XXV
A few days after this the Air Raids began.
We had heard, of course, that they would come. There had been the Zeppelin raids; people had talked of bombardment from the air; of London being destroyed; of German plans for more and larger aeroplanes than anyone had seen; but it had not seemed very real. And now, when the first raid came, I did not realize what it was.
I was undressing in my bedroom; it was about half-past ten, and I heard the warning whistles. Then came the shouts through a megaphone, ‘Take cover; take cover,’ a rhythmical, rather melancholy shout, like a sort of refrain. I stood still with my hairbrush in my hand; I remember that I was brushing my hair. The gas was turned low for fear of waking the baby, Rachel was the baby, in her cot at the end of the room; and it flickered a little in the draught from the open window, though the blinds were tightly drawn. I was thinking, I don’t know why, of a summer holiday when I was a child, with Guy and Hugo, at Yearsly. I was thinking of the high trees, and the swishing sound of the branches against the house; and I remembered how at first, when I was very little, I had been almost frightened of that sound, and afterwards I had got to love it.
It was a quiet place, unshaken, unshakeable, so it seemed to me; even being a hospital had not changed it really.
And Cousin Delia too, she was always the same. I thought of her calm face with the mass of grey hair swept upwards from the forehead, and those great grey eyes of hers, that were like Guy’s, but quieter. I could picture her face older, sadder, with more shadowed eyes, but I could not picture it harassed or worried or upset, nor marked with the fear or strain of the War.
And a great longing for Cousin Delia came over me, a longing for the quiet security of Yearsly, for the old high trees and the swishing branches, the sun-dried brick of the walled garden, the pear trees outspread against the wall, and the jasmine gate, and the droning of the bees. Inside that garden it was always sheltered and warm, outside the wind rocked through the beech trees, the clouds trailed rolling shadows across the wide green lawns, the high grass swayed and bent, like waves at sea, but the peace and quiet remained unbroken.
I thought of Guy and Hugo as boys, as they had been in those early summers when first I was there, boys in the branches of the beech trees in the High Wood, calling to each other among the calling of the rooks; and regret came over me, poignant, impersonal regret, at the inevitable pathos of existence; the relentlessness of time, and change, and the haunting dearness of the past.
I thought:
‘It will never be so again. Never in millions of years.’
I heard the shrill prolonged whistling in the street, and the hurrying rush of feet, the sing-song, almost musical cadence of the ‘Take cover,’ as it drew nearer and louder, and then passed further on and away down another street, but I did not give my mind to it; it did not recall my thoughts; and then the guns began; first one, then another, then a third, at intervals of a few minutes first, then closer together, then in bursts. One big anti-Aircraft Station was close behind us on Parliament Hill. The report of its gun boomed out, with an almost deafening roar; the windows rattled and the doors shook.
And then I realized that an Air Raid had begun, and I felt excited, and wondered if I should be afraid.
I crossed to the window and looked out. It was a brilliant moonlight night, searchlights still swung across the sky, crossing, intersecting, passing each other, but the moonlight dimmed their brightness, and I thought:
‘How beautiful it is.’
I looked up in the sky for Zeppelins or aeroplanes, but I could see nothing; only the tiny fleecy clouds, high up, incredibly high up, luminous and unearthly in the moonlight.
The street outside was empty, but further down in the bigger thoroughfares I could still hear the whistles and the warning cries and the shuffle of feet.
I felt my heart beating, but I was not afraid. I wondered:
‘What next? What will happen now?’
Then there was a stir inside the house; feet on the stairs, the opening and shutting of doors.
Walter came in from the study. I had forgotten Walter; and Maud came downstairs from her bedroom; I had forgotten that Maud was staying with us just then.
They pulled me back from the window.
Maud said:
‘Quick, we must get the children downstairs.’
She went to the cot and picked Rachel up.
She said:
‘Ada has taken Eleanor down already.’
Walter said:
‘That’s right, Maud: that’s right. Hurry up, Helen, why are you waiting?’
He took me by the shoulder and pushed me in front of him across the room, turning out the gas as he passed, and I went where he pushed me. I felt quite passive, and as though I were a long way off, and looking on We sat downstairs in the dining-room; the servants were there already with Eleanor. She was pink with sleep and rather puzzled. They had wrapped her up in a rug, and she sat on Walter’s knee. I took Rachel on mine; she was still fast asleep.
We could hear the shrapnel like hailstones on the roof, and in the street, and the long wail of the shells, and then between, came the sound of engines, a droning sinister sound.
And I thought:
‘A bomb might fall and kill us any moment; it might fall now, while I think.’
But it had no meaning for me at all, and I thought:
‘How funny we look sitting here in our dressing-gowns.’
For only Walter was still dressed, and I thought how funny the old cook looked with her hair down her back, and I thought Maud looked much nicer than she did in her ordinary clothes.
Maud was trying to talk to the maids, to distract their attention from the noise, and I noticed the tremor in her voice.
And I thought:
‘How funny that is; Maud is quite frightened.’
Now came a dropping of bombs, louder, more reverberating explosions, one after another. I counted seven in quick succession, then there was a lull. Again we could hear the whizzing of the engines, louder and louder, and then less loud, and again the barrage and the wailing of the shells and again the pattering like hailstones in the street.
Ada and the cook shuddered and shut their eyes.
Eleanor asked:
‘Why is there such a noise?’
Maud said:
‘Gun practice, my dear child. They are practising with guns.’
And she seemed satisfied, she was still half asleep.
And I thought:
‘Those bombs have fallen somewhere; they have fallen on something; people must have been killed.’
But it did not mean much to me even so.
Maud said violently:
‘And they call this War. I don’t.’
I said:
‘But what else is it?’
Maud said:
‘Murder. Massacre.’
And the cook and Ada nodded their heads.
The funny old cook with her grey plait of hair sat up very straight in her chair.
She said:
‘I could find it in my heart to be a second Charlotte Corday.’
I was surprised at her, and I could not remember what Charlotte Corday had done.
She shook her fist and said:
‘That Emperor William.’
And I thought again:
‘How funny it all is.’
And then I thought:
‘It is wrong to think it funny.’
And we sat there till the firing died away.
There was silence for a while and then ‘All Clear’ sirens were sounded.
Maud drew a deep breath and stood up.
Walter passed his hands across his forehead.
He said:
‘At last. Now we can go to bed.’
And I thought:
‘It is over now. That was an air raid.’
And then I thought:
‘George is dead; and Guy and Hugo are out there, where it goes on all the time.’
And I shivered and felt cold.
Walter said:
‘I wonder how Mother stood it.’
And Maud said:
‘She ought not to be alone.’