The White Cliffs Of Dover

Chapter One

The Chauffeur's Daughter

"What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, "This was their finest hour."

Winston S. Churchill, Prime Minister, House of Commons, 18th June 1940.

Downton Abbey, Yorkshire, England, June 1940.

"Father, did you hear on the radio, what Mr. Churchill said, in the House of Commons today?" asked Robert.

His father turned and then smiled at his eldest son. There was a moment's pause before the earl of Grantham answered and then, when he did so, it was almost hesitantly, as if Matthew was quoting from memory.

"What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over, the Battle of Britain is about to begin?" asked his father. "Yes, Robert, I did. Eventually. When, at last, I finally got back up here from the Estate Office".

On hearing his words, Mary shot her husband a fond look. Even if these days his hair was a little thinner, Matthew was still a fine figure of a man. In Tom's very own words, to be sure. Nevertheless, what with one thing and another, Mary thought that Matthew was working himself far too hard. Since the war had begun in earnest, some days she hardly saw anything of him. He was often up soon after dawn, out in all weathers and sometimes did not return back here to the abbey until just before dinner. When she had suggested he was doing too much, he had looked her coolly in the eye and asked if he didn't do what needed to be done, then who else would do it?

Mary glanced over at Tom and Sybil.

To all intents and purposes, down the years, since they married neither had changed very much but, as with them all, the signs were there nonetheless. There were lines on Tom's forhead which hadn't been there before and since the birth of their last child, little Dermot now aged eight, hopefully fast asleep up in the old nursery at the top of the house, Sybil had never quite shed the extra weight she had put on. There were flecks of grey in her hair too; in her own as well, if the truth was told. No, none of them were getting any younger. And now, of all things, this bloody, bloody war!

For his part, Robert grinned recognising the slight hesitation for what it was; a pause for effect only and nothing more than that. After all, his father's faculty for remembering all kinds of things was well known; second only to that of Uncle Tom. The more so, where his father was concerned, with all manner of matters appertaining to the Downton Abbey estate where Papa's knowledge, of the tenants, of births, of marriages and of deaths, of the half dozen or so farms, of alterations and repairs, of crop yields, and of all the other minutiae, was well nigh encyclopaedic. With the sun at last now beginning to set, Robert saw his father glance wistfully out of the Drawing Room window, at the Supermarine Spitfire parked on the expanse of green lawn directly opposite the south front of the abbey.

To Matthew it didn't seem more than a handful of years ago that he had watched both his sons, Robert and Simon, out there on that same lawn, playing at Cowboys and Indians. Now Robert was a man grown, last year, deaf to his parents' entreaties, having deferred his entry to Oxford, he had instead taken a short term commission in the Royal Air Force and was now fighting for his country;having first seen action in the skies over Dunkirk but a matter of weeks ago. Simon was only two years younger than Robert. What if this damned war lasted more than a couple of years? After all, back in 1914 they had been naive enough to believe that they would all be home for Christmas.

And look at what had then happened.

Four years of unparalleled slaughter and countless millions dead, maimed or missing. So how had it come down to this? History repeating itself. This time not because of the vain glorious pretensions of some gilded idiot like the Kaiser now living out his life in exile in the Netherlands or the last Tsar shot to death along with all his family by the Bolsheviks but all because of the over weening ambitions of that power hungry, jumped up, bloody little corporal over there in Germany, along with that bull necked, goggle eyed Mussolini in Italy. Swaggering upstarts the pair of them; the words were Friedrich's, not his own but, for all that, they were perfectly apt. Thank God Mary and his two youngest had been born girls; Becky just thirteen and little Emily, born in the summer of 1935 and aged but five years old. Masking his emotions, Matthew turned and smiled at his eldest son.

"Very impressive, I must say!"
"What the 'plane?" asked Robert. "Great turn of speed, guvnor; Merlin engine, 360 mph tops!"

"Feck no! You daft bugger!"

"Danny! Mind your language, please! This isn't the Brazen Head. For once, do try and remember where you are and also who else is present!" With some degree of exasperation, Sybil, who was seated on the sofa next to Danny's father looked up at their eldest son, shook her head in disbelief, and then nodded pointedly in the direction of Danny's grandmother.

