Page 130 of The Gathering Storm

‘Papa said—’ she began, muffled by his neck.

‘I know about your running-away bag,’ he said gently. ‘He told me, if things go bad, I must get you away. All of you,’ he added, in case she objected to leaving them. ‘But if you want, we can go now. It will only take a few days to arrange—’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Papa wouldn’t go, not yet anyway. And he’s not well, and Mama wouldn’t go without him.’ She lifted her head from his shoulder and looked at him, determination in her face, though her chin quivered. Her courage made him want to cry. ‘I’m staying. I want to stay with you. We’ll – we’ll face what we have to together.’

‘I will always take care of you,’ he said. ‘I promise.’

‘I know,’ she said.

The pogrom was called afterwards the Night of Broken Glass, or Kristallnacht in German, because of all the broken glass from Jewish windows that paved the streets and glittered in the streetlights. The German government ordered Jews to sweep it all up. They further imposed a fine of one billion Reichsmarks for the murder of vom Rath, which they levied by confiscating 20 per cent of all Jewish property. And they diverted six million Reichsmarks of insurance money, which would have been paid to Jews for the destruction of their property on Kristallnacht, to the government’s coffers. This, they said, was ‘damages due to the German Nation’.

It emerged in reports that Hitler had approved the pogrom, ordering officials not to intervene, and while that was shocking, it was not any more surprising. It could be seen that since 1933 the Nazi government’s intention had been to get all the Jews to quit Germany, leaving their wealth behind. But after Kristallnacht, it came to be feared that something more sinister was behind the relentless persecution. On the day after, Hermann Göring said at a news conference, ‘The Jewish problem will reach its solution if, in any time soon, we will be drawn into war beyond our border – then it is obvious that we will have to manage a final account with the Jews.’

‘You see,’ Cynthia said to Richard, ‘we are not people, like you. We are a problem.’

They were in the office, and Samuel had not come in that morning – Hannah rang to say that he was feeling very tired and she had insisted he stayed at home and rested. Later that day there was another phone call, from Leah this time – very nervous about using the telephone and under the impression she had to shout because they were a long way away. She said the master had collapsed, and as he was unconscious, the mistress had called for an ambulance, using the new ‘999’ service, and he had been taken away to hospital. Patient questioning by Richard elicited that he was at St Stephen’s in Fulham Road. He and Cynthia got their coats and hats and went outside to hail a taxi.

Samuel did not regain consciousness, and died two days later, after a second stroke. He was, Richard thought, though he never said it aloud, one more victim of the pogrom.

Lennie had gone. Polly missed him, but once she had received his wire from New York saying he had arrived safely, she felt calm and hopeful. She had plenty to do, including the arranging of a wedding, though she decided not to put any specific orders in place yet, from a superstitious fear that it would be tempting Fate. In any case, he had said three months, but that did not give her an actual date to work towards. She decided to wait until Christmas. He might have a better idea then of how much longer he needed. Three months would have him arriving back in England in February, when the weather was likely to be hard. March, or even April, would be better for a wedding. She had waited all this time, she could wait a little longer.

In all their talk together about being married, he had always taken it for granted that they would live at Morland Place. She remembered the very first man to propose to her, back when she was a foolish girl, and his assumption that she would live with him in London – far from her home, and not even in the country. No horses and dogs, no wide spaces to roam over. When she had queried that, he had proposed that at some point they might have a country house in Surrey. Surrey! But Lennie had understood. It had never been in question. She was Morland Place and Morland Place was her. How could it have taken her so long to see that he was the only man she could happily marry?

