by Bodie Thoene
17
To Do What One Can Do
In spite of Doc Grogan’s vow that he would never take more than twelve children on the Thursday educational walk, this morning there were twenty standing in the ranks on the sidewalk outside Red Lion House.
Elisa and the new baby were coming home today, which meant that Anna and Aunt Helen would be busy at the house while Murphy brought wife and baby home from the hospital. Someone had to help out with the new refugee children who had not yet made the transfer to their new families. For most of them, this would be their only opportunity to see London.
Doc squared his shoulders and counted heads. “Eighteen, nineteen, twenty, and twenty-one?” He scowled down at a fair-haired eight-year old girl who scowled back at him. “Where did you come from?” he asked in German.
“You counted me twice,” she replied, not much liking the attention.
“Then you must get in line only once,” Doc chided, then turned to Murphy with a grin. “How about it if we trade places, eh? I will pick up Elisa and the baby, and you take the troops to the Houses of Parliament.”
Hildy Frutschy broke her own rule about never speaking German. For the first time ever, Charles could clearly understand the plump little housekeeper as she shouted to the group, “Do you all have your lunch sacks?” Heads nodded in affirmative reply. “Gut! Sehr gut, Kinder!” But bobbing heads were not enough for Hildy. Again in German: “Raise your hand if you have your lunch.” It appeared that all hands were up. “Gut! Sehr gut! And then, one more check. “And if you do not have a lunch, bitte, now also raise your hand.” No hands went up. “Gut. Sehr gut!” Her job was done. She wiped her hands on her apron and retreated to the house to finish her work before the great arrival.
The adults had dwindled down to Murphy and Doc. Murphy was looking impatiently at his empty wrist. His watch was still broken, but he was sure the red double-decker bus was late—or at least it was not early as Murphy had hoped. He was staying on until the bus came. Doc needed the moral support until then. After that he would be on his own.
“We appreciate the help, Doc.” He patted the weary-looking academician on the shoulder.
“I am leaving with twenty,” Doc replied. “I hope I will return with the same number.” As if to emphasize his worry, he shouted to the standing group, “Stay together now! Remember! Everybody stay together!”
“Keep away from the subways. No tube stations,” Murphy warned. “There was another bomb scare yesterday. Nothing came of it. Probably nothing more afoot here in London after the Victoria bombing, but . . .” He looked over the heads of the children. “They have just come from that sort of thing. No use frightening them here in England.”
“Parliament Square should be a safe enough place,” Doc sighed. “I’m not so worried about IRA bombs as I am about having one of them wander off.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “More people were killed crossing the street last week than in the bombing.”
“Only one out of millions in London.” Murphy nodded. “Still, it’s the idea of the thing. Not knowing where. Makes like a little shaky when you can’t even go to the bathroom without wondering if the toilet is going to blow up.”
Doc returned the nod. “Senseless.”
“Not if you’re a terrorist,” Murphy disagreed. “Terror is a powerful weapon.” He lowered his voice and looked at the haunted eyes of these mirthless children. “Take a look, Doc. This is the result of six years’ worth of terror in Germany. Robbed the kids of their ability to laugh.”
Doc nodded. He had indeed noticed and commented on the fact that every week these excursions with the refugee children were silent and somber. Unlike the babble of English schoolchildren that echoed in the great halls and museums, these children marched! Their little feet against the pavement echoed the tramp of the Nazi jackboots that had pursued them from their homes and smashed their families, scattering them throughout Europe.
“No laughter,” Doc agreed. Then he reached out and mussed the hair of Charles. “Except for this one and his brother! He chucked Louis under his chin. “Talk, talk, talk! And I enjoy hearing every word too!”
The comment made Charles beam, showing the gap where his front teeth should have been. “I been . . . to Par-li-ment,” he said proudly.
“We been every place,” Louis added, bobbing up and down.
