Pantheon

by Sam Bourne

  There was an emphatic ‘amen’ from some in the room and an unmistakable silence from the rest. James was slowly becoming aware that this was no ordinary Sunday service.

  The preacher looked down at the lectern, a tiny gesture that suggested he was coming to a close. ‘I have been chaplain here for most of the last decade. You all know me well and you know my views. They are best summarized not with words, but by our Lord’s eloquent action. A small action, as it happens, but one that is still so radical, still so revolutionary. Struck on one side of his face, Jesus did not hit back. No, he did not. Instead he offered his other cheek. That’s right, he turned the other cheek. And that — that action that is so small but so large — is how we will abolish war. Even when we are provoked — and yes, our consciences are provoked by the violence in Europe — we will resist the urge to shed more blood. We will not fight war with war. As Isaiah says, “neither shall we learn war any more”.’

  The words were very familiar to James. How many Quaker meetings had he sat through where the speaker, often his father, had repeated those same points, citing the same sources? The only difference this time, besides the accent and the charisma of the delivery, emanated from the congregation. James was used to hearing the case for pacifism presented to a room full of pacifists. Yet here was a man preaching to a crowd which, it was obvious, was anything but converted. The pastor had his supporters, but there was a low, unvoiced hum of discontent throughout that was undeniable. Now the preacher moved to address it.

  ‘As I say, you know my views. You don’t need to hear them again. And I know the Yale fellowship is not of one mind on this topic, that our community of scholars has been debating this question fiercely. That’s how it should be. And I want that debate to live here, in God’s house. For as the holy texts tell us, “These and these are the words of the living God.” These and these. There is always more than one view.

  ‘Which is why I’m sharing this pulpit today. I have invited Dr Ernest West from the Philosophy Department to speak about the theory of the just war. Not that I think there can be such thing-’ He stopped himself with a smile. ‘Forgive me, I’m used to having the floor all to myself. Dr West, please come and address the congregation.’

  James watched as the room seemed to shift, a wave of energy rippling through it. Some sat forward in their seats, others pulled back and folded their arms into a posture of sullen disapproval.

  The new man at the pulpit was younger and more uncertain. He was clasping a text, which shook slightly in his hands.

  ‘I’d like to thank Pastor Theodore Lowell for welcoming me here today,’ he began, as if addressing the wood of the lectern. ‘And I come before you humbled by the scale of the task. I want to persuade you that the right place for the United States of America is by the side of those Europeans fighting for their lives and against the tyranny of Herr Hitler and his Third Reich.’

  ‘America first!’

  James swung around to his left in search of the heckler, but the acoustics had confused him. The voice could have come from any of the wooden benches on that side of the church. He looked up and saw that the speaker too was confused, thrown off balance by what he had heard. Dr West gathered himself and looked up to face his audience.

  ‘“America first”, you say and I understand that. I agree with it too. America should always put its interests first. But I tell you, this war is about our interests. Only Britain now stands between us and the Nazi menace. If Britain falls, then Germany will control the Atlantic. We could wake up any week now, any day now, with Nazi warships in Boston harbour and U-boat submarines off New York.’

  The heckler was silenced by that and the hush of the church seemed to catch the speaker by surprise.

  ‘And let’s remember that Germany will not be alone in this part of the world. It has friends — in Mexico and Argentina and throughout Latin America. Just imagine what Hitler would be capable of with a network of military bases throughout that continent. I say to you, we would face the very same threat now faced by our British cousins: bombs. A Blitzkrieg could come from the south, German bombs landing on San Diego or Houston or Miami, even, who knows, Chicago. So I do put America first. I put American safety first.’

  James noticed that the man’s voice was less nervy now; he was beginning to hit his stride. ‘That’s why we have a direct, vital interest in making sure Europe does not get swallowed up in Nazi tyranny. America cannot exist alone on this side of the Atlantic, hiding away from the world.’

