Pantheon

by Sam Bourne

  ‘It’s been in the offing for several weeks.’

  ‘Several weeks!’ He had tortured himself with the idea that Florence had been plotting behind his back for weeks, and now here was Grey telling him that his worst fears had, in fact, been utterly realistic. ‘Several weeks,’ he said, letting the weight of that amount of time hang in the air for a while. ‘No one told me.’

  ‘It would appear not.’

  ‘Why? Why in God’s name-’

  ‘I’m afraid-’

  ‘Florence is my wife, Master Grey. Harry is my son.’

  ‘No one told you, James, because we knew what you would say.’

  ‘“We”? Who’s “we”?’

  ‘All I-’

  ‘You mean you were involved in this?’

  ‘I played a very minor role. Many others were far-’

  ‘I don’t believe this. Lots of you were involved, were you? Many others, you say. What, in a secret plot to take my wife and child away from me?’

  ‘Now, James. Calm down.’

  ‘Don’t you tell me to calm down,’ James said, spitting out the words. ‘You’ve just told me you conspired in the break-up of my family, sending them half way across the world. So, no, I will not be calm. I want to know why you did this. Why you and all these “many others” plotted against me like this.’

  ‘You see this is exactly what we were afraid of.’

  ‘There you go again: we.’

  ‘This ranting and raving. This paranoia. This is what scared your wife out of her wits. This is what scared her away. You’ve been like this a long time now, James. It explains why… you’re in this situation.’

  That stopped him, the way Rosemary’s words had stopped him yesterday. What she had said then and what Grey said now sounded too much like the truth. Whatever help these others had given Florence, no one had forced her onto that ship: the decision to leave him, and to travel an ocean away, had been hers. More quietly than before, he spoke again. ‘And I suppose there were meetings, to iron out all the details?’

  ‘Yes, of course. The families involved, mothers mainly, met several times to make preparations. Helped by various university officials of course. Discussing visas, legal guardianship, that sort of thing.’

  ‘I don’t suppose these meetings were on Thursday evenings by any chance, were they?’

  ‘They were as a matter of fact, yes: 5 pm at Rhodes House.’

  So that’s why she had missed the last two walks with Rosemary and her Marxist Girl Guides. She was with other mothers, planning her escape — not to Norfolk or Bedfordshire, like other evacuees, but to America.

  ‘And who else knew about this? About Florence I mean?’

  ‘James.’

  ‘No. Go on, who’s this “we” you mentioned?’

  ‘I’m not sure this is healthy.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that. I’d like to know.’ He was trying hard to sound reasonable, as if they were no more than two Oxford dons trading college gossip.

  ‘Virginia, of course. Myself. Other concerned friends.’

  ‘Rosemary Hyde?’

  ‘I don’t think it’s necessary to mention any names, James.’

  ‘And why did this group of “concerned” friends believe that the one person who could not be trusted with this secret was the husband and father of the woman and child concerned? Why was that then?’

  ‘To repeat myself: we knew what you would say.’

  ‘And what was that?’

  ‘We knew you would say no.’

  He couldn’t argue. Of course he would have said no. The very idea of his family becoming evacuees across the Atlantic, he could not have discussed it, let alone approved of it. He believed a move to Herefordshire or the Cotswolds amounted to a surrender to the Third Reich; but the United States? It was abominable. It represented an abandonment of the country, as if they were pulling down the shutters and shutting up shop, leaving Britain for the Nazis to inherit. They might as well run up the white flag now. How had these other men — the fathers of those one hundred and twenty-five Oxford children — ever agreed to such a capitulation?

