The FitzOsbornes at War (43 page)

‘And he didn’t say where he was going?’

‘Well, he couldn’t, could he? Not in front of his commanding officer. I expect he’s on his way to Cairo, or somewhere else in the Middle East. That’s where most of them were headed.’

The Middle East! Where all the fighting is going on! I must have looked absolutely horrified, because Veronica stopped unpacking long enough to pat me on the shoulder.

‘Don’t worry, it’s not as though he’s flying fighters,’ she said. ‘It’s probably just some administrative job.’

Then, this morning, she added kindly, ‘You know, I doubt Simon got much notice of his new posting. In the services, they move people about constantly, without telling them a thing. He probably didn’t have
time
to tell you.’

Right. More likely, he’s a complete and utter
coward
. I bet he
requested
some dangerous overseas posting. What better way to punish himself over Toby, while avoiding any embarrassing future meetings with me? Why I
ever
felt –

Oh, someone’s knocking at the door.

M
UCH LATER
. It was Daniel, who’d received the message that Veronica was back from Spain, but not the one about her having to go in to work today.

‘Sorry,’ I said, even though it wasn’t my fault. Actually, I wasn’t sure if Veronica
had
told him about her meeting – she couldn’t have expected he’d come straight round. Usually it takes ages for him to arrange a day off.

‘I don’t suppose she mentioned when she’d be back?’ he asked, rather plaintively.

‘Well, when she goes in on Saturdays for meetings, she generally doesn’t get home till quite late.’ All the lines in his face sloped downwards at this, so I said, ‘Look, why don’t you come shopping with me? We’ll leave a note about where we’ve gone, just in case she comes home early, and then I’ll make you luncheon. I’ve got a new Ministry of Food recipe to try out – it’s mock goose and there’s no meat in it at all. For pudding, we can have the rest of last night’s mock apricot flan. With mock cream!’

He assumed an expression of mock horror, but obediently picked up my basket and followed me off to the shops. As I’d hoped, he cheered up a bit when we got there, especially after a woman wearing a fur stole and silk turban joined the line behind us. Daniel thinks wartime queues are fascinating opportunities for sociological observation, and he adores seeing rich and poor joined by a common goal (in this case, trying to buy under-the-counter chicken). Not that there are any
really
poor people around here. Anyway, it’s hardly a representative sample of the British population. I rarely see any
men
at the shops – even though nearly all women now have to do some form of war work, unless they’re looking after small children or a male relative (female relatives don’t count, in the government’s opinion). Today, the only man in evidence, other than Daniel, was an elderly gentleman with his head swaddled in woollen scarves. His daughter-in-law told us he had an ear-ache, but she couldn’t leave him home alone because he tended to wander off and get lost. Then she and Daniel had a long discussion about the inadequacy of the old age pension.

‘Yes, and what about pensions for people who’ve been injured in the raids?’ said another woman, further ahead of us. ‘Twenty shillings a week! How far does that go, with food prices as high as they are?’

‘Well, my sister lost her
leg
in a bombing raid,’ said another indignantly, ‘and they told her that housewives weren’t entitled to a pension, only people who’d been working! They said if she’d had a husband, then
he
could have an allowance to pay a maid to replace her. But she’s a spinster, isn’t she, looking after our mother. So she’s not entitled to anything at all! Hasn’t
she
been wounded by the enemy, just as badly as any soldier?’

‘If the recommendations of this new Beveridge Report are implemented, things will be much better for
everyone
,’ Daniel said firmly. ‘The unemployed, the elderly, the disabled – they’ll
all
receive enough to reach a decent standard of living. There’ll be a special allowance for bringing up children, too, and everybody will be entitled to free medical treatment.’

‘Yes, well, it all
sounds
wonderful,’ sighed the daughter-in-law. ‘But it won’t really happen, will it? Churchill says we can’t afford it.’

‘If the government can spend millions of pounds on bombers and warships,’ came the unexpected contribution of the fur-draped lady, ‘then it can surely afford to help the needy.’

Then someone else said that the priority ought to be helping ordinary, decent people to rebuild their bombed-out houses, not handing out money to people who didn’t want to work, and the woman with the crippled sister snapped that if there wasn’t going to be a kinder, more compassionate world after the war, then what on Earth were we fighting
for
?

I do love Daniel, but honestly, something like this happens every time I go out in public with him. It’s so embarrassing. At one stage, it looked as though the fur-draped lady and the rebuilding-houses lady were about to come to blows, but luckily, the queue had moved closer to the shop window by then, so I pointed at it and said, ‘Look! An onion!’ and everyone was distracted.

After we finally arrived back at the flat with our shopping, Daniel sat down at the table and polished all our silver while I made ‘mock goose’. We both wondered how potato, apple and sage, cooked in vegetable stock and sprinkled with grated cheese, could possibly taste anything like goose – and what a surprise, it doesn’t. Daniel diligently praised every aspect of the meal, but grew quieter and more downcast as it progressed and Veronica failed to appear.

I tried to divert him by asking whether he thought one had to be religious (or mad) to appreciate Christopher Smart’s poetry. Rupert had sent me a copy of
Rejoice in the Lamb: A Song from Bedlam
, but apart from the bits about Jeoffry the cat, I’d found it quite incomprehensible – even allowing for Keats’s idea of Negative Capability and being content with ‘half knowledge’ of poetry. Daniel said that Christopher Smart had been confined to a madhouse due to his habit of praying loudly in public, and that a sincere and personal devotion to a Divine Being could well seem insane to others – perhaps even to the man himself.

