(He used, in every case, the Revised Version for greater safety.)
Parsons until then had repeated to him variegated versions of his mother’s order to be good and had said that this was Christianity. They had explained God as a force striving for betterness and helping us in self-improvement. Some had even talked politics and others had doubted about hell. All had concealed, or not known, the truth. But it was nevertheless written out repeatedly. He found another plain sentence:
He that believeth on the Son hath eternal life; but he that obeyeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him. (St. John, iii, 36.)
There were (he saw) two wholly different kinds of person—the elect, who were very few, and of whom he was now one, and the wholly damned, who were innumerable. Judgment would come, and its character was quite explicitly indicated. His eye had fallen upon another passage in St. Matthew, which he copied out (ch. xxv.):
But when the Son of man shall come in his glory and all the angels with him, then shall he sit on the throne of his glory…Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels.
There was very little doubt about the meaning of that: and yet there were priests and pastors who delivered sermons week after week completely unaware of this terrifying news. As if a man should announce earnestly and in exact terms that invasion and universal slaughter were imminent and then turn the conversation to the weather.
Even the numbers of the saved were known, and were recorded in the Book of Revelation, which became more and more Bryan’s favourite reading.
And I saw, and behold, the Lamb standing on the mount Zion, and with him a hundred and forty and four thousand having his name and the name of his Father written on their foreheads.
A hundred and forty-four thousand. 144,000. A thousand gross, as though it had been one of the entries that he continually checked for his employers. A celestial cashier, if the parallel was not too arrogant, was keeping the Divine books, and among the millions of this world a thousand gross were very few. It was hardly likely that he would find others of the elect.
Sometimes he attended a Foursquare Gospel Chapel, or an extreme Evangelical sect; but he did not do so frequently. He doubted if the congregation were really the elect. He suspected their visible and violent excitement; consciousness of being elect should give calm. Anyway, he needed no confirmation from others; he relied confidently on his own interpretation of scripture.
Every night, as he closed his desk and took down his hat, he felt a silent relief, as if he was passing out of a grey and wet country into a sunny land. Before long he would be able once again to open his Bible, to see and feel the light; he said within himself, “I come, I come!” as if he had been crying to an impatient lover.
The flame was not always blazing. Undue attention to worldly things might dim it: some evenings he failed to see it at all when he had allowed himself to be too concentrated on his work or to be vexed by some external trouble or person. His friend, First Peter, explained to him why, in the verse that followed the one which had first enlightened him:
Beloved, I beseech you as sojourners and pilgrims, to abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul.
His soul was for him a machine to receive and record the heavenly light. It must be kept highly tuned and fit for duty. To abstain from fleshly lusts was not difficult for him. Drinking and smoking he had already effectively abandoned: now he made his rule rigid. He ate sparingly and drank water or cold milk instead of tea or coffee. He had no need to guard against love of fine raiments or the fascination of loose women. His new regime did not, in the end, differ greatly from the method of life he had already assumed, but as it was sparer it may be that he became definitely undernourished. It is certain that his spiritual life became more rather than less intense and his indifference to material conditions more marked.
The summons to serve upon a jury was something for which he was quite unprepared, and when he first received it he was displeased and unwilling. Fortunately, however, his perennial refuge did not fail him. First Peter, consulted, provided instructions exactly fitted to his need:
Be subject, he read, to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme; or unto governors, as sent by him for vengeance on evildoers and for praise to them that do well.
Momentarily, he flinched at the words in the oath: “Our Sovereign Lord the King.” They seemed near to blasphemy, but the phrase of St. Peter, “the king, as supreme”, remained in his mind and excused them, and he repeated the words with but a momentary hesitation.
5
While Mr. Bryan had been taking the oath, the Clerk had been covertly looking at the next juror. Courts were drab things, and a pretty woman was uncommon enough. Was this Mrs. Morris really pretty? Well, he wouldn’t like to swear. Certainly she stood out like a single yellow flower in a green field among this dingy collection of mostly middle-aged men, with their grey or red faces. She had used scent fairly freely, and that was a better smell than the heavy dusty smell, as of old books, that filled the court. No doubt she was smart, though the Clerk would have been hard put to it to say what she wore. A blue coat and skirt and rather high heels would have been all that he could have sworn to, however great the need. But he was perfectly well aware of the general effect, and he almost had a paternal smile as he said: “Alice Rachel Morris: repeat after me…”
***
Alice Rachel were her names; Alice because she was modern and had given up all her racial beliefs and practices, Rachel because after all she was a Jewess from her too-high-heeled shoes to her bright and gleaming-eyed little face, so well made-up and so anxiously deprived of all individuality. And her happiest day, the day in one sense when life began for her, was when she stood before a registrar—refusing Jewish marriage—and said after him, “I, Alice Rachel Greenberg do take thee, Leslie Morris, for my lawful wedded husband.” For all the devotion to family and sense of property that she could not or would not use as her fore-mothers had done, she concentrated on Les.
