Spies on Bikes

by Dennis Forster

  ‘Bert?’

  ‘Milady?’

  ‘I need a drink. The same as you gave yourself and Sir Charles.’

  Thursday 31st August 1939

  1

  ‘Leave your bow and arrows outside,’ Phyllis told Jack. ‘I don’t want arrowheads in my pies, nor snails, either. I’ve a busy day ahead of me. The Americans are coming, I have to put on a show and so do you. Go and wash, I’ve seen cleaner chimney sweeps … and no tricks when the guests are here, agreed?’

  ‘Why are they coming?’

  ‘For a holiday … people at the top of the tree lead busy lives, they need to have a rest.’

  ‘When do you go on holiday?’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Two facts for your notebook, young Jack … yeast makes bread rise and cooks in posh country houses don’t get holidays.’

  ‘I know why the Americans are coming.’

  ‘Do you indeed?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you been listening at keyholes?’

  ‘Do you want to know?’

  ‘No, I do not … it’s none of my business.’

  ‘Are you in a bad mood?’

  ‘No, but I am busy. And even if I was in a bad mood you’d still be my bonnie bairn. Here’s your eggs, soft boiled … plenty of butter on your bread, mind … you need fattening up. Where did you sleep last night?’

  ‘In my den.’

  ‘What did you see?’

  ‘Two rabbits and a badger … what have the Irish done?’

  ‘How’d you know about that? You’ve the sharpest eyes and ears of any bairn I know. Mister Harry is upset … we all are. I’d heard talk that he was sweet on the young lady that they killed … it’s a wicked thing the Irish have done.’

  ‘It might have been the Hitler Youth … they were in Newcastle last night … Aunt Elizabeth told me they are coming here. Nazis will kill anyone.’

  ‘Not in England they wouldn’t … they wouldn’t dare. No, the bomb was the work of the Irish.’

  ‘What’s George like?’

  ‘Your new friend?’

  ‘He’s not my friend. I’ve never met him. I’m sick of everyone going on about him all the time …how wonderful he is.’

  ‘Now who’s in a bad mood? You mentioned George, not me.’

  ‘What if he doesn’t like Jews?’

  ‘So, that’s what’s troubling you … George is not a Nazi. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve work to do.’

  2

  ‘No time for a shave this morning?’ Sir Charles asked his nephew. ‘It will take hard scrubbing to get the muck from the bomb out of your pores. You’d feel better if you shaved. In the army we shaved everyday … no matter what. Come and join us for breakfast. I’m having the kedgeree; tuck in. If there’s any left Phyllis will think we don’t like it … then we’ll all be in trouble. Cook has a lot to do today.’

  ‘If you don’t mind my saying so, Uncle, your enthusiasm for food at a time like this shows a lack of feeling. I know you’re not a big fan of CB but, dash it all, the poor chap has lost a wife and now a daughter … and that’s all before this bloody war we all keep talking about has even started. If CB doesn’t deserve sympathy, I don’t know who does … and I’ve lost Pruney. Do you wonder that I might not be hungry? I don’t think I’ll ever eat again after what I saw last night.’

  ‘In which case when the time comes for retribution you will be too starved to strike a blow. I, on the other hand, will be a hearty fellow, able to wield a club. Pruney’s death is one terrible blow.’

  ‘Murder, you mean … she was murdered, blown up by cowards. The Irish need to be taught a lesson.’

  ‘As much as we may wish it otherwise, what has happened cannot be undone. You must put the atrocity behind you.’

  ‘Stiff upper lip?’

  ‘Yes … if it comes to war you will have to get used to people being killed … though of course one never does … be a good chap and drive into town and pick up George. He’s on the Flying Scotsman. I’d go myself, but I have to be here to greet the Americans … they’d not think much of an absent host.’

  ‘Why can’t Mike go?’

