'And America?' I suggested.
'America is only interested in the World Fair on Flushing Meadow,' Archie said irritably.
'What about this champagne, boy?' asked David.
'I expect Watson's forgotten.' Archie reached his long arm for the bell. 'The question remains, what exactly can one do.'_
'Get your blood group registered,' suggested David practically. 'They're going to need the stuff by the gallon.'
'With Spain, it was easy. One simply volunteered.' Archie often seemed genuinely to believe that he had fought on the hard-baked, blood-soaked ridges of Catalonia.
'Volunteer as an air raid warden.' I told him. 'Or a fireman. I saw in today's paper that the government wants a hundred thousand of them.'
'I'd volunteer for the Army, but what's the point when the Government are moving towards the utterly oppressive step of conscription in peacetime? Which I and every other socialist should have imagined unthinkable in this country.'
'What's the matter?' called Watson from the doorway. 'I'd like to listen to the wireless myself, you know.'
'The Cliquot, Watson.'
'You didn't mean it, did you? I didn't think this was a champagne dinner.'
'You'll find some brandy in the cocktail cabinet,' Archie told David. 'Help yourself.'
'Darling, I can't hear the jokes,' complained Elizabeth, her ears directed to _Band Waggon_ on the London Regional.
'I'm having a serious political discussion,' Archie told her severely.
'You know that I've never been in the slightest interested in politics.'
'That's what some unfortunate French aristocrat protested at the guillotine. "Which is precisely why you are here", said the executioner, strapping him down.'
Archie's tart reply sprang from her teasing about Spain and his ulcer. Elizabeth stood up, pouting, and strode from the room saying, 'I'm going to powder my nose.'
She left Archie sitting gloomily at the table. I knew that he would be instantly sorry for provoking her. I had been living in the flat almost four years since Rosie died. I had discovered that Archie's was the tenderest conscience of any I dared to probe. In a way, he turned this conscience into a talent, by which he might make a political career. David handed him a balloon glass well filled with brandy. By way of making conversation, I said, 'Have you seen that travel poster put out by the Reich Tourist Office? A beautiful coloured picture of a schloss, and underneath, _Come To Mediaeval Germany._ Either the Nazis have absolutely no sense of humour, or they flatter us with an uproarious one.'
'Can't you turn that rubbish off?' Archie scowled at the radiogram.
David obliged and sat down on the sofa, picking one of the yellow jacketed volumes from the low table before the fire, which had _The Times,_ the _Daily Worker, Apollo, Punch_ and other periodicals laid out in club-like precision. 'What's this bloody rubbish?'
'The Left Book Club', Archie told him shortly. 'You get a couple of books cheap on current affairs every month. Surely you've heard of it? It's been going two or three years now.'
'Who are the doctors prescribing such intellectual tonics?'
'Well, there's Harold Laski-'
'Of course,' said David.
'And John Strachey.' Archie swallowed some brandy. 'He was at Eton. They've fifty or sixty thousand members, you know.'
David sat frowning, flicking over the pages. 'What sort of people would those be, I wonder?'
'Not intellectuals particularly, but people who regard themselves as intellectuals. Schoolteachers, university students who've seen through their dons. Anybody who feels he can't make enough of himself, who's frustrated by the political and social system.'
'Exactly the people in Germany who got the Nazis going,' I said.
Archie made a grimace. 'I know what you mean. Steam escaping from a faulty boiler by one crack rather than another. Of course, the Left Book Club's pretty Communist. It flatters a lot of people, rather dangerously, that they're more intelligent and better educated than they actually are. But I wish I'd had the idea. It would have been more useful than going to Spain, and made a lot of money.'
Archie spoke with a Bloomsbury publisher's combination of idealism and salesmanship. He had written a novel while recovering from his duodenal ulcer-_Scrannel Pipes,_ criticized by James Agate as 'the minutes of a rather decorous meeting of a committee comprising Aldous Huxley, Michael Arlen and Ronald Firbank.' As nobody had leapt to publish it, Archie founded the Urn Press in a basement. At the time of our dinner party, he was losing a thousand or two a year in the business, as comfortably as any other moneyed and cultured young gentleman down from the University. He rose abruptly from the table, saying he had some telephone calls to make. 'I hope I didn't upset Elizabeth,' he apologized in my direction.
