Treason if You Lose

by Peter Rimmer

“I’m sorry. It’s my nephew.”

  “I don’t care if it’s the King of England. Get off the bloody line and wait your turn.”

  Everyone Harry knew was on edge. Anthony, having turned sixteen in May, had said at breakfast he was going to lie about his age and join the Royal Air Force. His mother’s face had turned white. Beth, two years younger, had pulled a face.

  “I can fly,” Anthony had said.

  “A Tiger Moth, Anthony,” Harry had replied.

  “It’ll be all over before I’m eighteen.”

  “And what about school?” asked Tina.

  “I hate boarding school. They won’t let me play in the school teams because I stopped growing. They call me the runt.”

  “I went on growing at Oxford,” said Harry.

  “You’re just saying that, Dad.”

  “I can prove it. When I went up to Oxford I was eighteen years old and five foot five inches. It says so in my first passport. When I renewed it five years later I was five foot nine. You can have a look, Anthony.”

  “They made a mistake,” said Anthony, sounding unconvinced.

  “They don’t make mistakes on passports. Believe me, son, you’ll grow. Sons are always taller than their fathers.”

  “Mr Banford said at school a boy is taller than his mother. Mum’s only five foot three. I made her measure herself against the wall. I’ll always be a runt.”

  “Who’s Mr Banford?” asked Frank, almost the same height as his brother and nearly three years younger.

  “My PT teacher. He’s also the rugby coach.”

  Frank looked smug and went on reading Harry’s morning newspaper.

  “It says here that rationing starts next week. I’m going to make some more rabbit cages and go into business. How much will I get for a pound of rabbit?”

  “They’ll make you sell the meat to the butcher at a government price. No one’s meant to make money out of war.”

  “Then you’d better sell your shares in the Tender Meat Company, Dad. When can I go to America?”

  “Don’t be rude to your father, Frank,” said Tina.

  “I want to go to America and make money. I want to be rich so no one tells me what to do. Ant, you’re going to be a short-arse like our mother.”

  Tina, sitting next to Frank, without thinking, gave him a backhander across the face, hurting the back of her hand.

  Exactly at the same moment, the air-raid siren began to wail from the top of Headley Heath.

  “What’s that?” screamed Tina.

  “The air-raid alarm. They’re testing the system.”

  “Germans coming,” shouted Frank, banging the breakfast table with the back of his tablespoon, the slap on his face having had no effect on his pleasure at the chance of annoying his brother.

  “I’m going outside,” said Kim, the youngest. “I don’t like quarrels.”

  “Sit where you are,” snapped Tina, the siren alarm stopping abruptly.

  “Can I go too?” said Dorian.

  “I was right,” said Harry. “Now they’re sounding the all clear.”

  “You can all go,” said Tina. “Get out of my sight.”

  “We’re going to play in the air-raid shelter,” said Dorian. “Why is it so cold inside, Dad?”

  “The concrete blocks are still damp.”

  “There’s water on the floor.”

  “The man in Leatherhead is making duckboards.”

  “Are we having ducks when we sleep in the air-raid shelter?” asked Kim.

  “Duckboards are raised wooden slats. We used them in the trenches so as not to get our feet wet. When we have to go to the shelter we will take paraffin heaters and paraffin lamps. Warm it up and dry it out. You’ll see.”

  “Why don’t we go to Rhodesia?” asked Frank.

  “Because your mother does not wish to leave England.”

  “They’re testing that bloody siren again, Harry. That is now the alarm call. Why don’t you put a call through to Tinus and find out what’s happening? Could we get on a boat to Cape Town? I’m scared, Harry. For the children.”

  “Why are you scared, Mum?” asked Anthony. “With France and England as allies, Hitler will be defeated by Christmas. Why I want to join the RAF now.”

  “Why don’t you go into the garden, Anthony? I hate that sound. Is there anyone living in the Cape Town house?”

  “Only the caretaker,” said Harry.

  “Can we get the boys into Bishops?”