  ‘He’s busy preparing for the arrival of the Hitler Youth … don’t you feel up to driving?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I thought as much … that’s why I want you to go.’

  ‘Are you ordering me?’

  ‘I do not have that authority.’

  ‘But if you had?’

  ‘Yes, I’d order you. When you fall off a horse you have to get back on. Pruney’s death – all right, murder – was a blow … a terrible blow. Only if you allow it to fester will it be fatal to your good self. To please your uncle, be a good chap, get back on your horse … go pick up George. He looks up to you, you know … we all do – flying a fighter plane would scare the hell out of me.’

  ‘It’s like the time you made me dive for my shotgun, isn’t it?’

  ‘Harry, I don’t know what you are talking about … be a good chap and pass the marmalade. George will be thrilled to see you. The Flying Scotsman is never late but you will be if you don’t get a move on.’

  Harry shaved but gave breakfast a miss. He supposed he’d have to pick up George.

  ‘Is it wrong for a chap to want time to grieve?’ he asked his aunt.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Uncle Charles was right, though, wasn’t he? He’s always right.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that.’

  After they’d seen their nephew off Sir Charles said to his wife, ‘You think I was hard on the boy?’

  ‘At breakfast you sounded like the colonel you once were, admonishing a junior officer.’

  ‘I didn’t raise my voice.’

  ‘When you are in that mood you don’t have to … it’s your tone, the look that could sink a thousand ships.’

  ‘If it comes to war he will be an officer. Officers must show leadership, set an example.’

  ‘He’s so young.’

  ‘If he’s lucky Jerry might give him time to learn … that storm we had, how it knocked the plants flat on their backs … next day, sunshine … up they popped. He’s resilient … he’ll pop up again … he’s spoilt.’

  ‘I find it interesting he’s not forgotten you made him retrieve his gun from the lake. I seem to remember we had words. I wonder what Freud would make of him remembering?’

  ‘My own view is that the medicine worked.’

  ‘Why did you pretend not to remember?’

  ‘Didn’t want to embarrass him.’

  ‘Charles, you do have a soft centre after all.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Which is why I love you.’

  ‘I know.’

  3

  Jack watched the Hitler Youth through Mike’s binoculars.

  Mike had told him: ‘I took them off a German officer in 1917 … spoils of war. You’ll not get better. Use them to keep an eye on the blighters. You are not scared of them, I hope? They can’t hurt you here.’

  Scared of them? What should have scared him was his desire for revenge. He’d never forgive them for what they’d done … what he’d seen them do with his own eyes. His knowledge of their evil was first hand. But it didn’t seem right wanting to kill people in England.

  Back home in Germany it was also not right to kill people but, in Germany, there was no law. If you said bad things about the Nazis … Jew or gentile, it made no difference, you were taken away, at first in the middle of the night but later, when the thugs were more confident, at any time of day. Sometimes the bodies of the brave people who’d stood up for what they knew to be right were found dead. Sometimes they just disappeared as if they’d never existed. The difference between the gentile and the Jew in Germany was that for the Jew to
be murdered or made to disappear he did not have to criticise the Nazis; his crime was being a Jew.

  He thought the English did not always believe his stories of Nazi atrocities. They thought he exaggerated. He knew they did. They didn’t call him a liar – that, he was learning, was not the English way … they just looked at him and smiled, smug and superior in their Englishness, comfy in the knowledge that through their Empire they ruled half the world, that their battleships made them invincible.

  Yet, he understood why they might doubt him. They lived on an island, a beautiful green island. Living on an island had made them insular and snooty. To them, Europeans were foreigners; foreigners spoke ‘funny’. They didn’t eat beef. They were lazy.

  Mike’s orders were ‘keep an eye on the blighters’. He’d do more than that. He’d observe them like a naturalist. The more you knew about your enemy, the greater your chance of killing him without him killing you.

  The Nazi campsite was like a beehive: so much activity, so much coming and going. They’d corralled their bicycles in groups of three. That was the way the baker in Berlin had arranged his apfelstrudel.

