Once Again Assembled Here

by Sean O'Brien

  You should be aware that Rackham may suspect that a record of our encounter in 1945 still exists. Rackham is, on any serious assessment, a failure, like his fellow traitors. It is failure that makes them dangerous.

  I put the papers back in the envelope, and the envelope in the inside pocket of my coat, left the Vermuyden Inn and walked back to await the ferry. The day remained cold, with drizzle closing down the horizons. There was no one else at the ferry landing. A green bus arrived empty and left empty.

  So, after the war ended, while William Joyce and John Amery were hanged for treason, the one illegally and the other because he was also to hand, it seems that Rackham must, as he claimed to Carson, have had a protector, perhaps more than one. Assuming this to be so, whoever it was ensured his safe passage back into the civilian world. Was it a sense of honour and obligation that made them do so? To save one who had served a cause?

  Possibly, but in the reckoning after the conflict there were graver betrayals than that of a single compromised agent: the fate of the Cossack officers, for example, arranged at the Yalta Conference. Rackham was interesting and strange, but the powers – for they must have been powers – had no expedient reason to treat Rackham well. Either he retained a potential usefulness (hard to imagine with Germany defeated) or he possessed some advantage which made them decide to spare him. Rackham had a hold on someone more significant than Carson.

  Yet again, though, that might merely have hastened his end. So perhaps it must be that someone cared about Rackham, and wished him to be spared. And if so, suppose this affection had not lapsed in the meantime, but endured, balanced perhaps by Rackham’s continued power to threaten and expose? If this were so, then Rackham’s protector must be someone of such status as could make their wishes exceptions to the rule of law.

  The ferry docked and I went aboard. The bar was open now. One of our other sixth-form amusements was to board at lunchtime and simply stay on board drinking as the boat went back and forth. It was very tempting to do so again. I ordered a vodka and went to stare out at the estuary. Ships were leaving on the tide now. I watched a freighter fade into the distance until it was merely a ghost in the eye. I blinked and it had disappeared.

  I realized I was angry. Rackham was insane or evil or both, but what did it say of Carson that he had visited this on me? Was this the price of my being forgiven and readmitted? Anger was followed by shame, then a blend of both. Then came the thought that, while I had no doubt Carson was telling the truth about Rackham, the document did not constitute evidence – as Carson himself would have been the first to remind me.

  We came inshore, and the vessel shuddered as it turned to berth. I went down on deck. It was bitterly cold. The gangway was lowered and I walked ashore. But if the document was not evidence, then why should anyone be interested in getting hold of it? Why would they even suppose it existed? Carson would have added, with a look of disappointment at my slowness on the uptake, that whoever the interested parties were, they could not be certain that it did not exist, nor that, if it did exist, it was not evidence, nor that Carson had not risked naming Rackham’s high-born protector.

  The pubs would not be open for some time. I wished we were more European.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Feldberg’s Antiquarian Books occupied surprisingly large, not to say labyrinthine premises in the Victoria Arcade near the Law Courts. This was the city’s attempt to emulate the Galeries Lafayette. Feldberg’s lay in the deep interior between a religious supplies shop and a joke emporium with a sideline in pornography. The idea was presumably that you graduated from porn to antiquarianism and then sought the consolations of the church. So far my progress had stalled at Feldberg’s.

  Usually, Samuel Feldberg was seated in his emplacement of books, working by the light of what must have been one of the earliest anglepoise lamps ever manufactured, and surrounded by a Marmite-coloured gloom designed to keep the frivolous from penetrating the shop. His years of labour and applied discouragement had produced an enviable quality of immersed silence that any teacher would have given much to reproduce in the classroom. Although the shop seemed to be thriving, the Feldbergs had never made the conventional move to the suburbs. ‘This is the city,’ Mr Feldberg had once told me, ‘here, within the old walls. My father got off the boat at the bottom of the nearest street. Why would I want to be outside the city? We’re not all from the shtetl.’

  But this afternoon when I went into the shop he was not there. Instead, David Feldberg sat at the huge desk. When he looked up from his work, for a second he seemed annoyed at the interruption. This was his turf. He rose and came forward.

