Small Change 03: Half A Crown

by Jo Walton

  “You sound as if you’ve had a lot of practice at this kind of thing,” Carmichael said, through a mouthful of sandwich.

  “More than you’d imagine,” Sir Guy said, looking a little sad. “Though not recently. But that’s all moot. Look, have you been home?”

  “Yes,” Carmichael said.

  “Then they’ve been following you. I told them if you came here to leave you alone, to bugger off and go home, that I’d take care of things from here on. But be careful when you go, all the same, in case they weren’t listening properly.”

  “They snatched Jack,” Carmichael said.

  “Well, I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but he’s dead,” Sir Guy said, looking really sorry. Carmichael had known, almost known, been prepared for it, but all the same the news was more than he could bear. He felt his mouth opening wide as if to scream. Sir Guy handed him a whisky. “Knock it back, it’s the best thing. The only thing, really.”

  Carmichael knocked it back, choked and spluttered. Sir Guy handed him the other whisky. “Why are you doing this?” Carmichael asked.

  “Common bloody humanity,” Sir Guy said. “Not that that’s a thing there’s much of these days. I told you yesterday this wasn’t the world I signed up for. I was being literal. This morning, I wanted to tell you to keep your head down. Now I’m telling you to get out. Leave the country. Don’t stop. You seem like a decent chap.”

  “Did Jack tell them anything?”

  “No, of course he bloody didn’t. As I understand it, as soon as they started asking him about you, he offed himself. Hollow tooth, was it?”

  Carmichael nodded. He couldn’t quite believe that Jack was really dead and gone forever. One part of his brain still thought he could go home and tell Jack all about it.

  “I thought so. I have one too.”

  “You have one? Why?” Carmichael sipped the second whisky.

  “My masters in Moscow gave it to me, not long after I started to work for them. But as they’re radioactive dust and ashes now, I suppose I don’t need it as much as I did then. What happens when you’re a sleeper for an organization and the organization vanished? What do you do then?”

  “I don’t know,” Carmichael said. “You were a communist? Really? When you’re Foreign Secretary?”

  “They kept on telling me to keep my head down, do what Normanby wanted, get in with the Farthing crowd, let things get worse so they could get better,” he said, taking a long pull of his beer. “And I did what they told me until they lost the war and my contacts ran away, or started to pretend they didn’t know anything about anything. Now, I’m not sure what to do. I’ve realized that Stalin wasn’t the right answer to the questions I had in Cambridge, any more than bloody Hitler was, but the questions are still there, and getting louder.”

  “You shouldn’t have told me that.”

  “You’ve got a tooth too, if your man had one,” Sir Guy said. “You’d use it before you gave them my secrets. You’re a decent chap.”

  “I’m not,” Carmichael said. “I thought about turning in Elvira to get Jack back.”

  “You didn’t, though,” Sir Guy said, with impeccable logic.

  “I betrayed David Kahn, when I knew he hadn’t done it, when I had proof that it was Normanby and Angela Thirkie.”

  Sir Guy’s eyes widened. “Proof?” he said.

  “They killed my witnesses. But I had their testimony. Agnes Timms, a hairdresser from Southend, and the dowager Lady Thirkie. Between them they could have hanged Normanby. Penn-Barkis wouldn’t listen to me.” Carmichael finished the second whisky and put the glass down.

  “Do you still have the proof?” Sir Guy asked.

  “For what it’s worth now,” Carmichael said, bitterly. “In fact I have it right here.”

  “Will you give it to me?” Sir Guy asked.

  Carmichael fumbled through his pockets and pulled out the notebook. Even in the pain of losing Jack the sight of the notebook made him wince. He had set everything down so plainly, all his evidence, and it hadn’t been worth a farthing.

  Sir Guy took the book. “Get out, go now, tonight, as soon as you’ve finished your pint. It isn’t safe for you. Even if you’re as innocent as the day is long Mark will never believe it after that tooth business. He doesn’t know what you’ve got to hide, but now he knows you really do have something to hide he won’t let you get away with it. No, don’t tell me what it is.”

  “I wasn’t going to,” Carmichael said, finishing his pint.

