Second Violin

by John Lawton

  ‘All a bit familiar, in’t it?’

  ‘Herr Jacks, are you really comparing this to a concentration camp?’

  Billy shuffled his feet, moved away from the window, still not quite looking at Drax.

  ‘Dunno – It’s the nearest I’ve been to one. Lots o’blokes here got the midnight knock.’

  ‘I suppose I do recognise it. In my own mind I’ve been comparing the two since the day I got here. I can tell you this. The food is better. It’s not rancid and there are no maggots . . . the shortage of marzipan I would term a minor hiccup – and boredom, any amount of boredom, is better than forced labour. But I know the real difference. This is a prison, and only a prison. I hate it – I know you do – and in my conscious mind I discriminate between a prison and a machine. If we are here five years, if the Germans do not come, it will still be just a prison. In five years, probably less, camps like Dachau will be part of the machine.’

  ‘What machine?’

  ‘The killing machine. There won’t be enough bullets in the world to do the job.’

  ‘Killing who?’

  ‘Jews. Those who . . . what were Herr Troy’s words? . . . those who stand in line with Jews.’

  ‘Never pays to stick yer neck out.’

  ‘Have you never “stuck your neck out”, Billy?’

  ‘Yeah. Just the once. I was at Cable Street. You know what that was?’

  ‘Of course, I was in England by then.’

  ‘I reckon that was my fight. Not just standin’ in line with other buggers who thought it was their fight. My fight. Not because I’m Jewish or anything. The papers reported it as the East End takes on Mosley’s Blackshirts. Maybe it was. And maybe that’s part of why I was there. My East End, not bleedin’ Mosley’s. But there was also a chance of bungin’ a brick at coppers. I may know nothing about Blackshirts, but I sure as hell know a blueshirt when I see one. I’ve always ’ated coppers. Wasn’t Blackshirts dragged me into me old man’s workshop by one lug’ole just ’cos I’d ’alf-inched a packet of fags. It was coppers. Wasn’t Blackshirts tickled my ribs with a truncheon when I was fifteen, it was coppers. Wasn’t Blackshirts or British Tommies that came knockin’ on my door at midnight waving their internment orders – it was coppers. I got one mate who’s a copper, known him since I was a nipper. He’s alright. The rest? It’s a battlefield.’

  ‘Quite so. It’s everybody’s battle. You are so stubborn in seeing it as being yours alone. We are part of human kind, Billy. “Everyman’s death diminishes me.” Don’t ask me which of your English poets I am quoting, I’ve no idea. But we are a whole, a collective, a community.’

  ‘I’m not a Commie and you won’t make me into one. It’s just my attitude that’s bolshie, not my politics. Like I said, I was bungin’ bricks at coppers. I was lookin after number one.’

  ‘And now you’re looking after me. Feeding me your mother’s dreadful concoction.’

  ‘Can I get you some more?’

  § 155

  7 September 1940

  Of course they’d been expecting it all along. They’d been told to for years now. It was the received wisdom of the last decade. ‘When the bombing starts whole cities will be levelled.’ ‘Seventy thousand dead expected in the first raid on London’ – ‘the ARP stockpiling papier-maché coffins.’ And it went back even further than that, in all probability to before the attainment of powered flight. H.G. Wells had been predicting ‘the Blitz’ in everything but name since he first put pen to paper. The War in the Air had been a novel of his middle age, published the best part of ten years before the Great War.

  On 24 August, the Luftwaffe ‘accidentally’ bombed Central London. An ‘accident’ involving one hundred warplanes. The following night, on Churchill’s orders, a modest RAF fleet of twenty-two planes made a reciprocal raid on Berlin.

  A week or so later Hitler, as bonkers as Wells had said more recently, told the assembled Nazis in the Sportpalast that, ‘We will wipe out their cities.’

  And on 7 September the Luftwaffe tried to give him what he’d asked for.

  Down in Dulwich, to the south-east of London, Harold Hapgood, a senior Fire Officer with the London Fire Brigade, was off-duty. It being a sunny, exceptionally sunny, Saturday afternoon, he was in civvies on his back lawn, collar-stud popped, braces dangling, top button of his flies open for comfort and digestion, relaxing with a cup of Earl Grey, four rich tea biscuits, a packet of Craven A cork-tipped cigarettes and a copy of that morning’s News Chronicle. It was five o’clock or thereabouts, and had he not been so engrossed in his newspaper, he might have heard the distant wail of central London air-raid sirens letting rip at four minutes to five.

