GOOD DAUGHTERS

by MARY HOCKING

  ‘I was wondering if there was any news of Katia,’ she said nervously. ‘I thought she was supposed to be back by now.’

  ‘They have taken my grandparents and Katia away,’ Jacov said. ‘Someone wrote to tell us. The letter was not signed.’

  They all looked at her now, with the exception of Mr Vaseyelin, and there was no doubting their resentment. Anyone would think I had come to take them away, Alice thought. Aloud, she said, ‘I’ll tell Daddy. He will know what to do.’

  She was not sure what her father’s reaction would be, but when she told him what Jacov had said, he came with her at once. He seemed at first unaware of the family’s hostility. ‘I am sure you will find that this is something which can be sorted out,’ he said briskly, by no means displeased to take charge. ‘But I think you should notify the Foreign Office without delay.’

  The man by the mantelpiece, whom Mr Fairley took to be a distant relative, gave a short, bitter laugh. During the whole conversation he did not once turn to face Mr Fairley, but he contrived nevertheless to invest the proceedings with a profound pessimism which brought to nothing all Mr Fairley’s energy and positive thinking.

  At the mention of the Foreign Office Anita, who had been regarding Mr Fairley with suspicion, crossed herself. Mrs Vaseyelin said, ‘First Sonya and now Katia,’ as though the intervening period between the death of the one and the disappearance of the other was only an agonized moment of waiting for the completion of a dreadful act.

  ‘It is much too soon to despair,’ Stanley Fairley said sharply. She turned her head away from the possibility of hope. There was neither anger nor surprise, pain nor reproach, in her face.

  Stanley Fairley, confirmed in his opinion that foreigners have no idea how to behave in a crisis, turned to Jacov. ‘You must go to the Foreign Office and show them this letter which you have received. Katia is a British subject, I take it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘We always meant to do something about it,’ Jacov said wretchedly.

  Stanley Fairley swallowed his impatience. ‘Nevertheless, I think you should go to the Foreign Office. If it will be of any help, I will come with you.’

  ‘If you please.’

  Jacov turned to explain to his mother, speaking in Russian as though she no longer had a command of English. Anita interrupted, her little black peasant’s eyes glancing slyly at Mr Fairley from time to time. It was plain that she was advising Jacov against accompanying Mr Fairley. Mrs Vaseyelin raised a hand to quiet her. Good manners must be preserved even now; she gave Mr Fairley a bow which indicated that he was to be humoured. The twins now came to him, arguing fiercely in Russian. Mr Fairley looked at the room. The Vaseyelins had lived here for at least ten years but there was little to mark their occupation; this room might have been a place where people had set camp, expecting to move on at any moment. What have they been doing all these years? he thought; what has been going on in their minds?

  Jacov detached himself from his family. ‘I am ready now.’

  At this point, to Mr Fairley’s astonishment, the man by the mantelpiece cried out hoarsely, ‘My daughter, oh my beautiful daughter!’

  Jacov’s brothers and Anita watched as they walked down the path, for all the world as though there was some danger involved in going out into the open.

  On the bus they were silent, Mr Fairley thinking how typical of the Vaseyelins that, having conjured up a father, he should prove so singularly incapable of addressing himself to the problems of his family; Jacov impenetrable in his own thoughts.

  The man whom they saw at the Foreign Office was polite, but had little information to give and few suggestions to make, beyond a vague promise to do whatever was possible.

  ‘The grandparents owned a chain of stores, you say?’

  ‘Shoe shops,’ Jacov said.

  ‘We do know, of course, that a number of Jewish-owned stores have been closed.’

  ‘We all know that,’ Stanley Fairley pointed out. ‘What we don’t know is what happened to the owners.’

  The man said, ‘Precisely.’

  Stanley Fairley paused to give Jacov the chance to speak. The young man had sat for most of the interview staring at a shelf on which there was an untidy clutter of books. He appeared to be imposing an eye-test on himself. Whenever a question was asked by Mr Fairley he screwed up his eyes, focussing on a particular title.

  Mr Fairley said, ‘What about these . . . concentration camps we hear about now? A meaningless phrase if ever there was one, probably a cover for something rather nasty.’

  The man made a steeple of his fingers and looked down his nose at it. Jacov put his head to one side to study the spine of a volume. The man said, ‘I have to be honest with you,’ – not choosing to answer this question – either because he knew too much or too little. ‘We have had a number of enquiries similar to yours.’

  ‘You mean, cases of English schoolgirls who have gone to Germany for their summer holiday and not returned?’

  ‘English schoolgirls, no.’

  ‘To all intents and purposes, she is English.’

  ‘Not for diplomatic purposes, I fear. Please believe me, we will do everything in our power.’ He looked at Stanley Fairley. ‘You are a relative?’

  ‘I am Mr Vaseyelin’s next-door neighbour.’ Stanley Fairley was dismayed to realize he had had an impulse to disown the Vaseyelins, and he added resolutely. ‘A friend of the family.’

