Dominion

Chapter Forty-Three

DAVID WOKE NEXT MORNING to the sound of voices downstairs and the smell of frying bacon. He heard the quick murmur of Eileen’s voice, Sean’s slow one. Only a dim grey half-light penetrated the thin curtains of the room. Geoff was still asleep. He didn’t look well; several times in the night David had woken to hear him coughing.

He got up and dressed in the change of clothes he had been given the day before. Geoff sat up, coughed again and took a drink. David pulled aside the curtains. In daylight the smog was a dense greyish-yellow, pressing against the windows, which were dotted with greasy smuts of soot. He could make out, dimly, a brick wall surrounding a little yard. ‘It’s as bad as ever out there,’ he said to Geoff. ‘How are you?’

There was a sheen of sweat on Geoff’s forehead. ‘Not brilliant. My throat’s still sore. I’ve a headache. God, how that filthy stuff seeps in, I can smell it. Sorry if I woke you last night.’

‘You couldn’t help it.’

‘Funny, I had a dream I was back in Africa. I was going to see Elaine. Her husband was away and I was walking up the steps to her bungalow but it was my parents who opened the door, Mum and Dad. They looked young, like they were when I was a child.’ He lay staring pensively up at the ceiling. David had never before heard him talk with such lack of reserve.

‘They’ll be all right,’ he said.

‘It’s just the thought I’ll probably never see them again.’

‘Unless we kick out the Germans, eh?’

Geoff smiled weakly. Sarah must feel the same, David thought, about her family. It was all right for him, he just had his father now and he was safe in New Zealand. He might even go and join him.

Downstairs they found Ben and Natalia already eating breakfast, Eileen bustling round with plates. A radio in the kitchen played Housewives’ Choice. Sean was pulling on a pair of hobnailed boots. ‘Bacon and eggs?’ Eileen asked David. She looked at Geoff. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘A bit groggy.’

‘I’ll get some headache pills. I’m afraid this pea-souper looks set to go on all day, according to the radio, maybe longer. They’re worried about the Smithfield cattle show; some of the animals are getting ill. Filthy stuff. Here now, sit down.’

As they sat David met Natalia’s eye. She smiled sadly, half conspiratorially. She had washed her hair; it was brown and lustrous. David saw that Geoff had caught the look between him and Natalia, and quickly glanced away. ‘Where’s Frank?’ he asked Ben.

‘He’s no’ feeling too good either. I’m going to take his breakfast up in a minute.’

Sean stood. ‘I’m off to work. Back about six.’ He nodded at his guests, then kissed Eileen tenderly on the brow. ‘You be careful, you hear? Keep everyone safe.’

‘Get off now.’ She touched his cheek briefly, then hurried back out to the kitchen. The front door shut behind Sean. ‘Frank thinks Sean’s got it in for him,’ Ben said quietly. ‘That’s why he wanted to stay upstairs.’

‘People are afraid of mental illness.’ Natalia shook her head. ‘Frank could see it in Mr O’Shea.’

David said, ‘I’ll take him up his breakfast. Has he had his pill?’

‘I gave it him when he got up.’

‘He is addicted to those pills, isn’t he?’ Natalia said.

‘No,’ Ben answered. ‘He isnae. They’re no’ addictive, but people get used tae feelin’ calmer with them, so ye have to take them off them gradually. We’ll wean him off them when we’re safe.’ Ben looked at her seriously. ‘But for now he needs to be kept quiet, not just for his safety but ours, too.’

David took a tray upstairs. Frank was sitting on the bed, wearing one of Colonel Brock’s old cardigans, staring out at the fog. A single-bar electric fire took the edge off the cold. He gave David a sad little smile, quite different from that horrible rictus grin.

‘I brought you up some breakfast. Hungry?’

‘Yes. I could do with something.’

‘Ben said you didn’t want to come downstairs.’

‘No. That Mr O’Shea . . .’ He shrugged wearily.

‘Sean’s all right. It’s just a worry for him, having us here.’ David put the tray on the bed.

