This undertaking prefaced The Fox in the Attic, and I am reasonably confident that my narrative there of Hitler’s 1923 Munich Putsch was accurate at every point. But the Nazis destroyed all official records bearing on the Blood-Purge of 1934: thus surviving contemporary sources tend to be the work of known liars on both sides, so that disproof of one version cannot be taken as establishing any other. This reduces “belief” at certain points in the narrative of the Night of the Long Knives to a matter of choice.
Hanfstängl credits Röhm’s doctor with an eye-witness account of Röhm’s last night before his arrest. The knowledgeable will notice that I treat this account as authentic, and likewise von Salomon’s description of Ludin’s arrest and release. He will also see that I tend to credit Otto Strasser’s story of Banquo’s Ghost on the stairs, a story historians tend to ignore with the rest of Strasser’s hearsay about the Purge—but after all Strasser names his “Banquo” as Ernst Udet, who lived till 1941 and could therefore easily have given Strasser the lie; and the story seems to me strange enough to be true. It fits.
—R.H.
TWELVE CHAPTERS
From the Unfinished Final Volume
1
COVENTRY IN THE Year 1934: Number 17 Court off Godsell Street, better known as Slaughterhouse Yard.... Pitch-darkness, warm and smelling of jam-packed sleeping bodies: the only glimmer a small square of window, a dim blob wavering vaguely outside it and clumsily bumping against the glass....
The two “boys” (now in their twenties) stir at the sound of the knocker-up’s long unwieldy wand but lapse back again into slumber, having no jobs to get up for. Only a single candle-end bursts into light, turning the flimsy curtains screening one bed into a giant Chinese lantern; and that is their sister’s—Norah’s.
Dad is still snoring; but Mum has long lain awake, and now raises herself on an elbow to watch the gigantic leaping shadows thrown by the girl inside there dressing herself in bed: for this is the very last time, now even Norah has got herself the sack.
Six years ago, turned fourteen, Norah’s school sewing-prize had won her a Mender’s job at the Mill; and what mother wouldn’t rejoice at her girl being picked for a Mender instead of just one of those foul-mouthed Weavers, yelling their voices hoarse against that awful racket of looms? For Menders (with microscopic if not downright myopic eyes, and sensitive fingers) tend to the toffee-nosed sort mums prefer as their daughters’ companions, respecting themselves and others. And look at the place where they work, a sort of quiet greenhouse right up in the roof of the Mill! Rats teem in the filth of the weaving-sheds, but would never venture up here where everything’s clean and the Menders’ lights are so bright....
A spanking job; and the girl could have stopped in it all her life if only she needn’t go throwing her weight about! Mum sighed. This former boss-kid of Slaughterhouse Yard, used to running everyone’s lives before she even left school.... Granted, her passion for seeing that weaker-minded girls than herself didn’t get put-upon was the best thing about Our Norah—but now it seemed to have turned out the worst thing too, for what Foremistress twice her age would for ever stand being bossed about? It was only because her work was so good that the Manager let her finish the week.... She’d had plenty of warnings—and now, this actual sacking: a black mark against her name, as well as six years of skill and experience gone down the drain (and with them, thirty to forty shillings a week).
Mum had been chewing this bitter cud half the night; but Norah herself was almost dressed before coming awake enough to remember that this was her very last day at the Mill: the end of a long drawn out coming-to-womanhood spent just day-dreaming over a Mending Desk. The end, too, of all the friendships made in the course of those six lotus-eating years: she would miss the girls badly, not only the cash.
Perhaps if the work itself had made any calls on her brains Norah might have kept out of trouble. But hands and eyes had soon learned to do the job on their own; hands had whisked the fluff off material reaching them rough from the loom, then felt for burls too tiny to see which they marked with chalk and afterwards teased out those minute knots with delicate tweezers, spotting threads in the pattern machine-looms had missed, had guided her needle replacing them, even down the whole length of some close-woven roll of showerproof gaberdine. This could hardly suffice to keep a girl’s brains out of mischief: not even such simple mischief as hiding mice in the Foremistresses’ boots....