"All right Ma!" The young man sighed. Then, thoroughly unabashed, Danny grinned happily down at his pretty, dark haired mother; the same endearing lopsided grin possessed of his own father and which when worn by either Tom or their eldest son was always guaranteed to melt her heart.

"What your Da really means, Rob, is that he's most impressed that you didn't manage to splatter yourself and that ruddy thing of yours all over the front of the abbey!" laughed Danny now digging his English cousin and best friend gently in the ribs.

Robert laughed.

"Armament's pretty good too. Four machine guns...," he began. Across the room, Matthew now saw Mary blanche. Silently he shook his head at his son and then deftly changed the subject.

"Whiskey, old chap?"

"Thanks, guvnor, don't mind if I do!".

"Danny? What about you? It's not Jameson, I'm afraid. Will Glenturret be all right?"

Danny chuckled.

"Uncle Matthew, when have you ever heard an Irishman ever refuse a whiskey? Even from north of the Scottish border. For sure! And thanks!"

Over the rim of their cut glass tumblers Danny's and Robert's eyes met in a silent salute. At this precise moment, given all the particular circumstances of which most in this room, were for the present entirely and blissfully ignorant, whiskey, whether Irish or Scottish, was just what they both needed.

It had been earlier the previous day when, late in the afternoon, shortly after Barrow had served them tea, but before the arrival of the Bransons from Ireland, on hearing close at hand the roar of an aeroplane directly overhead, that Mary, countess of Grantham and her second son Simon, Robert's younger brother, had both come running out onto the gravel at the front of the abbey. They were just in time to see the same aircraft doing what Mary recognised immediately as a Victory Roll right over the roofs of the great house.

Shortly thereafter, in a precisely executed manoeuvre, the very same aeroplane had landed on the wide sweep of manicured lawn in front of the abbey, drawing neatly to a stop at the very edge of the gravel. A moment later, the cockpit slid back and, evidently having already pulled off his flying helmet, a fair haired pilot clambered out. Dropping lithely down from off the wing, divesting himself of both his goggles and gloves as he made his way towards them, a young man had sauntered nonchalantly across the grass to where both mother and son were still standing.

"Hallo, Mama!" he laughed. A moment later and Robert, who now topped Mary in height, had drawn his mother into a bone crushing bear hug of an embrace.

"Oh, darling, do put me down!"" cried Mary who, still never one to show her emotions, at least not in public, was fighting back tears of happiness.

"Hi, Si!" The two brothers embraced.

Simon then drew back, smiled and nodded towards the now stationary aeroplane.

"Hello Rob. Well, I have to hand it to you, old chap, your arrivals are never short of spectacular!"

Not that at the time Simon Crawley could have known anything about what was to happen that evening but this time his elder brother's homecoming would prove to be far more spectacular than any one of them in the family could ever have begun to imagine.

Robert grinned.

"Do you know, Si, I don't think I could have put it better myself".

"Darling, when do you have to go back?" asked Mary, fighting a wave of conflicting emotions, of fear, of pride, of a mother's love for her son and trying desperately to keep her voice sounding neutral.

"In the morning, Mama. When I said I was coming up, the skipper said I could bring the kite but only so long as I'm back at Croydon by tomorrow afternoon".

Once again, Matthew eyed the stationary Spitfire through the window; this time on seeing what he saw, he shook his head and sighed. No doubt old Alf' Bates, the Head Gardener, would have a thing or two to say about those tyre tracks. Although on reflection, perhaps it didn't really matter that much. What with the constant demands being made upon the estate by the Ministry of Agriculture to turn every available acre over to the production of crops, it was likely that the green expanse of lawn in front of the abbey would, like the cricket field over beyond Home Farm, soon be under the plough. And as for this useless great house, most of the rooms were already shut up and the domestic staff reduced to a shadow of what it had once been. Of course Barrow had been furious but then this house was his life and he had nowhere else to go. And it would have happened sooner or later, war or no war. Living life the way it had been lived here before the Great War was no longer an option. Matthew sighed again. He had yet to tell Mary about the letter he had received.

