Second Violin

by Lawton, John

  A pause.

  They slurped tea. Billy favouring cup over saucer for once.

  ‘Dad? Why din’t you tell Mum about the tribunal?’

  ‘Why? ’Cos I felt a total pratt, that’s why.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Havin’ to say how British I was.’

  ‘There’s people in this street’d’ve paid good money to see that.’

  ‘There’s worse . . . I had to point out I was Jewish . . .’

  Lena giggled. Even Billy began to smile.

  ‘I mean, how thick can these toffs get? Not knowin’ a Jew when they see one. They might have known from the name, ’cos they kept referrin’ to me as “Mr Jakobson”. Like you get Jakobsons in Surrey or Hampshire. Jakobson, my arse. I even sign cheques as Billy Jacks. But . . . it was a farce . . . me sittin’ there remindin’ them of things I ain’t give a toss about in donkey’s years . . . bein’ British . . . bein’ Jewish . . .’

  ‘I never seen you so much as open a bible.’

  ‘Ain’t one in the house. Not since your zayde came back from the Somme with one of his balls shot off. Wasn’t exactly godfearin’ in the first place, but that made him a screamin’ atheist, that did. He’s lost one . . . therefore there ain’t no God . . .’

  A pause.

  They slurped.

  ‘Still,’ Lena said. ‘It gets yer.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘You can play the sarcastic old sheeny for all it’s worth, Dad. But I’ve seen twenty years of your act . . . grumpy, stingy, whiney . . . you’ve played most of the seven dwarfs . . . but this has really got to you.’

  ‘I never thought about bein’ Polish much. And not once did I ever think about bein’ German. I was two when we left Danzig. Don’t remember it at all. For the next couple of years we lived wherever your zayde laid his hat. A few months in Cracow, almost a year in Rotterdam. Pogromed here, pogromed there, old Macdonald had a pogrom . . . and that ain’t strictly true neither . . . we just moved . . . moved before it happened. “One step ahead of the Cossacks,” he always used to say. Not that he ever saw a Cossack. I got vague memories of Rotterdam, and I remember landing at Tilbury, just like Manny and Joe did, but the old man . . . he filled me up with his memories. Told so many tales. It’s like I could remember Cracow and Rotterdam and all the other places . . . but I can’t really. And the strange thing is, he took to England. As far as your zayde was concerned, he was English. OK, so we never had a bible in the house . . . but we had a Union Jack.’

  ‘Till he died. Then you binned it.’

  ‘Like I was sayin’. He took to England. Became English. Didn’t give a toss about bein’ Jewish no more. I never had a bar mitzvah. The Rabbis come round he’d just tell ’em to bugger off. Only thing he kept out of bein’ born a Jew was speakin Yiddish. And I’ve always liked that. Yiddish says things English can’t.’

  ‘You never passed it on to me and Danny and Sallie.’

  ‘What would be the point? Your Mum’s a cockney shikse through and through. She’d never learn Yiddish. Knows enough to call me a putz when she’s narked and that’s about it. Anyway . . . the other thing the old man passed on to me was something he didn’t feel . . . but like I caught it from his memories . . . I don’t care about nationalities, he did . . . I don’t care about bein’ British, he did. I can’t explain it. I just grew up that way. Like I was more shaped by his tales of being the Wanderin’ Jew than I was by the streets of London. If London took me in, that was fine. But I took it for granted. I didn’t much think about it. Now that may sound ungrateful to you, you bein’ English an’ all, but that’s the way it was. That’s the way it was for a lot of Jews . . . anywhere that didn’t boot you out was where you stayed. And I always felt it could have been anywhere. Just so happens it was England, it was London, it was Stepney. Of the three the only one that matters the price of a bag o’fish an’ chips is Stepney.

  ‘I suppose I should say thank you to England. Took me in, gave me a home. But if it does this to me I won’t forgive it. Me and your zayde spent thirty years building up a business. How long will it last now?’

  ‘I can manage. With Manny to do the tailoring.’

  ‘Manny’s a tailor. He don’t know nothin’ about buyin’. Leastways not in London. And no disrespect to the old boy . . . but the real talent’s Joe. Joe can cut and sew fit for Savile Row.’

