We'll Meet Again

Chapter One

Adlestrop

Old Montague Street, Whitechapel, London, England, 10th May 1941.

Barely ten months had elapsed since the marriage between Max Schönborn and Claire Barton.

Their lovemaking had undoubtedly moved on apace from those first, pleasurable, slightly awkward sexual encounters. The early, eager, earnest attempts by both of them to try and please the other, to reach the stage at which they both were now, that being a blissfully happy state of contented, settled familiarity. Nonetheless, each was more than willing to continue experimenting, exploring further, to find hitherto un-dreamed ways of giving the other physical pleasure. After all, as Max had said, quoting the Dowager Countess, his grandmother Cora:

"When two people love each other, then everything is the most terrific fun".

An observation with which Max and Claire concurred wholeheartedly.

And, because the two of them were so utterly secure in their love for each other, it mattered not which of them took the lead; Max being more than content for Claire to show she wanted him; while for her part Claire was just as happy if Max showed his need of her. As had been the case earlier tonight, when, with modesty between them long since being a thing of the past, coming in search of Claire, Max had wandered, stark naked, into the kitchen of their shabby, second floor flat here on Old Montague Street, in Whitechapel, in the East End of London.

"Max! Yes! Oh! Yes! There! Yes! There! I love you! I love you!"

With the physical sensations coursing through her body, Claire found herself wanting the impossible: that this one moment should last forever. All the same, she sought to prolong it, by turns, clutching, moaning, arching herself against Max, her nails raking the damp skin of his back, tangling in his hair. Now clasped her arms around his neck, tightened the grip of her legs about him, drawing him in yet deeper still.

A short while later, and Claire was nearing the point of her release. Knew from the quickened pace of Max's breathing that it was the same for him too. And then when it happened, they came together, Claire screaming Max's name, as he spilled himself inside her.

Yet, however abiding and deep their love was for each other, both Claire and Max were very well aware that because of his haemophilia, however much they might wish it otherwise, things were as they were, and it was unthinkable that they should run the risk of Claire falling pregnant which, given their appetite for the sexual side of their marriage, would no doubt have happened long since. So in order to avoid this, given Max's inexperience with and dislike of using condoms, and coitus interruptus not being a viable option, Claire had solved the problem for them, some time ago in fact, by the simple expedient of the fitting of a coil.

Now happy and sated, they also came down together.

"I love you, Max! I love you so very much!"

"Ich liebe dich so sehr, Liebling!"

Max smothered Claire's face with kisses, before rolling off her, then straightaway pulling her close. A moment later and he felt Claire's hand move from where it presently rested on his hip, first downwards to his thigh, and from there upwards, between his legs, seeking his manhood; Max sighing with pleasure, responding instantly to the practised touch of Claire's fingers.

And then ... the air raid siren began its all too familiar mournful wail.

"Scheiße!" yelled Max, sitting up in bed.

Unlike his Irish cousin Danny Branson, nineteen year old Max Schönborn was not given to mouthing profanities but that he did so was an indication of the frustration he felt. Now turning his head, through the chink between the shutters, Max glimpsed the pale beams of the search lights weaving back and forth across the inky blackness of the night; heard the thud of anti aircraft fire, followed quickly by the all too predictable crump of high explosives, causing the whole building to shake.

"Christ! That one was close!" Seemingly oblivious to what was happening, Claire took not the slightest notice; instead, snuggled herself in closer against Max, while outside, increasingly shot with flame, the night sky turned a fiery red, as London burned.

A moment later, there was yet another deafening explosion which, both from the noise and the shock waves that followed close upon it, came from somewhere even nearer at hand, perhaps the other side of the street. Here in the bedroom there was the sound of breaking glass as the window panes first crazed, then shattered, followed swiftly in turn by an acrid stench of burning and the unmistakable smell of gas, Max realising instantly that the mains must have gone. That, in itself, rather settled things; leaving Claire and he no alternative but to quit the snug, warm sanctuary of their bed, dress in the dark as quickly as they could, and then seek the comparative safety of the communal air raid shelter which stood further down the street.

Downton Station, West Riding, Yorkshire, England, June 1941.

Wreathed in steam, the last train of the day from Ripon drew slowly to a stop along side the unlit platform.

