Innocence To Die For

by Eidinow, John

  In the park, men were digging trenches, creating mounds of sandy soil; children on holiday ran up and down them, screaming with joy. For a few minutes he stood and watched painters at work on roadside trees and kerbstones, decorating them with broad white bands, anticipating a blackout. The rhythmic sweeping of the painters’ wide brushes sounded like the regular tread of marching feet. He and Ella must take the ARP measures for the flat – actually their mother’s. Would she give up living on the continent? No sign of her returning.

  Lincoln’s Inn was still deep in the torpor of the summer vacation. The only activity came from removal vans loading furniture from some flats in the Inn. Bolting for the country, he supposed.

  At chambers tea, the handful of barristers not on holiday or down at the Oval all agreed how the unheralded Nazi–Soviet pact had made war inevitable unless Poland could be brought to see sense over Danzig. One said forcefully that he didn’t see why Britain should be dragged into a Jew-war that had nothing to do with her. Jewish finance was behind the crisis and Germany had no quarrel with Britain.

  Peter found his thoughts had drifted to Dinah. ‘The left argue it’s an imperialist conflict and a war will be against the interests of the working class.’ The barrister, Creevey-Adams, gave him a thoughtful look. Later he took him aside to say such talk – even if not seriously meant – didn’t go down well in chambers. No matter how able he might be, an inexperienced young man should understand these were a patriotic set – if, that is, he was hoping for a seat there. Perhaps Peter would like to hear some sensible, properly patriotic views on the situation? He could be Creevey-Adams’s guest at the next meeting of an Anglo-German club, very proper, full of peers, MPs and retired officers. He would let him know time and place.

  The barrister who acted as Peter’s “pupil-master”, tutoring him in the ways of the Bar, was in the country, leaving him free to write. A short story he’d sent to the London Mercury had just been returned – though the literary editor had asked to see something more of his work. His eye for the significant detail had been praised, with the originality and neatness of the plot. Social life was well observed, but Mercury readers liked more involvement, characters to sympathize with.

  He should start another, but the looming conflict was distracting, unsettling: what price the morrow?

  He took himself off to the deserted waiting room to read the paper, full of the emergency measures being brought in, sweeping powers over every area of life, said by the leader writer to be “unprecedented but essential”. What would Dinah’s status mean for her? In Germany, “The account must be settled,” proclaimed Die Angriff. “Even the historic turning point constituted by the pact between Germany and Russia does not bring the Poles to their senses. The increasingly brutal treatment Germans are experiencing in Poland makes every German clench his fist.” The heat was certainly being turned up in Berlin.

  As he turned the pages, a gossip story about Gordon Selfridge caught his eye. Though recently retired, the retailing titan was still to be seen patrolling the aisles of his creation, still putting his personal stamp on the displays.

  Bidding the indifferent clerks goodbye, he was off to Oxford Street.

  In the packed bus there was no escaping talk of war and Hitler. Behind him, two middle-aged women were agreeing on the difficulty of fitting children with gas masks. A brother-in-law was an ARP warden, had been put on duty and warned to expect mass panic in the streets. In front, a young woman was telling her boyfriend that her boss had heard from a German traveller how, in a military parade in Berlin, half the tanks were made of cardboard mounted on tractors. Across the gangway, the chat was Anderson shelters. If the bomb had your name on it, that was you done for, with or without a shelter. They were white-collars, old enough to have been in the previous show.

  By halfway, he’d heard enough and decided to walk. The early evening was comfortably warm; the streets had a yellow glow that lifted the spirits in spite of the war talk.

  An earnest campaigner at a Peace Pledge Union stall buttonholed him. He declined to sign the petition against war but out of politeness took a copy of Peace News and advice on how to avoid conscription. Not quite running, he arrived outside the staff entrance of the store as the shop assistants were pouring out.

  Self-conscious as the crowd thinned, Peter tried to seem occupied with Peace News while looking out for Dinah. No racing results here, he thought. Anyway, was he the racing type? Would he recognise her? Or she him?

