‘Mr Hill, my granddaughter is everything to me. There is nothing I will not do in my power for her safety and her happiness, for her life in truth and justice. Nothing.’ He raised his glass. ‘You have not chosen an easy road, but I wish you all joy and good fortune in your life to come. To you both.’
Peter said, ‘Thank you. One of our finest authors wrote, “What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life …?” I know we are joined for life.’ He raised his glass. ‘To Dinah, my love.’
She said, ‘To Peter, my love.’
The professor said, ‘To you, my dear granddaughter. To you, my dear Mr Hill.’
****
‘My love, I will always remember this evening.’ Her grandfather had left them alone. ‘This wonderful evening.’ Silently, lightly but with complete tenderness, she caressed his face, and drew his lips to hers. Then she opened the front of her dress and took his head into her bosom. He was lost in its gentle rise and fall, so soft and delectable under his lips, held in bliss. The warm, rich fragrance of her perfume enveloped him. Loosened, her dark locks fell over his kisses.
Gently she pushed him away and closed her dress. ‘You must go, my dearest. I have to rise early for work.’ She refused his offer to help. ‘Tomorrow, tomorrow. But I do have one favour to ask. If you have a moment, could you go to Victoria, the station, for me on your way to work?’ She laughed. ‘To chambers, shouldn’t I say?’
An acquaintance was arriving from Paris with some irreplaceable notes her grandfather had left behind in Vienna; they had recently been retrieved, carried to Switzerland by a brave friend from the old days – it was very risky – and sent on to Paris. She had been hoping to slip down to the station and pick them up, but now she had a meeting in the store at just the time—10.40.
Of course. How would he know the person?
The acquaintance, Madame Gerstina, a blonde woman in her mid-30s, would be in the buffet opposite platform two. On the table would be a copy of Nouvelle Revue Française. The notes would be inside. He should ask her – in French if he liked – was there an article by André Malraux. She would say she had finished with the magazine and ask if he would like it.
‘How very dramatic. Just like a spy story. Is this cloak-and-dagger way really necessary?’
‘Madame Gerstina knows the notes were smuggled out of Vienna and she is very nervous. She is a member of an anti-Fascist front and was in Spain. If I went, it would be not necessary, believe me.’
One other small thing, if he really did not mind. In return, they wanted to send back by the same route a letter describing where some more papers might be found, papers that would help them financially. Could he give that to Madame Gerstina?
****
Soldiers and sailors were crowding the station buffet, their kitbags, respirators and helmets spilling into the spaces between tables. Smoke from cheap cigarettes hung in the air. Raucous banter assaulted the ears. Just before 10.35 he queued for a cup of tea and looked round for somewhere to drink it amid the bustle of khaki and blue.
A blonde woman had found a table for two in a corner by the bar, facing the double-doors on to the street. She was smoking thoughtfully and writing in a notebook. He struggled across the buffet towards the vacant seat. On the table, by her handbag and a half-empty cup, was a copy of Nouvelle Revue Française.
The rest went like clockwork. At Dinah’s suggestion, he had put the return letter, thin and in an airmail envelope, in his newspaper. The blonde lady gave him the magazine; he offered her his paper, which she accepted with a smile. She looked at the clock over the doors, finished her coffee, put her notebook away (he saw columns of letters and figures), picked up her bag, and left without a backward glance. It was 10.46. Across the aisle, an unshaven man in a crumpled blue suit was alternately drawing on a soggy Woodbine and picking his stained teeth with a rolled-up bus ticket; he squinted at the magazine, then drank his tea from the saucer.
Peter decided not to hurry away. He smoked a cigarette with his tea, glancing over the first pages of the Revue before putting it into his case. He went by bus to the store where he bought a sturdy brown bag into which he stuffed the magazine and the envelope it concealed, leaving it for Miss Altschuler in an office on the top floor. Her name was greeted with respect.
