by John Lawton
‘So, Joe, you made it. This is England.’
This England in February was bleak. The night wrapped itself around them. The Thames seemed to suck every last ounce of warmth out of the air, and the view across the river seemed to Hummel like an infinity of darkness, broken only by a few pinpoints of light on the Kentish shore. Again, he wanted to embrace Schuster, but Billy Jacks was anxious to move off.
‘Brass monkeys. We’ll freeze if yer hang about. You two have yer chinwag on the way back, why don’t yer.’
Schuster looked older, but then he was. Nearly seventy, Hummel thought. But the warmth in his smile, the brightness in his eyes made him seem younger than anyone he’d left behind. The lights in Vienna might still be on, the light in the Viennese had been snuffed out.
‘Ja, Joe. In the car we shall talk. Billy has a car. Better still, a car with a heater.’
§ 47
He had not dreamt of it. If he had, it could so easily have been everything he had dreamt of. The all-enveloping womb of family life, from the gust of heat, the faint soot-tang of an open coal fire as the front door was thrust open . . . the swish as the heavy curtain was drawn back across the door on its iron rail . . . shutting out night and fog and cold . . . to the patter of a child’s feet in the room above . . . and the smell of cooking from the kitchen. It picked up Hummel and wrapped him in sensations he had forgotten. Sensations scarcely remembered, they had stopped with his mother’s death. At thirty-odd he felt like a child, a willing child wanting the Jacks’ household to pick him up, to adopt him, to feed him and tuck him up in bed. It was not the opposite of the freedom he had felt in Paris – ‘my own room, mine’ – it was the complimentary sensation . . . the house of Jacks, its larder stocked, its fires lit, its curtains drawn . . . everything you might want in a place you might find it . . . from the scissors hanging by the mantelpiece to the roller towel on the back of the scullery door. It was a created world, a maintained world. A world someone cared enough to make. His world, and his father’s too, had been one of easy neglect. And the nagging voice of guilt told him that perhaps that was why it had been so easily taken away from him . . . because he had neglected it.
‘Hello, I’m Judy.’
With one hand she pulled her pinafore over her head and dropped it onto a chairback, then she leaned over, pecked Hummel on the cheek and said, ‘You must be Joe. We been hearin’ so much about you. Old Manny, he’s talked of little else since he heard you got away from ’Itler.’
Schuster whispered in his ear, ‘Mrs Jacks does not speak Yiddish, Joe. In fact she isn’t Jewish.’
He was not prepared for a ‘mixed’ marriage, in fact he’d never come across one before, but he had prepared a stock phrase for just this occasion.
‘How very please to meet you. I am . . . sharmed.’
The blonde, blue-eyed vision smiled, turned to her husband and said, ‘I don’t care what you think, Billy Jacks. For that he gets another smacker.’
And she kissed him again.
Jacks said in Yiddish to Hummel, ‘The missis, my Judy. Gets a bit sentimental y’know.’
And in English, to himself, ‘And the rest of the time you could cut diamonds with her.’
Hummel said nothing.
§ 48
It was a big house. Five storeys, rooms below ground level, rising high into the eaves where Schuster had an attic very like the one Hummel had had in Paris. He had given Hummel the larger attic room, saying he found he needed so little of anything these days, less space, less sleep – even less money, so long as he had just enough.
Hummel pinned his portrait to the attic wall.
At breakfast Hummel met the family. Sallie, who made a point of holding up fingers to show him she was nine years old; Lena who told him through her father that she was twenty and worked ‘up West . . . in Liberty’s . . . that’s posh that is’; and he became acquainted with the prospect of Danny, who had come in after Hummel had gone to bed and gone out before Hummel had got up. All Hummel learnt was that Danny was seventeen. Billy seemed disinclined to say any more about the boy.
‘We got two families,’ Judy said, Billy translating and scowling simultaneously. ‘I had Lena when I was only eighteen, and Sallie when I was twenty-nine. She’s our little mistake. A lovely weekend at Walton-on-the-Naze, summer of 1929, wasn’t it, Bill?’
Billy stopped translating.
‘I ain’t tellin ’im that. Why should I tell ’im that? Why would he want to know that?’