  ‘Warmonger!’

  The same heckler or a different one, James could not tell. Now there were a few cries in response: ‘Pipe down!’ ‘We came here to hear him, not you!’

  James noticed that the pastor did nothing to impose order on his church, but was watching the unfolding scene with an indulgent smile.

  Dr West chose to ignore the last interruption and press on. ‘We cannot hide ourselves away. We need Europe. Not just to buy our goods. Though I have to say America will only be the leading power of this twentieth century if we sell and trade with the rest of the world. And there will be no trade with Herr Hitler’s empire. No, we need a Europe that holds to the same ideals as we do.’

  ‘Our ideal should be peace!’

  ‘Of course it is. But you cannot make a pact with the Devil. And we should be clear what kind of enemy we face. “Know thine enemy”, that’s what the Bible tells us, doesn’t it, Pastor Lowell? And there can be no denying that we face a new and terrible enemy in Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party. America will not be able to live in a world where such brutality holds supreme. As President Roosevelt-’

  ‘Rosenfeld!’

  ‘As President Roosevelt has argued so forcefully, it is a delusion, a fantasy, to think that we can let America become, I quote, “a lone island in a world dominated by the philosophy of force”. Our ideals as Americans, the very ideals set out by our founding fathers-’

  ‘“Beware of foreign entanglements”, that’s what Washington said!’

  ‘I know what he said: you don’t have to shout his words at me. But these are different times. There was no threat then equal to the threat we face today, a dictator bent on ruling the world.’

  There was more commotion now, as a small group to James’s right attempted to start a chorus of ‘America first!’ James fought the urge to stand up, march over to the pulpit and deliver a speech of his own. Did these people have no idea what was happening across the sea? He had left a country already at war, its men either at the front or preparing to defend the homeland; a place plunged into unbroken darkness at night, where people, including him, were digging holes in their gardens to shelter from bombs; where even a two-year-old boy like Harry was told to carry a gas mark lest Hitler attempt to fill the air with poison; where the enemy was a matter of miles away, just twenty-two of them in fact, Dover to Calais.

  Yet here in New Haven war was a debating topic, with arguments to be made for and against. This was how Britain itself had been three or four years ago, back when Chamberlain reckoned he could make peace with Hitler. There had been debates like this, plenty of them, at the Oxford Union and elsewhere, with young gentlemen making speeches about whether they would fight for ‘King and country’ and all that. But not any more. That argument was over.

  In the United States, however, here in this chapel, the argument was just beginning. He was suddenly aware, more keenly than he had ever been before, that Britain truly did stand alone. Stalin and the Soviet Union had become Hitler’s allies; Italy had joined in, declaring war on Britain a matter of weeks ago; France, Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg had fallen to the Germans. And America was still debating with itself.

  It struck James with sudden, painful force. Britain was on the brink of extinction. If it were to survive, if its people were not to live under the boot-heel of the Gestapo, they would have to defeat the German menace with their own bare hands.

  He didn’t wait for the speaker to finish, leaving him instead to take on the hecklers over
whether Roosevelt was agitating for war as an excuse to build up the might of the federal government.

  As he got up to leave, he caught sight of something that stopped him in his tracks. Someone he recognized. A face there, then gone. He scanned the congregation again only to see what he had seen before: the same sea of undifferentiated, unfamiliar faces. But the vague sense of recognition, someone spied in his peripheral vision, lingered. He craned slightly, to see around a pillar, but found nothing.

  As quietly as he had entered, he retreated to the chapel door and left.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The gentle tap on the door did not wake him, though the offer of a cup of ‘the Lizzie’s own tea’ was welcome. He had woken early, relieved that today was Monday: that offices would be open, that all he needed to do was find the right secretary, in front of the right card index, who would swiftly run through the list of Oxford children and their new, temporary homes. And soon after that, he told himself, he would have Florence and Harry back in his arms. Today would be the day they were reunited. What he told himself was the hardest part — the shock, the separation, the long journey across the Atlantic — would be over. Whether Florence would see it that way, whether she would immediately embrace him as if nothing had happened, whether the mere fact of his having come all this way would nullify the concerns that had driven her away in the first place — on those questions James preferred not to linger.

