Second Violin (46 page)

‘What is this? A delegation?’

‘After a fashion. Doctor Massmann . . .’

‘When a Jew comes to me, things must be in a sorry state on the lower floors.’

‘Actually I’m not Jewish.’

‘But your little friend is, and while you are hell-bent on sticking to your English manners and your Queensberry rules, your friend would like to strangle me. I can see it in his
eyes.’

Rod was utterly thrown by this. Almost speechless.

‘Come, little Jew. Say what you are thinking – spit it out. Tell me to my face. You would like to strangle me, would you not?’

‘Yeah,’ Billy blurted out. ‘Right on all counts, Jerry. I’m a Jew, I would like to strangle you but I’ve come to ask a favour.’

Massmann laid the book face down on his chest.

‘So, the air is cleared. And now such honesty must surely be rewarded. Ask away, little Jew. Your Englishman is clearly still tongue-tied.’

‘We got this mate – been taken sick he has. We reckon it’s pneumonia. He says he’s always been prone to a touch of bronchitis – but now it looks worse. You’re
the only doctor in camp. We’d like you to take a look.’

‘Another Jew?’

Billy looked at Rod, Rod looked back.

‘Well? Yes or no? Another stinking Jew?’

‘Yes,’ Rod said at last. ‘Another stinking Jew.’

Massmann stood up, stood at the end of his bed, turned on the tap above the basin, not speaking until the groaning in the pipes had shivered to a stop.

To Rod’s surprise he switched to German.

‘
“Da aber Pilatus sah, daß er nichts schaffte, sondern daß ein viel größer Getümmel ward, nahm er Wasser und wusch die Hände vor dem Volk und
sprach: Ich bin unschuldig an dem Blut dieses Gerechten, sehet ihr zu!’ Die, die in Ubereinstimmung mit Juden stehen, sterben als Juden. Laß ihn kreuzigen! Laß ihn
kreuzigen
!’

All the way back down the stairs Rod could hear
‘Laß ihn kreuzigen
!’ ringing in his ears. He had almost to drag Billy with him, kicking and screaming, ‘Bastard,
you complete fuckin’ bastard.’

Only at the bottom of the stairs, shrugging off Rod’s hand did he ask, ‘What was that about? What did he say?’

‘He was quoting the bible. New Testament. Matthew, I think.’

‘I ain’t never read it. Come to think of it, I ain’t read much of the old one neither.’

‘Pontius Pilate was the Roman Governor of Judaea who condemned Christ to death – literally washed his hands of him.’

‘Yeah well – I don’t need that bit spelled out. I could see that for meself You don’t need to be no scholar to work out he was washing his hands of old Drax. What was he
sayin’ about Jews? I know he said something – I definitely heard “Juden”.’

‘If you – and I think he meant me – line up with Jews you can expect to die as one.’

Billy thought for a moment but the best he could come up with was ‘Fuckim’.

Then Rod said, ‘Stinking Jews’ as much to himself as to Billy.

‘Yeah. Why did you say that? Have you gone stark starin’ bonkers or what, ’Ampstead?’

‘He’s right. We’re all stinking Jews now.
Wir sind die stinkenden Juden.
’

‘Oh . . . Chippin fuckin Campden!’

Billy stomped off, uncomprehending, unforgiving.

Half an hour later Jenkins found Billy and Siebert in the gardens, cutting nettles.

‘I heard you were asking for me,’ he said. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Cuttin’ nettles for nettle soup.’

‘Do you really think the rations are that bad?’

‘It ain’t for us. It’s for old Drax. Best thing for lung trouble, nettle soup. My old man used to swear by it. When I was not much more than a kid, during the last war, I used
to raid disused gardens for nettles. My mum must have poured nettle soup down dozens of people. You won’t remember that flu epidemic, last year of the war, will you?’

‘I’m not that young, Billy. I’d be four or five – I heard about it.’

Billy seemed to think they had cut enough, stopped swinging the bread knife and wrapped what he and Siebert had cut in a towel.

‘You heard that Nazi won’t treat Drax?’

‘No – but I can’t say I’m surprised.’

‘Ever occur to you to wonder why he’s here?’

‘He makes that obvious, he wears his politics next to his heartlessness, on his sleeve.’

‘I mean – why he’s
still
here?’

‘I don’t follow.’

‘Oskar here reckons all the Nazis was shipped out just before I got here. Every last one, ’cept for Massmann. So . . . why not him, why is he here and not on his way to Canada or
Australia or at the bottom of the ocean like some poor buggers?’