At first the boys had been disappointed that they would not be on hand when Elisa and their baby sister came home, but Doc and Murphy had explained that Doc needed them to “ride herd.” Just like cowboys, keeping the group all together, Charles and Louis were assigned to bring up the rear, looking out for some children who were a lot older than they. The responsibility felt good.
“There is a triple duty police force on patrol, I’m told,” Murphy said as the big red bus rounded the corner in a cloud of diesel smoke. “And Scotland Yard has plainclothesmen everywhere as well. Might be a help to the kids if you let them meet a bobby or two. Let them see the difference between here and the Reich. They still aren’t going to get it for a while, I guess,” Murphy added with a shrug. Then in a low voice he whispered, “You know, Charles is still having nightmares. After the Victoria bombing he slept in my bed. Poor kid.”
Doc frowned at that news as though it made his heart hurt. He shook his head and patted his chest. But there was only a moment for reflection about what life in Germany could do to a child’s dreams. The bus pulled up with a mighty belch. Doc counted heads as solemn faces piled into the bus. He realized that riding on a public bus was something many of these children had been forbidden to do in their homeland. All of them, without exception, headed straight to the fume-filled back of the vehicle and appeared confused and nervous as they took their places.
“I’ll bring them back a bit change, I hope,” Doc said to Murphy as he counted out the fares.
“Just bring them back, Doc,” Murphy teased.
Doc did not seem to hear him. He shouted for everyone to move. “Top of the bus! Everyone up! Front seats, if you please!” It was good for a start.
Hildy opened the window and shouted down that there was a trunk call for Murphy, all the way from Danzig, no less!
Murphy looked impatiently at his wrist and then, muttering to himself about the fact that phone calls were more expensive than steamer fare, he ran up the stairs to face yet another bout with the pleading of Lori Ibsen.
“Can’t you also give me a job in Warsaw?” she begged. “I do not want to leave Danzig unless we all leave together. Please. I am smart. I can work as a secretary! Please let me go to Warsaw with Jacob.”
Murphy told her sternly that all positions were filled and that it would be good for Jacob Kalner to have experience as a news journalist’s assistant through the rest of the summer. And certainly by autumn, when it was time for him to be in school, the mix-up about his papers would all be straightened out. Murphy tried to assure the young woman, although he did not believe most of it. By autumn, Europe would be at war, and everyone who was getting out would be out. Or else.
It did not take a genius to figure out that Elisa’s cousin was deeply in love with Jacob Kalner. Even Murphy caught on two sentences into Lori’s last long-distance try.
“His boss is a fellow named Sam Orde, just out of the British military. He’ll run the Warsaw bureau like an army boot camp, Lori. It’s no place for a young lady. But he’ll take care of Jacob, that’s for sure. He’s arriving in Danzig the morning your ship leaves. Said he’d hand around the docks and meet up with Jacob. Okay?”
At last Murphy heard the resignation in her voice. No use trying. Staying was really impossible. She would be more trouble than anyone wanted to deal with if she tried to go to Warsaw.
“All right then,” she replied quietly. “I suppose. If you promise he will be in school in the autumn.”
Murphy consulted his wrist again. He would be late picking up Elisa and Katie. He hoped Lori would forgive him if, indeed, Jacob ended up being one of the unlucky ones left behind come Se
ptember. “I will do all I can to make that happen,” Murphy promised. What more could he do?
***
Allan Farrell stepped off the tube at the Westminster Station and bounded up the stairs into the bright sunlight of Parliament Square.
On the east, the square was bordered by the towers of Parliament. On the south was St. Margaret’s Church, dwarfed in the shadow of Westminster Abbey. The square was ringed by statues of British statesmen whose heroic deeds were nearly forgotten now. Allan made his way across the area to the fountain that commemorated the abolition of slavery in the British dominions. Since Northern Ireland was still enslaved, Allan considered the symbolism of the fountain a shame; however, the water was cool. The spray dotted his forehead and eased the unrelenting heat. He dipped his handkerchief in the water and mopped his brow, then sat on a bench to wait for the arrival of this contact.
