Page 169 of The Gathering Storm

‘What will happen to us?’ she asked, after a while.

He didn’t answer at once. It was an impossible question, anyway. She meant them, him and her, but also their household, their family, and she also meant the neighbourhood, York, England. All of them.

‘We’ll be all right,’ he said.

‘Do you really think so? I can’t help thinking that it’s going to be as bad as last time, and look at all the people we lost.’ He had nothing to say to that. Then she said, ‘But the Lady didn’t cry. So we’ll survive, won’t we?’

‘We’ll survive,’ he said.

Saturday was a waiting day. ‘It’s like Holy Saturday,’ Polly said, and strangely only Ethel really understood her, being an old-fashioned churchgoer. There was nothing to do but wait. She knew the children felt the atmosphere, so she took them over to Twelvetrees, where Jessie did her bit to entertain them, giving the little Lohmanns a riding lesson on a quiet horse, letting Alec take one over the jumps. They stayed for lunch, and then while Jessie went off to do things, Catherine and Ottilie played a protracted game of Monopoly with them. The Lohmanns had never played before, so it kept them thoroughly absorbed. Their English was now quite idiomatic, but they learned a few more words while playing the game.

Polly collected them and took them home for baths and supper. She had a telephone call from Emma, who chatted about her children, and sounded oddly disjointed. ‘I just wanted to know you were still there, I suppose,’ she confessed at last. ‘Everything is so strange. I somehow feel that if Morland Place is still there, if it’s all right, we’ll come through.’

‘Like the ravens at the Tower of London?’ Polly said.

‘Oh, yes – and goodness, what’s going to happen to them? Will they have—?’

‘Taken precautions to make sure they survive? I’m sure they will,’ Polly said.

Later that evening, there was a most unexpected call from Basil. ‘I was just talking to the Aged Ps, and they asked about you. So I said I’d give you a ring. Mum was on the phone to Aunt Molly for an hour today. Everyone’s ringing everyone else, it seems.’

‘It’s that sort of day,’ Polly said.

‘Yes, a transition day. From the state of peace to the state of war.’

‘What have you heard?’

‘Nothing from Germany over the ultimatum – unsurprisingly – so the government’s going to give them a final deadline of tomorrow morning. The French too, but a bit later. And after that – war will be declared.’

‘Oh, Basil!’

‘Don’t be like that. It’s going to be hard – harder than anybody realises, I think – but we’ll come through.’

‘You really think so?’

‘Britain’s been around for thousands of years. Caesar tried to beat us, and Napoleon, and the Kaiser, and they all failed. You don’t think that silly little man with the ridiculous moustache is going to put an end to our magnificent history, do you?’

She laughed shakily. ‘Oh, Basil, you do one so much good.’

‘Please tell the mater that. She thinks my hair is too long, and that I’m not serious enough about things.’

‘Wherever would she get that idea?’

Sunday, the 3rd of September. Not Easter Day, with its triumph and joy and the transcending of death, but a strangely holy day, all the same. Everyone moved quietly about the house, even the children. The world seemed to be holding its breath. The dogs followed Polly, keeping close, sensing the atmosphere. After breakfast, Lennie got out an enormous jigsaw puzzle and set it up on the dining-room table for the children. The picture on the lid was an odd one, of three circus workers playing draughts backstage – a clown, a bareback rider in ballet dress and a scarlet-uniformed ring master with waxed moustaches and a whip. The board was set out on an elephant’s stand from the ring, and a black-and-white dog lay nearby, wearing a clown’s ruff. Everyone who passed the door went in and looked, and placed a piece or two. It was the strange background to the day that Polly never forgot.

A little after eleven in the morning, there was an announcement on the wireless: ‘This is London. You will now hear a statement by the Prime Minister.’

It had been announced the night before that the deadline was eleven on Sunday morning, so everyone was hanging around nearby, waiting to hear. Polly urged everyone into the drawing-room, adults, children and servants.

Mr Chamberlain’s voice, with its oddly fluting vowel sounds, came on: clear, but tired, and despondent.

‘I am speaking to you from the Cabinet Room at ten Downing Street. This morning the British ambassador in Berlin handed the German government a final note stating that unless we heard from them by eleven o’clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received and that consequently this country is at war with Germany.

‘You can imagine what a bitter blow it is to me that all my long struggle to win peace has failed. Yet I cannot believe that there is anything more or anything different that I could have done and that would have been more successful. Up to the very last it would have been quite possible to have arranged a peaceful and honourable settlement between Germany and Poland. But Hitler would not have it. He had evidently made up his mind to attack Poland whatever happened, and although he now says he put forward reasonable proposals, which were rejected by the Poles, that is not a true statement.

‘The proposals were never shown to the Poles, nor to us, and, though they were announced in a German broadcast on Thursday night, Hitler did not wait to hear comments on them, but ordered his troops to cross the Polish frontier. His action shows convincingly that there is no chance of expecting that this man will ever give up his practice of using force to gain his will. He can only be stopped by force.

‘We and France are today, in fulfilment of our obligations, going to the aid of Poland, who is so bravely resisting this wicked and unprovoked attack upon her people. We have a clear conscience. We have done all that any country could do to establish peace, but a situation in which no word given by Germany’s ruler could be trusted and no people or country could feel themselves safe had become intolerable. And now that we have resolved to finish it, I know that you will all play your part with calmness and courage.