Pantheon

Chapter Twelve

He lost track of the number 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.’

‘Good God,’ the Master said into the telephone.

‘That’s right. I suspect Sir Herbert would be rather less persuadable. These Whitehall mandarins tend towards the sceptical, don’t they, Master? Professional requirement, you could say.’

‘You wouldn’t dare.’

‘Wouldn’t I? I thought you just said I was crazy. No telling what a crazy man might do. Besides, it would be very easy. Sir Herbert’s ministry is just down the road these days, isn’t it? I’m surprised you haven’t run into him at high table.’

‘He wouldn’t credit a word that came out of your mouth.’

‘Maybe not. But the suspicion would linger, wouldn’t it? Sir Herbert might eventually ask his daughter if there was any truth in what that lunatic Zennor had suggested. And, as we know, the girl is talking.’

‘This is blackmail of the crudest kind, James.’

‘You can call it what you like. Now, why not get Forsyth to fetch you a pencil and paper?’ James spelled out his demands slowly, as if Bernard Grey were a junior secretary, pad perched on her knee. He wanted a berth on the SS Santa Clara, which Hunter had just told him was due to leave Liverpool in the coming week, a US visa and a visiting research fellowship, with suitable accommodation, at Yale University. ‘None of that should give you too much trouble,’ James had added breezily. ‘And if it does, you can always give the chancellor of Oxford University a call: he used to be the foreign secretary, after all.’

Any delay on any of his demands and the letters James had already written and stamped would be on their way to Mrs Grey and Sir Herbert in the next post. ‘And don’t try pulling strings with the Liverpool constabulary to get me arrested: I’ve left word with my new friends here at the port to post those letters for me if I don’t come back and collect them.’ That last threat was a pure lie, but the white-haired social reformer and distinguished scholar had not risked proving it.

The calculus of interest, Harry used to call it. ‘Almost mathematical. You can work it out like an equation.’ That’s what James had done, reasoning that Bernard Grey would soon see that acceding to James’s demands was actually in his own best interests. Given what James knew, wasn’t it obvious that the Master would want him out of the way?