by C. J. Sansom
When the results were declared, though, the party had lost most of their hundred seats in Parliament, overtaken by British Union, Mosley’s Fascist party, which rose from thirty seats to a hundred and four, and joined Beaverbrook’s coalition of Treaty Conservative and Labour. Churchill had, finally, led his followers out of the Commons after a speech denouncing a ‘rigged election to return a gangster Parliament’. So people whispered round the Whitehall corridors, although the newspapers and television reported that they had stormed out in a fit of pique. Shortly after, the United Democrats had been accused of fomenting political strikes and declared illegal. They went underground and a new name, ‘Resistance’ after the French movement, began to appear on walls.
The new government swiftly moved even closer to Germany. German Jewish refugees had been returned under the Berlin Treaty in 1940 but despite growing anti-Semitism, restrictions on British Jews had been limited. Now the government claimed the Jews were implacable enemies of Britain’s great ally, and elements of the German Nuremberg laws were to be brought in. David would wake sweating in the night at the thought of what might happen if his secret were found out. Everyone knew that Germany had been lobbying for years to have Britain’s Jews, the last free Jews in Europe along with the remaining French ones, deported to the East. Perhaps now it would happen. David knew it was more important than ever to tell nobody, especially not Sarah, about his mother.
In the months that followed, though, David had begun to speak out, to Sarah and trusted friends, about other things: the continuing recession, the growing recruitment of ‘Biff-boys’ from Mosley’s Fascists as Special Branch Auxiliary Police to deal with unrest and strikes, the promise by Churchill to set Britain ablaze with ‘sabotage and resistance’. Churchill and his people were denied radio or television time, of course, but there was talk of clandestine gramophone records circulated secretly, where he spoke of never surrendering, of the ‘dark tyranny that had descended over Europe’. Something had snapped inside David after the election; perhaps even before, when Charlie died.
He had talked most of all to his oldest friend, Geoff Drax. Geoff had been with him at Oxford, and joined the Colonial Service at the same time as David joined the Dominions Office. Geoff had served in East Africa for six years, returning to work as a London desk officer in 1948. He had spoken even then of his shock at seeing at first hand how Britain had turned into a drab, conformist German satellite state.
The years in Africa had changed Geoff. Under the thatch of fair hair his thin, bony face had new lines, and his mouth was pursed and unhappy. He had always had a sardonic sense of humour but now he was bitter, firing out caustic remarks, accompanied by a little barking laugh. He had spoken of an unhappy love affair in Kenya with a married woman. He had told David he hadn’t managed to get over it, and envied his friend’s settled life with Sarah and Charlie. He didn’t like his desk work in the big new Colonial Office building at Church House, and when they met for lunch David thought how Geoff always looked uncomfortable in his black coat and pinstripe trousers, as though he should still be in baggy shorts and a pith helmet.
Geoff lived in Pinner, near David’s Kenton home, and they would often meet for a swim and tennis on Saturday mornings. Afterwards they would sit in a corner of the tennis club bar, talking politics – quietly, for few in the club would have sympathized.
One Saturday in the summer of 1950, Geoff had been telling David about events in Kenya. ‘A hundred and fifty thousand settlers they’ve got there now,’ he said with quiet intensity. ‘It’s bloody chaos. Unemployed families from Durham and Sheffield brought over with promises of free farms and unlimited native labour. They give them a three-month course in farming, then hand them a thousand acres of bush. They wouldn’t have a clue if it weren’t for the blacks. But it’s the blacks’ land. There’s real trouble starting among the Kikuyu. Blood’s going to get spilt. Some of these builders of this proposed new East African Dominion are going to wish they’d never left home.’ He gave one of his angry barks of laughter.
David hesitated, then spoke quietly. ‘Some of the Dominion governments are getting very concerned about what our new government’s doing. The Canadians and New Zealanders are talking about leaving the Empire. They’re very worried in the Office.’ David was being indiscreet, to a degree he would not have been even a year before. He went on to talk about protests from New Zealand about the latest British trade union bans. When David finished Geoff sat looking at him in silence, then whispered, ‘There’s a friend of mine you might like to meet.’