‘Am I a mistake?’ Sallie asked.
‘See what you done? You want to answer that? I bleedin don’t!’
Judy ducked the question and ducked into the kitchen. Schuster smiled away the tension.
‘So long since we either of us lived with women, eh Joe?’
Judy came back with plates for the men, ranged along her forearm like a practised waiter.
‘Eat up, you lot . . . before somebody rations it!’
Hummel had not grown up in a kosher household – who could run to two sinks and all the extra crockery? – but he had been made aware of the abominations of Leviticus and had never been served bacon in his life.
He watched as Billy made a mountain of fried bread, crispy bacon and fried egg. The tomato Billy left disdainfully on the side. Then he saw Billy stretch his jaws to the limit, bite into the mountain, catch a dribble of egg yolk with his finger tip and heard him mutter, ‘loverly’. To his amazement Schuster did the same, and after his first mouthful said, ‘Trust me, Joe, it’s delicious. An English delicacy.’
Judy said, ‘You tuck in, Joe. Use your knife and fork if you want. You don’t have to eat like a pig, just ’cos they do.’
But no one translated.
Hummel ate bacon. A bland taste he thought, but a delightful texture. The crisper the better, he concluded. And he thought his host wrong to ignore the fried tomato. When he thought he had finished, Judy stretched out a hand for his plate and uttered a single syllable he had no difficulty understanding.
‘More?’ she said.
‘’Ere,’ said Billy. ‘You ain’t offered me seconds!’
‘Oh you’re such a kid. He’s our guest, Billy.’
‘He’s our guest till we get to the workshop. And when we get back, he’s just another lodger!’
‘Sure – but right now he gets seconds. Look at him for Gawd’s sake. He’s as thin as a runner bean.’
§ 49
Minsky was dead, to begin with.
Billy’s workshop was a short walk away. On the Mile End Road, only yards from Stepney Green. One flight up from street level, a long low room with a wall of windows front and back, and row upon row of overhead lights in dirty metal shades. Over the door was a peeling painted sign much like the one over Hummel’s shopfront in Vienna: ‘Abel Jakobson & Son. Est 1902’ – and beneath that in gold lettering so faded it would soon be invisible: ‘Formerly Minsky & Jakobson’. But Minsky was dead, to begin with.
‘Abel. He was my dad,’ Billy said, pointing at the sign. ‘I’m just “and son”.’
‘Me too,’ said Hummel.
‘And Jakobson got dropped years back – I never been anybody ’cept Billy Jacks.’
Billy’s War Office order was blue. Several different shades of blue. He was, he explained to Hummel, never told what branch of the forces they were destined for – that was a secret and all insignia were added later by others. Jakobson & Son made, as it were, blank uniforms.
‘But light blue’s RAF, stands to reason, navy blue’s the Navy – obviously – the really dark blue’s Civil Defence and the blue that’s black – well, you look at it . . . they call it blue but it’s black init? – that’s coppers out in Suffolk, the Suffolk Constabulary. That’s a different order altogether that is. We do the blouses and the trousers. That’s all. Unnerstand?’
What was not to understand? Compared to making a bespoke suit it was basic tailoring, but as Schuster whispered in his ear, ‘It’s still our trade . . . and it’s a living.’
Hummel cut cloth – duck to water.
Mid-morning Billy muttered something along the lines of ‘See a man about a dog’, and went out.
Schuster said, ‘I know what you’re thinking.’
Hummel wasn’t thinking anything.
‘But he’s a good man. A rough diamond, as they say here. And Judy’s a good woman. She and Billy, well they have their . . .’
Schuster put down his scissors, levelled his hand mid-air and tilted it this way and that to illustrate the equivocation.
§ 50
The following Sunday, the Jacks ate a late breakfast. It was Billy’s one lie-in of the week – a day on which he slept till eight. On Saturdays they worked a half day, which meant no lie-in but an afternoon off – mostly, Schuster opined, to let working Londoners attend a football match if they chose . . . teams with odd names like the Arsenal or Leyton Orient or Tottenham Hotspur. Schuster knew there was a place called Tottenham, although he’d never been there, but he doubted the existence of places called Arsenal or Orient.