"Have you heard anything more from Edith?" asked Cora clearly hopeful that she would hear that they had indeed done so. But in this, she was to be sorely disappointed.
"No, Mama. I'm sorry we haven't. Not since her telephone call here three days ago. According to Matthew, the line from France was pretty bad. It was a miracle that she was able to get through at all. Do, please, try not to worry".

Mary smiled and patted her mother's knee re-assuringly, knowing that whatever she said their mother, Cora Dowager Countess of Grantham now aged nearly eighty and increasingly frail since her mild stroke the previous year, would always fret if anyone of them was in any kind of danger, real or only perceived. In this case however, the danger was all too real.

"I'll try not to". Cora smiled.

"Mama! Look, I know I've suggested it before but why don't you come back and live here, with us? Matthew and I would be delighted if you would. There's plenty of space and the girls will love having you around".

"Thank you my darling. I know you mean well but no. This was the house your father brought me to as a young bride, where we made our home, where you girls were born. But even now, nearly ten years on, I could never come back here to live. It just wouldn't feel right when your father isn't ..."

"We could always up sticks and move in with you at the Dower House," suggested Matthew. "At least for the duration".

Mary shook her head emphatically.

"Matthew, I've said it before and I'll say it again. The earl and countess of Grantham reside at Downton Abbey. That's how it's always been, that's how it will remain and there's an end of it".

Matthew shook his head.

That might well be how things had always been but he knew that the time was fast approaching when they would all have to face up to the kind of changes none of them could ever have expected. Largely thanks to his careful husbandry, the Downton Abbey estate was in far better shape than most of those that remained in the locality but whether it would survive the demands made upon it by this war remained to be seen. The army had already commandeered Monks' Wood down by the main road, felled the timber and put up a rash of Nissen huts to provide barracks for an influx of soldiers for whom there was no room in the barracks in and around Ripon. That had been the start of it and now, just last week, had come that letter. He was dreading telling Mary that in all likelihood they would have to give up this house too so that it could be turned into a military hospital and this time around one for all ranks, not a convalescent home for ... how was it Tom had termed it all those years ago? Oh, yes! For randy officers.

"So where on earth are they all now, Matthew? I mean Edith, Friedrich and the boys?" asked Tom. "You didn't say at dinner. By the way, Mary, before we go up tonight I think either Sybil or I should go down and thank Mrs. Bastow. Given the circumstances, that was a truly excellent meal".

Mary smiled.

"Thank you, Tom. Yes, it was, wasn't it? From what I've heard, I'm given to understand that it's Mrs. Bastow's son we should be thanking. Apparently, he's quite the dab hand at finding all manner of things which, given the blasted rationing over here, would otherwise be completely unobtainable and from a variety of sources too. Although it's my considered opinion that it's best not to enquire too closely as to where they all come from!"

Tom chuckled. The thought of his aristocratic sister-in-law blithely eating blacket market food was too funny for words.

"It's not that much different back in Ireland, what with the Emergency. All kinds of food are rationed. Fuel's short too. Both petrol for cars and peat for fires. They've been stockpiling turves and digging allotments in Phoenix Park too. Mind you, now that Danny's moved into town, Bobby and Dermot have taken over his vegetable garden behind the house so at least we won't starve!"

"Turves?" Mary sounded nonplussed.

"Turves of peat. You remember, I told you. To burn on the fire. Dried turves of peat are our staple fuel.

"Rebecca's been doing the same here too, in the kitchen garden with Robert's old patch. Emily says she helps although I think she just sits and watches. Doesn't like getting her hands dirty that one. A bit like me I suppose!" She laughed. "God knows where either Robert or Rebecca get their love of the soil from. Certainly not from me. Perhaps it's something to do with Matthew's obsession with the estate. Mind you, as far as food goes, we're better off than some round here".

"Well, no need to worry, Mary. After all, we've already eaten whatever could have been used in evidence against us from tonight's meal! So no case to answer, for sure! Now, what news is there about Edith, Friedrich and the two boys? Where precisely are they?"

Matthew smiled, shook his head, and spread his hands expansively.