David felt a stab of anxiety as he realized he had been saying too much. ‘I think you’d find views in common,’ Geoff continued. ‘In fact I’m sure you would.’
David looked back at him. Immediately he wondered if Geoff meant someone in the Resistance. With Geoff’s angry restlessness, he recognized he might. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. He thought of Sarah, at home, grieving for their dead son.
Geoff gave a tight little smile, waved an arm. ‘I’m not talking about committing to anything. Just talking to someone who – sees things the way we do. It helps to realize you’re not alone.’
Part of David wanted to say no, change the subject to sport or the weather, end the conversation. But then an angry impatience came over him, chasing away the fear.
Geoff introduced him to Jackson a week later. It was high summer, the sun hot in a cloudless sky. David met Geoff at Hampstead Heath Station and they walked to the top of Parliament Hill. Courting couples strolled along hand in hand, the women in bright, white-skirted summer dresses, the men in open-necked shirts and light jackets. There were families too; children were flying kites, bright colours against the blue sky.
David had been expecting Geoff’s friend to be someone their age, but the man sitting on a bench was in his fifties, with iron-grey hair. He got up at their approach; he was tall and bulky but moved quickly. Geoff introduced him as Mr Jackson and he shook David’s hand with a firm grip. He had big, solid features and keen light-blue eyes. He gave David a broad smile.
‘Mr Fitzgerald.’ He spoke in a voice that Sarah’s mother would have called la-di-da. ‘Delighted to meet you.’ His manner had the easy public-school confidence, what they called effortless superiority, that always made David, the grammar-school boy, feel slightly defensive.
‘Let’s take a turn,’ Jackson said cheerfully.
They walked towards Highgate Ponds. A group of teenage boys in Scout uniform were putting on a gymnastic display; three stood in a row, two more balanced on their shoulders, a sixth climbing slowly to form the pinnacle. Several people were watching. A scoutmaster gave instructions in a quiet voice. ‘Slowly now, distribute your weight carefully, that’s the key.’
Jackson stopped to watch. ‘Goodness me,’ he said quietly. ‘I remember when Scouts used to help old ladies across the road. It’s all gymnastics and military exercises now. Of course they’re afraid of a forced merger with the League of Fascist Youth.’
‘People wouldn’t stand for that,’ David said. ‘They’d take their sons out.’
Jackson laughed softly. ‘Who knows what some people will stand for, these days?’ He turned away, striking out across the heath, Geoff and David following. Jackson, slowing down, spoke quietly to David. ‘Geoff tells me you’re unhappy with the way the poor old country’s going.’
‘Yes, I am.’ David hesitated, then thought, to hell with it. ‘They’ve got away with rigging the election. More and more people are getting arrested under Section 18a. And with Mosley as Home Secretary – the anti-Jew laws – we’ll be as Fascist as the rest of Europe soon.’ He felt himself redden when he spoke of the anti-Jew laws, and glanced quickly at Jackson, but the older man didn’t seem to have noticed. He just nodded, considered for a moment, and then said, ‘Felt like this for long?’
‘I suppose I have. I know this has been building up for years. It’s all caught up with me since the election.’
Jackson looked reflective. ‘You lost a child rec
ently, I believe. An accident.’
David hadn’t expected Geoff to tell him about Charlie. He answered ‘Yes,’ stiffly, giving Geoff a frown.
‘I’m sorry to hear it.’
‘Thank you.’
Jackson cleared his throat. ‘You served in the war, Geoff said.’
‘Yes, in Norway.’
Jackson smiled sadly. ‘The Norway campaign finished Chamberlain. Some say if Churchill had got the premiership at that time, we’d have carried on the war after France fell. I wonder what would have happened then?’
They were walking briskly now; despite his size Jackson did not seem to be out of breath. David said, ‘Norway was a mess. I’d seen men die, the Germans seemed – invincible. After France fell I thought we had to make peace, I thought the Treaty was the only alternative to conquest.’