  He washed and dressed quickly, taking directions for the old campus, a quadrangle of lawns and redbrick colonial buildings that were neither modern, nor ancient in the Oxford sense but rather of an eighteenth-century colonial style rarely glimpsed in England. He found the administrative building and went inside, following the signs.

  The Dean’s office boasted an outer area roomy enough for two secretaries and which, James noted, was probably twice the size of Bernard Grey’s entire study. Clearing his throat, he announced himself.

  ‘Hello, my name is Dr James Zennor, here to take up a fellowship from Oxford,’ he began, attempting his most charming smile. ‘I’ve come about the Oxford children.’

  To his great relief, the woman — in early middle age and with a wave of brunette hair so unmoving it appeared to be sculpted from rock — smiled back. Encouraged, he explained his situation, that his wife and child were among the evacuees and that he had come to join them. Having learned his lesson in Liverpool, he asked if she might check her files and let him know where a Miss Florence Walsingham or Mrs Florence Zennor was now resident.

  The secretary’s relentlessly professional smile did not waver. ‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible, Dr Zennor. These records are strictly private and confidential.’

  He had expected that. ‘Of course. I wouldn’t ask you to divulge the details of anyone but my own immediate family. Here’s my passport, just so there is no doubt as to my name. If my wife is here under her married name, it will be a simple matter of matching me with your records. I’m happy to wait.’ It was an effort to resist the urge he had to push past her and ransack the files himself, but he forced himself to take a couple of paces backward, deliberately relaxed.

  ‘Sir, perhaps I was not clear,’ the secretary said, her face still frozen into a rictus of apparent delight. ‘The Dean has left very specific instructions that the Oxford children and their parents are here as guests of Yale and, as such, we cannot divulge any private information.’

  ‘But I am one of the parents! I am Harry’s father. Harry Zennor. Just check your list.’ He gritted his teeth in an attempt to remain polite. ‘Please.’

  ‘Dr Zennor. If you would care to write to the Dean, I’m sure he will-’

  ‘Ah, you need him to give authorization. I understand. Well, perhaps I could see him now, if he’s available. The Dean, I mean.’

  ‘What I was going to say is that if you wrote to the Dean, he would explain to you what I have tried to explain.’

  ‘Could I speak to the Dean, please?’ The temperature in his bloodstream was rising, he could feel it beginning to bubble.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, but the Dean is not available.’

  He advanced again, menacing. ‘He’s behind that door, isn’t he?’

  ‘Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to step away from the desk.’

  ‘Now you listen to me,’ he said, leaning in. ‘I’ve just travelled across the Atlantic, and then from Canada all the way here. I want to see my wife and child. That’s all.’

  ‘Please sir, step back. Otherwise, I will have to have you removed.’

  The woman stood up and moved rapidly to the empty desk behind her, where she reached for the telephone and, with her back to James, spoke hurriedly into it. She seemed genuinely frightened.

  James retreated, aware that he had gone too far, that he had already made a hash of it. When the far door opened, he was not surprised to see a stocky man in a cheap uniform enter. Instinctively, James raised his hands, showing his palms in a gesture of surrender, and headed for the door.

  Outside, in the sunshine, he wanted to howl with rage, to break a window with his fists, such was his frustration.

  He walked briskly away, trying to formulate a plan. The silver lining was that he had clearly come to the right place; the secretary with the plastered-on smile had not looked at him blankly as she might have done: she knew about the Oxford children. The bad news was that her instructions had clearly been strict and unambiguous, as if he had asked her to breach a state secret. He wondered why.