  Two commissionaires came out and lit cigarettes, peering across the narrow street at him. Peace News urged a policy based on collective security and friendship towards the German people. War solved nothing, adding poverty and despair to wanton death and destruction that would now be the lot of peoples everywhere, not just in the front line.

  ‘They’ve all gone ’ome now, son.’ One of the commissionaires was at his side, an upright man with a clipped, grizzled moustache and two rows of medal ribbons. The eyes spoke knowingly: pick-up in a pub, night out, second thoughts, fickle womankind. ‘Some ’as handed in their notice and left London.’ He nodded at Peter’s paper. ‘You don’t want to take no account of that. We’ll ’ave to deal with the Jerries for once and all. That ’itler’s mad, raving. ’e won’t stop till ’e’s put out of his misery, and we won’t do it with calls for peace.’ He turned away on his heel, then changed his mind. ‘If you don’t mind my saying so, a young man like you should be in khaki. We did our turn. Now it’s yours.’

  Squaring his shoulders, the commissionaire crossed the street. After a brief exchange and a nod and a final glance at Peter, the two went inside and closed the brown wooden door. That was that—for tonight. He considered going to the Proms – Brahms – but felt too restless.

  When he arrived at the flat, his sister greeted him with a shout of relief. ‘Thank goodness you’re in. You can help hang this bloody, bloody blackout.’ She was surrounded with cascades of black curtaining. ‘Why on earth didn’t Mother buy a basement? These bow-windows are a nightmare and Frances was right – this Italian stuff has gone up 1s 3d a yard since last week. I knew I should have bought it then.’

  The windows were already striped with brown paper. ‘You’re really taking the surprise bombing attack seriously.’

  ‘Carlos – you know, the boy who’s writing a novel about Katherine of Aragon – has a cousin at the Spanish Embassy. And he told me that the military attaché had spoken to some of the German pilots in the Condor Legion. And they said Spain was just a proving ground for England. All the plans had been worked out. They had the bombers and the targets. All they needed was Hitler’s go-ahead to wipe us out.’

  ‘But that’s probably just propaganda, to frighten us off supporting Poland.’

  ‘It wasn’t propaganda that flattened Guernica. Anyway, why take the risk? Hold up that hem, Peter, or I’ll never finish. And I will not be told off by the chief porter or his wife.’

  ‘Have you thought more about a war job?’

  ‘I thought I might volunteer as an ambulance driver. God, I hate these curtains.’

  ‘We look like the inside of a French undertakers, pompes funèbres. We could hold a blackout mass party, invite Aleistair Crowley.’

  ‘Perhaps we should hold an end of peace party. Don’t let that hem droop.’

  ‘Gas masks de rigueur.’

  ‘Bunty will see us through.’

  ‘Watch for the Dacoits in the hills.’

  ****

  Next morning he caught a bus that took him past Selfridge’s great windows. Dinah at work would look out and their eyes would meet. He would jump off the bus.

  Blazers, yachting caps, white dinner jackets, pleated tennis skirts, shorts and halter necks, straw hats at a rakish angle. Escape, they said, from world crisis to the south of France or Bahamas, cocktails at sunset, the deep red-purple of bougainvillea, cards spread across the green baize.

  “Là, tout n’est qu’ordre et beauté,

  Luxe, calme, et volupté.
/>   Nothing but order and beauty …”

  But Baudelaire’s remaining three words? He walked part of the way to the Inn musing on the translation, passing the Rationalist Hall to see if another meeting was announced. “Opulent, serene, and sensual.”

  Ella had left a message in chambers: little Jean, her goddaughter, was being sent to safety in Canada; she was going to Southampton to see her off and would stay with Frances overnight. Then Aubrey rang to propose dinner; they could discuss the plan for the critical review, talk it over.

  ’Parental responsibilities weighing heavy?’ The felt presence of the pram in the hall?

  ‘I don’t know about heavy, but the prospect of being a parent in wartime makes one think about the future in a different way. Dafini’s?’