  ‘Can I help you, sir?’

  ‘I was hoping to see your father.’

  ‘Was he expecting you?’

  ‘No, but I said I might look in.’

  ‘He should be back before long. Can I do anything, sir?’

  ‘No, but I’ll wait, if that’s all right.’

  ‘Then please have a seat. Would you like some tea?’

  ‘You carry on with your work. Forget about me.’ The boy smiled at this remote possibility. I wandered along the shelves. There were copies of a couple of Rackham’s early volumes. I wondered about buying them.

  Soon David appeared from the back room with a tea-tray. Somebody hates you, David, I thought. Someone has selected you as an object of hatred, a pretext, a representative. I could not imagine how to begin to tell him. The shop door opened and his father came in. I rose and went over.

  ‘Mr Maxwell, have you been here long?’

  ‘A few minutes.’

  ‘I am sorry. I went to see an old lady, near the park, as it happens, who is uncertain whether to dispose of her late husband’s books. Nothing was decided. We meet quite regularly to go over the matter. But she phoned and seemed rather urgent, as if the undertaker was coming up the path, so it was a courtesy. David, have you looked after our guest?’ The boy indicated the tray and began to gather his books and papers together. The shop door opened again and the girl from St Clare’s came in.

  ‘Introduction, David,’ said Mr Feldberg.

  ‘This is Rachel, sir. We’re on our way to the pictures.’

  ‘I’ve seen you about the school, Rachel. It’s nice to meet you at last. Are you a historian like David?’

  ‘Actually I’m hoping to read medicine.’

  ‘Her parents are very proud of her, of course,’ said Mr Feldberg. ‘Another doctor in the family. Soon they will have a complete set.’

  Rachel blushed at this. Now that I saw her properly, her dark, vivid prettiness was apparent.

  ‘What is the film this week?’ Mr Feldberg asked.

  ‘Rosemary’s Baby,’ said Rachel, still blushing. David shook his head at his father’s teasing.

  ‘Does your mother know, Rachel? Is this film suitable?’ Feldberg asked, arch and mischievous.

  ‘Dad, stop,’ said David. ‘You’re embarrassing her.’

  Mr Feldberg burst out laughing. ‘And a young lady must never be embarrassed? Of course. How could I have forgotten? Go and enjoy yourselves David, make sure you see Rachel to the bus afterwards.’

  ‘She seems a nice girl,’ I said, when the pair had left.

  ‘Certainly,’ said Mr Feldberg, pouring tea. ‘From a nice family. Both doctors. For some reason they choose to live out in the wilds, right on the edge of a golf course where her father is not permitted to play. I’m sure it makes sense to them. Sit, please. So, are there further items you wanted to me to examine?’

  ‘Not at the minute.’ What could I tell him? Why was I here, if not for that? Mr Feldberg considered me for a moment, as if wondering the same thing. But I did not say what I had come to say.

  ‘Well,’ he said, after a slightly baffled pause, ‘since you have been kind enough to come in person, perhaps you won’t mind if I ask your opinion. I know I should leave it until parents’ evening, but why waste an opportunity?’

  ‘Please. If I can be of help.’

 
‘How is my son progressing, in your view?’

  ‘He’s extremely able and hard working.’

  ‘You have a reservation about him.’

  ‘No. It’s nothing, really. David’s an excellent student. That hasn’t changed. If there’s a problem it’s that he has no peers in his classes.’

  ‘Is he arrogant?’

  ‘No, no. He’s bored.’

  ‘I’ll speak to him, then,’ said Mr Feldberg.

  ‘But what will you say? He’s done nothing wrong. The situation is not of his making.’

  ‘If he is bored he should take pains to conceal it.’

  ‘Is that really necessary?’

  ‘It’s wise, Stephen. For some people his presence itself will be a provocation.’

  ‘Do you think so?’

