Page 168 of The Gathering Storm

‘I can’t believe you haven’t mentioned me since then,’ Meredith said to him.

He looked embarrassed. ‘There wasn’t anything to tell, was there? Not until now.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Polly demanded.

‘Meredith and I – well, I’ve been wanting to marry her for years, but she would never agree, until now.’

Polly looked from one to the other, delight dawning. ‘You’re engaged to be married?’

‘Um, not exactly,’ James said. ‘We stopped off in London and did the deed. Meredith is Mrs James Morland now.’

‘We had everything in place to get married in the American Embassy in Paris,’ James said. ‘You know, birth certificates and so on. But things were getting more and more sticky over there, and I started to worry that we were going to be marooned. You remember, Pol, Papa telling how all those Americans got caught there last time? The Germans were massing at the Polish border, and we’d moved everything of Hélène’s that she wanted moving, plus everything of all of her friends, so there was nothing really to stay for. Then Hélène said, “For God’s sake, go!” So we went.’

‘I’m terribly glad you did,’ Polly said, though with a doubt in her voice.

James heard it. ‘What’s wrong? Aren’t we welcome? I’d offer to take ourselves off to an hotel, but the fact is that we’re stony broke, haven’t a bean between us. Spent our last sous getting married. We can sleep on the nursery floor, and we don’t eat much.’

‘Don’t be silly, of course you’re welcome,’ Polly said. ‘I wouldn’t forgive you if you went somewhere else.’

Lennie understood. ‘I think what your sister is worrying about is that, now you’re back in the country, you’ll be eligible to be called up when conscription starts.’

James shrugged. ‘Oh, well, can’t help that.’

‘Unless you went back to the States,’ Lennie said. ‘You could still get out.’

James and Meredith looked at each other. ‘We don’t want to do that,’ she said. ‘We talked about it, and we want to be here, carrying on the fight.’

‘It would be very feeble of us to run away,’ James said.

Lennie grinned. ‘Exactly how I felt when the last war broke out. I was visiting here, and definitely didn’t want to go home and miss it all.’

Alec was ecstatic that his uncle had come back. James was flattered, until his nephew said, ‘Well, Uncle Lennie is American so he can’t fight, and Mummy’s a girl and they don’t, so I’d have no-one to tell the other boys at school about. But now you’re here, and you’ll go off and fight, and kill hundreds of Germans, and I can talk about that. It’ll be swish!’

‘What a bloodthirsty young ruffian you are,’ James said dispassionately.

In the early hours of the 1st of September, the German army invaded Poland from three different directions, with one and a half million men, panzer divisions and a relentless bombing from the Luftwaffe.

It was a Friday. The children went to school, everyone tried to get on with their work as usual, and the hammering from the chapel roof continued with even greater urgency. Polly went into York to talk to her staff at Makepeace’s. The ARP warden had visited her two weeks before to ask her what arrangements she had made for their safety in an air raid. Makepeace’s had a cellar, but the warden had recommended that she got steel and wooden props put in place to support the ceiling as an extra safety measure. Now she addressed the staff to make sure they knew what to do if the air-raid siren went off; that they knew the difference between the warning and the ‘all clear’; and that they all had their gas masks with them. The young men from the gentlemen’s departments she shook hands with, telling them that when they were called up, everyone would be tremendously proud of them; they shuffled and blushed. She wondered how she would stretch her female staff to cover their jobs, and what gentleman customers would think of being served by girls.

That evening, it was announced on the news that the Prime Minister had addressed the House of Commons at six o’clock. The newscaster read out his speech. ‘“It now only remains for us to set our teeth and to enter upon this struggle, which we ourselves earnestly endeavoured to avoid, with determination to see it through to the end. We shall enter it with a clear conscience, with the support of the Dominions and the British Empire, and the moral approval of the greater part of the world.”’

And the late bulletin said that Sir Neville Henderson had handed an ultimatum to Ribbentrop at 9 p.m., which declared that unless the British government received satisfactory assurances that Germany was prepared to withdraw from Polish territory ‘His Majesty’s Government will without hesitation fulfil their obligation to Poland’. The newscaster said that the French ambassador delivered an identical note one hour later.

‘So the die is cast,’ Lennie said.

‘What does that mean?’ Ethel asked. She was knitting again, and the more agitated she got, the faster the needles moved.

‘It means that if Hitler doesn’t withdraw from Poland, we go to war,’ James explained. ‘And he won’t, so we will.’

Further bulletins described various attacks and bombings on Poland. The Polish forces were no match for the German military machine.

That night, Polly lay in Lennie’s arms, and said, ‘We’re for it, aren’t we?’

‘I think so,’ he said.

She pressed closer. ‘It sounds stupid, but I’m almost glad the waiting’s over. It’s been going on for so long. At least now we know what we’re facing.’

He held her, and kissed her hair.