With no wife, married to the job and devoted to the Met, Superintendent Thomas had slunk home to be haunted by his empty house, spending most of the subsequent weeks in the Royal Oak, stewing in a stagnant pit of his own loathing and listlessness, solidly drinking through the palpable fear.
Now, Arthur turned to Jack Harrison.
“Good evening, Sir, what will it be?” He smiled expectantly. Jack returned it, amused by the formality.
“Pint of stout please, old boy. How goes it?”
“Could be worse, son. Could be a lot better, mind.”
“You’re not wrong, mate.” Jack gestured towards the two glum, familiar figures sat on tables in the public bar with a tilt of his head. “Three sheets to the wind?”
“Blotto,” Arthur replied, quietly. “Both absolutely bollocks’d. Both been in since I reopened. Don’t have the ’eart to refuse them, truth be told…”
Much like before the occupation, public houses continued to close for several hours in the afternoon, before reopening later for the evening crowd, men and occasionally their wives whom had just finished work and were in need of a pint.
Jack looked to the piano, nestled around the corner of the bar to his right, past where the morose figure of Thomas was sat unresponsively, close to a slouched man who had the disorientating aura of a powerful prize-fighter gone to seed. His name was Bill Wilson, and he had been a regular at the Royal Oak for nigh on twenty years. Few paid him attention; the man was as taciturn as the table he sat at, and less conversational than a mute lunatic; just another mental casualty from a doomed war generation of young corpses, haunted cripples and orphans. Countless parents who’d outlived their children. A lost generation.
Arthur’s head was balding, cheeks rosy, nose red and streaked with tiny burst blood vessels, giving him the air of an ageing drunk whose body was in the midst of betraying him after years of substance abuse. But his eyes remained alert and wary. They followed Jack’s gaze again, with a knowing look. “Brushing up on Wolfgang,” he said, with just a hint of sardonicism.
“Any complaints?”
“From this lot?” was the murmured rebuke.
Jack briefly closed his eyes to the music. “I always loved Mozart,” he smiled. The pianist was quietly playing Requiem – Jack recognised ‘Dies Irae’ and surmised that he was around ten minutes in to the epic composition.
“Yes,” Arthur intoned, smile fixed. “Wonderful music. Fitting, I thought.”
Jack marvelled. The unctuous manner and classical German composition was the perfect foil to con a Gestapo informant or operative, while few drinkers would make the connection between the hated occupiers and the piano’s discreet lull. Plus, Mozart was magnificent, Jack thought. Absolutely magnificent, heavenly music.
He leaned in to Arthur.
“Mozart is fantastic.”
Jack’s impetuous nature had long ago been quelled by necessity in the intrigues of Spain, but caution still frustrated him. Arthur finally relented, recognising a somewhat teasing determination in Jack’s eyes, and he dropped the act.
“Aye. But…” and the old publican’s voice dropped to a barely audible, croaked whisper, “this is not the Germany we know.”
Arthur turned his face ruefully, and began to pour Jack a pint, his hands slightly tremulous.
“No. And these aren’t Mozart Germans.”
Only as he said it did the full realisation dawn on Jack that he was profoundly disturbed, and saddened by the thought. The nation of Mozart, Beethoven, Goethe, Nietzsche and all the other names whose work William had introduced him to, and whose magnum opera he’d greedily absorbed… that nation no longer existed, to him; replaced by automatons, repeating slogans and racial ideals screamed at them by a crippled dwarf, a fat Renaissance emperor-complex opiate-addicted narcissist and a syphilitic moustachioed psychopath; three maniacs. That nation, a sophisticated country of culture, music, literature and psychology had been supplanted by a nation of strong-armed Aryan supermen; ideal soldiers, machine men, with obedient, unthinking minds and pitiless logic replacing human kindness. The conformists praised, and exalted; the ruthless rewarded; the dissidents, rebels, dreamers, thinkers and heroes tortured, interned, brutalised, killed. Vanished from history.