  “When I asked the headmaster last year it was all right. I’ll go and book a call to Tinus.”

  “What will you do, Harry?”

  “Stay in England. When it’s over I’ll join you. I hope they’ve finished the dam on time. Tinus was supervising the planting of the citrus. We’ll need irrigation on the small trees after this year’s rains. Are you serious, Tina? You’ve always been adamant about staying in England.”

  “That damn siren’s got on my nerves. When will Hitler invade France?”

  “André’s already gone over with his squadron. The BEF are already there in strength. We’ll stop them.”

  “Three days to overrun Poland.”

  “The Russians did a deal. You can’t trust anyone in politics. I’ll try to book a call. The lines will be busy. Everyone wants to make a long-distance call.”

  “Do you think he really will grow some more?”

  “Oh, Anthony, I’m certain. It’s in his genes. He’ll be a big boy by the time he’s twenty. There it goes again. The all clear.”

  “That bloody siren gives me the willies.”

  “You’ll get used to it, Tina. If you stay in England.”

  “I’m going. With the children.”

  “That is good news. What about Frank’s rabbits?”

  “He can gas the lot for all I care. He’s not taking them with him. He’s always got something to say. He likes hurting people.”

  “That was a pretty good backhander.” Harry was grinning at his wife; it was Frank’s first whack. “Not bad. Next time give him one for me. You know the old adage, spare the rod and spoil the boy. He’s so damn like him. That’s what makes me so mad. Both of them like getting under other people’s skin. Rubbing them up the wrong way. One of these days Frank and Anthony are going to end up in a fight.”

  “All boys fight. It’s part of how they are made.”

  For a bad moment, Harry had thought Tina was going to admit Barnaby St Clair was Frank’s father in front of the children. Getting up from the breakfast table, Harry had gone into the hall and booked his person to person call to Rhodesia.

  At three o’clock in the afternoon, the same operator put through the call.

  “Mr Oosthuizen is not available.”

  “Just put me through. It doesn’t matter who answers.”

  “Three minutes and no more.”

  “Thank you… Who’s speaking? Mother, it’s Harry. Where’s Tinus?”

  “On the train to Cape Town. Can you hear me? Who’s speaking?”

  “Harry.”

  “What’s going on, Harry?”

  “We’re at war.”

  “Have they dropped any bombs?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Do you want to speak to Madge? When are you coming home? You know they won’t let you fly at your age.”

  “Tina may come with the children. What’s Tinus doing in Cape Town?”

  “Catching the boat. It seems from his days at Oxford he’s on the RAF reserve. They’ve called him up.”

  “Three minutes!” called the operator.

  “Who’s that, Harry?”

  “The Leatherhead operator. Got to go.”

  Before his mother could say goodbye, the line went dead. Beside him Tina was looking up at him enquiringly.

  “What’s Tinus doing in Cape Town, Harry?”

  “They’ve called him up. He’s joining the RAF. There’s a troop ship going to Cape Town I heard in the office. There must be people wanting to join up in South Africa.”

>   “They won’t call you up will they, Harry? To fly?”

  “Not yet. They want me to go down to Uxbridge next week. The CO is an old friend of mine.”

  “Thank God Anthony is too young. And Frank.”

  “The last war went on for four years. Better take them to Cape Town or Rhodesia.”

  “What is there at Uxbridge?”

  “The control centre of Fighter Command. Where the radar units down the south coast call in what they see from their screens. The nerve centre of the RAF if the Germans come across the Channel. Underground. Away from German bombs. Near the airfield.”

  “Are we going to win this war, Harry?”

  “Not with Neville Chamberlain as Prime Minister. Rumour has it Churchill will form a coalition government with the Labour Party. Make Clement Attlee his deputy prime minister. Then we’ll see what’s what. I wonder if Tinus had time to finish the dam? I need a cup of tea.”

  “I need a drink.”

  “Then we’ll have one. Together. I haven’t had a drink at ten past three in the afternoon since I left the Royal Flying Corps in 1918. If we can’t celebrate we can drown our sorrows.”