  ****

  The Dafini family had had “the shop”, as they called their restaurant off Charlotte Street, since before the Great War. Serafino Dafini served on charitable committees for the Italian hospital and church. ‘If I was British, I would support your Mr Chamberlain, a man of peace and municipal values.’ He sighed heavily, pouring olive oil on to a mountain of spaghetti while Emilia, his wife, took orders and supervised the cooking. ‘I hope to live out my life in peace here in London.’

  By the end of the meal, Peter knew there would be no review, not with Aubrey’s backing at any rate. His friend had dragged out the conversation until their osso buco was on the table before confessing that he’d been offered a place at the about-to-be-formed Ministry of Information and felt he should take it. It would be full-time. Also they had particularly mentioned the prospect of an office opening in New York.

  ‘And with your being married to an American citizen, you should be in the running.’

  ‘I have no doubt Angela would welcome the opportunity. With all this talk of a surprise knock-out blow from the air, a chance for her to be over there, at home, with the baby … Obviously, in these circumstances …’

  Aubrey, Peter judged, looked more relieved than embarrassed; slightly flushed, though that might have been Darfini’s full Tuscan wine. He tried to imagine his friend in Washington or New York. Angela’s people were well connected in both cities, slipping from law firm to administration and back. He debated a response. Show sympathetic understanding of Aubrey’s position? Which in fact he thought he had pretty well. Or make a plea that keeping culture alive in war was essential, was what we would be fighting for, and that people would rush to a cultural oasis?

  But Aubrey was explaining how he’d heard on good authority that paper would be rationed the moment war was declared and allocated on previous usage, so an un-established literary magazine probably wouldn’t get any allocation. Anyway, people would doubtless flock to conventional values, familiar, comforting, and there’d be problems with censorship once war was declared.

  “Never waste energy resisting the inevitable” was Peter’s father’s phrase. “Withdraw and regroup.” He took the proffered exit – ‘Let’s hope Hitler backs down and things get back to normal’ – and asked Aubrey about the ministry and what he would do.

  ‘It’ll be the Home Front. Keeping up morale mainly, but censorship and news, and also getting our case over abroad.’ He didn’t know yet precisely his own function.

  ‘ “Chamberlain Wants You” posters. That sort of thing?’

  ‘This is a serious matter, Peter. The war could be won or lost on the Home Front.’

  ‘Do you think people want war, Aubrey?’

  ‘After Czecho? It’s a matter of national honour and I think most people see that, don’t you?’

  ‘I think some are asking if Poland is worth bringing down our whole civilization.’

  ‘Same old Peter, always taking the contrary view. Hitler is leaving us no choice. And I expect people understand that. And if not, it will be my duty to help them.’ He pulled out his watch. ‘I must go. Angela …’ He smiled and waved for the bill. With it came two small glasses of Strega.

  Peter picked up his glass. ‘Every success at the Ministry.’

  ‘Thank you. I want to say we’re very grateful – I can speak for Angela – for your understanding. I told Angela you could be counted on to understand. By the way, is your father coming back to the colours?’

  ‘Ella and I haven’t heard from him for an age, but I doubt it. He’s always said one war in a lifetime was enough. And Kenya obviously agrees with him.’

  ‘And this show is ours.’ Aubrey’s voice swelled with readiness. The MoI had only just begun recruiting; it would be a bit of a lark really. Might Peter himself be interested? ‘Think it over. It could be your cup of tea. I’d put in a word.’

  Chapter Two

  It was Saturday morning, and he breakfasted at Gloria, a continental patisserie a few minutes away from the flat. In his paper, a foreign correspondent reported that the German chancellor Herr Hitler had declared “Polish provocations intolerable”. The problem of Danzig and the corridor must be solved. Herr Hitler was prepared to make a reasonable settlement if Poland and Britain would agree on one that respected Germany’s vital interests. Another article suggested frantic behind-the-scenes efforts for peace.

  Concentration was difficult. The hum of conversation, the lively coming and going, the anonymity of other lives, the cushioned enclosure – normally he would have settled into all that with a purposeful sense of pleasure. Not this morning. Was it the news? The change in Aubrey he’d felt at once last night – a certain heaviness of manner that had come between them? Was it time for him to be putting away childish things? Was it not having found Dinah?