Frank gave a long, despairing sigh. ‘He sees.’

‘Sees what, Frank?’

‘I’ve always felt I was under some sort of curse.’ Frank spoke so low David had to bend to hear. ‘There’s something in me – I don’t even know what –’ he waved his bad hand in a helpless gesture – ‘that makes people want to hurt me. It’s always been like that.’ He looked at David and gave one of his harsh little laughs. ‘You think it’s my madness talking, I can see.’

‘Frank, some people are just, well, afraid of people who’ve been – where you have. And you’re not mad,’ he added firmly.

‘No, it’s always been the same.’ Frank shook his head decisively. ‘Since I was a little boy, before I went away to school. Mother had her life controlled by this fake spiritualist, Mrs Baker. She got me sent to that school. I dreamed about her last night, she was sitting in a garden. There were angels in the sky, I suppose it was heaven. She was drinking whisky from a bottle and laughing at me.’

David touched him on the arm. ‘Eat your breakfast, eh? It’s getting cold.’

Obediently Frank took the tray on his knees and began to eat. Despite not having full use of his right hand he could use his fork dexterously. Experience, David supposed. When he had finished Frank said abruptly, ‘Did you notice it when you met me?’

‘What? Your hand?’

‘No. Everyone notices that. I mean this thing about me, this – aura. My mother used to talk a lot about auras.’

‘No, Frank. I just thought you were – afraid. I thought maybe because of that school; you didn’t say much about it but it sounded bad.’

‘It was.’ Frank looked out of the window at the fog again. ‘But most people survived it. I just couldn’t, somehow.’ He shook his head. ‘Unless you were exactly like them and did what they wanted – well, they’d do anything to you. They were like the Nazis in lots of ways. You know,’ he added, ‘I always had a feeling my life would end with something really bad, it was bound to somehow.’ He glanced at David and said, curiously, ‘You remember yesterday, in that field, I said I’d always wanted to be normal and you said you’d always felt the same. Why? You’re not like me, you’re the opposite of me. People respect you, they like you. They always have.’

‘Do they?’ David shifted uneasily. ‘They expect things. Since I was a kid, everyone expected something special. I had advantages, you’re right, but I always felt I couldn’t be just normal, any more than you.’ He remembered school, diving into the swimming pool. Down into silence, peace. ‘Anyway, I brought all this on myself. I went into the Resistance, deceived my wife, everyone I worked with, because—’

‘Why?’

‘Because underneath it all I was so angry. I think I always have been.’ He turned to his old friend. ‘You must be too, Frank. You must be angry?’

Frank shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Maybe. But what’s the point of being angry with your fate?’ His voice sank to a whisper. ‘Frightened, yes, because you can’t change fate, you can’t do anything.’

‘You pushed your brother out of that window.’

‘That was an accident. But yes, he made me lose control. I have to keep control.’ Frank spoke with a sudden emphasis. ‘If I hadn’t, they’d have got it all out of me at the hospital. You – have – to – keep – control,’ he repeated, slowly, fiercely. ‘I learned that at school.’

‘Easy, Frank, easy. No-one’s threatening you here. Not Mr O’Shea, not any of us.’

‘All right.’

‘That took some guts, not spilling what your brother told you when you were alone in that hospital, or to the police.’

‘I shouldn’t have told you. That it was about the Bomb. I’m sorry, but it’s a – it’s a big thing to bear.’ He looked at David with sudden sharpness. ‘You haven’t told anybody?’

‘I promised you I wouldn’t.’

‘In the field, you see – I thought if you knew how important it was, you’d realize I had to die.’

‘You don’t. We’ll get you out. And you made a promise too, remember. To stay alive.’

‘I know.’ There was silence for a few moments, then Frank said, ‘What will it be like, in America? I’ve met a few Americans, they always seem so noisy. Then there’s all the gangsters in the films. But it’s a big country, isn’t it; maybe I could find somewhere quiet. Do you think I could, David?’