  25

  When little Debbie came to wake me I was dreaming that I was in a grand ballroom dancing with a snake. The snake had Sir Alan’s beard but talked like Bannister, and I had to stay there with it making conversation until my friends came back, and the lights were going out and it was getting darker and darker, so all in all I was very glad to wake up. I wasn’t even confused about where I was. “Mum says it’s time to wake you. Everyone’s here, we’re about to start the seder.”

  I sat up and yawned. I hadn’t undressed to sleep, but the navy dress had stayed surprisingly uncreased. I supposed that was its virtue, to make up for its unpleasant texture, along with its cheapness, of course. I followed Debbie downstairs and into a room I hadn’t seen before.

  My first impression was that hundreds of people were crammed around the table, and all the men were wearing long white robes, almost like dressing gowns, but with suits underneath instead of pajamas. The women and children were dressed up, and wearing enough jewelry between them to put good taste to shame—Mrs. Berman looked like a Christmas tree. I realized from the odd way the tablecloth was falling that the table was on two levels—probably the kitchen table had been brought in and put next to the dining room table, which was extended as far as it would go. Chairs were crammed in around it, filling the room. Two of the men were even sitting in armchairs. On the table was a silver plate with indentations, filled with what looked like food oddments, an elaborate silver goblet alone in the middle, what looked for all the world like a plate of Ryvita, and a collection of wine bottles.

  Paula got up, showed me to a chair between her and little Ben, and introduced me to the company as her cousin Hava. She told me who everyone was, but it confused me. I gathered that her husband was the man in the armchair on her other side, the other man in an armchair was her brother, the woman next to him was his wife. A bearded man smiling across the table at me was Paula’s brother-in-law, Dan, also with his wife, and the others were apparently friends who worked in the neighborhood. There were a lot of children, some of them quite young. I never did get it straight who they all belonged to. I did eventually gather to my astonishment that the plump woman sitting on the far end of the table, nearest to the door, was the servant who had brought me the potatoes earlier, sitting down to eat with the family. Not that there was any food yet, except the odd things on the plate. I could tell that there was proper food somewhere, because I could smell delicious roasting meat, but none of it was on the table.

  “Hava isn’t observant,” Paula said. “We’ll have to explain as we go along.”

  “It’s supposed to be about explaining,” said Debbie, taking her own seat. “It’s supposed to be about explaining to children, but I already know about it. I’ll help explain to you, Hava.”

  “Cousin Hava isn’t going to ask the questions, is she?” asked one of the younger children, anxiously.

  “No, don’t worry, you’ll ask your question,” Paula’s husband said. I was deeply relieved, as I’d have had no idea what to ask. And after that, with no more ado, they started.

  It isn’t true that they sacrifice babies. And they’re clean enough to put us all to shame. But their customs are very peculiar, and all their prayers are in Hebrew, and they wear robes and have strange rituals in their houses in the evening. I’m not surprised that people get nervous about them and wonder what they’re up to. I felt nervous myself. First, everyone trooped off to the kitchen to wash their hands, using a special cup, and everyone making jokes a
bout not praying while they did it. Washing hands in the kitchen seemed very strange to me, almost dirty, although the kitchen was so very clean. Then we went back to sit down again, crowding in around the table. There were a lot of jokes, and a lot of arguing. Frankly, I didn’t understand what was going on even with the explanations.

  Then we dipped parsley in salt water (for affliction, Debbie told me, confusingly) and Dan broke the Ryvita in half, and then Paula’s husband read a piece of Hebrew, and there was a little silence.

  “It’s hard to think now of God always redeeming us from the hands of those who persecute us,” Dan said, scrunching the edge of the tablecloth between his fingers. “Knowing what’s going on in Europe, and with the news about them opening a camp here.”

  I just stared at him. It did indeed seem as if the Jewish God wasn’t doing a very good job of looking after his people just at present.

  “Well,” Paula said, looking around the table at the children and the older people and especially at me. “We’ve been through times like this before, and we’ve always come out of them. No matter how bleak things seem now, God will save us from this too. Maybe not any of us as individuals, but as a nation we will still be around long after they are as extinct as the Pharaohs.”

