Treason if You Lose

by Peter Rimmer

  “It’s not the amount, Hirst-Brown. It’s the dishonesty. You’re just lucky we don’t wish to go to the police.”

  “What do I do now, Mr Rosenzweig?”

  “You should have thought of that before you took the bank’s money. We can’t have thieves working in the bank now can we?”

  “He was going to break my legs.”

  “Really? This is England. People don’t go around breaking other people’s legs. What the board would like to know is what else you stole?”

  “Are you going to give me a reference?” Rodney had said in frustration.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You’ll be blacklisted, Hirst-Brown. Better than going to jail.”

  Looking back on his last interview with Aaron Rosenzweig, Rodney began to boil all over again. Whatever the Germans did with his photographs they were welcome. The man had ruined his life for the princely sum of thirty-two shillings.

  Ever since getting the sack, Rodney had channelled his frustration and hatred at the Jews, telling anyone he met what he thought of them. ‘Bloodsuckers’ was the word he liked to use, never once allowing his thoughts to suggest to himself his predicament was his own damn fault.

  As usual, no one came across to talk to him. Rodney waited patiently for the landlord of the Crown to give him a few brief words in exchange for another round. When he finally left the bar, Rodney was drunk, feeling better about himself for the first time all day.

  6

  Six weeks later, Gregory L’Amour ducked his head to walk through the open door of the aircraft and, from the platform at the top of the steps, looked down on the hordes of people who had been waiting hours for his arrival in England. Gregory, looking out over the sea of expectant faces staring up at him, silent, waiting for him to say something, as if the fear of war had locked their jaws, wondered what the hell he was doing here.

  “Well, it’s too late to backtrack now,” he said quietly.

  “I doubt Croydon Airport has ever seen so many people meeting a flight,” said Bruno Kannberg right behind, still just inside the door of the aircraft, not wishing to spoil the picture for the press of Gregory standing there all alone in all his glory.

  “Look as if they’ve come to witness a hanging by the deathly silence.”

  “Wave, Gregory. To them you are Robin Hood. They want you to smile.”

  Gregory, taking his cue from Bruno, instead of taking direction from whoever was directing his latest film, moved forward to just above the first step that would take him down to the tarmac and raised his right hand open-palmed, then he waved. Instantly the crowd responded with a cheer.

  “Just be yourself, Gregory.”

  “If I became myself I’d piss in my pants at what my big mouth has got me into.”

  “Then play the part.”

  “This is real, Bruno. Down there they expect me to go and fight a real war, where the characters get killed once and for all. How the hell do I get out of it?”

  “You’ll be fine. The RAF will be fun.”

  “Are you going to join up?”

  “I would, Gregory, but as you know, Gillian wants us to live in America. We’ll start the first chapter right here getting off the aircraft. The All American Man, remember. Max says every magazine on both sides of the Atlantic is vying for the rights. We’ll tell the readers how proud you are right now. How much you want to fight the tyranny of Hitler. How much you sympathise with the Jews. That last bit’s important. The Jews in Europe are going through a hard time right now.”

  “I’m scared shitless, Bruno. Why don’t you tell them that in your magazine?”

  “Robin Hood and Sir Richard Saint Claire were never frightened when they went into battle to fight the good fight. Wave again, Gregory. Wave again. Down there are your people. They adore you. Just look at their smiling faces. They were silently sad. Now they are cheering.”

  “And will weep no doubt at my funeral. Except they’ll be alive and I’ll be dead. I’m too young to die. What am I doing here? How did those first words of bravado at Uxbridge get me here? How did you all let it get out of hand?”

  “You let it get out of hand when Genevieve turned you down. Don’t blame us.”

  “I’m turning round.”

  “Not now. Holy Knight is finished even if it was in a hurry. When she sees how brave you really are, she’ll change her mind.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “Women like real heroes. You’re going to be a real hero, Greg.”

  “I’m going to be a dead hero, Bruno.”