‘I hope so.’

‘Where would you go? You and your wife?’

‘I don’t know about Sarah, but I’d like to go to New Zealand. It’s a good place. They’re decent people, they hate this Fascist shit.’

Frank looked puzzled. ‘You’d go together, surely?’

‘I don’t know.’

Frank said quietly, ‘We’re not going to get there, you know, David. It’s only a dream. They’ll get me still.’

‘No, they won’t. Come on, Frank, we’ve got this far. We have to be positive.’

Frank picked at a loose thread on his mattress. ‘You said you had cyanide pills, if the Germans came. That Natalia would shoot me to stop them taking me. But what if you didn’t get the chance? David, I want a cyanide pill as well. I won’t take it unless they come, I promise, but I – I want the same chance as the rest of you.’

David looked at him. Natalia and Ben would never take the risk of Frank trying to kill himself again. The Americans wanted him alive; though Ben and Natalia had also become protective of him, wanted him to live. ‘I’ll talk to them,’ he said.

Frank nodded. But from his expression he knew it wasn’t going to happen, David saw. That uncanny sensitivity of his, he thought, the sensitivity of an endangered animal.

After breakfast Ben persuaded Frank to come downstairs. Eileen had gone out to the shops, and to meet her Resistance contact. They sat in the lounge: Geoff still looked ill; he coughed frequently, a dry, hacking sound. Ben suggested a board game; Eileen had said there were some to be found next door. David went to fetch them. He switched on the light – the fog made everything so dim. The room had the faintly damp smell of a little-used ‘best parlour’. There was a cardboard box of games under the table, chess and draughts and Monopoly.

For a couple of hours they sat round playing Monopoly, like some strange family party. Frank turned out to be an easy winner, piling up a heap of paper money beside him. Ben said jokingly, ‘You’re a Monopoly capitalist, Frank, that’s what you are. Ye’ve taken all my money, I’ve nothin’ left.’

Frank looked pleased. ‘I just try to think ahead, that’s all.’

Ben shook his head. ‘I played a bit when I was inside, I wisnae bad but you’re a bloody genius, mate.’

‘Why were you in prison?’ Geoff asked. ‘Was it for political reasons?’

Ben looked at him intently. ‘No, I wis a naughty boy at school, did some bad things. The Glasgow magistrates thought they were bad anyway. Got two years in a Borstal when I was seventeen, and a good dose of the birch.’ David remembered the scars he had seen on Ben last night. ‘Put an end tae a promising career, that did. Parents disowned me, the auld bastards. Though it was being inside taught me about politics, people in there gave me a proper education about the class system. So I don’t regret it.’

David smiled ruefully. ‘Everything’s class with you, isn’t it?’

‘Aye, it is. I’ve seen you once or twice, ye don’t always follow what I’m sayin’, do ye, with ma accent?’

‘You put it on sometimes.’

‘Where ah wis brought up, ye’d no’ve understood a word.’

‘That’s because you’ve a Scottish accent.’

‘No.’ Ben looked at him intently. ‘It’s because I’m working-class Scottish.’

Frank said, ‘He’s right. My school was in Scotland, but I understood the accents all right.’

‘Because they spoke middle-class Scots, that’s why. Morrrningsiide.’ Ben drew out the name in a way that made Frank do something David could barely ever remember him doing. He laughed.

‘It’s class that’s the real divide, not nationality,’ Ben said finally. He nudged Frank. ‘Come on, Rockefeller, David’s still got a few houses left.’

They moved on to chess. David played Frank as he had promised, the others watching while Geoff went upstairs to lie down. Frank had just won his second game when, in the middle of the afternoon, Sean returned. ‘They’ve sent me home,’ he said. ‘There’s problems all round London, freight’s not moving. Drivers can’t see the bloody signals. Everything all right here?’

‘Yes.’

‘Eileen back?’

‘Not yet,’ Natalia said. Sean bit his lip.

‘It’ll be the fog, don’t worry,’ she reassured him.

