In Farleigh Field: A Novel of World War II

“Been out riding, Phoebe?” Her governess, Miss Gumble, came into the room. She was tall and thin and carried herself well. Her face was now rather gaunt, but she must have been good-looking once. In fact, she came from a good family and she might have married well, but the Great War robbed her of the chance to find a husband.

She had been hired as Phoebe’s governess when Dido was sent to finishing school in Switzerland. They got along well. Phoebe was a bright little girl and a pleasure to teach, even though Miss Gumble’s conscience had been nagging her to abandon her post and volunteer for war work. She had a good brain. Surely she could be useful in any number of ways.

Phoebe looked up. “Oh, hello, Gumbie. I didn’t hear you come in. You’ll never guess what: I found a body in the far field when I was riding this morning.”

“A body? Good gracious. Did you tell your father?”

“Yes, and he and the army man went to take a look at it. It was a man whose parachute didn’t open, and he must have fallen out of a plane. He was awfully smashed up.”

“How horrid for you,” Gumbie said.

“Yes, it was, rather,” Phoebe said. “But you would have been proud of me. I didn’t let anyone see I was upset. The worst thing was that I almost rode over it. Can you imagine? Luckily, the boy from London who’s living with the gamekeeper ran out and stopped me. He was jolly brave, actually.”

“Good for him.” Gumbie came around behind Phoebe to do up the buttons on her cotton dress. Since Phoebe had now declared herself too old to have a nanny, her governess had taken over such tasks. She was smart enough to realise that a girl of twelve needed some looking after, even if she claimed she didn’t. The child’s mother, Lady Esme, was a nice enough person but hadn’t a clue about mothering her children, essentially leaving them to fend for themselves. Miss Gumble was only surprised that they had all turned out remarkably well. She smiled at Phoebe.

“If I were you, I’d go down and have a jolly good breakfast before we start work. I always find that food is the best thing if you’ve had a shock. Food and hot, sweet tea. They work wonders.”

Phoebe undid her pigtails and started to brush her hair. “I wonder who he was, poor man.”

“I expect it was some kind of night-time training exercise that went wrong,” Miss Gumble said. “You know, commando stuff.”

“So many horrid things seem to be happening, don’t they?” Phoebe said while she tugged at a stubborn tangle in her corn-coloured hair. “Alfie said he saw a dead baby lying in the street and a woman whose clothes had been blown off her.”

“Poor Alfie,” Miss Gumble said. “He was sent here to get away from the distressing sights of the war, and now the war has followed him.”

She took the brush from Phoebe. “Give me your hair ribbon. You can’t go downstairs looking like Alice in Wonderland.”

Phoebe turned obediently and allowed her governess to tie back her hair. “Gumbie,” she said. “How long do you think the war will go on? For a long time?”

“I hope so,” Miss Gumble replied.

Phoebe spun around, shocked. “You want the war to go on?”

“I do. Because if it ends quickly, it will mean that the Germans have conquered.”

“Conquered? You mean come into England?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Do you think that might happen?”

“I think it’s all too possible, Phoebe. We’ll do our best, of course. Mr. Churchill said that we would fight them on the beaches and in our back gardens, but I wonder how many people actually would when it came to it?”

“My father would,” Phoebe said.

“Yes, I expect he would,” Miss Gumble replied, “but there are plenty of people who wouldn’t put up a fight. We’ve all grown tired of war already, and if it goes on much longer . . . well, we’ll welcome anyone who can return life to normal.”

She tied the girl’s hair ribbon. “Go on. Go down before your father eats all the good stuff.”





CHAPTER FIVE


Farleigh, the breakfast room

May 1941



Phoebe actually liked this dining room better than the cavernous oak-panelled room where they had taken their meals before the war. This had been a former music room, painted light blue with gilded trim, and tall French windows looked out over the lake. Sunlight was streaming in. It felt warm and safe because Phoebe was still cold. She had looked in vain for scrambled eggs and just served herself a plate of kedgeree when her father came in, followed by the English setters who were jumping around him excitedly.

“I hope you’ve left something for me, young lady,” he said, striding over to the sideboard. “Would you blasted animals go away and leave me in peace? You’ll not get any bacon, you know. There’s a war on.”

“I thought you’d had breakfast.” Phoebe took a generous mouthful of rice. It was now, unfortunately, almost cold, but the bits of kipper made it taste all right.

“I was interrupted in the middle of mine, if you remember.” Lord Westerham took the silver lid off the chafing dish. “Ah, good. There is still plenty. I suppose nobody else is up yet?”

“Dido is. She wanted me to show her the body.”

“That young woman is going to come to a sticky end if she’s not careful.” He looked up as Lady Esme came in, holding an envelope in her hand. “Hear that, Esme? Your idiot daughter wanted to see the body of a man who fell into our field.” He took his place at the head of the table, and the dogs sat expectantly beside him.

Lady Esme looked only vaguely surprised. “I thought I heard something of the kind when I was having my morning tea,” she said. “Well, I suppose she could be curious. I suppose I was at her age. Whose body was it?”

“Some damned army chappie, although the colonel doesn’t see how it can be one of his. Bit fishy if you ask me.”

“Mummy, I found the body,” Phoebe said.

Lady Westerham had now taken a piece of toast and sat beside her husband. “Did you, dear? That must have been exciting for you.”

Phoebe glanced at her. Gumbie was perceptive enough to know that it had shocked Phoebe, but not her mother, who was now calmly opening the envelope. “Oh, it’s a letter from Clemmie Churchill,” she said, showing enthusiasm for the first time. “I was expecting to hear from her about the garden party at Chartwell next month.”

“Garden party?” Lord Westerham bellowed. “Doesn’t Clemmie Churchill know there’s a war on?”

“Of course she does, but Winston misses Chartwell and needs cheering up, so she arranged this little garden party for him at the home he misses so much,” she said. “Be quiet and let me read, Roddy.”

Her eyes scanned the page. “Poor thing,” she said.

“I hardly think that being wife of the prime minister can be described as a poor thing,” Lord Westerham muttered between bites of breakfast.

“She says that Winston is horribly overworked, gets almost no sleep, and in consequence is always bad-tempered.”

Lord Westerham snorted. “Winston has always been bad-tempered, ever since I’ve known him. The moment anything doesn’t go the way he wants it to, he explodes. I should imagine losing a war would not be kind to anyone’s temper.”