  ‘Dad, I’ve fiddled your books for you since I was sixteen. I’ll manage.’

  ‘Kept – not fiddled!’

  ‘That’s why we’re sitting here filleting the paperwork and sending half of it up in flames, is it? ’Cos we keep straight books? Leave it out, Dad.’

  ‘As soon as I’m somewhere I’ll write to you. Send you an address.’

  ‘If they let you.’

  ‘Maybe we can keep it all together long distance.’

  ‘Trust me, Dad. You brought me up to have brains, didn’t you?’

  ‘I brought you up to look after number one.’

  ‘Yeah . . . well now I’m lookin’ after you.’

  Another pause.

  They slurped.

  Three floors up Hummel lay on his narrow bed. He had taken down his portrait. His suitcase stood packed at the foot of it. Juif Errant once more. He lay like an English knight depicted in brass upon a tombstone, legs crossed at the ankles, hands clasped across his chest. His eyes looked up to the ceiling, slanting down to meet the wall. His eyes looked up to the heaven he had never perceived, to the God he had never believed in, and his lips mouthed the silent word Job had never uttered, ‘Wieder?’

  § 97

  Sunday morning came.

  Troy was awoken by a hammering at his door.

  Kitty’s head rose up from deep in the sheets.

  ‘Wossat? Wot time is it?’

  ‘It’s gone ten. And I’ve no idea who it is, but at this time on a Sunday they can just bugger off.’

  Troy tiptoed naked to the window, parted the curtain half an inch and found himself looking down at the top of some bloke’s trilby. The man drew back a couple of paces from the door, looked down the alley, pulled up his sleeve and looked at his watch. Troy stepped back.

  ‘Good bloody grief, it’s Steerforth.’

  ‘Wot?’

  ‘Steerforth. Outside. On the doorstep.’

  ‘Wot’s he want?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. I haven’t set eyes on him since the day he thumped me in the tunnel by the Russian Tea Rooms.’

  ‘Then don’t answer.’

  ‘I’m not going to. I’ve two days off. I don’t care what wop or Kraut he wants nicked. He can get somebody else.’

  After sex, a bath, more sex (unplanned) and another (colder) bath, Troy caught the Northern line up to Hampstead, and saved on petrol. Lunch with his parents and whatever ad hoc family could be arranged. Some combination of sisters, brothers-in-law, the odd uncle. But the man sitting clutching a trilby hat in the hallway as Troy let himself in just after noon wasn’t a brother, a brother-in-law or an uncle. He was a copper.

  ‘Have you been looking for me? I was at home all morning,’ Troy half-lied. ‘There really was no need . . .’

  Steerforth stood up. Knowing the man would not stand in the presence of a junior officer just for the sake of it, Troy turned to the door of the morning room to see who had appeared.

  His father said, ‘Come in now, if you would, Chief Inspector.’

  And noticing Troy added, ‘You too, Freddie. Your timing seems little short of magic.’

  Alex held the door wide, Troy looked at Steerforth, Steerforth looked at Troy.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking, son. But I didn’t ask for this.’

  ‘Ask for what?’

  ‘You mean they didn’t send for you?’

  ‘Send for me?’

  ‘O’course not . . . you could hardly have got here from the West End in . . .’

  ‘Gentlemen, if you would,’ Troy’s father cut Steerforth short.

  Steerforth was out of his depth.
Rank was no match for class. Troy extended an arm and waved him into the sitting room, past his father to face the assembled Troys. His mother looking ashen, his father looking solemn, Uncle Nikolai looking tousled as though they had dragged him from his bed for this . . . and Rod looking unreadable – not calm, not anxious, a neutrality that Troy found baffling. Steerforth pulled out his warrant card.

  Troy’s father said, ‘Not necessary, Chief Inspector. No one doubts your identity.’

  Steerforth put the card back into his inside pocket, but when the hand emerged it was clutching instead a small brown envelope.

  ‘Mr Rodyon . . . Aly . . . Aly . . .’ he looked down at the name and was grinding to a halt over the pronunciation of the patronymic when Rod baled him out.

  ‘Rodyon Alexeyevitch Troy,’ Rod said. ‘That’s me.’