Breakfast was the same – it never varied in that nothing was missing from the plate but on a Sunday something might be added. So this Sunday Hummel faced two novelties – the pork sausage, and the errant son, Danny putting in his first appearance. Each looked as odd as the other. The former cooked to the point where burnt might be a better word, and the latter stuck at the end of the table still in his overcoat, with a scarf pulled up to his nose, which was only lowered to insert food. He seemed to have no inclination to speak to his father.
‘You was in late last night,’ Billy said to the boy.
‘Meeting,’ Danny muttered.
Hummel gently tapped his sausage on the plate to see if it flexed. It didn’t. Judy looked up from her tea at the sound and said, smiling, ‘Billy likes ’em that way. Says what’s a banger if you can’t bang it?’
Schuster conveyed her meaning to Hummel.
‘Izzat all you do?’ Billy went on through a mouthful of sausage, ‘Just go to yer party meetings? When I was your age I wanted a bit of fun in me life.’
Danny said nothing. Hummel bit into his sausage and chewed. He concluded that the British banger might be kosher – as he couldn’t be at all certain it contained any pork.
‘And,’ Billy blathered, ‘if I went to a party it wouldn’t be the bleedin’ Labour party!’
‘Oh for Christ’s sake, Bill,’ Judy said. ‘Leave the boy alone.’
‘Leave ’im alone. How can I? He’s an embarrassment to the family. My son the Red . . .’
‘That’s Commies, Dad, not us,’ said Danny.
‘Same difference. You think I count for nuffin’, don’t yer? Well I got standin’ in this community. How do you think it looks, me a lifelong Tory with a son who goes out canvassing for pinkoes?’
Danny pulled up his scarf and retreated. Blue eyes and spiky hair visible above the scarfline.
‘You?’Judy said. ‘A lifelong Tory? When did you ever bother to vote? I never known you to vote Tory or anythin’ else. You ain’t even on the roll. Lifelong selfish git would be better way of puttin’ it. All you’ve ever done is look after number one!’
‘So? What’s wrong with that? Yeah, I’ve looked after number one, but lookin’ after number one’s what puts the grub on the table. There’s women in this street out skivvyin’ and cleanin’ – you’ve never had to do that. So don’t knock it. Lookin’ after number one’s what comes naturally.’
Danny got up. Muttered, ‘Stick another record on, Dad.’ And slammed out of the door to Billy’s cry of, ‘You ungrateful little gobshite! – and you, Manny, don’t bother to translate that!’
Hummel watched the room dissolve. Billy to sturdy, unpleasurable trencherwork at his plate, Schuster to a judicious silence, Judy to a loud kitchen display of pot and plate rattling.
The previous day, the Saturday, he’d persuaded Schuster to take him ‘up West’ – they’d visited a dozen bookshops in the Charing Cross Road. He’d bought a couple of English novels and an English-German/German-English dictionary. If he didn’t understand the Jacks’ rows, at least he might learn enough English to ask to start the day with coffee rather than tea.
At teatime Billy found him at the table, hunched over David Copperfield, dictionary splayed, humming softly to himself.
‘Ere, Manny. Just listen. Joe’s away in birdland hummin’ to hisself.’
Schuster looked up from his place in an armchair by the fire, where he had dozed lightly while pretending to read a newspaper.
‘Ja, Billy. He always hummed when he was a boy in Vienna. Usually when he was reading, but then he was always reading. I think it means he is happy.’
‘Happy? After what he’s been through?’
‘Why not? Why not be happy? A free afternoon. A stolen moment. The worst may be yet to come.’
§ 51
Each Saturday that spring and summer, when he had a free afternoon, Hummel went back to the Charing Cross Road and visited Foyle’s bookshop, where he would steal a volume of the German edition of the Collected Works of Sigmund Freud – an edition that had been appearing at intervals ever since 1925 – until he’d got the lot. He wasn’t wholly sure why he did this. He felt the need of a gesture of defiance – even a gesture only he would ever know about. Nor was it stealing merely for the sake of stealing – he read the books.
On his third venture, having just stuffed Studies on Hysteria into a specially sewn pocket inside his overcoat, he crossed the road and set off south towards Cambridge Circus and another book shop, one of his favourites, at 84 Charing Cross Road – prop. Marks & Co.