Sean turned to Frank with a smile. ‘How are you, feller? Listen, I’m sorry I was a bit rude last night. It’s the strain, y’see?’

Frank smiled uncertainly. ‘It’s all right.’

‘Mates, eh?’ Sean stretched out a hand, and Frank took it. David wondered if Eileen had told him off. Sean looked round the table. ‘Where’s the fair-haired feller?’

‘He went upstairs for a rest,’ David said. ‘He’s feeling poorly. I think it’s the fog.’

‘It’s a bugger. One of my workmates is asthmatic, they had to take him to hospital this afternoon. Hope they manage to get him there, traffic’s hardly moving. If they were planning to move the Jews today, that’s definitely off.’ He sighed. ‘I’m going to make a sandwich.’ He went out to the kitchen. David cleared the table and took everything back to the front room. He switched on the light and put the box back under the table. As he stood up he saw someone standing outside the window, a little white face looking in at him. He stood stock still for a second, then stepped forward. He glimpsed a cap and child’s raincoat as the figure darted away into the murk. He went quickly back to the living room.

‘What’s the matter?’ Natalia asked sharply.

‘There was a little boy, standing in the front garden, looking in. It might have been the one from two doors down.’

‘Shit,’ Ben said, half rising. Sean came out of the kitchen and ran to the front door, throwing it open. A minute later he came back, breathing hard.

‘I heard the door slam at Number 38. That little fucker, he’s always nosing round, he watches the TV programmes telling people to keep an eye out for terrorists.’

Natalia said, ‘He has only seen David, and he saw him yesterday.’

Sean frowned. ‘He’ll tell his dad the man with a posh accent is staying here now.’ He sat down, chewing anxiously on his knuckles. ‘I don’t bloody know. We’ll have to see what Eileen says.’

She returned half an hour later, weighed down with shopping bags. ‘What weather,’ she said. ‘The bus was so slow. The smog’s leaving black grease on everything, you should see the steps.’ Eileen looked round them, her face suddenly tense. ‘Has something happened?’

Sean told her about David seeing the little boy. ‘Ah, that’s bad luck. And I didn’t see his mother at the shops, I thought she’d be there. But young Philip’s always peeping into people’s houses, playing at spies and terrorists like all the little boys.’ She looked at Natalia. ‘What do you think?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know these people.’

‘We’ve had him looking in the window before when we’ve had visitors. He’s a lonely wee lad. Used to play with our two till his parents stopped him last year. I think it’s all right. He hasn’t seen any of the rest of you?’

‘No.’

‘I’ll have to try and get an excuse to speak to his mother, tell her you’re some sort of relation.’

‘With that accent?’ Sean said.

David reddened. ‘I only said a few words.’

‘Well, there’s nothing we can do about it now,’ Eileen said.

‘Go and see her,’ Sean urged.

She shook her head. ‘No, she’d wonder why I was so worried about it. It’ll have to be casual.’ Eileen frowned, obviously still uneasy. She looked at her guests. ‘It looks like you’re staying in London another day or so. The submarine’s waiting in the Channel now, but it’s a question of when the weather’s going to be right for you to be picked up – I can’t say yet where from.’

Geoff had come down and was sitting by the fire, looking pale and sweating. He shook his head. ‘So there actually is a submarine waiting for us?’

‘There is.’

David thought, it’s real, it could happen. He said to Eileen, ‘Any word on my wife?’

‘She’s all right. She’s out of London, near where you’ll be leaving from.’ Eileen hesitated, then added, ‘Only an hour away.’

Natalia gave her a warning look. David thought, she’s right, the less everyone knows, the safer we are.

When dinner was over Eileen asked them to split the night watch, Ben first. After eating they all sat in the living room, except for Natalia, who went upstairs, to David and Geoff’s bedroom, for a rest. Geoff coughed frequently; with six of them packed into the living room, most smoking, the room had quickly become a fug. Eileen suggested Geoff go and sit in the front room. Frank asked if he could rest upstairs for a while. Ben looked at David, who nodded; Frank had given him his promise to do nothing stupid.

