Innocence To Die For

by Eidinow, John

  ‘Does Poirot ever say zut alors!?’

  ‘Perhaps not.’

  They had walked down to a green, small shops on one side, the Heath opening out on the other. It seemed deserted. Buses stood empty. The traffic had stopped. On the corner was a café, the doorway clustered with people, unmoving, listening hard to the measured, precise speech from within. ‘Standing room only,’ whispered a bus conductor as they joined the crowd. A small boy dropped his wooden boat with a clatter; his parents took no notice:

  “…. at war with Germany. You can imagine what a bitter blow it is to me that all my long struggle to win peace has failed. Yet I cannot believe that there is anything more or anything different that I could have done and that would have been more successful. Up to the very last it would have been quite possible to have arranged a peaceful and honourable settlement between Germany and Poland, but Hitler would not have it. … The government have made plans under which it will be possible to carry on work of the nation in the days of stress and strain that may be ahead... Now may God bless you all. May He defend the right. For it is evil things that we shall be fighting against - brute force, bad faith, injustice, oppression and persecution - and against them I am certain that right will prevail.”

  Another voice, gravely orotund, followed:

  “The prime minister, Mr Neville Chamberlain, was speaking from the Cabinet Room at 10 Downing Street.”

  The little crowd broke away in silence. The small boy’s mother picked him up and held him tightly, tears running down her face and over her chin. Peter took Dinah’s hand and led her across the road, to the path into the Heath. As they set off along it, an unearthly wailing filled the air. The few walkers looked amazed, hesitant, frightened. Some started to run. Others paused, then went ahead. On the green, a steel-helmeted warden had appeared and was directing passers-by towards an underground shelter. Screaming hysterically, a woman mounted a bicycle and rode away, still screaming.

  ‘Do you want to go on?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ She looked ahead. ‘We shall go on.’

  They walked in silence for a while, still hand in hand, her stride matching his. The breeze was soft, the air fresh after the heavy overnight rain, the sky clear. Her clasp was cool and firm. As the path narrowed and turned uphill between entwined thickets of ancient trees, she gave his hand a squeeze and let go. ‘You have not a working man’s hand,’ she said. ‘Strong, yes, but not signs of toil.’

  ‘There’s more than one sort of toil. What if mine is by brain rather than hand?’

  ‘Oh yes, but in the service of your class, the rentier class?’

  ‘Until the revolution comes. For now, even the rentier class are entitled to my intellectual service, such as it is.’ He stopped and took her hands, turned them over and stroked the fingers and palms. Smiling, he held them for a moment more and let them go. ‘And your hands aren’t exactly those of a labouring woman, in daily toil at the factory bench, behind the plough, or scrubbing the front doorstep in the bitter cold.’

  ‘You are right. Objectively my hands fail to demonstrate that I have the correct class orientation.’

  ‘Not at all. Look at it this way. By making Selfridge’s sell more through your window displays, you’re in effect helping to bring about more ostentatious displays of wealth, thus increasing the division between the bourgeoisie and working classes, thus laying the ground for heightened revolutionary sentiments among the proletariat. This is political work, much more important than your standing at a factory bench ten hours a day.’

  ‘If you are not joking, Englishman, your analysis is class-based, that is correct.’

  ‘I am serious. You are an agent. Working behind the lines to undermine capitalism.’

  ‘A window-dresser of the revolution?’

  ‘It’s a pity for your work that the war will put an end to displays of wealth.’

  ‘The war will see two fascist systems destroy each other. My window work will not be necessary for the triumph of the international proletariat.’

  A new wailing filled the air, this one steadier, less urgent. They drew level with a tall, thin man who was saying to his companion, a middle-aged woman, ‘That must be the all-clear.’ He looked across at Peter. ‘We can leave our trenches and start fighting back for our country.’ He turned back to his companion. ‘Our country. That’s all that matters now, whatever we thought before.’

  ****

  ‘Tell me how a window dresser from Czernowitz comes to be an agent of the revolution in London.’

  ‘I will tell you. First, what we began at the dinner: you tell me about yourself. I do not wish to be a Paul Pry but a respectable woman must know who is her escort … Yes?’ She smiled.

