and ran around to the servants’ entrance, hoping Mrs. Bascombe was in the kitchen. She was, with a bowl of batter in the crook of one arm, stirring it violently with a wooden spoon. “Who’s here?” Eileen asked, trying to keep the eagerness out of her voice. “I saw a car out in front as I-”
“They’re from the War Office.”
“But…” The War Office? Why would the retrieval team tell Lady Caroline that?
“They’re here to look over the house and grounds to see if they’re suitable.”
“Clods don’t hurt nothing,” Alf said at her elbow. “It’s only dirt.”
Eileen ignored him. “Suitable for what?” she asked Mrs. Bascombe.
“For shooting,” Mrs. Bascombe said, stirring viciously. “The government’s taking over the manor for the duration. They’re turning it into a riflery training school.”
The horns are to butt with and the mouth is to moo with.
Kent-April 1944
THE BULL STARED AT ERNEST FROM ACROSS THE PASTURE for a long, menacing moment. “Worthing! Run! There’s a bull!” Cess shouted from behind the lorry.
“Naw look wot ya done!” the farmer said. “Ya’ve upset my bull. This is his pasture-”
“Yes, I can see that,” Ernest said without taking his eye off the bull.
The bull hadn’t taken its little eyes off him either. Where the hell was the fog when you needed it?
The bull lowered its massive head. Oh, Christ, here he comes! Ernest thought, pushing his back against the tank.
The bull began to paw the ground. Ernest shot a frantic look at the farmer, who was standing by the fence with his arms folded belligerently. “Now ye’ve torn it,” he said. “He don’t like what ye’ve done to his pasture, nor do I. Look at this great mess of tracks. Ye’ve chewed up the whole meadow with your bloody tanks, and that’s made him mad.”
“I know,” Ernest said. “What do you suggest I do now?”
“Run!” Cess shouted.
The bull swung its massive head around to see who’d said that, and then turned back to Ernest. It snorted.
“Don’t-” Ernest said, putting his hand out like a traffic policeman, but the bull was already barreling across the grass straight at him.