"God knows! From what she said to me on the telephone, Tom, and, as Mary's already said, the line was bloody dreadful, they'd been making for the coast over towards St. Nazaire. Apparently, someone in our embassy in Paris told them that some kind of evacuation of military personnel, our chaps, the Czechs and the Poles too, as well as civilians, was about to get under way from several of the French ports on the west coast. When she telephoned, Edith said they'd already managed to reach the outskirts of Nantes. Then we were cut off. Mind you, I heard a rumour doing the rounds that the Lancastria sailed from Liverpool a matter of days ago to help with the evacuation. I don't know how true that is or what good it will do them. After Dunkirk, everything over there is in complete shambles. A right bloody mess from all accounts".

"And what if they don't make it, father? What then?" asked Robert nervously.

"Of course they'll make it, Rob. You know Aunt Edith! It'll take more than a few bloody Nazis and their bombs to stop her!" Danny smiled. So too did Sybil and for once she forbore to criticise her dearly loved eldest son's use of yet another expletive.

Both of the young men had a very high opinion of the practical capabilities of their Aunt Edith whose exploits throughout the 20s and 30s in the Near East, in Egypt, in Palestine and in what was now called the Hashemite Kingdom of Iraq, had passed into the annals of Branson and Crawley family folklore. Her two nephews present here this evening in the Drawing Room of Downton Abbey both loved her dearly and considered their aunt to be intelligent, sophisticated, worldly wise and as far as they were concerned, well nigh indestructible.

"Anyway," continued Matthew, "before we were cut off, your aunt said there was some shelling and that if they didn't make it on board one of the ships, then they'll continue driving as far south as they possibly could in their motor, hopefully all the way down to Biarritz, where they have friends, and then try and make it over the Pyrenees and the border into neutral Spain".

"And just how on earth do they propose doing that for sure?" asked Tom glancing over his shoulder while refilling his glass from the decanter of whiskey.

"Knowing Friedrich and Edith, given the fact they both know how to fly, I wouldn't put it past them to try and commandeer a 'plane from somewhere!" laughed Sybil trying somewhat to lighten the sombreness of the mood.

"What? With young Max and little Kurt in tow? Don't be bloody ridiculous!" snapped Mary. This whole business was beginning to get to her so much so that her head was starting to throb ominously, a sure sign that she was about to suffer one of her migraines. Putting her fingers to her temples, she grimaced and shook her head. "Matthew, do you really have to do that now?"

"Darling, the daylight's already going. The blackout remember," he said gently continuing with the business of closing and latching the shutters of the window nearest to him.

"Here, I'll help you". Tom rose and crossed to the adjacent window and likewise began to close the shutters.

"Thanks".

"Max will be fine. You'll see, they all will. And God help any German storm troopers who get in Edith's way. She'll make mincemeat out of them!" laughed Tom now sitting back down on the sofa next to Sybil.

"Mary, darling, in case you've forgotten, Max is seventeen now..."

"Yes, but he's still... delicate. And little Kurt..." In mounting disbelief, once again, Mary shook her head. God knows what dear, dead Papa would have made of all of this; any of it.

"Mary, are you all right?" asked Sybil.

"No, not really. I think I'm getting one of my damned heads. If you don't mind, if it doesn't improve and soon, I think I'll go upstairs and lie down".

"No, of course not. By all means go up, if you feel you need to do so".

Standing by the fireplace, Danny, dapper in his silk tie and lounge suit, and Robert, smart in his uniform of a Pilot Officer with the Royal Air Force, now did their very best not to laugh. Sadly there was still as yet no cure for Max's haemophilia. However, having had several serious bleeds, the worst of which had occurred when he suffered a severe nosebleed as the family had fled Austria in the wake of the Anschluss, their dearly loved cousin Max had made it through the dangerous years of his childhood relatively unscathed.

The last time his Irish and English cousins had seen him had been the previous summer, in July 1939, when the Bransons and the Crawleys had all been on a visit to Uncle Friedrich and Aunt Edith and their two sons at La Rosière the small moated château they owned which lay close to Nantes and stood on the north bank of the Loire. Kurt was then only seven but for his part Max was a strapping, sixteen year old, sandy haired blue eyed youth; almost the same height as his father Friedrich and, thanks to his mother's patient tuition, a crack shot. So, despite his precarious health, for anyone to describe him as delicate did seem faintly ridiculous.