  “Go on down to them. They’re waiting for you. Just look at them chanting your name. This is going to make the first instalment blow Max Pearl’s mind.”

  “Isn’t that Tinus Oosthuizen I met with Genevieve at Oxford?”

  “Probably. She said he had joined up. You mean the chap in uniform? Yes, that looks like him. That’s Harry Brigandshaw’s nephew. Harry’s the famous fighter pilot. You’re in good hands.”

  “How’s he in uniform so quickly? He was in Rhodesia when Genevieve said no.”

  “University Air Squadron. He’s been a pilot for years. Now off you go, Gregory, before you make a fool of yourself standing around. The ‘All American Man’ strides forth. He doesn’t dither around.”

  “Give me a push.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “My feet are like lead. They won’t move. Please, Bruno. Before they all see my knees shaking.”

  As Gregory L’Amour stepped down on the first step, gripping the rail, Bruno right behind him with a strong hand in the small of his back, the brass band at the back of the crowd began to play the Star-Spangled Banner, strengthening Gregory’s resolve. The music spurred him on. Drowned out his cowardice. Changed his fear to a resigned resolve. Once again he was in the kind of dreamlike trance he felt when making a film.

  At the bottom of the steps, Tinus Oosthuizen was the first to shake his hand. Gregory felt he was standing tall. The smile on his face was real.

  “How did you get here, Tinus?”

  “By ship. I wanted a sea voyage to think.”

  “Any girls on board?”

  “Plenty.”

  “Where do I go from here? Bruno Kannberg said I’m booked in at the Savoy.”

  “Squadron Leader Kent is waiting with a staff car. You remember RAF Uxbridge outside London, where we first took you after our meeting on the river? That’s where we are going for you to apply to join up. Then to Redhill for flying lessons. This will be the last time the press will get a look at you. Make the best of it. Hello, Bruno. How’s Genevieve?”

  “She said if I saw you to give you her love.”

  “Here I am. Still getting used to the uniform. Doesn’t take long. You’ll be staying at Hastings Court during the flying lessons. You’re American, Gregory. So far America is neutral. We’re all working on it.”

  “And if I’m no good at flying?”

  “Don’t think of it. You’ll be fine. Like riding a bicycle when you know how. Oh, and please, no interviews. Don’t answer any questions. This time it’s for real… That bit they’re playing now, that’s the RAF’s anthem, so to speak. Martial music. Stirring stuff don’t you think? We thought God Save the King a bit much for an American. Up the revolution, I say. We Boers sympathise with you Americans. South Africa is all right now. Sometime everyone has to fight for independence.”

  “Hey, where are you going?” said Bruno.

  “Say goodbye to Bruno, Gregory.”

  “What about the press?”

  “The stunt’s over, Bruno.”

  Nobody took any more notice of him as the passengers, now getting off the plane behind Bruno, passed either side of him. Gregory, with the tall, thin Tinus in the grey-blue uniform with the snow-white wings on his breast, passed on into the crowd.

  Moments later Bruno could see the car as they got inside, the magazine story disappearing in front of his eyes. Max Pearl had said to stay in England for as long as the story ran. Bruno gave the spectac
le in front of him a wry smile that went unnoticed. It had happened before to every journalist. What to do next was his problem.

  Looking back at the aircraft that had bought them from America, there was no one else coming down the movable steps. Two men in overalls were pulling the contraption away from the open door of the aircraft. Luggage was being handed down from the luggage bay at the back of the plane and put on a trolley. The Royal Air Force must have sent someone to wait for Gregory’s suitcase using the ticket to match the number on the case.

  When he looked back, the staff car had drawn away leaving the crowd to mill around, the press like wolves who had lost their quarry. Someone would have to cancel the rooms at the Savoy. Without Gregory L’Amour or a story there was no way Bruno could see Max Pearl footing the bill for a suite at the Savoy. Bruno had imagined a few days of luxury controlling the few interviews he was going to allow the other members of the press.

  “I’ll be buggered,” he said as the crowd dispersed. “Now you see it. Now you don’t.”