‘And Hitler promised to leave the Empire alone; many thought that generous. But Churchill said the Treaty would still lead to German dominion and he was right.’ He smiled at David then, a pleasant social smile although his eyes remained sharp. David knew that in a very English way he was being probed, tested. There was something about Jackson that made him guess this man was a civil servant like him, but very senior. He wondered where he was leading. Jackson smiled encouragingly. David took a breath and then dived right in, just as he had from the diving board as a boy.
‘My wife’s a pacifist,’ he said. ‘I used to agree with her. She still maintains that at least we stopped the war. Though she knows Britain’s supporting what’s going on in Russia. Endless bloody murder.’
Jackson stopped and looked out over Highgate Ponds. In the same quiet voice he said, ‘The Germans can never win in Russia. They’ve been fighting for eleven years to realize their goal: a state of German settlement stretching from Archangel to Astrakhan, some capitalist semi-colonial Russian state beyond that in the Urals and Siberia. But they’ve never managed it. Every summer they edge a bit further east, they breach parts of the Volga line, every winter the Russians push them back with these new Kalashnikov rifles they’re making beyond the Urals – millions of them, light and effective. And behind the lines, the partisans hold half the countryside. In some places the Germans just control the towns and the railway lines. Do you know what happened after they captured Leningrad ten years ago?’
‘No-one knows that, do they? All we hear is that the Germans keep slowly advancing.’
‘Well, they’re not. As for Leningrad, the Germans didn’t go in, they just surrounded the city and left the population to starve. Over three million people. There’s been complete radio silence from Leningrad since 1942. Nothing, not a cheep. When they took Moscow they turned the population out, put them in camps, and left them to starve. Same with the European Jews. They’re all supposed to have gone to labour camps, somewhere in the East. We’ve seen the newsreels, nice wooden huts with flowers in the window and lawns outside. But no English Jew has ever heard a word from friends or relatives who went there: not a letter, not a postcard. Nothing.’
David stared at Jackson. Does he know about me? he thought. But nobody knew his secret, apart from his father. It was just that with the new laws people were talking about the Jews more. He said, ‘There were what, six million people, seven, sent to the labour camps?’
Jackson nodded gravely. ‘Yes. There’s only ours and some of the French Jews left now. It’s been a matter of national pride and independence not to let them go, despite German pressure. But Mosley wants them out and he counts more every month.’ He sighed. ‘Where are we going, do you think, Fitzgerald?’
‘I think we’re going to hell in a handcart.’
A young couple walked by, the woman wearing white-framed sunglasses, a pink frock patterned with flowers. Between them they held the hands of a little girl, swinging her up in the air; she shrieked with delight. A collie dog ran round them, wagging its tail. Jackson smiled and the woman smiled back. The little family walked on, towards the water. When they were out of earshot Geoff said, ‘It’s getting worse in India, too. Has been ever since Gandhi died in prison in ’47. It doesn’t matter how many leaders they lock up along with Nehru. It just goes on: the rent strikes, the boycott of British goods, strikes in the industries exporting to Britain. These mutinies of Indian regiments against their officers – that really could bring the whole thing tumbling down. And the irony is that the Berlin Treaty limited our trade with the continent – look at the duties we have to pay on imports and exports, just so Hitler can use Europe as a captive market for his own industries. But that’s how Beaverbrook’s people wanted it.’ Geoff paused. ‘Imperial free trade and tariffs on trade with everyone else. His lifelong dream.’
‘Well, now he’s got it.’ Geoff gave one of his humourless barking laughs. ‘And we’ve had a Depression that’s gone on over twenty years.’
‘I’ve heard around the office,’ David spoke hesitantly, ‘that Enoch Powell wants to recruit a couple of new English divisions to send to India. But that would push our army above the Treaty limit.’
Jackson said, ‘Did you know, Hitler once offered to lend us a couple of SS divisions to sort out India.’ How much does this man know? David thought. Who is he?