Here in the grimy, unkempt surroundings of a Third Class compartment, the paintwork chipped and scuffed, the upholstery sagging and faded, and the mesh of the luggage racks frayed and threadbare, Max stood up and pulled down hard on the droplight. Leaning out of the window, half hoping to see Papa and Mama, he glanced up and down the length of the platform, only to find that it was completely deserted; devoid even of railway staff.

Not that Max himself was unduly surprised. After all, petrol was in short supply, and it was now very late in the evening, their long journey having been beset with the usual problems encountered when travelling anywhere by train in wartime England: repeated delays and cancellations, each with little or no notice. The poster, produced by a body, grandly calling itself The Railway Executive, plastered skew-whiff to one of the station notice boards, rather said it all:

IS YOUR JOURNEY REALLY NECESSARY?

The answer to which, thought Max, was, yes.

This on account of the appalling news they had received, first from Ireland where, at the end of May, Uncle Tom and Aunt Sybil's thirteen year old son, Bobby, one of Max's cousins, had been killed in an air raid on Dublin. Presumably, thought Max, his dearly loved cousin Danny, Bobby's elder brother, now living with his Spanish girl friend, Carmen, and their little boy, on the infinitely remote Portuguese island of Madeira, far out in the Atlantic Ocean, would not yet have learned what had happened there on Dublin's Northside, when, whether by accident or by design, the Germans had bombed the capital city of neutral Ireland, killing nearly thirty people, among them young Bobby Branson.

And then a matter of days since had come the dreadful news from Downton, where but a week or so ago, Granny Cora had been killed, this, when a burning German bomber had crashed down on the Dower House, incinerating both its crew and everyone inside the house. Everything else apart, given Max's work for the SOE and Claire's medical studies, this was the first real opportunity that they had had to travel back here to Downton since their elopement last summer.

Made possible by the money which Robert, with Saiorse's blessing, had given them, even if Max insisted it was only a loan, and with Robert as his Best Man, Max and Claire's wedding had taken place in September 1940, in the ancient church of All Hallows By The Tower, London. Now, that centuries old church was nothing more than a gaunt, blackened shell; yet another of the historic buildings in the capital obliterated in the firestorm of destruction wrought upon London by Herr Hitler's Luftwaffe in what was being called the Blitz. Something which both Max and Claire themselves had experienced at first hand, living where they now did, in the heavily bombed out East End of London.

Then, not long after Max had been discharged from St. Thomas's Hospital following a lengthy and painful blood transfusion, the result of an injury to his knee, and but a couple of months after their wedding, had come the dreadful news that Robert had been shot down over France. That had been eight months ago, and, despite still being listed as missing, presumed killed, everyone in the family had come to terms with the fact that, in all probability, Robert was dead.

And now, so too, were both darling Bobby and Granny Cora.

Their journey, up here to Yorkshire, from far distant London, had been both long and tiring: the trains, save for this one, the final one of the day from Ripon, being dirty, overcrowded, and slow; a shadow of what the service had once been in the days before the war. Or, so Claire had told Max. And since one of her three brothers, Edward, was a railwayman, a signalman, at the country station down in Devonshire where Claire and Max had first met, Max supposed that there must be a very great deal of truth in that.

Having read the poster produced by The Railway Executive, it was at this point that Max's tummy rumbled; reminding him, embarrassingly so, of the fact that neither Claire nor he had had much to eat since breakfast; that eaten at a very early hour, before they had taken the Underground into London, there to catch the train northwards from King's Cross. Thereafter, they had to make do with the round of cheese and pickle sandwiches that Claire had made up the previous night, along with two apples, and a thermos of lukewarm tea; both taking it in turns to drink from the single cup. And that had been all. Well, almost. Save for what had been called a Chelsea bun - clearly the ersatz variety had observed Max - and yet another cup of stewed tea, this time taken in the dingy Refreshment Rooms on York station where they had changed trains for the umpteenth time today.

Drawing Room, Downton Abbey, earlier that same evening.

"Darling, the truth of it is, neither of them seem to mind in the slightest. Just so long as they're together".

"There's no need to be quite so graphic about it, Edith!" Mary admonished primly. When it came to what she perceived as the raising of either matters medical or else those of a private, physical nature, Mary became uncomfortable; something in which she was truly her own father's daughter. "But, really!" Mary continued, having just learned from Edith where it was Max and Claire were now living.

