by Peter Rimmer
World communism was the only possible way man could live in harmony without destroying the world. The atomic bomb had fallen and man’s time on earth was limited. ‘The revolution has to come now!’ they would shout, making them feel much better afterwards.
Wolfgang Baumann lectured the girls in politics and philosophy. He had left Germany in a hurry in 1934, soon after Hitler came to power on a platform that disliked the communists a little less than the Jews. A hero for a while in England for his outspoken opposition to the Nazis, when Stalin signed the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact on the 23rd August 1939, Baumann was seen as the enemy and soon after war broke out the following month he was interned for the duration of the war.
When Josephine was first entranced by his magnetism, he was thirty-nine years old, grey at the temples, flat in the stomach from careful diet and exercise, and with not a trace of his German accent or any sign of resentment for the years of his Scottish internment. Being a realist he knew the advantage of being locked away in a safe place while other men of his own age were killing each other.
A university environment suited Wolfgang where his own enthusiasm could be fed and kept alive by the idealistic naïvety of youth. Like the Catholic Church, he liked to catch his converts young. He was at the height of his good looks, peddling the fire to light the imagination of virgin youth. He was not fooled by Josephine Langton’s haircut or shapeless dress code, but he was aware of her violet eyes that followed him around the lecture room, drinking in his words and gobbling up anything else she could see. The queer aspect of the girl was that below her right eye was a tiny red birthmark, the shape of a diamond.
In the lecture hall, Wolfgang was certain of the rightness of what he said but when he went home to his barren and lonely flat, he was not so sure. Since the Greeks had given hemlock to Socrates – and before, with the Persians and Egyptians, the ancient Chinese – men had risen up and proclaimed the way to man’s salvation. The whisky bottle was some comfort but expensive, and drinking alone was not the best way to nurture his soul. Dangerously, he understood too much; the task of living was not all the joy he had expected from his years of thinking; ‘futility’ and ‘waste of time’ were notions frequently on his mind.
The pursuit of revolution had dominated his youth, taking away the comforts of marriage and children, the normality of family life, for better or for worse. His belief in communism was all he had needed to sustain his life. He was terrified of losing his faith.
She found him one autumn evening at the end of September in Holland Park where a symphony orchestra played to the summer trees and people on the grass, picnicking and blissfully content on a warm dry night, sent their long shadows lengthening across the grass. She had overheard him talking to a maths lecturer.
“I didn’t know classical music went with Karl Marx,” she said, sitting next to him on the soft grass while the musicians changed their music sheets.
“Hello!” He was surprised, disturbed from his reverie induced by the music. “Not much is free in London. I like the park as much as the music. Soothing, both of them. Why, art is important to man. Art and nature. They soothe his jaded nerves. What are you doing here, Jo?”
“Sitting on the grass.”
He gave her a queer look, and the music began again, Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He forgot her next to him on the grass, losing himself in the music and the melancholy of his life. She was only a child, not to be bored with the approaching pain of middle age. His problems were not for youthful ears, if anyone’s at all. The swallows were flying high, making him think of their journey out to Africa. The summer was spent. Desperately, he made the music take away the thoughts that tangled in his mind.
For young Will, autumn brought the magic of the woods. For his twelfth birthday his parents had given him a single-barrelled .410 shotgun, accurate at thirty yards. The dream of his childhood had come true. Across the farm of Langton Manor flew fat wood pigeons that kinked in flight at the sight of a man carrying a long stick. The sloping hills to the cliffs were burrowed by rabbits, the big bucks thumping the ground when Will came looking, sending the kits scampering back to safety in their holes. Seagulls, lazy on the sea-salt air, ignored the boy, turning their wings to dip and dive.
There was freedom in every stride and power in the gun crooked under his arm. A weekly border from his prep school, Will was the only child left in the house. The young hunter strode the woods and dales, the hedgerows, the close-cropped hills above the cliffs and pounding sea, as happy as a boy can ever be, content in his pursuit, bringing food back to the family. Somehow he knew his father and grandfather had done it all before him and the knowledge bridged the gap of age for all of them, the fledgling working for his spurs, the shared and constant joy of youth.
Will skinned and gutted his rabbits and hares, plucked the pigeons and once a pheasant. Everything was eaten, nothing ever thrown away. Even the boy understood the privilege he enjoyed to cull the wildlife on the farm and each new weekend he changed the warren for the woods. He knew the dog-fox and the vixen, the owls and sparrowhawks, the bird-nests in the hedgerows stark from the fallen leaves. He was a part of them as they were a part of him. In the wet, he tramped in gumboots, a black oilskin coat and hat: nothing kept him from the fields after the light came up with morning. He ate his sandwiches in the cave at Dancing Ledge and no one day was ever dull. The boy needed nothing but the magic of the woods, alone.