  ‘Paula Pry, but yes, of course.’ That smile! ‘Forgive me. I should have explained myself earlier.’

  ‘Of course you are forgiven.’

  ‘I’m afraid it’s rather conventional and dull. Like hundreds of my rentier class, I followed in my father’s footsteps, beginning with my preparatory school, then my public school, private, that is—’

  ‘Like Captain Hastings.’

  ‘ … University—’

  ‘Cambridge, you said.’

  ‘Cambridge. Then a law crammer—’

  ‘Crammer?’

  ‘Tutors who stuff you with as much law as you need as quickly as you can to become a barrister – an advocate.’

  ‘Why not study law at Cambridge?’

  ‘It’s not a proper academic subject … Now I’m starting as a barrister. You know here the legal profession is divided into solicitors and barristers?’

  They had reached the top of the heath and were looking across at the panorama of London, from St Paul’s to Westminster, calm and poised in the midday sun. Barrage balloons floated like big silver fish in a blue sea. A little further away from where they stood, laughing children were making futile efforts to get kites off the ground, fathers joining in. ‘Shouldn’t be doing that,’ someone said. ‘Might be a signal to Jerry.’

  ‘Your legal system is not important to the present discussion.’ She patted his arm. ‘Tell me about your family.’

  He found himself steadily going further into his life than he ever intended.

  On his father’s side: one of those families spread in a web across English society. Put it another way, family members always to be found playing a serious part somewhere in public life – in the church, law, university, army, public administration, diplomacy, colonies, city banking. Hardly ever in politics.’

  ‘Aristocrats?’

  ‘Heavens no. A rung or two below and proud of it. Duty done is its own reward.’ Substantial, yes, but not rich; no wide farming acres or deep pockets of coal or streets of tenanted cottages. ‘Too much stress on education, perhaps. Able. Occasionally very able.’

  ‘Able?’ She raised her eyebrows.

  ‘What we call being clever.’

  ‘Why not say clever?’

  ‘No one wants to be thought clever, certainly not too clever. Sign of a doubtful character.’

  ‘You mean you might be foreign – like Poirot?’

  Or cosmopolitan, he thought. ‘No. That would be excusable. Of an Englishman, “too clever by half” means not to be trusted. Some flaw of character there. “Not too clever but decent enough” – don’t ask him to think, but he’ll never let you down. So, “able” avoids the perils of “clever”.’

  ‘I am learning so much. Thank you.’ She squeezed his arm. ‘Please go on.’

  Through the generations the Hills went forward, priding themselves on their good sense, balance, decency, reliability, straightforwardness, solidity. With those attributes and with the family’s connections and reputation—

  ‘And being able? Perhaps very able?’

  ‘It helps.’ A family member, however dull, could always be found a post. Father himself a bit out of line, however. Younger son. In 1914, gave up a lectureship in ancient history – one of the youngest appointments – to join up, was
decorated and promoted, ended in 1919 as brigadier-general, very young, stayed on in the army.

  He paused. Dinah waited. He said: ‘Let’s walk up to Kenwood House. Have you seen it? Then find some lunch in Highgate.’ He paused again. She waited.

  He’d never really talked about it all, except with Ella, but now he went on, spilling it out. ‘He’d married. It was very romantic. Not at all what Hills did.’ A nasty wound early on, an ambulance back to a base hospital. Love at first sight with the ambulance driver. French, he thought, but actually Polish. Immediate marriage; immediate children. Two. He and Ella.

  ‘Very un-family, of course. Very.’ Before 1914, before the Archduke’s assassination put a stop to that life, his mother had been studying art in Paris, ambitious to be a painter, paying her way by working as an artist’s model.

  ‘Artist’s model.’ He laid weitght on the phrase. ‘I suppose an American heiress would have been acceptable, but the rule, the family understanding, was serious wives with serious connections, another string in the family web.’

