Even now, as he pedalled off with his trailer rattling after him, across Park Lane and into Mayfair, he was not relaxing. He was calling out ‘Get rid of Chamberlain. Get rid of Chamberlain and prepare for war’ in that high‐pitched, slightly mad‐sounding voice of his.
Mr Josser stood looking after him till the words, like the tail‐lamp of the trailer, had grown fainter and still fainter in the darkness, and finally were lost amid the rest of London.
Chapter XLVIII
1
It was September the first, September the first, 1939.
And a lot was happening. Queen Wilhelmina and King Leopold’s offer of mediation had been rejected. Not that there was anything very remarkable in that. Indeed, looking back on it afterwards it is doubtful if either of them really expected it to be accepted. Because, taken all in all, it had been European rejection week. Similar snubs had just been administered to His Holiness and President Roosevelt. In short, the Nazis weren’t having any. And, in the circumstances, it seemed pretty sporting and public‐spirited of Mussolini of all people to propose a conference.
But, by then, patience had worn a bit thin all round and Whitehall wasn’t having any either. It was, of course, nice to know that we still had a friend in Mussolini but with Herr Forster, a Nazi, already installed in Danzig as head of the state, and Hitler as rude as he had been to Sir Nevile Henderson, it was plain that no good would come of any more palaver. That was why just four hours after the Third Reich began its Blitzkrieg on Poland, the London County Council was busy bundling the first parties of children out of the metropolis for their long holiday in the country.
It nearly broke Connie’s heart to think about those poor little kids. And it upset her a bit on her own account as well. The Government would hardly go to all that trouble and expense – special trains and reception‐committees and what‐not, like a glorified Cook’s Tour – unless they expected something. And if the balloon really went up what was going to become of Connie, poor thing, with only Mr Puddy in between her and Marshal Goering’s Luftwaffe? The mere thought of it was enough to bring on that sinking feeling.
But it was the school‐children that really seared her. And their poor dear mothers. Just think of it – one day a whole quiverful of little blue‐eyed darlings with lisps, and on the next just a nursery of empty cots and unplayed‐with toys. She wondered how any woman could stand it. There’d be suicides if she knew anything about it. Nice motherly women popping their heads into gas‐ovens just because they couldn’t bear the pain of separation. And little orphaned children crying under haystacks or trying to walk back to London in shoes that were worn through to the tiny feet inside them…
Connie took out her handkerchief and had a good cry over it. She’d always been that way about cruelty to children. And this was funny because she didn’t particularly like children when she was with them. But, in imagination, they were heavenly little creatures, golden‐haired ones especially. They brought out the best in her. Not that there was anything unusual in that. She was always having her best brought out. Holiday‐makers drowned while bathing, brides killed in motor‐smashes, sea‐birds with oil on their wings, fathers of families getting caught up in machinery, cats marooned on church steeples – she rarely got through the daily paper completely dry‐eyed.
But as all these dreadful things were happening, and as these poor little innocents, all weeping and struggling to get back to their mothers, were going to be sent away, she decided that she might as well go along to Waterloo and see something of it. She’d even stand herself a platform‐ticket if that would help. It wasn’t every day that there was drama like that going on just round the corner.
She got to the station at about 10.30. At first it was difficult to get in because there was so much happening. But she managed it all right in the end even though it did mean having a few words over her shoulder with a policeman. And, once inside, what a scene it was! Not a bit what she’d imagined it, mind you. No screaming, no hysteria, no panic. Just rows and rows of children each with a gas‐mask, a parcel containing rations and sponge‐bag, and a label to prove that the child really was itself and not a totally different child from some other school. It was all orderly, efficient, disciplined as though the London County Council had been in the business of children’s crusades for years. The teachers who were looking after these enormous families might have been in charge of a mass visit to the Zoo. They merely had about them that look of depressed watchfulness which is common to all adults accompanying school outings. The children themselves were blithe, excited and ready for anything.
For a moment, Connie was almost disappointed. It looked as though she had mis‐read the part. Then the artist in her came to the top again and she spotted that really it was worse, much worse, this way. It meant that the children were simply so many little dumb animals being headed into trucks like cattle without realising what was happening. That brought the lump back into her throat all right, and made her old eyes misty. When an infant school of toddlers trotted in out of the yard it was too much for her. She took out her handkerchief and cried.
‘You’re an old fool, Connie,’ she told herself. ‘That’s what you are, an old fool. If you can’t stand it, you shouldn’t have come.’
But she knew that such advice even from herself was useless. This was something that she wouldn’t have missed for worlds.
She hadn’t properly recovered when she was moved out of the way quite rudely by a ticket‐inspector who seemed to have been put in charge of all the mothers with babies. Obviously, a family man himself, he was followed by a long column of large, dejected women with small wrapped‐up babies. Connie looked away. Between Connie and her sex there was no spare sympathy. It was just the children without any mothers who got her every time.
There was one little girl in particular. She wasn’t even an especially pretty child. Just one more junior evacuee standing a little out of line. She had a band across her front teeth and wore glasses with a length of cotton wound around the bridge. But, as she stood there, she was hugging her teddy bear and talking to it. The sight quite bowled Connie over. She wondered what the teacher would say if someone, a stranger, started kissing one of her pupils.
