David stared at Jackson. Does he know about me? he thought. But nobody knew his secret, apart from his father. It was just that with the new laws people were talking about the Jews more. He said, ‘There were what, six million people, seven, sent to the labour camps?’
Jackson nodded gravely. ‘Yes. There’s only ours and some of the French Jews left now. It’s been a matter of national pride and independence not to let them go, despite German pressure. But Mosley wants them out and he counts more every month.’ He sighed. ‘Where are we going, do you think, Fitzgerald?’
‘I think we’re going to hell in a handcart.’
A young couple walked by, the woman wearing white-framed sunglasses, a pink frock patterned with flowers. Between them they held the hands of a little girl, swinging her up in the air; she shrieked with delight. A collie dog ran round them, wagging its tail. Jackson smiled and the woman smiled back. The little family walked on, towards the water. When they were out of earshot Geoff said, ‘It’s getting worse in India, too. Has been ever since Gandhi died in prison in ’47. It doesn’t matter how many leaders they lock up along with Nehru. It just goes on: the rent strikes, the boycott of British goods, strikes in the industries exporting to Britain. These mutinies of Indian regiments against their officers – that really could bring the whole thing tumbling down. And the irony is that the Berlin Treaty limited our trade with the continent – look at the duties we have to pay on imports and exports, just so Hitler can use Europe as a captive market for his own industries. But that’s how Beaverbrook’s people wanted it.’ Geoff paused. ‘Imperial free trade and tariffs on trade with everyone else. His lifelong dream.’
‘Well, now he’s got it.’ Geoff gave one of his humourless barking laughs. ‘And we’ve had a Depression that’s gone on over twenty years.’
‘I’ve heard around the office,’ David spoke hesitantly, ‘that Enoch Powell wants to recruit a couple of new English divisions to send to India. But that would push our army above the Treaty limit.’
Jackson said, ‘Did you know, Hitler once offered to lend us a couple of SS divisions to sort out India.’ How much does this man know? David thought. Who is he?
Jackson looked at him. ‘You’re in the Dominions Office, Geoff tells me.’
‘Yes.’ This is going too fast. He’d already said too much to Geoff.
‘Principal in the Political Division, main job servicing the minister’s weekly meetings with the Dominion High Commissioners.’ Jackson’s tone had changed again, become brisk, businesslike.
‘Yes.’ The weekly meetings between the minister and the High Commissioners for the Dominions – Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and, since last year, Rhodesia – were organized and minuted by David’s superior, with David doing much of the legwork.
‘Present at most of the meetings?’
David didn’t answer. There was a little silence, then Jackson continued, his tone conversational again. ‘You’ve been overseas, I believe, to New Zealand?’
‘Yes. I was posted there from ’44 to ’46. My father has family in Auckland. He’s gone to live with them, in fact. He thought we were going to hell in a handcart, too.’
‘And your mother?’
‘She died when I was at school.’
‘You have Irish blood, from your name.’
‘My father’s from a line of Dublin solicitors. He brought my mother and me over when I was three, during the Independence War.’
Jackson smiled. ‘You have an Irish look, if you don’t mind me saying.’
‘A lot of people think that.’
‘Any loyalties to Ireland?’
David shook his head. ‘To De Valera’s republic? No. My father hated all that stern Catholic nationalism.’
‘Did you think of staying out in Kiwiland with your father?’
‘Yes. But we decided to come back. This is still our country.’ And there had been no anti-Jew laws then; repression was still mild.
Jackson looked down across London, spread out under the blue sky. ‘Britain’s become a dangerous place. If you step out of line, that is. But,’ he said quietly, ‘opposition’s growing.’
David looked at Geoff. His friend’s nose was reddening in the sun. He wondered how, with his fair skin, Geoff had coped in Africa all that time. ‘Yes,’ David agreed, ‘it is.’
‘Fast.’
David said, ‘A lot of people are being killed on both sides. Strikers. Soldiers. Policemen. It’s getting worse.’
‘Churchill said we had to “set Britain ablaze” after the last election was rigged.’
‘Is he still alive?’ David asked. ‘I know there used be to be illicit recordings circulating of him urging us to resist, but nobody’s heard of those for a while. He’s getting on for eighty now. His wife Clementine’s gone, they found her dead from pneumonia in that stately home in Lancashire last year. Life on the run, for old people like that?’ He shook his head. ‘His son Randolph’s a collaborator, been on TV supporting the government. And if Churchill’s dead, who’s in power in the Resistance now? The Communists?’