  They’d put up their tents, not in a haphazard way, but in rows. If their camp was a beehive, then Hitler, far away in Berlin, was the queen bee. Though many hundreds of miles away they were doing his bidding. What long arms he must have, what influence; it was in his name, in the name of National Socialism, they’d murdered his mother and father. If he’d had a machine gun he’d have killed all of them.

  How could they be responsible for such crimes and look so, as the English would say, run of the mill? If Jews had to wear a yellow star in Germany, these people should be made to paint their faces red. They were devils, so they should look like devils … not like Boy Scouts. The English had not seen them do the things he had … smashing the windows of Jewish shops, humiliating a rabbi by making him clean a doorstep with a toothbrush.

  Already they were plundering. Had Uncle Charles given them permission to chop a branch off a tree? He’d not like them making a flagpole out of it. He knew he wouldn’t. Nor would Mike.

  To mark their territory animals defecate. By hoisting the Nazi flag, the Hitler Youth were saying, ‘This part of England is mine’.

  Was it by chance they’d used a branch lobbed off an oak tree for their flagpole? Oak trees were as English as bowler hats. The Nazis loved their symbols and badges. Were they sending the English a message? He’d read Treasure Island. Were they giving England the ‘black spot’?

  In a Berlin art gallery his father had drawn his attention to a painting. Its artist had used glossy oils to show a hotchpotch of mortals looking up in awe at a host of angels surrounding the risen Christ. His father had whispered, ‘That is how the people of Germany think of Herr Hitler. They think he has come to save them from the Versailles Treaty. Look at the cobbler’s face. You see the same look of rapture on the faces of Germans at a Hitler rally.’

  When the Hitler Youth saluted the Nazi flag, Jack, looking through binoculars, saw ‘rapture’ on their faces.

  4

  The front door of The Hall – a massive piece of English oak hanging on hinges cast from French cannon captured at Waterloo by one of Sir Charles’s ancestors – swung open. From out of this imposing frame stepped Bert, pulling down his waistcoat points and slicking his hair with fingers moistened by his own saliva.

  When the Americans arrived he wanted to look his best. In Flanders an American had given him a bar of chocolate. He’d never forgotten the kindness. At the time he’d been in quite a bad way. It was his private opinion that the Hershey Bar had saved his life. He was therefore keen that the Americans receive the very best service that he and the other members of The Hall’s staff were capable of providing.

  Things were going to plan in so much as the local stationmaster had telephoned to say, as he’d put it, ‘The cigars and Stetsons are on their way’. Bert knew the man, recently appointed to the job, a stranger to the area, to be a radical.

  From long experience he also knew the time it took a car to travel from the railway station to The Hall. He was therefore not surprised when he spied, in the middle distance, a Rolls-Royce, followed by a horse drawn phaeton.

  At once he set in motion The Hall’s well-rehearsed procedure for receiving VIPs.

  According to character and their status within The Hall’s hierarchy, chauffeurs, footmen, maids, cook and domestics ambled and shuffled into a line of ‘welcome’ that would have been given five out of ten by an RSM of a Guard’s regiment.

  Bert inspected them for smartness and cheerfulness. He told the boot boy, a dour fourteen year old who resented authority, ‘Smile, lad, smile … take my word for it, no smile is too big for an American. It’s the prairies you know … big skies, big smiles.’

  He informed Sir Charles and Lady Elizabeth, ‘The Americans have crossed the bridge, sir.’

  ‘Is anyone in the phaeton?’ said Sir Charles.

  ‘A little too far away for me to tell, sir, that is for certain, but I think so.’

  ‘I hope so … a nice touch, I thought, sending the phaeton … arriving at The Hall in a horse drawn vehicle will give them a sense of history … remind them, if it does come to war, what we’ll be fighting for.’