‘I don’t know.’

Siebert spoke, ‘You know, Billy, there was a lot of shuffling about, people changing places with one another. It wasn’t a list so much as a quota. Mostly it was younger men trading
places with the elderly. Drax himself was down to be shipped – a younger man took his place. As long as the numbers were right Trench seemed content.’

‘Do you think anyone would have swapped places with Massmann?’

‘No, probably not.’

‘So we look for another reason why he’s still here, and I’ll give you one. He had to be down for deportation – paid up fuckin’ Nazi after all – and what I say
is this, he bought his way out. Greased somebody’s palm.’

Jenkins looked surprised and innocent. ‘But whose?’

Billy said, ‘Well there’s only two people in camp with power to bump his name off a list – even if you do call it a quota – there’s you . . . and there’s
Trench.’

The light dawned on Jenkins.

‘Oh bugger,’ he said. ‘Oh bugger, what do you want?’

‘We want,’ Siebert said. ‘A key to Trench’s office.’

Thus far Hugh Greene’s war had proved no less eventful than Rod Troy’s. He had escaped the fall of Poland by fleeing to Rumania, had escaped the fall of Belgium by
fleeing into France, and had escaped the fall of France by boarding the SS
Madura
at Bordeaux, out of East Africa bound for England. Late in June he landed at Falmouth, and made his way back
to London. He had been in London a couple of days when it occurred to him to call Rod, and he rang the house in Hampstead. Alex Troy invited him round at once, and brought him up to date on his
son’s plight.

‘It’s outrageous.
It’s bonkers
!’

‘I know,’ said Alex.

‘All that . . . dammit . . . all that talent going to waste . . . the kind of talents we need to win this war. Surely you talked to Churchill?’

‘No, no. I didn’t.’

‘But surely . . .?’

‘And Rod expressly asked me not to. There have been questions in the House. Cazalet has taken up the cause of the unfairness of it all, the uselessness of it all – but neither he nor
I have spoken directly to Churchill.’

The old man was getting . . . well . . . old, Hugh thought, but to leave his son wallowing in some godforsaken hole in . . . well . . . where exactly?

‘Isle of Man. Heaven’s Gate, near Port Erin. I gather it is some sort of lapsed stately home, run as a girls’ school since the last war and now commandeered for the purpose. We
write. Letters can can take two days or two weeks, and they are censored.’

‘I shall write at once,’ said Hugh.

And he did.

It was three weeks before Rod Troy received the letter. Nothing had been cut. Hugh stated that he was undoubtedly going to end up in the forces pretty damn quick. Most probably the RAF.
Rod’s reply took a further fortnight, and after the censorship, which blanked out anything of interest about life at Heaven’s Gate, ended, ‘The RAF? Wish I was joining
you.’

By now Pilot Officer Greene was a translator/interrogator with RAF Intelligence at Cockfosters, on the northernmost edge of London. His superiors were impressed with his command of languages and
one of them, one day towards the middle of August, lazily remarked that they could do with half a dozen like him.

‘Half a dozen? I could get you one, but an absolute corker.’

‘What languages?’

‘German, French and Russian, smattering of Polish too.’

‘Good German?’

‘Three years in Berlin. Reported on the Kristallnacht from Vienna. Got booted out of Germany same time as me.’

‘And where is he now? In the RAF?’

‘Not quite.’

‘How not quite?’

‘He’s in one of the camps – interned.’

‘Oh – you mean he
is
a German?’

‘Absolutely not. Harrow and Pembroke, Cambridge. Just had the rotten luck to be born in Vienna.’

For reasons that would never be wholly clear to him, Hugh seemed to have struck a chord in Wing-Commander Perkins.

‘Locked up! Half the buggers in the country seemed to be locked up. Krauts, naturally . . . but Jews, and Iteyes and . . . and bloody Austrians. What the bloody hell’s going on?
It’s easier to ask who haven’t we locked up! Well – if he’s in War Office custody, I’m sure the War Office will have to let him go if we say we need him. Half the
blokes in those camps would be more use on the outside. Do you know they locked up my tailor? What’s the bloody point of that? I curse the bloody War Office every time I lose a button on my
flies! I have to go around with my flies flapping like some old pervert on the Brighton Line, just because they can’t tell a Nazi from a . . . and they locked up the chef from
Quaglino’s too – can’t get a decent meal anywhere in Soho these days! Do you know what I had to eat the last time I was up West? Fish and bloody chips! That’s what! And they
were cold! I ask you, is this what we’re fighting this war for, for the freedom to go around with our wedding tackle flapping in the breeze, and to eat cold fish and chips? And they nobbled
that bloke who used to do hand-made ice-cream every summer at the corner of Old Compton Street! And my brother-in-law’s accountant, who turned out to be Viennese – and all the time we
thought he was Welsh! I’ll get on the blower to the War Office right away. What’s your chap’s name?’

