It had been the perfect moment, Peter told the policeman. His standing in front of Dinah, back to the street, blocking her view. Had that made it a snap decision by the thief, he wondered to himself, or had he been watching them as they walked along absorbed in each other, his eyes greedily on the parcel?
Notebook in hand, the policeman listened patiently. He took Peter’s name and address. There was a lot of petty theft on these streets. Things had become worse since the war, as if people didn’t care any more. The blackout was a gift to the criminal class. Was it valuable? Peter should ask his friend. In the meantime, they should hold on to their possessions, particularly in the blackout, particularly if likely to be distracted. He winked.
‘Can you let Mr Thomas know what happened to his parcel?’
‘I’ll ask grandfather how to get word to him.’
‘What was it, do you think? Important?’
‘No, no. Probably just a German book he knew grandfather would like.’ She seemed anxious not to talk about it.
‘He left an envelope behind as well. Addressed to a shop in Zürich. He seems to have had quite a forgetful moment. I’ve posted it. A flower shop, I think. It should get there eventually.’
‘Roses for a dear lady, perhaps.’
He bought a dozen at the next flower-stand.
****
At their destination, a French bistro in a side street near Leicester Square, the patron took advantage of Dinah’s momentary absence to murmur that he could recommend a small hotel, if they were in need of one, very quiet, very discreet. His eyes, the colour of a stagnant pond, Peter thought, darted across the small, Frenchified dining room to where Dinah would reappear. ‘Just around the corner, clientèle très convenable.’
Peter had time only to mutter, ‘Thank you, but no’, as Dinah came sweeping back, arching her eyebrows as he rose to seat her. ‘He was complimenting me on my companion.’
She glanced over at the patron, now absorbed in filleting a sole, and began to speak, but her voice was lost in a burst of cheering. A group of uniformed French officers were on their feet, toasting the downfall of Germany. A short, plump officer gestured to the other diners to join in the toast. ‘This time once and for all. Il faut en faire.’ A few lifted their glasses; the rest stared at their plates until the noise died down.
‘They won’t be cheering soon.’ An elderly man at the next table pulled a disgusted face and called for his bill. He left his paper, open at pictures of Tommies in full kit, waving and smiling as they boarded a ferry bound for Calais. The British Expeditionary Force, the BEF, on its way. The barmaid’s intended one of them? The patron came round with glasses of champagne ‘from our allies, in honour of our entente militaire. They have no doubt la gloire awaits them when Hitler smashes himself on the Maginot Line.’
Peter raised his glass, but to her promotion. Then, with conversation drowned by the increasing noise of French triumphal fervour, they cut short the meal and went in search of peace.
****
In the corner of an almost deserted saloon bar, they sat with the roses on the table in front of them.
‘Celebration?’ The barman had winked at Peter, who wondered if he was related to the policeman.
‘I have a new job today.’ Dinah jumped in.
‘Always good news, a job. They say this war’ll put an end to men on the dole, but no sign of it yet.’
‘The arms manufacturers may be busy but this war cannot be in the long-term interest of working people.’
The barman had stared at Peter, who’d hastily offered him a drink to celebrate with them.
When he and Dinah were seated, she asked, ‘Would you come with me next week to a political meeting to discuss the war?’
‘With pleasure. Also, I would like to meet your grandfather, if I may. And we must make the date for Ella to meet you properly.’
She squeezed his hand. ‘My grandfather would like to meet you. He says you must be a young man of worth. And I would like to get to know your sister.’
****
At the top of her street, Dinah called to the driver to pull over. Peter took the flowers and helped her out of the cab. They stood facing each other, confirming the next meeting, then falling into silence for a long moment. Dinah was looking up at him.
‘Go on. Give her a kiss.’ Peter heard the whisper quite distinctly. ‘For God’s sake. We might none of us be here next week.’
He glanced round. The taxi driver was sitting in his cab looking straight ahead. Dinah was silent still, still looking up.