  He’d arranged to go walking in Kent with some men from school; they met regularly, getting out into the fresh air, stretching their legs. He’d take an earlier train.

  ****

  Returning on Sunday evening, he found Ella in a rage. Their mother had rung from Italy to say that she’d read about the ARP in Zürcher Tageblatt and was sending Madame Duverger, her Belgian former housekeeper, to sew and hang the blackout. ‘I told her I … we had done them, but she said Madame would make sure they would survive a bomb blast. Why send me to school in a convent if it wasn’t to learn sewing? There was precious little else on offer.’

  ‘Didn’t stop you getting into the Slade.’

  ‘You know I really learned to draw on our hols in France. You shot. I drew. Anyway, I hate the Belgian. She’s really coming to spy on us. See if I’m keeping a man.’

  ‘She was a spy in the war, criss-crossing the channel. Father swore he saw her slipping into the War Office by a side door.’

  ‘With plans for the next German offensive sewn into her stays.’

  ‘He didn’t get that close. Did Mother say anything about coming back?’

  ‘Far from it. Apparently she has new assignments, photographic reportage. “Je fais les choux gras, poupée jolie”. Enjoying lots of good things.’

  ‘Hmm. Perhaps she’s worried she could be treated as an alien here when … if they divorce.’

  They compared notes on their weekend: railway stations thronged with soldiers and evacuees; sandbags on pavement lights; air-raid shelter signs suddenly everywhere. Ella found Aunt Frances very gloomy. ‘She’d said it all reminded her of Spain.’ Seeing the goddaughter off had been heart-rending; the ship was swarming with tight-lipped parents bidding farewell to tearful children before dispatching them with their nannies to safety. How could you blame the parents? With all the predictions of knockout bombing raids, if you had the chance, take it.

  Two of Peter’s walking party had pulled out of the weekend. Air Force volunteers, they’d been called up, one from his ship-brokers, the other from his jobbers. The outing on the Downs had been glorious, utter peace, and the Channel twinkling away. Not a soldier, not a sandbag, not a trench in sight.

  ‘Are you serious about driving an ambulance?’

  ‘Absolutely. I’ve put my name down. We could make an ex-Slade brigade. Any thoughts on what you might do?’

  ‘Assuming I don’t just stay in cham
bers ’til I’m called up? No. No thoughts. I’m not even sure what I’m good for.’

  ‘When she’s not busy unpicking my needlework, ask Madame for some tips on spying.’

  ‘Or assassination. She has assassin’s eyes. Quite clear and quite empty.’

  ‘Could you manage Auden’s “The conscious acceptance of guilt in the necessary murder”?’

  ‘Don’t know about guilt and necessary. Or managing, for that matter. There won’t be any flat ephemeral magazine, at any rate.’ He related his dinner with Aubrey and the change, that heaviness of manner he’d felt in his friend, as if in anticipation of his running the country.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Peter. What a blow.’

  ‘Not really. I felt it coming – and it’s really the war.’

  ‘But he’s not the only one of your friends with capital and literary pretensions.’

  ‘True. But I can’t imagine raising the matter. “I know we’re just about to go to war, but would you like to fund an esoteric and probably ephemeral literary magazine?”. Some hopes.’

  ****

  He woke determined to see Dinah again, surprising himself with his certainty.

  At Selfridge’s only one window was being changed: two other window-dressers were arranging the models. Inside, he wandered, he hoped casually, from floor to floor; then, embarrassed, went straight to chambers, finding an invitation from Creevey-Adams to the “aforementioned meeting” – a few friends in an association “where you can hear some interesting facts and fresh views about the German situation. Particulars to follow”. He got back to the store just before closing time. Ella would never believe his pursuing a foreign window-dresser, met once, briefly. Aubrey would relish it with their friends.

  He could not possibly stand outside the staff entrance again. An ABC teashop offered a view up the side street. He found a seat, armed himself with a pot of tea and a teacake, and settled in to watch and wait. By coincidence, he opened his paper at a Selfridge’s advertisement, a homily by Callisthenes boasting how customers were remembered even after a gap of sixteen years. Some hope there.