A Place Of Strangers

by Geoffrey Seed

  ‘I told you I’d get you to England.’

  They disembark and Bea makes a two shilling trunk call to Daddy at the Air Ministry. She waits to be connected by the operator then presses Button A and hears his fault-finding voice.

  ‘What the hell do you think you’ve been playing at?’

  ‘I’ve not been playing at anything, Daddy, just trying to get home.’

  ‘You’re just like your mother was, never listening to a word I say.’

  ‘I’m getting a train to London in the morning.’

  ‘You’ll need to buck up your ideas, young lady. There’s a war coming.’

  ‘You don’t need to tell me. I’ve just escaped from the enemy.’

  Outside the telephone box, Arie realises all is not well. He watches her from beneath his wild black hair, falling in rings over the collar of his mourner’s coat. They find rooms in a small hotel in a side street, exhausted and needing to sleep.

  Next day, both are pre-occupied with the new realities of their different worlds. They sit opposite each other on the carriage’s moquette seats, heading north. Bea looks out at gently wooded hills and red-tiled villages. History will soon be written here, in trails of vapour and smoke from planes in mortal combat high above the Weald. For now, every turn of the train wheels brings her closer to Daddy’s recriminations.

  How can she ever tell him about Arie? You’ll never guess what, but I’ve bagged a refugee. Or her feelings for him? I’m really rather fond of him.

  Daddy won’t salute any of that nonsense. What seemed decent and honourable – and thrilling – in the medieval maze of Prague’s occupied streets, will be scorned as yet another example of the self centred, wilful ways she had certainly not inherited from him. She could already hear the derision in his voice.

  You do realise he’s a Jew boy, don’t you?

  Put a knife in Daddy’s hand and he would always twist it. Mummy discovered that.

  *

  Arie holds her with his messianic, poet’s gaze.

  ‘I owe my life to you.’

  ‘You mustn’t exaggerate.’

  ‘I do not exaggerate, Beatrice.’

  ‘Lots of people were getting out of Prague somehow.’

  ‘But to what, Beatrice... only to that crucible of suffering to come.’

  Arie believes the Nazis have begun the ultimate pogrom. This burden is carried in the depths of his seer’s eyes. The Nazis hold Jews to be a plague bacillus, the disease in the blood of pure Aryans which is responsible for all their ills. Arie thinks it will only get worse. Not everyone accepts this. Mr Malindine at the British Embassy didn’t.

  ‘Prague has some thirty thousand homeless Jews at present but they’re not truly political refugees, just people who’ve panicked and come here.’

  Arie’s disbelief isn’t checked by Bea’s hand on his arm.

  ‘Then you haven’t heard of Dachau?’

  ‘It’s a holding camp, isn’t it?’

  ‘A holding camp? It’s where Jews are being murdered for being Jews.’

  ‘I grant you things are difficult but it doesn’t do to overstate matters.’

  ‘How can the legalised destruction of people be overstated?’

  ‘Forgive me but that isn’t quite happening.’

  ‘Then why are Jews being hung, shot and burned out of their homes every day?’

  ‘These are indeed trying times but let me assure you, everyone’s doing their best.’

  Bea took the diplomat to one side.

  ‘Please, Mr Malindine... can’t you help just a little bit? Please?’

  ‘I’m sorry but I have my instructions.’

  ‘But matters of national security are involved here.’

  ‘I don’t know about that but I do know even people with papers are being turned back when they land in England.’

  ‘This man won’t be. He’s different, you see.’

  ‘But, Miss Bowen – ’

  ‘Mr Malindine... you do remember who my father is, don’t you?’

  He did. Now, she is nearly home – and with Arie. But the closer the train gets to London, the more remote he becomes. She fears her part in his plan – whatever that might be – is almost over. A worm of doubt crawls through her mind. Did she misread that frisson between them in the Embassy yard? Bea simply could not bear to think that. Arie attracted her like no other man she had ever met – so foreign. Dangerous, almost. She could not believe he would walk away from her now... not after all she had done for him.

