Innocence To Die For

by Eidinow, John

  Innocence to Die For

  John Eidinow

  © John Eidinow 2017

  John Eidinow has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published by Endeavour Press Ltd in 2017.

  Sombre the night is:

  And, though we have our lives, we know

  What sinister threat lurks there.

  ….

  Death could drop from the dark

  As easily as song—

  But song only dropped,

  Like a blind man’s dreams on the sand

  By dangerous tides;

  Like a girl’s dark hair, for she dreams no ruin lies there,

  Or her kisses where a serpent hides.

  (Isaac Rosenberg “Returning We Hear The Larks”)

  Table of contents

  Part One: By Dangerous Tides

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Part Two: Dawning

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Part Three: Borderlands

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Part Four: Sombre The Night

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Part Five: Strange Joy

  THE END OF ANOTHER DAY

  Part One: By Dangerous Tides

  Chapter One

  Strolling through that warm late summer’s evening, Peter heard the distant shouting, then saw the crowd blocking the pavement and spilling into the road. As he approached, he realised they were swirling around the passage that led past the Adelaide into the square where Aubrey had his town house. The plan was to drop in on him, but it seemed a bit too early. The Adelaide had beckoned.

  Closer now, he could see that a surge of people coming out of the Rationalist Hall next to the Adelaide was meeting a surge pushing into it. ‘Traitors!’ ‘Nazis!’ ‘Cowardly red scum!’ In the confusion of shouts, he couldn’t make out who was pushing whom and for what reasons.

  A man reeled out of the crowd clutching a bleeding nose and sat heavily on the kerb. A trilby hat flew out of the mêlée and landed at Peter’s feet. He picked it up. The side had a deep dent, which he automatically straightened, watching from a safe distance as the crowd swayed back and forth. The surge coming out of the hall seemed to get the upper hand, pushing hard against its opponents. In the lamplight, Peter could see a pair of burly men in caps and mufflers in the vanguard, striking out with their fists, clearing a path for a group of respectably dressed men and women to edge into the street.

  The opposing crowd gave a final heave. ‘Traitors!’ ‘Nazis!’ A police whistle sounded close by. An elderly man fell, a white-haired woman clutched at his arm in an attempt to lift him. Peter ran forward. The crowd swarmed round the man, hiding him from view. Police whistles were closer.

  In the scrum, a woman took his arm. ‘Would you give me your protection? This violence frightens me.’ The voice was low and accented. Dark eyes engaged his.

  As the police came up, the crowd melted away, the burly men vanishing. He found himself walking with the woman past the now emptied hall. A caretaker was standing on the platform holding a broom and conversing with a middle-aged woman in tweeds and a bearded man in a long mackintosh. She was holding a rolled-up banner; he clutched a cardboard box overflowing with papers. The floor was littered with newspapers and flysheets.

  Two out-of-breath policemen arrived in the passage and the woman moved closer to Peter. They were by the Adelaide’s saloon bar entrance. ‘May we go in?’ she said.

  The pub was in transition between the last of homeward-bound shopkeepers and office workers and the first of the locals. They found places at a corner table, she on the red velvet bench under a gilt lamp with a tasselled shade, he in a hoop-back oak chair. Peter realised he was still holding the hat and placed it on the table, then, feeling awkward about it, on a hook under the lamp.

  ‘What can I get you?’

  She shrugged, then smiled. ‘I don’t know. Whatever you usually get for your lady friends? Thank you.’

  As he went to the bar, he wondered what he would get a “lady friend”. Beer, wine, champagne? A small sweet sherry and a half of bitter for himself should do it. Through the haze of cigarette smoke, across in the public bar, he spotted the two burly men who had been clearing a path outside the hall. One saw him looking, muttered something to his companion, and they turned their backs. At his elbow, the bearded man ordered a double whisky and a brandy then turned to the woman in tweeds who had come up beside him. ‘Is there any of the mutton broth left?’

  Back at the table, the young woman had taken a packet of cigarettes and a lighter out of her handbag. A lighted cigarette lay in the ashtray, the smoke curling up. She pushed the packet towards him. ‘Thank you for helping me. You are very kind.’

  He held out his hand. ‘Peter Hill.’

  ‘Dinah. Forgive me, please, that I imposed myself. It was the violence, and I saw you go to help that poor man when he fell.’ Her hand was cool and hard, her handshake firm.

  Large dark eyes with hazy black smudges underneath. Thick dark eyebrows. A long, finely aquiline nose. Full, curving lips. A soft, smooth complexion, but white, almost pallid, without makeup. She had pulled off her beret exposing thick dark hair twisted into a plait and pinned up behind. Not portrait photograph pretty, he thought; not glossy Tatler, but undoubtedly fascinating. Twenty plus? She was wearing a raincoat but he could glimpse a dark blue skirt and a white blouse buttoned up to the neck.

  ‘You were not at the meeting?’ She broke into his scrutiny. Her accent was … what? German? Central European?

  ‘No. I was on my way to meet a friend. Well, to see if he was in. Just on the off-chance, you know.’