With Rosenberg having been confiscated by the Nazis, it had been assumed by everyone in the family that the Schőnborns would settle in Switzerland, at least for the duration of the war, where Friedrich also had property. Instead, quite unexpectedly, they had moved to La Rosière, with its pepper pot towers and steep slate roofs standing on the banks of the Loire, a magical place of great beauty; or as Sybil described it one summer's evening with Tom beside her, his arm around her waist, both of them standing gazing at the distant château, a fairy tale castle come to life.

But reality has an unpleasant habit of intruding upon fairy tales.

It came to La Rosière and the family living there gradually, almost by stealth, in the form of the Munich Crisis, the annexation by Germany of what remained of Czechoslovakia, the pact between Germany and the Soviet Union, the German invasion of Poland and finally the declaration of war against Germany by both Britain and France. With the Russians having attacked Finland and then occupied the Baltic States, Germany then launched an invasion of Denmark and Norway followed by an attack on the Low Countries. With the German invasion of France and the British evacuation from Dunkirk, Edith and Friedrich realised that for the sake of their boys and also for themselves that finally, at the eleventh hour, with the enemy almost at the gates, they were now left with no choice but to somehow try and escape from German occupied France.

"Well, that maybe," conceded Cora. "But even so, Kurt is only eight years old. The same age as Dermot. He's just a little boy".

"And, unlike some I could mention, he thinks the world of his older brother!" added Danny. He nudged Robert in the ribs. "Has Si forgiven us yet?" he asked with a chuckle and a knowing wink to Robert who, now recalling what had happened the previous summer at La Rosière, promptly burst out laughing.

Danny and Robert's present amusement centred on the fate that had so nearly befallen Oscar, Simon's old, decidedly moth-eaten, and much loved teddy bear. Having been warned by Danny's twelve year old brother Bobby, who had seen what was afoot from one of the upstairs windows of the château, aged almost sixteen, Simon had hot footed it outside; to find Oscar sitting sedately out in the sunshine on top of the wall of the moat amidst the broken, shattered fragments of a row of empty wine bottles which Danny and Robert, under the expert tutelage of Max, were using for target practice with their Austrian cousin's new hunting rifle. When Simon arrived on the scene, only one bottle remained intact, with poor little Oscar being snatched from the jaws of death by his owner at the very last minute; the evidence and manner of his demise which would otherwise have been lost forever in the murky depths of the moat at La Rosière.

"So just what do you propose they do then, Mama? Surrender to the Nazis? You know what that would mean for Friedrich. And God knows what would happen to Edith and the boys. They'd probably be sent to one of Herr Hitler's concentration camps!" exclaimed Sybil.

Cora gasped.

"They wouldn't dare do that, surely?"
"Don't count on it!" Sybil shook her head. Sometimes she thought her mother lived in another world.

"It's all right, Mama. That won't happen," soothed Mary reassuringly. "If it comes to it, if I have to, I'll sail over there myself in the Skylark. Anything to fetch them all home, safe and sound".

Robert smiled, thinking back to a hot summer's day several years ago, when he was sixteen years old, and his mother had asked him if he would teach her how to sail. To begin with, Robert wasn't sure if he had heard her correctly. But no, it turned out that his aristocratic mother was serious and the following day, she had appeared at the boathouse at the agreed hour, dressed in a headscarf and wearing trousers for the very first time. As memory stirred, Robert smiled again. Mama had proved an avid pupil and had taken to sailing like a duck to water; which was just as well as there had been several spills in the first few weeks. The sight of his normally elegant mother trudging beside him back to the great house soaked to the skin, as had once happened to his dearly loved grandfather, was something which he would never forget.

Oddly enough, at the time, he had never asked her why it was she wanted to learn how to sail. Perhaps that had been to do with the fact that even then their relationship had still been rather formal. Not that he ever doubted that Mama loved him; he knew she did. However, unlike Danny's parents, it was not until after their trip to the Continent in the summer of 1932 when they had all stayed in a villa overlooking Florence, that his mother had become much better at expressing her maternal feelings, both towards himself, his brother and their sisters. It was only some time later that Robert thought he finally understood the real reason which had lain behind his mother's otherwise inexplicable request made to him in the summer of 1936 that he teach her how to sail. Grandps had loved sailing with his grandsons out on the lake at Downton and Robert suspected that it was in the Skylark that his mother felt herself closer to her late father than anywhere else on the estate.

