Oh, shut up, she thought.
‘We should get out. My toes are all wrinkly and the others must be up by now.’
She scrambled up the cliff and showed him where to put his foot. ‘You should bring your wife this afternoon. One last swim before you leave. I don’t think we’ll see another place like this before the war is over.’
He shook the drops out of his hair. ‘She hates water.’
How could someone hate water? She might as well hate air.
Grace wondered how much longer the war would last, and where she and Max would be when it ended.
Of Love and Other Wars
1
‘It will kill Mother, of course,’ Paul said.
Charlie said nothing.
‘And Father.’ Paul looked at his dry, chapped hands.
‘Is there anything you would like to tell me other than that I’m going to turn us into orphans?’
‘Think about it. Please.’
Charlie stood up. ‘Look at me. Don’t you think I’ve thought about it?’ He lifted his blue-grey cap and put it back down on his head. He tugged at the collar of his blue-grey uniform. ‘What do you think I’m wearing? This is the uniform our boys wore when they defended the sky over London and it’s the uniform I’ll be wearing one day when I defend the sky over Moscow and any other decent place where decent people live. This is the uniform some of our boys died in.’ He grew loud. ‘Chaps like you and me, Paul. But we didn’t die, did we? We weren’t up there. And you know why? Because we were sitting snugly in Highgate Meeting House and praising the Lord for keeping it safe and peaceful in there.’
‘We weren’t in Meeting House last summer,’ Paul said quietly. ‘You were at Swarthmoor Hall. I was in gaol.’
They sat at the back of a deserted pub. The landlord was polishing glasses with a stained old tea towel and now and then threw them a suspicious glance.
Charlie walked up to the counter and returned with a beer and a lemonade.
‘I’d have preferred a pint,’ Paul said, and took the lemonade. He rolled the glass between his hands. ‘Look.’ He put down the glass and fumbled around in his pockets. ‘There’s something I’d like you to consider.’
The card had softened around the edges, with small tears and dog-eared corners and a jagged boyish ink scrawl along the bottom. He drew it from his shirt pocket and put it on the table.
‘Remember this?’
But Charlie was not looking at the card. He was looking over Paul’s shoulder.
‘It’s our pledge card,’ Paul said.
A hand pressed down on his shoulder.
‘Pledge?’ Miriam’s voice was a little faded, a little tired. ‘What pledge?’
She leaned over the table, picked up the card and read out: ‘“I renounce war, and never again, directly or indirectly, will I sanction or support another.”’
With a curious expression on her face, she sighed and put it back on the table. There it lay like a leper’s handkerchief.
*
It was like any old London pub. Dark wood panelling, a dulled brass rail around the counter, green tartan carpets. Windows latticed with blast-proof tape. And that made it all the more terrible, Paul thought: the fact that the props and backdrops that filled the stage of his life were like any old props and backdrops; and the stage itself was like three apple crates pushed together in the basement of a pub.
He had mumbled and shuffled at his tribunal as he had mumbled and shuffled a thousand times before, and he had sat at sticky stained wooden tables like this one a thousand times before. It was all so ordinary; the script, the lines, the props were perfectly ordinary. Yet the great screeching world insisted that he himself was different, was an outcast; not a brilliant and glamorous outcast, not a dashing bandit or revolutionary, but an odd little person whose wooden model must be feathered, whose mumbling must be ridiculed, and whose earnestly signed pledge card must be studied with pity and mild contempt.
Miriam was still standing next to the table. She hesitated, looked left and right, and eventually sat down next to Charlie, facing Paul.
‘Paul.’ Charlie spoke in a deep, fatherly tone, as to a child. ‘Here are the facts. I’ve joined the RAF and expect to be shipped out to a training base next week. I would like you to come with me to Highgate and be there when I tell them. That’s all I’m asking of you. I’m not asking you to cheer me on, or pray for me, or advise me, or talk me out of it. I’m only asking you to be there when I tell them.’
Paul slid his hand across the table and placed it on the card.
‘But you’ve got a card just like this one.’
‘Somewhere between my old schoolbooks and those letters from my German pen friend. Probably, yes.’
‘And you signed it. We signed it together. We said we wouldn’t fight. You kept the card, you’ve said so yourself, and it’s as valid as ever. It doesn’t apply to a hypothetical war, it applies to every war. It applies to this war. If it was wrong to kill twenty years ago, then it can’t be right to kill now. I knew this war would be a great test, and there are many reasons why men choose to break the pledge. But I, I cannot break that pledge. Our father and grandfathers and all the men in our family have honoured their pledge, they’ve all honoured the peace testimony, and every single one of them must have had a niggling doubt as to whether their particular war was different, whether their particular war was worth betraying the testimony for. But it wasn’t, was it? The last war wasn’t worth it, and none of the previous wars were worth it. What we’re hearing now is the great noise of the war machine, but once it’s fallen silent, once the guns have fallen silent, well, then we’ll speak again. And we may find that when all is said and done, refusing to kill was not a bad choice after all.’
Paul leaned back, exhausted. Charlie and Miriam exchanged tired glances. The pub landlord was still polishing the same pint glass.