Very smooth. The encounter with Madame Gerstina, blonde, mid-30s, polished, had the makings of a story. The opening of a Greene perhaps. She and Dinah had chosen the same perfume. He could smell its aroma on the pages of the magazine. An anti-fascist veteran of Spain, no less.
****
Ella made her farewells. A family cocktail party in the flat, a drink with her ARP team, a riotous evening in the pub with her artist friends, and a final dinner on the eve of her departure. Just the two of them, in Dafini’s.
With her off next evening, neither Ella nor Peter felt much like eating. She would go to Newhaven via an overnight with Aunt Frances and cross to Dieppe.
‘I’m still not clear why you’re going, Ella dear, when you’ve so much here.’
‘What I said in the Coal Hole. “… to fresh woods and pastures new”.’
‘In that case,’ he waved his wine glass, ‘you should be wearing blue:
“Twitched her mantle blue
Tomorrow to fresh woods de dum …”
Actually you’re far more Amy Lowell than Milton …
“… So for a moment I stand, my feet planted firm in the present,
Eagerly scanning the future, which is so soon to possess me.”’
Ella shook her head. ‘Brother dear, you have a quote for every occasion. You should remember, quoting is just a substitute for real feeling or acting.’
‘That was something I checked for Rutherglen.’ He was stung.
‘And you’re the one with the future, with Dinah. I can’t help feeling, well, I suppose almost jealous.’
‘You have scores of admirers.’
‘But not that one, that chosen one who counts for everything, closer than anything else in life. And you’re lucky you’ve fallen for someone outside the magic circle … how I hate the lot.’ She spat it out.
‘That’s a bit sudden, isn’t it? You’ve always been so in with them.’
‘“In with them”? Haven’t you ever noticed how I’ve never been quite “in with them”? Nor you.’ She patted his hand. ‘Well, perhaps you wouldn’t see that, with doing so well at school and varsity, and your charm and gentleness, and being good with a gun.’ She reflected for a moment. ‘And making yourself into a flâneur.’
He was shaken, and dropped into French, the private language of their childhood. ‘Well, yes, we’ve always been … we are treated a little warily, perhaps, by some. I put that down to our being half-Polish, to Mother’s being so foreign, so different, and then going off, turning her back on everybody. You know what people are like if they think you’re not quite one of them.’
‘Yes I do and I’ll be glad to say goodbye to them for a while.’
Their food had come and gone without his noticing what he was eating. Ella had only pecked at hers.
‘Has something happened to upset you? Is that why you’re going? I don’t really believe “pastures new”.’
‘You have to believe it.’
Mr Dafini sent over his accustomed Strega, and they toasted her journey.
Outside, she had an afterthought. ‘Alexandria, Cairo—cosmopolitan, drawn up from every background and culture.’
Colonial too. He kept that notion to himself. ‘And hot.’ Then he could not stop himself. ‘You will keep in touch en route.’ Mines in the channel, torpedoes in the Mediterranean.
She kissed his cheek. ‘I said I’ll try to ring from Dieppe and Marseille and telegraph from Malta and Alexandria as soon as I can. Don’t worry. It’s a drôle de guerre.’
‘Jusqu’à présent.’
****
Dinah had the afternoon off and they went to the stripped-out National Gallery to hear Myra Hess
play. With a knowing smile – ‘Only a couple o’ bob’ – she insisted on paying.
Peter thought he had never been part of so rapt an audience. Scarlatti, Beethoven and Mozart sonatas, and Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring as an encore. Around him, some listeners were in tears, Dinah among them. ‘Jesus bleibet meine Freude,’ she whispered to him when it ended. She blew her nose. ‘I heard it in school.’
They hurried through the cold driving rain to the Strand for a sandwich on the first floor of Lyons Cornerhouse, looking down at the drenched street and the forest of shining umbrellas. He told her about the latest of Miriam’s dinners. The “guest speaker” had been a French parliamentarian, with a past in the Comité France-Allemagne. A right-wing Catholic, the smell of Action Française about him. His English hadn’t been up to it and Peter had been dragooned into translating. The burden was that there was no sense in France’s and England’s exhausting themselves in a pointless war.