Then, as if this followed on quite logically, he asked if I thought Veronica was in love with ‘that Michael person’.

‘Who?’ I said. ‘You mean Michael from the Embassy in Madrid? Oh,
Daniel
! He’s her colleague, that’s all.’

‘But she’s always talking about him,’ said Daniel miserably.

‘Because she
works
with him! He’s the one helping to get Allied servicemen out of France.’

This task has become even more urgent in the last month, because the Nazis have taken over the southern bit of France that they’d previously allowed the Vichy government to administer.

‘Why not ask
her
about all this?’ I said. ‘She’d tell you the truth.’

‘Yes, that’s what I’m afraid of,’ he said.

I could only assume that all this foolishness was the result of his stressful work, combined with his long separations from Veronica. Daniel’s the most important person in the world to Veronica, outside our family – anyone can see that.

‘Oh, I
know
,’ he said, catching my exasperated look but misinterpreting it. ‘I know I’m being ridiculous. I haven’t any right to ask for reassurances from her! She’s entitled to fall in love with whomever she wants. It’s not as though we’re . . .’

‘Engaged?’

‘Well, I’d
ask
her to marry me, if I thought there was the slightest possibility she’d say yes.’

‘I thought you didn’t believe in marriage.’

‘I don’t, really. It all seems so bureaucratic and repressive. Personal relationships oughtn’t to have anything to do with the government. But then, I’ve always thought of myself as quite uninterested in owning things – or people – and look at the way I’m behaving now! Perhaps marriage is actually a very sensible way of managing jealousy and possessiveness. Perhaps people
aren’t
very good at sharing, after all.’

‘That doesn’t bode well for the Beveridge plan,’ I said.

‘No,’ he said gloomily. ‘Oh, I don’t know – about marriage, I mean. It’s still a very inequitable institution for women. I wouldn’t blame Veronica in the least for not wanting to consider it. All that business of having to give up one’s job, even change one’s
name
–’

I smiled. It might as well have been Veronica talking.

‘Perhaps you could offer to become a FitzOsborne, instead?’ I suggested. ‘Although then you’d have to stop being a Bloom.’

‘I wouldn’t care. It isn’t even our real family name. My grandparents changed it from Rosenblum when they arrived in England. They knew that having a name that was obviously Jewish would be a terrible disadvantage here.’

‘How awful!’ I said. ‘I mean, that they felt they had to do that. But at least attitudes are better now.’

‘Are they?’

‘Well, since the war started,’ I said. ‘I mean, you never see any of those disgusting slogans painted on walls now. And the British Union of Fascists is banned.’

‘What does that matter, when so many in the government are blatantly anti-Semitic? When the only Jewish member of the War Cabinet is forced to resign because the Prime Minister says there might be “prejudice against him”?’

‘Who?’

‘Leslie Hore-Belisha.’

‘Oh, but that was when
Chamberlain
was Prime Minister. Chamberlain was an idiot, everyone knows that.’

‘Chamberlain was acting on the advice of the King and the military. And Churchill’s not much better. Most of the upper classes are the same. Look at your aunt. Imagine what she’d say if Veronica announced she was going to marry a Jew.’

‘I don’t think Aunt Charlotte would care much, right now,’ I said. ‘She’s too upset about Toby. Besides, you aren’t
actually
very Jewish, are you?’ The last time I’d been to a National Gallery concert with Daniel, he’d bought us both Spam sandwiches for luncheon. He didn’t even believe in God.

‘Well, perhaps I ought to be far
more
Jewish,’ he said, with uncharacteristic ferocity. ‘Given what’s happening to all the Jews in Europe –’

He broke off and looked away.

‘What do you mean?’ I said. ‘What’s happening to the Jews?’

He just shook his head. I remembered what Veronica had said, about Daniel interrogating German officers. What
could
he have heard? I know that the Nazis are often arresting Jews, and putting them in camps, but once the war’s over, they’ll all be let out, won’t they?

‘Churchill is determined to defeat Hitler,’ I reassured Daniel, ‘and so are the Americans. The Allies just need a bit more time to plan a Second Front, so that it all works properly. We
will
win the war, you know.’

‘Yes,’ he said, after a moment. ‘I’m sure you’re right. Sorry. I’m just in a horrible mood, that’s all. No wonder Veronica’s avoiding me.’

‘She’s
not
avoiding you,’ I said, determined he should understand that, at least. ‘She’ll be home soon, and then you can –’

‘No, I really ought to be going,’ he said, without looking at his watch. ‘I don’t want to miss my train.’

He thanked me for luncheon and for listening to his ‘wretched ramblings’, then trudged off.

Well, that certainly puts my own unhappiness into perspective, doesn’t it?

Boxing Day, 1942

I
’D HOPED
C
HRISTMAS MIGHT CHEER
us all up a bit, but when we arrived at Milford, everything was so topsy-turvy that I felt more unsettled than ever. Aunt Charlotte was rushing about making cups of tea and fetching aspirins for Barnes, who’d slipped over on the icy front path that morning and sprained her ankle. Barnes was ensconced in one of the two armchairs pulled up to the sitting room fire, her leg propped on a footstool. The other armchair was occupied by Carlos, his snores providing a not-very-harmonious accompaniment to the concert playing on the wireless. Most of the sofa cushions had been arranged on the floor in a series of steps to make it easier for him to climb up there.