Her life, begun then, lasted two years: she was married at twenty-two and before she was twenty-five it was over. Half-Jews are unhappier than whole Jews: part of a nation, or a race, or whatever you choose to call it, was slowly assimilating itself to its neighbours until 1933, when it was ordered by Hitler to go back from where it came. Those who had never started on the journey were least injured; those who could no longer be Jews and might not now be Gentiles were the unhappiest. They were like chickens half out of the shell who were ordered back into the egg.
It was not by any means only in Germany and Italy that the order was given. Anti-Semitism is a contagion; indeed it is worse, it is an infection. Before Hitler came to power anti-Semitism had been an endemic disease only in certain limited areas where Jewish commercial competition was serious. Certain American towns, the environs of Stoke Newington and Whitechapel in London, for example. But in general in England and France, and in much of America and the British and French Empires, anti-Semitism did not exist in any serious form because its foundation did not exist. Men were not in the habit of asking themselves if their neighbours were Jews, not at least until they had asked many other questions first.
But once the Nazis had passed their laws and begun their pogroms even their enemies became Jew-conscious. The Scandinavian, the Frenchman, or the Englishman who had scarcely troubled himself about the matter began to examine his Jewish neighbours. The strongest anti-anti-Semite became, against his will, a Jew-smeller. Were Jews ill-mannered, rapacious, lustful, and dishonest? Did they congregate in loud-voiced, ostentatious groups? He must notice them more carefully, in order to refute these silly slanders. He defended Jews and so was only one degree less a pogromist than a Fascist; for he had ceased to look on them as normal human beings.
There is not, anthropologi
sts tell us, any scientific basis whatever for Jew-smelling. Jews are not even a race: they are two, if not three different races, ethnologically indistinguishable from the communities from which they come. But this, though true, does not matter. Once any group, no matter what, is separated by a general suspicion or merely a general belief from the rest of society, it is by that mere fact made different, and develops at once marked characteristics of its own. These may not be the characteristics that its enemies believe—Herr Streicher’s Jew is almost non-existent—but they are very real. So, since 1933, the Jews of England have become in fact more sharply differentiated from the Gentiles. They have developed more of both fearfulness and of compensating self-assertiveness. The anti-Semite lie has by its mere propagation brought into existence the differences on which it pretended to base itself.
Before Hitler, then, Les Morris would have passed unnoticed and unobjected-to among his fellows. No one would have considered that his shoes were too brightly polished, his ties too loud, his green shirts too fanciful, and the checks on his black and white suit too large. Or, if they did, they would merely have considered these clothes were the common sign of an East End upbringing, for the drabness of those acres of dreary streets must be compensated somehow, and what are easier than gaudy garments? They certainly could not have said that he looked like a typical Jew; for except to Rachel’s eyes it is undeniable that he looked only like a fish, and very strikingly so. His complexion was of the pure and unvarying colour which distinguishes the underside of a plaice. His mouth was perpetually half open, with that expression of astonished but respectful attention which is worn by a goldfish. His eyes were very pale and gave an erroneous impression of being unwinking. Nevertheless, after Hitler, people who had never seen him before could and did recognize him at sight as a Jew.
As against that, it must be put that almost every day his wife, as she watched him leave the home for the office, said under her breath: “But he is so handsome.”
Early married life is the time for poetry; can there be any poetry more suited to Jews who are not Jews but consciously English than the verse of a Roman Catholic patriot? The Morrises’ favourite was G. K. Chesterton. When they read,
The happy, jewelled alien men
Worked then but as a little leaven;
From some more modest palace then
The Soul of Dives stank to Heaven.
they knew that these words could not refer to them and their friends. They had no idea (no more than the writer) with what barbarisms words like these might turn out to be linked. But as they were too young to remember the disenchantment that followed 1914, it was war poetry which they liked most, and above all “The Wife of Flanders”:
What is the price of that red spark that caught me
From a kind farm that never had a name?
What is the price of that dead man they brought me?
For other dead men do not look the same.
How should I pay for one poor graven steeple
Whereon you shattered what you shall not know?
How should I pay you, miserable people?
How should I pay you everything you owe?
The end to this came very suddenly, and for no reason and following no pattern, as evil things generally do. Or at least for very little reason, and if there was any pattern it was one too great for the Morrises’ life to fit into it. Les had a third share in a timber firm; it was doing very well and there were no warnings of trouble. Indeed, that very morning, a Sunday, they had gone up to Golder’s Green to look at houses, for the time seemed to be coming when they could move out to a really nice district. In the afternoon, they walked out to see an aunt in Whitechapel: she lived in one of the streets off the north of the High Street. It was a hot, dry, fine afternoon, and the side streets were as empty as the main street was full. Hardly any one about except a few yobos who had got nothing to do, and hung around in irritated idleness, spitting manfully in the gutter and telling dirty stories which they all had heard before.
