In Farleigh Field: A Novel of World War II

“I probably could, but I can’t go against your father’s wishes while you’re still a minor. There must be useful things to be done in Sevenoaks or Tonbridge.”

“Being a land girl and helping raise pigs? That’s about it. I want to do something exciting. I’m going to ask Mr. Churchill next time we see him. Pah knows him quite well, you know. And if Mr. Churchill says he wants to employ me, then Pah certainly can’t say no, can he?”

“Do you have any useful skills?” Ben asked. “Can you type and take shorthand?”

“Not really.” She chewed on her lip, making him realise how young she still was.

“That’s the sort of thing that women are hired to do on the whole,” he said. “Office work. Clerical stuff.”

“Boring, boring, boring. I’d rather drive an ambulance or learn to be a radio operator or even join the army.”

“They don’t let women fight. I imagine you’d still be doing clerical tasks in uniform.”

“It’s not fair.” She pouted. “I’m just as capable as these boys. And just as brave.”

“Oh no, miss,” one of the soldiers said. “It was to protect ladies like you that we joined up. We have to believe that you’ll be safe at home, waiting for us when we’re shipped overseas.”

“Will you be going overseas soon?” Ben asked.

The young soldier frowned. “We haven’t heard anything. Our lot was at Dunkirk. We lost men there, but I suppose it will be our turn to ship out again soon enough. In the meantime, life in Kent isn’t too bad. Especially when there are young ladies like you around.” And he grinned at Dido.

Ben had just decided there was no point in staying on any longer at the pub when Dr. Sinclair came in and beside him a middle-aged man. There was something distinctly foreign in his facial features and the cut of his jacket. The mysterious German, Ben thought and went over to greet them. The doctor greeted Ben warmly and introduced his companion. “This is Dr. Rosenberg. He’s helping me with my practice. Splendid chap.”

The other man gave a correct little bow and held out his hand. “How do you do?” he said in clipped English.

“You’re from Germany?” Ben asked pleasantly.

“Austria,” Dr. Rosenberg said. “I was at the medical school at the University of Vienna before the war.”

“One of their most distinguished professors,” Dr. Sinclair added. “He managed to get out just in time.”

The man looked at Ben with a bleak expression. “It never occurred to me that I was not safe, even though my grandfather was Jewish. I mean, I don’t look Jewish, do I? And I was a respected man. Then the Germans marched in, and I was dismissed from my position and told I had to wear a yellow star. That was enough for me. I left everything and took the next train to Italy and then to France and then here.” He paused to take the glass of beer that the doctor offered him. “I was fortunate to get out in time. I hear that my friends and relatives were not so lucky. They made my fellow professors scrub the streets while people spat on them. And others just disappeared. Nobody knew where they went, but there were rumours of camps . . .” He shook his head. “Sometimes I feel guilty that I am here, in this pleasant place, able to practise my medicine.”

“You made the right decision, old chap,” Dr. Sinclair said. “You acted. Others didn’t. Most people don’t think such things can happen to them until too late.”

Ben left the Three Bells, thinking about Dr. Rosenberg. As he had said, he didn’t look Jewish, with his blond hair and light greenish eyes. Ben toyed with the idea that he could have been a plant, sent over to become embedded in the community. Dr. Sinclair was a soft-hearted man, lonely, easily taken in. Perhaps the parachutist had expected to find sanctuary at the doctor’s house.





CHAPTER EIGHTEEN


Farleigh again


The next morning there was great excitement in several households with the arrival of the morning post. Lady Esme looked up in surprise, waving a sheet of paper at the other occupants of the breakfast table. “Well, isn’t that nice?” she said. “We’re invited to a dinner party at the Prescotts to celebrate Jeremy’s safe return home.”

“Just you and Pah or all of us?” Dido asked.

“It says you and your family,” Lady Esme said. “Not Phoebe, of course. She’s too young for dinner parties.”

“What?” Phoebe looked up from her porridge. “That’s not fair. I’m never included in anything.”

“You are not an adult, Phoebe. You haven’t come out,” Lady Esme said.

“Neither has Dido. Neither has anybody these days,” Phoebe said.

“Don’t remind me!” Dido said angrily. “If you’re talking about not fair, then my missing a season is the unfairest of all. No balls. No parties. Nothing. I’ll never meet a man and I’ll die an old spinster.”

“I don’t know how they can get their hands on enough food to hold a dinner party when we are eating sawdust sausages and shepherd’s pie that is ninety-percent potato.” Lord Westerham interrupted this tirade. “But then that blighter Prescott always does seem to get his hands on things other people can’t. He drives that Rolls of his around as if there wasn’t petrol rationing.”

“He’s on important committees, dear,” Lady Esme said. “Obviously, he has to go up to London.”

“What’s wrong with a train, like for the rest of us?” Lord Westerham snapped. “I am most careful about the amount of petrol I use.”

“I don’t believe you’ve taken out the motorcar once since the chauffeur was called up,” Lady Esme said. “But then you’ve always been a hopeless driver.”

“I resent that,” Lord Westerham retorted. “I’m sure I could be a splendid driver if I put my mind to it. But there’s always been a chauffeur, so there didn’t seem much point. Besides, we are supposed to set a good example by not using any unnecessary petrol. And since I’m apparently no use to anybody in the war effort, apart from leading the local home guard, I have no justification to use petrol.”

“If you’d teach me to drive, then I could chauffeur us around,” Dido said. “Will you, Pah?”

“You? Drive us around? Even without the petrol coupons, the answer to that would be no, no, a thousand times no. You’d be more danger to the British populace than the Germans. You’d kill us all.”

“I wouldn’t,” Dido said, her cheeks now bright pink. “I bet I’d be a marvellous driver. Lots of girls from good families are driving ambulances and lorries these days. Doing their bit for the war effort, unlike me, stuck here, bored to tears.”

“Anyway, Roddy, you’ll have to get the motorcar out to drive us to the Prescotts,” Lady Esme said. “We can hardly arrive on bicycles.”

“I don’t know if I want to go,” Lord Westerham said. “There’s something about that blighter Prescott. I don’t trust him. He’s not one of us.”

“How can you say that, Pah?” Pamma had sat quietly until now, finishing up a slice of toast and marmalade.

“Because he’s not. Oh, he might have a fine house and all the airs and graces these days, but he grew up distinctly middle class.”