Winter took a grip on the countryside in mid-November when the first frosts turned the ruts in the farm roads to steel. The preparations for Christmas had begun. Granda had the job of smoking the hogs, young six-month-old porkers, and turning three of them into hams and bacon. He fuelled the big smoker with oak shavings and was as content as Will in the fields. Ever since any of them could remember, which included the repeated stories of Granda’s grandparents, Christmas at Langton Manor was the focal point of the year and relatives from far and wide came to the family home. The geese were fattened, plum pudding taken from the cellar and topped with brandy, pickles made and the ingredients for a huge Christmas cake put aside, ready for the big bake with the pies and tarts. It was the period of great and joyful expectations when the year’s worries were put aside to celebrate the foundations of a Christian home, part ancestral, part pagan with the Christmas tree, part son of God all blessed in old tradition, giving the family hope for the future from the God proud of the past. The weeks were frantic with Adelaide and Red, Granda, the old cook, more family than servant, two of the labourers’ wives who helped at the big house, the dogs, all four of them border collies for the sheep, the cats, six of them of no determinable pedigree for the rats and mice, all scurrying about the big house in constant bursts of energy.
When Hilary came back for the hols from Stanmore, now fifteen years old, he was pushed out of the house by Will to be shown all the new, exciting nests and lairs. Despite the age difference they were still best friends, and it was Will who first heard his friend was entering the priesthood in eighteen months after he wrote his school certificate.
“I want to be a missionary,” Hilary told Will. “Go out to Africa, bring them the word of God and true salvation.”
“Africa?” Will picked up on. “Wouldn’t mind going to Africa. All those lions and tigers.”
“There are no tigers in Africa.” Hilary had been doing his homework.
“Have you told Dad?”
“The group captain won’t mind.”
“No, don’t suppose he will. Dad likes God a lot.”
“Don’t we all?” said Hilary, serious with his new conviction.
“I like Christmas,” said Will more hopefully.
“Christmas is just part of it,” Hilary said very seriously, imitating his headmaster. Hilary wanted to say more, to explain the wonderful feeling that had taken him when the headmaster had asked him a few months after his confirmation whether he wished to join the Church and he had answered ‘yes’, the missionary part and Africa coming
later. But Will had gone off behind the hedgerow looking for neither of them knew what.
Josephine had told her mother she was bringing a friend for Christmas which was normal in the Langton family. What Adelaide did not expect when he arrived was a man, and a man the same age as Adelaide and a contemporary of Group Captain Red Langton, father of the four children, all but one of whom was grown up. Granda had chuckled, got into his rattletrap of a car and gone off to Corfe Castle and the Ship Inn: it had mostly been the expression on his son’s face at the idea of entertaining a German for Christmas, not the age and relationship to Josephine, that had sent him off for a pint. Old Harold Langton had seen it all and nothing gave him a surprise. When he told his cronies in the corner of the bar, the guffaws of laughter was enough reward for the journey.
“Now don’t you go telling the tale round Langton Matravers,” he said with a wink, knowing the German up at the big house, right under the group captain’s nose, would be the talk of the district by breakfast time.
Wolfgang had known it was a mistake to accept his student’s invitation to spend Christmas with her family but he had made so many mistakes by then it did not seem to matter. When they had walked through Holland Park in the gloaming on their way to their respective homes, he had stupidly invited her up to his flat for coffee and a chat, master and student. She had seen the Scotch bottle and suggested a drink, sitting on the carpet at his feet while he talked. Josephine began nursing her only drink and Wolfgang kept topping up his own by the light of the lamp from the street. It had been a Friday, with a long, lonely weekend stretching out before him and he enjoyed talking to an attentive audience. His colleague, the mathematics lecturer, was two years younger than Wolfgang, single, intelligent and more than interesting, but women of thirty-seven failed to excite him, to make him interested in them as a woman rather than a friend. Wolfgang Baumann liked young women and, worse, young women liked him but all the ones he ever met were his students and they were off limits as much from his own understanding of right and wrong as the college rules. If the turmoil in Germany and the war had not kept him apart from women, he would have expended his energy in lustful youth at the right time of his life.
In the weeks to come he blamed the whisky, his loneliness, his lack of family when all he had to do was blame himself. The arm on the shoulder had brought the young lady up onto the sofa, in the process riding up her ugly dress to the middle of young, healthy, surprisingly sunburnt thighs. Wiggling to hear the words of revolutionary wisdom better, Wolfgang giving her what she wanted to hear, had made it worse and revealed a flash of white, virginal panties that made Wolfgang pour himself another Scotch, thereby, and certainly without intention, lowering his power of resistance. When he finally put a hand on the thigh, all hell was let loose, the nights of Josephine’s frustration with Sofia finally finding the right object of her desire. Frustration met frustration on the old couch watched from only a few feet away by the street light, and when she cried out in real pain, he realised he had penetrated her virginity and what the Scotch, the lamplight and his male desire had started would not go away in a hurry, especially after they made love through the whole weekend, only going out once to buy two pints of milk and a loaf of bread.
