The Green Gauntlet Read Online Free PDF Page A

many arguments about this one, for whilst he was convinced that it was just, she blamed it on the vanities and inefficiencies of male animals from Plymouth to Pekin. It need never have happened, she said, and whilst granting that it had to be won at all costs, she had no confidence that the world would be any the better for it when the rubble was cleared away. To her it was the ultimate negation of commonsense and demonstrative proof of the obsession of men with inessentials. All that mattered to a Derwent was good food, warm clothes, a roof that didn’t leak, regular harvests, and the pleasure of sharing a double bed with your partner in all these things. She had never once bothered herself about politics, having seen what they had done to her predecessor, who left a good husband and a good home to march about London breaking windows and waving banners. Her detachment sometimes irritated Paul but today it brought a gleam of humour to the sombreness of the day.
    He said with a grin, ‘I might have known the violation of Mary’s chintzy little bedroom would have outraged you far more than the fact that two German battleships have got clear.’
    ‘Damn the battleships and damn the war! I’m terribly upset for that nice girl Connie, and for Simon as well, but for me the entire stupidity of everything that’s happening is pinpointed by some fool hundreds of miles away making a bomb to drop on a home two people built for themselves out of nothing. I daresay it’s illogical but there it is. I remember Periwinkle in the days before even you came here. It was nothing but a ratty old shack, and Rumble and Mary created it, but now it’ll never be the same for them. It’ll always be the place where somebody they liked was killed.’
    ‘Have some whisky yourself, old girl,’ he said tolerantly, and was crossing to the decanter when Rumble Patrick came in, having dropped Young Eveleigh at Codsall Bridge. He had been given the gist of what had happened at Periwinkle and Paul was puzzled by his phlegmatic approach to the destruction of the farm and the narrow escape of his wife and child. When Paul told him how they had found Rachel in the ruins of the scullery he shrugged. ‘I’m more upset about Harold Eveleigh,’ he said. ‘At least he still thought life was worth living.’
    ‘Didn’t Rachel?’
    ‘No. She was fed up and has been ever since Simon brought her here.’
    ‘She missed him that much?’
    Rumble looked at him shrewdly, drawing his brows together in a way Paul remembered his father Ikey Palfrey had done, on the few occasions Ikey had wanted to say anything serious.
    ‘How much do you know about Simon and Rachel, Gov’nor?’
    ‘Practically nothing,’ Paul admitted, ‘except that they seemed to get along.’
    ‘Get along is about right. Like a couple of elderly workmen digging a trench. They haven’t been man and wife to one another for a long time. Rachel told me that herself, although I guessed it when Simon had his last leave.’
    ‘You mean they quarrelled?’
    ‘Not quarrelled, just parted company. Spiritually you might say. She was a pacifist.’
    ‘I knew she was once. She never really got over her first husband’s death in the First War but Simon was always very ‘anti’ himself.’
    ‘Not since he fought in Spain. He’d kill every bloody Fascist he met with a spanner, or anything handy! That was where they split. She believed in Gandhi’s theory of peaceful absorption of invaders, even Nazi invaders, and Simon thought that was damn silly. Most men and women could agree to differ on an abstract issue of that kind but they were political animals. It was in their veins—pamphlets, speeches, attitudes, ideals, the lot. They’ve spent their whole lives at it, poor devils. I can understand Simon—it’s inherited from his mother I imagine—but Rachel was a farmer’s daughter, Valley born and bred. It’s difficult to know why she was so intense.’
    Paul, remembering other times,