Seacliff

Chapter sixty: The king's speech

1939

Saoirse attempted to follow her son as Aidan made a run for it towards the house. Sorley blocked her path. His eyes flicked over her shoulder to something behind her. She turned around.

Little Aoife was standing there, scared out of her wits, her small hands clumping fistfuls of her boys' breeches – Aidan's old ones, which the girl preferred wearing when out and about on adventures.

"Mama..."

Saoirse ran to her and hoisted the girl up on her hip. "Oh, my little angel... I'm so sorry you had to see that."

"Mama, why did you fight with Aidan?"

Sorley joined them, pecking Aoife's hair as he wrapped his arms around both mother and daughter. Coherent thoughts evaded Saoirse. Snippets of the argument reverberated in her mind like the shrill screech of an air raid siren. Such horrid words, the sort she would have never considered herself capable of uttering.

"Mama..." The girl's fingers nudged Saoirse's jaw so they came face to face.

Her wide eyes demanded an explanation, only how did one explain war to an angel? Saoirse kissed her daughter's wrist, her rosy cheek, her smooth forehead.

"Come on, let's get back to the house," Saoirse said. "Papa said he'll be back for supper. We must get ready."

Pouting, Aoife turned to her dad, who only smiled compassionately.

"Come to Da," he said and took her from Saoirse's arms into his own. "You are too big now for your ma to carry you all the way home."

Aoife rested on her da's shoulder, looking like she might go to sleep. Saoirse picked up the picnic basket.

Her heart hurt to find Aidan had left home. And James didn't make it by tea-time, after all. When she called the Edinburgh house to check up on him, he said he wouldn't be able to make it at all. Some emergency or other.

"Is Aidan there with you?" his wife asked him.

"No. In fact, I don't know. I haven't gone upstairs to see. Why, what happened?"

Saoirse dreaded to think of the exchange they'd had and found no strength to recount it to her husband. "Just... look out for him, please. The boy's heartbroken."

Surprisingly, James didn't press it. "Right. I'll let you know how we get on. Tell Aoife I love her. And say hello to Sorley for me."

"Will do."

"Oh, and – the king's making a speech at six, by the way, if you'd like to hear what he has to say."

"Thanks, James. Goodnight."

"Goodnight."

Saoirse convinced her daughter to go up to her room and have their royal tea party there, as opposed to the coffee table in the front room. They had scones, with clotted cream and strawberry jam, shortbread, and Earl Grey.

Just before six, Saoirse managed to slip away on account of supper. She switched on the wireless, setting it on low volume, and stood by the mantelpiece, where it sat beside the maneki neko, to hear the king's address.

"In this grave hour," it began, "perhaps the most fateful of our history, I send to all my peoples, both at home and overseas..."

Her eyes closed, lips pursed in an attempt to stifle premature tears. The king's words grew jumbled in her brain, until...

"For the second time in the lives of most of us," he enunciated, "we are at War. Over and over again, we have tried to find a peaceful way out of the differences between ourselves and those who are now our enemies. But it has been in vain..."

Saoirse was sobbing into the marble perch now. The king's disembodied voice, even and mechanic, did little to console her. It only made the tragedy undoubtedly real. Unstoppable.

It would be easy to believe, in this most peaceful corner of Scottish countryside, that a second Great War was but a figment of some lunatic's imagination. A scandalous plot for the pictures, fictive rather than factual. Would that it were so...

"The task will be hard."

Saoirse stood straighter, the automaton nurse stirring.

"There may be dark days ahead and war is no longer confined to the battlefield but we can only do the right as we see the right..."

She dabbed at her eyes with Aidan's handkerchief, forgotten in the pocket of her cardigan.

"...and reverently commend our cause to God. If one and all be resolutely faithful today, ready for whatever service or sacrifice it may demand..."

No one knew service and sacrifice better than Saoirse, God or no God.

"...with God's help we shall prevail. May He bless us and keep us all."

"A-bloody-men," Saoirse sneered and switched off the device.

The king had said his piece, it was now up to the plebs to see this stinking war through. A jolt of hope electrocuted her. James would talk sense into her son, she knew. Aidan would be safe, at home, many other boys wouldn't. Perhaps even Jemmy, as he'd surmised. There was nothing she could do to stop the battles, but there was plenty she could do to help the humans fighting them.

Saoirse resolved to reach out to her FANY contacts in the morning, put her services at their disposal. The ambulance convoy, her time and knowledge... Her grit, energy and knack, as Jessie Pope had put it in a Great War poem once. She wasn't dead yet and she would be damned if she let this war kill her.