‘I love you,’ he heard himself say. Dinah put her arms round his neck and lifted her face to his. He said, ‘I love you’, and kissed her.
****
On the way home, Peter was seized with panic. Had he rushed it? Moved too fast for her? Broken the rules? Were young women in Czernowitz or Vienna not accustomed to young men being so forward? She hadn’t said she loved him. She hadn’t said anything. Just taken the roses, breathed in their scent for a moment, and walked off the short distance to her front door without looking back. But she had kissed him. He felt her arms round his neck and her soft lips opening on his.
Suppose he had taken up the patron’s suggestion? Joined the clientèle très convenable? At the small reception desk, Dinah is hanging back, her hat pulled down over her brow. The night clerk stubs out his cigarette in the yellow Ricard ashtray and reaches for a key from the rack behind without lifting his eyes from the evening paper. The room door is shutting behind them. The bed is turned back, ready. In the corner, a bidet on a stand, with two towels. Outside, a red and green advertisement for an apéritif flashes on and off. In the velvet silence he draws the curtains.
The taxi swerved to avoid an unlit motorcycle. The driver swore quietly.
****
‘You’ve become lovers?’
‘What sort of question is that?’
Ella laughed with delight. ‘You should see your expression.’
‘Whatever my expression, the answer to your question is no. You might spend all your time with your girlfriends talking about your sex lives and who’s sleeping with whom, but Dinah’s not that sort.’
‘She’s a modern young woman with a sweet young man. Of course you’d like to, wouldn’t you?’
‘You’re very frank tonight.’
‘It’s the war, blackout and boredom, and not knowing.’
****
In the night, the telephone rang. Ella answered it; he heard her exclamation of surprise before drifting back to sleep. He dreamed he was on a street corner in an unknown location, a voice whispering to him. He knew it was urgent but couldn’t make out the words. He felt rather than saw the presence of a shadow, but couldn’t make it out. He awoke briefly in blackness, disorientated until he remembered the blackout.
In the morning, already dressed, Ella came into his room with a cup of tea. ‘Mother rang,’ she announced. ‘In the middle of the night.’
‘I heard the phone and your answering. I thought it must be your ARP. What on earth did she want at that hour? Anything wrong?’
‘She wants you to meet her. In The Hague, of all places. I’ve written down the details.’
‘In the Hague? What on earth for?’
‘She didn’t share that. She was very insistent – en français. Au sérieux.’
‘Did she say where she was calling from?’
‘Rome.’
Chapter Five
No peace, no war. This ambiguous time was marked only by a rising tide of resentment, heard on buses and in shops and pubs, muttering at emergency measures, the blackout, the apparent pointlessness of it all.
Taken up with Dinah, working at testators’ and trustees’ ambiguities, Peter himself was unconcerned. There was no pressure on men to join up – almost the reverse, with the army unable to train them – and Creevey-Adams seemed so grateful for his efforts, preoccupied as the man was with prospects for a peace settlement, going off for conversations with confidential sources
—English peers, Swedish and Danish businessmen. ‘All very hush-hush, y’know. Promising. They have contacts in German government and society, very anti-Hitler, ready to act if we only give a lead. We can pass them on to the Foreign Office.’
So, when prompted by a tenacious Creevey-Adams to go to the meeting at the Russian Tea Rooms in Kensington, he went. He’d debated going, but felt he couldn’t refuse the man who was being so helpful to him professionally just when he should be taking the Bar seriously. And again, the fact was, he’d felt curious about these people and their arguments at this queer time of no war, no peace. Anyway, it would be interesting; broaden his experience of life. At the last minute, Creevey-Adams had pulled out. ‘Unfortunately I can’t join you. Tell Miriam, Mrs Baggot, an even more important meeting’s come up. You’ll be recognised and made welcome.’