  Following the rest of the passengers Bruno went to look for his luggage. Then he went to the ticket office of Imperial Airways, presented his open half of the return ticket and booked his flight on the same aircraft back to New York. Now there was nothing in it for him it was best not to call on his full-time employer at the Daily Mirror. It was out of his hands. Everything was suddenly out of his hands, the money from the new book drying up in front of him.

  Imagining Gillian’s look of disapproval when she learnt they were back to a newspaperman’s salary, Bruno wondered when he was again going to get any sex. Sitting on a bench, looking at his luggage, he racked his brain for another celebrity to write about until his mind went blank. At least Max Pearl had paid for the return flight. As usual, Bruno was broke.

  A month later, with his biographer back in New York as the American correspondent for the London Daily Mirror, Gregory L’Amour moved into the same suite at the Savoy Hotel occupied by Henning von Lieberman when Henning was receiving speech therapy from Janet Wakefield in 1937 while recruiting his sleepers. The winds of winter were blowing across the British Isles with gale force velocity.

  For the first time Guy Fawkes day had not been celebrated with bonfires and fireworks across England in case the beacons of fire in the night brought down German bombs on their heads. Nothing, so far, had happened in Europe so far as Gregory could see from the papers. What the fuss about Guy Fawkes day was all about, Gregory had no idea.

  The autumn days at Hastings Court with Tinus and the famous First World War pilot had progressed with the mornings spent at Redhill Aerodrome learning to fly a Tiger Moth, a biplane similar to the aircraft flown by Harry Brigandshaw in the war. Harry had taken him to Redhill to meet John Woodall the first day and followed his progress from Hastings Court after that.

  John Woodall, who had flown with Harry in the war, taught him to fly in three weeks. When shown properly, Gregory found flying no more difficult than driving a car, only the consequence of a mistake being different. When a car went off the road it landed in a ditch. An aeroplane falling out the sky was more difficult to climb from after the crash. The day he was to fly solo, Harry had taken him to Redhill without the chauffeur and watched.

  “You are going to make a good pilot, Gregory. When I next speak to Genevieve on the transatlantic phone I’ll tell her how you’re doing. Are you going to marry her? The newspapers think so. But that’s none of my business.”

  “Will they let me join the RAF?”

  “I’m not sure. You filled in a form in triplicate at RAF Uxbridge when you arrived but you have to understand you are an American. America is neutral. In the Spanish Civil War Americans were running off to fight for both sides in the conflict and that was stopped. Did you find a birth certificate for your great-grandfather? You told them at Uxbridge he was British.”

  “The Holts, my real name, L’Amour the one that sounds better for the films, were not your aristocracy. People went to America in those days to get away from something. They say he was from Lancashire but I don’t know the parish to look for the entry of his christening. When the immigrants arrive in the States they dump the old baggage to start all over again. I’ve got a man on it in Liverpool but all he has is the name. Apparently there are lots of Holts in England. His name was common. Eric Holt. That’s all I know. Even his middle name has been forgotten. Grandfather said great-grandfather hadn’t stolen sheep or they would have sent him to Australia as a convict. Didn’t do much in America. Neither did grandfather. People don’t really. Just go through life and die of old age if they are lucky. I don’t think I can claim British nationality through great-grandfather. Maybe I’ll have to wait for America to come into the war and fly as an American. At least now I can fly. My guess is they want my film name more than they want me?”

  “I’m afraid so. It’s all part of the diplomacy to get America on our side. There’s only a thin line between politics and war. They cross and recross each other. Churchill has to wait for a war to become our prime minister.”

  “So everyone is using me?”

  “Not me, Gregory. No, maybe that’s wrong. I do what the Air Ministry tell me to do.”

  “So they’re using you. Your war record. Your crash in the Congo I read about in America with everyone else. How did you get out in the end?”

