Second Violin

by Lawton, John

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Siebert spoke, ‘You know, Billy, there was a lot of shuffling about, people changing places with one another. It wasn’t a list so much as a quota. Mostly it was younger men trading places with the elderly. Drax himself was down to be shipped – a younger man took his place. As long as the numbers were right Trench seemed content.’

  ‘Do you think anyone would have swapped places with Massmann?’

  ‘No, probably not.’

  ‘So we look for another reason why he’s still here, and I’ll give you one. He had to be down for deportation – paid up fuckin’ Nazi after all – and what I say is this, he bought his way out. Greased somebody’s palm.’

  Jenkins looked surprised and innocent. ‘But whose?’

  Billy said, ‘Well there’s only two people in camp with power to bump his name off a list – even if you do call it a quota – there’s you . . . and there’s Trench.’

  The light dawned on Jenkins.

  ‘Oh bugger,’ he said. ‘Oh bugger, what do you want?’

  ‘We want,’ Siebert said. ‘A key to Trench’s office.’

  § 144

  Thus far Hugh Greene’s war had proved no less eventful than Rod Troy’s. He had escaped the fall of Poland by fleeing to Rumania, had escaped the fall of Belgium by fleeing into France, and had escaped the fall of France by boarding the SS Madura at Bordeaux, out of East Africa bound for England. Late in June he landed at Falmouth, and made his way back to London. He had been in London a couple of days when it occurred to him to call Rod, and he rang the house in Hampstead. Alex Troy invited him round at once, and brought him up to date on his son’s plight.

  ‘It’s outrageous. It’s bonkers!’

  ‘I know,’ said Alex.

  ‘All that . . . dammit . . . all that talent going to waste . . . the kind of talents we need to win this war. Surely you talked to Churchill?’

  ‘No, no. I didn’t.’

  ‘But surely . . .?’

  ‘And Rod expressly asked me not to. There have been questions in the House. Cazalet has taken up the cause of the unfairness of it all, the uselessness of it all – but neither he nor I have spoken directly to Churchill.’

  The old man was getting . . . well . . . old, Hugh thought, but to leave his son wallowing in some godforsaken hole in . . . well . . . where exactly?

  ‘Isle of Man. Heaven’s Gate, near Port Erin. I gather it is some sort of lapsed stately home, run as a girls’ school since the last war and now commandeered for the purpose. We write. Letters can can take two days or two weeks, and they are censored.’

  ‘I shall write at once,’ said Hugh.

  And he did.

  It was three weeks before Rod Troy received the letter. Nothing had been cut. Hugh stated that he was undoubtedly going to end up in the forces pretty damn quick. Most probably the RAF. Rod’s reply took a further fortnight, and after the censorship, which blanked out anything of interest about life at Heaven’s Gate, ended, ‘The RAF? Wish I was joining you.’

  By now Pilot Officer Greene was a translator/interrogator with RAF Intelligence at Cockfosters, on the northernmost edge of London. His superiors were impressed with his command of languages and one of them, one day towards the middle of August, lazily remarked that they could do with half a dozen like him.

  ‘Half a dozen? I could get you one, but an absolute corker.’

  ‘What languages?’

  ‘German, French and Russian, smattering of Polish too.’

  ‘Good German?’

  ‘Three years in Berlin. Reported on the Kristallnacht from Vienna. Got booted out of Germany same time as me.’

  ‘And where is he now? In the RAF?’

  ‘Not quite.’

  ‘How not quite?’

  ‘He’s in one of the camps – interned.’

  ‘Oh – you mean he is a German?’

  ‘Absolutely not. Harrow and Pembroke, Cambridge. Just had the rotten luck to be born in Vienna.’

  For reasons that would never be wholly clear to him, Hugh seemed to have struck a chord in Wing-Commander Perkins.