****
Miriam, in tweeds, accompanied by the smiling niece, was in the Tea Rooms. ‘I gathered you’d be interested to join us.’ She enjoined discretion on him. ‘Not a word outside. You can report to Alexander, of course.’
Alexander? So that was what the ‘A’ stood for. “Mr A. P. C. Creevey-Adams” on chambers’s doorpost.
As they left the Tea Rooms to go through the adjacent front door to a flat above, the niece introduced herself. ‘Helen Jones. I’m Miriam’s secretary.’ On second viewing, he thought, she had sharp, pointed features. Probably called Foxy at secretarial college.
****
Thirteen or so people were packed into a sitting room-cum-office. He recognised some from the Holborn meeting; two or three nodded welcome. A tall, stringy young man, still wearing his bicycle clips, pointed to an upright chair. Miriam introduced him as Peter – ‘no surnames here’ – vouched for by Alexander, ‘who thinks very highly of him’. A woman with slanting blue eyes, wearing a floral blouse, a long skirt and flat sandals, caught his glance at a space where a picture had hung until recently and smiled knowingly. Miriam asked the woman, Eva, to open the meeting.
Eva spoke softly and with a Slavonic accent. ‘We know why we’re here. To oppose Chamberlain and co.’s Jew war policy, its military involvement in Europe, its refusal to understand that National Socialism had a historic role in clearing up the social and political rottenness of the Continent, and that Britain could learn something from its success, not oppose it—’
Miriam intervened. It was not unpatriotic or treacherous to argue that they must work for peace with Hitler, even to express admiration for his economic success and the spirit of national unity he had engendered in Germany. A spirit so different from the soft, irresolute character of feckless Britain and its unfit youth. The Empire was the future, and Britain must be guided away from wasting her blood and treasure on the current mess in Europe and towards strengthening the Empire. To continue in a European conflict would surrender the future to Bolshevism as the two sides fought themselves into the ground. Of course, that was what the left hoped. Britain’s and Germany’s – and the true Europe’s – mutual interests and needs must be recognised. That was the point.
‘It would mean’, added a well-pressed blue suit, ‘standing up to Jewish influence and its brute money power.’
‘Hear, hear’, from a black coat and striped trousers. ‘The press will never give this a fair hearing while it’s under Jew control.’
‘We must put first things first.’ Miriam ignored them. ‘That means taking advantage of the current stalemate to alert people to the criminal folly of fighting Hitler, and to campaign for peace on terms that would free our country of its chains to a corrupt Europe and put its Empire interests first. It does not mean anything that could be construed as treasonable—supporting a Nazi invasion or persuading our troops not to fight. I can’t emphasise that enough. They will lock us up if they can.’
This was a lesson in human nature, Peter thought. Although he’d met right-wing figures at dinners in right-wing houses, and been to the meeting in Holborn, he’d heard nothing like this small group’s corrosive antagonism towards the government and its, admittedly muddled, attempt to stand up for, he supposed, decency. As for the sheer venom directed at the Jews, that was the sharpest lesson: his fellow citizens with such bile seething below the most commonplace of surfaces.
Miriam picked up again. ‘Organisation is the key. We must organise and set up cells of true like-minded patriots outside London. Eva has a list of members and sympathisers from our various groups and I want to start the ball rolling.’ Eva gestured with her head towards Peter. Miriam smiled fleetingly towards him. ‘Peter, no need at this stage to bore you with the administrative part of the meeting. Please do think over what you’ve heard and how you can contribute to this great cause. You’ve been most welcome. Helen will be in touch. She’ll show you out.’
As he made his way out, the stringy man in bicycle clips thrust something into his hand. ‘Get these away,’ he mouthed.
Smiling, Helen led the way down to the street door. ‘Thank you for coming. It’s good to have a new recruit so well connected. What was Eric anxious to give you?’
Peter looked down at a small pack of square gummed labels and peeled off two or three. The top one had a hand-printed slogan in black ink: “Jew Belisha wants you to fight for him”. The next read: “Jew War Destroys Workers”.