  So, anyway, after the war, though all was well at home, looking back, perhaps other parts of the family never really seemed comfortable with them—some cousins always rather distant, even at school, parents always rather reserved. Then, at more or less the same time, his father fell out with the military establishment over tanks – his obsession with tanks as the future of land war – and his mother became very restless at home and began to spend more and more time on the continent.

  ‘She couldn’t bear England or his family. They parted. He went to Kenya—’

  ‘Where did your mother come from in Poland?’

  ‘Warsaw, I think. But she had family in Lemberg.’

  ‘Lwow. Czy mowi pan po polsku? Do you speak Polish?’

  ‘She never spoke it. She had made French her tongue and spoke nothing but French to us from the cradle. As children, we thought she was French. She would pinch us if we spoke English to her. She sent us to stay with a French friend, a marquis I’m afraid, in the holidays. Usually at his château, occasionally in Paris. I think he’d helped organise their wedding.’

  ‘And your sister? What does she do?’

  ‘She’s the one who’s become an artist. Very good. Just now she’s volunteered to be an ambulance driver. The decisive one of us. You must meet her.’

  Dinah smiled and gave a little bow with her head. ‘And your mother is happy that her daughter has picked up where she had to leave off?’

  How sharp she was. ‘I’m sure both Father and Mother agreed Ella should go to art school and both are pleased she’s beginning to make her way. But Mother hasn’t given up on art, if photography counts. She’s creating quite a name as a photo-journalist.’

  ‘You will show me their work, mother and daughter.’

  They had reached Kenwood and stood contemplating Robert Adam’s long classical façade, glowing in the sun.

  ‘And you, able Peter, perhaps very able Peter, with all this education and serious family, what are you good for?’

  Normally he would have brushed off such a question. He thought for a while, gazing at the house, running his eyes from one window to another. ‘“The universal good cause of cheering us all up”, people might say.’

  She looked quizzically at him.

  ‘Honestly, I don’t know. I suppose war means it won’t matter. How does Kenwood strike you?’

  ‘A fine building. Of the 18th century?’

  ‘Yes. It’s famous for the Orangery – there – all glass. And its paintings. We’ll come and see them another Sunday. If you would like to.’

  ‘I would, please. Who owns it? A city banker? An aristocrat?’

  ‘An aristocratic brewer gave it to the people about ten years ago.’

  ‘The people made and the people drank his beer and from the profit he could give the people one of his mansions.’

  ‘They enjoyed his wages and his beer and now they enjoy his paintings and his house. Isn’t that a good use of wealth?’

  ‘If they owned the means of production in the first place, they would not have to depend on the whims of their masters for access to great art.’

  ‘Until that day comes, at least they can walk in the Orangery and see great paintings now. And we can go and drink his beer.’

  They turned away, and in a gesture of familiarity, she exchanged her hat for his. ‘It suits you. Now, until recently my life was very ordinary.’ She slipped her hand under his arm. ‘And comfortable. My father is a surgeon and my mother a teacher. Czernowitz is a beautiful, cultural city. Now it is in Roumania, but from its buildings it is known as Little Vienna, and everybody, that is who is not a Roumanian nationalist, looks back to the time when it was a jewel of Austria-Hungary. My father was in the Imperial army in the war, on the Italian front. He was very proud of his uniform and his service to the emperor. My parents are not religious, though I think my mother would like to have some contact with the practice of her childhood. My father always had argued that the Jew should be Austrian in the street and Austrian in the home, and honestly has tried to change that to Roumanian though he knows the change is bad for Jewish people.’

  ‘Religious or not religious.’

  ‘It makes no difference, religious or not religious. From a Christian family or converted in the cradle, as they say.’

  ‘And your father felt his daughter had best leave Czernowitz?’

  He was taking them down from Kenwood, through the fresh air and sunshine, across the rolling grass slope to a path that would lead them up to Highgate village. As they went, music rose to meet them.

  In a shallow bowl, four young string players had set up music stands in a half-circle. An elderly woman held a poster advertising a recital that night. Scrawled across it in red crayon was “Cancelled due to Hostilities”. Peter and Dinah joined the small crowd that had gathered round, drawn by the harmonies, parents shushing children.