'Lord Meddish is in his self-analytical mood tonight,' I observed, smiling after our departed host. 'He wants to stop Hitler, but he doesn't want conscription.'
'Oh, Archie's mind is always as confused as an old woman's sewing-basket.' David sat sipping his brandy, the yellow-jacketed book on his knees. 'Do you suppose Elizabeth's having a good cry?'
'Elizabeth? Don't be silly.'
'You're pretty thick with her, aren't you?'
'On the contrary, she only lets me take her to occasions like this, when there are other people about. We never enjoy what Norman Douglas called 'a friendly teat-a-teat'. I don't see very much of her at all, really, as she spends most of the winter on the Riviera with her mother. She maintains a relationship of steely flippancy.'
'I don't know how you put up with it. I certainly wouldn't take that sort of selfishness from any woman. Even a stunner like her.
'I'd take even worse from Elizabeth,' I told him soberly. 'Surely you can understand my feelings? For years she was the untouchable embodiment of everything I wanted. Not just in the feminine way, but everything in life-money, home, _savoir faire,_ friends, parents. I was happy if she threw me a word, like a fish bone to one of Sir Edward's damn cats. Lady Tip hated me, of course, and still does. She always treated me with the utmost contempt, and I didn't see any reason why Elizabeth shouldn't do likewise.'
'Why didn't she?' asked David bluntly.
'She's much more civilized than her mother. Ever since Lady Tip was once horrible to me in her presence, she's felt guilty, perhaps. And of course my elevation to work with her father must have helped. Besides, things are changing, aren't they? Our Hitler makes class warfare look a silly game.'
'Didn't you once say she wasn't his daughter?'
'That was the gossip below stairs.'
'Personally, I think she's just a high-class prick teaser.'
Elizabeth came in, recovered from her pique and smiling. Noticing the book on David's lap, she exclaimed, 'Don't say you've taken to Mr Victor Gollancz's high-minded publications? Is he supporting this thing in Parliament to abolish flogging? You know that he doesn't eat the day when anybody's hanged, don't you? Not a thing. Daddy's seen him in the Savoy. Only a glass of champagne and a cigar.'
David knocked back his brandy and stood up. 'I must go, if I want to slip into Mary's and see Margaret before catching my train. Why is the last one to Oxford so bloody early? The dons like early nights, I suppose.'
David had been a doctor about three years. He was then working as an assistant to one of the consultant physicians at the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford. I was to be best man at Easter when he married a staff nurse he had met while doing his house jobs at St Mary's. She had been denied the feast that evening through night duty.
'What's Archie up to?' David asked Elizabeth.
'Talking to Watson about the Test Match in Durban. Apparently it rained just as England were winning. That seems to sum up our national destiny in general, doesn't it?'
'Can I take you home in a taxi?' I asked her.
'Of course, darling.'
It was a cold, windy, showery night, handfuls of rain rattling against the cab window. 'Must you go in yet?' I pleaded. 'It's dreadfully early. I whisked you off because I saw
how Archie wanted to get rid of us all.'
'I promised Daddy I shouldn't be late.'
'You mean, you don't want to be alone with me longer than it is strictly polite to allow?'
In reply, she said, 'It must be a dreadful strain living with Archie. I wonder you're not a nervous wreck.
'I don't see a lot of him. He's always out in the evenings organizing committees, speaking at meetings, engineering interviews or buying drinks for journalists. He's a crusader with many banners.'
'Archie seems to think there's going to be a war.'
'It'll be a relief, really, won't it? After having to run our lives from one of Hitler's speeches to the next.'
'If there's a war I shall do something useful.'_
'Cut your hair and make munitions. Lots of girls did last time.'
'I'd be a nurse. I'd be one now, you know, honestly. But of course you have to be twenty-one before they let you start.'
'Can I kiss you?'
She formally closed her eyes and pursed her lips. I said, _Ich Liebe dich, and du schlдfst.'_
'What's that mean?' I translated. 'Please, Jim, don't start getting pompous,' she protested, much as Gerda had.
'But you're quite aware that I do love you.'
