“But I’ve raised over £4,000,” he repeated out loud again and again.
“That’s not the point, Townsend,” he could hear the headmaster saying.
He tried not to show the junior boy how anxious he really was. As he left his room and walked into the corridor, he could see the open door of his housemaster’s study. His strides became slower and slower. He walked in, and Mr. Clarke handed him the phone. Keith wished the housemaster would leave the room, but he just sat there and continued to mark last night’s prep.
“Keith Townsend,” he said.
“Good morning, Keith. It’s Mike Adams.”
Keith immediately recognized the name of the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald. How had he found out about the missing money?
“Are you still there?” asked Adams.
“Yes,” said Keith. “What can I do for you?” He was relieved that Adams couldn’t see him trembling.
“I’ve just read the latest edition of the St. Andy, and in particular your piece on Australia becoming a republic. I think it’s first class, and I’d like to reprint the whole article in the SMH—if we can agree on a fee.”
“It’s not for sale,” said Keith firmly.
“I was thinking of offering you £75,” said Adams.
“I wouldn’t let you reprint it, if you offered me…”
“If we offered you how much?”
* * *
The week before Keith was due to sit his exams for Oxford, he returned to Toorak for some last-minute cramming with Miss Steadman. They went over possible questions together and read model answers she had prepared. She failed on only one thing—getting him to relax. But he couldn’t tell her that it wasn’t the exams he was nervous about.
“I’m sure you’ll pass,” his mother said confidently over breakfast on the Sunday morning.
“I do hope so,” said Keith, only too aware that the following day the Sydney Morning Herald was going to publish his “Dawn of a New Republic.” But that would also be the morning he began his exams, so Keith just hoped that his father and mother would keep their counsel for at least the next ten days, and by then perhaps …
“Well, if it’s a close-run thing,” said his father, interrupting his thoughts, “I’m sure you’ll be helped by the headmaster’s strong endorsement after your amazing success with the pavilion appeal. By the way, I forgot to mention that your grandmother was so impressed by your efforts that she donated another £100 to the appeal, in your name.”
It was the first time Keith’s mother had ever heard him swear.
* * *
By the Monday morning Keith felt as ready to face the examiners as he believed he would ever be, and by the time he had completed the final paper ten days later, he was impressed by how many of the questions Miss Steadman had anticipated. He knew he’d done well in History and Geography, and only hoped that the Oxford board didn’t place too much weight on the Classics.
He phoned his mother to assure her that he thought he had performed as well as he could have hoped, and that if he wasn’t offered a place at Oxford he wouldn’t be able to complain that he’d been unlucky with the questions.
“Neither will I complain,” came back his mother’s immediate reply. “But I do have one piece of advice for you, Keith. Keep out of your father’s way for a few more days.”
The anticlimax that followed the ending of the exams was inevitable. While Keith waited to learn the results, he spent some of his time trying to raise the final few hundred pounds for the pavilion appeal, some of it at the racecourse placing small bets with his own money, and a night with the wife of a banker who ended up donating £50.
On the last Monday of term, Mr. Jessop informed his staff at their weekly meeting that St. Andrew’s would be continuing the great tradition of sending its finest students to Oxford and Cambridge, thus maintaining the link with those two great universities. He read out the names of those who had won places:
Alexander, D.T.L.
Tomkins, C.
Townsend, K.R.
“A shit, a swot, and a star, but not necessarily in that order,” said the headmaster under his breath.
SECOND EDITION
To the Victor the Spoils
9.
Daily Mirror
7 June 1944
NORMANDY LANDINGS ARE SUCCESSFUL
When Lubji Hoch had finished telling the tribunal his story, they just looked at him with incredulous stares. He was either some sort of superman, or a pathological liar—they couldn’t decide which.
The Czech translator shrugged his shoulders. “Some of it adds up,” he told the investigating officer. “But a lot of it sounds a little far-fetched to me.”
The chairman of the tribunal considered the case of Lubji Hoch for a few moments, and then decided on the easy way out. “Send him back to the internment camp—and we’ll see him again in six months’ time. He can then tell us his story again, and we’ll just have to see how much of it has changed.”
Lubji had sat through the tribunal unable to understand a word the chairman was saying, but at least this time they had supplied him with an interpreter so he was able to follow the proceedings. On the journey back to the internment camp he made one decision. When they reviewed his case in six months’ time, he wouldn’t need his words translated.
That didn’t turn out to be quite as easy as Lubji had anticipated, because once he was back in the camp among his countrymen they showed little interest in speaking anything but Czech. In fact the only thing they ever taught him was how to play poker, and it wasn’t long before he was beating every one of them at their own game. Most of them assumed they would be returning home as soon as the war was over.
Lubji was the first internee to rise every morning, and he persistently annoyed his fellow inmates by always wanting to outrun, outwork and outstrip every one of them. Most of the Czechs looked upon him as nothing more than a Ruthenian ruffian, but as he was now over six feet in height and still growing, none of them voiced this opinion to his face.