  And yet, these convictions dragged behind them a nag of doubt. He could not quite articulate it even to himself but he could feel it. It was the guilty sense he had that these other men, these other fathers, were allowed to take such extreme action to protect their young but that he was granted no such privilege. They would perform their act of sacrifice on the battlefield or, failing that, in some war ministry or other, now relocated in Oxford. But staying put, keeping his family in England even under Nazi occupation, even in the shadow of Hitler’s bombs, was the only act of resistance available to James Zennor. If he buckled on that, then he was doing precisely nothing to defy the fascist barbarians who had killed his friend and nearly destroyed him. There was nothing else he could do. And the realization of it — that he was using a woman and a not-yet three-year-old boy vicariously, to make up for his own failure to play any part in this essential and wholly just war — filled him with shame.

  And then the mental recording of the words just spoken caught up with him. ‘What was that you said?’

  ‘James, I really cannot stay on the telephone much longer. I-’

  ‘You said, “This explains why you’re in this situation.” Now, what did you mean by that?’

  ‘I, I, I was referring of course to your wife being on that ship. That is to say… she knew you refused all talk of evacuation, which is-’

  ‘No. You meant something else. You said I’ve been like this a “long time”. You meant something else, didn’t you?’

  ‘James, please.’

  ‘DIDN’T YOU?’ He bellowed it, prompting more turned heads in the outer office. When Grey spoke again, James was sure he could hear a tremble in the older man’s voice.

  ‘Yes, I did. It was a slip, I’m sorry.’

  ‘I know all about slips. They never are entirely accidental, are they? What were you trying not to say?’

  ‘I regret you pushing me in this manner, James. But since you seem determined to twist my arm, I was referring to your recent…’ He paused again. ‘Rejections.’

  ‘You mean from the civil service? From the ministries? What about them?’

  ‘I have already said far too much.’

  And then James saw it. ‘Oh, I don’t believe it. You bastard.’

  ‘How dare you speak to me that way! It was not down to me. I had next to nothing to do with it. They run their own checks, their own independent assessments.’

  ‘But they would have consulted you. Whitehall doesn’t order a box of bloody paperclips without asking what Professor Bernard bloody Grey thinks about it.’

  ‘It was not like that, James. You must accept my word on that. They had already concluded that you were… not suitable for sensitive work, long before they spoke to me about you.’

  ‘“Not suitable for sensitive work” is that how we put it now? And I thought my lot were fond of euphemism. Crackers, is that the word you’re looking for? Poor Zennor, he’s round the twist: is that what you told them? Saw a bit too much action in Spain and now he’s out of his mind. Eh? Would that be the gist of it, Professor? The “burden of the argument” as you philosophers like to put it?’

  Grey sighed and then replied quietly. ‘Something like that, yes. And this little exhibition has only confirmed the accuracy of the analysis, Dr Zennor. Now I suggest you put down the receiver and head back to Oxford where Virginia and I will see what we can do for you.’

  ‘You’ve ruined my life.’

  ‘I am going to say goodbye now, James, before you say anything you will come to regret.’

  And it was at that moment that James added another decision to the one he had already made. He had vowed the second he had learned where Florence had gone that he would somehow get to America and find his wife. But now he saw how he was going to do it — and just who would pay the price.

  Chapter Twelve

  He lost track of the n
umber of hours he spent pacing in and around Liverpool docks that day and yet, if you asked him to sketch the place or draw a map, he would have been blank. He had paid no attention to it, looking no further than the ground beneath his feet. He was a brain grappling with a problem: when he was like this, everything else, everything physical, was a distraction.

  The problem in this case was multi-layered. The harbourmaster had shaken his head and sucked in his breath, leaving James in no doubt as to the near-impossibility of him sailing across the Atlantic any time soon or at least this side of a German surrender — and ‘Adolf doesn’t seem the surrendering type’. There were few ships daring to make the crossing now, running the gauntlet of German U-boats and their deadly torpedoes, like the missile that had taken out the Arandora Star. Those that did had to travel in convoys for their own protection, escorted by at least one or two warships, which meant ships could not sail as and when they pleased: they had to wait till there were enough vessels to constitute a group. Even if James was lucky, and there was another crossing, there were next to no regular passengers these days, travelling for simple business or pleasure. If they weren’t troops on the move, enemy aliens or POWs deported to Canada or young evacuees transported by the Children’s Overseas Reception Board, there had to be a damn good reason for an ordinary member of the British public to make the journey, which meant official permission. And the difficulties did not end there. At the other end, while a British subject could simply walk into Canada, to enter the United States required a visa.