He peered in through the window. There was always a bentwood chair by the counter. Often elderly customers would sit and chat, or sit and wait while Marks’s staff found a book for them. The man sitting there on the second Saturday in March was a familiar face, one he had seen on odd occasions in the streets of Vienna – Professor Freud.
Hummel took the coincidence as sanction. On two subsequent occasions, having pinched more volumes of the Collected Freud, he stopped by Marks’s to see Professor Freud sitting there. He did not go in, but walked on, clutching his book and humming to himself.
§ 52
After Hitler took Prague, as easily as moving a bishop across a chess board, in the March of 1939, Alex and Churchill met in Alex’s London club, the Garrick. Churchill knocked back his customary whiskies and soda – the man’s capacious liver never failed to surprise Alex – and quite soon the conversation dwindled to mutual ‘I told you so’s’. Indeed, each had told the other and both had told the nation. Round about glass five Churchill said, ‘Of course, this is bound to make the Prime Minister shape up. I think we can safely conclude that appeasement is dead. This has got to be the point at which Neville stops being a mouse and becomes a man.’
Alex said, ‘Mice don’t shape up, they just get eaten.’
§ 53
May 1939
Berlin
They had forsaken Kranzler’s for the Taverne. Less private – half the foreign correspondents in Berlin drank there, traded stories, boasted. Less private – half the Berlin Gestapo seemed to be there, trying to be unobtrusive, trying to listen in. As Rod put it in his schoolboy manner, ‘they ear’ole everything and understand bugger all. And as for inconspicuous they might just as well have “nark” tattooed across the forehead.’
He looked around, saw heads turn away and shoulders hunch over glasses of beer. Those three chaps at the next table, surely they didn’t think they hadn’t been spotted? Hugh Greene was looking at him, waiting for a pause in the prattle to say something that clearly burnt at the tip of the tongue.
‘Spit it out.’
‘Spit what out?’
‘Hugh, you’re dying to tell me something.’
‘I was just wondering . . . you’re not in Who’s Who are you?’
Rod always thought the title of that famous register of English toffs could not be utte
red without sounding like the mating call of a barn owl.
‘Of course not. At my age? I’m only thirty for Christ’s sake.’
‘I’m twenty-eight.’
The penny dropped.
‘You’ve had the form?’
‘Indeed I have . . . mother’s maiden name, education, hobbies, clubs . . . in that order.’
‘Congratulations,’ Rod said flatly.
‘It’s a bit of a coup, isn’t it?’
‘I suppose it is,’ Rod replied.
‘You know, I thought I’d . . . well . . . made it . . . when I got a pay rise to twenty quid a week. The magic figure . . . thousand a year man . . . smacks of hand-made shoes and an account with a decent tailor . . . sort of thing makes you want to dance around the room . . .’
‘I’m on twelve-fifty,’ Rod said just as flatly.
‘Bastard,’ said Hugh.
But Rod was no longer listening. He was staring at the doorway, to where more Gestapo had entered, this time without any subterfuge – full uniform, leather coats for the underlings, black jacket, lightning and silver skulls for the bloke in charge.
Hugh squirmed in his seat to follow Rod’s gaze.
‘Bugger me, that’s Wolfgang Stahl. He’s never seen in public. What on earth does he want here?’
‘Us,’ said Rod. ‘He hasn’t looked at anyone else.’
‘Stahl wouldn’t know either of us from Adam.’
‘Hugh, after that mickey-take you published on Goebbels I doubt there’s a member of the Gestapo who hasn’t got your phizzog imprinted on his brain.’
‘Oh crikey – he’s coming over.’
Rod’s first reaction was that it was odd that Stahl was the hidden face of the SD, so rarely seen, so rarely photographed – they were missing a publicity stunt. Too dark – saturnine might be the word – for the Aryan ideal, nonetheless he was tall and he was handsome . . . an advertisement for the Reich – which was more than could be said for Stahl’s SD superior Reinhard Heydrich, and much more than could be said for Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels. Stahl looked good on parade, Stahl looked good just picking his way through the room to their table.
