Dominion

managed to tag onto the fringes of David’s group, who tended, like David, to be serious, thoughtful, not prone to larking. David had status among the other students, as he had taken up rowing and was in the university team.

Frank always remembered one evening towards the end of his first term. Italy had invaded Abyssinia, and a pact between Britain and France allowing Italy to annex much of the country was raising fierce political opposition. Frank and David were sitting in their rooms discussing the situation with David’s best friend, Geoff Drax.

‘We have to accept Italy’s won the war,’ Geoff said. ‘I wish there had been a different outcome but it’s better to make a settlement now and stop the fighting.’

‘But it’ll be the end of the League of Nations.’ David’s normally quiet voice betrayed unusual emotion. ‘It’s a licence to any country to start an aggressive war.’

‘The League of Nations is finished. It didn’t stop Japan invading Manchuria.’

‘All the more reason to make a stand now.’

Frank had seen, on sixth-form visits to the cinema, what was happening in Europe: the sinister Stalin; the strutting dictators Hitler and Mussolini. Newsreels of Jewish shop windows in Germany being smashed by jeering Brownshirts, the owners cowering inside, aroused an instinctive sympathy in him for the victims. He had begun following the news. He said now, ‘If Mussolini’s allowed to get away with this, it’ll encourage Hitler. He’s already brought back conscription, and Churchill says he’s building an air force. He wants to go to war in Europe again; God knows what he’ll do to the Jews then.’

Frank realized he had been speaking passionately, vehemently even. He stopped himself suddenly. David’s eyes were fixed on his and it dawned on Frank that, for the first time he could remember, someone was actually interested in what he was saying. Geoff, too, though he said, ‘If Churchill’s right and Hitler’s a danger, all the more reason to try and get friendly with Mussolini.’

‘Hitler and Mussolini are cut from the same cloth,’ Frank countered. ‘They’ll come together sooner or later.’

‘Yes, they will,’ David said. ‘And you’re right, what will happen to the Jews then?’

Someone came into the quiet room, disturbing his reverie. Ben looked down at him keenly. ‘Are ye all right? You look awful worried.’

‘I’m fine.’ Frank thought again, why does he care? Then he remembered his terrible thoughts of suicide earlier, Wilson and the shock therapy. He saw now, there was only one possible alternative. He took a deep breath. ‘I’ve been thinking. Perhaps I should contact my friend, David, who I knew at university.’

Ben nodded quickly in agreement. ‘All right. You could phone at the weekend when I’m on the nurses’ station. Don’t tell the other staff, you dinnae want Wilson stickin’ his nose in.’

Frank thought again about the shame of telling David where he was. When he’d been with him and his friends at university, sometimes then he had felt almost normal, human. But that was all gone now.

Ben raised his eyebrows, inclined his head interrogatively. ‘Deal?’ he asked.

‘All right,’ Frank said. He essayed a smile; a real one this time.

Chapter Twelve

SARAH RETURNED HOME FROM her meeting shortly after five on Friday. As she walked down the road she looked across the little park to the old air-raid shelter; she had often thought, thank God we never had to use the shelter, but now she wondered, would fighting on in 1940 really have brought something worse than this? She shook her head in helpless perplexity.

There was a handwritten note on the doormat. It was an estimate from the builders she had contacted, offering to come and re-wallpaper the staircase. She sat down wearily in an armchair, the note in her hand. She thought of the boys who had been beaten up outside the tube, all the blood. She wished her father had a telephone; despite the cost she would have phoned him in Clacton. She could have phoned Irene but knew what her sister would say: there had to be law enforcement, even if the Auxiliary Police did go over the top sometimes.

She remembered her father’s arrest, back in 1941. The pacifists who had supported the 1940 Treaty – the pacifist Labour MPs, the Peace Pledge activists, the Quakers – all those people had had qualms early on when anti-Nazi refugees, mostly Jewish, were sent back to Germany under the Treaty. But it was the start of the German war against Russia the following spring that had stirred them into mass protest when the ancient warhorse, Lloyd George, delighting in being back as Prime Minister after almost twenty years, urged British volunteers to join Germany’s campaign against communism.