  ‘Schubert D minor—’

  As Dinah whispered to him, a hoarsely bawled ‘“There’ll always be an England…”’ drowned her words. ‘“… And England will be free …”’

  A man on the edge of the crowd was red in the face with the effort of singing over the quartet. ‘Let’s ’ave some real music,’ he shouted. ‘All together now: “There’ll always be an England …”’ Unshaven, a cloth cap pulled over matted hair and a muffler tucked into a stained waistcoat, a thick black scab at the corner of his mouth, he was jerking his arms up and down as he shouted.

  Dinah whirled round, shaking her finger, hissing, ‘Please be quiet. Be quiet.’ The force made the singer hesitate. ‘Let them play in peace.’

  A well-built man stepped out of the crowd towards the man, handing his little girl to his wife. ‘Bugger off, matey,’ he said quietly. The singer grew redder still, opened his mouth to continue, thought better of it, and turned away.

  The piece ended with a ferocious rush and flourish over an ominous, foreboding theme. The little audience clapped enthusiastically. After a short pause and some retuning, the players began a new piece. ‘Delius,’ whispered Peter. ‘It’s Delius or lunch. We’ll have to hurry a bit.’

  ****

  With Guinness, oxtail soup and roast beef sandwiches, they sat in the courtyard of an old drovers’ inn among a thin crowd of walkers. Peter picked up his glass. ‘A salute to Kenwood – with the drink that opened it to the public. Guinness.’

  ‘To the workers who made it.’

  ‘And the noble lord who gave it.’

  She pulled a face. ‘It is very bitter.’

  He offered her something else.

  ‘No, no thank you. I must fully experience English taste. I thought you liked only sweet things.’

  ‘In this case, it’s Irish.’ He couldn’t hold back: ‘Your father thought you should leave Czernowitz?’

  ‘I did not come to London from Czernowitz. I came from Vienna. I had dreams of being an architect. From when I was a young girl, I wanted to create buildings. Houses, apar
tments, libraries, theatres. Czernowitz is a feast of building in every style —baroque, classical, secession, art nouveau, modernist. That is why it is called “Little Vienna”. And my parents agreed with me that real Vienna would be the place to study architecture, especially as my grandfather, my father’s father, was living there. He was a professor of Germanistic at the University. You know Schiller and Novalis?’

  ‘Schiller a bit – only in English. Novalis I’ve only heard of.’

  ‘Novalis was a romantic-mystic writer. He was a poet and novelist who wanted to educate the world into love and nature. His real name was Friedrich von Hardenberg and he died very young in 1801. My grandfather is a student of Schiller too, but in particular he has devoted his life to Novalis, who left his work in many fragments.’

  He urged her to eat. ‘You must be starving and the soup will get cold.’

  She drank her soup between phrases. ‘Novalis – putting his work together, understanding it, tracing his great influence – should be more than enough for one life. But as a younger man my grandfather was also politically active: he followed the Polish Bund and became a member of the Russian Social Democrats and debated with their leaders. He even travelled to London for their conference, with Lenin and Trotsky. We had long political discussions, he and I.’ She smiled into his eyes. ‘Now I must tell you “Eat! You must be starving”.’ She was speaking and laughing through her sandwich, and her cheeks were pink. ‘Eat, eat. I will not go on until you eat. Novalis said “Learning is pleasurable but doing is the height of enjoyment.”’

  He realised how intensely he must be looking at her and felt himself go red. ‘Your going on will be the height of enjoyment for me. Did your grandfather’s influence make you a Bolshevik?’

  ‘No, no. He was not originally a Bolshevik. In those far off days, a Menshevik. Then so many splits and groupings came, but he went into the Communist Party. In Vienna, he was never an active party worker. As for me, I wanted to build apartments in which workers lived a full and equal life, and for that, first the foundations must be laid correctly. My grandfather would walk with me through Vienna discussing economics, society and history. He helped me see the objective relations of capital and labour.’ She fell silent. In the gaunt Victorian parish church across the road, morning service had been followed by a vigil for peace, with people of all ages coming and going in an unbroken stream, subdued and uneasy. ‘It seems that your countrymen are not joyous at going to war.’