And even though nothing had changed since Paul entered the pub, everything had changed. He had sat down at the table and waited for Charlie and Miriam: three accomplices united under the landlord’s suspicious glare.
Paul stared at his pledge card that lay there like a leper’s handkerchief.
Yes, there were three accomplices in the pub. But now it occurred to Paul that he was not one of them.
Miriam stood up. Just before straightening her back she hesitated and put one hand on her stomach in that dramatic way of hers, as if she felt physically upset by the argument. The same heightened emotion that he had once found so appealing now annoyed him.
‘Go on then,’ she said wearily. ‘Go on covering your ears and debating it all in your own head and inventing a world of your own, while in the real world, my people are being murdered. What is it your brilliant Mr Gandhi wrote in that pamphlet of yours? “If I were a Jew . . . I would claim Germany as my home even as the tallest gentile German may, and challenge him to shoot me or cast me in the dungeon.” Well, that says it all. You and Mr Gandhi, you don’t want to listen and you don’t want to see.’
‘I thought we’d agreed not to talk about all that,’ Paul said.
‘Well, we can try to ignore the world, but that doesn’t mean the world will ignore us. And I’m not sure I want to ignore it. I grew up with three of my uncles in their uniforms looking down at me from the mantelpiece. There’d be no room for them on your mantelpiece, I suppose.’
‘We could find pictures of them in civilian clothes.’
‘And hide the military ones as if they were something shameful. Well, they’re not shameful to me. When I have a mantelpiece I’m going to display all three of them because I’m proud of everything my family’s done for this country. I’m proud to think that when the time came, our men always did their bit.’
She turned round and walked towards the door. Her slightly stooped back was covered in a shapeless wool coat. A faint smell of machine oil trailed her and mingled with the smoky air.
When she reached the door, she put her hand on the brass knob and
paused. Charlie stared at Paul. Even the landlord stared at Paul. But Paul did not get up to hold her back, and she turned the brass knob and walked out.
When the door swung shut behind her, Charlie reached out and swiped their half-full glasses off the table.
‘You bloody fool.’ He grabbed Paul’s pledge card. ‘Look at you, with your martyr’s face, with your self-pity, with your bloody steadfastness. Steadfastness! You’d rather let her walk away than concede an inch of ground. Oh, and I know what you’re thinking. Martyrdom! A test of your sodding conscience! That’s what you’re thinking. You’re looking at my uniform and her munitions job and you’re feeling damn smug, aren’t you, with your little pledge card and your little testimony and your pristine little Quaker brain? Well, I won’t let you take the moral high ground here. We signed this when we were boys. And you think I ought to feel bound by it? You think I ought to pretend to be the Elder of Snotsborough for the rest of my life?’
He ripped up the card and flung it on the floor. ‘You think this is a pledge? Well it isn’t, Paul. It’s just a postcard.’
2
By the time Paul and Charlie reached the little cottage in Highgate, Charlie was very calm. He wore his full Royal Air Force uniform. Curtains shuffled in the neighbouring houses and old Mr Boddington stood outside the grocery, next to his cabbages, grinning with satisfaction. The brothers ignored him.
‘Shall I knock or do you . . .?’ Paul mumbled. Charlie simply stepped past him and knocked on the door.
Their father opened it. His face showed no surprise: perhaps he had been steeling himself for this.
‘Charles.’
‘Did you receive my letter?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m not here to argue.’
‘No one here has the slightest intention of arguing.’ Their father’s voice was as hoarse, as if he had been screaming all day.
‘What I mean is, I’ve made up my mind.’
Their father looked over Charlie’s uniform. ‘I can see that.’
‘Good.’
For a moment Paul thought it might all turn out acceptably well, that they might have one last cup of tea together. Then Charlie tried to walk through the door and their father blocked his way.
‘I’m sorry, Charles,’ he said. ‘No man in uniform has ever stepped past this threshold and I would like it to remain that way.’
‘I haven’t come to stay. I’ve only come to see you and Mother before I head out.’
‘You’ll have to see us here, outside the door.’
‘Like a dog.’
‘Like someone who’s unwilling to accept the rules of the house.’
‘What about compassion?’ Charlie’s voice trembled. ‘What about loving thy neighbour?’
‘I do love my neighbour,’ their father said in that strange hoarse voice.
‘If you say so.’
‘Oh, I love my neighbour. I love my neighbour even though he thinks I’m a spy. I love my neighbour even though he’s put a brick through the window of my soap shop and called me a traitor. I love my neighbour even though he’d rather travel across town to a shop with a Union Jack out front than touch any of my soap. Yes, I love my neighbour who’s given me white feathers and hounded me and almost driven me to bankruptcy, and stolen my son and put him in a uniform. I love my neighbour. But that doesn’t mean I must allow him to take everything from me. My neighbour can have my food, my house, my business. But he cannot take away my faith. I can’t allow that. And I love my sons, but I cannot let them take away my faith. This is a house of peace in a country at war and no man in uniform shall ever step over its threshold.’