  “Why do nations always want to fight each other?”

  “You’d better ask history.”

  2

  While Harry and Tina were drinking gin and tonic, Barnaby St Clair was looking out of the second floor window of his four-storey Piccadilly townhouse at the beginning of autumn in Green Park across the road. Everything looked different. What a week ago held the promise of peace in the comfort of grass and trees now had an air of menace.

  “Stop hovering, Edward,” snapped Barnaby. “Go and find another room to clean.”

  “Everything looks the same yet everything is different,” said Edward, Barnaby’s valet.

  “Exactly what I was thinking.”

  “How will they know to sound the alarm siren? No sooner you hear the aircraft they’ll be on top of us dropping bombs. Last time all we had was the Zeppelins drifting into England. Plenty of time to take cover from an airship.”

  “They have chaps on the coast with binoculars. Aircraft spotters. Harry tried to explain the radar. Bounces a signal off metal somehow. They all have telephones. Harry says we’ll be given plenty of warning to go down to the air-raid shelters.”

  “I heard they are giving everyone gas masks. They think Jerry will drop cylinders of mustard gas. Like the waves of yellow gas he sent over our trenches when the wind was blowing right. He’ll asphyxiate the lot of us. Friend of mine took in just a whiff before he got his mask on. Been coughing ever since, poor bastard. Doctor says he’ll be coughing six times a day for the rest of his life. I’ve cleaned out the basement. What happens if Jerry drops incendiary bombs?”

  “We’ll fry, Edward. Try hiding in our own basement. Don’t be damn silly. The RAF will have shot them down long before they get to London.”

  “They’ll have fighter escorts. The Polish air force didn’t shoot down one of them according to the Daily Mirror.”

  “Of course they did. The Mirror always likes sensation. The Poles didn’t have our Hurricanes and Spitfires. Harry says the Germans have nothing to compare. Once they’ve shot the German fighters out of the sky the slow flying bombers will be sitting ducks.”

  “My friend said Jerry bombers bristle with machine guns. How else did the Poles give in so quickly? Jerry has tanks that go fifty miles an hour.”

  “Mechanised infantry.”

  “What’s the difference if you don’t have an air force and you’re riding horses into battle? Mirror says the Polish cavalry were still mounted on horses. Anyway, they won’t call us up this time!”

  “Haven’t you heard of the Home Guard?”

  “What’s that, sir?”

  “To protect the island if the Germans invade. Every able-bodied man under the age of sixty. No one is going to avoid this war, men or women.”

  “The Mirror said last week it would be over by Christmas.”

  “Then they’d better make up their minds. I met one of their reporters at RAF Benson. Having an open day for celebrities and the press to recruit pilots. Came from somewhere in the Baltic, or his dad did. Bruno. That was his name. Bruno Kannberg. I’ll have a word with him if we ever meet again. No point in frightening people or making them complacent. I’m going for a walk in the park, Edward, while I still can. And you’re right. Everything feels different.”

  “They’ll have to make different sized gas masks for the children.”

  “I suppose they will. At least we didn’t have that problem last time.”

  “They called it the war to end all wars, sir.”

  “I do remember, Edward. It was just twenty years ago. Every damn part of it is still vivid in my mind. Yours too, I expect Edward. We’ll just have to keep our chins up a second time.”

  In Green Park Barnaby found strangers were looking at him, trying to make eye contact. For a moment he thought there was something wrong with his appearance or there was something left over from lunch on the side of his face making him put up a hand to find out what was wrong. Then he saw the same person looking at a man sitting alone on a bench. The two smiled at each other. Strangers acknowledging each other’s existence, a very un-English practice Barnaby had only seen during the last war.

  ‘They’re looking for reassurance,’ thought Barnaby.