  “Bribed the Tutsis with guns. For them, no doubt, to use to kill their eternal enemies. The Hutus and the Tutsis have been warring with each other longer than the collective memory of both tribes. Hatred passed down from father to son. It’s just the same in Africa only we don’t write about it in England. We write about the English killing the Boers, not the Matabele killing the Shona, which they will go on doing in my part of Africa until one of the tribes is obliterated or their women absorbed. Man behaves the same wherever you find him. To win we look for allies. Like America. Like the Shona were happy when Cecil John Rhodes destroyed the power of Lobengula, the last King of the Matabele, freeing the Shona from being preyed on by the Matabele impis that stole their cattle and young women.”

  “You’ve lost me.”

  “Like your great-grandfather. People come and go, never heard of again, only remembered by those who have a reason to remember them. I often wonder with a feeling of guilt how many lives it cost for me to get my freedom from the Tutsis after De Wet Cronjé died of malaria two years after being crippled in the crash. Sorry, other people’s stories are boring. Where are you going to now, Gregory?”

  “I’m going to move up to London to await my fate. I will remember these days of calm.”

  “Good idea. There’s more to do in London for a young man. The calm won’t last much longer. Probably until the spring, when the weather is better for killing people. Then we’ll be at each other’s throats. Can I suggest something, Gregory?”

  “Of course.”

  “This isn’t your fight. Go home. You’re American. Only when America is threatened do Americans have to fight.”

  “You know something!”

  “Just a little. You can do more for England back in America than getting yourself killed over here. The vast majority of our pilots in the last war died through accidents, often before they ever went into combat. Believe me, there’s no glamour in war. It’s horrible. From a nightmare you can wake up to a beautiful day. From war you never wake up. Even if you come out alive. It stays in your head. Like those guns I gave to the Tutsis when they brought me down the lake. The children will miss you. Probably talk about Gregory L’Amour for the rest of their lives.”

  “Thank you all for your hospitality. And the flying at Redhill.”

  “It’s a pleasure. The chauffeur did most of the work. Maybe tomorrow we can go up on the same train to London.”

  “When are your family going to Cape Town?”

  “Soon. Very soon I hope. I want Tina and the children out of the way when the balloon goes up.”

  “Will you give this small box to Tinus when you next see him?”


  “What’s in it?”

  “A rabbit’s foot. I found it among the yew trees when I was looking at the graves of his ancestors. So many of them stretching back so far into history. I sent it up to London and Bryers hung it on a chain. They’ll be proud of him, all those silent ancestors. It’ll bring him luck, I hope.”

  “The fox eat the body and leave the feet. All that’s left is the feet. What a nice thought, Gregory. It’s always the thought that really counts. He’s asked for a posting to the same squadron as André Cloete. They were at school together in the same cricket side. All three of us went to the same school in Cape Town, though I was a bit before their time. Well, there you have it. Another step down the path of life. I often wonder where it all really ends. Rather like this rabbit’s foot. Could the rabbit have ever thought his foot would fly in the sky? You see, Tinus will hang it round his neck. Like a talisman. You can be sure of that.”

  The message had been given to Gregory in the hotel lobby when he came back from his walk along the embankment of the River Thames, a wistful journey to remind him of a happier time with Genevieve while rowing a boat on the same river upstream near Oxford and the university.

  “Who left the message?” he had asked, his heart pounding.

  “Didn’t say, sir. Call came through at six o’clock our time from New York.”

  “Was it a man or a woman?”

  “Fred? Was it a man or a woman you spoke to for Mr L’Amour?”

  Everyone in the lobby stopped what they were doing to look at him, the girl at the desk giving him a sweet smile, savouring her moment in the limelight.

  “A girl, Dolly.”

  “Did you hear the accent, Fred?” asked Gregory.

  “They all sound the same from America.”

  Ordering a meal in the suite instead of eating alone in the restaurant to be stared at, Gregory had waited for his call from Genevieve, excited to tell her he was now a pilot, that he had flown the Tiger Moth solo, only bouncing twice when he came in to land that first time on his own. For Gregory, it was the first real achievement in his life.