always hated anti-Semitism.’
‘But even before 1940, we were all brought up with prejudice,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s always there, anti- Semitism sometimes comes out when you least expect it—’
She shouted, ‘Not with
‘But Irene—’
‘Irene married a bigoted fool! You know what I think of him! But you didn’t trust me. All these secrets. You never trusted me with any of it. Never.’
He stood up, stepped towards her again. ‘I’m sorry. I was just so used to nobody knowing. Sometimes for a while I’d forget it myself until the persecutions started. And everything else, it was all to protect you.’
‘The support I could have given you, the help, the
‘I thought it was for the best.’
Sarah thought it a miserable answer, nothing of love in it. She stood for a long moment facing her husband. Part of her wanted to reach out and stroke his face, soothe his desperate unhappiness; another part wanted to hit him. She closed her eyes for a moment. Then she turned practical; it was the only way she could cope at the moment and God knew there were enough questions about practicalities, too. She took a deep breath. ‘What’s going to happen tonight?’
David took a deep breath. ‘A boat will be waiting to pick us all up a few miles from here at half past midnight. It’ll take us to an American submarine in the Channel. You, me, Frank and the two others I’m with. They’re all upstairs now.’
‘Frank was in a lunatic asylum. Is he fit to go? Does he want to go?’
‘Yes. He’s better than he was.’
‘Who are these other two?’
‘Ben, he was a nurse at his hospital, and – and Natalia, she’s the one in charge of our group.’ His voice faltered for a moment, and he took a deep breath. ‘Part of our cover is that Natalia and I are supposed to be husband and wife, and Ben and Frank my cousins; we’re all supposed to have come down here for an old aunt’s funeral. You and I are not supposed to know each other, by the way, we have to pretend.’
‘Pretend?’ Sarah laughed bitterly.
He said, quietly, ‘I’m so sorry, Sarah. For everything. I . . .’
Just then there was a knock at the door. Jane came in. She looked scared. She said, ‘I’m sorry, but please, please keep your voices down. You can be heard upstairs, and in the hotel next door, these walls are thin.’ She looked at David, her eyes wide with fear. ‘What you shouted out earlier—’
‘About being Jewish?’ David nodded fiercely. ‘Yes, that’s dangerous, isn’t it?’
‘It’s all right,’ Sarah said. ‘I’ll go up to my room.’ She looked at David. ‘Don’t come after me.’
Jane followed her out, and said, ‘Please don’t think I’m interfering, only – you’ve got to be ready to go off tonight. You can’t be arguing and fighting, not tonight.’
Sarah realized just how frightened Jane was. Her life was at stake here, too.
In her room Sarah closed the door, sat on the bed and put her head in her hands. It had been as bad as she had feared, worse. She recognized that inside she had been hoping against hope for some explanation from David that would somehow make everything all right again. But he had lived in a world of deception and lies, not just since becoming a spy, but long before she’d met him. She had a feeling that even now he hadn’t told her everything. How could she ever believe him again?
FRANK AND BEN HAD BEEN playing chess again. Ben, soundly beaten, seemed determined to win at least one game but Frank had got bored and said he needed a break. He went and looked out of the window. He saw a tall woman walk up the empty street and turn towards the hotel. Then she stopped in her tracks, staring in at the ground-floor window. She seemed to hunch her body a little before going on to climb the front steps, passing out of view. Frank turned and said quietly, ‘Someone’s arrived. I think it might be David’s wife.’
Ben was sitting on his bed, the chessboard on a little table. He joined Frank by the window.
‘She’s gone now,’ Frank said.
‘What was she like?’
‘Quite tall. Red-haired. Funny, not that pretty. I’d have expected David to marry someone pretty.’
‘Love disnae always go like that,’ Ben said. ‘Romance is no’ like in the films. Ye dinnae choose who ye love.’ There was a sadness in his voice. Frank thought, all I know of love is from the films. He sat on his bed again. Ben had given him another pill on the way to the hotel, but the odd peacefulness he had felt since his encounter with Churchill was more than that. It had been astonishing; the old man had seemed somehow to understand him. Frank was certain now that the Resistance people wouldn’t try to take his secret. But he knew the safety of their little group here was as precarious as it had been in London. And tonight, when they tried to get on the submarine, that would be the most dangerous time of all.
Ben was looking at him curiously. ‘You all right there?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’ve been awfy quiet.’
‘What will happen to me if we get to America?’
Ben lit a cigarette. ‘They’ll ask all about what your brother told you, that’s for sure. But you won’t be telling them anything they don’t know.’
‘I wonder what they’ll do with me then.’
‘Maybe they’ll give you a job working on the atom bomb. They love their super-weapons, the Americans. Almost as bad as the Germans.’
Frank shook his head. ‘I couldn’t do that.’
‘I know. I wis just joking.’
Frank pursed his lips. ‘I don’t want to see my brother again,’ he said. ‘I hope they don’t decide to – well – put me out of the way, because of what I know. Or put me back in a hospital.’
‘No, pal. You’ll be a hero, coming over to them, escaping the Germans. Maybe they’ll set you up in some nice, sunny, quiet wee town in California.’ But Frank knew Ben had no more idea than he did of what the Americans would do with him.
‘I wanted to die, before, but now – I think I’d like to live, if I can. But not back in a hospital.’
‘You won’t. I know it was hard there. There won’t be such harsh conditions under communism. Hell, there’ll be nae reason for people to get mental.’
Frank didn’t reply. He had grown to like and admire Ben now he knew the risks he had run to save him, but he wished he didn’t get so misty-eyed about communism. ‘Now that bastard Hitler’s deid,’ Ben added, ‘things’ll change. You wait . . .’
Then, through the floor, they heard shouting, a woman’s voice. Next David shouting back. ‘
Frank and Ben looked at each other in astonishment. Ben whistled. ‘That’s a turn-up for the book. David? Jewish?’ He looked at Frank. ‘Did you know?’
‘I’d no idea.’
Ben frowned. ‘They’d better stop yellin’ at each other like that, sound travels.’
But there was no more shouting, just murmuring voices. Then they heard a door shut downstairs, and footsteps mounting the stairs rapidly.
‘They’ve got to get themselves sorted out,’ Ben said anxiously. ‘We need to be on the ball tonight.’
Frank didn’t answer. An odd feeling of betrayal had stolen over him, just as it had when he had overheard David and Natalia making love in the O’Shea house. David was Jewish? All the time he knew David, he’d had this secret, too. He told himself it was stupid; David owed him no confidences. ‘Everyone thought David’s parents were Irish,’ he said.
‘They must have had Jewish blood and kept it quiet.’ Ben sighed. ‘People fake their ancestry all over the place these days. There’s parts of Scotland now, SNP strongholds, where if you’ve English blood you don’t talk about it.’