  ‘It’s a letter of instruction, Mr Troy, telling you to report for internment the day after tomorrow, under the Registration of Aliens Act 1939. I won’t read it out. I’m quite sure your brother will explain it all to you. It isn’t a warrant. It could be, of course it could be, it’s just that under the circumstances . . . well . . . we didn’t think it was necessary. I won’t be sending an escort either . . . I didn’t think that was necessary.’

  Troy noted the change from plural to singular in the course of Steerforth’s decision-making. Rod took the envelope from Steerforth, slipped out the single sheet of folded foolscap, read it at a glance and said, ‘10.30 it is. St Pancras Station. I’ll be ready.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Troy. Thank you for not making this difficult.’

  ‘Not making it difficult!’ Troy exploded. ‘What the bloody hell is going on?’

  Rank took over from class. Steerforth said quietly, ‘A word outside if you please, Sergeant.’

  Troy followed him to the front door, out into the street.

  Steerforth turned on him, all but purple with rage, a vein throbbing prominently in his forehead, but his voice controlled – the anger simmering not boiling. The moustache twitching – again.

  ‘I tried to tell you, but you don’t bloody listen, do you? I tried to tell you. I didn’t ask for this collar. I’m stuck with it ’cos I follow orders. Now, I accept that you don’t understand the word “orders”, which is why, in my opinion, you’re a gobshite of a copper, a whippersnapper who’d be filing paperclips if you were on my team. But you’re not, and I’m stuck with you all the same. But mark my words, son, I did you a big favour today. I could have come along here with a pair of uniform bobbies and dragged your brother off in a Black Maria. I didn’t. Why? Because I’ve some respect for your father, and I’ve some consideration for your mother, and like it or not, you’re a copper, and coppers stick together. I hate to say it, but you are one of us. I wish to God you weren’t, but you are. If I were Stanley Onions I’d have you back in civvy street tomorrow morning. But I’m not Stanley Onions. I’m the poor sod who he stuck with you. Now I suggest you get back in there and explain to them all.’

  ‘You could have told me yesterday.’

  ‘I didn’t bloody know yesterday. I knew this bloody morning. I called by your bloody house on my way into the bloody Yard two hours ago, I hammered on your bloody door and you were either in your bloody pit or you weren’t home all morning ’cos no bugger answered. Now, bugger off back inside, Sergeant Troy, and see to your family.’

  Steerforth stomped off to the end of the street, doing what Troy always thought of as copper’s plod. A way of walking that summed up not so much a job as a generation. Inside hell had cracked open and spewed forth.

  The row was going on in three languages. His mother was yelling at his father in French, his Uncle Nikolai was attempting mediation in Russian and Rod was saying in English, ‘Will you all just calm down, please.’

  Troy cut through it.

  ‘For the last time will somebody tell me what’s going on?’

  It was loud enough to turn all three heads, but it was Rod who spoke first.

  ‘There’s nothing to worry about, Freddie. And it isn’t a mistake. I am being interned as an enemy alien. The paperwork is all in order.’

  ‘Enemy? What enemy? Alien? What alien? You’re English. As English as I am.’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  His mother exploded again – something about idiots and missed chances. His father put an arm around her and was shrugged off as she fished up her sleeve for a handkerchief to stem the tide of her tears.

  ‘Well?’

  Rod embraced his mother. Much taller than any other man in the room, the embrace seemed all-enveloping and she did not resist.

  ‘Dad,’ Rod said simply. ‘Tell him.’

  ‘Let us all sit down,’ Alex said.

  Nobody moved.

  ‘Let us sit. Please let us sit.’

  Rod steered Maria Mikhailovna to the sofa, Alex and Nikolai took armchairs, Troy perched on a footstool – the youngest once more, the baby of the family lost at foot level, feeling, as in childhood, that he was the only one who hadn’t a clue.

  ‘Many years ago . . .’

  It was the sort of opening that had made Troy yawn as a child.

  ‘Many years ago, I suppose it would have been around 1919 or 1920 . . . when I accepted the baronetcy . . . I changed the family name . . . and I accepted British Citizenship . . . for myself, for your mother and for the twins. For you it was not necessary. You were born in this house, the little Englander, as your mother was wont to call you. Nikolai and my father I left to their own devices. Neither of them much wanted to give up being Russian. My father died a Russian and a Troitsky Nikolai still is Russian, and a Troitsky. The choice was his. But . . . we’re not at war with Russia.’