They watched the news; London was at a standstill because of the fog, emergency rooms in all the hospitals full of people with weak chests. A couple more women had been attacked by assailants they hadn’t been able to see, hit on the head and their handbags taken. One had been knifed. Sean grunted, ‘The good lord save them, as my mammy would have said. Only he doesn’t.’

‘You were brought up a Catholic?’ David had noticed that unlike other Irish homes he had visited, there was no Catholic imagery anywhere in the house.

‘We both were,’ Eileen said. ‘You?’

‘No, my parents weren’t believers.’

A look of sadness crossed her face. ‘How can anyone believe in the Catholic Church, after what they’ve done to support all the Fascist regimes – in Spain, Italy, Croatia?’

Sean nodded agreement. ‘Ireland too, that’s no paradise. Did anyone see that film the Pope made a few years ago?’

‘I did,’ David said. ‘Pius XII walking in his garden, showing the world the way of peace. As though he didn’t live in this world at all.’

‘Live in it. Ha.’ Sean growled. ‘He helped build it. That’s why they even show him on British TV now.’

At the end of the news there was an extended interview with Beaver brook about the new reduced tariffs on trade with Europe, Beaverbrook pugnacious and optimistic, the interviewer respectful as usual. The Jewish deportations were not mentioned. The Prime Minister said that on his recent visit he had formed the closest relations with Dr Goebbels, praised all the propaganda minister had done for Germany. Sean said, ‘The wind’s shifting further to Goebbels all the time. If Hitler dies, who will he go with, Himmler or Speer?’

Ben agreed. ‘Beaverbrook’s making Goebbels his insurance policy. Bet it was Goebbels who got him to promise he’d get rid of the Jews when he went to Germany. A personal favour.’

David went upstairs to check on Frank, who was sitting on the mattress massaging his bad hand. He looked up at David. ‘It’s sore tonight.’ He winced. ‘It doesn’t like the damp.’

‘Hopefully we’ll be off in a day or two.’

‘Where?’

‘We’ll know when it’s safe for us to know.’

Frank said, ‘Natalia came in to talk to me for a while. She’s nice, she understands things. She told me about her brother. He had problems too. Women – they mostly don’t understand, they can be even worse than men. But she’s not like that, is she?’

David smiled. ‘No. She’s pretty special.’

‘I told her about school.’ He looked at his hand. ‘You know, sometimes I wonder what my life might have been, if my mother had never met Mrs Baker, if I’d never gone to Strangmans. There’s a physicist in America who thinks the world we live in is only one of millions of parallel worlds, existing alongside each other, each different in tiny little ways. Maybe worlds where everyone is happy.’ His face clouded. ‘And maybe ones where everyone was killed by the atom bomb. I try not to think about that.’

‘We’re stuck in the world as it is,’ David said. ‘It’s a bad place but we have to do the best we can.’

‘That’s what Natalia said.’

‘I’m going to sleep here while Ben goes on watch. Leave Natalia to rest in my room for a bit.’

‘I’m ready to go to bed, too.’

‘I’ll leave you to get ready, go and have a last fag.’

‘Okay.’ Frank smiled a gentle little smile again. ‘Thanks, David,’ he said. ‘Thanks for everything.’

David passed the room where Natalia was resting. He heard movement inside. He hesitated, then knocked quietly on the door. She called to him to come in. She was sitting on the side of the mattress, the one he had slept on last night, brushing her hair. She smiled at him.

‘Couldn’t you sleep?’ he asked.

‘No. Usually I can sleep anywhere, but not this evening.’

‘I’ve been thinking about what you said last night.’ David closed the door. ‘You’re right. I will tell people I’m Jewish. But I want my wife to be the first to know.’

Natalia looked at him. ‘Will she be unhappy about it?’

‘I don’t think so. I don’t know. But she’ll care about there being yet another secret, so I want to tell her first.’

‘That sounds – right.’