  He was pacing down College Street now, past the brick facades of the colleges and into a parade of modern-looking shops, as if he had stepped out of the eighteenth and into the twentieth century. He stopped by a ‘drugstore’ that advertised a ‘soda fountain’. He had seen one of those at the pictures, but could hardly believe it was real. He went inside.

  The place was filled with students, sipping milkshakes or drinking coffee. James took a seat at a window table and looked at the options on the menu wedged between the salt and pepper pots: eggs fried, scrambled, boiled or poached; a three-egg omelette; buttermilk pancakes with blueberries optional; cheesecake, poundcake, pecan pie. On it went, promising a banquet, plates spilling over with food and glasses filled to the brim, enough to stuff the bellies of the greediest, most gluttonous diners. A three-egg omelette! Three! That was eleven days’ rations blown in a single breakfast. And what would it be like to eat a cake that was made from real butter? He could hardly remember how such a delicacy tasted.

  By the door was a stack of newspapers: the Yale Daily News. The main story on the front page told of the imminent retirement of the university football coach; only lower down and far less prominent was an item related to the war. There had been a conference in Havana of all the governments of the western hemisphere, apparently to discuss their common interest in ‘neutrality’. Neutrality? The very word made him sick. The Nazis were on the rampage: to be neutral was simply to step out of their way. You saved your own skin and someone else got clobbered.

  An unnerving thought came to him then: he was as alone in this country as Britain was alone in the world.

  Though he was hungry, he ignored the waitress heading his way, got up and walked out, feeling disgusted. He kept walking until drawn by a sign promising ‘Imported Pipes, Tobaccos and Cigars’. It was called the Owl Shop, but it also appeared to have a bar. Even though it was not yet nine thirty in the morning, and he strongly doubted they would serve a real drink, he suddenly craved one. But a cigarette would be a decent consolation prize. He went in and bought a packet of Pall Malls.

  He lit up straight away, sucking the smoke deep into his lungs, then, at the very moment he should have exhaled, breathed in deeper — a trick he had learned from Harry Knox and not forgotten — and gazed ahead, unseeing, as the nicotine snaked its way through his system.

  ‘Can I help you, sir?’

  It was the man behind the counter. Without realizing it, James had been staring. Except only now did he see how young this bartender was. Slight
and with bad skin, he looked like a schoolboy.

  James forced himself out of his cigarette reverie and asked, ‘Do you work here?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Sorry. You just seem rather-’

  ‘Yes, sir. Gotta work my way through college. Three mornings, five evenings a week.’ James had not worked during term-time as an undergraduate at Oxford, but he had during the vacations: he had once sold ice-creams on Bournemouth beach. ‘Can I can get you something, sir?’

  James shook his head. He picked up a copy of the New Haven Evening Register left discarded on the counter, scavenging hungrily for items of war news. There was a brief story about the Duke of Windsor, ‘formerly King Edward VIII of England’, was how the paper put it, taking up his new post as governor of the Bahamas. Good riddance to the appeasing bastard, James thought.

  As the cigarette glowed its last, he admonished himself for falling at the very first hurdle, threatening the college secretary and keeper of the Oxford files that held the secret of his wife’s location. What an idiot. Rosemary Hyde was right: his temper had become a liability. He was unable to control himself, even when he desperately needed to. What on earth could he do now?

  He looked up, inadvertently making eye contact again with the bar-boy. The lad smiled, then glanced up at the old clock, clad in tobacco-stained wood on the wall. Counting the hours till his shift ends, James thought, I know that feeling…

  Hold on. James stared at the clock. It was worth a try at least.

  He took up a position on a low wall on the opposite side of the street. That way, he reasoned, he could keep an eye on the entrance of the administrative building without being too obvious. He had his newspaper, but not much else by way of distraction. Even a park bench would have been helpful; that way, he could have at least pretended to be having a rest or taking a nap. He had no visible reason to be sitting there, just hanging about.