And now, that will happen to us, Jack realised. These robotic sauerkrauts will inflict that soulless system on us; good blood isn’t enough, conformity is of equal necessity. The neurological ability to critically analyse and process information forever switched off, Ja mein Führer in its place. Nothing less than a reshaping of human thought.
The thick beer frothed over the top of his glass, and Jack noticed the small wince that crept across Arthur’s thin lips. Beer had not yet been rationed, but with the prosperity of the average man fading under Berlin’s rule, and the wealth of England already reportedly being bled out of her flanks, even the pubs were being hit. The German mark had been fixed at 9.6 to the pound sterling, but the existing British currency was still being widely used; pennies, shillings and the like. This was still a good rate for the Germans, and their legal purchases were of a notably good value, to say nothing of the illicit siphoning away of art, gold and iron ore that had been quietly reported. Göring, it was said, had obtained some priceless arts for his collection at Karinhall.
Arthur set his beer down in front of Jack. “Thank you, Sir, that will be six and three pence please.”
“Cheers.”
Jack laid the money down in front of him, a full shilling; three pennies more than had been asked for. Arthur took it gratefully, nodding towards the door leading into the saloon bar where the rooms were partitioned.
Jack turned on his heel and headed through into that section of the pub, its floor thickly carpeted in red and booths replacing tables and chairs. He slid into the furthest booth, occupied by a young man and woman of similar age – mid-twenties – both dressed similarly. No words passed between them, but almost as though by instinct, their hands slid across the smooth table surface and meet, grasping each other firmly.
“Any joy, old boy?” William asked quietly.
He was slightly taller than Jack, with near-shoulder-length dirty blond hair from which he had long since deflected any suggestion of cutting for anonymity’s sake. A quiet and more scholarly nature than the others in their collective merely disguised the same burning desire they all shared. His convictions had been expressed in no less violent a manner, at times, though he was free of the almost compulsive impulsivity of the others.
Jack shook his head slowly. “No joy at all.”
He sipped his beer thoughtfully, and looked at Mary, sat directly facing him, her dark, Latin eyes scrutinising his. He added quickly, “the rendezvous didn’t happen.” Theirs was a bond that neither required nor allowed for melodrama or one-upmanship.
“Why,” she asked simply, the ‘y’ lingering a little with the Latin lilt on her tongue. She tilted her head curiously.
“I don’t know.”
She pursed her lips. Jack loved her unique movements, the way she physically presented each spoken sentence, though he was careful to keep that view private from William, her lover and fiancé. Jack had long since resigned himself to never acting on any impulse with her, nor expressing his deep lust and affection; quite deliberately spending little time over the past four years with her without William, Alan or another comrade being present.
“I’ve no idea,” he admitted.
Beats of dejected, contemplative silence, before Jack realised the inpact of his words, and he hurriedly elaborated. “No word at all from recon. No message to, or from, anyone. Forget the War Office, there’s no word even at recon level if there’s any kind of organised…” before William could hiss at him to be quiet, Jack nodded quickly, recognising his friend’s expression. He whispered “… I know… no intel, no radio operators broadcasting, no word if there’s even an organised resistance movement left, what happened or what’s going on now. There’s silence in every direction.”
N
o one spoke for a moment. They all knew the gravity of being cut off, acting independently. It wasn’t in their nature to just turn their backs on the responsibilities they’d been entrusted with. But with no discernible support network, for supplies, information, instruction; they were adrift. The three of them all knew that their life expectancy could be measured in weeks, if not days, if they went ahead with any mission whatsoever.
Jack leaned across the well-polished table to William. “I take it you didn’t get a note with your change?”
William shook his head.
“No such luck. Old Arthur hasn’t heard anything but radio static since the Germans took London.”
“He was supposed to be our bloody focal point of information,” Jack hissed. William shrugged at him, pointing out the flawed logic.
