Page 115 of The Gathering Storm

‘Half the Jews in Austria are Polish, and I have relatives still in Poland. They keep me informed. And if it starts up here, I need to know you won’t sit around thinking it can’t really be happening, and leave it too late to get them out.’

‘Get them out where?’ Richard asked, feeling bewildered.

‘If England goes, America will be the only safe place. I don’t know which will be the safest route – Southampton or Liverpool. Or you might have to get them across to Ireland and find a sailing from there. Ireland’ll claim to be neutral but secretly back Germany, like last time, so it might not be safe. You’ll have to decide at the time. But don’t get caught out. Things will move fast. Don’t trust anyone. Don’t tell anyone your plans. I’ve told them to have a bag packed ready to go at any moment. You won’t find they argue. They’ll obey orders. They know what’s at stake.’

Richard started to say, ‘I’m sure you’re worrying unnecessarily,’ and realised in time that it was a pointless thing to say. Instead he said, ‘I understand.’

‘You’ll get them away safely?’ Samuel insisted. ‘I know you won’t want to go – you’ll want to stay and fight – but war isn’t women’s business. I’ve transferred assets over there to support them until you can join them. Or bring them back – if there’s anything to come back to.’

‘You really think … ?’ Richard began, but it was another pointless remark. ‘I’ll see to it that they’re safe,’ he said instead. And added, ‘I promise.’

Samuel visibly relaxed, and sat back. For a moment they both stared out of the window at the passing world. The countryside of May, the loveliest month, unreeled mile upon mile, the hedges thick with hawthorn, the verges with kex and moon daisies, England all in green and white and gold, decked for a wedding. It was beautiful almost beyond belief, and Richard wished he had someone to share it with. The most human of urges is to say, ‘Oh, look!’ So much of art, he thought – paintings and poetry and much of prose and music – is someone with unusual talent saying, ‘Oh, look!’ at the world we all see and have no words for. Richard gazed, and felt a tremor of love that was almost fear for the timeless beauty of a timeless land: the fields and woods and villages of England, unchanged for hundreds of years.

After a while, Samuel spoke again. ‘Hard to believe, when you look at all this, that anything could ever touch it,’ he said, jumping uncannily into Richard’s thoughts. Richard met his eyes, startled, and he went on, ‘I know you think I’m a foolish old man, but you’ll see. There’s a monster over there, in Europe, feeding on men’s hearts, and growing bigger every day on their blood. I’m a Jew, we’re an old people, and we’ve seen enough monsters to recognise them, however they disguise themselves.’

‘I’ll take care of them,’ Richard promised again. It was all he could say.

He didn’t mention the conversation to Cynthia when he got home. They talked about the site at Woolthorpe, and the construction plans. She told him some ideas she’d had about the entertainments they might arrange for the visitors – games and competitions that would cost little or nothing to put on – and he invented some ridiculous competitions to make her laugh. Then they went to bed, and made love, and he held her while she fell asleep, thinking of the Jews in Vienna being rounded up, and wondering what it was that made men do vile acts. One was tempted to say they behaved ‘like animals’, but animals never did such things. They were governed by nature. Only humans could be so unnaturally cruel.

It was on the following evening, after dinner, that the thought came to him. The wireless was on, playing dance music, turned down low, while Cynthia knitted. Richard put down the book he was reading and left the room to go upstairs.

He found the bag under the bed, pushed well back – he had to lie down and reach full stretch to touch it. A leather Gladstone, worn but sturdy: inside he found clothes, a wallet containing a copy of her birth and marriage certificates and the passport she’d had to get for their honeymoon, a jewel-case, empty, ready to put her valuables into at a moment’s notice, and in an envelope, family photographs, of Hannah and Samuel, of Cynthia as a child, an old sepia print of stern-looking strangers, probably her grandparents, and the studio portrait of her and Richard taken for their engagement, her seated and him standing behind with his hand on her shoulder, he smiling confidently, she with a faint smile that looked almost bewildered. At the bottom there was a large amount of money, still bundled in a bank’s paper sleeves. Hundreds of pounds. Samuel must have provided it. Passage to America cost around forty pounds, so he was making sure they had enough to get themselves established. Or did he think they might have to bribe their way onto a boat?

