had a chance to think.’
There was silence in the room. The young man looked away.
Things were never the same for the peace movement, though, after the Spanish war began. Sarah, like most pacifists, had always thought of herself as progressive, but now some people were accusing pacifists of being blind fools, reactionaries, even. War was coming, fascism was on the march and you had to choose sides. She and Irene went to see H.G. Wells’ film
It was easier for Irene; she had always been one to go wholeheartedly one way or the other and now she had joined the League for Anglo-German Understanding. She had met Steve there and become, like him, a Hitler enthusiast. Sarah asked how anyone who believed in peace could possibly see anything good in fascism. Irene answered, ‘Hitler’s a man of peace and vision, darling, you mustn’t believe the propaganda. All he wants is justice for Germany and friendship with Britain.’
Sarah turned to her father for advice. ‘You’re right, darling,’ he said. ‘Hitler’s an evil militarist. But if we go to war with him we’re just using the same methods as his. Mr Chamberlain is right.’ He spoke quietly, sadly. There were fewer meetings now and often Jim would sit in the lounge staring into space, his misery palpable.
Then came autumn 1938 and the Munich crisis. Men were digging up parks and lawns, making trenches where people could hide when the bombs fell, crosses of tape were stuck on the school windows so that splinters of glass would not slice into the children. Sarah thought, this time the civilians are in the trenches too. The school took a delivery of gas masks, horrible things of rubber and glass, large ones for the adults and small ones with Mickey Mouse faces for the children. When she went into school and saw the table piled with those blank, staring goggles, Sarah had to grip a chair to keep from fainting. The other teachers were staring at the masks in horror. The headmistress said they would have to show the children how to fit them. One teacher asked, tears streaming down her face, ‘How do we tell those little tots what those things are for, that people in aeroplanes will drop gas bombs on them? How do we do it?’
‘Because we bloody must!’ the headmistress shouted back, her voice breaking for a second. ‘Because if we don’t they’ll be dead. You think these are bad, you should see the maternity ward where my sister works! They’ve got bloody gas suits for babies there!’
But it didn’t happen. There was a miracle, Chamberlain came back with the Munich agreement giving Germany part of Czechoslovakia. ‘Only where Germans live, not Czechs,’ Irene said triumphantly. Steve said that if a war had come it would have ruined the country financially; all the businessmen and bankers had been terrified by the prospect. ‘One in the eye for that warmonger Churchill!’ When she heard the news Sarah felt relief course through her body like a drug. But then, a year later, in August 1939 it all happened again over Poland, trenches and gas masks and evacuation plans, and this time war was declared, Chamberlain’s heartbroken voice announcing it on the radio. The horrible wail of the air-raid siren sounded for the first time, only in practice but the next time it might be real. All over London you saw people, grim or tearful, taking their dogs and cats to be put to sleep because they would be defenceless against the bombs. In the first week of September Sarah led a sad crocodile of children, carrying gas masks and little suitcases and accompanied by mothers with haunted faces, down to Victoria Station for evacuation.
The switchback of hope and horror took another turn. For months after the evacuation nothing happened, no air raids, no fighting after Poland fell to Germany. Parents began bringing their children home. The phoney war, people began calling it. Some asked what point there was in continuing the war; it had been fought to help Poland but Poland was defeated, gone, divided between Germany and Russia. During the cold winter of 1939–40, watching the children throwing snowballs in the playground, Sarah began to hope again. But in April Germany suddenly invaded Denmark and Norway and British forces were thrown effortlessly back.
Chamberlain resigned and was replaced by Lord Halifax, just before the Germans attacked the Low Countries and France. Again the Germans swept all before them, shattering the French armies and sending the British army home, minus their equipment, from Dunkirk. The newscasters’ voices on the BBC became increasingly serious, and people once more began looking fearfully up at the skies above London, now dotted with barrage balloons. The French army retreated further and further. Then, in the middle of June, news came that France and Britain had sued for an armistice. A month later the Treaty of Berlin was signed, a peace which the newspapers and the BBC said was surprisingly generous on Hitler’s part; no occupation, no reparations, Britain and the Empire and the navy left intact, no colonies surrendered; the Belgian Congo the only European colony lost to Germany. And there was to be no German occupation apart from the large military base on the Isle of Wight. German Jews who had fled to Britain since the Nazis took over were to be repatriated, but nothing was said about British Jews. Sarah remembered seeing on a cinema newsreel, Lord Halifax returning from Berlin, Butler and Douglas-Home beside him on the airport tarmac, and the emotion in the aristocratic voice as Halifax declared, ‘The peace we have signed with Germany will last, God willing, for ever.’ Clapping and shouts of ‘Hurrah!’ broke out all over the cinema. Sarah had gone with her family; Irene cheered louder than anyone and their mother cried with relief. Sarah glanced at her father, but the good side of his face was turned away from her, and she could not see his expression.
A year later, just after the Russian war began, Halifax resigned – for health reasons they said, although his emaciated face was a mask of sorrow as he left Downing Street, and it was rumoured he had been against the German ‘crusade’. He was replaced by the ancient but cheerfully aggressive Lloyd George, who had called Hitler the greatest German of the age. People said he was little more than a stooge. He looked like a living relic on television, his false teeth clattering noisily during his broadcasts, his white hair wild. After his death in 1945 the newspaper proprietor and Cabinet Minister Beaverbrook took over, callously dismissive of the atrocity stories from Europe, his lifelong dreams of Empire free trade finally realized.
When Sarah left Westminster Abbey she was surprised to see how late it was. The sun was already beginning to set and the hundreds of windows in the Palace of Westminster sparkled with reflected light, making her blink. The sky to the west was like a Turner painting, a haze of reds and purples. She felt better for her prayer and the tears, though she did not believe any God was really there to listen.
She crossed the road to the Underground. It was busy outside the tube station; a costermonger, wrapped in a thick muffler, was selling vegetables from a stall. A newsvendor called out ‘
Suddenly, she was aware of a commotion. Four boys of about twenty, in raincoats and carrying satchels, were racing down the street towards her, weaving through the crowds and pulling leaflets from their satchels, thrusting them into the hands of surprised passers-by and tossing handfuls into the air. Someone shouted, ‘Hey!’ Sarah wondered if it was a student prank, but the boys’ faces were serious. They ran past, tossing a shower of leaflets at the costermonger’s stall. The newsvendor shouted, ‘Bastards!’ after them as they ran past the entrance to the tube station. A rush of hot air from inside sent the leaflets swirling like confetti. One blew against Sarah’s coat and she grasped it.
We have
NO FREE PARLIAMENT!
NO FREE PRESS!
NO FREE UNIONS!
The Germans occupy the Isle of Wight!
Strikers are executed!
The Germans make us persecute the Jews!
WHO WILL BE NEXT?
FIGHT GERMAN CONTROL!
JOIN THE RESISTANCE MOVEMENT!
W.S. Churchill