"Tom, do you want another snifter?" asked Matthew.

"For sure".

"Robert?"

"Thank you Papa".

"Danny?"
"For sure!"

"Where's Saiorse?" asked Sybil looking at her watch. "Her shift down at the Cottage Hospital ended well over an hour ago".

Their daughter's decision, to follow her mother into nursing, had taken both Tom and Sybil completely by surprise, just as on the family's return from France, where they had been staying with the Crawleys at Friedrich and Edith's château beside the Loire, had Saiorse's announcement that she wanted to continue her training over here in England, at Leeds General Infirmary. The reason Saiorse had given was that she wanted to succeed on her own merits rather than by appearing to hang onto her mother's coat tails. After all, Danny, who had followed in the footsteps of both his father and his cousin Padraig and gone into journalism was finding it inordinately difficult to shrug off the fact that his father was Tom Branson, Deputy Editor of the Irish Independent. Besides which, as Saiorse pointed out, she would not be far from Downton Abbey and, if ever she needed a bolthole, she could always ring up Uncle Matthew and Aunt Mary. Not that so far she had done so but it was early days yet.

As arranged, Saiorse had met them on the platform at Leeds where they had all boarded the York train and then travelled onto Downton together with Saiorse explaining that she had arranged to go down to the Cottage Hospital that evening before coming on up to the abbey. It was an opportunity to see, at close quarters, the workings of a small local infirmary.

"Don't fret love!" Tom smiled. "I expect she's stopped off for a chat with young Joe down at Home Farm. She said that she was going to drop in on the Morstons".

"Do you think she's sweet on him?" Sybil laughed.

"Perhaps!" Tom chuckled. "No, if there was anyone special, I'm sure we'd have heard about him long ago".

At Tom's words, Cora smiled. How different the world was now from what it had once been; her Irish grand daughter unchaperoned casually "dropping in" to see a young man, the son of one of her English son-in-law's tenants.

"And where precisely is Rebecca?" asked Mary.

"I told her she could stay up for an extra hour," said Matthew. He smiled.

"Did you now?" Mary lofted an eyebrow. "That still doesn't tell me where she..."

"In the Billiards Room. Playing snooker with Simon and Bobby," said Danny.

"Really?" asked his aunt with another lift of her ever expressive eyebrows. Sometimes, in fact more often than not, Mary despaired of her young daughter who, now aged thirteen had all the makings of a tomboy. Despite Sybil having reassured her that Rebecca would grow out of the phase just as had Saiorse, Mary was not so sure.

Tom stood up and joined his brother-in-law standing by the fireplace.

"So, Rob, what was it you wanted to say to us that you couldn't say over dinner?" asked his uncle.

"Well, there's something I do have to tell you ..." began Robert.

"Yes, I think we gathered that," said Matthew.

It was then that the door to the Drawing Room opened and as it did so, it seemed to Sybil that a faint sigh ran round the room and for one brief moment it was almost as if there were two others with them here in the room.

"Ah there you are!" exclaimed Tom.

Saiorse smiled but didn't answer her father. Instead, she remained standing by the door.

"I'm here," she said.

"So I can see," replied Matthew and as he did so it was now that, quite unexpectedly, Robert crossed the room to stand beside Saiorse.

"I don't think this is such a good idea. We mustn't worry Granny," he whispered.

"You asked me to come and I've come".

"Will someone please tell me what is going on?" asked Cora, somewhat peremptorily.

"Granny has as much right to know as anybody else," said Saiorse, taking firm hold of Robert's hand.

"Why don't I find that reassuring?" asked the Dowager Countess.

Author's Note:

The Brazen Head is Dublin's oldest public house.

Croydon was one of the airfields which played a major part in the Battle of Britain.

The Emergency is the name given in Ireland to the Second World War. While the republic remained neutral during the conflict its citizens found themselves subject to many of the same privations as those of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, including rationing of both food and fuel.