  To meet one of his oldest friends. Chums since their first day at prep school, he and Aubrey. Then at school and varsity – if different colleges, he at his father’s, Aubrey at his. Best man at Aubrey’s Hanover Square wedding the previous spring. Now they were discussing a project together, launching a monthly literary magazine, modernist in approach, which he would edit and Aubrey be the proprietor – something to occupy Aubrey while he waited for the family Commons seat to come along. Not that Aubrey’s uncle showed much sign of giving up hopes of office and leaving the House. All the less likely with war possibly weeks away.

  ‘I stopped you seeing your friend. I am sorry.’ She was looking him in the eye with the hint of a smile, then switched away, glancing into the public bar and then round the saloon. It was filling up, the regulars settling in against the bar, a cheerful hubbub spreading with the cigarette smoke across the glowing brass, well polished mahogany and brushed red velvet.


  ‘Please don’t be. I can see him any time. What was the meeting? Why was there such an angry crowd?’

  ‘It was a broad left anti-fascist meeting to discuss policy on Germany. Why the left is not committed to war against Hitler but not campaigning against it. And the fascists were there to break it up as usual. But there was also opposition from German and Czech exiles and anti-Nazi forces.’

  ‘But Hitler’s imprisoned the German social democrats and communists. The same is happening in Prague. I would have thought the left wanted to see him defeated.’

  ‘It’s more complicated than that: for communists, the only point is what is best objectively for the victory of the international working class.’

  ‘You haven’t touched your drink. May I get you something else?’

  She sipped at it without enthusiasm. ‘No, it is perfect, thank you.’

  ‘And you’re a communist?’

  Something in his tone seemed to amuse her. A smile lit up her eyes for a moment. ‘You never met a communist before?’

  A burst of shouted conversation and laughter drowned her out. A piano struck up When they begin the beguine, It brings back the sound of music so tender… and a heavily rouged woman in a turban started to sing in an American accent.

  He leaned forward to catch her words as she repeated herself: ‘… met one?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ he protested. ‘I have friends who are communist.’ He felt foolish but plunged on. ‘One or two have joined the party. Men I knew at school went off to Spain to join the International Brigade.’

  ‘You did not go with them?’

  ‘Sorry to disturb you …’

  Peter felt a tap on his shoulder and jumped. Sitting back, he looked up into a square, lined face, neatly clipped moustache, well-brushed hair cut short at the back and sides. A smile revealed tobacco-stained teeth, one in the front chipped. The Prince of Wales check suit looked comfortably worn.

  ‘Sorry to disturb you. I think that’s my hat.’ The man indicated the trilby with the wave of a stubby pipe. ‘Fell off when someone took a swing at me out there. You’ll find my initials in it – NH – Nick Harry. How do you do.’ He put the pipe into the ashtray and held out his hand. His glance was sharper than his friendly manner.

  ‘Peter Hill.’

  ‘And Miss … or is it Mrs … ?’

  ‘This is Dinah, a friend.’ Peter dropped his eyes to her left hand – ringless – and felt his face go hot.

  ‘How do you do. Good to have a drink after a meeting like that.’

  Dinah stood up. ‘We were just going.’

  The interloper stood to one side. ‘Well, thanks for saving my hat. Wouldn’t want to lose it after all these years.’ He turned to Peter. ‘Be just like losing my head.’ He put his beer mug on the table. ‘Sorry you couldn’t stay and finish your drinks.’

  He took Dinah’s place and pulled an evening paper out of his pocket. When Peter glanced back as they pushed their way through the throng of drinkers, he appeared absorbed in the racing pages.

  Outside, he turned to her. ‘Which way?’

  She glanced up and down the passage. ‘There’s really no need now. You have already been very kind, but it’s only a short distance and I am sure you would like to find your friend.’

  Peter heard himself say, ‘No, no. I couldn’t possibly let you go on alone. And I would take great pleasure in accompanying you.’

  Two men came out of the public bar arguing loudly. One pushed the other in the shoulder. Dinah took Peter’s arm. ‘This way.’ They went into the tranquil square.

  The night was fine, cooler after the muggy evening, a light breeze rustling the heavy leaves on the plane trees. Patches of light striped the pavements from the long windows of houses facing the square. From one came piano music, from another the hum of conversation and clinking of silverware on china, from a third a baby’s cry. Looking up, Peter saw a young nursery maid framed in an upper casement, rocking a baby in her arms. Then they left the reserved elegance of the square and entered the dark network of narrow terraces with King’s Cross railway station and goods yards to the north and industrial Clerkenwell to the east, the occasional pub or fish-and-chip or eel-and-pie shop making the only splashes of brightness in the gloomy streets.

  Dinah stepped out with a brisk, loose stride. ‘What do you do, kind Mr Peter?’

  ‘I’m supposed to be training as a barrister. What about you, Miss Dinah? What do you do?’

  ‘I’m supposed to be a window dresser at Selfridge’s. Why are you supposed to be training? Do you really not do it?’

