Second Violin Read online

  ‘Would that be in the national interest?’

  ‘I’m afraid it would.’

  ‘I wonder what Freud will say.’

  ‘Freud? I’m sorry Alex, I don’t quite follow . . .?’

  ‘It’s his book. Years of work. I rather think he will relish any response even one as prematurely negative as this.’

  ‘Alex, are we talking about the same letter?’

  ‘I have it in front of me . . . signed by the Board of Deputies.’

  ‘No . . . That’s not it. I was referring to a letter from a bunch of East End rabbis.’

  Alex tore open the second letter, said, ‘One moment, Denys.’

  Sir,

  War cannot now be far away. Anyone who has experienced the disruption and conflict created by British fascism in recent years, as we, the Rabbis of Stepney, have, will surely agree with us that it is now time to imprison our home-grown Nazis? We call upon His Majesty’s Government to wait no longer on the outbreak of war and imprison these men forthwith:

  Sir Oswald Mosley, Archibald Ramsay MP, Oliver Gilbert, Victor Rowe, Roland Rollason, Lord Carsington, Major Harold Haward-Pyke, Professor Charles Lockett, Sir Michael Redburn, Viscount Blackwall, Geoffrey Trench MP.

  Yrs Faithfully,

  Daniel Shoval

  Isaiah Borg

  Aaron Adelson

  Moses Friedland

  Elishah Nader

  David Cohen

  Jacob Kossoff.

  Coincidence was a small world. You could fit it onto the head of a pin and still have room for all those angels. No sight or mention of Carsington for years and now twice in one day.

  ‘I’ve read it, Denys. Explain the national interest to me.’

  ‘It’s simply too provocative.’

  ‘The men so named need no provocation.’

  ‘And, of course, there’s the possibility of libel.’

  ‘Denys, I think I’ve been sued for libel half a dozen times in the last thirty years. I’ve won with costs every time. Libel is not a consideration. I have had no chance to talk to our solicitor and I will not even bother. Everyone on this list has spoken against Jews. Everyone on this list has spoken for Nazis. They are our undeclared enemy. I see no reason not to treat them as such.’

  ‘I agree – in principle.’

  ‘In principle?’

  ‘Well . . . we’re not at war yet.’

  ‘Only a matter of time.’

  ‘And we’ve no law under which we could lock them up.’

  ‘But you’re getting one ready to put on the statute books?’

  Quilty was silent too long.

  ‘Denys?’

  ‘It’s imminent.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Actually . . . later today. Second reading tomorrow. With any luck it’ll be law by midnight on Saturday. But it’ll take days before it filters down to enforcement level as rules and regulations.’

  ‘So when will you lock them up . . . in a matter of days?’

  ‘Doubtful.’

  ‘On the outbreak of war?’

  ‘Doubtful . . . we’d still need a reason.’

  ‘War is not reason enough?’

  ‘Alright – we’d need an excuse – and we’re looking for one. It’s all in the wording, and between you and me what’s going through tonight isn’t quite the blank cheque one would need to bang up any Tom, Dick or Oswald.’

  ‘Then what will it do?’

  ‘Well . . . it’ll tell you which end to open your boiled egg at breakfast. And give a jobsworth in a tin hat the power to fine you fifty quid if you bash the wrong end with your teaspoon.’

  ‘You’re kidding?’

  ‘Kidding, yes. Exaggerating, no. If it were up to me it would be a law that locked these buggers up post-haste. I think it’s necessary. But that in itself is one reason not to publish. It would be, shall I say, tipping our hand? Why give the buggers any warning? They’ll probably not think the law applies to them, and I’d rather they stayed complacent.’

  ‘One reason you say – you mean there’s more than one?’

  ‘The Herschel Grynszpan factor.’

  Alex could not find the name in his memory.

  ‘Remind me.’

  ‘He’s the boy who shot the Third Under-Secretary or whatever in Paris and set off Kristallnacht. I don’t want to give our homegrown fascists any warning – equally I don’t want to give them any excuse to go after more Jews with one of their rent-a-mobs.’