‘Can I relieve you of them? Miriam really doesn’t want this sort of thing.’ She took the pack. ‘It attracts the wrong sort of attention.’ With a wave she disappeared inside.
****
‘This is a broad left meeting,’ Dinah instructed him over curry in an Indian restaurant not far from the hall. ‘There is a debate as to the objectively correct understanding of the conflict. It is rumoured that the Comintern leadership are taking the view that the line adopted by elements in the British Communist leadership at the beginning of the war might on further analysis be found to have depended on incorrect reasoning. It might therefore have to be changed. The rest of the broad left are demanding to debate the line now. The Communist leadership say this is premature.’
‘There will be a row?’
She paused. ‘The discussion could be heated.’
‘I thought since the invasion of Poland the CP was supporting the war as part of the left coalition.’
‘Yes. The line was – is – that nothing could be worse for the working class than the victory of Nazism. Fighting the war, working people could demand leadership by a popular front, bring in their own government.’
‘And now?’
‘Now a more thorough theoretical analysis shows objectively this is not an anti-fascist war. It is an imperialist conflict, a conflict between imperialist powers, and the working class should stand aside as they can have no interest in the success of either side.’ She paused, frowned, drank some beer, leaned forward and spoke in a low voice. ‘If correct, if adopted as the general line, it means a policy of revolutionary defeatism.’ She stood up. ‘We must go. Thank you for your company.’
“Revolutionary defeatism”? Something to do with Lenin? Whatever it meant, Dinah, ready for the battle in her long dark coat and dark beret, didn’t seem at all happy. He was glad to be going. Again, new experience, novel characters, but most of all because she had asked him to share this. She had never yet said she loved him. Her wanting him at her side here, at an important political moment—that was something.
****
The meeting was in a dockside borough south of the river, in the municipal baths. The pool had been closed in case of German air attack when it was full of swimmers. Drained and boarded over, during the day it was used for the host of extra tasks war had imposed on the Town Hall, the distribution of gas-masks, evacuation lists, ration cards. Mass vaccination would be given here if the enemy attacked with germs, as was rumoured. At night, it became a venue for political and social meetings, amateur dramatics and operetta, boxing and wrestling—tonight’s stewards looked familiar enough with the ring.
Behind a table under the diving boards at the deep end sat two men, one heavi
ly built, full-faced, short back and sides, his collar tight around a thick neck (metal-beater in a suit and tie, thought Peter). The other looked as if he was in one of the professions: sharp features, shrewd eyes glinting behind round spectacles, long, neatly trimmed hair, well-fitting dark suit.
Metal-beater rose and called comrades to order. He seemed nervous, his voice shaking a little as he began. This meeting was by no means intended to decide policy towards the war. That would be to assume change was on the agenda and anyway premature. To remind comrades: since 1933, the Communist Party had condemned the Nazi terror and its system of industrial slavery. On the third of September, the Party had supported the war; the broad left coalition had supported it. All thinking people had believed this was a just war to be supported by the industrial class and any other anti-fascist forces, working together to install a popular front government, the only government that could bring the fruits of victory to the masses. Otherwise, to allow the Fascist beast to ride roughshod over Europe would be the ultimate betrayal of working people and all they had fought to achieve. He paused.
Peter was moved by the man’s growing passion and certainty – he knew how to speak – but much of the audience was restless, impatient. Only scattered applause came from the hall. He glanced at Dinah, sitting forward, listening intently, her beret pulled down over her forehead almost to her eyebrows.
Metal-beater was raising his hand and going on. It was no secret, however, that this established and popular British Left understanding of the nature of the conflict had come under criticism from cadres in Moscow and the Comintern. It was argued that there had been a failure to apply the lessons Lenin had taught the Party. That was the issue for discussion. He came to an abrupt halt.
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