“We were supposed to kick Jerry’s arse in France. Hitler was supposed to be happy with reintegrating the poor Sudeten krauts back into kraut-land with the other sauerkrauts, one big happy kraut family of non-aggressive sauerkrauts,” William complained, his lilting Scottish accent more pronounced as he warmed to the sardonic commentary. “Munich was supposed to be ‘Peace in Our Time’. Baldolini and the Iti’s were supposed to keep Hitler out of Austria. Someone, somewhere, surely, we supposed to help the Republic when the fascists revolted – never underestimate the Catholic Church, of course. Versailles was supposed to keep Germany docile. The League of Nations was supposed to prevent war. The word ‘supposed’, all things considered, is evil bollocks.”
“You have a point,” Jack conceded dryly.
Mary scowled. “All the preparation, weapons dumps, radio operators sharing information from cell to cell, and then los fascistas come here nada, no word at all.”
She tossed her head impatiently, clearing a thick strand of dark hair out of her eye and awarding Jack a view of her profile. Despite himself, he felt the unmistakeable first flush of arousal. The spark of her eyes, the smooth Latin flesh. To a London-raised English boy, hers was a ravishing beauty made terrible by the impossibility of consumation.
Jack turned to his friend. “Look, I didn’t want to ask this but does he… y’know, have any other contacts?”
“You know the score there, old bean. Total deniability and compartmentalisation. Arthur doesn’t know anything other than who commissioned him, us, and what he gets told on the radio. And that,” he said bitterly, sipping his pint, “… is bugger all.”
He leaned back, and scratched his chin, as though deep in thought. But as Mary turned to him, William shrugged, as though to avoid raising her hopes. He was as lost as they were.
“How are you two holding up?” Jack asked. He saw little point in further ruminating on their situation. William shook his head sombrely.
“We could be better, my friend. Came down to make a difference, not sit drinking stout quietly in a German city, rubbing shoulders with Jerries.” He scowled. “I still can’t get used to the swastika flag flying over British soil.”
Jack nodded sympathetically. William was the intellectual of the group, but his hatred of fascism was even more deep-rooted and bitter than was his own, and Alan’s. Never much minded to fight for as long as Jack had known him – he’d moved down from Edinburgh to Bloomsbury, London in 1934 as an eighteen-year old, compelled by the area’s literary reputation and proximity to the hub of central London. Jack had taken an instant liking to the studious Scot. William was prone to quick bursts of intensity, as though social norms only repressed his natural state of being – it was as though in taking up arms in 1936 he had renounced his pacifism in some existential war, reluctantly losing some nobler part of himself to pragmatics and the need to fight fire with fire; only to return back to Britain defeated and, in the cruellest of ironies, find himself living under Nazi rule anyway.
“I never thought we’d see the swastika fly over this country,” William continued sadly.
It was a bitter pill for them all to swallow – even having being recruited in the Auxiliary Units. Alan had threatened suicide twice the day the first German troops landed at Dover, and had to be pacified and even sedated.
Mary looked down, and Jack leaned forwards and gave her hands a squeeze. They locked eyes, briefly; no words were needed.
“We’re fine,” she told him softly.
“How’s your Mum?” Jack asked William.
“She’s not too great. Still in hospital, her last letter said, and she’s got the Jerries’ to worry about an’all. She sends her best, anyway.”
Mary poked him playfully, and then turned to the recent arrival. “How’s your sister, Jack?”
“She’s fine,” he replied. “She’s getting on with it, like everyone else.”
He pulled out a small notebook, ripping a piece of blank white paper from it on which he wrote “no recon.” He took out a shilling and some pennies, giving them to William, along with the note.
“Here you go old boy, get the next round in.”
At that, William seemed to raise himself a little bit. But before he could squeeze out of the booth, prodding Mary back several times in kind, a very distinctive voice came sharply through the bar from the public room. The tone was argumentative, and rose higher.