Lubji had been back at the camp for about a week when he first noticed her. He was returning to his hut after breakfast when he saw an old woman pushing a bicycle laden with newspapers up the hill. As she passed through the camp gates he couldn’t make out her face clearly, because she wore a scarf over her head as a token defense against the bitter wind. She began to deliver papers, first to the officers’ mess and then, one by one, to the little houses occupied by the non-commissioned officers. Lubji walked around the side of the parade ground and began to follow her, hoping she might turn out to be the person to help him. When the bag on the front of her bicycle was empty, she turned back toward the camp gates. As she passed Lubji, he shouted, “Hello.”
“Good morning,” she replied, mounted her bicycle and rode through the gates and off down the hill without another word.
The following morning Lubji didn’t bother with breakfast but stood by the camp gates, staring down the hill. When he saw her pushing her laden bicycle up the slope, he ran out to join her before the guard could stop him. “Good morning,” he said, taking the bicycle from her.
“Good morning,” she replied. “I’m Mrs. Sweetman. And how are you today?” Lubji would have told her, if he’d had the slightest idea what she had said.
As she did her rounds he eagerly carried each bundle for her. One of the first words he learned in English was “newspaper.” After that he set himself the task of learning ten new words every day.
By the end of the month, the guard on the camp gate didn’t even blink when Lubji slipped past him each morning to join the old lady at the bottom of the hill.
By the second month, he was sitting on the doorstep of Mrs. Sweetman’s shop at six o’clock every morning so that he could stack all the papers in the right order, before pushing the laden bicycle up the hill. When she requested a meeting with the camp commander at the beginning of the third month, the major told her that he could see no objection to Hoch’s working a few hour
s each day in the village shop, as long as he was always back before roll-call.
Mrs. Sweetman quickly discovered that this was not the first news-agent’s shop the young man had worked in, and she made no attempt to stop him when he rearranged the shelves, reorganized the delivery schedule, and a month later took over the accounts. She was not surprised to discover, after a few weeks of Lubji’s suggestions, that her turnover was up for the first time since 1939.
Whenever the shop was empty Mrs. Sweetman would help Lubji with his English by reading out loud one of the stories from the front page of the Citizen. Lubji would then try to read it back to her. She often burst out laughing with what she called his “howlers.” Just another word Lubji added to his vocabulary.
By the time winter had turned into spring there was only the occasional howler, and it was not much longer before Lubji was able to sit down quietly in the corner and read to himself, stopping to consult Mrs. Sweetman only when he came to a word he hadn’t come across. Long before he was due to reappear in front of the tribunal, he had moved on to studying the leader column in the Manchester Guardian, and one morning, when Mrs. Sweetman stared at the word “insouciant” without attempting to offer an explanation, Lubji decided to save her embarrassment by referring in future to the unthumbed Oxford Pocket Dictionary which had been left to gather dust under the counter.
* * *
“Do you require an interpreter?” the chairman of the panel asked.
“No, thank you, sir,” came back Lubji’s immediate reply.
The chairman raised an eyebrow. He was sure that when he had last interviewed this giant of a man only six months before he hadn’t been able to understand a word of English. Wasn’t he the one who had held them all spellbound with an unlikely tale of what he had been through before he ended up in Liverpool? Now he was repeating exactly the same story and, apart from a few grammatical errors and a dreadful Liverpudlian accent, it was having an even greater effect on the panel than when they had first interviewed him.
“So, what would you like to do next, Hoch?” he asked, once the young Czech had come to the end of his story.
“I wish to join old regiment and play my part in winning war,” came Lubji’s well-rehearsed reply.
“That may not prove quite so easy, Hoch,” said the chairman, smiling benignly down at him.
“If you will not give me rifle I will kill Germans with bare hands,” said Lubji defiantly. “Just give me chance to prove myself.”
The chairman smiled at him again before nodding at the duty sergeant, who came to attention and marched Lubji briskly out of the room.
Lubji didn’t learn the result of the tribunal’s deliberations for several days. He was delivering the morning papers to the officers’ quarters when a corporal marched up to him and said without explanation, “’Och, the CO wants to see you.”
“When?” asked Lubji.
“Now,” said the corporal, and without another word he turned and began marching away. Lubji dropped the remaining papers on the ground, and chased after him as he disappeared through the morning mist across the parade ground in the direction of the office block. They both came to a halt in front of a door marked “Commanding Officer.”
The corporal knocked, and the moment he had heard the word “Come,” opened the door, marched in, stood to attention in front of the colonel’s desk and saluted.
“’Och reporting as ordered, sir,” he bellowed as if he were still outside on the parade ground. Lubji stopped directly behind the corporal, and was nearly knocked over by him when he took a pace backward.
Lubji stared at the smartly-dressed officer behind the desk. He had seen him once or twice before, but only at a distance. He stood to attention and threw the palm of his hand up to his forehead, trying to mimic the corporal. The commanding officer looked up at him for a moment, and then back down at the single sheet of paper on his desk.
“Hoch,” he began. “You are to be transferred from this camp to a training depot in Staffordshire, where you will join the Pioneer Corps as a private soldier.”