‘But nobody speaking of negotiations taking place?’
‘No, only their urgent desirability, as usual. I did meet a man who offered me as many torch batteries as I needed. Just give him a call.’
‘The travellers who come to the shop say the same thing.’ She looked at her watch. ‘I must scram.’
He stared at her in surprise.
A cosmetics sales-girl from New York had been teaching her American, so different from the English she’d learned and how the customers spoke. ‘I must beat it.’ She should take advantage of her afternoon off to do some shopping and take it home. She grabbed at her coat and bag, pecked his cheek, and was off. He darted after her with her umbrella. At the top of the stairs, she thanked him with a proper kiss.
Alone, he was suddenly ill at ease, conscious of feeling restless, apprehensive, out of tune with himself. Ella’s leaving, he supposed. The trouble with being a twin. Hoping to shake off this mood, he decided to browse the second-hand bookshops in Charing Cross Road, a short walk away. As he went, he glanced up at the majestic portico of St Martin’s Church and saw Dinah. She must have bumped into Davidson, if that was the man’s name, and he was sure it was. They were standing under the pediment out of the rain, Dinah talking animatedly.
Davidson’s eyes met his over her shoulder. The man showed no sign of recognition, but even at that distance Peter felt his disquiet as he stepped back into the gloom of the portico, behind the second row of columns, and Dinah followed him.
Whatever it was between the two, Dinah and Davidson, it was none of his business. Tilting his umbrella towards them, he walked on. Something about Davidson bothered him: hadn’t the man read modern languages at Cambridge? Not necessarily German of course.
Chapter Eight
He was expecting Aunt Frances up from the New Forest – out of the blue she’d asked if she could stay – but surely not arriving this early and surely not knocking and ringing this urgently. Ella? Something had happened to Ella? She had reached Dieppe safely and by now should be waiting in Marseille for her boat. He pulled on his dressing gown and ran to the door.
Dinah fell on him in tears, cold, pallid and trembling. Her grandfather. He had been taken away. She had no idea where he was. She had not slept a minute since those men had come for him.
He sat her down in the kitchen. ‘Tea and toast and tell me from the beginning. Then we’ll see what can be done.’
The story came out incoherently at first, then more clearly as she calmed down. Arriving in a private black car, two men had called at the house and showed papers from the police special branch. Very politely they asked for Professor Altschuler. Then they said he must come with them, to check his documents. He would be back later that day without fail. One of them took her aside to reassure her. A routine matter: they were doing hundreds of such pick-ups and returns. He made it sound like a taxi-service. She could certainly go to work. Selfridge’s? His wife liked to window shop there, but on his pay …
But her grandfather had not returned that day. Not that night. Not the next day or night. She had tried everywhere to find him. Scotland Yard: the special branch was unreachable. The local police: nothing to do with them. The Home Office: nothing to do with the special branch. Its Aliens Department: inquiries only in writing; recommended calling into the local police station.
She was in tears again, shaking and crying. Again he attempted to calm her. He would try to find out what had happened to her grandfather. He was sure they would locate him. In Britain, people didn’t just disappear—this wasn’t Russia or Germany. Some administrative error – they did happen – could be put right. She knew he’d do all he could help her. ‘You’ll be better off going to work. There’s no point in your fretting at home. I’ll do everything I can, and I’ll let you know at once.’
But she wasn’t in a fit state for work. She had rushed straight to him.
‘Please refresh yourself here. You’ll find some of Ella’s things in the bathroom. It’s just as she left it. I’ll get you a bathrobe and some towels.’
****
Some three-quarters of an hour later, Madame let herself into the flat and caught sight of Dinah emerging from the steam of the bathroom: pink, hair damp at the nape of her neck, trailing Ella’s talcum powder, and looking distinctly at home. He was momentarily silenced, then collected himself enough to introduce Dinah though unable to work out how to explain her presence this early and in the bathroom.