  ‘Locked up! Half the buggers in the country seemed to be locked up. Krauts, naturally . . . but Jews, and Iteyes and . . . and bloody Austrians. What the bloody hell’s going on? It’s easier to ask who haven’t we locked up! Well – if he’s in War Office custody, I’m sure the War Office will have to let him go if we say we need him. Half the blokes in those camps would be more use on the outside. Do you know they locked up my tailor? What’s the bloody point of that? I curse the bloody War Office every time I lose a button on my flies! I have to go around with my flies flapping like some old pervert on the Brighton Line, just because they can’t tell a Nazi from a . . . and they locked up the chef from Quaglino’s too – can’t get a decent meal anywhere in Soho these days! Do you know what I had to eat the last time I was up West? Fish and bloody chips! That’s what! And they were cold! I ask you, is this what we’re fighting this war for, for the freedom to go around with our wedding tackle flapping in the breeze, and to eat cold fish and chips? And they nobbled that bloke who used to do hand-made ice-cream every summer at the corner of Old Compton Street! And my brother-in-law’s accountant, who turned out to be Viennese – and all the time we thought he was Welsh! I’ll get on the blower to the War Office right away. What’s your chap’s name?’

  This was where his surge of belligerent enthusiasm might just hit the buffers, but when Hugh said, ‘Troy, Rod Troy’ Perkins simply reached for the telephone half-muttering ‘Any relation to that old fool who writes all those cranky editorials?’ And the next minute he was bellowing at some poor underling in Whitehall.

  § 145

  Rod found Hummel and Jacks in their room. Billy was stretched full length on his bed looking bored, blowing smoke rings from a roll-up ciggie so thin it was scarcely fatter than a matchstick. Hummel was sitting on the window seat, mending trousers for Herr Rosen, needle and scissors flying, and feeling plagued by wasps attracted by the tall pear tree just outside his window. A quick wave of his arm and he had snipped three of the insects in half as they flew.

  ‘Amazing,’ Rod said. ‘How do you do that?’

  Hummel merely smiled.

  ‘Would you do something for me, the two of you.’

  ‘I’m so bored, ’Ampstead, I’d do a tap dance for you with feathers up me jacksie if you asked.’

  ‘Thank you, Billy – but what I had in mind was a spot of tailoring.’

  ‘Wot exactly?’

  ‘I need lots of yellow stars of David on white armbands.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Can you do it?’

  Hummel said, ‘Ja, we sacrifice a sheet for the white armbands. Perhaps we use yours?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Rod. ‘By all means take both the sheets off my bed. We need to make an armband for everyone in camp. Now, what about the yellow stars? Any ideas?’

  Billy said, ‘Ain’t there an art room from the days when this joint was a school? Find us some yellow poster paint.’

  ‘And,’ said Hummel, ‘Bob’s your uncle.’

  ‘I don’t know where he picks it all up, I really don’t.’

  ‘And,’ Rod said, ‘I need them tomorrow.’

  § 146

  At roll call Rod spread the word – the entire camp stayed out in the yard. It was a fortuitously sunny morning, but it had not been one of the mornings when Trench had graced them with his presence. Jenkins had done one of his hopeless head counts, told them to dismiss in his inimitably lazy fashion and had not seemed at all bothered when they hadn’t.

  Rod looked around – he could see Hummel, he couldn’t see Billy or Siebert. It looked as though they had legged it.

  Watching Kornfeld slip on the armband, he felt a twinge. What was he asking them to do?

  ‘I’m sorry, Arthur. I suppose this is all too familiar.’

  ‘No,’ Kornfeld replied. ‘It is . . . new to me.’

  ‘I thought all Jews had to
wear the yellow star?’

  ‘In Poland perhaps, but it is only a matter of time . . . and . . . I’m not Jewish. As a matter of fact, I’m a Lutheran. A rather obviously lapsed Lutheran.’

  ‘With a name like Kornfeld?’

  ‘What’s in a name, Mr Troitsky? What’s in a label?’

  Kornfeld seemed to have set himself to musing. The two of them stood at the edge of the courtyard watching Rosen, Spinetti and half a dozen volunteers hand out the armbands.

  ‘It’s nothing new, you know. So little the Nazis come up with is. A badge of some sort to tell the Jews at a glance has been around for centuries. Every other tyrant seems to have entertained the idea. Popes and kings and emperors – your own King Henry III, to name but one – and for centuries there was such a thing as a Jewish hat. A quirk of fashion made compulsory. Yellow stars are merely the latest manifestation.’

  ‘They all seem to be going along with it.’

