Under the Apple Tree

Under the Apple Tree by Lilian Harry

Book: Under the Apple Tree by Lilian Harry Read Free Book Online
Authors: Lilian Harry
Tags: Fiction, Sagas
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Royal
    Beach to meet the City Council members. Judy, lining up
    with the rest of the staff to greet him, gazed in awe at his
    stumpy figure and the famous cigar wedged in his mouth.
    He really does look like a bulldog, she thought - absolutely
    determined, as if nothing can stop him. If anyone can make
    us win the war, he can.
     
    He made a speech too, as good as any on the wireless. ‘I
    thought about you a good deal a few weeks ago when we
    knew how heavily you were being attacked,’ he told them,
    ‘and I am very glad to find an afternoon to come to see you
    here and wish you “Good Luck”. Our buildings, our
    dwellings, may be destroyed, but the spirit of Britain glows
    warmer and brighter for the tribulations through which we
    pass. We shall come through. We cannot tell when. We
    cannot tell how. But we shall come through.’ He paused and
    seemed to look at every person present, as if calling on each
    one to live up to his expectations. ‘We have — none of us —
    any doubt whatever. And when we have done so, we shall
    have the right to say,’ his voice swelled and deepened, ‘that
    we live in an age that, in all the long history of Britain, was
    most filled with glorious achievement and most graced by
    duties done.’
    There was a pause as he finished speaking, and then a
    spontaneous outburst of applause. All the women and many
    of the men had tears in their eyes. Mr Churchill stood for a
    moment, smiling broadly, then he nodded his big head and
    waved his hand, giving them the famous Victory salute, and
    turned to go out of the room.
    ‘Isn’t he wonderful!’ Judy said, going back to her desk.
    ‘You can’t help but follow a man like that. I mean, even on
    the wireless he makes you feel you could do anything, but
    when you see him in person - well, he’s like a tidal wave,
    rushing you along.’
    ‘And the way he puts things,’ Laura agreed. ‘I used to be
    good at English at school, but I could never put things the
    way he does. And it wasn’t even a big speech, not to go on
    the wireless or in Parliament, I mean. It was just to us, here
    in Pompey.’
    ‘It’ll be in the newspapers though,’ Judy said. ‘The Evening News will print it — there was a reporter here taking down every word — and some of the others will too, I expect.
    Plenty of people will get to know what he said to us.’
    They went back to work, heartened by the Prime
    Minister’s words. Judy thought about them, wondering just
    why they seemed so different from the bishop’s during the
    mass funeral. He, too, had been trying to give them hope,
    but somehow it hadn’t been the same. It was as if he were
    trying to brush aside and glorify the horrible deaths that so
    many people had suffered, whereas Mr Churchill seemed to
    suffer with them. He’d seen deaths like that himself, he
    knew what they were like and didn’t pretend they were
    glorious or ‘happy’, but at the same time he seemed to draw
    strength from them, and hand it on to others. What was it
    he’d said in that other speech? ‘I have nothing to offer you but blood, toil, tears and sweat.’ And, ‘We shall fight them in the streets and the hills and on the beaches. We shall never
    surrender.’ He didn’t pretend, but at the same time he gave you hope and some of his own stubborn determination. And
    he made you feel that, however small a part you played
    yourself, it was important. It was all a part of the great
    national effort.
    Just at the moment, Judy’s part in that effort was trying
    to set up a system for salvage collections - there had been
    appeals for binoculars for the Navy, for saucepans and other
    aluminium goods for making aeroplanes, for clothes, for rags
    and bones. Nothing, it seemed, was to be thrown away;
    everything could be put to some use.
    ‘There are going to be special bins for food scraps,’ she
    said. ‘They’ll be collected for pig swill - pigs will eat
    anything. There’ll be one on the corner of every street

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