  He leans back with his head against the carriage window, eyes closed. She looks at him, worn down by concerns she cannot even imagine.

  But what does she truly know of this man?

  He told her he was born in Paris in 1902. His family name is Minsky and he lived with his parents till they moved back to Vilna. The Minskys owned a timber business there. They are clever, educated people, wealthy and influential. Arie speaks four languages and could have been a rabbi but is not religious. He studied philosophy and writes poetry and was visiting friends in Prague when the Nazis marched in. That was just before Bea saw him queuing in the street outside the British Embassy. He has never mentioned his profession so she has no idea what he does for a living.

  On that morning in April 1939, clattering by the dirty back sculleries of south London, this is all she knows about the man opposite. It is not very much.

  But if Arie Minsky is good at anything, it is keeping himself to himself.

  *

  They take a taxi to Bea’s flat just off Great Titchfield Street. The city bustles and jostles as it ever did. But there is tension and uncertainty on the faces of those around them. Bea buys an Evening News from an old soldier whose legs were blown off at Passchendaele. The paper reports the Prime Minister saying conscription into the army is being introduced now Germany is threatening Poland. Arie reads this and retreats deeper into himself.

  There is no food in the flat. Bea takes him to a Lyons’ Corner House near a toy shop selling tin helmets for children to play games of war. They sit in colonnaded gentility. A black-frocked Nippy attends their table. She wears a white cotton coronet in her neatly bobbed hair and has two rows of tiny pearl buttons trimming the front of her dress. They order mushroom soup, poached eggs and toast.

  ‘For one so young to have such an elegant apartment suggests you are not without social standing, Beatrice.’

  ‘No, not really. It was my mother’s but she died two years ago.’

  ‘I am sorry for that. But why do you not live with your father?’

  ‘Well, he and my mother separated when I was a child and I chose to live with her.’

  ‘Did that make some difficulties between you and him?’

  ‘It has never been easy. I took my mother’s side, you see.’

  ‘What does he do, this father of yours?’

  ‘He’s an Air Marshal.’

  They finish eating and Arie asks her something faintly unsettling.

  ‘Will you show me how to use the telephone kiosk outside?’

  ‘Of course. You never said you knew anyone in England.’

  ‘They may have moved away but I need to find out.’

  ‘You could call them from my flat. I have a telephone.’

  ‘That is kind but the public telephone will be just as good.’

  So Bea explains and waits on the pavement close by. Arie takes out a small diary from his pocket. His back is turned but he is obviously talking. The call takes only half a minute then they return to Bea’s flat. Nothing more is said about the person he rang. Bea makes up a bed for him on the sofa. She sees inside his case.

  He has two white shirts, some socks and several folders with papers inside. She cannot read what is written because it is in a foreign language. As Arie sleeps that night, so Bea makes a telephone call herself.

  *

  Fog settles across Hyde Park and Westminster. Buses and taxis appear and disappear in a great conjuring trick of theatrical mist. Hazy figures scurry
by then vanish. Bea and Arie walk quickly through the damp murk towards Caxton Street. They find a café and Bea buys him coffee.

  ‘I’ll be an hour, maybe less. Wait here. Whatever you do, don’t leave this place.’

  She moves along the rank of cabs by St Ermine’s Hotel and steps inside its marbled lobby. The place has been turned over to anonymous men in army uniforms, busy about their business which is preparing for war. Bea tells the receptionist she has an appointment with Major Peter Casserley. She waits by a tall palm plant in a brass jardinière. Bea has met him several times before. Daddy would like them to do this more often.

  Peter approaches down the hotel’s sweeping staircase. He has a trademark red carnation in the lapel of a well-tailored suit of grey worsted.

  ‘Beatrice – how lovely. Let’s go up to my office.’