  The man suggested that Jacov might like to give detailed information about Katia, and for this purpose he took him to another room. The man returned on his own, and Stanley Fairley took the opportunity to say to him, ‘How serious is this, do you think?’

  The man shrugged his shoulders. ‘I couldn’t tell.’ Then, for a moment, his impassive calm was broken and he said waspishly, ‘These people, why can’t they use a little sense! If they can’t bring themselves to apply for British citizenship, at least you would think they would stay in this country where they are safe.’

  ‘Then you do think it is serious?’ Mr Fairley was dismayed.

  ‘If that letter is genuine it can hardly be anything but serious, can it?’ The man’s mouth twitched in a thin, caustic smile. ‘However, I have to tell you that the general view here is that there is a lot of exaggeration. Once Hitler feels more secure, the situation in Germany will improve.’ His cold blue eyes looked at Mr Fairley. ‘Hitler believes he is encircled. We may have to revert to the flat earth theory, but all things are possible in the best of all possible worlds.’

  A few minutes later Mr Fairley and Jacov left the Foreign Office. It was a cloudy day with rain in the wind. ‘Would you like to have something to eat?’ Mr Fairley asked. Jacov, however, preferred to stay in the open, so they walked into St James’s Park and sat on a bench by the lake, watching people feeding the ducks.

  Mr Fairley, who had not found this encounter with officialdom reassuring, said, ‘Rather a coldblooded type, I’m afraid; but efficient, no doubt.’ A child bounced a coloured ball which rolled beneath the bench and Mr Fairley, glad of diversion, bounced the ball back to the child, who immediately recognized a playmate. Jacov dug clenched fists into his jacket pockets and stared at the lake, its grey waters ruffled by the wind. The child’s mother came and led the child away. Stanley Fairley stared after it regretfully. ‘Katia will come back,’ he said. He felt empty and hungry and was aware that his voice lacked its usual conviction. ‘I’m not sure about your grandparents, but there won’t be any trouble over Katia. She is only a child – even the Germans will realize they have made a mistake.’

  Jacov said, ‘Yes,’ holding himself together because he must not upset Mr Fairley who had been kind.

  Soon, a light drizzle began to fall and they got up and walked towards Victoria where Mr Fairley, who was almost faint with hunger and depression, insisted that Jacov must have something to eat. As they consumed baked beans on toast they watched the people in the street: giggling girls in cotton frocks holding han
dbags over their heads to shield themselves from the rain, a pavement artist laying sacking over his half-completed work, the commissionaire of an hotel summoning a taxi for an elderly woman in furs. Mr Fairley told Jacov that he must visit the German Embassy and contact his Member of Parliament and Jacov, nodding his head, sat back in his corner and wished that Mr Fairley’s voice lent itself to a more confidential tone.

  After they left the cafe they caught a bus outside Victoria Station and Mr Fairley read the Evening Standard, which occupied him for most of the journey. Jacov looked from the window as they came to streets which had been familiar to him for many years now. Roads ran off on either side of the High Street; he had no idea where they went, had never investigated any of them with the exception of the one that led to St Bartholomew’s hall. He did not understand the topography of the neighbourhood and would have had to study his rate demand to find out in which borough he lived. As for central government, this was an area of English life of which he intended to remain ignorant; nothing would induce him to consult his Member of Parliament, thereby inviting the intervention of the State in his affairs and putting the remainder of his family in jeopardy.

  ‘I shall write to the newspapers, of course,’ Stanley Fairley said, folding the Evening Standard.

  ‘I should be most grateful,’ Jacov said politely.

  They were travelling together on this bus because Katia had failed to return to England and an unknown letterwriter had said she had been ‘taken away’. But even the bare facts of the situation presented them with no common ground. Mr Fairley applied his intellect and imagination to the concept of being ‘taken away’, and thought he had arrived at a fair understanding of the enormity of it. Mr Fairley had been born in Sussex; he had fought a war on foreign soil and then returned home to marry a Cornishwoman, and the extent of his travels since then had been a move from Sussex to London. He saw Katia’s predicament as the result of a particularly unpleasant upsurge of German nationalism. Jacov and his brothers and sister had been born in Russia, had left in the night and slept in cellars in strange houses in unknown countries, they had travelled across a continent and eventually they had come to England, where their aristocratic father now played the violin outside Earls Court station. And yet, Katia had been taken in the night. The footsteps in the moonless street, the knock on the door were, to Jacov, the announcement of the time and place of an appointment from which there was no exemption.

  They got off the bus and walked up Pratts Farm Road. Jacov, hunching into his coat, said, ‘My father has lost two beloved daughters now.’

  Something in his tone disturbed Mr Fairley who was, in any case, unsatisfied with what had passed. He said sharply, ‘Look here, you must keep up your hope, you know.’

