And Is There Honey Still For Tea? (17 page)

I leaned forward, put both elbows on the table and clasped my hands together.

‘I am sure one of the things Father put to you is that you are his heir,' I said. I managed a grim smile. ‘And, in fairness, it is the traditional role of the younger son to be the soldier. The older brother is supposed to stay at home to continue the dynasty. If anyone is to go to Spain it should be me.'

‘I can't absolve myself of my responsibility just because of that,' he replied. ‘But – and this is one of the reasons I wanted to speak to you tonight – I want you to promise that you won't try to follow me. One of us going is enough. It's not fair to our parents. Someone must be here to take care of them. If England were facing invasion, then everyone would take up arms, of course. But at present this is still a foreign war, thank God.'

‘I don't see how I can possibly make such a promise,' I said, although in truth, the thought of going to Spain had never crossed my mind for a moment.

‘You must,' Roger insisted gently. ‘You are not going to talk me out of this, even if you are a barrister now. If Father couldn't, you can't, and I would be grateful if you didn't try. I don't want there to be bad blood between us, and I am counting on receiving letters from Boswell while I am in Spain – assuming that letters are still being delivered in Spain.'

Roger refilled our wine glasses and I took a long drink.

‘You do know that …?'

‘That it is illegal to fight for a foreign army as an irregular? Yes, James, I do know that. All the volunteers have to hope that there are so many of us that the Government will be too embarrassed to prosecute us for doing what the Government should have done itself, using our regular forces.'

‘I am not at all sure they will take that view,' I said.

He nodded. ‘I know. That is a chance I am just going to have to take.'

The waiter reappeared, looking disapprovingly at so much untouched food. I told him rather abruptly to clear the plates away, discouraging the question he was preparing to ask about why we had not enjoyed it. Roger ordered us a bottle of whisky and a soda syphon. I knew that I would never dissuade him from what he proposed to do, although everything in me wanted to scream and shout and rage at him until the very walls of the Reform Club collapsed under the onslaught. I am sure my father had had the same reaction. For both of us, the possibility of losing Roger was so dreadful, the risk so unthinkable, that we could never accept it. I also felt ashamed that I had never considered doing what Roger was about to do. I hated fascism as much as he did, and I recognised the threat it posed, but I had never once done more than debate the question with my fellow socialists. Roger was going to do something about it, or die trying; and that, of course, was the horror of it. Our whisky arrived. I had one, weak, argument left, one which I knew troubled Donald, as it did me. It was worth trying on Roger.

‘It's not as though the Soviets are angels,' I said. ‘Look at what Stalin is doing to his own people, even loyal Party members.'

Roger nodded, pouring a large whisky for us both.

‘I agree,' he said. ‘The Revolution is one thing in theory and something quite different in practice.'

He took a long drink of his whisky.

‘But unlike the fascists, the Revolution does at least point in the right direction. It is possible to see Stalin as an aberration that will disappear as socialism becomes more mature. In any case, at the moment, the Soviet Union is the only real hope we have of containing fascism and preventing it expanding any further. I believe they are sending equipment and advisers to Spain to do for the Republicans what Germany and Italy have done for the Nationalists.'

We drank in silence for some time as the dining room filled up.

‘When will you leave?' I asked.

‘The day after tomorrow,' he replied. He lowered his voice and leaned forward confidentially. ‘I will tell you this so that you have some idea what is going on, but I must ask you not to tell anyone the details, certainly not anyone at home.'

I nodded my agreement.

‘I am taking the night ferry to Dieppe in the guise of a tourist. From there I take the train to Paris. When I arrive at Gare du Nord, there will be a taxi waiting. There is a safe house of some kind in the city where all the volunteers meet to receive a briefing. Then we take a train for the south west. There are two clandestine routes into Spain. One involves stowing away on board a ship out of Marseilles, either to Barcelona or Valencia. The second is a hike overnight in the darkness from Perpignan across the Pyrenees into Spain. I won't know which route I will be taking, or which unit I will be assigned to, until I get there. I will send a letter to you here, care of the Club, as soon as I can, but I have absolutely no idea when that may be, or whether it will arrive. I am going to rely on you to contact Mother and tell her as much as you think she would want to hear.'