  Instead, when concentration lagged, he glanced up into the sky, and saw to the north and east what looked like a swarm of insects, a black, moving mass, dotted with puffs of smoke. For fully ten seconds the lure of aesthetics and mystery took hold of him. They couldn’t be insects, could they? And as reality returned, he realised . . . more German bombers than he’d ever seen in the daytime sky . . . hundreds of them, three hundred and seventy-five, as records later showed, and a fighter escort of twice that size. And the puffs of smoke were London’s own ack-ack opening fire. He ran for his uniform. ‘It’ had begun.

  Earlier that day, Ed Murrow, London correspondent of the American radio network CBS, had driven down to the mouth of the Thames through the East End of London. He had driven through the territory policed by George Bonham, and so recently purged of its Jews by Troy and Stilton, and remarked to his travelling companions, and later to the American nation, on how peaceful and pleasant it seemed in Commercial Road, the East India Dock Road . . . by five o’clock Mr Murrow was at an RAF airfield out on the Thames estuary, watching the ‘insect’ swarm fly upriver to bomb London.

  Outside Scotland Yard, Troy and Onions stood on the Thames Embankment, ignored the wailing siren and the rush of people around them and stared downriver. The image that came to Troy’s mind was more precise than the one that had occurred to Fire Officer Hapgood – they were not just insects, they were moths, moths pursued by gnats.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Onions. ‘Is this it?’

  Troy had distinct feelings about ‘it’. ‘It’ struck him as a ready willingness towards the irrational, a superstition . . . like the ‘historical imperative’ or ‘manifest destiny’, both of which he thought to be complete bollocks, politics masquerading as faith – chance and circumstance elevated to the preordained. Telling Onions so would be a waste of time, so he said simply, ‘There is no it.’

  They went back to work. About an hour later Troy heard the all-clear sound – a two-minute wail of the siren – and looked up from his desk to see Onions in the doorway, macintosh on, cloth cap on, gas mask case across one shoulder. The cloth cap, Troy had learnt, meant Onions-in-disguise.

  ‘They’ve stopped. I thought I’d heard nowt for a bit. D’ye fancy a drink? It’s Saturday. Let’s have a quick one and get home before the buggers come back again.’

  Troy had an arrangement to meet Kitty out of work at eight o’clock. There was plenty of time to do both.

  ‘St Stephens?’

  ‘Too many toffs.’

  Toffs meant politicians. Politicians to Onions meant flapping ears.

  ‘Let’s go the other way. Summat wi’ a few dark corners. Villiers Street. Underneath the Arches.’

  Onions always wanted a pub with dark corners. It didn’t matter whether he was slagging off the bosses or merely telling you what he was growing on his allotment in Acton.

  In the street, stepping eastward, Troy was suddenly disoriented to find himself walking into the sunset. Then it struck him. The glow on the horizon was London burning.

  Onions bought a round. They stood at a window. Sipped ale.

  Onions said, ‘What was that you were saying earlier on? There is no “it”?’

  It had not struck Troy as having a deal of philosophical depth, but clearly it troubled Onions. What in the realm of ideas
might trouble Onions was never predictable.

  ‘It seems to me,’ Troy began tentatively, ‘that we’ve worked up a sort of fatalism over the last year or so. Probably caused by that vacuum when nothing much seemed to happen, then exacerbated when what did happen happened so quickly.’

  ‘Like Dunkirk, you mean?’

  ‘Exactly. We had a long time to brood about it. And we’ve worked up an expectation of the worst. An old friend of my dad’s rang up the last time I was with him, an old boy who’s decided to see the war out from his retreat in Wiltshire. You know what he said? He’s got hold of cyanide from the local chemist’s –just in case.’

  ‘Just in case o’ what?’

  ‘My point exactly.’

  ‘You mean he’d top himself?’