  Jacov said, ‘Yes, of course,’ and tried to arrange his features into an expression which would be acceptable; but it was the eyes which Mr Fairley was watching at that moment. The lad who, years ago, had snared him in the trap of pity had grown into a man and, looking at him, Mr Fairley was surprised to realize how mistaken he had been to equate Jacov’s condition with the deprivation of the children from the slums of Acton. The slums were within the compass of Mr Fairley’s life – a terrible indictment of his society, but part of it. Jacov Vaseyelin had engaged his pity under false pretences. Mr Fairley, standing at his garden gate – within a few paces of home and the comfort of tea and saffron cake – looked into Jacov’s eyes and saw that the things which for him had stood secure for a thousand years were to Jacov so much ephemera to be blown away in the wind; all the law, the learning, the hard-won human values, all blown in the wind.

  He went into his house feeling uneasy in his world, and was immediately set upon by Judith. ‘Alice has been telling me that Katia had a boyfriend. Tell Daddy what you told me.’

  ‘His name is Ernst. She didn’t tell me his surname, but she said his father is in the Nazi party and he knows Hermann Goering. So if his family is important, they won’t let anything happen to Katia, will they?’

  Stanley Fairley felt one of his more severe depressions coming on. ‘I’ll take my tea upstairs with me. I must get down to writing to the newspapers.’ As he sat at his desk, he found himself wondering whether Katia would come back. Absurd, of course . . . He took a sheet of paper and laid it in front of him. No words came.

  It was not the newspapers with which he was concerned; no editor would have the answer to the questions which he now asked himself. He had faced another crisis during the year, but in the matter of Louise he had been able to take the blame to himself. There was no way in which he could place himself in the centre of this tragedy, if tragedy it was. The only person to blame in this case was God. How could God let this thing happen to a young girl like Katia, who had never done any harm to anyone? He heard himself crying out to God like a protesting child. Yet he read his Bible every day and it was all there. How little he had considered what it meant: the suffering servant, the birth in the stable, the journey into Jerusalem riding on an ass. He had not examined the implications of this for modern Christianity, had still thought in terms of Lord, King, Almighty, of a Power to be called into action whenever the situation warranted intervention. Had he really believed God was like Jove, up there in the sky ready with a thunderbolt to toss down on miscreants? The truth was that, in the matter of obtaining Katia’s release, God was no more effective than the man at the Foreign Office – had, in fact, less earthly power. God, as the Bible frequently reminded one, was to be found not among the captains and the kings, but among the rejected and defeated, among those already in captivity. God was not strong as man judges strength.

  ‘Have I never really believed?’ he asked himself. ‘Have I only been in love with ultimate authority?’

  He could not write the letters while his mind was in such turmoil. He hurried down the stairs to Judith who was taking washing from the line.

  ‘That can wait,’ he said.

  ‘You won’t say that if you don’t have a clean shirt tomorrow.’ It looked as if more rain might come; the most urgent need as far as she was concerned was to get the washing in quickly. Even when she finally consented to come into the drawing-room, she was impatient and cut short his exposition of his dilemma.

  ‘Stanley, you are always examining and re-examining what you believe!’

  ‘This is different, surely you can see that?’

  ‘It’s not different, only more serious. This self-examination is part of your make-up. If only you would realize that and try to avoid it when you feel it coming on, you wouldn’t get yourself in such a state.’

  ‘ “Avoid it when you feel it coming on”! You reduce everything to the terms of the schoolroom.’

  He went out of the room, slamming the door behind him, and barely spoke to her for the rest of the evening. But that night he came to her, wanting to assert himself and yet at the same time like a child asking to be comforted. This mixture of male arrogance and abject need had once roused her anger but now, understanding better, she could give in to him without feeling diminished. She loved him and comforted him and they were at peace.

  But it was their very loving which disturbed him when he settled down in his study the next day. In the last year he had lost weight, and with it had gone some of his thrustfulness. Sometimes, when caught unawares, his eyes seemed to start out of his head, not with anger but an emotion more akin to fear. He had that look about him now as he meditated on the nature of love. Love was so vulnerable. In his own life he came nearest to his Christian calling in his love for his wife and his daughters; yet it was in this area of his life that he was most vulnerable. Was vulnerability then an inseparable part of loving, something woven into the seamless robe? Of Christ this was acceptable, at least in his earthly passion. But what of God, who was perfect love? Did the very perfection cast out vulnerability along with other weaknesses? One must suppose so, since the alternative was to regard God as totally vulnerable – a thought so disquieting that neither Mr Fairley’s intellect nor hi
s emotions were prepared to have truck with it.

  He looked down at his desk. He would write the letters to the newspapers. But suppose nothing came of his efforts, what then? The Vaseyelins would not go away, they would continue to live next door and for a time every morning he would enquire if they had heard from Katia, and then there would come a time when it would be kinder not to ask. After that, would he go about his own affairs, shape the privet hedge, mend the fences, forget?

  He picked up his pen and wrote, ‘Dear Editor . . .’

  When Claire came back from the Children’s Special Service Mission camp, her family greeted her safe arrival with a combination of joy and guilt. Claire was not joyful. As the train bore her towards Liverpool Street she had looked with dismay at the soot-blackened buildings and the forest of chimneys belching smoke, and thought how awful it was that life had to be lived in such surroundings. The squalor of Shepherd’s Bush had depressed her utterly.