His first scanning of the heat-weary crowds of tourists and schoolchildren revealed that there was a disproportionately high number of policemen wandering about the square and standing in the shade of the towers and turrets of the surrounding buildings. Such vigilance on the part of Scotland Yard and the British authorities would be hard to penetrate during his next attack. He imagined that there was a plainclothes officer from Scotland Yard standing on duty at every urinal in the city of London.
The thought pleased him. The news accounts had called the Victoria Station bombing cowardly and depraved. Allan considered that it was just the opposite, and a tremendous success, judging from the visible evidence of so many blue-coated bobbies prowling around the place.
It was astounding how much damage one little pipe and a few match heads would do to the morale of the mighty British Empire. And words like coward held no meaning to Allan any longer. He had tasted blood, and like the newly tried hound of a hunt, he was eager for more.
Only this morning he had considered what his next job might be. A bomb right here? He stared at the spurting fountain, this monument to hypocrisy. Well, perhaps not this, he mused. He enjoyed it as his only refuge from the summer heat in his forays to pass information to the contact.
Maybe St. Margaret’s Church? Or the abbey itself? That would certainly set all of England on its ear! A pipe bomb exploding in the organ of Westminster Abbey?
A matched pair of bobbies strolled past. They were greeted by yet another pair at the junction of the walkways in the square. Too much risk. It would be foolish to allow himself to be caught when he had only just begun his crusade.
St. Margaret’s Street ran into the Old Palace Yard at the edge of the Houses of Parliament. The place was the scene of execution for a number of Catholic conspirators, led by one Guy Fawkes, who had attempted to blow up Parliament and King James I, with all his lords as well. Bright fellows, those unfortunate men had been. They had rented a coal cellar that extended beneath the House of Lords and had crammed if full of gunpowder. They would have succeeded too, had it not been for an informer. The cellars were searched, and the conspirators captured with a lantern ready to ignite the deadly fuse.
The course of history might have gone differently, Allan knew, if those Catholic dissenters had pulled it off. But half were executed in the Old Palace Yard, and the others were killed near the entrance of London’s great St. Paul’s Cathedral. Protestant England still celebrated the failure of the Gunpowder Plot each year, and now it remained for someone else to carry the lantern and light the fuse beneath the city of London!
Allan had been raised on stories such as these. It was the dream of every brother in the IRA to pick up the tale where King James buried it. Those ideological forebears who had dreamed up the Gunpowder Plot in 1605 were perched on the pedestals of Allan Farrell’s mind today as he gazed around the square. He was not so insane as to think that he could succeed where they had failed, but he longed to speak to England through the fire and smoke of terror as they had tried to do.
His sense of justice strengthened as he looked up into the cloudless sky. Pigeons fluttered past to roost in the shadowed cornices of the great facades. Perhaps, in this case, German bombers would one day finish the work of Guy Fawkes and his band of brave men. Allan imagined fire leaping through the roofs of Commons, devouring the great clock tower and turning Big Ben into molten metal.
The image reinforced his belief that all the evil the English had dished out would explode on their heads one day. But such dreams did little to satisfy his own sense of what he must do to hasten that certain day.
He must think; scout London for some unguarded relic, some fortress of well-being where the enemy would never imagine destruction could come upon them. A public lavatory at a train station was just a beginning, and a small beginning at that. But Allan fully intended to keep sleep from the eyes of Scotland Yard’s best men. A miniscule device, a tiny flash of destruction, would simply be his foretaste of something big yet to come. He would need help. He would need the proper materials.
When the German agents stepped from the red omnibus and walked slowly toward Allan, he remained where he was. Today he did not merely leave the information tucked into the pages of the London Times. Today Allan left a personal note stating that he wanted to extend his role beyond that of mere messenger boy.
Allan Farrell wanted to prove to the world and to himself that he was much more than just the son of Maureen; that he could outdo anything his mother had ever dreamed of! For Allan Farrell, all his life had come down to this moment.
***
“Well, Murphy, did you get mother and child home safely?”
“Both doing great, Winston.”
