A Presumption of Death Read Free Page B

surely must have been part of an abbey before the Reformation, and although the handiest part, down some stairs behind the bar, is full of beer barrels, there are positively spacious catacombs further in. Gudgeon will throw these open to the villagers. The president of the Paggleham Women’s Institute was talking of providing comforts – built-in bunks, paraffin heaters, tea-kettles, a library of second-hand books, communal blankets – when, behold and lo! a difficulty arises: the Methodists of Paggleham will on no account be herded into a public house, not even as a matter of life and death. Mr Gudgeon, rather magnanimously I thought, offered to close off his beer barrels so that one could reach the safety of the vaults without even catching sight of a stave or hoop or spigot, but it will not do. In Paggleham not even Hitler will cause a Methodist to be caught sight of entering a public house.
    There matters rested for several days until someone remembered ‘The Cave’, an excavation in the chalk of Spring Hill, used, I am told, in the Napoleonic War as a munitions store, and seemingly deep enough for safety, and large enough for the congregation of the Chapel. Mrs Ruddle’s Bert is duly at work fitting it out with primitive bunks; never let it be said that Church folk or the Godless had an easier berth than Chapel folk . . .
    I can’t help thinking that in practice, when we get an air-raid, everyone will rush to the nearest point of safety, and we shall have ecumenical havens, one each end of the village.
    As Hitler has not yet obliged us with an actual peril, our excellent ARP committee has ordered a rehearsal on Saturday night, when an air-raid will be supposed to take place. It has to be Saturday, as everyone is available then, and nobody wants to imitate the horrible inconvenience that might attend a real air-raid.
    Since there is to be a dance on Saturday next week in the Village Memorial Hall, and we don’t want to disappoint the brave fellows from the airfields all around, the practice is timed for just after the dance, and we shall see if the Methodists’ cave is near enough to be reached in time. The cave would be nearer than the Crown for Talboys, of course, but I have promised to help Mrs Goodacre with the refreshments for the dance, so it will be the vaults for us this time. Dear Peter, how petty all this must seem to you, reading this letter, if you ever get it, in the middle of something much more world-shattering, and in danger for which no artificial rehearsal is necessary. But it’s all the news there is from our parish pump. God keep us from having anything more interesting to write to you about! . . .
    One
     
     
     
     
     
    It is through chance that, from among the various
    individuals of which each of us is composed,
    one emerges rather than another.
    Henry de Montherlant, Explicit Mysterium , 1931
     ‘Whoever, for example, Lady Peter,’ said Miss Agnes Twitterton, ‘is that?’
    ‘You do have a point, my dear,’ said Mrs Goodacre, the vicar’s wife, who was standing with the two women behind a trestle table at one end of the Village Hall, pouring out Miss Twitterton’s parsnip wine into rows of assorted sherry glasses. ‘There was a time, as you say, and not so long ago, when we would have known everybody we could possibly meet here – when any stranger was a seven-day wonder – and now here we are organising a village hop, and we don’t know half the people here. They could be anybody; indeed I expect they are.’
    Harriet looked around. The shabby little hall, with a dusty dais at one end, had perhaps fifty people in it. About half were young men in uniform, rather outshining the youthful farm workers and shop-boys in civvies. The uniform blotted out whatever they may have been like in peace-time; no better than the rest of the company, most likely, and possibly much worse, but khaki and air-force blue gave them now the status of heroes.
    It’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy