After the Cabaret
Page 18
Then Eugene and Sally were dancing. But Eugene kept saying, ‘What upsets me is that you didn’t tell me. What did you think I’d say? That it was wrong that you had it? Didn’t you trust—’
And then there was a big hand on Sally’s shoulder and a Southern American voice said to Eugene, ‘Mind if I cut in?’
‘Not if the lady doesn’t object,’ said Eugene, expressionlessly.
‘I do, actually,’ Sally said. ‘I’m dancing with this man. And I don’t know you.’
‘I think it’s better if you dance with me,’ he said politely. He was a tall man, with a lieutenant’s stripes. ‘Don’t you, boy?’ he said to Eugene.
‘Like I said, it’s the lady’s choice,’ said Eugene, but his eyes told Sally to dance with the lieutenant. Sally wouldn’t.
‘I don’t think so,’ she said. She moved a little closer to Eugene’s rigid body.
‘Dance with him,’ he muttered.
The eyes of ten soldiers who had massed behind the lieutenant were on him. Immediately a dozen black soldiers came from all corners of the hall. The band stopped playing. Couples scattered to the edge of the floor.
A British soldier observed, in a disgruntled tone, ‘It’s about time these blokes thought about fighting the enemy once in a while, instead of each other.’
‘Ain’t that what I’m always telling them?’ said a vast white-helmeted military policeman, pushing past him. He grabbed a soldier and fielded him into the arms of the MP behind him. ‘Do you guys from Dixie never learn?’
Meanwhile Eugene had dragged Sally away from the core of the fight. A man in a red jacket beckoned them down a passageway at the back of the dance hall where he pulled up a bar and opened the door into an alleyway. They ran up it to a deserted street with another black soldier behind them. An exchange of nods between Eugene and the other man established that one would go right, the other left. ‘Same old story,’ said the other soldier. ‘Feets, do your stuff.’ He took off and Eugene and Sally found themselves back in another part of the Strand. They pulled up, panting.
‘You could have explained,’ Sally said. ‘It wasn’t your fault.’
‘Yeah. Those white boys would have up and confessed to everything,’ Eugene said harshly. ‘“Sorry, officer. We all apologise that we launched an unprovoked attack on our fellow soldiers.”’
A bus came crawling along and Eugene and Sally got on. All the seats were full, so they stood.
Sally went on with the argument. ‘What did you want me to do? Give in and dance with a perfect stranger?’
‘Didn’t you see the guys crowding up behind?’
‘No, actually.’
‘I did. And you wanted to know whether I wanted you to give in and dance with a perfect stranger. I told you then and there – yes. It wasn’t just me, you know. It was all the other guys.’
‘Look,’ she said, ‘this is England.’
‘No, Sally, it is not England. The US troops are under US military law. If you are a US enlisted man they will try you and if they want, they will hang you.’ He paused. ‘This just isn’t working out.’
‘OK, Eugene. If you want me to say I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’
‘It’s not only that.’
‘What?’ she exclaimed.
‘The baby – the fight – the baby,’ he said. He told her, ‘I’m going. Just for a while, to clear my mind. Just for a while, Sally.’ And he pushed his way down the bus and got off, leaving Sally, bewildered, still clinging to the strap. She looked back to see if she could spot him on the pavement, but there were heads in the way. Her eyes filled with tears. People who had been pretending not to listen to their conversation, pretended now not to notice what had happened, except for one old lady, sitting under Sally’s elbow.
‘You should have stuck with your own kind, girl,’ she said, though it was not clear whether she was referring to Eugene’s colour or his uniform.
‘Shut up,’ Sally said venomously. Listeners were shocked, faces set in disapproval. First, she’d been going out with a Yank, then there was something about a baby, now she’d turned on a poor old lady. It was all due to the war. It was disgusting.
‘Eugene didn’t get in touch again. Sally wrote to him at his base but he did not reply.
‘They would probably have made up the row if there had been time,’ Bruno said. ‘But it was war, there was always too much time or too little. Eugene got posted, so that seemed to be the end of it.’