'Don't be serious, darling. You know how being serious spoils everything.'
We lay back in our separate corners of the taxi. 'You're lucky that I'm-well, not frightened of women, but frightened of making a fool of myself over them. That happened once.'
After a moment's puzzlement, she said, 'Oh, Rosie,' rather bleakly.
'And of course, as far as you're concerned, Elizabeth, I'm still the butler's boy.'
'Why must you keep bringing that up?' she asked crossly. 'It's awfully unfair. You're like Archie, trying to make us all feel utterly ashamed of ourselves because people in Bermondsey have got less to eat for dinner than we have. Wasn't that chicken ghastly?'_
'How long are you staying with your father?'
'I don't know. Mummy may remain in Monte Carlo, though of course it's dreadfully unfashionable after Easter.'
We arrived at the newly-built block of flats in Mayfair, where Sir Edward Tiplady now lived alone. Lady Tip had walked out about the same time as King Edward the Eighth abdicated. As I reached to open the cab door, she adopted again the ceremonial expression indicating that she would allow herself to be kissed.
'Come and see _Design for Living_ tomorrow,' I asked temptingly. 'Diana Wynyard and Rex Harrison.'
'Darling, there's simply no time for going to the theatre. Tomorrow I absolutely must go to a party with Hugo Mottram.'
'Who's Hugo Mottram?'
'He's frightfully rich on the Stock Exchange. I'm having an utterly passionate affair with him. Daddy's so pleased.'
'Good night.'
'Good night, darling. You're really the most wonderfully saint-like man, and of course I completely adore you.'
The taxi drove back to Archie's. Unrequited love is painful enough, love shrivelled by frivolity can be suicidal.
20
'Jim, it was awfully good of you to waste your time with Elizabeth last night.'
Sir Edward Tiplady came hurrying into my laboratory. I had risen in the Harley Street house from basement to attic. After Lady Tip bolted he had turned the whole place into consulting rooms, which he let profitably. It was simply a doctors' shop. Our basement was now full of files and rubbish, I tested blood and urine samples in the room where I had fathered Clare. My mother had gone as cook to a small hotel in Eastbourne. My father had died shortly after the old King, knocked down by a taxi outside a pub. The house itself then had barely eighteen months to live, before being blown to bits early in the blitz
'I know that underneath she's terribly impressed meeting someone like Lord Meddish,' he continued. 'Who's always getting himself into the newspapers.'
'We were delighted to see her. She livens us all up.' Sir Edward always placed me in an avuncular relationship to Elizabeth. It seemed sage not to rectify his impression.
'I'm sure she didn't. She bored you terribly, I expect.' He was moving restlessly as ever round the white-painted, sloping-roofed room. He was growing grey, but his figure was still spare and the lines round his blue eyes no deeper. His happiness had much improved since shedding his wife. 'I really do find it hard work, chatting to bright young things these days. They don't even call themselves "bright young things" any more, do they? There seems such an enormous gap in our ideas, in the way we look at the world. And of course, Elizabeth is really very naughty, playing the _enfant terrible._ She's really too old for that sort of prankish behaviour. Have you done Mrs Cockburn's blood urea?'
'Yes, it's normal.'
'Good, the old thing's kidneys are all right after all. But I think I'll play her along. She needs a doctor to relieve her inner tensions by listening to her troubles. Her family got sick to death of them years ago. And she always pays on the nail.'
Encouraged and financed by Sir Edward, I had started a one-man biochemical and bacteriological service for neighbouring consulting rooms and the private nursing homes and clinics then multiplying in London. Mine were the coming sciences. There had been little point in identifying the germs infecting the patient, or the deficiencies of his blood and other body fluids, when the doctor could do little to rectify either misfortune. I was doing prosperously. I dressed better, I wore bow ties like Alexander Fleming. Much of my work-like Mrs Cockburn's blood urea-was to save the doctor's conscience rather than the patient's life. Cronin's _The Citadel_ had been published a couple of years, and there were still plenty of physicians in Harley Street unscrupulous about treating an imaginary illness or overrating a real one, and plenty of zealous surgeons who had to cut to earn their living. It was Domagk's sulphonamide which opened an age when so many diseases thankfully became treatable that it was no longer necessary for the doctors to invent others
'I really came up with a complaint,' He stood smiling, hands characteristically on loins, black formal jacket tucked back, monocle in eye. 'You ruined my last night's sleep. At the perfectly ungodly hour of six-forty-five somebody telephoned trying to trace you urgently. An American, of course.' I frowned, puzzled. 'He called my number, because he remembered me as the chap who'd originally introduced you.'