  Bea is wearing a wine-coloured afternoon gown with embroidered reveres which her mother bought for her just before she died. It came from Good Housekeeping and cost seventeen shillings and sixpence but she had long since left Daddy so could spend as she liked.

  ‘So you’ve only just got back?’

  ‘Yes, I’m still quite tired.’

  ‘And you actually saw the Nazis march into Prague?’

  ‘It was utterly awful, Peter. Those Germans are unspeakably wicked.’

  ‘Is that what you want to talk to me about?’

  ‘Partly, but I rang for another reason.’

  Casserley’s office is at the end of a long carpeted corridor on the third floor. It is quite small and poorly lit. He has a desk with a sit-up-and-beg typewriter, a black telephone and a map of Europe on a plain white wall. He bids Bea take the spare chair.

  He smiles into her face and gives her his full attention. He is a strikingly good-looking man, the right side of forty with receding dark hair. Bea accepts his offer of a cigarette. He lights hers and puts his own in a holder. It would be a mistake to think Casserley effete. He is setting up a secret army of saboteurs to fight the Nazis behind their own lines when the time comes. Bea knows this because Daddy told her.

  ‘I’ve met this man in Prague who could be useful to you.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘He’s got a French passport, speaks French like a native – and other languages, too.’

  ‘Not too much use to me in Prague, Beatrice.’

  ‘No, that’s it, you see. He came back with me.’

  ‘Did he, by God.’

  ‘Yes, he’s here in London.’

  Casserley fills his fountain pen from a small bottle of blue-black ink and writes the date at the top of a lined pad. He waits for Bea to continue.

  ‘He’s convinced that Herr Hitler plans to wipe out all the Jews.’

  ‘Is he a Jew?’

  ‘Yes, from Vilna but he was visiting friends in Prague when the Nazis invaded so he couldn’t get out in time’.

  Casserley stops writing. He looks at Beatrice as if wondering how far to trust her.

  ‘There’s been a lot of clandestine activity in Prague of late.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The Jews are smuggling their brethren out of Europe through Prague then to Palestine. God’s chosen people are nothing if not resourceful.’

  ‘All I know is he says he’ll do anything to help the British against the Nazis.’

  ‘How do you think I could best use him?’

  ‘For intelligence. He’s got connections, Peter – all across Europe.’

  ‘Not a communist, is he?’

  ‘What if he is?’

  ‘It’s just as well to know these things, that’s all. Maybe I should take a look at him.’

  He stops writing and stands to look out of the window into the sunless quad behind the hotel.

  ‘Does your father know about this chap?’

  ‘No, nothing.’

  ‘Or that you brought him back with you?’

  ‘Certainly not.’

  ‘Where’s he actually staying in London?’

  ‘He knows someone who’s got a place here.’

  Casserley sits down again. He removes the cigarette end from his holder and inserts a fresh one then leans back, legs outstretched and crossed, black brogues gleaming from spit and polish.

  ‘I can’t tell you how glad I am that you’re home, Beatrice. I’ve really missed you. Why don’t we go out for supper tonight?’

  *

  Bea opened the ivory-coloured musical box on her dressing table. Arie bought it for her in a shop near Dover railway station. Its little pink ballerina turned as she was ordained to do forever and the room filled with the tinny notes of Goodnight, go to sleep. Bea watched till the porcelain figure could dance no more for in its tawdry innocence was the story of her life and the memory of a lover’s first kiss, all summoned back by the tune of a clockwork toy.

  Chapter Nine

  McCall fell ill with bacterial pneumonia on New Year’s Day. His forehead was hot and damp, the right side of his chest in spasms of pain. The white sheets were speckled with a fine spray of blood coughed up during the sleepless night. A locum drove out to Garth Hall and prescribed antibiotics.

  Francis was nowhere to be found as Bea and Evie prepared lunch.

  ‘You must think us a family of old crocks, Evie.’

  ‘No, it’s Mac working too hard that’s the fault and him not looking after himself.’

  ‘I’m afraid you’re right. That boy has always worried me.’