Chapter 43
Greg said goodbye to Bruno in the restaurant and, thinking hard, went down the tube station steps, planning to go back to Everton Gardens and write up his notes, perhaps do some reading. Instead, on impulse, he went to the Tate Gallery. At a desk he asked for information about an artist, Eugene Hamilton.
He half expected some heavy delving and then, possibly, instructions to visit some remote gallery or archive. He was surprised when the young woman he had asked answered briskly, ‘We’ve got one. I’ll check exactly where it is.’
‘You mean you have a painting here by Eugene Hamilton, an American?’
‘Yes,’ she told him. ‘The Metropolitan in New York has more, two or three, I think.’
‘This would be a black American, around the time of the Second World War,’ persisted Greg.
‘That’s right,’ she said. She pulled out a book. ‘Here we are – Eugene Hamilton, born in New York in nineteen fifteen, illustrator, painter, relationship with the Harlem Renaissance. There’s nothing after the fifties, though he was certainly painting immediately after the Second World War. In fact, that’s the point.’ And she told him how to find the painting.
The picture was largely in blacks and browns. From the light, it was dusk and at the centre of the canvas was a glow of red, a small fire around which six figures sat – three men, two women and a child. All were emaciated and in rags. One of the men, gaunt and shaven-headed, wore a tattered uniform of some striped material. A woman, a shawl over her head, looked out at Greg with huge, blank eyes, eyes that chilled and sobered the viewer. Behind the group was a long wooden barrack block. The child, a wizened dwarf hunched over an enamel mug, was gazing, plainly in fear, at something or someone invisible to one side of the picture. All the others looked into space or at the fire, incapable, it seemed, of any thought, movement, reaction.
There could be no doubt of what the picture showed.
Greg gazed at it in awe for some minutes. Then he ran downstairs and spoke again to the woman at the enquiry desk. ‘When you said the Second World War was the point, did you mean that all he painted were war pictures?’
‘Pictures of the Holocaust,’ she said. ‘Just a few, perhaps four, and some drawings, and then nothing more. I’ve just looked it up. His regiment, or part of it, was stationed at Dachau to guard the camp after it was liberated.’
‘My God!’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Terrible.’
‘Is he alive?’
She checked her book again. ‘It looks as if no one knows. He disappeared.’
‘Disappeared?’
She nodded.
‘Can I get that book you have?’ he asked. She wrote down the title for him.
Greg crossed the road and stood looking down into the swirling water of the Thames. He felt very sober. Now his story included a young American, much the same age as himself, first an inheritor of that bygone world of the Harlem Renaissance, then a guard in the terrible Dachau camp. And it seemed the young man had shown what he had seen, then ceased to draw or paint.
Shaken, he made his way back to Everton Gardens and Katherine. When he came in, her voice seemed to come from a distance as she said, ‘I’ve been wondering what to do at Christmas. I thought of going to my uncle Simon’s. Will you come with me?’
Greg, his mind still full of Eugene Hamilton, said, ‘Christmas? Oh, yes, sure. I haven’t any plans. Who is your uncle? Where does he live?’
‘In a little village in Dorset – very pretty. He’s my great-uncle, really, my grandfa
ther’s brother, but he’s only about ten years older than Dad. The only reason I can give my parents for not spending Christmas at home. And it’ll be much more fun at Simon’s, more still if you come. I know he’d be pleased to meet you.’
‘I’ll rent a car,’ Greg said. ‘It’d be good to get out of London.’
‘Great,’ she said. ‘Any more news of Pym?’
‘Why should there be?’ he asked. And then told her eagerly about the picture of Sally, and Eugene and Sally’s row, and of his discoveries at the Tate. He said also, ‘I’ve asked Bruno to dinner here tomorrow and he accepted. I thought you’d like to meet him.’
‘Bruno Lowenthal, coming here!’ she exclaimed. ‘Oh, Greg, what a disappointment! I’ve got to go back early to Cambridge tomorrow. It’s an emergency – a sudden funding crisis, a half-million shortfall just discovered and consequent staffing and curriculum changes. Don’t ask how they mislaid half a million. But you know what it’s like, these days. You have to be there when these things are discussed. My professor’s demanded my presence. Or else.’