Ever since arriving at Langton Manor, by which time Josephine had moved out of the bedsitter and into his flat in the suburb of Holland Park, and seeing the group captain’s uniform in the downstairs closet when he had gone to the toilet, he had been careful not to bring up the war. During his internment, some of the guards had been RAF, so he had known the rank of the uniform arm sticking out from the coats in the closet as he relieved himself, the realisation swiftly curtailing the even flow of his water. His only consolation was the girl being over eighteen, but that would not stop the wrath of the father. As more and more guests arrived, most of whom had the name of Critchley or Langton, he hoped to be less conspicuous. The eldest son was not coming home for Christmas, a fact mentioned once and dropped.
When he asked Josephine she had said, “Oh, Randolph. Army. National service. You know… My twin’s coming down this afternoon. Byron’s in the dog box for avoiding the army, rigging his medical, Granda says, and Randolph failed to get a commission. Now there’s only Will. My Uncle Cliff was in the ranks. TUC, now. You’ll like Uncle Cliff. His politics and philosophy are the same as yours. Ma says he’s the black sheep of her family which is nonsense… Byron’s bringing a girl. Poor Mother. Can’t get over we’re grown up with minds of our own. You must talk to Father. Make him see socialism is the only answer.”
Wolfgang took a path to the left where they were walking in the leafless woods, the trees stark, fingers pointing to a leaden sky. The last thing he intended bringing up in Langton Manor, where the same family had lived for generations, was communism and returning the land to its rightful owners, the people… He was in enough trouble already if her father ever found out.
Aunty Eve, Adelaide’s aunt on her mother’s side, and great-aunt to Will, Byron, Josephine and Randolph, took one look at the situation and told Adelaide that Jo was in love.
“Don’t be silly, Aunt Eve. She’s only a child, he’s her lecturer, nothing more.”
“Twaddle. The girl’s even done her hair.”
“She’s barely eighteen.”
“I was married and widowed by her age.” There was a brief moment of silence as both of them remembered the First World War.
“I hadn’t thought of that,” said Adelaide.
“You’d better. He’s far too old. There’ll be trouble.” And Aunt Eve had a reputation for always being right.
“The hair does look better,” said Adelaide, thinking to herself.
“Something good always comes out of something bad. Fact of life. And they’re sleeping together. See it in her eyes. Way she looks at him. You don’t look at your lecturer like that if you are only listening to his words. Man must be forty, probably a communist if he’s London School of Economics… And he’s German. Next thing we’ll find out he’s a Jew, or she’s pregnant. Have a word with her.”
“You wouldn’t like to…?”
“No. I never interfere in other people’s business. World would be much better off if we stopped interfering. She’s your business and you’re mine. Widowed old aunts have a job to do in the family and I’ve just done mine. Oh, and you’re about to tell young Clifford to get a proper job. Trade unions are tantamount to extortion. Extortion or blackmail. I never know which it is but they’re just as bad as each other. Can’t have the family going to pot.”
Jasmine Blackburn was bored. She had determined not to be lonely on Christmas Day and was paying the price. Her affair with Byron was over but the offer to spend Christmas at Langton Manor had been accepted weeks before. Everyone was old and family, or too young and family, too young even for Jasmine. The idea of turning a future missionary on his head had crossed her mind during the family silence after Hilary announced at breakfast he was entering the Church when he left school, the surprise even showing on the face of the group captain. Two of the male cousins were just not on and if she had to walk another yard in the country, she would scream. Soggy leaves underfoot and dripping trees were not her idea of fun, the sight of dead birds hanging by their feet turned her stomach, and when young Will with all good intention thrust a dead rabbit at her face she almost gave him a clout.
“Don’t you like rabbits?” Will had said, deliberately dripping blood on the girl’s shoes.
“Not dead ones.”
“You can’t eat them when they are alive,” replied Will with a small boy’s practical logic. “You’ll like the look of a leg on your plate.”
Jasmine had pulled away, looked at the blood on her shoes and been sick in the bushes, much to Will’s satisfaction.
The only possible alternative to boredom was the tall German even though she did not like older men. The fun would be in annoying Byron’s sister who was always going off about the welfare state and what the Labour Party were doing for the people
. She had even glanced at Cliff but shied away when he took the panacea of socialism a step further than Josephine.
Bored, she had stepped into the conversation. “Everyone getting it all for nothing will soon have the English doing no work at all,” repeating something her father had said at which she had smiled as neither father nor daughter were candidates for hard work.
“You must agree with us,” Cliff had said, turning to Wolfgang.
“I have learnt never to disagree with a lady.” There was even a trace of his German accent as he spoke. The flash of anger directed by Josephine fried Jasmine.
Tea had been served in the morning room and Uncle Cliff had mounted his hobby horse, encouraged by Josephine. Log fires were burning at either end of the room and outside it was cold – not as cold as the winter of 1947, but the air was wet, blown by an east wind. The dogs were flat on their sides around the fire, interspersed with sleeping cats. The big sash windows rattled with the wind but the room was warm despite the tall ceiling. Old, dark paintings hung on the walls and the furniture was vintage, well tried by the Langton generations. The origins of some of the pieces were only known to the ancestors. It was of some comfort and beauty that had come about by trial and error. At night, the burgundy curtains were drawn against the darkening chill to create a feeling of safety.