“And what,” inquired Winston Churchill, “was your impression of today’s debate over the Prevention of Violence Act?”
“It must be gratifying to you, Winston, to finally see Parliament come to grips with an issue in such complete agreement,” responded Murphy. “The government admits that terrorists are real, and that special measures and deportations are in order.”
Churchill shook his ponderous head slowly. “Don’t give them too much credit, Murphy,” he warned. “If I have seen a vicious dog bite four of my neighbors already, then my wisdom cannot receive a great deal of credit if I let the mongrel come into my yard and bite me before I decide that I need to do something about it!”
The great man paused to reflect before continuing. “What this government still does not see is the identity of the master of the dog named terrorism. Herr Hitler has done it with Arabs in Palestine, racial Germans in Austria and the Sudetenland and Danzig, and now with Irish extremists in London.”
Murphy frowned thoughtfully. “I would have thought you’d be pleased with the home secretary’s statement.” The newsman paused and referred to a notebook. “Here it is: ‘The terrorists are being actively stimulated by foreign organization.’”
“Bah,” Churchill grumbled. “You’ll note that he still does not accuse Nazis by name! I’m not entirely certain that he himself knows. He may be referring to the Irish Republican brotherhood in America! That group, the Clan da Gael, may buy some dog food, but it is still Herr Hitler who commands the dog to jump! No, Murphy,” Churchill concluded sadly. “For all the rhetoric about expulsions, exclusions, and deportations, Chamberlain and his cronies still do not grasp the gravity of the situation.”
***
Hitler listened as his interpreter, Dr. Schmidt, translated the text of the commons debate about IRA terrorism. The Führer nodded contentedly as Chamberlain’s remarks were read. He seemed distracted, as if he were not really paying attention.
Then Schmidt began to translate the responses offered by Lloyd George and Anthony Eden. The Führer’s face clouded over, and with each reference to Germany’s instigation of the bombings, Hitler’s countenance grew darker and darker.
Schmidt glanced up nervously, then back at the transcript, nearly losing his place. He could tell that the storm of Hitler’s wrath was about to break.
When Schmidt reached Churchill’s remarks, the interpreter was already braced for t
he explosion.
“This English bulldog dares to snarl at us?” Hitler shouted. “This jowled species of British mongrel making watchdog noises!” Flecks of spittle flew from the lips of the leader of the Nazi Reich in his rage.
“Who is Churchill that anyone gives him room to speak?” Hitler demanded of the air. “He is discredited, a failure, a castoff wretch! The British want peace, peace, peace! Why do their papers still report the ravings of this warmongering cur? Schmidt!” Hitler snapped his fingers. “Enough! Stop reading! Tell Himmler I need to see him at once!”
***
Every piece of furniture in Orde’s London home was shrouded in dusty sheets. Orde carefully removed the covering from a straight-backed petit-point chair that he had never sat on before now. He left his favorite overstuffed chair out of sight as if one glimpse of the fabric would bring back too many memories. Better to view the room from this uncomfortable and unfamiliar angle. Katie had purchased the chair because she liked the needlework on the cushion. Now Orde sat firmly on it and thought what a frivolous purchase that had been. To buy a chair no one ever sat in simply because it was pretty.
That sort of impracticality had been cut out of character for Katie, so Orde assumed she must have seen something extraordinary in the chair, some faraway purpose she imagined it would serve. A mourning seat for Orde, so he would not have to take the covers from the really comfortable chairs. So he would not have to sit and remember and doze off to dream that the years without her were just a terrible dream!
He resisted the insane urge to call for her to make him a cup of tea. He looked at the long dead ashes in the fireplace. He had not cleaned them out after she died. He had let the coals glow and watched the light pass from the embers, leaving his heart there in the ashes on the hearth.
He chided himself for not simply cleaning the place and renting it to some junior diplomat or a university professor on sabbatical. He had been foolish to simply let it sit and gather a coat of dust, while beneath the shroud the colors and pain of memories were as vivid as ever.