He replaced everything in the same order, pushed the bag back where it had come from, and stood up, dusting his hands. His heart hurt. She had taken her father’s warning seriously, but had not mentioned it to him. Did that mean she didn’t really believe there was a danger, or believed and was afraid Richard might ridicule it? He had a flash of imagination, a bleak image of her and her mother coming down the gangplank at a dock in New York, two very small figures in a huge city, facing an uncertain future, the archetypes of refugees everywhere. What must it be like to be Jewish and know yourself not welcome anywhere? He felt a fierce determination to protect her. In the short time he had known her, she had climbed inside his heart and curled up there, and he could not remove her without destroying himself. But he didn’t want to remove her. It was a warm and belonging feeling, to care for somebody. What was one’s life for, but to be part of someone else’s?

He wished he could give her the one thing she really wanted – a child.

Morland Place was excited about Jeremy’s wedding. Mr and Mrs Robb, the bride’s parents, had been unwilling at first to agree to it taking place there: a girl got married from her own home, Mr Robb said stubbornly, and that was that.

But the couple had been walking out for a year before they got engaged, and for another two years before they got married, which was long enough for hardened attitudes to be eroded. An invitation to dinner to celebrate the engagement had begun the softening. They had never set foot in Morland Place before, and Mrs Robb was visibly impressed, though – to her credit – not at all overpowered by the magnificent rooms and the even more magnificent servants. Little Miss Robb, having seen what she might be denied, had begun working on her parents soon afterwards. The chapel was very pretty, she urged: how lovely it would be to walk down the aisle there. The Robbs thought the very idea of having a chapel in a house was Popish; but she assured them the ceremony would not be conducted by some unknown Romish priest in league with the Devil but by Mr Ordsall, the vicar, whom everyone knew and liked. And to have the wedding breakfast in that lovely dining-saloon! How convenient, just to walk from the chapel, and not to have all the muddle and inconvenience of cars from church to hotel. By the time the actual date for the wedding was being discussed, the walls had been breached, the fort taken, and the Robbs could not remember when they had actually agreed to it, only that they had.

The engagement had gone on for so long that even Ethel was resigned to the marriage. During that time, Jeremy had been promoted at the bank to under-manager, with an increase in salary that not only enabled him to look at renting a three-bedroomed house in Sycamore Terrace – which would mean a bedroom for her to stay in when she visited them – but to afford to run a little motor-car, meaning he could visit her at Morland Place more often.

When she heard about the larger house, Polly had allowed herself to dream that Ethel would go and live with them permanently, but it was not to be. Ethel herself had vetoed the idea. A young couple should have the chance to be alone at the beginning of their married life, she said, with a sentimental look, and she could not abandon Polly and leave her to run that big house all on her own. Polly believed Ethel had decided her creature comforts would be better served in a household with many servants than in the new house with only a cook-general and a girl for the heavy work. Besides, she had discovered that, despite her soft pink looks, Miss Robb was anything but soft and pink inside, and indeed these days received Ethel’s helpful criticisms with tight lips and a militant light in her eye. At the moment Amelia had to take what Ethel dished out, but once under her own roof, she looked likely to make her own rules and want them followed.

So Ethel had all the fun of a wedding without any attendant trouble to herself. Polly made sure Miss Robb got a substantial discount at Makepeace’s for her wedding dress – made by Makepeace’s own seamstresses – and trousseau from Makepeace’s ready-made department. Her fellow employees clubbed together to buy her a silver-plated filigree cake basket, and from the management, Polly arranged a forty-eight-piece dinner service, comprising twelve dinner plates, twelve dessert plates, twelve side plates, two serving platters, two vegetable dishes with lids, one vegetable dish without lid, one gravy boat with saucer and one sauce boat with lid and saucer. Jeremy’s bank gave him a striking mantel clock.