Greg was disappointed and a little upset that she did not seem more sorry to go. The evening was dull. They ate, and opened a bottle of wine of which Katherine drank more than her fair share. Greg phoned the Metropolitan Museum in New York and confirmed that they had several Hamiltons on their walls. They agreed to fax him any information they had about the artist, but said that they had no current address for him. Any business connected with the paintings was done through his late brother’s lawyers in Atlanta. This address they agreed to send to Greg. He went back into the living room and opened another bottle of wine. As soon as they got into bed Katherine fell asleep. Greg lay awake, feeling lonely.
Next day he said, as she packed, ‘I guess you’ll be stuck in Cambridge pretty much up to Christmas now. Shall I pick you up?’
‘Mm,’ agreed Katherine, trying to zip her holdall.
By now he was wondering if Katherine had suddenly gone off him, and asked, ‘Is the visit still on?’
‘Of course!’ she exclaimed, finally closing the zip. ‘It’ll be wonderful. It’s a beautiful house, called Chapel Manor Farm, stuffed with paintings and china and all the rest of it. Simon inherited it from some ‘relative’. But we think his benefactor was more a lover. The family connection was pretty tenuous. You’ll love it – it’s so English, fields, village green, incredible views. Can you pick me up on the twenty-third? Sit on this little case, darling. I can’t close it. I don’t know why. I haven’t bought anything extra.’
It was on the bed so Greg sat on it and asked, ‘You’re not going just to avoid Bruno, are you?’
She looked at him incredulously, ‘Don’t be daft. Why should I? I told you the reason I had to go. To be honest, I think my job may be at stake.’ She fell on him and they made love, beside the little suitcase, one last time.
Chapter 44
After Katherine’s departure Greg was feeling low and lonely but pulled himself together and fixed a careful dinner for Bruno: a plate of antipasto from a nearby delicatessen, to be followed by meatloaf and tomato sauce, his speciality, then pastries, fruit and cheese. While he was tending the tomato sauce he received the material from the Metropolitan Museum, along with the address of Eugene Hamilton’s brother’s lawyer. He wrote a letter of enquiry to them and faxed the letter as well as posting it. Later Bruno arrived and they ate in front of the gas fire in the little sitting room. That was when Bruno produced the picture of Sally, nicely mounted. ‘I have a man who does a lot of work for me,’ he said, ‘so he did it quickly. I knew how much you wanted to see it again.’
Greg did not mention his fear that Bruno would not, in the end, give it to him. He accepted and propped it on the mantelpiece where Sally, annoyed and laughing in spite of herself, her big sack on her shoulder, looked down at them.
‘Be careful it doesn’t fade,’ Bruno said.
‘I will. I can’t thank you enough – really not. Do you think it would be possible to use it as a cover for the book?’
‘Why not? It’s yours. Eugene gave it to me. I’m giving it to you. Here’s a document stating that.’
Overwhelmed at this generosity Greg spluttered his thanks.
‘We must get on,’ Bruno said firmly, between mouthfuls of his antipasto. And while keen enough himself to get Bruno’s story as fast as possible Greg wondered again at the old man’s sudden emphasis on speed.
Chapter 45
‘Sally was rather quiet and subdued after Eugene left,’ Bruno said. ‘She didn’t have a leg to stand on, really, for during the course of the relationship she’d told everybody repeatedly, even Eugene himself, how Theo was the only man she’d ever loved. Once he’d gone, though, she’d lie around the flat when she’d done her postal deliveries, saying, ‘I’ve got the blues.’
‘There were other reasons for her depression. Pym was feeding her with secret reports about measures being taken against European Jews, the deportations and such. All Jews had had to wear a yellow star since September ’forty-one, and at the beginning of ’forty-two, though we didn’t know it then, Heydrich had started organising what they called “the final solution”. By nineteen forty-three millions had been murdered. This is the sort of information that Pym relayed to Sally and, of course, it made her unhappy. Not everybody was familiar with the details of all this, but as early as December ’forty-two the British Government knew enough about the exterminations to condemn them publicly. Few could have guessed how bad it was, though.’ Bruno sighed. ‘Not till the end.’