Not that the name itself had meant anything to her, given that Mary's knowledge of London was decidedly sketchy. Was confined almost exclusively to places such as Belgrave, Chester or Eaton Squares in Belgravia - the district in which Aunt Rosamund had lived and where, Grantham House, the family's former residence in town, yet stood, that was if the Germans hadn't blown it to pieces. Of course, it no longer belonged to the Crawleys; having, at Matthew's insistence, been sold long since and, if reports were to be believed, turned into a third rate hotel. This being so, Mary could almost wish that if the building did still exist, that the Luftwaffe had marked it down for immediate destruction. Other than Belgravia, Mary knew, of course, of emporia such as Derry and Toms and Harrods in Kensington, or else Selfridges on Oxford Street; as well as certain of the London hotels, Claridges, the Dorchester, and the Ritz. But that was all. And, as for mixing with the hoi polloi on the Underground, as apparently Max and his wife did on a daily basis, well, really!

"Just where did you think the two of them would be staying? In a suite at Claridges?"

"No, of course not," snapped Mary; her nerves frayed raw not only by the awful business of Robert, but also by Saiorse's repeated mood swings brought about by her missing Robert dreadfully and by caring for the twins, Alexander and Sorcha, insisting that she did so on her own, as well as by all the changes wrought here at Downton by this bloody, needless war. "But surely they could have afforded something better than ... Where was it you said they were living again?"
"In Whitechapel, in a second floor flat".

"Whitechapel? Dear God! Isn't that where Jack the Ripper ..."
"Mary, that was over fifty years ago. What with all the bombing, of course Friedrich and I would much prefer them to be living somewhere else, but Max and Claire won't hear of it. They want to be independent. Shift for themselves".

"They do? Or she does?"

While Mary loved her Austrian nephew, Max Schönborn, very dearly, she still thought of him as the handsome, winning, little boy he had once been, as opposed to the equally handsome, winning, young man he now was. This apart, she had no time at all for his wife, Claire, the fair haired, freckle faced, former Miss Barton, whom Mary regarded as someone akin to a cross between a gold digger and a Devonshire version of Mata Hari. In Mary's eyes, a thoroughly unscrupulous, little hussey who had wormed her way into young Max's affections when he was at a very low ebb, believing both his mother and his younger brother Kurt to have been lost when the Lancastria had been sunk off the French coast. And had then proceeded to seduce him; forcing darling Max into the unenviable position of having to do what he undoubtedly saw as the honourable thing by marrying her. To be fair, Edith herself had been of very much the same opinion; even if neither Matthew, nor indeed Friedrich, were of this view. For, as Friedrich had observed ruefully, darling Max had always known his own mind; had never been one to do anything unless he himself was willing to undertake it.

The truth was altogether something different and stemmed from how it was that Max Schönborn and Claire Barton had first met. This but scarce a year ago. On a bright summer's morning, back in June 1940, down in Devonshire, when Claire had driven a pony and trap from her parents' farm at Shute Cross, down to the little station at Wrangaton, there to meet the morning train from Plymouth. And off it, two men; a father and his son, both of them Austrian. Survivors, from the Cunard liner, RMS Lancastria, sunk by German dive bombers close to St. Nazaire off the west coast of France. All of which Claire had been told by the son's cousin, Danny Branson, a young Irishman, who was recuperating at the farm after being beaten up and thrown off a train at Wrangaton station.

Of course, if by some miracle Claire had been told that, within the space of three months, the younger of the two men she was going to meet from off the London bound train would have become her husband, she would have scoffed at the idea. But then, Claire Barton had never believed in the notion of love at first sight.

Wrangaton Station, Devonshire, England, 24th June 1940.

Nothing which Danny had told Claire about his cousin could have prepared her for Max.

Of course, Danny had made mention of the fact that, throughout his life, Max had experienced serious health problems. That he had spent a lot of time in and out of hospital or else at home in bed recovering. Apparently, it was something to do with his blood; not that Danny fully understood the nature of just what it was that was wrong with Max. However, with her intention to train as a doctor, with some justification, Claire's curiosity, understandably, had been piqued. It was now, on seeing Max, that for the very first time in her life, Claire experienced the feeling of going weak at the knees and, if the truth be told, of feeling slightly lightheaded.