  Feldberg nodded and smiled. ‘You know how things are. A degree of caution, circumspection – these are not the same as cowardice.’ We drank our tea. ‘You know he has become interested in politics now? He joined the youth organization of the Labour Party. Of course, I’m pleased by this, but I have told him not to let it interfere with his work. At his age, though, he has too much energy. School, music, politics – and the girl, of course. I would borrow some if I could.’

  ‘He has become involved in the mock election.’

  ‘Now that’s something he has not mentioned. It doesn’t comes as a surprise, though.’

  ‘He’s helping run the Labour campaign. He can be quite fierce.’

  ‘Oh, yes? Fierce, you say?’ Mr Feldberg smiled and nodded.

  ‘He says what he thinks.’

  ‘But fiercely?’

  ‘There was an argument at the candidates’ meeting. He made his position clear.’

  ‘This is like pulling teeth, Stephen. Tell me.’

  ‘He had a row with the BPP candidate.’

  ‘The BPP are being allowed to stand?’

  ‘It reflects the actual by-election if they are.’ This sounded even worse spoken aloud.

  ‘What use is such a reflection? Is this your idea?’

  ‘Actually, I’m organizing the mock election. I inherited the job from Captain Carson. But my powers are limited. Others have more of a say.’

  ‘This too is a reflection. Think of Weimar. Well.’ He drank some tea and looked out into the arcade.

  ‘The mock election’s not the real thing, though,’ I said. This was so obvious as scarcely to be true.

  Mr Feldberg shook his head. ‘The ideas and passions and hatreds are real enough, I would imagine. David is serious and some of the others will be doing something more than playing the game.’ He poured some more tea. ‘Of course, Stephen, don’t imagine for a minute that I think it was your idea to admit the BPP to this election. Which of your colleagues argues the case for them?’

  ‘I suppose that would be Charles Rackham.’

  ‘Is that so? He is not someone I’ve met, though we have some of his work in stock here, along with all the other poetry books that regrettably nobody buys.’ He gave a short laugh. ‘And what is his motive, your friend Rackham?’

  This was the reason I was there, wasn’t it? But what could I tell Mr Feldberg? That according to a handwritten journal passed to me by a dead man Rackham’s motive was to destroy his son? I could not yet imagine a world in which such a statement could be made with a semblance of sanity.

  ‘He’s not my friend,’ I said. ‘My acquaintance with him is professional. I can only speak for myself. I’m trying to ensure that the election process is conducted in the proper fashion, as Captain Carson would have done.’

  ‘No doubt you are. Well, I will talk to David. He needs to remain calm and learn from the situation. And it will pass, and the fascists will not win, and then he can turn his attention back fully to his studies.’

  ‘He is not neglecting his studies.’

  ‘But you know what I mean. Let him attend to the future. When my friends and I were demobbed at the end of the war and came home we found Mosley’s people back on the streets of London and other cities, this one included, spreading their poison again. So we took action. And from time to time since then it’s been necessary to do the same thing. I don’t want my son to have to do as we did. So I tell myself this will pass.’

  I wondered how I could decently take my leave.

  ‘And you,’ Mr Feldberg asked, smiling, ‘have you found yourself a wife yet?’

  ‘Not quite, I’m afraid. Not so far.’

  ‘Then do so. What happened to that pretty girl, the one who made the costumes, that you used to go about with before you went to university? Sharon, was that her name?’

  ‘Shirley. She’s still here. She works in Vlaminck’s bookshop.’

  ‘If you want to call it that. What a waste. She was a clever girl, I thought. Certainly a reader. And now she works for Vlaminck? Let me tell you: nothing good comes out of that place, or Vlaminck’s stupid mouth. It seems as if everywhere I turn his kind appear. They are parasites. Anyway, there’ll other girls. A man needs a family – you will surely come to feel that sooner or later. It’s no good to be alone, believe me: Anna died when David was six: every day since then has seemed very long. But I have David, and perhaps he has Rachel, and in turn you will find someone.’ Feldberg laughed. ‘Forgive me. The matchmaker! I’m too presuming. I’m sure Mrs Rowan is more than able to advise you on the way to win a fair lady? And – yes, now – am I right in thinking she is Mr Rackham’s sister?’

  I smiled and said nothing. Mr Feldberg rose.

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘forgive me. I must do some work. Come again, please. You are always welcome. Keep me informed, Stephen. I rely on you to guide David, like Captain Carson before you.’

  You shouldn’t do that, I thought, and took my leave.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  I went down the arcade and came out near Holy Trinity. The marketplace was deserted in the darkening later afternoon. There was frost in the air and a bonfirey smell that seemed charged with a sourceless nostalgia. The pubs closed at three in the afternoon then, but faint music drifted from one of them: someone was pleading with Ruby not to take her love to town.

  I walked slowly round the church. It was still smoke-blackened and Dickensian in those days, with its madly elaborate exterior and its somehow uncomfortable tower that looked as if it had been arrested short of its full height. This evening there was nobody home, it seemed. I felt a brief fever of renewed loneliness at leaving the idea of the secure and affectionate family group that Feldberg’s shop seemed to promise.

  I sat for a while on a bench in the flagstoned churchyard among the pollarded plane trees. The church was neither high nor low. Inside, I knew, it was cold and smelled of stone and dust and the passage of time. Towards the end of the twelfth century, before there was a church on this site, the city had seen a pogrom against its small Jewish community. Following the massacre at York in 1190, Richard I had forbidden the persecution of the Jews, but no sooner had he departed for the Third Crusade than there was a rash of further incidents, which then continued sporadically until the expulsion of the Jews from England a century later. I knew about the massacre. Any educated person living in the city was bound to. But the event was historically so remote that it was possible to suppose it had never happened. I was a hundred yards from Mr Feldberg’s shop.

  And I had the envelope, and nowhere to keep it safe. I couldn’t ask Bone again, or Miss Ormond, still less Mr Feldberg.

  As I walked back through the city the streets were beginning to fill up again as people set out for Saturday night. Groups of girls went arm in arm, done up to the nines, taunting the groups of boys across the street, who responded with good-humoured profanity and invitations. That was the ordinary world, behind its invisible glass.

  Without quite knowing why, I decided to walk via the school, though it was a slightly longer route. I went in at the side gate and past School House. Lights burned in the prep room, where I had spent the boring Saturday evenings of my boyhood. I went on throu
gh the woods at the eastern edge of the field between the railway sidings and the lake. A signal blinked on a gantry over the tracks.

  The raft, which had not been used since Carson’s death, was moored once more at the bank of the lake. On the island I could make out the CCF’s climbing nets among the trees. At the gate to the railway crossing I paused and listened. A coal train came slowly up, heading for the docks. After that there was nothing but the night noise of the city coming and going.

  I went over the crossing towards the lights of Maggie’s studio. Over here, I decided, it should be a quite different place from the school side. It should be personal, a matter of pleasure and irresponsible happiness, somewhere that appeared to have escaped the clock, a little enclave of Bohemia, in which foreign policy had no interest. Clearly, I told myself, despite her attitude to Mr Feldberg, Maggie had little to do with her brother; she knew no more of his wartime experiences than anyone at the school except Carson, who was dead. And me. And anyway, I was going to Percival Street now to break things off between us, wasn’t I? Another possibility occurred to me.

  I let myself in and made my way upstairs. Gradually I made out the music playing in Maggie’s studio. It was Annie Ross singing ‘Some People’. I remembered I was supposed to meet Smallbone in the Narwhal. No doubt he would forgive me if there was a skirt involved.

  ‘I thought you weren’t talking,’ Maggie said, when I arrived in the studio. She poured two glasses of wine from an open bottle. A fire burned in the grate.

  Without knowing I was about to, I said: ‘I forgive you.’

  ‘Do you now? If you say so.’ She was almost demure, by her standards.

  ‘Well, you were a bit brusque the other day,’ I said. I was weak.

  ‘So sensitive! Then I’m sorry.’

  ‘I’m not talking about me, Maggie. I mean Mr Feldberg,’ I said.

  She shook her head.

  ‘Oh, I know I must have seemed very ill-mannered. Did he mind very much?’

  ‘He didn’t mention it.’