This was where his surge of belligerent enthusiasm might just hit the buffers, but when Hugh said, ‘Troy, Rod Troy’ Perkins simply reached for the telephone half-muttering ‘Any
relation to that old fool who writes all those cranky editorials?’ And the next minute he was bellowing at some poor underling in Whitehall.

Rod found Hummel and Jacks in their room. Billy was stretched full length on his bed looking bored, blowing smoke rings from a roll-up ciggie so thin it was scarcely fatter
than a matchstick. Hummel was sitting on the window seat, mending trousers for Herr Rosen, needle and scissors flying, and feeling plagued by wasps attracted by the tall pear tree just outside his
window. A quick wave of his arm and he had snipped three of the insects in half as they flew.

‘Amazing,’ Rod said. ‘How do you do that?’

Hummel merely smiled.

‘Would you do something for me, the two of you.’

‘I’m so bored, ’Ampstead, I’d do a tap dance for you with feathers up me jacksie if you asked.’

‘Thank you, Billy – but what I had in mind was a spot of tailoring.’

‘Wot exactly?’

‘I need lots of yellow stars of David on white armbands.’

‘Why?’

‘Can you do it?’

Hummel said, ‘
Ja
, we sacrifice a sheet for the white armbands. Perhaps we use yours?’

‘Of course,’ said Rod. ‘By all means take both the sheets off my bed. We need to make an armband for everyone in camp. Now, what about the yellow stars? Any ideas?’

Billy said, ‘Ain’t there an art room from the days when this joint was a school? Find us some yellow poster paint.’

‘And,’ said Hummel, ‘Bob’s your uncle.’

‘I don’t know where he picks it all up, I really don’t.’

‘And,’ Rod said, ‘I need them tomorrow.’

At roll call Rod spread the word – the entire camp stayed out in the yard. It was a fortuitously sunny morning, but it had not been one of the mornings when Trench had
graced them with his presence. Jenkins had done one of his hopeless head counts, told them to dismiss in his inimitably lazy fashion and had not seemed at all bothered when they hadn’t.

Rod looked around – he could see Hummel, he couldn’t see Billy or Siebert. It looked as though they had legged it.

Watching Kornfeld slip on the armband, he felt a twinge. What was he asking them to do?

‘I’m sorry, Arthur. I suppose this is all too familiar.’

‘No,’ Kornfeld replied. ‘It is . . . new to me.’

‘I thought all Jews had to wear the yellow star?’

‘In Poland perhaps, but it is only a matter of time . . . and . . . I’m not Jewish. As a matter of fact, I’m a Lutheran. A rather obviously lapsed Lutheran.’

‘With a name like Kornfeld?’

‘What’s in a name, Mr Troitsky? What’s in a label?’

Kornfeld seemed to have set himself to musing. The two of them stood at the edge of the courtyard watching Rosen, Spinetti and half a dozen volunteers hand out the armbands.

‘It’s nothing new, you know. So little the Nazis come up with is. A badge of some sort to tell the Jews at a glance has been around for centuries. Every other tyrant seems to have
entertained the idea. Popes and kings and emperors – your own King Henry III, to name but one – and for centuries there was such a thing as a Jewish hat. A quirk of fashion made
compulsory. Yellow stars are merely the latest manifestation.’

‘They all seem to be going along with it.’

‘Oh, they will, they will. There was a slogan a few years back, “
Tragt ihn mit Stolz, den gelben Fleck
.” I often think you are the most reluctant leader I have ever met,
Troy. Yet you handle a man as plainly disagreeable as Billy Jacks with skill, a man as deeply odd as Josef Hummel with understanding and a man as prickly as Viktor Rosen with tact. So, in this you
lead and they will follow – they will wear the yellow star with pride.’

‘There’s a bit more to it than that.’

‘Oh really – what do you have in mind?’

Rod briefed them all. They murmured almost with one voice it seemed, a baritone hum rippling across ninety-odd faces. They turned to look at one another, to mutter, to nod, to agree.

‘Of course if anyone feels that they can’t . . .’ Rod began.