  ‘We’re not at war with France either,’ Troy said.

  ‘Quite. But France is not the issue.’

  ‘Yes it is . . . Rod and the twins were born in France . . . they were French . . . now they’re English. I mean, dammit, you are English, aren’t you?’

  Troy looked across at his brother. Their mother had straightened up and was now merely sniffling. Rod was braced as though for impact, one large hand on each large knee.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, I’m not. And I’m not French either.’

  ‘Rubbish. You lot have always told me that you lived in Paris before you came to London. All of you. The twins and Rod were born there. Ergo . . .’

  Alex cut in, ‘Before that we lived for some time in Vienna.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘I was born there,’ Rod said. ‘I’m not English or French, I’m Austrian . . . and in the present climate that means German.’

  ‘I don’t believe this. I don’t bloody believe this! Why are you German? Why didn’t you naturalize when everybody else did?’

  Alex said, ‘It was my fault.’

  Rod said, ‘No it wasn’t. Dad gave me a choice.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I chose to stay as I was.’

  ‘Rod, I swear I’m going to fucking throttle you!’

  ‘I was thirteen . . . an adolescent . . . it was just a way of asserting my independence from family . . . a way of being different at school. You said the same thing yourself at about the same age . . . nothing like an English public school for making you wish you weren’t English.’

  Alex said, ‘I should have made you do it.’

  ‘No,’ Rod said. ‘You were right. You gave me the choice. God knows there’ve been plenty of opportunities to naturalize since and I haven’t taken them.’

  ‘Just a minute,’ Troy said. ‘Are you telling me you’ve been travelling all these years on an Austrian passport . . . all those trips into Germany? You were even in Vienna in ’38. On an Austrian passport?’

  ‘Freddie, I haven’t got any kind of state passport. I never have had a passport as such.’

  ‘Then how do you get around?’

  ‘When I was younger, travelling with the family . . . no one asked . . . more often than not we arrived in foreign parts on a ship Dad owned or charte
red . . . do you think anyone comes up to Alex Troy and says “who are you”? After that, more often than not all I ever had to show in Germany was a press card. Even when they kicked me out there was no paperwork. In fact, the only time I’ve ever had to show papers was Vienna.’

  ‘So what did you show them?’

  ‘My Nansen.’

  Troy felt he might be in shock. He felt his jaw must have dropped and would not have been surprised to be told he was drooling. Nansen passports were the invention of the Norwegian diplomat, and quondam explorer, Fridtjof Nansen, who, under the auspices of the League of Nations, attempted to give papers to the stateless, to people who might otherwise – in an otherwise world than the one that existed after the Great War – have been citizens of countries whose borders had shifted or whose independent status had been simply obliterated. Specifically, the Nansen had been introduced to help Russian refugees. It was easy to see how Rod had been inspired to ask for one. Harder to see quite why they had given him one. He’d have worn it like a badge on the back of his lapel, as though he were a member of some secret school society. It reinforced his foreignness just when adolescence made it all the harder to be English. Nansen’s had been a noble effort, almost half a million stateless people helped. Within the member countries of the League of Nations the passport had some validity. Notably neither the USA nor the USSR were members, and since Germany had stormed out of the league in 1933, Troy thought a Nansen in the greater Germany was probably not worth the paper it took to print. About as much use as wearing the school monitor’s badge. Half a million stateless now seemed like a redundant statistic, mathematics for another age . . . the zeroes as meaningless as those on a Weimar stamp – the homeless, the stateless, the nameless were already teeming in the millions, and we’d been arguing about what to do with them for years – a world of bureaucracy, of quotas, of visas, of ‘send the Jews anywhere but here’, Madagascar, Uganda, the Dominican Republic . . . Pillar . . . Post . . . Palestine . . . anywhere but here. For Rod to be posing – was that the word? posing – as one of them, to be playing the game of statelessness, to be travelling around Hitler’s Europe on a fifteen-year-old scrap of paper was little short of ridiculous.