Meanwhile, she kept busy. There were many visits of congratulation after the engagement was announced in the papers, with commiseration that her betrothed had had to go away. She held a dinner for the family and favoured guests, and out of kindness to Ethel, who seemed a bit miffed for reasons Polly couldn’t guess – had she wanted Polly to remain a widow like her? Did she fear being thrown out after the wedding and made to go and live with Jeremy and Amelia? – she asked Jeremy to act as host. He seemed as much nervous as pleased, but in the event he did it very well, and she was impressed by his gain in maturity since he had married. During the mingling part of the evening, he came up to Polly quietly and told her that Amelia was expecting, which perhaps explained it: assistant manager of his branch, a married man, and now about to become a father. He said he had wanted her to know, but didn’t want to steal her thunder by announcing it generally at her party. Polly thanked him, was touched, and when they got to the toasting part of the evening, and she had to stand up and reply, she announced it herself. Jeremy looked startled and pleased, Amelia blushed fierily, and Ethel burst into tears. It was a happy evening – as Polly told Lennie in a long letter.

Alec seemed pleased about the engagement, and to Polly’s careful questions said he liked Uncle Lennie and asked would he have to call him ‘Father’ after the wedding. Polly said that was up to him, and he should wait and see what came naturally – there was no rule about it. But after a few days he seemed to feel differently, became anxious and silent, and finally, when Polly got him alone and ready to talk – she took him out riding, feeling it was always easier to open your mind when you were side by side and moving, rather than face to face and immobile – he confessed that a boy at school had put the wind up him. ‘He said that stepfathers always hate you, and beat you, like in David Copperfield, and turn your mother against you, and then your mother dies and you’re an orphan and your stepfather steals your inheritance and sends you to the workhouse.’ He was staring ahead through Shady’s ears, biting his lip so as not to cry, because he was eight years old now and big boys didn’t.

Polly bit her lip too, so as not to laugh, though she wanted to cry as well. When she had control of herself, she said seriously, ‘I think you’re being a little bit silly. Nothing like that can possibly happen.’

‘Can’t it?’ he said, in a small voice.

‘For one thing, there aren’t any workhouses any more. And I’m not in the slightest bit likely to die. The mother in David Copperfield was a weak, silly woman, but I’m not, am I?’

‘Well …’ he allowed doubtfully.

‘She’d never done anything but sit around in pretty dresses and drink tea. She hadn’t run businesses like me. So she was easy for her new husband to dominate. I don’t see anyone being able to turn me against you, do you?’ He didn’t answer. ‘And besides all that,’ she went on, ‘Uncle Lennie isn’t anything like Mr Murdstone. David Copperfield had never met him before the wedding, but you know Uncle Lennie. You’ve talked to him and gone riding with him and sat at breakfast with him, and he helped you build the wireless set. You like him and he likes you.’

Alec thought about that. ‘He wouldn’t change, through being married? You both wouldn’t change?’

‘Not a bit. We’ll just be happier than ever, and that’ll make us be nicer than ever to you.’

‘Oh,’ said Alec. ‘You’re sure?’

‘Completely, absolutely sure.’

Alec thought for a while as they rode on. It was a chill and foggy November day, the only colour the last few leaves clinging to the sycamores, gleaming like fool’s gold through the misty greyness. Shady had already grown his winter coat. Polly thought they would have to have him trace-clipped if Alec was to hunt him this winter.

Finally Alec sighed, not an unhappy sigh but a concluding sigh.

‘Thought it all out?’ she asked. He nodded. ‘You’re not scared any more?’ He shook his head. She could tell he had something else to say. ‘What, then? Spit it out!’

‘Mum, do you think Uncle Lennie would buy me a camera?’

She wrote to James to tell him about the engagement, and he wrote back expressing his delight. ‘You ought to have been married long ago – it’s such a waste your being single.’ He sent her as an engagement present a beautiful little Schiaparelli evening jacket in scarlet silk with an enormous gold honey-bee embroidered on each breast, and a promise that he would come to the wedding. ‘You’ve chosen the right man,’ he wrote. ‘I think he’ll make you very happy. And if you have some more children, it would do a lot to assuage my guilt over leaving you in charge.’

And then a new paragraph – the ink slightly different, as if he had added it later: ‘The world is a pretty horrible place at the moment. I’m very glad that you will have someone to look after you. And we need all the occasions of joy we can get. Your wedding will be a beacon in the dark. All the love in the world from your devoted brother, James.’

Another early-morning invasion by Emil, though this time James was up and dressed. ‘What’s happened now?’ he asked, letting his friend in.