It was a late August evening when the refugees came. The sun was lying in a low amber shaft along the high street below, the rooftops and chimney pots still painted in glowing color, but the houses of Mrs. Turber’s cobbled street were already sunk deep in their own shadows. Beatrice had been called to her door by the train whistle and waited, like other householders, in her own doorway. Mrs. Turber stood two doors down with her neighbor, clutching a shawl around her shoulders, as if the arriving refugees had brought the chill of war to the warm evening. Above them, Mr. Tillingham, prevented from going to the docks by the sudden flaring of his gout, stood at the open window of his garden room smoking a cigar.
The small group, led by Dr. Lawton and the Mayor, came slowly up the cobbles. Despite the doctor’s age and the Mayor’s girth, they seemed regally upright and hearty compared to the refugees, who climbed with great fatigue, heads down and shoulders hunched under shawls or gray donated blankets. Instead of the apple-cheeked children expected by the ladies waiting at the Town Hall, these were mostly families, the parents and grandparents leaning in one to the other, a hand reaching, or a shoulder offered. Three old nuns made a small family of their own in the rear, habits creased and grimy, hands counting their rosary beads. All carried only small, shapeless bundles, as if there had been no time to gather belongings, or as if they had been forced to shed them along the way.
Beatrice had not expected the silence. She heard only the scrape of wooden clogs and the wheezing of breath, the strike of the doctor’s cane and a low cough somewhere in the rear. It was the same pressing sense of solemnity as a funeral procession, and Beatrice felt her heart clench. A sob broke the silence, a low and plaintive sob as a young woman carrying a small child raised her face to the brightness above the rooftops. Her shawl fell from her head, revealing a tumble of pale blond hair and a face as white as bone save for the blue hollows beneath her eyes. Her dress was dirty and torn about the hem, and yet Beatrice saw it was paneled in thick lace down the front, and her boots, now ruined with mud, were of soft leather with an elegant curved heel. The child she carried wore a rough peasant’s smock and clogs. His ruddy cheeks announced that he belonged not to the girl but to the large family just ahead of her, the mother already clutching a baby and the father keeping his arm around the back of an old woman, bent low under the weight of her years and suffering. Hugh Grange brought up the rear, supporting the shuffling steps of an older man who kept a hand over his eyes, as if he had seen too much and could no longer bear to look about him.
As they passed, the neighbors seemed to grow conscious of their own staring and called out welcomes in softened voices. But the tired and stumbling refugees only shrank further into their blankets and quickened away up the hill. Hugh glanced at Beatrice as he passed, and his face seemed to brighten as if he were glad to see her. He gave her a small nod.
Beatrice had decided to keep away from the Town Hall. Though she was determined to give such free time as she had to Agatha Kent’s committee, there were many more ladies than needed to meet the arrivals, and she did not wish to be among the curious with their pressing enthusiasm. Now, however, she felt an urgent need to follow the refugees and assist as she might in their safe billeting.
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The council room was in some state of uproar when she arrived. Urgent discussions bordering on argument seemed to be going on in many corners while the seated refugees were attacked from all sides by ladies swinging hot teapots in reckless arcs and pressing huge trays of sandwiches on people who were already holding sandwiches. The lady pounding spirited music-hall favorites on the piano was blithely unaware that she was merely adding to the general din. Meanwhile a small girl, dressed in Sunday best, much beribboned about the head, and carrying a basket of shortbread, offered her treats to the refugees with the trembling timidity of one asked to pass raw meat through the bars of a lion cage.
Beatrice saw Hugh standing apart, eating two ham sandwiches at once.
“Sorry to be so rude but I’m famished,” he said by way of greeting. He sounded exhausted. “A very long day and no lunch.”
“What’s happening?” asked Beatrice. “I see some anxious discussions.”
“We have a number of large families who understandably do not wish to be parted,” said Hugh. “Meanwhile many well-meaning ladies have made meticulous arrangements to take in one or two guests each. Ironic that families who cleaved together through German brutality may be forced asunder by English charity.”
Mr. Tillingham, a frown of concentration on the great forehead, walked towards them, deep in discussion with an agitated Mrs. Fothergill. “One must open one’s heart in the face of this scale of human tragedy,” he was saying, a hand patting her arm. “Would that I had more to offer than the limited scope of a bachelor establishment.”
“We had requested mostly children, but my husband said the people in charge were quite rude about it,” said Mrs. Fothergill. She spotted Hugh. “Mr. Grange, you were there. Were there no children to be had?”
“We managed one or two,” said Hugh, “but as you can see they came with parents and grandparents attached, and they were unwilling to part with them.”
“One could also have wished for more genteel folk,” said Mrs. Fothergill. She frowned at a man who was noisily drinking from a teacup held in both hands and lowered her voice. “Of course, we will succor all who need us, but it is quite impossible to ask our ladies to take absolute peasants into their own houses, however charming their wooden clogs.”
“I’m afraid it was all desperation at the docks,” said Hugh. “They just sorted us a group, like cutting out sheep at the Wednesday market, and your husband did not like to refuse. I believe the Mayor of Bexhill was there collecting a second batch.”
Agatha Kent seemed to have quieted most of the arguments and now approached bearing a sheaf of papers, pen in hand. “The farm at New Road will take one family. They have an empty cottage,” she said. “Colonel Wheaton has offered a gamekeeper’s lodge to hold another, and the Misses Porter will take in the nuns until they can receive assistance from their order. Meanwhile, we will just have to remake the lower street hostel over to accommodate families instead of boys’ and girls’ dormitories.”
“People will be so disappointed,” said Mrs. Fothergill. “They wished so much to open their hearts and homes.”
“Perhaps you could give up taking in the accountant and his wife?” asked Agatha, indicating a thin refugee couple sitting very protectively either side of a battered brown suitcase. “You already have so many obligations with the Voluntary Aid Detachment, and there are other ladies wishing desperately to be called.”
“Let me sink from exhaustion, yet still will I do my duty,” said Mrs. Fothergill. “I shall not shirk from the strife.”
“Is that everyone?” asked Hugh.
“I believe so,” said Agatha. “There may be just a small issue with the professor whom you offered to take in, Mr. Tillingham.”
“He’s not a charlatan, is he?” said Mr. Tillingham. “I picked him out as a man of great intellectual refinement.”