‘Then, Ralph Hodd, who had escaped from his prison camp and gone back, unhurt, to Bomber Command, was killed in a raid over Germany. Sally’s mother sent her the newspaper cutting announcing his death, without a word of comment.’
‘Why would Pym have been trying to upset Sally with all this information about the Holocaust?’ Greg asked.
‘He thought it would be useful later,’ Bruno said.
‘Useful? I don’t understand.’
‘You will,’ said Bruno grimly. He raised a finger. ‘You must wait. You are irritated, but it will be easier by far, to take everything in order.’ He smiled. ‘I am a German, after all. Everything in order,’ he said.
Greg produced his meatloaf and tomato sauce.
‘Good,’ said Bruno. ‘Did your girlfriend help?’
‘She had to leave. Budget problems at her college.’
‘An intelligent young lady – yes?’
‘She certainly is.’
‘Will you have the pleasure of Christmas together?’
‘Yes, with her uncle, in Dorset.’
‘A charming place, Dorset,’ said Bruno, with a nasty expression on his face. Then, ‘Well, on with the tale. Sally was sad and then her mood improved a little. She was an optimist at heart. Things would get better – the struggle continues – we will overcome in the end. All that sort of thing she believed.’
‘Not a bad philosophy,’ said Greg stoutly.
‘For an American,’ Bruno said. ‘A little foolish for a European. But never mind. She went on singing, and doing her day-time job.’ Bruno broke into song in a cracked voice. ‘“Please don’t talk about me when I’m gone – no matter how I carry on – please don’t talk about me when I’m gone.”’
Greg smiled.
‘There was another song. I think she learned it from Eugene. “That don’t bother me. You can see that I ain’t free, but that don’t bother me.”’
Greg joined in and they both laughed.
‘However,’ Bruno went on, ‘unlike when Theo dumped her, she said this time that she’d given up men. “I’ve given up men, darling,”’ he quoted. ‘“From now on I’m going to be like a little nun and dedicate myself to the Party.” But there were other things going on at Pontifex Street too.
‘It was around that time that I got up one night – I couldn’t sleep I suppose – and went to the kitchen for a glass of water. I found Pym and Briggs and Geoffrey Forbes poring over some blueprints they
had spread out on the kitchen table. That wasn’t so strange. They were all concerned with secrets and naturally new scientific developments in warfare were important to them. I think what shook me was the way they looked at me when I first came in – they covered it up quickly, but I saw they were very shocked. Just that I’d come into the room. They didn’t want any witnesses, even me. I didn’t know what they were doing and I didn’t care, which they would have known well. So why the alarm? Why the secrecy? I went back to bed and forgot it as soon as possible.
‘But not really, because the next day I came in to find Sally painting her toenails red with some paint from a child’s painting kit – the red enamel used for the lead soldiers’ tunics. She was quite proud to have discovered it in a shop somewhere in Soho. And then I asked her, “Sally, do you know anywhere I could stay? Don’t tell anybody I asked.”
‘“You want to move?” she asked me. “I don’t know anywhere. Sorry.” So many houses had been destroyed and people were living in very bad accommodation, with relatives – anything. So I knew she probably would have heard of nothing and had to be content. Though, basically, I was not.
‘Cora then did a strange thing. She banned Pym from La Vie. When he arrived one night she just said, like a pub landlady, “No, you’re barred.” He tried to argue, but it was hopeless. She said it was over his bill, which was enormous, but that wasn’t it. Cora never cared about things like that. I think she smelt trouble. Pym had a good cover – his perpetual drinking and roaming around for sex masked everything. But there was a Russian sailor, for example, who spent two weeks at Pontifex Street before his ship sailed, drinking vodka straight from the bottle and singing all the time. Who was he, really? A pick-up of Pym’s, or a messenger? Although the Allies were winning the war, things at Pontifex Street seemed more unpleasant somehow than during its worst hours. The atmosphere was bad. Cora had guessed something too, I’m sure of that now.