But now Norah must hurry: already two pairs of high heels (Jean’s and Rita’s: she knew every footstep in Slaughterhouse Yard) had clattered past below on the cobbles; and least of all on her Last Day must she be late!
She blew out her candles and bolted downstairs; and at first the diurnal routine took over almost as though there were nothing so special about today. But hurrying helter-skelter up Godsell Street something suddenly rose in her gorge like a cold lump of sick: the thought of that empty tomorrow.
“Book oop, me gel,” Norah scolded herself out loud: “Tain’t End o’ the Weld!”
All the same, even if this was not the End of the World new jobs wouldn’t fall in her mouth: she must put on her thinking-cap.... What was it that someone had said to her two or three weeks ago, about some rich cripple who wished to learn tapestry-work (that amateur hand-loom stuff which the clumsiest Mender could do with her eyes shut)? That must have been Young Syl’s mum, who had a sister working for nobs in a big house somewhere down south....
At the time Norah hadn’t thought twice about it—who would? But now—well, now she had better find out.
It would mean leaving home, of course; and surely the whole wide world held no nest so snug as her natal Slaughterhouse Yard (with its mice and black-beetles and overcrowding, its single communal tap and its single row of latrines all together down the far end). Moreover it meant getting mixed up with the Rich, an alien breed she despised. All the same, a sacking against her name left her little hope of a Coventry job (and there wasn’t another Coventry mill, come to that). But need her banishment be for ever? Surely her lady would soon tire of tapestry work or die; and boasting this teaching experience, might she not then come back and aspire to a Coventry Art School post?
She was still turning over the pros and cons when she got to the Mill. There those ... those silly young coots had all clubbed together to buy her a bottle of scent as a farewell gift.
Syl’s Mum (that superior widow who went out to teach rich shopkeepers’ kids by the hour, and only the oldest Yardsters dared to call Nellie) had both the rooms now, facing the sheds where the beasts were killed, where once the “Balloon-woman” used to live in the downstairs one till her dropsy carried her off. Nellie kept the house spotless. Eleven-year-old Sylvanus was only allowed inside in his stockinged feet; and the bicycle Nellie used for visiting pupils on was wiped every time, and lived on its special washable mat.
Norah looked in that night, while the pale bespectacled boy was doing his homework and Nellie was washing up tea; but the latter couldn’t say if the post would be vacant still, she would have to write to her sister and ask. So Norah gave her three-ha’pence to pay for the stamp.
*
By Tuesday the answer had come: it was Yes, and that Norah was wanted at once on trial.
The place was in far-away Dorset, which set Norah worrying how to raise cash for the fare. But Syl’s Mum said not to worry: her sister wrote they’d be fetching her there by car, so could she be ready ten-o’clock Thursday morning round at the King’s Head hotel?
That was better perhaps than some snooty chauffeur poking his nose in her Yard: all the same it confirmed her worst fears about Nobs. The King’s Head on Broadgate was Coventry’s grandest hotel; and if that was where even their chauffeurs were sent to kip for the night, how was her sort of girl to stomach the like-on-the-Pictures extravagant kind of life that such swank-pots lead? Sooner or later for certain she’d blow her top and end up out on her ear. But Nellie (the Mellton Housekeeper’s sister) was able to reassure her that life at Mell
ton wasn’t a bit like those flash millionaires on the Pictures....
“It isn’t all squandering and carousing?”
“No. And poor Mrs Wadamy’s ever so nice: you won’t be able to help yourself liking her.”
2
There was no time for Mum to cut her out something new to make up, so Norah simply pressed her one decent frock and gave her hair a good curl—reminding herself that she wasn’t the sort to go scaredy-cat over anyone, not even chauffeurs who stopped at King’s Head Hotels. Then, the night before, they all went round to the Fish-and-Chips shop for a farewell feast.
That King’s Head Hotel “on Broadgate” was not strictly-speaking on Broadgate at all: it had three ways in, but none was on Broadgate. The first, the original entrance, was right round the corner on Smithford Street. There in centuries past you rode in under a gated arch, and found yourself in the typical narrow central yard of the modest provincial inn which this used to be. But the cutting of Hertford Street as a way to the railway-station had made this a corner site, creating a new façade for a new front entrance; and new upper storeys, which did indeed have a view up Broadgate.