Then a happy new idea came to her. She couldn’t afford it. But what did it matter? If there really was going to be a war money wouldn’t be worth anything, so why not spend now while there was still a chance. Crossing over to the sweet‐stall she bought a Mars Bar. The little girl with the teddy bear was so surprised that she didn’t even say thank‐you.
But Connie scarcely noticed because there was a big new sensation close at hand. A press photographer was taking pictures of the children, and the children were bunching themselves together to get into the group. Connie didn’t stand a chance herself when a well‐dressed, determined‐looking woman – obviously the headmistress – came striding up to establish order and get into the photograph herself.
Connie was elbowed right back in fact and simply had to stand looking on. The sadness of it all was affecting her again and she pulled out her handkerchief. Some of the children had surreptitiously opened their parcels and started lunch. Little bits were dropping everywhere.
‘I’d like to have Hitler here,’ she reflected gloatingly. ‘I’d like to have him to myself for five minutes. I’d like to make him go down on his knees and clear up after ’em.’
She was disturbed in her reverie by a hand that was placed on her fore‐arm. It was a timid, hesitating pressure, quite unlike the way a policeman grabs hold of you. She turned and saw that there was an old gentleman standing beside her. And such a nice old gentleman – white crinkly hair under a black hat, and a loose bow‐tie. Quite the elderly clubman, in fact, with a rolled‐up umbrella hanging over his arm and a whole armful of the shiny picture papers. He’d got a suitcase with his initials on it, on the ground beside him. And for some reason or other he was holding out a pound note towards Connie.
‘Bless them,’ he said rather huskily, n
ot even looking at Connie but staring straight in front of him at the children. ‘It’s terrible to have it happening. But they’ll be safe and that’s all that matters. I saw you giving them something just now. See what you can do with this.’
He thrust the pound note into her hand, and without waiting for an answer he moved off.
For a moment it fairly stumped Connie getting a whole quid to spend like that. But she liked the idea of going right up and down the long lines of children distributing chocolate and buns and monkey‐nuts like some perishing Lady Bountiful. She went straight back over to the sweet‐stall where she’d first bought the Mars Bar, thinking what a stir her new order was going to make. There was quite a crowd already gathered there, however, and she had to wait while a lot of fiddling small stuff was attended to.
It was while she was waiting that she saw a tiny incident that altered everything. A small boy in the party nearest to her started eating an orange before he’d finished the sandwich that he’d got in his hand, and the master in charge spotted him. He was a rough, brutal type of man, the master – quite the reverse of the old gentleman – and he gave two little hoots on a whistle that he’d been carrying in his pocket.
‘Mordyke Road Senior Boys,’ he said in a harsh, penetrating voice. ‘Listen to me. There’s eating going on again. Stop it. I don’t want you all being sick in the train.’
Well, that was that. Who would want a lot of children being sick all over the upholstery, particularly if you had to travel with them? Not Connie. She saw now that it wouldn’t be fair on the teachers to give as much as one piece of chocolate away. It was just one of those things. She looked round for the old gentleman, but he’d gone. There was nothing that she could do about it. She hadn’t asked for it: it had been a gift. She stood there, pondering. Then folding up the pound note very small she thrust it deep down into her handbag, and shot out of the station. No loitering.
If this was stealing she’d been wasting her time all these years.
It was next day that she had her big surprise. In the Daily Mirror. Front page. There was a picture of the children, and a close‐up of herself giving the little girl with the teddy bear a Mars Bar. It made her go all goose‐flesh from excitement. She hoped that the old gentleman would see it, too, because in a way it seemed to prove things.
Then she read the caption. And she wasn’t so pleased. It was professionally damaging, she reckoned. There might even be a libel action in it.
‘Granny gives Her Mite,’ was what the caption said.
2
There was one further little piece of excitement when she got back. The men had come to measure for the air‐raid shelter.
The air‐raid shelter had been Mr Squales’ idea. Ever since Mrs Jan Byl’s premature retreat from the ruins of London, he had been worried about Mrs Vizzard’s safety. The house was old, he could not help remembering – it needed only one good push to send the whole stucco terrace shuddering to the ground. And if his intended was going to stay in the danger zone he wanted somewhere below ground for her, somewhere snug where he could creep in and sit beside her so that she shouldn’t be afraid.
Chapter XLIX
1
It’s the next day now. Evening on September the second. To‐morrow will bring – what to‐morrow will bring. At the moment, to‐morrow is just like any other day except for the fact that the Prime Minister is going to speak. The atmosphere is tense, but there are no foregone conclusions.
Let’s get away from Dulcimer Street for a moment. Things are going on elsewhere as well. Liners are drawing in at the big ports. Aeroplanes are arriving at Croydon. And, if you feel like it, you can walk into any railway ticket office and book straight through to Berlin.14 Take a look at Harwich – always a good stepping‐off point. At Parkestone Quay lies the night‐boat for the Hook. Overhead in the thickening dusk, seagulls wind backwards and forwards in circles as though on strings like children’s kites. Despite the rows of suspended lamps – which swing a little in the breeze that comes straight in from the North Sea – the whole place looks bleak, desolate and a little unfriendly as dockyards always look at night. Oyster crates are piled alongside the first‐class waiting‐room.