He shook his head. ‘Ever since our son died – it’s strange, you’d think tragedy would bring people together, but just as often it drives you apart.’

She looked at him seriously. ‘My husband – he had a secret from me, too. I told you he was German Army Intelligence, you remember? The Abwehr?’

‘Yes.’

‘He was posted to England, at the end of 1942; the year we had seen the Jews taken away in the summer. We married just before we left, in Berlin. My brother was not long dead. He was a cipher clerk, at Senate House.’

‘Hasn’t the Abwehr been dissolved? There was talk of some plot to kill Hitler.’

‘Yes. In 1943. I don’t know what sort of Germany the officers would have created –’ she smiled sadly – ‘something old-fashioned and proper, I think, Gustav was a very old-fashioned man.’

‘Was he involved?’

‘Yes. He never got over that time we saw the Jews, on that train. Someone betrayed the plotters, we never knew who. A lot of the Abwehr people were executed. Others who the Nazis weren’t sure of, like Gustav, were sent to the East. To posts they would not return from. There were even suspicions about Rommel, you know, but nothing was proved.’

‘How did you find out your husband was involved?’

‘When he was posted to Russia, I stayed behind. He arranged it.’ She sighed deeply. ‘Then one day, not long after he was killed at the front, in 1945, the Resistance contacted me. That was in their very early days, Churchill was still in Parliament, but he could see what was coming. They had already set up networks of supporters, people who could help with intelligence. And I was working as an interpreter; I met many of the Germans who came here. The Resistance had been in touch with my husband, you see, he was working for them, he had become what you call a double agent. He told them I might help them, if anything happened to him. But while he was alive he never told me. He wanted to protect me, as you wish to protect your wife. I think he also wanted me to know he had opposed the Nazis.’ She looked at David, smiling her sad smile. ‘So, I too know about secrets, brave people with secrets.’

‘And you decided to join the Resistance?’ She’s lived this dangerous life for seven years, he thought.

‘Yes. Because I had nothing left. And I wanted to get back at them. For Gustav, for my broken country, for my brother. And to try and end Europe’s nationalist frenzy. It’s not just vengeance, you know, I want something better, a better world.’

David looked down at the floor. ‘Frank said just now he thinks you understand him. I suppose that’s because of your brother’s problems.’

She nodded, not speaking.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said quietly. ‘They’ve taken everything from you, haven’t they?’

He saw tears in her eyes, but she smiled bravely and said, ‘Gustav and I had happy times. My brother Peter and I had good years, too, before the war. Bratislava was a cosmopolitan city then, and we were part of it. We went to university together.’ She sighed. ‘In that pretty old city by the Danube. I am sentimentalizing, it was dirty and poor, too. But in our circles, among our friends, whether you were part Hungarian, part Jew, part Slovak, part German, part Tartar, it didn’t matter. Everyone is part something, you know. In the nineteenth century not having a fixed national identity was perfectly common in Eastern Europe. But then nationalism turned that into a danger.’

David hesitated again, then sat down on the bed beside her. ‘We English think we’re special.’

‘It’s that part of your culture you share with the Germans. The great Imperial nation part. I think in the thirties you thought fascism would never come to Britain; you had been a democracy so long, and you felt, as you said, special. But you were wrong; given the right circumstances fascism can infest any country, feeding off the hatreds and nationalisms that already exist. Nobody is safe.’

‘I know.’

‘We have our own little Fascist leaders in Slovakia. People for whom nationalism is everything.’

‘And your leader is a priest.’

‘Yes. Monsignor Tiso. The ruling party has Fascist sections and Catholic components. The Vatican and the Fascists work together in most of Europe. They both like order. Though when the Jews were taken away, some Catholic priests came out and protested.’ She shook her head in puzzlement. ‘While others said they deserved all they got. My husband Gustav was a Catholic, you know, a good Catholic.’ She turned to him. ‘A good man, like you.’ She hesitated, then laid a hand on his. And this time David responded. He leaned forward and kissed her.