The Robbs were able to be generous to their daughter, since all the expense of the wedding ceremony and wedding breakfast had been taken off their shoulders, and it was they who bought the little second-hand Morris 8, two years old, one careful owner, and also paid for the honeymoon. Jeremy’s brother John was the best man – he worked at Hanbury’s garage and it took him a week to get his hands and nails clean enough, a week during which Mr Hanbury kindly put him on driving-only duties, and John looked on like a cat watching birds through the window while other employees plunged their heads under bonnets and crawled under chassis.

Alec had been persuaded, through a shocking level of bribery, necessary because he was almost eight and said he was too old to be subjected to silk stockings, to be a page-boy. He complained bitterly right up to the day itself, but then found he rather liked being the centre of attention. He didn’t like having his hair ruffled and being told he looked ‘sweet’, but he discovered the plaudits often came with tips – Mr Robb excelled himself and pressed a half-crown into Alec’s hand – which all went towards the construction kit he was saving for.

The groom’s sister Roberta came to the wedding, having asked if she could bring her employer, Mrs Maddox, as a guest. Polly said yes, though it seemed an odd request. She thought she understood better on the day when the pair turned up, with Roberta driving Mrs Maddox’s motor. She had grown tall and handsome since leaving home to work in the racing stables at Stillington, but she was very slim and probably, Polly guessed, rode at no more than nine stone. Her hair was cropped as short as a boy’s, but was curly enough to pass muster with her mother. She and Mrs Maddox were both wearing light tweed suits, the jackets cut rather like hacking jackets – Polly wondered if they served a dual purpose – and in them they looked like sisters. Polly immediately felt the closeness between them. Roberta had gone as a management trainee six years ago, but from the way they stood together, a little apart from everyone else, and talked together in low voices, and managed to exchange information with looks alone, she thought they were more like a married couple. Ethel bustled up to get Roberta to talk about how well she was doing, wanting something to boast about, but Roberta would only talk about the horses, and how well they were doing. She had the habit of referring her comments to Mrs Maddox: ‘Didn’t he, Hilary?’ and ‘Don’t they, Hilary?’ and ‘Was that in ’thirty-five or ’thirty-six, Hilary?’ Mrs Maddox didn’t talk much, but she smiled a lot, and when she did speak, it was to praise, so everyone thought well of her.

When the wedding feast was finally over, the young couple set off for Scarborough, Jeremy looking very proud behind the wheel of the Morris 8. Polly, waving them off, thought Miss Robb, now Mrs Jeremy Compton, looked relieved as much as anything. Ethel retired to a sofa, claiming exhaustion, and indulged herself in comfortable tears. And, seeing it was June and wouldn’t be dark until ten o’clock, Polly escaped upstairs, changed into riding clothes, collected the dogs and went round to the stables, saddled Zephyr, and cantered away into the green and glowing evening.

* * *

Lennie stepped down from the carriage and saw Polly waiting exactly opposite him. It was an overcast, humid August day, and she was wearing a fitted silk dress in milk-chocolate brown figured with white, a belted waist, slightly flared skirt to just below the knee and cap sleeves, white gloves and a small hat with a very long pheasant feather. His heart swelled.

‘How did you manage to be waiting in just the right place?’ he called, instead of saying what was in his heart and embarrassing himself.

‘I know where the first class stops, of course.’

She looked at him uncertainly for a moment, then he put down his valise and held out his arms to her, and it seemed perfectly natural to step into them instead of shaking hands. He was a sort of cousin and she had known him nearly all her life, after all. And Americans, she knew, were much more demonstrative than the English. It felt good to be held against his strong male body. His grey overcoat, made from the lightest, softest wool, was delicious against her cheek, and he smelt lovely. She had forgotten how tall he was.

Lennie held her slender body close, closed his eyes, and ached. Then forced himself to release her.

‘You’re all on your own?’ she said, looking up at him and automatically straightening her hair.