  There was only one person who could get James through all those hoops — and he had just called him a bastard down a long-distance telephone line. He was pretty sure that at the moment Bernard Grey would rather drop him to the bottom of the Atlantic than help him cross it.

  The harbourmaster had begged him to find a boarding house — he had even recommended one on Kitchen Street — and told him to get a good night’s sleep. But James could not rest, he could not even eat, until he had cracked this problem. And so he had paced.

  Only once was his concentration broken. To his alarm he saw two police officers, apparently interviewing people on the dockside. Had they found the man James had beaten last night? Was he dead? Were they conducting a murder inquiry? He could feel his heart thumping. It wouldn’t take long for them to point the finger at him; anyone in the harbourmaster’s office could tell them about the strange man they had found sleeping rough, a man who had already admitted that he had been here, down at the docks, late last night. A man who they had just overheard shouting down the phone, in a state of high distress.

  James turned around, attempting to walk away discreetly, when he caught a snatch of the conversation the police were having with the man they had stopped.

  ‘Now, don’t get lippy with me. I told you before, all I need to see is your licence. You know the rules on selling.’

  A woman standing close by, with huge forearms, was chipping in. ‘Them batteries only worth tuppence ha’penny and he’s selling them for fourpence. You should bang him up for that n’all.’

  ‘No one asked you, madam,’ the second policeman said firmly, as a small crowd began to form. The man at the centre, James could now see, was wearing a shiny suit, the cheap and nasty uniform of the black marketeer. He was protesting that he ‘wasn’t forcing no one to buy my torch batteries’, that that was their choice and it was still a free country — ‘till Jerry gets here at any rate’. James turned away with relief.

  He called in at the harbourmaster’s office at frequent intervals, making a nuisance of himself but picking up new and, on his last visit, useful information. It was not long after that, as he was pacing along a pier sloppy with bilge water and stinking of fish, that it struck him. He had been thinking of Harry Knox. He remembered him holding forth on all manner of topics at the most improbable times and in the unlikeliest locations. This little lecture came during the defence of the university district in Madrid, as they stood together, shivering with cold in an abandoned block, its walls pocked with bullet holes, between rounds of shooting. Conversation was the only distraction.

  Not that conversation was the right word. Tutorial, more like. Harry would lecture him on political theory, on the difference between Menshevik and Bolshevik, on the treachery of Ramsay MacDonald, on the true evil of Hitler and his lunatic worship of the Aryan superman. ‘There’s a man who’s swallowed his Nietzsche neat,’ Harry had said of Hitler, ‘while I always recommend the taking of German philosophers with gentle sips and plenty of water.’

  On that particular night, Harry had been expounding on human motivation. Officially, this should have fallen into James’s area of expertise but there was no field in which Harry was not the most well-read man in the room. So James tried to clean his rifle — oddly they had discovered that Nivea handcream worked wonders on the weapon — and listened.

  ‘I prattle on about all these great ideologies and you, James, are good enough to hear me out,’ Harry had said, ‘but do you know what really motivates men to act?’ James stopped poking inside the gun chamber and was contemplating offering an answer when he realized that Harry was not waiting for one. His question had been rhetorical. ‘God, money and sex.’

  James had laughed but Harry had continued in earnest. ‘And power of course. Not power to do x or y, but the thrill of wielding power itself. That’s why people risk their lives or do things they would, in normal circumstances, run a mile to avoid: power, religion, moolah or getting their oats.’

  ‘And which one of those is it with us?’

  ‘Beg pardon, James?’