  Evie was due to catch a late afternoon train back to London. Part of her did not want to go. For someone who read maths at Somerville and was an empiricist if nothing else, the indefinable presence she experienced in the stillness of Garth’s long, low drawing room defied rational explanation. It was as if she was being led by those who had once dwelt there and now awaited her, too. She could just about describe the how of what she felt but not why.

  Less ethereally, Evie also knew she was being tested, auditioned to complete Bea’s mission in life. But could she ever measure up to Helen’s broken promise? Or did the entrancingly painted scenery of Garth Hall hide a stage door through which it would be wiser to disappear before the audience whistled her off?

  McCall was asleep when Evie went to kiss him goodbye. Bea drove her to Ludlow Station but the London connection was delayed two hours by more bad weather. Bea suggested coffee and cake at De Grey’s Café.

  Flurries of snow danced around the spangled Christmas decorations still strung between Ludlow’s narrow streets. Clee Hill loomed in the distance, pure white against a slate blue sky.

  ‘What of your people, Evie... your parents?’

  ‘There’s only my father.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that. Your mother’s passed on, has she?’

  ‘In a way, yes.’

  Evie was aware she did not have to reply in these terms. But like McCall said, everyone has need of a priest some day.

  ‘How do you mean, Evie?’

  ‘She left us... I was only little.’

  ‘How awful. But you and your father must be very close.’

  ‘Yes... we were, once.’

  Again, there was a pause, a silence Evie deliberately left in the air.

  ‘But not anymore? You’ve had a falling out?’

  ‘Something like that, yes.’

  ‘Do you want to tell me what it was about?’

  Bea leaned across the table and took Evie’s hand in her own. Evie was suddenly close to tears and looked away.

  ‘He says he never wants to see me again.’

  ‘No, surely not. Why should he say such a terrible thing?’

  ‘It’s my work, you see... he’s never approved of what I do.’

  ‘What’s he got against it?’

  ‘He says I’m a traitor.’

  ‘A traitor? To whom?’

  ‘A traitor to him, to my class... everything he’s ever worked for.’

  ‘And what’s his job?’

  ‘He’s a miner... or he was till this damned strike began a
nd his pit closed down.’

  ‘I see... and your work, Evie – what is it that you really do?’

  ‘Can’t you guess? Francis did.’

  *

  In his fever, McCall wandered through time and space. Garth had thirty rooms, attics and cellars and poky places where maids once curled up after each long day.

  Some were shut off like graves from where the dead had risen. Aunt Lavinia’s was one such room, a little bed-sit mured at the end of a passageway, chilly and unlit and frightening for a child.

  He remembered her dressing table-cum-desk and red plush armchair set by a tiny hob grate. Lavinia was Francis’s aunt, a widow from the Great War who could go from happy to sad in a second.

  McCall could still see her damp old eyes. But she disappeared from his life one day and they would never tell him why.

  The rug by her single bed was worn through to the threads. Behind the curtains, bleached by the sun till their pattern was almost gone, the husks of emptied flies spun slowly from broken webs of gossamer.

  Her sensible skirts and dresses still lay in the chest of drawers where she left them, smelling of talc and mothballs. And in the oval photograph on the wall, she stood in front of Garth Hall, forever twenty years old and in a pale cotton shift and so bashfully happy shortly before her marriage. Not long after, a telegram boy would bring the worst of news from France.

  In McCall’s early, bewildered times, he thought Lavinia a magician – an inventor of games, a teller of stories, the keeper of all the secrets of Garth Woods.

  ‘Am I staying here forever?’

  ‘Would you like to?’

  ‘Can I?’

  ‘Of course you can. This is your home now. We’re your new family.’

  ‘Are you my Mummy?’

  ‘No, not quite.’

  ‘So is Bea my Mummy?’

  ‘More than me, yes. But you’re very lucky – you’ve got both of us.’

  ‘Who is my Daddy, now?’