  Alex sighed.

  ‘Denys – I won’t publish this. And I hope I never regret it.’

  § 61

  Alex spread out the two letters side by side. He picked up the first, read it once more and called Freud at his home.

  Freud’s response was simple.

  ‘Alex,’ Freud said, ‘publish. I shall. I can do no other. Let them speak. I have no other intention.’

  ‘As you wish. Now, there is another matter. I have received another letter from a group of rabbis. None of them men of whom I have ever heard and I doubt you have either. Not a deputy among them. They all live and work in the East End and have written to me calling for the arrest of fascist rabble-rousers who go into the East End and spread anti-Semitism . . .’

  ‘I say again, publish.’

  Alex ignored this. Had no wish to explain to Freud the reasons why he would not publish.

  ‘Among the fascist demagogues named is a Professor Lockett. Was it not a Professor Lockett who called me last year, who persuaded you to leave Vienna?’

  ‘It was. Nicholas Lockett is the younger brother of the man you are thinking of. Charles Lockett, I believe?’

  ‘Yes . . . Charles. I know the name and I know he speaks from time to time against the Jews. Apart from the mere fact of his anti-Semitism I know nothing about him.’

  ‘Nicholas Lockett is a protégé of mine . . . if I were messianic I might even say disciple. Suffice it to say he is a psychoanalyst of the highest reputation. His scientific credentials could not be faulted. His brother, on the other hand, is the inheritor of another Viennese school of thought. It was current when you first came to me. Perhaps you came across a magazine called Ostara and its publisher von Liebenfels?’

  ‘Ah . . . what did they call themselves . . .?’

  ‘Ariosophists.’

  ‘So they did.’

  ‘New wine in old bottles. A dash of phrenology, a cup of eugenics, a splash of Zoroastrianism, a twist of Hindu myth . . . shake the bottle and you get a disgusting mess of pseudo-science more appropriate to the middle of the last century than the middle of this one. The justification of Aryan superiority by a patchwork of mysticism. That is what the elder Lockett practises. The gobbledegook of racial differences. Tell me, Alex, is it your intention to contact this man?’

  ‘Probably not.’

  ‘Just as well, I’m sure he would ask to feel your bumps.’

  § 62

  Alex’s younger son, Frederick, had rebelled against the way laid out for him. An exhibition to read history at Christ Church, Oxford, might have impressed his father, but it hadn’t impressed him. He’d thought about it most of the summer of 1933, and late in the summer shortly after his eighteenth birthday he had appeared in his father’s study about breakfast time and told him he didn’t want to go to Oxford, or any other university for that matter.

  Alex had taken the news well. Had asked merely ‘What would you prefer to do?’

  Frederick Troy admitted that he did not know.

  ‘Journalism?’ Alex said hopefully knowing full well how different his sons were.

  ‘Maybe,’ Troy said, ‘but where does one begin?’

  ‘When one’s father owns the paper,’ Alex said parodically ‘one begins where one wants. But if one is asking for a suggestion – Dickens began as a court reporter. You could do worse.’

  Troy joined the Post as court reporter. He learnt shorthand, did the job for a year and in 1934 moved on to become a crime reporter, and after a year on crime appeare
d yet again in his father’s study at breakfast to say: ‘I know now. I’d like to be a policeman.’

  In 1936 he passed out from Hendon, and took up his first assignment as a beat bobby in Stepney, astounded the locals with his accent, and came under the benign care of Station Sergeant George Bonham – a gentle giant of a man.

  By the summer of 1939, Troy was a detective constable in Stepney. Bonham still ran the station, still presided over Troy with all the attentiveness of a nanny, but in every other respect accepted that Troy had gone where he could not follow, occasionally muttering something about ‘seven league boots’.

  ‘This just came in,’ he said one Tuesday afternoon towards the end of August, and the end of Peace. ‘You might want to take a look. You never know.’

  Troy had got used to Bonham’s ‘you never know’. It was a mechanism that allowed for being surprised. What he liked about coppering was the moment when you did know, when you finally had all the pieces on the board and got the last one into place.