As for the old inn yard, they had roofed it over with glass like a shopping-arcade: one almost expected pile carpets and potted palms....
The third way in was down a modest cul-de-sac, mostly frequented by dogs in search of a quiet lamp-post. It turned off beside the Empire (the Picture Theater where Norah had learned all she knew of the ways of the rich); and it led to the hotel garage direct. It would never have entered Norah’s head to storm the hotel itself and inquire at the desk: so on Thursday morning this was the way she took (giving the Empire’s familiar gallery-entrance a loving farewell pat as she passed).
But arrived at the garage like this, she somehow had to divine which car. Most likely a Rolls, she thought. There were four; and she wished she understood number-plate codes to discover if one of them came from Dorset. Or was it that Daimler? The rest were names which hardly suggested their owners were genuine slap-up gentry, unless.... But of course, what a goose she was! These Wadamy moneybags surely would own a whole fleet of cars and never send one of the grand ones meant for themselves....
So which was the Wadamy chauffeur? That looked an easier question to solve since only two were in sight. One of them (all spit-and-polish, dressed in brown and green livery) stood by the doorway smoking a last cigarette. With his short but carefully-waved gray hair and his rice-powdered jowl he looked like a matinee idol going to seed. She hoped it wouldn’t be him; but still, “Mister,” she asked: “You frum th’Wadamys?”
“No, Young Woman!” he boomed in the voice of a pantomime Earl: “We are Sir Frederic Thomas, if you wish to know.” And he turned on his heel.
“Keep y’r ’air on, old cock!” she muttered. “Moost be tootherun.”
This was a rather pimply young man with his chauffeur’s tunic off: in shirt-sleeves, orange braces, dark blue breeches and long rubber boots he was hosing some foreign car in the yard outside. But it wasn’t him either: “Wadamy, Sweet’eart? No, never ’eard on ’em”—adding under his breath: “‘Sodomy’? Coo what a monniker!” Then he laid down his hose and advanced towards her with all sorts of cheeky remarks on the tip of his tongue. But the steely look in her eye was enough; crestfallen, he started to whistle a popular tune instead and shambled back to his work.
By now it was past ten-o’clock, and Norah was starting to panic....
The only other person in sight was an unimpressive figure in gray flannel bags and an old tweed jacket with leather patches: a weather-worn man in his thirties, leaning against a large old-fashioned open two-seater and wholly absorbed in a map. Still, he might at least know where she ought to inquire: so she walked across. But even when she was standing right over the man he never looked up from his map.
“Hi,” she said, “You! Wakey-wakey!”
He jumped. “O-oh.... Are you the young lady I’ve come here to meet? Forgive me: I’d told the girl in the office to let me know.—Coffee before we start?”
Dumbfounded, to answer both questions at once she nodded first and afterwards shook her head.
Just then a hotel porter arrived with a large leather case which he strapped to the luggage-rack at the back. Whereupon the Mystery Man said “Allow me,” took Norah’s small cardboard case from her hands (it was glaringly tied up with string where a catch had burst) and carefully stowed it away in the dicky.
“Now: are you sure you’ve got all you want? If so we’d better be moving.”
He handed her into the passenger-seat, tucked her well up in a Shetland rug, cranked the engine—and Lo! Before she had fully recovered her wits they were off, with a roar, amplified in that cavernous place, which recalled the cathedral organ.
3
The car might be ancient but ate up the miles: the scruffy driver looked scarcely a regular chauffeur but certainly knew how to drive! They had shot through Warwick before he remarked: “Did Nellie tell you how my sister got crippled?”
(His sister? Crikey....) “No, Sir.”
“A toss out hunting, ten years ago. She broke her neck.”
“But—that kills yer!” Norah blurted out in surprise.
“They saved her life. But it left her paralyzed.”
“Cruelty, not to let her die!” thought Norah—They would, one of us.... “How she pass the time?”
“She still has the use of her hands: which is where you come in.”