  ‘Most likely knock it back at the first sign of a German parachute floating down.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’

  ‘And of course . . . it would be a paratrooper dressed as a nun or a Red Cross nurse.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I heard that one in the canteen yesterday. That idiot Gutteridge regaling the Yard with rumours he’d heard that the Germans will land dressed as women.’

  ‘Man’s a twat.’

  ‘If they do . . . I have several friends in Fitzrovia who’d be delighted at the thought of big butch soldiers dressed as women.’

  ‘God . . . you know some queer folk.’

  Onions sipped and thought.

  ‘Fatalism? Like that saying from the last war . . . “if it’s got your name on it”?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘You don’t buy that?’

  ‘It’s bollocks, Stan.’

  Onions sipped and thought.

  ‘But if “it” happened. If you knew it was all up for us . . .?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Troy said.

  ‘If I’m going to die,’ Onions began, ‘. . . I’d like to be out on me allotment, get me parsnips lifted first. Leave things neat. And you?’

  ‘Dunno,’ Troy lied, wondering whether he would prefer to meet his maker between Kitty Stilton’s arms or Zette Borg’s thighs.

  § 156

  Kitty emerged from Bow Street nick – tin hat boldly marked POLICE slung across one arm, gas mask in its cardboard case hanging from a shoulder – pale, worried, gabbling.

  ‘Thank God you’re ’ere. Stepney’s taken a pasting. I got through to me mum. She’s spent three hours in the coal cellar. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know whether I should be there or not.’

  ‘Is she alright?’

  ‘Oh yeah, nothing actually fell in the street. But she said she could hear it all around her. And the earth shook. And she had Aunt Dolly and Mrs Wisby with her. And Mrs Wisby’s always been a bag o’ nerves . . . and . . . I don’t know . . . I don’t know what to do!’

  ‘You got through to them?’

  ‘No . . . Mum called me. Seems like a miracle all . . .’

  A hand waved to the heavens.

  ‘. . . This! And after all this the phones still work. No gas . . . half the bleedin’ windows gone and the phone still works. I should be there, Troy. I should be there.’

  Looking at heaven again.

  ‘I don’t know what to do!’

  Germany answered for Troy. The air-raid siren howled again. Kitty looked up into the sky darkening in the west, still glowing red in the east.

  ‘Oh bum. Oh arse!’

  ‘You can’t go now,’ he said. ‘Stick to plan A. Come home with me.’

  ‘No . . . I gotta go.’

  ‘I can’t drive you there while there’s a raid on. We’d just be an obstacle.’

  ‘Then I’ll walk!’

  Two steps and Troy had her by the arm.

  ‘And when you get there, if you get there? Kitty, this war doesn’t need spectators.’

  She turned on him, red-faced and angry.

  ‘See this blue outfit? I don’t wear it ’cos it’s me favourite colour. I’m a uniformed copper and I’m trained. Or has it been so long since you wore one you’ve been and gone and forgot?’

  ‘Trained to find your family dead? Trained to see your own house blown to bollocks?’

  ‘Don’t say that!’

  Then a tear, rolling from the corner of each eye.

  ‘I . . . I couldn’t bear that.’

  Her forehead slumped to his chest.

  ‘Oh Jesus Christ.’

  ‘Come home with me. We can go to Stepney the second the all-clear sounds.’

  Her head lifted. A hand wiping at her eyes.

  ‘No . . . we ought to . . . we ought to . . . surely to God we ought to find a shelter?’

  ‘I’m not going in a shelter. The world and his wife will be in the shelters. Cramped, crowded, stale, smelly, a hundred people all breathing the same pocket of air . . . every chance of catching some disease . . . I’d sooner take my chances in the open air. I’d sooner take my chances at home.’

  Green eyes flashing – all anger again.

  ‘What is it? The great unwashed? You know, you’re such a bloody snob sometimes . . .’

  ‘Of course. Now come home with this snob.’

  He held the car door open for her. She hesitated, looked up at the eastern sky once more.

  ‘Your mum will want you to be safe. You can’t get to Stepney while there’s a raid on.’

  He served her a dinner of leftovers. Mashed potato, cabbage and a hint of bacon, half a sausage each, fried up in lard into a passable bubble’n’squeak. Her spirits had not recovered. They ate in silence – or rather in the absence of words. The world outside was alive with noise. She had just pushed her plate aside, with half the meal still on it, saying, ‘Sorry, I’m just not that . . .’ when a bomb landed so close the windows rattled and the door blew open. A crash, a boom, a gust of air. A ghost in the room.