“That’s bloody Alan,” Jack snapped redundantly. “For Christ’s sake. I told him the saloon bar. Thick as bloody mince…”
Muttering irritably, the Londoner rose smartly and strode through to the public bar, noting Arthur turn at his arrival to shrug helplessly. The man to whom the Geordie accent belonged was clad in a typically buccaneering black leather jacket with fur lining, his hair cut short into a businessman’s neat side parting, as though in conscious irony; the dichotomy of a man stood strained with unreleased tension, green eyes lit by the fire of fury as his voice rose to a scream:
“You’re fuckin’ pathetic, man! Sitting here drinking yourself into oblivion while there’s a war and killin’ out there – you do realise there’s a war aye?”
But his red-faced admonitions were for nought. Bill Wilson remained as impassive as ever.
“I am quite well aware of the hostilities, thank you.” Bill said quietly.
The tone was a sort of softened cockney; the vague hint of underlying Bow Bells remained, but had been smoothened into the kind of generic delivery that could have come out of any north London suburb. Somehow, the clear and reasoned elocution didn’t seem synergic with his appearance; bloodshot eyes, a heavy overcoat as weathered as Alan’s own jacket, and several days’ worth of stubble on a haggard, drawn face, not to mention the lingering pungency of the strong tobacco odour that relentlessly followed him. Bill was a tired man, whose age was almost impossible to determine, with the vestiges of a rugged, yet still youthful handsomeness visible, but overwhelmed by the wild facial hair and weatherbeaten skin. Yet for a man suspected of all manner of things, from idiocy to outright lunacy, he rarely betrayed emotion, much less emotional immaturity. Faced with an irate Alan, the fatigued, battered-looking Bill betrayed nothing; no fear, resentment, anger, sadness, bemusement… nothing. The calm response only served to further rile Alan up. Bill’s composure was unsettling. Worse, the man’s slovenly state made his reasoned tone seem exaggerated, which his Geordie tormentor seemed to sense as he visibly bristled, railing even louder than before:
“Then get off your arse and do something constructive you drunken shite! You didn’t even put your name down for the reserves or the Local Defence volunteers or the fire service or anything, you draft dodging bastard!”
In the ensuing silence of the pub, Bill sipped his pint again, thoughtfully. In no obvious hurry to answer, nor concerned at all for his own wellbeing, he scratched the stubble on his chin with one overgrown, blackened fingernail, before raising his eyes to Alan, calmly inquisitive.
“What exactly are you doing?”
Jack had seen enough. The reply was maddening for Alan, who recognised and quickly bit down on his dangerous anger as it threatened to boil over into violence. He’d began sneering “if only you bleedi
n’ well kn…” just as Jack grabbed him from behind, and jostled him away to the threshold. “Alan! That’s enough!”
Steering the incensed Geordie towards the door, Jack looked around at Bill. “Sorry about that,” and to his friend, “let’s go outside and cool off.”
Alan gently removed Jack’s hand that was still clasped on his shoulder, and they walked out together, the anger instantly quelled. With no sun in the darkening sky, the frosty wind bit as they stepped out into the chilly air, both silently noting that such conditions were ideal to speak in. On this uncommonly windy evening, few informants would be inclined to face the chill, with fewer still potential or tangible enemies in proximity capable of hearing much of what was being said in the silent streets.
Despite this, Jack suddenly grabbed the Geordie, and dragged him over to the alleyway next to the pub. He didn’t let go until they were several metres into the shadow, finally allowing himself to let loose with a flurry of recriminations.
“What the hell do you think you’re playing at? Were you really about to tell one of the locals that you’re doing something to be proud of, for the war? When the war is officially over – making scenes in public when we’ve got to stay anonymous or die?”
Jack’s face was aghast, but he left it at that, letting the words take effect. Alan knew the risks involved. It was a stressful time for all of them, and his judgement had lapsed.
But no mistakes could be made. Their lives depended on it.
Alan shrugged, unsmiling. “Stupid man, aye, I just got wound up by that old drunk. He gave me a right look up and down when I walked in the place, it fired my blood–”
“–But we can’t afford that, Alan. And I know; only Arthur, John, Bill and a few of the old boys were in there but you know better, mate. Even if things look safe, we can’t afford to take those risks.”
Jackboot Britain: The Alternate History - Hitler's Victory & The Nazi UK! Page 5