Charmed Circle: A heart-warming English family saga by Barbara Whitnell

Author:Barbara Whitnell [Whitnell, Barbara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sapere Books
Published: 2022-07-17T04:00:00+00:00

I can’t help wondering what Red Rosie would say about this life I’m leading. It seems so purposeless, somehow. I’ve offered myself for Good Works, but nobody needs me, and I’ve read nothing worthwhile for ages. I hereby resolve to take myself in hand.

In England, Mr Chamberlain flew back from Berchtesgaden, with his death’s-head smile and his winged collar and his umbrella, to announce to the populace that he brought ‘peace for our time’.

It was quite like old times, Rachel thought, as she listened to Tom Whitcroft holding forth at the Garfield’s dinner table the following Saturday. He was a wireless buff, a great listener to the BBC, and utterly contemptuous of Neville Chamberlain and his policy of appeasement.

“He caved in,” he said, his thin, dark face showing his disgust. “Gave Hitler everything he wanted — and the Czech representative wasn’t allowed to say a word. Nor was Russia. The poor bloody Czechs were just sold down the river —”

“Rubbish,” snapped Priscilla Martin. She was a vivacious, blonde girl with a wicked gift for mimicry, star of the Dramatic Society. She was also a notorious flirt, but had clearly not found it worthwhile going into action for Tom. “Nobody wants war.”

“Have you looked at a map recently?” Tom asked her derisively. “The Rhineland’s remilitarized to the west. Now Germany’s snatched the Sudeteneland to the east. If you imagine the threat’s over, all I can say is there’s none so blind as those who won’t see.”

And because of his accent — the accent, in Priscilla’s view, of comedians and men with daft grins who played ukuleles — they were words that she garnered and relished and improved upon; so that ‘Noon so blaind as them as worn’t see’ became a catchphrase, bandied about among the younger set long after Tom Whitcroft had returned to his home station at Masaka.

It was, of course, the accent that did for him as far as Kitty was concerned — that and the fact that he had, as she told Rachel after the first and only time that he came to the house, a working-class face. In vain did Rachel say that he was intelligent and had opinions she found interesting; her mother continued to assure her that she was committing social suicide by continuing to associate with such an impossible young man.

Rachel set her lips stubbornly and continued to enjoy Tom’s company, not admitting even to herself that her mother’s opposition increased his appeal. He was interesting, she said — a whole lot more interesting than most of the people she was forced into conversation with at all the dinner parties she had to attend. Her mother should be glad, she insisted, that she’d met someone who at least encouraged her to find out what was going on in the world, and to read the more serious magazines that arrived spasmodically in large, out-of-date bundles.

Few others in Entebbe seemed to share Tom’s disquiet. Did Gavin, Rachel wondered? Was he even now burning with righteous zeal

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