  ‘Oh, they will, they will. There was a slogan a few years back, “Tragt ihn mit Stolz, den gelben Fleck.” I often think you are the most reluctant leader I have ever met, Troy. Yet you handle a man as plainly disagreeable as Billy Jacks with skill, a man as deeply odd as Josef Hummel with understanding and a man as prickly as Viktor Rosen with tact. So, in this you lead and they will follow – they will wear the yellow star with pride.’

  ‘There’s a bit more to it than that.’

  ‘Oh really – what do you have in mind?’

  Rod briefed them all. They murmured almost with one voice it seemed, a baritone hum rippling across ninety-odd faces. They turned to look at one another, to mutter, to nod, to agree.

  ‘Of course if anyone feels that they can’t . . .’ Rod began.

  But Herr Rosen finished for him, ‘No, Herr Troy, there will be no dissenters. Not this morning.’

  Rod almost blushed with pride.

  Kornfeld, standing at Rod’s side, hands behind his back, the way they’d seen Jenkins stand when playing the subordinate, whispered, ‘And those who stand in line with Jews.’

  Rod suggested they wait for Billy and Siebert.

  Kornfeld said, ‘Carpe diem.’

  So they did.

  Jenkins was first on the scene.

  ‘Oh bugger! What are you chaps up to?’

  And the chant drowned out every last syllable.

  ‘Jude! Jude! Jude! Jude! Jude! Jude! Jude! Jude!’

  Ninety-odd voices – a single word.

  ‘Jude! Jude! Jude! Jude! Jude! Jude! Jude! Jude! Jude! Jude! Jude! Jude! Jude! Jude! Jude! Jude! Jude! Jude! Jude! Jude! Jude! Jude! Jude! Jude!’

  Jenkins dashed back inside.

  They took a breather.

  Schwitters appeared, carrying a large roll of paper nailed to two sticks. He gave one end to Spinetti and then walked away from him unrolling the paper until it was about ten feet long and its text clearly visible:

  ‘We Are the Stinking Jews !’. . . in letters a foot high.

  ‘Such a telling phrase. I had originally intended to do it in German,’ Schwitters said, ‘but then I thought of your intended audience.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Rod, ‘Fine,’ thinking all the while ‘bloody hell!’

  They took up the chant once more.

  ‘Jude, Jude, Jude!’

  Trench appeared in the doorway, hatless and red-faced. He turned and shouted at Jenkins. Rod wished they’d paused in the chant long enough for him to hear what Trench was saying.

  Jenkins came over, shy and almost embarrassed to be cast as the errand-boy. He and Rod found themselves conducting their conversation at shouting pitch.

  ‘The Major says whatever it is you think you’ll achieve by this, you won’t!’

  ‘We want a doctor for Drax! That’s all!’

  ‘I’d sort of worked that out for myself. Not entirely a thicko, y’know! Is that what you want me to tell Major Trench?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And if . . .’

  ‘If he says no we’ll stay here till he does.’

  ‘Really Till dark? Past dinner time?’

  Rod had not thought that far ahead, but ‘yes’ was the only answer.

  Jenkins went back inside. Five minutes later he was back.

  ‘Message from the Major. You can stay here till you freeze or starve. He isn’t even going to turn out the guard.’

  Rod’s heart sank, silently. He waved an arm in the air, the chant of ‘Jude!’ slowly fizzled out.

  ‘Bugger,’ he said softly to Jenkins.

  ‘Bugger indeed.’

  ‘I’d sort of counted on a reaction. If not immediate acquiescence, at least something that tied up lots of soldiers all doing nothing when they should be doing something.’

  ‘Can’t help you there, old man. If I turn out the guard I could be on a fizzer.’

  ‘Jenkins!’

  They both turned, Trench was in the doorway bellowing.

  Jenkins said, ‘Start your chaps up again,’ and dashed across.

  Rod saw the confrontation as mime, drowned out once more by the chant, Trench all arms in the air, the comic face of British bluster, Jenkins doing what he did worst, trying to stand to attention.

  Then Trench was gone, and Jenkins was running across the lawn to them waving madly. The chant stopped, this time almost as one.

  ‘He said yes. He’s sending for a physician, for a doctor from one of the villages!’

  ‘Why?’ Rod said.

  ‘Does it matter? He’s agreed! God knows why, but he has. You can call it off now!’