  ‘Bethnal Green Underground Station. Bloke found dead at the bottom of the escalator. Probably an accident, but . . .’

  ‘You never know,’ Troy said.

  ‘How did you know I was gonna say that?’

  Troy took the piece of paper from Bonham’s hand, looked at his watch.

  ‘I’ll drive over now. The poor bugger on the beat is probably holding a crowd at bay.’

  Accidents happen – another Bonhamism – and only one thing about the bundled body at the bottom of the escalator surprised Troy. The hat, the coat and the beard. It was an Orthodox rabbi.

  The beat bobby was even younger than Troy – white as a sheet, admitted he’d never seen a dead body before, did not admit that keeping a nosy crowd at bay had strained his tact and his coppering skills.

  Troy simply and loudly said, ‘If anyone saw him fall, speak up. If anyone knows him, speak up. If not, clear off.’

  The crowd thinned. Only a small boy remained. Twelve or thirteen, Troy thought – blue blazer, grey shorts, tufts of curly hair, and a yarmulke pinned to the top of his head.

  ‘Do you recognise him?’

  The boy nodded his head.

  ‘It’s the rabbi.’

  ‘I can see that.’

  ‘I mean it’s our rabbi. Teaches us in shul.’

  ‘Tell me his name.’

  ‘Rabbi Shoval. His real name’s Daniel. But we always call him Digger.’

  Troy bent down to look at the dead man’s face. He’d never met Rabbi Shoval, he’d heard of him – most people who lived in the East End had heard of Daniel Shoval, a campaigner, a fighter – but he’d never met him and he hadn’t recognised him from the dozens of photographs that had appeared over the years in the local papers. Nor did he know that small boys had stuck him with such an undignified nickname – but they would, wouldn’t they?

  Troy picked up the broken pieces of the rabbi’s walking stick. It had snapped just like the man.

  The boy was dictating his name and address to the constable – clearly and calmly. Cooler in the face of death than either of the policemen. Then he turned to Troy.

  ‘An accident?’ he said. ‘It was an accident?’

  §

  Under moonlight,

  infectious moonlight,

  a madman dances.

  § 63

  1 September 1939

  Warsaw

  ‘Hello. Hello. Does anyone speak English? (pause) Eeeenglisshh? (pause) No, I don’t speak Polish, not a word!’

  ‘You have reached the press office of the Foreign Ministry, sir. Is it the press office you wanted?’

  ‘Damn right it is. Kulikowski. I wish to speak to Mr Kulikowski.’

  Greene heard muffled voices as though a hand had been placed over the mouthpiece.

  ‘This is Kulikowski. To whom am I speaking?’

  ‘Hugh Greene. Warsaw Correspondent, Daily Telegraph, London. We met at . . . dammit . . . can’t remember where . . . doesn’t matter . . . . Listen . . . Katowice . . .’

  ‘Katowice? I thought you said Warsaw?’

  ‘Of course I’m in Warsaw, I’m the Warsaw correspondent.’

  ‘So? Why Katowice?’

  Jesus wept.

  ‘We have a stringer . . .’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A correspondent. We have a correspondent in Katowice, at the moment. A colleague. She just telephoned me . . .’

  ‘She?’

  ‘She. The female of the species. Some of us are women. You know, the odd-looking chaps with bumps on their chests? Look, will you just listen? The Germans have attacked.’

  ‘Attacked what?’

  Jesus wept.

  ‘Katowice!’

  The muffled voices once more, the hand not quite masking the conversation. Polish could do that all on its own.

  ‘Mr Greene, this is nonsense. We would be the first to know. We are still in negotiation with the Germans.’

  ‘Not any more, you’re not.’

  ‘What are you trying to tell us, Mr Greene?’

  ‘I think I’m trying to tell you that World War Two has just begun.’

  With pantomime timing an air raid siren began its demented wail. Greene heard it twice, once through the open window, and again down the telephone line from the Ministry.