Jackson gave David a long, appraising look. ‘Churchill is alive,’ he said, quietly. ‘And the Resistance goes a great deal wider than the Communist Party.’ He gave a slow nod, then looked at his watch and said, suddenly, ‘Well, shall we walk back towards the station? My wife’s expecting me home. One of her family get-togethers.’ And David realized that wherever Jackson was thinking of leading him, he wasn’t going to go there just yet.
On the walk back to the station Jackson talked genially about cricket and rugger; he had been in the school XV at Eton. When they parted he shook David’s hand, bestowed a rubicund smile, and walked away. In a rare gesture, Geoff squeezed David’s arm. ‘He liked you,’ he said quietly.
‘What’s this about, Geoff? Why did you tell him so much about me?’
‘I thought you might be interested in joining us.’
‘To do what?’
‘Perhaps in time – help us.’ Geoff smiled his quick, anxious smile. ‘But it’s up to you, David. The decision would have to come from you.’
From the kitchen, David could hear Sarah doing the washing-up, banging plates angrily on the draining board. He turned away from the staircase. Right from the beginning, from that first meeting with Jackson on Hampstead Heath, her safety had been his biggest worry. A wife, his handlers had told him later, could be told what her husband was doing only if she were totally committed as well. And although Sarah detested the government, her pacifism meant she couldn’t support the Resistance, not after the bombings and shooting of policemen started. And ever since then David had felt resentment towards her, blamed her for the intolerable burden of yet another secret.
Chapter Three
THE FOLLOWING SUNDAY Sarah went into town to meet Irene and go to the pictures. They had spoken on the telephone during the week, and discussed what had happened on Remembrance Sunday. There had still been nothing about it on the news; it was as though the attack on Rommel and the arrests had never happened.
They went to the Gaumont in Leicester Square to see the new Marilyn Monroe comedy from America. Before the big feature the B film was the usual frothy German musical, and between the films they had to sit through one of the government-commissioned Pathé newsreels. The lights always came up then, to discourage Resistance supporters from booing if any Nazi leaders came on. First came a report of a European eugenics conference in Berlin: Marie Stopes talking with German doctors in a pillared hall. The next item was a vision of helclass="underline" a snow-covered landscape, an old woman swathed in ragged clothes weeping and shouting in Russian outside the smoking ruins of a hut, a German soldier in helmet and greatcoat trying to comfort her. Bob Danvers-Walker’s voice turned stern: ‘In Russia, the war against communism continues. Soviet terrorists continue to commit fearful atrocities not just against Germans but against their own people. Outside Kazan a cowardly group of so-called partisans, skulking safely in the forests, fire a Katyusha rocket into a village whose inhabitants had dared to sell German soldiers some food.’ The camera panned outwards, from the ruined hut to the smashed and broken village. ‘Some Russians have chosen to forget what Germany rescued them from: the secret police and forced labour of Stalin’s regime; the millions dumped in Arctic concentration camps.’ There followed familiar grainy footage of one of the camps discovered by the Germans in 1942, skeletal figures lying in deep snow, barbed wire and watchtowers. Sarah looked away from the horrible scenes. The newsreader’s voice deepened: ‘Never doubt Europe’s eventual victory over this evil Asian doctrine. Germany beat Stalin and it will beat his successors.’ As a reminder, there followed the famous shots of Stalin after his capture when Moscow was taken in October 1941: a little man with a thick moustache, pockmarked, grey hair dishevelled, scowling at the ground while his arms were held by laughing German soldiers. Later he had been hanged publicly in Red Square. Next there was footage of the new, giant German Tiger 4 tanks with their eighteen-foot guns smashing through a birch forest on a hunt for partisans, knocking over young trees like match-sticks while helicopters clattered overhead. Then came the launch of a V3 rocket, the camera following the huge pointed cylinder with its tail of fire as it rose into the sky on its way to the far side of the Urals. Optimistic martial music played. Then the newsreel switched to an item on Beaverbrook opening a shiny new television factory in the Midlands, before the lights finally dimmed again and the main feature opened with a clash of music and a bright wash of Technicolor.