  Rod looked at Kornfeld, Kornfeld looked at Rod. Shook his head. Looked at the ground.

  Rod looked at Jenkins. ‘When we see the doctor arrive, then we’ll stop.’

  He turned to the crowd to be certain they’d heard him, and saw the nods of assent.

  ‘We’ll stop chanting, but we stay here until the doctor arrives. If he doesn’t arrive in an hour, we might find our voice again.’

  ‘Fine by me,’ said Jenkins. ‘Absolutely fine.’

  As Jenkins left, Jacks and Siebert ambled out. Late and shameless.

  ‘Missed the show ’ave we?’

  About three-quarters of an hour passed, then the main gate opened and Rod saw a Bullnose Morris, not unlike the one his brother drove, pull up to the house. A doctor – with a homburg and a gladstone bag he could be no other – stepped out, glanced momentarily at the crowd of protestors and vanished into the house.

  Billy Jacks was standing facing Rod and Kornfeld. His yellow-star armband dangling at the elbow, hands in pockets flicking out the fabric of his trousers for all the world to see, like a schoolboy playing with his private parts. Like the cat that got at the cream.

  ‘Can we have breakfast now?’ he said. ‘I’m starvin’. I’d never thought I’d see the day I yearned for porridge, but yearn is what I do. If I don’t get some oats in me in the next five minutes, I’ll eat one of Schwitters’ obbjydarses.’

  § 147

  Trench sent for Rod. Rod would have been surprised if Trench had not sent for him.

  ‘That was quite a show you put on out there.’

  Rod said nothing to this. If Trench was going to play the headmaster, fine. They stood in his office, barely adapted from the headmistress’s study. Several generations of hockey First XIs still askew on the walls, a glass-fronted bookshelf stuffed with pocket-sized Loeb dual-language classics – Horace, Cicero, Polybius. It was at least a fitting venue.

  ‘Don’t think it swayed me.’

  ‘Something did.’

  ‘I gather Professor Drax does have pneumonia?’

  ‘That’s what the doctor’s treating him for. It’s not as if there’s a pill one can take.’

  ‘Quite.’

  They’d reached an impasse. Whatever ‘It’ was Trench had to say he wasn’t saying it.

  ‘I know . . . I realise . . . when you first got here . . .’

  Rod declined to prompt him.

  ‘You put me down as . . . as a particular type . . .
a particular type of chap. I think you made the mistake of confusing my opinions . . . my behaviour with that of my brother. It’s obvious you know who he is. If one or two of the others read newspapers more often they’d all know who he is.’

  ‘Of course I know who Geoffrey Trench is. My father was present when Mungo Carfax threw him out of the House with a boot up his arse. You’re lucky that didn’t make the newspapers.’

  ‘Quite. However, it remains, yours was a rush to judgement. I’m no kind of fascist, and my politics are my own business. In denying your request for a civilian doctor I was merely following guidelines.’

  ‘Then why did you change your mind?’

  ‘I changed my mind because they are only guidelines and not regulations. It was a matter entirely for my discretion. And I did that to convince you that I am a man who acts independently. I am my brother’s twin not his carbon copy.’

  Rod had one thought.

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  He kept it to himself.

  § 148

  Rod told Billy Jacks and Oskar Siebert what Trench had said to him.

  ‘Of course he’s kidding himself. I think the sound of us chanting was a huge embarrassment to him. Made him look as though he wasn’t in control. In front of Jenkins and the men, I mean. No officer could stand that sort of thing.’

  Jacks was doing that fiddling thing in his trouser pockets again – it struck Rod as faintly obscene. But one hand emerged, clutching a folded sheet of paper.

  ‘There is one other thing,’ he said. ‘We let him get a gander at what you lot was up to out in the yard, and then we gave him this.’

  Billy handed Rod a folded sheet of thin white paper. At first glance it seemed to Rod to be a child’s scrawl, awful handwriting, perfect spelling – then it dawned on him Jacks had done a word for word, comma for comma copy of a letter that had originated on headed notepaper.

  Lascelles & Abercrombie Bank

  Regent House

  Hanover Square

  London W1

  June 2nd 1940

  Major R. A. C. Trench

  Heaven’s Gate