A new campaigning organization, For Peace in Europe, had sprung up, and Sarah’s father had joined. There were marches, leafleting campaigns, a boycott of German produce. The newspapers, like Beaverbrook’s Express, had mocked the sandal-wearing vegetarian brigade who had turned their coats, as the Communists had, now Hitler had broken the Nazi-Soviet pact and invaded the homeland of communism.

In October 1941, just after the fall of Moscow, there had been a huge demonstration in Trafalgar Square and Sarah’s father had decided to go. It was the only time Sarah and Irene had had a major row; Irene was married to Steve and no longer a strict pacifist, but Sarah still planned to go on the march with her father. It was Jim who had refused to let her; even the BBC was calling the anti-war campaigners dangerous Communist stooges and though Jim was retired now, Sarah had her teaching job to lose. So she wasn’t there; she only heard on the news that the demonstration had collapsed into violent anarchism. She heard later, from her father, what had really happened, about the thousands sitting peacefully under Nelson’s Column: Bertrand Russell and Vera Brittain and A.J.P. Taylor, clerics by the hundred, London dockers, housewives, the unemployed and peers of the realm. The authorities had ringed the square with armoured cars, then sent in the police with batons. Many of the leaders had ended up in the Isle of Man detention camp with a ten-year sentence, and some were rumoured to have been shipped over to the Germans on the Isle of Wight. Further demonstrations were prohibited under the old wartime regulations that had remained in force after 1940. Lloyd George spoke of crushing subversion with a firm hand. Some famous pacifists, such as Vera Brittain and Fenner Brockway, went on hunger strike on the Isle of Man but were left to die. It was, Lloyd George said, their choice. There were other, smaller demonstrations, that Jim heard from old friends, but they were never publicized and ruthlessly suppressed. Jim said he was too old to be of use in illegal political activity, and told Sarah she should keep quiet, wait for better times. That had been David’s view too, when Sarah met him. But things had got steadily worse; people groused and muttered but they were powerless now.

Standing in her hall, Sarah wondered if she would even tell David what had happened this afternoon; he wouldn’t be back for hours and she didn’t know whether his story of working late was true. She walked into the lounge and stood there for a moment, arms wrapped round herself. She sighed. It was so easy to forget the things that went on now; perhaps it was good to have them thrust in your face. She lit the fire, which the daily woman had made up, then went back into the hall. She looked at the torn wallpaper. On a table in the hall stood the large, colourful Regency vase, decorated with bright flowers, which had been one of David’s mother’s proudest possessions. When his father moved to New Zealand he had left it with David. Sarah remembered another afternoon, a lifetime ago. Charlie, crawling now, had gone over to the table and slowly, steadily, tried to stand, clutching at the table edge. The vase had wobbled. David stepped towards his son, big, silent steps so as not to startle him, and grabbed Charlie under the arms and pulled him away. The little boy turned and stared at his father with an expression of such astonishment it made his parents laugh and Charlie joined in too. David raised him above his head. ‘We’ll have to move Grandma’s vase, or little Charlie rascal will get it.’ They had put the vase in a cupboard; but after Charlie died David had wanted to put it back. ‘It was always in the hall at our house.’

Sarah looked at the vase now. Then she doubled over, and began weeping helplessly.

David arrived home at eight. Sarah had composed herself by then and made dinner. She was knitting a pullover, a Christmas present for Irene’s elder son. She spent more and more time knitting these days; it was one way of passing her time alone in the house. She put the pullover down and looked at her husband. He seemed tired and pale, not like someone who had been in bed with a lover. She kissed him as usual. There was no smell of perfume on him, just the stale, cold tang of the London streets. He said, ‘I’m sorry, I wanted to get home at a decent time.’ He has been working late, she thought, he’s tired out. Unless the strain was from trying to act a part. She pulled away. David looked at her. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked. And then, when she did not reply, he took her gently by the arms. ‘Sarah, has something happened?’

She must look more rattled than she had thought. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘In town, this afternoon. I saw something horrible.’