  Then they went back to Hebrew and incomprehensible behavior. I didn’t know why they broke one of the pieces of Ryvita in half, or why the children stole it and hid it. I didn’t know why we had to keep drinking, or picking up and not drinking, glasses of sweet red wine—with grape juice for the children, and for me after the first glass. But however peculiar it is, it’s all done in goodwill. I couldn’t mistake that. And they were good people. They’d taken me in when they didn’t know the first thing about me.

  Most of the service, if that’s what it was, went over my head. Even when they were arguing in English, I didn’t really know what they were arguing about. Paula’s husband would read something, in Hebrew, and then they’d all quibble about it, or that’s how it seemed to me. It was interminable, and I was getting hungrier and hungrier. The little bits of odd food they passed around didn’t help. The children were getting visibly tireder. They took turns asking their questions. When Ben asked his, in Hebrew, and clearly memorized by rote, he looked up at me proudly. I smiled back at him and mouthed, “Well done.” It certainly seemed like a lot more fun than I’d ever had in Sunday school.

  After a lot of this, and some strange things like flicking wine, or grape juice, from our fingers onto plates, apparently to represent the plagues of Egypt, and filling the cup in the middle of the table, which I suppose was some sort of chalice, because nobody drank out of it, we all trooped off to the kitchen to wash our hands again. The smell of the food was unbearable. This time we did have to say a blessing, in Hebrew. Debbie said it for me, and reminded me to wash each hand twice. Then we went back to the table and ate the Ryvita, which wasn’t exactly Ryvita but definitely some kind of crispbread. We had it first plain, then with horrible fresh horseradish. “Be careful, it burns,” little Ben warned me. Then we had it with a weird kind of chopped salad stuff, with apples and walnuts, to which we were, amazingly, supposed to add more horseradish.

  Eventually, after we’d eaten these, the servant got up and went to the kitchen, and Paula got up to go to help her. “Let me help too,” I begged, and she nodded, so I followed her out. The servant was putting dumplings or something into the soup, and Paula took a huge piece of beef brisket out of the oven. It was late in the evening—we’d been sitting around the table for hours. I could hardly believe we were going to sit down to such a heavy meal at this hour, but it seemed we were. I’d almost stopped being hungry and would have liked to have gone straight to bed. I was put to stir the soup, which was some kind of chicken broth, with dumplings fluffing up in it.

  There was a loud knock on the front door. Paula and the servant froze, staring at each other. “Who could that be at this hour?” the servant asked, in her thickly accented English.

  “Nobody we know, or they’d have given the special knock,” Paula said. Then she turned to me. “Into the passage,” she said. “If it’s safe, Rivka will come and get you soon. If she doesn’t come, get out through the passage and run for it. It comes out in Dan’s garden, not ours, so it should be safe even if they’re behind the house.”

  I followed her out into the back kitchen. She drew up the rug that covered the trapdoor. “Shouldn’t you all hide?” I asked.

  “There’s probably no need,” Paula said. Fat Rivka was walking towards the door, calling out that she was coming as fast as she could, there was no need to knock the door down. “Besides, the lights are on. If they see the table laid and no visitors, they’ll wonder even more. Probably you’re just going to spend ten uncomfortable minutes before we all laugh about this.” Paula handed me my coat, or rather Uncle Carmichael’s coat, which I’d left in the kitchen earlier, and I put it over my arm.

  I went down the steps and she closed the trap above me. The dim little light came on, and I heard her putting the rug back in place. I waited, hoping she was right, hoping this was nothing, that it wasn’t Bannister and Bushy Eyebrows and their friends come to find me again, even though I knew it was. I even tried to pray, for whatever good it could have done. I’d been to church almost every Sunday of my life, but I think the last time I’d really prayed from my heart had been when Betsy was pregnant.

  I heard bangs from above, followed by screams. I thought about going back up the stairs and saying I was there, they should leave everyone else alone, but I knew if I did they’d only take it as proof the Bermans and their friends were guilty. They were guilty, guilty of hiding me, guilty of being Jews, of terrible taste in jewelry, of wearing weird robes and chanting in Hebrew, of not eating until ten o’clock at night. I walked away up the passage towards the place where it bent, where the light was. There was nothing I could do for the Bermans, nothing at all. It was hard to see clearly through the tears in my eyes, so I kept wiping them away as I walked.