  ‘They might also think we’ve not heard of the internal combustion engine,’ said Lady Elizabeth.

  ‘That’s why I also sent the Rolls. I will be able to tell much about their characters from their choice of conveyance.’

  ‘You have set them a test?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Freud?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Harry doesn’t like Freud’s ideas.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘If it were raining I’d sit in the Rolls … if it was warm and sunny, like today, I’d sit in the phaeton.’

  ‘I know you would, my dear. You are practical, that’s why I married you. No family should have more than one romantic under its roof.’

  ‘Who will be found wanting, the Roll’s riders or the phaeton fresh air fiends? Knowing your penchant for al fresco, I’ve no doubt the former. People are becoming bores the way they talk about Freud. Do you remember at Cannes when we played the Freud game? “I’m going to say a word,” said Freddy, “then I want you to say the first word that pops into your head”.’

  ‘And Freddy said, “Beelzebub” and you said, “Mike”.’

  ‘And you all fell about laughing … I don’t know why, I don’t think Mike is the devil. But I do think he is a bad influence.’

  ‘Have we ice, Bert?’ said Sir Charles.

  ‘Sufficient to build an igloo, sir.’

  ‘And Phyllis?’

  ‘Cook now accepts that for the purpose of my obtaining ice for the Americans’ drinks – and for that purpose only – I may enter her kitchen and remove ice from HER new American ice-box.’

  ‘The ice-house was easier?’

  ‘Yes, sir, but the new machine is cleaner.’

  ‘No bits of unspecified black bits in the ice cubes?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘We wouldn’t want the Americans to think we were trying to poison them. Americans, Bert, are foreigners … think of them as Hottentots or Bushmen and you won’t be going far wrong. Because they speak our language we think they are the same as us; they are not. They have strange habits. They are not too fond of tea and they love iced water. If we run short of ice they will think us backward. Now, my dear, England expects.’ He gave her his arm. ‘This visit is important. We must treat them like royalty. In their own country they have influence. We need them to spread the gospel that if it comes to war with Germany, England will need the help of America.’

  ‘So, I’m to be a missionary?’

  ‘Of a sort, my dear, yes.’

  ‘I’m to convert them to the British point of view?’

  ‘Yes, but
baptism will not be necessary. They are all anglophiles, or at least I think they are.’

  ‘You are not certain?’

  ‘I am certain that they are all patriots. In any coming conflict they will put America first. When the chips are down we will be like a dog begging … our job is to persuade them to throw us a bone.’

  ‘You make them sound quite horrid. Yet you invite them to sleep under our roof … Charles, we might be murdered in our beds.’

  ‘I am prepared for that eventuality … show her ladyship the gun, Bert.’

  ‘It’s stuck, sir.’

  ‘Let me help, turn round.’

  Sir Charles parted the butler’s tailed coat to reveal a service revolver dangling from a snake-clasp belt.

  ‘I think you are both quite mad.’

  ‘It’s for the parachutists, my dear,’ explained Sir Charles. ‘If it comes to war and Hitler invades he might well use paratroopers. If he does, we are ready for them. Bert’s a good shot with a Webley.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘You know,’ said Sir Charles, coming over all thoughtful, ‘I do believe you could hide a sheep under a tailed coat and never know it was there.’

  5

  George was pleased to see Harry but would have preferred to have been met by Mike. Harry could be thoughtless. He forgot a chap was a bit deaf.

  ‘Where’s Mike? Grandfather always sends Mike … pick me up.’

  Harry explained.

  ‘Nazis, at The Hall!’ said George.

  ‘If war breaks out they might shoot us,’ said Harry.

  ‘Will Mike shoot them?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Joking … on the other hand your grandfather’s gamekeeper is a law unto himself. In my view he needs putting in his place. He picked me up from the airfield … drove like a maniac … made me carry my own bag.’

  ‘You’re in your aeroplane?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Will you take me up?’

  ‘One day.’