Standing before her in the morning sunshine, in ill-fitting clothes, obviously borrowed, with the distinct whiff about him of what Claire assumed must be engine oil, even though his left arm was in a sling, was no invalid, but a handsome, well-built young man, with sandy hair, blue eyes, and a ready smile.

For his part, Max was equally entranced by the pretty young woman standing in front of him. With her long, fair hair tied back in a plait, her sparkling blue grey eyes, her sunburned, freckled face and her equally open smile, she radiated both health and happiness. Nodding his approval, Max found himself smiling broadly.

"Fraulein," he said; his eyes alive with mirth, before a moment later taking Claire's right hand, and raising it to his lips. Letting go of her hand, Max straightened up, and this time it was Claire who smiled.

"Welcome to England," she said, never for an instant taking her eyes off his face. Then with her hand she indicated the steps leading from the platform up to the road above. "Shall we?"
Max nodded.

Some would say that there is no such thing as love at first sight. However, if on this warm summer morning anyone had said as much to Max Schönborn or to Claire Barton, they would have profoundly disagreed.

Because, for once, it was true.

Downton Station, West Riding, Yorkshire, evening, June 1941.

The posts from which the station's name boards had long since been removed now caught Max's attention. He knew this had happened elsewhere on the railways, along with the uprooting of milestones and signposts from off both lanes and roads, all as a concerted effort, ordered by the government to confuse and disorientate German paratroopers should ever they land in England,

"Adlestrop," Max muttered, before ducking his head, easing himself back inside the compartment, and shoving up the window.

"Pardon?" Claire asked, looking up at him from where she was still sitting with a sheaf of papers resting in her lap; the notes from the most recent lecture she had attended the previous afternoon at the London School of Medicine, on Hunter Street, in Bloomsbury, London. At times, she could still scarcely believe their good fortune. That they were indeed man and wife. Knew that on the odd occasion Max had come to meet her after her lectures were finished for the day, his charm and good looks had drawn admiring comments.

Max smiled.

"Oh, nothing really. Just the name of a place, in Gloucestershire, I think. It's also the title of a poem Mama made me learn when I was a boy, in order to help try and improve my English. Max now quoted hurriedly from memory::

Yes. I remember Adlestrop

The name, because one afternoon

Of heat, the express-train drew up there

Unwontedly. It was late June.

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.

No one left and no one came

On the bare platform. What I saw

Was Adlestrop—only the name

Claire likewise smiled.

Taking hold of their one, rather battered, suitcase, Max opened the door of their compartment and then, having descended from the train, helped Claire down onto the platform. Ahead of them, at the far end of the station, the engine whistled self importantly, before a moment later, in a cloud of steam and smoke, hauling its two ancient coaches, it puffed off noisily into the gathering darkness.

Max turned to Claire.

"Are you nervous?"

Her answer came promptly.

"No, not a bit of it. Did you really think I would be?"

"Knowing you as I do? No. Although, after what Mama said to you, to both of us, last year ..."

"That's very sweet of you". Claire turned, reached up, and kissed him lightly on the cheek.

Max grinned shyly; ducked his head. Glanced up at the station clock. And then, as the first drops of rain began to patter down, at the rapidly darkening sky.

"Well, then," he said, offering Claire his arm, " here's no passing shower, it's getting late, and it's over a mile to walk to Crawley House ..."

Author's Note:

The title of this story is that of the well known wartime song, released in 1939, and later made famous by Vera Lynn.

Had Max and Claire managed to wait until the following evening, then their love-making would not have been interrupted; at least not by the Luftwaffe. 10th-11th May 1941 saw the last night of the Blitz.

The German bombing, of Dublin's Northside, on 31st May 1941 killed some 28 people, injured over 90, and caused considerable damage. The reason for the bombing remains unclear.

The infamous Jack the Ripper murders took place in Whitechapel in the late summer, early autumn, of 1888.

Established in 1874, the London School of Medicine was the first medical school in England to train women. Later, it would become part of University College, London.

The poem, Adlestrop, from which Max quotes, describes an event its author, Edward Thomas (1878-1917) one of the Great War poets, witnessed in the summer of 1914, just before the outbreak of the war, when an express train drew up unexpectedly at a small country station in Gloucestershire.