  There was nobody in the shed at the other end of the tunnel. It was drizzling. I put the coat on and came out cautiously. There were men waving electric torches around in a garden a few doors down, but nobody in front of my shed. I slipped away down the alley in the opposite direction, not running, but walking as rapidly as I dared. There were dustbins and things in the alley, and I didn’t want to bang into anything and make a clatter. At the corner where the alley intersected a cross-street I turned towards the Bermans’ street. When I came to it I glanced down it, then looked away and went on along the street I was on. There were three police cars outside the Bermans’ house and they were dragging people out in handcuffs. None of the neighbors were paying any attention. I suppose people don’t. I wouldn’t myself, normally.

  I kept walking, with no idea of where I was going. It was late, I was tired, I couldn’t go to the Maynards or Uncle Carmichael or anyone I knew, because they’d find me there. Obviously Uncle Carmichael was wrong about how safe I was. I looked through the pockets of my coat as I walked and found a ten-shilling note and half a crown tucked down at the bottom underneath a big striped handkerchief. I wasn’t sure how much a room at a hotel cost, and I knew that respectable young ladies didn’t ever stay at hotels alone in any case. But I wasn’t a respectable young lady, was I? I wasn’t sure what I was, walking alone at night through a strange part of London. I wasn’t Elvira Royston, of Arlinghurst and Switzerland and soon to be presented and then go to St. Hilda’s. I wasn’t the Cockney child I had been, but I knew what she knew. If I went to a hotel in my cheap ready-made frock and good shoes and man’s coat, they’d take me for a prostitute, like the ones I’d met in prison, and throw me out. So where did prostitutes go? There I could be safe, or at least inconspicuous.

  I was glad I’d had that thought, because on the next street corner there was a policeman. This street was well lit and had traffic on it, and I could see the warm lights of a pub glowing nearby. The policeman looked at me suspiciously. I didn’t cower
away as I would have before. “Got a fag?” I asked him, in my London voice, just as the streetwalker I’d met in Paddington had asked me. Prostitution was technically illegal, of course, but they could hardly arrest every whore in London. I didn’t look quite sufficiently a floozy, for one thing I had no makeup on at all, but I obviously didn’t arouse any suspicions.

  “Try the George and Dragon,” he replied, bored and already moving on.

  I went into the pub. I had to, he was still on the corner and might have been watching. Besides, it was brightly lit and full of people. It smelt horribly of beer, which reminded me at once of the one place I could perhaps go and be safe. People looked up as I went up to the bar, but they looked away again quite quickly. Only one man kept on looking. He was unshaven and beer-smelling, and shorter than I was. “You working, love?” he asked.

  “Not tonight,” I said. “Do you know how much it would cost to get a taxi from here to Leytonstone?”

  “Haven’t the faintest,” he said. He didn’t seem unfriendly. “I’d go on the tube, assuming I wanted to go, which isn’t very likely in the first place.”

  “Where’s the nearest tube station?” I asked.

  “Just down the street to Golders Green,” he said, jerking his thumb in the direction away from the Bermans’.

  I went to the bar and bought ten du Mauriers, tipped, and a box of matches. I lit one as I went out of the pub, in case the policeman was watching, but he’d vanished in any case. I walked off in the direction the man had indicated, smoking and coughing. I came to the tube station eventually, when I was starting to think I’d missed it, because nobody could say just down the road and mean this distance. I bought a ticket to Leytonstone and as soon as the train came subsided into a seat in the corner of the carriage.

  Golders Green is where the Northern Line dives underground, after running on the surface. I felt safe once we were buried, anonymous, underground, hidden. I could almost have fallen asleep. There was a very tall man sitting opposite me with an amazing carved face. He was reading the Standard. The headline was “Strike Spreads.” I changed trains in Tottenham Court Road, and made it without incident to Leytonstone not much after eleven. It was enough after that when I walked into the Nag’s Head, my mother told me they were closed, though people were still drinking up.