On the other side of the harbour, the Royal Naval side, the guards have been doubled and all the destroyers have got steam up. But it’s too dark to see anything of that. Everything that’s in sight is as normal as the seagulls.
The eight o’clock train from Liverpool Street draws in, the pink table‐lamps in the Pullman cars momentarily lending a touch of almost drawing‐room comfort to the scene. Porters, the queer half‐breed race – part railway servant, part sea‐dog – that inhabit every maritime terminus – come forward from a small room that smells of paraffin and cooking. There is new life in the refreshment buffet where the young ladies, wiping their damp red hands on their black dresses, saunter along to take up their positions behind the bar. In the Customs sheds the clerks arrange their cardboard boxes of coloured crayons and hang out their notices about explosives and hashish. Two dim little men – special officers from Scotland Yard – hang around the doorway.
Then the passengers come streaming in. They are a quiet, heavy lot, with very few women among them. Mostly business men with large brief‐cases elaborately strapped and buckled. They have about them the air of extreme importance which is the birthright of commercial foreigners. When they stand up in front of their suitcases, to allow the Customs men to go carefully through their pyjamas, their toilet‐case, their change of under‐wear, a row of pink necks bulge out over their hard white collars. Then, innocent of concealed firearms, they raise their furry velours politely, show their passports which are examined as casually as though they were tram‐tickets, and pass through to the boat for a quick drink before sailing.
The small round man at the far end takes a little longer than the others. Two of the Customs men are bending low over his bag and one of the special officers from Scotland Yard approaches hopefully. But it’s nothing. Only the top of Dr Hapfel’s hair‐cream bottle that has come off. He borrows a duster to mop up his nice silk dressing‐gown and then he too hurries through to the waiting boat.
His thesis on The Leader‐Principle in Democratic Government has been accepted and, if the present trouble blows over, it will be published in London as well as in Leipzig. During the three years he has been in England he has discovered many things about the English. The first is their ignorance. Keeping themselves to themselves is the highest virtue. In consequence the entire island race knows nothing of what is happening elsewhere. And no one seems to care very much. Stupidity coupled with comfort has produced a breed that is impervious to anxiety. They sleep at night secure in the arms of the Navy that no one ever sees, supported by an Empire that no one ever mentions.
Puzzling – but to a philosopher like Dr Hapfel – also pathetic. There is a lot in England that the sentimentalist in him would like to see preserved; remodelled, of course, brought up‐to‐date and gleichgeschaltet, but preserved. But as things are there will be little, very little, nothing in fact, left of the England that he has known. Even the pleasant things like the young lady with high colouring and a lace bodice in the newsagent’s at the corner of the Euston Road, will be swept away along with Mr Chamberlain and the Archbishop of Canterbury and Mr Montague Norman and the Jews of the City of London.
Dr Hapfel stumbles as the mounts the gangway and someone, a stranger, standing on the quayside helps to steady him.
‘Lift ’em up,’ he says. ‘It’s only for life.’
Only for life! It is precisely this attitude that Dr Hapfel has tried to explain in his thesis. An attitude compounded of cynicism and insensitiveness and impudence. It is the same attitude that has allowed a daily paper this morning, apparently without threat of police action, to publish a cartoon of the Führer, his Führer, dressed up in the costume of Charlie Chaplin.
There must, Dr Hapfel decides as he tries to fit himself into his little cabin, be more to it than eith
er Herr Ribbentrop or the Link have yet discovered. Perhaps English humour is really only a sublimation of the death‐urge, the suicide‐impulse. Perhaps Mr Chamberlain actually wants to impale himself.
Perhaps he is certifiable.
Undoing his sponge‐bag, Dr Hapfel, Ph.D., removes his toothbrush and his Odol and proceeds to brush his teeth.
2
The boat has just left and the eight o’clock train for Liverpool Street is being pushed away into a siding. The porters have shut themselves away in their paraffin closet. The young ladies in the buffet have turned out the light and left the washing‐up until to‐morrow. The Customs men have disappeared to wherever Customs men disappear to between departures. And the special officers from Scotland Yard have gone to a commercial hotel for the night. Only the seagulls are still there.
The boat, with Dr Hapfel on board, is now no more than a smudge of lights on the horizon.
Take a good look at it. It is the last gleam of brightness that will be seen in the North Sea for quite a time. There isn’t going to be a boat‐train to‐morrow, because there won’t be any boat.
By then, it will be war. And England really will be keeping herself to herself.
BOOK FOUR
Rex v. Percy Boon
Chapter L
1
A lot more had been happening.
On the day, the very day, when war had been declared – within half an hour of the declaration in fact – the air‐raid sirens had sounded. And Londoners had been introduced to their new signature tune. It was, as it turned out, only a false alarm. No air‐raid followed. But on that tremendous Sunday everybody was a bit on edge. Including the aircraft spotters. In consequence, the coastal batteries were opening up on anything in sight. Even on our own planes.
London Belongs to Me Page 51