Norah thought for a moment. “Kids?”
“The eldest is just sixteen. She’s abroad in school—But frankly,” (he spoke with a note of deep concern in his voice) “Polly’s more a source of worry now than a help.”
“Boys, is it?”
“Eh?” He seemed rather taken aback: “No. It’s her craze for Hitler.” (Hitler? Surely that name rang some sort of bell—but never mind now....) “She’s twice done a bunk from school in Geneva simply to hear him speak.”
Without losing speed he swerved to avoid a wandering horse and cart with the carter asleep, throwing Norah from side to side in her ample seat. When that was over,
“G’roother kids?” she asked.
“Two. A girl of ten and a boy nearly eight who is backward a bit: slight brain-damage when he was born, though not too bad—mental age, six.” He drove at a dizzying speed, but Norah was more elated than frightened. “Most of the day she reads; but it tires her eyes. Or listens to Wireless Talks; but they’re often boring. She doesn’t care much about music—like me: so gramophones aren’t any use. Hence my idea that she ought to learn something new she could do with those hands of hers. It was Mrs. Winter suggested tapestry-work, and offered to ask her sister to find us a teacher: it had to be somebody young who wouldn’t get on my sister’s nerves, as one of those usual middle-aged Homespun Emmas would. Mary isn’t a fool; and she finds that jabbering hospital-nurse we have to keep in the house quite trial enough!” He gave Norah a sideways appraising glance: “I can’t tell you how grateful we are to you, saying you’d have a go.”
“Think I’ll do?”
“Nellie’s certain you will. She told me so only last night.”
Norah stiffened: “Last night?”
“Why yes: I came round, hoping to find you and meet your mother. No one was in, so I went to see Nellie instead.”
Cheeky blighter, poking his nose in her Yard on the sly while they were all round at the Fish-and-Chips! “Well, what did you....” Norah corrected herself: “What did she tell you?”
“Plenty—from when you were still just a kid but ran the whole place and had all of them eating out of your hand. But it all boils down to she thinks you’re a girl in a thousand. You’re bound to be very much missed. And” (he was wondering how best to put it) “you’re bound to miss them very much—the whole box-of-tricks, I’m afraid.” He glanced at her quickly again: “Frankly, I wonder what makes you willing to leave.”
“So do I wonder!” thought Norah, pondering what lay ahead in that outside
world which she knew so little about.
An awkward silence set in. She was prickly still about what he must think of her home, whereas he—though of course he had noticed the sudden abrasive note in her voice but couldn’t guess why, having seen too much of how out-of-work Welsh miners lived to find anything odd in any Coventry yard—had let his mind wander off onto other things. What a curious city this Coventry was, he mused. In spite of its noble cathedral, that fairy-tale medieval center was not a bit like the center of other cathedral cities, but mostly the derelict relics of ancient trades (and medieval “yards,” like the one where this young woman lived): then in contrast, those miles of enormous up-to-date factories hemming it in! A continuous manufacturing town ever since the Middle Ages, and still one today.... Moreover the worst of the slump must be over, he thought: shift-working was starting again, to judge by the distant roar of machines all night and the glow in the sky....
But soon the awkwardness seemed to fade of itself, and they found themselves simply enjoying together the autumn sun: the rush of the wind, and the way that these High Cotswold roads allowed his old Bentley—built to his order while still at Oxford—to show its paces.
In forty-three minutes they’d covered the forty-five miles from Warwick to Cirencester (“We won’t go through beastly Swindon: I made that mistake coming up”); and stopped for an early corned-beef and pickles lunch at a pub on the Warminster-Shaftesbury road.
The nearer they got to Mellton, however, the less call there seemed for speed. He wanted “to show her the country,” and presently turned up a sunken lane (incredibly steep, with the Bentley just fitting between its banks) to somewhere on top of the downs which he called “the chase.” It was wonderful, seen through the single turreted gate in its miles of lofty wall: there were streaks of red and yellow already in wilder woods than Norah had ever seen. “What picnics!” Norah thought, even though the deer he’d promised her failed to appear.
The Wooden Shepherdess Page 36