Danny Leary was seventeen and had had no regular employment since he left school. Neither had most of his gang—if gang be not too dignified a word. They were more a casual group whose only common bond was a habit of destructive mischief. They did not carry knives and when they fought, which was frequently, they used feet and hands. Most were pretty much the same age and strength; Sammy Redfern was the youngest and smallest, tolerated for a peculiar ability of reproducing without moving his lips all the less polite noises of the human body. This greatly brightened conversation, especially with his elders. There were times when quite important persons had been discomposed by a prolonged and resonant rumble appearing to come from their own interior.
Five of the boys had hung round the corner of Burdett Road, “accidentally” pushing the passers-by and calling out meaningless cries until it seemed that the police had noticed them. Then they drifted slowly westwards along Mile End road. Near the People’s Palace they caught sight of two girls they knew, walking along equally aimlessly, in the uncertain hope of some unspecified “bit of fun”. Danny and Frank, a young man of about his age, crossed the road and raised their hats with an exaggerated gesture.
“Going anywhere, Rosie dear?” said Danny.
“Walky talky with me?” was Frank’s effort.
Such wit deserved and received a high giggle. “Well, I reelly don’t know,” said Rosie.
“What about Victoria Park?”
“What about the pictures?”
“Oh, come on, you c’n have more fun in the park.”
“Marlene Dietrich’s on at the Rivoli.”
There was a deadlock and then Rosie made her decision. “Come on, Lil. They haven’t got the price of a seat between them, I dessay. Wouldn’t spend it if they had. The Something-for-Nothing brigade as usual.”
“Wouldn’t spend it on you anyway,” was all Frank could manage as they passed on.
Sammy produced a monster eructation, and was kicked on the ankle for his pains. “Play the fool when you’re asked to,” said Danny.
They had spent another hour completely aimlessly when they turned into a street north of Whitechapel High Street. It happened to be the street in which the Morrises were walking. A flicker of life came into them.
“Let’s have a bit of fun with the shonks,” said Frank.
They made a procession in the gutter near the Morrises, one gibbering, flapping his hands and dragging his feet like a stage Hebrew, Sammy making the obscenest noises he could near to Alice, Danny and Frank speculating loudly about Les’s performance as a husband, the rest singing a song whose words were clear.
The Morrises, though their colour heightened, took no notice. Danny got angry; this was no fun. “’Ere,” he said to his crowd. “This way.”
They bolted down a side street, led by Danny, turned right, ran round the block, and came to the end of the street down which the Morrises were walking. They linked arms and walked towards the Morrises, all now singing the song.
The Morrises crossed to the other side of the road. They crossed, too.
The two lines came together—five youths, facing a man and his wife. Alice was trembling and Les was uneasy. But after all this was London, not Berlin, and he was an Englishman.
“Please let us pass,” he said in a firm voice.
“Oo-hoo! You kikes going anywhere?” said Danny with falsetto surprise.
“Will you let us pass?”
“Naughty! Naughty! Temper!” Frank’s wit was reviving. He slipped his hand loose, tweaked Les’s tie out of his waistcoat and flipped it into his face. “Muck you shonks wear,” he added.
Les, white and breathing fast, pushed the tie back. There was no use, anyway, in running away, even if that had been the thing to do with hooligans. “Let me pass,” he said and thrust forward. Danny gave him a huge push back, and Frank slapped his wrist.
“You ——s need a lesso
n,” said Danny in a suddenly thick voice, and hit him on the shoulder.
Les was no coward and he was wiry. He hit straight out and caught Danny on the end of his nose, a very painful kind of blow. Now both Frank and Danny rushed at him, using feet as well as hands. Les’s fists whirled round like flails, till Sammy kicked him neatly and viciously in the muscle behind the knee. He went down with a thump, and Frank knelt on his face. Alice clawed at the louts’ backs, and kicked at them with her small pointed shoes, squealing shrilly. In a few seconds they had finished: Les’s clothes were torn, his face running with blood, someone had stamped on his hand. As he rose, Danny deliberately aimed at him a savage kick in the side of the belly.
“Get art, you,” he said.
He watched them stagger away silently, Les almost unable to stand and leaning on Rachel. His lower jaw dropped and his tongue hung out slightly; he seemed to be thinking. “Cheese it now,” he said after a minute to the gang. “They’ll fetch the cops.”
They ran down the side street and scattered. Danny found himself with Sammy. “Cor,” shrilled the smaller boy, almost dancing along. “That was fine. That shonk didn’t half cop it. See his face?”
“Shut up!” said Danny and hit him an angry blow on the side of his neck. Sammy took a single look at his expression and became dead silent.
***
Les felt very ill and they decided not to go to his aunt’s but straight back home to lie down. Alice washed his wounds and he said he would soon be better. But that evening he began to vomit blood. The doctor was called. He said it was a ruptured spleen—definitely a dangerous case—night and day nurse—no possibility of moving him. Les fell into a coma and died three days later without speaking.
For other dead men do not look the same.
Alice Morris could not even have revenge. The police searched with anxious zeal, for they feared this modern Mohockery as much as any one, and knew more than any one how common it was becoming. But Alice could tell them so pitifully little. She could not even be sure of recognizing the gang, and she had not heard the names of a single one. She was shown several “possibles”: not one was right.
Verdict of Twelve Page 6