We embraced on the steps of the Club as I left to return to Holland Park. My heart was breaking and I could find no words to say goodbye. Roger sensed it.

‘I must insist, Sir,' he said, as we parted, ‘that I hold you in greater esteem than any gentleman now living.'

‘Sir,' I replied through my tears, ‘I am sensible of your affection, and hold you in just as great an esteem.'

After I had walked a hundred yards or so along Pall Mall I stopped and turned to look back towards the Reform. Roger was still standing on the steps, leaning against the wall, staring after me. We exchanged waves.

27

In the week which began on Monday 9th November, the case involving the two brothers and the father of unsound mind settled. The solicitors for the estate accepted that our evidence of mental incapacity would very likely be overwhelming at trial, and agreed that the will should be set aside in my clients' favour. A short hearing was held before a judge of the Chancery Division for that purpose. The solicitors were delighted, and I had received a substantial fee. I took Bridget out to dinner to celebrate. She was living close to me in Holland Park now, and had taken a temporary secretarial job while she worked out what she wanted to do with her degree in anthropology. I had not heard from Roger, apart from one short, cryptic note in early October which confirmed that he had arrived safely in Spain and was awaiting instructions for his deployment, but gave no further detail. She knew I was fretting about it and, in the hope of cheering me up, she suggested that I go up to Cambridge for the weekend, attend a meeting of the Apostles – my debating club, as we still called it – have a few drinks and relax for a day or two. It sounded like a good idea, and I was grateful to her. I took a train up to Cambridge on the late afternoon of Friday the 13th.

To my surprise, on Saturday the 14th, I found Anthony in residence, and we attended the Apostles debate together. He invited me to his rooms for a drink after the meeting ended, some time after midnight, and asked after my practice and after Bridget. We talked with a chuckle or two about Guy, who had somehow landed a job producing programmes with a political edge for the BBC, another career move which still surprised me, in my state of naïveté. Anthony told me that he had visited Spain in March, before the outbreak of war, with Louis MacNeice, and he talked to me at some length about finding the country so obviously on the point of conflict. He had also visited the Soviet Union with his brother Wilfrid the year before, and had been very impressed by what he saw, although he was alert enough to recognise that what they saw was being strictly controlled by the inevitable minder who accompanied tourists everywhere, to make sure they did not see too much of the reality of life under the Revolution. He was particularly positive about the Soviet attitude to art, and told me that he was developing a theory about the role of art in a socialist society, and would like to discuss with me how chess might fit into that picture, once his ideas on the subject were more concrete.

At about 1.30, as I was thinking of finding my way back to my own room, there was a knock on the door. When Anthony answered it, a black-suited college porter wearing a bowler hat offered him what looked like a letter. There was a whispered conversation, which I could not hear from my seat in front of the fireplace. The door closed again and there was a silence. I sensed that something was badly amiss. I stood, turned, and saw Anthony standing by the door, the letter in his hand, his face white, unable to speak. I took one or two faltering steps towards him. He handed me the envelope. I saw that it contained a telegram, accompanied by a hand-written letter from the Secretary of the Reform Club, who said he had found out my whereabouts from Bridget and, considering it to be a matter of urgency, had taken the liberty of forwarding it to me at Trinity by messenger.

The telegram was addressed to me, as next of kin, from a consular officer at the British Embassy in Madrid, who was regretfully obliged to inform me that my brother, the Hon Roger Digby, was reliably believed to have been killed in action in a suburb of the city on Sunday the 8th of November, while engaged in defending the city on behalf of irregular Republican forces against a Nationalist attack. The Embassy was making every effort to confirm the information, and to arrange for recovery of Mr Digby's body, but I should understand that conditions in the city were extremely difficult, and no assurance could be given about when inquiries might be complete. The family was advised to keep in contact with the Embassy for the purpose of effecting the repatriation of the body, if desired. The officer assured me of the Ambassador's personal condolences.