'Not Jeff Beckerman?' I exclaimed.
Sir Edward nodded. 'He's at the Savoy-naturally. Apparently, he got into Southampton from New York late last night. He wants to see you as soon as possible. I'd get him to stand a good dinner, if I were you.'
I had heard not a word from Jeff, nor about him, since leaving Wuppertal. Naturally, I was excited and intrigued by the summons, and telephoned the Savoy at once. Jeff sounded exactly the same. He spoke heartily but briefly, apparently distracted during his stay in London by business as multifarious as usual. He invited me for cocktail time. This apparently meant five in the afternoon, when I usually took a cup of tea.
He had a suite. It was on an upper floor, overlooking the river. He was redder in the face, his dark hair had been allowed to grow, and from my first impression he seemed twice the size. He still wore beautifully-tailored English tweeds. There was a good deal of slapping, hugging and kidding. 'Married yet?' I asked.
'Yeah, but it didn't work out. How about you, old man.'
'Yes, but she died.'
'Oh, how terrible.'
'I've got over it now.' Rosie had gone to wherever the damp souls of housemaids went. I consoled myself that her continued existence would have meant misery for three. 'Have you been back to Wuppertal?' I asked, to keep off the subject.
'Sure, I have. Before Christmas. And I'm on my way back. _Ich bin ein Wuppertaler, nicht wahr?_ The Red Crown Brewery remains a monument to American enterprise and capitalism, though the Nazis can hardly keep their hands off it. That cosmetics company in Berlin has turned out a headache. The Nazis don't care for powder and scent, _natьrlich. _They put the girls in calf-length uniforms and awful shoes and march them all over the country. They regard
women as inferior beings, only necessary for breeding. The whole of Germany's got like one big stud farm. What'll you have to drink?'
'Sherry.'
Try a martini. Mind, I quit living there about the time old man Hindenburg died, in the July of '34. It was after Hitler had his bloodbath at Munich. I guessed it was the hour to go. I got to hear the details-say, do you know they took Rцhm to Stadelheim jail, and a couple of SS men shot him in his cell? The guy in charge was Sepp Dietrich, who ran Hitler's personal bodyguard. I've seen the guy in Berlin, he's got big ears and a little moustache, he looks as though Frankenstein the monster-maker was trying to construct Clark Gable. He'll come to a bad end-I hope.' Jeff busied himself with the cocktail shaker. 'Do you know, absolutely no one in the States would touch our fine, pure spirits after they repealed the Eighteenth Amendment. The whole country had got the taste for bathtub gin.'
I gingerly sipped the first martini of my life. 'How's Gerda Dieffenbach?' I had been wanting to ask since entering the room.
'I saw her last year. She's fine, it seems. Still a schoolmistress. I kept clear, that game has become too dangerous. But I was sick, and I called in Dr Dieffenbach. He's disillusioned with the Nazis, I guess. He thought they'd bolster the middle classes. But Hitler isn't interested in the middle classes or any classes.' Hitler was interested only in race and blood, valour and fecundity, warfare and slavery, torture and death. 'Their boy's gone to join the Army.'
'Did Professor Domagk's daughter's arm recover?' It was like talking about ghosts.
'Oh, sure. They didn't have to operate, or anything. We saw the start of big deal, old man. I've started up a pharmaceutical company in New York State, we're making this new one, sulphapyridine against pneumonia.'
I nodded. 'The disease which used to be called "the old man's friend", but more frequently robbed him of his healthy grandson.'
Jeff topped up my glass from the shaker. I decided definitely to give up sherry.
'That guy you used to talk about, Professor Hцrlein-'
'He's been to England a couple of times. He was lecturing to doctors about Domagk and his mice.'
THE INVISIBLE VICTORY Page 16