“Yes, sir,” shouted Lubji happily.
The colonel’s eyes remained on the piece of paper in front of him. “You will embus from the camp at 0700 hours tomorrow morning.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Before then you will report to the duty clerk who will supply you with all the necessary documentation, including a rail warrant.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you have any questions, Hoch?”
“Yes, sir,” said Lubji. “Do the Pioneer Corps kill Germans?”
“No, Hoch, they do not,” replied the colonel, laughing, “but you will be expected to give invaluable assistance to those who do.”
Lubji knew what the word “valuable” meant, but wasn’t quite sure about “invaluable.” He made a note of it the moment he returned to his hut.
That afternoon he reported, as instructed, to the duty clerk, and was issued with a rail warrant and ten shillings. After he had packed his few possessions, he walked down the hill for the last time to thank Mrs. Sweetman for all she had done during the past seven months to help him learn English. He looked up the new word in the dictionary under the counter, and told Mrs. Sweetman that her help had been invaluable. She didn’t care to admit to the tall young foreigner that he now spoke her language better than she did.
The following morning Lubji took a bus to the station in time to catch the 7:20 to Stafford. By the time he arrived, after three changes and several delays, he had read The Times from cover to cover.
There was a jeep waiting for him at Stafford. Behind the wheel sat a corporal of the North Staffordshire Regiment, who looked so smart that Lubji called him “sir.” On the journey to the barracks the corporal left Lubji in no doubt that the “coolies”—Lubji was still finding it hard to pick up slang—were the lowest form of life. “They’re nothing more than a bunch of skivers who’ll do anything to avoid taking part in real action.”
“I want to take part in real action,” Lubji told him firmly, “and I am not a skiver.” He hesitated. “Am I?”
“It takes one to know one,” the corporal said, as the jeep came to a halt outside the quartermaster’s stores.
Once Lubji had been issued with a private’s uniform, trousers a couple of inches too short, two khaki shirts, two pairs of gray socks, a brown tie (cotton), a billycan, knife, fork and spoon, two blankets, one sheet and one pillowcase, he was escorted to his new barracks. He found himself billeted with twenty recruits from the Staffordshire area who, before they had been called up, had worked mostly as potters or coalminers. It took him some time to realize that they were talking the same language he had been taught by Mrs. Sweetman.
During the next few weeks Lubji did little more than dig trenches, clean out latrines and occasionally drive lorry-loads of rubbish to a dump a couple of miles outside the camp. To the displeasure of his comrades, he always worked harder and longer than any of them. He soon discovered why the corporal thought the coolies were nothing more than a bunch of skivers.
Whenever Lubji emptied the dustbins behind the officers’ mess, he would retrieve any discarded newspapers, however out of date. Later that night he would lie on his narrow bed, his legs dangling over the end, and slowly turn the pages of each paper. He was mostly interested in stories about the war, but the more he read, the more he feared the action was coming to an end, and the last battle would be over long before he had been given the chance to kill any Germans.
* * *
Lubji had been a coolie for about six months when he read in morning orders that the North Staffordshire Regiment was scheduled to hold its annual boxing tournament to select representatives for the national army championships later that year. Lubji’s section was given the responsibility of setting up the ring and putting out chairs in the gymnasium so that the entire regiment could watch the final. The order was signed by the duty officer, Lieutenant Wakeham.
Once the ring had been erected
in the center of the gymnasium, Lubji started to unfold the seats and place them in rows around it. At ten o’clock the section was given a fifteen-minute break, and most of them slipped out to share a Woodbine. But Lubji remained inside, watching the boxers go about their training.
When the regiment’s sixteen-stone heavyweight champion climbed through the ropes, the instructor was unable to find a suitable sparring partner for him, so the champ had to be satisfied with belting a punch-bag held up for him by the largest soldier available. But no one could hold up the bulky punch-bag for long, and after several men had been exhausted, the champion began to shadow-box, his coach urging him to knock out an invisible opponent.
Lubji watched in awe until a slight man in his early twenties, who wore one pip on his shoulder and looked as if he had just left school, entered the gymnasium. Lubji quickly began to unfold more chairs. Lieutenant Wakeham stopped by the side of the ring, and frowned as he saw the heavyweight champion shadow-boxing. “What’s the problem, sergeant? Can’t you find anyone to take on Matthews?”
“No, sir,” came back the immediate reply. “No one who’s the right weight would last more than a couple of minutes with ‘im.”
“Pity,” said the lieutenant. “He’s bound to become a little rusty if he doesn’t get any real competition. Do try and find someone who would be willing to go a couple of rounds with him.”
Lubji dropped the chair he was unfolding and ran toward the ring. He saluted the lieutenant and said, “I’ll go with him for as long as you like, sir.”
The champion looked down from the ring and began to laugh. “I don’t box with coolies,” he said. “Or with girls from the Land Army, for that matter.”
Lubji immediately pulled himself up into the ring, put up his fists and advanced toward the champion.
“All right, all right,” said Lieutenant Wakeham, looking up at Lubji. “What’s your name?”
The Fourth Estate Page 12