‘I am pleased to meet you.’ Madame seemed almost gratified. ‘Mr Hill’s mother has mentioned his friendship with you. She will be happy to hear of our encounter. Would the Mademoiselle like some coffee now?’ Her light stress on ‘now’ hung in the air between them. Declining somewhat stiffly, Dinah went. They would meet at her home that evening.
****
He’d known immediately. His godfather Anselm, one of his father’s elder brothers, would have the answer. Anselm had retired early from the Home Office, where he’d been marked for permanent secretary. In conscience, he’d declared to a select few, he couldn’t serve a monarch who wore soft collars and soft hats on public appearances. When they’d stopped chuckling in disbelief, he’d explained it wasn’t the clothes. It was the state of mind, the lack of understanding. But now Anselm held a number of public offices and acted as secretary to various committees and commissions, was in demand when a politically tricky issue needed finessing or an embarrassment an elegant kick into the long grass. If anyone could, he would be able to reach into the administration for the professor’s whereabouts.
****
‘I’ve been wondering if I might hear from you.’ Anselm’s clipped even diction gave nothing away. No patent interest or lack of interest. No hint of pleasure or distaste. His reception of Peter’s call was neither open nor closed; no encouragement to continue nor indication that further communication was pointless.
His wife the Lady Veronica had picked up the telephone, inquired after his father and mother and for news of her god-daughter ‘dear Ella’, and had said she would see if Anselm was still at home. Peter had the impression her husband was sitting across from her in their bow-fronted morning room overlooking the river at Chelsea.
‘Hear from me.’ He tried to sound as neutral. ‘Really?’
‘Some younger family members seem to be under the impression that I can help them to secure their ambition to pass the current war in circumstances that will be both safe and agreeable for the foreseeable future.’
Ah. No question of his calling with such a thing in mind. While, yes, he did hope to benefit from that experience and knowledge of government, this call was strictly on behalf of a friend in distress.
Silence. Neutral silence, neither bidding nor forbidding.
Peter plunged into his tale. The professor, from Vienna, Novalis, his being taken away, his disappearance, his granddaughter’s being distraught and totally frustrated at every turn. ‘I was hoping you might feel able to offer guidance on how to find out where he is and what’s happening to him.’
‘Can I take it that the
granddaughter is the young woman we’ve been hearing about?’
“We’ve been hearing about”! ‘I am very attached to Miss Altschuler, but there is no question of anything being formalised between us or you and Lady Veronica would have known, of course.’
‘Dear boy, dear boy. The point is only that I chair one of the enemy alien assessment tribunals, and I couldn’t hear a case where there was any kind of family connection. Professor Gershon Altschuler. Six o’clock.’
The phone went dead. Peter felt immense relief. Good. If anyone could find the professor, Anselm could.
****
He was in the marbled entrance hall of Anselm’s club just before Big Ben struck six and was directed to take a seat in the Morning Room. Four bishops in gaiters were sipping pale sherry, one whispering something that made two shake their heads and the third laugh uproariously. Then Anselm was at his side, placing glasses of champagne on the table and lowering himself stiffly into the other chair. He reached into an inside pocket for a folded paper. ‘Have a dekko at this.’
Intantly hopeful, Peter opened it only to find an attempt at a Latin translation of a Rosenberg war poem, Returning We Hear The Larks:
“Sombre the night is:
And, though we have our lives, we know
What sinister threat lurks there …”
The Latin and English were interleaved, the penmanship neat and precise.
‘Please take it. I’ll be most grateful for your reading.’ As to Peter’s professor. He’d made inquiries. Not without difficulty. Some people were in a state akin to panic – the only term for it – over presumed networks of spies and a supposedly extensive British Fifth Column ready to rise up on German forces’ invading. Panic meant mistakes, poor administration, relinquishing standards, possible injustice. He sighed and shook his head. Too much talk of risk and too little of facts. Admittedly, facts were hard to come by. However, his inquiries had proved not unproductive. He had ascertained that Peter’s professor was being held in Camp 21. For special category enemy aliens.
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