Jackson looked at him. ‘You’re in the Dominions Office, Geoff tells me.’
‘Yes.’ This is going too fast. He’d already said too much to Geoff.
‘Principal in the Political Division, main job servicing the minister’s weekly meetings with the Dominion High Commissioners.’ Jackson’s tone had changed again, become brisk, businesslike.
‘Yes.’ The weekly meetings between the minister and the High Commissioners for the Dominions – Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and, since last year, Rhodesia – were organized and minuted by David’s superior, with David doing much of the legwork.
‘Present at most of the meetings?’
David didn’t answer. There was a little silence, then Jackson continued, his tone conversational again. ‘You’ve been overseas, I believe, to New Zealand?’
‘Yes. I was posted there from ’44 to ’46. My father has family in Auckland. He’s gone to live with them, in fact. He thought we were going to hell in a handcart, too.’
‘And your mother?’
‘She died when I was at school.’
‘You have Irish blood, from your name.’
‘My father’s from a line of Dublin solicitors. He brought my mother and me over when I was three, during the Independence War.’
Jackson smiled. ‘You have an Irish look, if you don’t mind me saying.’
‘A lot of people think that.’
‘Any loyalties to Ireland?’
David shook his head. ‘To De Valera’s republic? No. My father hated all that stern Catholic nationalism.’
‘Did you think of staying out in Kiwiland with your father?’
‘Yes. But we decided to come back. This is still our country.’ And there had been no anti-Jew laws then; repression was still mild.
Jackson looked down across London, spread out under the blue sky. ‘Britain’s become a dangerous place. If you step out of line, that is. But,’ he said quietly, ‘opposition’s growing.’
David looked at Geoff. His friend’s nose was reddening in the sun. He wondered how, with his fair skin, Geoff had coped in Africa all that time. ‘Yes,’ David agreed, ‘it is.’
‘Fast.’
David said, ‘A lot of people are being killed on both sides. Strikers. Soldiers. Policemen. It’s getting worse.’
‘Churchill said we had to “set Britain ablaze” after the last election was rigged.’
‘Is he still alive?’ David asked. ‘I know there used be to be illicit recordings circulating of him urging us to resist, but nobody’s heard of those for a while. He’s getting on for eighty now. His wife Clementine’s gone, they found her dead from pneumonia in that stately home in Lancashire last year. Life on the run, for old people like that?’ He shook his head. ‘His son Randolph’s a collaborator, been on TV su
pporting the government. And if Churchill’s dead, who’s in power in the Resistance now? The Communists?’
Jackson gave David a long, appraising look. ‘Churchill is alive,’ he said, quietly. ‘And the Resistance goes a great deal wider than the Communist Party.’ He gave a slow nod, then looked at his watch and said, suddenly, ‘Well, shall we walk back towards the station? My wife’s expecting me home. One of her family get-togethers.’ And David realized that wherever Jackson was thinking of leading him, he wasn’t going to go there just yet.
On the walk back to the station Jackson talked genially about cricket and rugger; he had been in the school XV at Eton. When they parted he shook David’s hand, bestowed a rubicund smile, and walked away. In a rare gesture, Geoff squeezed David’s arm. ‘He liked you,’ he said quietly.
‘What’s this about, Geoff? Why did you tell him so much about me?’
‘I thought you might be interested in joining us.’
‘To do what?’
‘Perhaps in time – help us.’ Geoff smiled his quick, anxious smile. ‘But it’s up to you, David. The decision would have to come from you.’
From the kitchen, David could hear Sarah doing the washing-up, banging plates angrily on the draining board. He turned away from the staircase. Right from the beginning, from that first meeting with Jackson on Hampstead Heath, her safety had been his biggest worry. A wife, his handlers had told him later, could be told what her husband was doing only if she were totally committed as well. And although Sarah detested the government, her pacifism meant she couldn’t support the Resistance, not after the bombings and shooting of policemen started. And ever since then David had felt resentment towards her, blamed her for the intolerable burden of yet another secret.