  ‘I turn up in chambers, the place where barristers work, but I … well, I want to write and I’m working on a new literary magazine I hope to set up.’ He added quickly, ‘You’re not English?’

  ‘You are an observant supposed barrister.’

  ‘From?’

  ‘From Czernowitz. You know where that is?’

  ‘Galicia.’

  ‘You are quite well informed, Mr Peter. Bukovina, you should say. I thought Englishmen of your class knew only about Persia, India, Africa. Not the far, far away borderlands of Europe. Have you travelled there?’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t think so.’ There had been a long, dusty car journey one summer holiday to the stately city his mother called Lemberg, Lwow really. Then up into broad meadows and cool forests of the Carpathians. ‘So your mother tongue is … ?’

  ‘German – not very popular today, so I say Roumanian or sometimes Ukrainian. You would know if you had been to Czernowitz, so many fine buildings, such culture. But here we are.’

  She turned into a cross street of Regency terrace houses, two-storey with basements. Even in the yellow lamplight Peter could see dilapidation and neglect, peeling paintwork, damp patches on the walls and under cracked windows. A dim glow showed through the fanlight of the house where Dinah stopped and turned to face him. She held out her hand.

  ‘You are a true gentleman,’ she said. ‘I thank you for escorting me.’

  ‘I was glad to be of help.’ The front door was closing behind her before he could ask if they could meet again.

  And now? Return to the square to see if Aubrey was minded to have a nightcap? When he’d walked through the square with Dinah, it had been Aubrey’s baby he’d caught sight of, wide awake in her nursemaid’s arms. A pretty domestic scene. Ford Maddox Brown? Sickert? Teething meant she seemed always awake. But no. He needed to mull over this strange turn of events.

  In a taxi to the flat he shared with his sister, he could still feel the touch of the woman’s hand, light but firm, where she had taken his arm. He didn’t even know her surname, hadn’t asked her. Or had she deliberately diverted him? A communist window-dresser from Czernowitz in Bukovina – of which, naturally, he knew little. She was different. Detached but engaging, at arm’s length but close, cool but warm. He must see her. The cabbie was repeating the fare: he’d arrived.

  His sister Ella was reading the evening paper over a drink.

  ‘How’s the artist? Enjoyable dinner?’ he asked.

  ‘Grisly. Everyone on about what jobs they’ll have when war comes and how their mothers are planning to close their houses and book a hotel in Malvern for the duration. How about you?’

  ‘Hopeless as usual: no job arranged and no hotel booked in Malvern.’

  She shook her head at him and kicked off her shoes. ‘How was your excursion to the New Forest? I’m sure Aunt Frances had improving advice for you.’

  ‘She was too busy preparing for war to persuade me to join her in pacificism. Digging a new vegetable garden and complaining non-stop about the price of blackout curtains going up. She’s planning strips of brown paper on all her windows. In the middle of the New Forest, would you believe? She says nowhere is safe from the bomber.’ He paused and went on more thoughtfully. ‘Actually, going down there, I thought the war must have started. Stations packed with troops. And from the train, the roads west seemed chock-a-block with cars and furniture vans.’ />
  ‘We ought to do the windows. Over dinner, an Air Ministry official was uttering dreadful warnings, blood-curdling.’

  ‘Probably hoping you’d ask him for protection.’

  ‘He said the Germans will start the war with a single, overwhelming, knockout blow from the air. No declaration first, just reduce London to ruins. Huge casualties, total destruction. The noise and blast will drive us all out of our senses. Maddened people will wander the streets laughing and singing. The hospitals are already being cleared.’

  ‘You seem somewhat blasé about the end of the world.’

  ‘I thought he was like Dickens’s fat boy Joe, wanted to make our flesh creep. He said there was no defence and no leadership, almost no anti-aircraft guns and no searchlights.’

  ‘And where’s Chamberlain? Fishing in Scotland. Perhaps we should pack up here and move in with Aunt Frances. Better than Malvern. I could till the ground and you could paint landscapes.’

  ‘Who’d buy landscapes in wartime? Generals’ portraits perhaps. Maybe we should get war jobs.’ She gave him the paper. ‘I’m off to bed.’

  The front page forecast the recall of Parliament to pass emergency legislation. “The most far-reaching measures in peacetime,” the paper predicted, “Drastic and comprehensive, with sweeping internment of aliens.” Was Dinah an alien? He supposed she was. Still, Aubrey’s uncle had heard from a fellow Conservative MP that war wasn’t inevitable: he had an Italian chef who had it on good authority that Italy would hold Hitler back.

  He went to bed unable to get Dinah out of his mind.

  ****

  The next few days brought a sea change. A notice appeared in the flats’ entrance hall giving the name of the block’s air raid warden and the nearest shelter (the basement). On the hall table, tenants’ copies of the Air Raid Precautions pamphlet had been spread under the flowers: blinds, curtains and paint had to be bought; windows screened with cardboard and brown paper and protected against splintering; rooms gas-proofed with cellulose sheets and tape. Someone had put red pails of sand and water in the main corridors, with shovels and hand pumps.