  § 64

  3 September 1939

  ‘The Day War Broke Out’

  In the absence of anyone more senior Troy had an office. His immediate superior, Sergeant McKechnie, being a member of the reserve, had been called up some time ago. The station inspector, Malnick by name, and, as far as Troy was concerned, Malnick by practice, had transferred to the City Police – hence Troy – a mere detective constable – had an office, and had it to himself.

  Station Sergeant George Bonham – a man who stood just shy of seven foot in boots and helmet – was backing in through the door with a large wooden cabinet in his hands.

  ‘George, what are you doing?’

  Bonham stuck the cabinet on Troy’s desk – its perforated hardboard back facing Troy. He recognised it for what it was – a wet-cell wireless, sold as portable, which it was if you also owned a wheelbarrow.

  ‘Prime Minister’s supposed to be on any minute. Address to the nation or some such.’

  ‘George, I hardly think we need . . .’

  Bonham sat down and Troy was drowned out in a barrage of hisses and whistles as Bonham twiddled the knob in search of the Home Service. He found it just in time. Pip, pip, pip and a BBC epitome-of-reserve voice announced the address. Troy accepted he had lost and thought he’d sit it out in silence, but at the sound of those few words . . . ‘And now the Prime Minister’ . . . Bonham stood up at attention.

  ‘George, for Christ’s sake, it’s only Neville Chamberlain. Not the King.’

  Bonham looked at him quizzically but sat down, perched on the edge of the chair as though ready to spring to attention should the wireless demand it of him.

  ‘I am speaking to you from the Cabinet Room at 10, Downing Street. This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government a final note stating that, unless we heard from them by 11 o’clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany.’

  What struck Troy was not the gravity of the matter – what sentient being had expected anything other? – but the tone. Chamberlain seemed old, frail. Almost bird-like in delicacy, a butterfly about to be broken upon a wheel of his own making. It roused no sympathy in him.

  ‘You can imagine what a bitter blow it is to me that all my long struggle to win peace has failed. Yet I cannot believe that there is . . .’

  Troy reached over and turned off the set.

  ‘’Ere ’Old yer ’orses. He hasn’t finished yet!’

  ‘Do you really want to hear a list of excuses? If you do, you don’t need Chamberl
ain. I could recite for you word for word what he’s going to say next . . . he’ll tell us how no one could be more hurt by this . . . how no one could have done more . . . how he hoped for peace until about three minutes ago . . . how he really believed it was possible to do business with Nazis . . . and what you won’t hear is any reference to the shabby betrayals of Austria, of Czechoslovakia . . . of small faraway countries . . . of which, apparently, we knew nothing. All I can say is, thank God Hitler didn’t have his sights set on Wales . . . it qualifies in both categories.’

  ‘Bloody hell, young Fred. What a bee! What a bonnet!’

  Troy was saved from having to answer. The ululation of an air-raid siren sliced the air and changed the subject.

  Bonham stood up and looked out of the window as though expecting to see a German bomber. Troy opened a folder and went back to his paperwork.

  ‘We’d best get to the shelter, Freddie.’

  ‘False alarm, George.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  Troy didn’t bother to look up from his papers.

  ‘Trust me.’

  ‘You know the procedure . . . how would it look to Joe Public if us coppers didn’t stick to the drill?’

  ‘George . . . nobody’s looking.’

  ‘Course not . . . they’re running for the shelters. Take a look out the window. The street was full half a minute ago. Now . . . they’ve just scattered like hens!’

  ‘I say again, false alarm.’

  Bonham dithered.

  ‘At least one of us should turn off the gas. They tell you to turn off the gas.’

  ‘And then they give you a gas mask, just in case.’

  ‘It’s not funny, Freddie.’

  Troy still didn’t look up.

  ‘Of course not. But we’ve read all the bumf, haven’t we?’

  ‘Course.’

  ‘And you taped up all the windows with sticky tape.’

  ‘You saw me do it . . . an’ you didn’t lift a finger to help.’

  ‘And you’ve got a stirrup pump?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘And a bucket of sand?’

  ‘We got lots o’ buckets o’ sand. I reckon we got six or seven scattered round the nick. I have to stop blokes from putting their fag ends out in ’em.’