Page 163 of The Gathering Storm

‘Nanny did. I heard her say it to Clara. The dirty Huns are going to gas us all.’

‘You shouldn’t repeat things you hear that people that don’t know you’re listening say,’ said Esmond.

‘Ungrammatical, but correct,’ said Vivian.

‘Are you coming too, Auntie Charlotte?’ Angelica asked.

‘No, I have to stay in London,’ Charlotte said. ‘But you’ll have Alethea and Electra to play with. That will be nice, won’t it?’ Kit and Emma’s two, at nine and seven, were the right age to be playmates.

‘But they’re just more girls,’ Esmond objected. ‘And I’m ten. I’m too old for them.’

‘But they’ll need you to look after them, old chap,’ Vivian said. ‘I depend on you.’

Esmond looked wistful. ‘I’d sooner stay and fight the Germans.’

Emma and Kit arrived so soon after breakfast they must have risen with the lark. Their two daughters looked pale and strained, and Molly sent all the children away to play for ten minutes while she told Emma and Kit Charlotte’s story.

‘Oh, good Lord!’ Kit said. ‘What a beast! I must admit I’ve been completely taken in by him. I thought he was charming.’

‘But that’s the thing about charm,’ Emma said. ‘It charms you.’

‘When you think of the etymology of the word,’ Vivian said, ‘it comes from the Latin for incantation. In Middle English it meant magic spell, or to cast a spell.’

‘Milo did that, all right,’ Kit said, discontentedly. ‘I say, isn’t that a splendid title for a book: The Etymology of Charm. Or a film, even better. Starring Leslie Howard and Olivia de Havilland?’

‘Which reminds me,’ Molly said, ‘are Oliver and Verena sending their children down to Walcote? They don’t have a country place of their own.’

‘It would rather be putting all our eggs in one basket, wouldn’t it?’ Kit said. ‘No, I believe they’re staying put, but the nippers’ll be sent down to Tunstead Hall if things turn bad. Oliver won’t leave his practice, and Verena won’t leave him. Oh, by the way, did you hear, Charlotte, that young Henry is engaged to the younger Partridge girl? The less sandy one.’

‘No, I hadn’t heard. That’s rather sudden, isn’t it?’

‘A bit of war fever, apparently. Oliver said they’re going for a quick wedding because Henry’s volunteered for the RAF.’

‘I suppose we’ll see a lot of that,’ Molly said. ‘What about you two?’

‘We’re already married,’ Kit said blandly.

‘Don’t be foolish. I mean, are you going to stay down with the children? Emma turned cagey on me when I asked her.’

Emma and Kit exchanged a look. ‘I suppose there’s no harm in telling you all now,’ Emma said. ‘We hadn’t decided last night whether to stay down or not. Because, you see, I’m having another baby.’

‘Oh my dear! How wonderful!’ Molly exclaimed.

‘It is, rather,’ Emma said, looking pink and pleased. ‘We’ve talked about having a another for ages, but the time never seemed quite right. But now, with the world going to pieces—’

‘Anyway, the deed is done,’ Kit said, ‘and I couldn’t be more happy.’

Emma smiled at him. ‘I had to persuade him not to delay any more. I’m forty-three, you know. I can’t afford to wait any longer. The only thing I regret is that I won’t be able to contribute to the war effort, like last time.’

‘The baby will be your contribution,’ Kit said.

Everyone thought of the same thing, that babies would be needed to replace all the young men who were going to be killed. And everyone saw that everyone else had thought it too.

Emma cleared her throat, and said, ‘So I’m staying up for a while, until I get too large to be comfortable, and then I’ll go down to be with the children. Unless it starts getting bad, and then I’ll go sooner.’ She looked at Charlotte. ‘You’ll have to do it for me – help the war effort.’

The suggestion was tacit, Charlotte thought: It will keep you busy. ‘I will,’ she said.