  ‘Why are we sitting here waiting to get our nuts blown off in the middle of nowhere in a country neither of us come from? It’s certainly not for the money. And I don’t see any ladies around.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Harry, paying his friend the respect of appearing to think about the question. ‘This would be faith. What we have created here is a new religion. Still the battle of good and evil that your parents and their Quaker Friends would recognize — but this time the devil is played by Francisco Franco.’

  They had laughed and the conversation had moved on but Harry’s rule had proved surprisingly durable. And as he paced around the docks, feeling the wind off the Mersey, chill even in July, it struck James with new force. Of course. How could he not have thought of it before?

  Thank you, Harry and thank you, Florence, James said to himself now, breaking into a sprint in search of the nearest telephone box. He checked his watch; every chance Grey would be out.

  He wondered what he would do if Virginia answered. He would have to hang up; it would not work unless he spoke to the Master directly. Two rings, three. Damn. He could be anywhere, trading Whitehall chit-chat at Balliol or out drilling the pot-bellied warriors of the Local Defence Volunteers. Four rings — and then the voice of the college butler. He pressed Button A and heard the coins tumble through the machine.

  ‘Ah, Forsyth,’ James began. ‘It’s Zennor. I need to speak with Master Grey. Urgently.’

  ‘I’m afraid, he’s not available at-’

  ‘Tell him he will regret not speaking to me. Immensely.’

  A pause, in which was contained several years of college gossip about the mental state of poor Dr Zennor, as well as the calculation by Forsyth the butler that he was not paid to act as nursemaid to the fellows and that this was a matter best dealt with by the Master himself. ‘Please hold on, sir.’

  James waited, looking up at the Liverpool sky through the red-bordered glass squares of the telephone box.

  A rustle, the muffled voice of the butler and finally, ‘This is Grey.’

  ‘Bernard, it’s James, again.’ Bernard. A different tone.

  ‘Yes, James? Forsyth tells me you are telephoning on a matter of great urgency.’

  ‘That’s right. I need your help in getting across the Atlantic. I need a United States visa and I need you to contact the Ministry of Shipping to get me a berth on the next ship out of here. There’s due to be
another crossing in-’

  ‘That’s completely impossible, James. How would I possibly justify you travelling to North America? You’re not a woman, you’re not a child — even if you are, to my great sorrow, behaving like one. You’re not an evacuee. It’s completely out of the question. Besides, and I say this kindly, the reason why many of us sought to help Florence was in order to deliver her to safety — and that, in part, meant getting her and her child away from you.’

  Once again, James could feel the fury bubbling through his veins. Her child. He was being steadily removed from his own family. Any compunction he had felt about using the weapon Florence had unwittingly handed him a few months ago now dissolved. He thought back to the moment Florence had come home with the news of Grey’s affair with the college secretary, some thirty-five years his junior. At the time, James had affected heard-it-all-before nonchalance, easy to do because he had indeed heard it all before. But there was no room for nonchalance now.

  He closed his eyes and began, bracing himself as if he were about to jump into a pool of bottomless water. ‘I know about you and Miss Hodges.’

  Grey cleared his throat before replying. ‘You’ll have to do better than that, James. As you must surely appreciate, Virginia and I do not believe in the suburban conventions of marriage. She is a much more enlightened woman than you give her credit for.’

  ‘Is she enlightened enough to approve of her husband having got his mistress pregnant?’

  A long pause. ‘Virginia is a very understanding woman.’

  ‘I wonder if she would also understand that you demanded Miss Hodges get an abortion.’

  A longer pause, then a reply from Grey delivered with an ice James had not heard before. ‘No one would believe a word you say. These claims would be dismissed as the ravings of a madman. I would make sure of it.’

  James had anticipated this move too. ‘That might work with your wife, though I would not bet on it: Virginia knows me too well for that. But I certainly doubt it would work with your mistress’s father.’