I do not remember much more until some time after I had woken up, in Anthony's bed, late the following afternoon. Bridget was sitting on the bed, holding my hand. I felt heavily sedated and, for some time, completely disorientated. As the events of the previous morning slowly came back to me I remembered screaming hysterically, throwing myself to the floor, and rolling around out of control, colliding with the furniture; I remembered Anthony grabbing me to make sure I didn't injure myself, and sitting beside me on the floor and holding me firmly in his arms for what seemed a very long time. He told me later that he had eventually seized an opportunity to slip me a powerful sleeping pill and put me to bed. I think, in fact, that he must have slipped me something more powerful than a sleeping pill, because I must have gone from uncontrolled hysteria to complete unconsciousness in a matter of minutes; but I have never asked him about it, and whatever he gave me I am profoundly grateful for. He spent a fitful few hours on the sofa, and as soon as it was light he contacted Bridget and asked her to come to Cambridge by train as quickly as she could. They were acts of kindness I shall never forget.

* * *

It is difficult to believe that a man could die in a modern capital city like Madrid in 1936 and that his body should disappear without a trace. But that is what happened. Our family solicitors in London were in constant contact with the Embassy, and we understood at once the conditions under which they were operating. The city was under siege. Its normal life was grinding to a halt. Supplies of food and medicines were running low. Refugees, including shepherds with their sheep and farmers with their livestock, were crowding into Madrid from every direction. The Nationalists' Heinkel and Fiat fighters were carrying out punishing air attacks against the Republican militias, and the sound of artillery pounding the suburbs could be heard in the city centre. Madrid was a dangerous place to be, and there was no way for the Embassy to maintain anything like normal consular services. It was a miracle that they could communicate with us at all. I was the point of contact for our solicitors, and I called my parents every evening. But I never had anything more than the merest glimmer of hope to offer, and even that was far-fetched. As I called I could hear the life fading from my father's voice day by day.

When we finally received confirmation of our worst fears it came, not from the Embassy, but from a man called George Watson, who called at the Manor unexpectedly one day in March 1937. Watson hailed from Gateshead, and he had been one of many ordinary British men who had travelled to Spain on their own initiative to fight for the Republican cause. I am ashamed to say that I had long had the impression that the Englishmen who went to Spain were almost all university graduates, left-leaning officer-class intellectuals, such as Roger and my fellow Apostle, Julian Bell, who also died there. In fact there were many men like Watson, honourable working men who had been forced into long-term unemployment by the economic disasters of the previous decade, and the Government's apparent indifference to their plight; who believed in socialism, but no longer so much in the Labour Party; and who also saw Spain as a vital line of defence against fascism. These men enlisted as foot-soldiers in their hundreds and offered their lives on that line of defence.

Watson had been wounded in action and had lost the use of his left arm. He got himself repatriated, basically by going back the way he had come, via Marseilles and Paris. While making his way home, he came to the Manor and gave my parents Roger's identity card. It was a difficult moment. Like any parents, until Roger's body was accounted for, they harboured a belief, or at least a hope, that one day he would walk through the front door, alive and unharmed, the victim of nothing worse than poor war-time communications; and that life at the Manor would resume exactly as it had been before he went away. Now, that belief, or hope, was as dead as Roger himself.

Watson had been standing not far from Roger when he was killed. His account of the circumstances was lucid and detailed. On the morning of Sunday the 8th November, Varela's Nationalist forces had launched a ferocious three-pronged attack on the western perimeter of the city. The main thrust of the attack was the Casa de Campo, a large wooded area, the site of a historic royal hunting ground running down to the Manzanares River. There were no rows of suburban streets to protect the city, or slow the invading forces down, in that sector. If the Casa de Campo fell to Varela, he would be free to advance unhindered into the very heart of the city. The Republican militias deployed almost all their available personnel to defend the Casa de Campo sector. The militias were lightly and badly armed, and many of their recruits, including Watson himself, had learned to load, fire, and clear their rifles only the night before. But they had numbers and, by some miracle, were able to hold Varela's forces at the perimeter. That same evening, the first of the organised international brigades arrived in the city with Soviet military advisers, and evidence of further Soviet support, in the form of Ilyushin 15 biplane fighters, appeared in the skies above Madrid to counter the threat from the Heinkels. Varela's chance to take the city quickly and without significant resistance had come and gone. The defence of Madrid on November 8th was a major success for the Republican forces.