  ‘Oh God . . . that wasn’t the East End, that felt more like Trafalgar Square.’

  Troy closed the door.

  ‘Would you really like to go to a shelter?’

  ‘Nah. I want to be with you. I mean . . . here . . . with you.’

  Close to midnight, he was certain she had nodded off. It had taken a couple of hours of her tossing and turning, wanting to be wrapped up in him, wanting to be fucked.

  He slipped on his clothes, picked up his shoes and tiptoed to the bedroom door.

  ‘Wot yer doin’?’

  ‘I thought you were asleep.’

  ‘With this racket going on? Can there be anybody asleep anywhere in London? I said – wot yer doin’?’

  ‘I was just going outside for a while.’

  ‘For a walk, you mean?’

  ‘Yes. I thought I’d just take a look. See how far east I could get.’

  ‘You mean you’re going to walk to Stepney?’

  ‘Sort of,’ he lied.

  ‘Troy – “this war don’t need spectators”. Or had you forgotten that?’

  ‘It’s the sound . . . it just . . .’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Sucks you in.’

  ‘Oh God . . . you are such a nutter. If you’re that desperate to see, why don’t you just peel back the blackout and look out the window?’

  His bedroom window looked almost due south, across the flat roof of the bathroom. Leaning out and looking east, London burnt so brightly it was almost like daylight. He looked at the face of his wristwatch and found he could tell the time clearly. Five past twelve.

  He opened the window wide and slid down to the flat roof, heard Kitty behind him say, ‘Nutter.’

  A drainpipe led up to the pitched roof, a quick scramble and he was at gutter height, a careful tiptoeing up the tiles and he was level with the chimney stack. He sat down just below the ridge, set his back against the stack and gazed eastward.

  ‘Are you staying up there?’

  ‘I won’t be long.’

  ‘You are bonkers, Troy, completely bonkers. Sitting on the roof in an air-raid!’

  The risk seemed slight. Fire-watchers
perched on rooftops every night. A hit from the Germans and he’d be just as dead in the room below. British shrapnel? He could see it streak across the sky like shooting stars – but there were no anti-aircraft guns this side of Hyde Park. He’d be very unlucky to be killed this night by his own side.

  ‘Don’t leave me alone.’

  ‘I won’t,’ he lied.

  He stared into the night sky. The night sky was not black it was pink. The barrage balloons, great silver cartoon whales tethered to a giant’s fingertips in the sky, were not silver they were pink. And the giant’s fingers were the searchlight beams, scouring the sky from Primrose Hill and Regent’s Park. London’s ack-ack defences puffed shells into the sky – the shooting stars. Silver on pink, pink on black. And the more Troy stared the more the colours ran like pastels in rain, spreading out in sponge-like shapes, like oil on puddles, colour leeching into colour, leeching into nothingness. Incendiaries falling from the sky, scattering in dozens and hundreds – a lethal war confetti – to explode in blinding blue-white pinpricks of magnesium light, turning yellow as the core caught, and taking on the hues of whatever they had ignited – black and red and orange, spreading ever outward in a burning tide, red into orange into pink – pink on silver, pink on black.

  The bombers were concentrating on the docks that packed both sides of the Thames from Tower Bridge, around the bulge of the Isle of Dogs and out into the estuary past Woolwich Arsenal – St Katharine’s Docks, Surrey Commercial Docks, the plainly named London Docks . . . the exotically named East and West India Docks, the royally named Albert and Victoria Docks . . . and dozens of lesser harbours . . . Canada, Quebec, Russia . . . trade, empire, monarchy all written in brick and stone, and it seemed to Troy now that they were all burning, that Heinkels and Dorniers in wave after wave simply followed the twisted arrow that was the Thames into the heart of London. Some strayed. The bomb that had shaken the house looked to him to have fallen in the direction of the Strand and Charing Cross, the cloud of dust and smoke still hovering almost directly overhead – and with smoke and flames visible in the south-west it was clear that some had got as far as Victoria, and perhaps as far as Chelsea and Fulham.