  The leaves on the trees were dark green, the last colour of green before turning brown and falling off to the ground. In a month it would be autumn in the park followed by winter; cold, short days when walking outside needed a thick overcoat, gloves and a scarf wound round his neck. At the fourth person he passed, Barnaby smiled, receiving the same smile of reassurance in return; London and England were going to survive, they seemed to say to each other.

  England had not been conquered since 1066. Many had tried and failed, the Spanish, the French, the Dutch; only the Romans and the Normans had ever succeeded. The park felt different, no longer a place of menace. Looking back through the trees across the grass and over the traffic down Piccadilly, Barnaby could see the second floor window of his house, the same window he had been standing at before his brief talk with Edward. At forty-two, they were both too old to be fighting men again. He was too old to ride a camel through the Arabian Desert fighting the Turks, or anyone else for that matter. His body was no longer the taut athletic one that had taken him through the war with honour until the moment when he failed.

  ‘Fifty quid,’ he thought. ‘I’ve got more than that in my wallet right now, all because I borrowed the money to pay my debts.’

  Always, in the same discussion with himself, Barnaby was sure he would have given back the money had he not been caught and told to go back to England from Cairo at the end of the war and resign his commission before he was cashiered in disgrace. A cold sweat broke out as the memory came back, jolting him, making him remember the fear of ostracism from the people that made up his class.

  A disaster, in the end, prevented by Colonel Parson, his CO, after Barnaby had gone on the boat out of Egypt with his tail between his legs and fear in his belly, a far greater fear than anything brought on by the Turks. So little money now, so much money then, the cold reality of recollection still forming a knot in his stomach.

  Even Colonel Parson would not want him back in the army. Once a thief always a thief. Not even a desk job to let him feel he was doing his bit to repay what life and England had always given him, the life of privilege and success despite the errors on the way that still came back to haunt him on a walk in the park. For whatever reason he was no good to England anymore, except to smile reassurance at passers-by that bombs were not going to drop from the sky at any moment.

  Now he had all that money and nothing to do. The girls, all the girls, were beginning to merge into one in his mind, the same woman in the same passing face, exciting for a moment and soon forgotten, the face, the body, soon forgotten, just another girl passing briefly through his life to momentarily take away his
boredom. Some of them had used the word love which made him laugh at how easily everyone mistook lust for love and hoped it would last long after satisfaction.

  A pretty girl caught his eye making Barnaby give her a smile, a different smile to the smile he usually gave to girls. She smiled back and passed on down the path, leaving Barnaby with a feeling of friendship in adversity rather than his usual predatory expectation.

  ‘Well,’ he told himself sitting down alone on a park bench away from the path, ‘it’s over, Barnaby. Fighting wars. Chasing women. Even the excitement of making money.’ Only then did he begin to laugh at the irony of life; he’d had it all, most of it not mattering a damn in the end. Did Tina sometimes think of him, he doubted? With five children she had enough on her plate not to dwell in the past.

  The same pretty girl was passing back the other way along the path in front of him ten yards across the lawn. This time she avoided his look. Barnaby looked around. It was too early in the day to go for a drink. Closing his eyes in the September sun that dappled him through the leaves of the tree above, Barnaby quickly fell asleep, an ability to nap on demand learnt in Palestine during the months and years with his mounted regiment hunting the Turks.

  When Barnaby woke, feeling refreshed, no longer in the trance of a knot in his stomach, it was six o’clock by his watch.

  A little stiff in the joints from the wooden park bench, he got up and went to look for a drink, avoiding eye contact with anyone as he walked down Piccadilly to Piccadilly Circus and his favourite pub on the corner where he ordered himself a pint of bitter.

  3

  While Barnaby was enjoying his first pint of beer, across the pond in America, Bruno Kannberg was walking down the street in New York on his way to an early lunch appointment with Max Pearl, his publisher. As the American correspondent for the London Daily Mirror he was trained to be on time for an appointment, especially one that was important. Looking at the passers-by, they seemed to Bruno to be their usual confident selves, the news from the old world having changed nothing in their lives. Looking at them, Bruno doubted the war in Europe even crossed their minds.