Roger, in effect, had the rank of a First Lieutenant in a militia brigade, and Watson was a member of his company. At the height of the fighting Roger was ordered to lead his company in an effort to take down three heavy artillery emplacements which were partly camouflaged by the trees on the north-western edge of the Casa de Campo, and which were causing havoc among the militias trying to defend one of the main roads into the city. Using the trees to provide cover of their own, Roger's company successfully disabled two of the emplacements. But the officer commanding the third had placed snipers in defensive positions a short distance away and, as Roger led the company from the front, one of the snipers shot him through the heart, killing him instantly. Watson and some others tried to drag his body away, only to be driven back by remorseless fire. But Watson did manage to seize his service revolver and his identity card.

Watson said that the men of his company liked and respected Roger, and regarded him as a natural officer, even though he had received as little training as they had. He was courageous and imaginative, and led from the front, Watson said. Although he had gone some distance out of his way, Watson refused to accept anything from my parents for his visit to the Manor except a cup of tea and a sandwich – not even his train fare back to Gateshead.

* * *

We held a memorial service for Roger at the village church in April, with our old friend Norman Jarrett presiding. Friends came from far and wide; friends from the estate, from Clitheroe and the neighbouring towns and villages; local worthies from all over Lancashire; and friends from the Reform and elsewhere in London; friends from Cambridge. There was a letter from the Palace, and a wreath from Anthony. I was expected to deliver a eulogy but, as the day approached and I had already torn up several notebooks full of notes which utterly failed even to scratch the surface of the feelings I wanted to express about Roger and about his death, I finally gave up, and in place of a eulogy I read aloud the letter I would have sent him. I didn't try to explain it, and I am sure all those present thought I must have taken leave of my senses, deranged with grief; perhaps I was. But I didn't care. I was not speaking to them; I was speaking to Roger.

Digby Manor

21 April 1937

Sir,

Lacking the intimacy you now have with the immortal and the eternal, I cannot tell whether you are sensible of the depth of grief and despair into which your untimely death has plunged all who hold you dear. That grief and that despair grow stronger, not weaker, with time, and present no prospect of relief. Yet for all their awful reality, I cannot summon up the words to describe them. Nor, sir, do I believe that even Mr Garrick, at the height of his powers, could have demonstrated the utter devastation of them on the stage. I am unable to credit that I shall never more take tea with you in your rooms in the Temple, never more dine with you at the Mitre or the Club.

It is, sir, I am sure you will allow, entirely natural for me to be angry with you for deserting me in favour of foreign adventures, with no more than a day or two of forewarning, and no opportunity to enjoy your company before your departure. You will also allow my feelings of guilt that I permitted you to usurp a role which ought to have been mine, of which you so graciously and unselfishly relieved me, it being the duty of the younger son to become a soldier and travel to fight on foreign soil. Yet I know, and I am assured in the strongest terms by every gentleman of our acquaintance, that you did so, not in pursuit of any personal fame or glory, but in pursuit of a cause whose nobility is allowed by all. All of these gentlemen beg leave to pay their respects through me, and in particular, sir, Mr Blunt, whose praise I know you will esteem highly as you esteem the gentleman himself.

I could not stand beside you in your battles in Spain. But you will recall, sir, how often in earlier years we took up arms together against Normans, Infidels, and Roundheads, nay, sir, how often we won brilliant victories over them, and this without ever leaving these shores or suffering any loss or casualty. How innocent we were then of the realities of war, and of life. You have played your part, as you were determined to do, in stemming the tide of evil and I am confident that your sacrifice will not have been in vain. Yet I know not how I, and the many who love you, will ever be able to bear the loss of your voice, of your strength, of your infinitely benign presence.

I shall, of course, do my utmost to discharge faithfully the duties which fall upon me by virtue of your death, including the duty appurtenant to the title which I shall in due course assume. But I wish to assure you, sir, that there is no title or other thing whatsoever, which I would not immediately and joyfully abandon and renounce, if I could but receive news that the reports of your death were the product of some terrible error, understandably made in the chaos and confusion of the conflict.