In the dimly lit hallway, Paul saw their mother wringing her apron with both hands. Her face was very lined and grey and she closed her eyes and opened them again as if hoping that it was all an awful vision, that her husband would relent, her son become contrite.
Charlie lowered his voice. ‘I want to say goodbye to Mother.’
Their mother stirred, but Charlie held up his hand. ‘Not out here. I want to say goodbye to my mother in my childhood home. Father, surely you’ll grant me that.’
Their father crossed his arms. ‘You were the one who put on the uniform, Charles. It was not my choice. It was your choice.’
‘Fine.’ With deliberate, slow movements, Charlie took off his cap, unbuttoned the blue uniform jacket and slipped it off. He stepped out of his trousers, his shirt, his shoes and socks until he stood by the rubbish bins outside their door wearing nothing but a pair of grey briefs and a ribbed undershirt.
He pushed past their father, gave their mother a long hug and whispered in her ear.
Then he went out again, put on his uniform, and without another word to their father, left.
*
At the street corner, Paul stopped Charlie.
‘I’ve been offered a place with an ambulance unit.’
‘Well done. I’ll be relying on you to patch me up then.’
‘If you’re very unlucky.’ Paul opened his bag and took out a brown envelope sealed with tape. ‘Since you ripped up my pledge card, I suppose you’ve thrown away your own card too. So I thought I’d give you this. You don’t have to open it now, or indeed at all. It’s just something Father gave to me, and I think you should have it. Think of it as a lucky charm.’
The Triangle
When Max was seized by two uniformed men in a train station in northern Germany, he expected to be shot on the spot. The others in his intelligence unit had probably also been arrested, pulled out of flats and offices all over Europe, but they were Brits and at least had some protection as prisoners of war. He, however, was once again a German citizen, and as such, a traitor.
It doesn’t matter which way I look, he thought: whether it’s east or west, whether my heart is on this side or on that, my feet are always in the wrong place.
They did not shoot him. They took him to a camp. Behind barbed wire, once again; only this time there would be no university and no parliament. It occurred to him that this was what had happened to his mother, but the thought was too painful and he forced it into a deep trunk at the back of his mind and bolted down the lid.
On this first day, he thought he might survive. Then he noticed that everyone else was avoiding him. All the other inmates were avoiding him, even the weak and starving ones. What was it, he wondered. He wore the same clothes as everyone else, his head had been shaved like everyone’s. What was it that marked him out as different?
In the queue for watery soup the others left a gap between them and him. Someone trod on his foot when the guard was looking: as if every inmate wanted to prove he was not his friend.
But what is it? Max thought, cowering under the glare of the guards, the glances of fear and pity from the other inmates. What is it that’s different about me?
When he carried his full bowl along the queue, an inmate walking past him stopped and said: ‘You don’t know about your triangle, do you?’
No, Max replied, fearful that the guard would see them. What is it?
‘The yellow triangle on your back. It marks you for death. At the next opportunity, they’re going to get rid of you.’ The inmate shrugged and walked on.
Max tried to look back over his shoulder, but it was impossible. No one can see his own back, he thought; no, no one can see his own back. I’ll have to take this fellow’s word for it.
*
Max had a shameful thought. It made him feel dirty every time his mind turned to it, yet he could not push it away. Soon it obsessively spun in his skull.
He might get them to remove the yellow triangle, he thought, if he told them about his father.
They would not release him, of course. But they might remove the triangle if he told them that while his mother was Jewish, by the race laws, if not by faith, his father was not. His father was an extensively certified, documented, proven Aryan (and how his father had painstakingly gathered those documents, hoarding them in his dark study lik
e a ghoul). A physicist in Berlin, neither famous nor exceptionally brilliant, but respected within his circles. One whose career had dipped in 1933, but risen steadily after he divorced his Jewish wife and abandoned his half-Jewish son in 1935. Thanks to Mrs Morningstar’s scientific journals, Max could recite a whole list of recent prizes and achievements.
In England, nobody but Grace knew this. Mrs Morningstar must have her theories, but she kept them to herself. He had even once overheard her telling someone that Max was the son of a distant cousin and that his father had died of a severe cold; and he had never felt more in awe of this neat practical woman who could lie as convincingly as any spy.
When he had first arrived in London with a note from his mother, he had assumed the Morningstars would eventually betray him. For a long time he could not shed this fear, and he kept a packed suitcase under his bed and another in his office.
He ought to have confided in Mrs Morningstar and told her everything. How his father had been the first to agitate against Jewish scientists, lest anyone suspect him of old loyalties to his discarded wife and son. How his father had time and again proven himself as an ardent, dedicated party member, and yet succeeded in retaining the trust of old friends who thought that this was all for show, that he was a decent person underneath it all.
As young men, his father and Gottfried von der Weide had spent a summer selling shoes in Passau to save up for their studies. It was one of his father’s favourite anecdotes. For a long time, he enjoyed telling his students that they both still knew how to measure a lady’s foot. Of course it was also he who invited Gottfried to stay at his home when the faculty hounded him out for his opposition to the regime; and it was he who went to the authorities with recordings and neat transcripts of their confidential conversations.
Of Love and Other Wars Page 22
