The Fourth Estate (12 page)

As she clipped
on her bra, Penny asked casually, “Same time next week?”

“Sorry, can’t
make it next week,” said Keith. “Got an appointment in Melbourne.”

“Who with?”
asked Penny. “You’re surely not playing for the First Eleven.”

“No, they’re not
quite that desperate,” said Keith, laughing. “But I do have to attend an
Interview Board for Oxford.”

“Why bother?”
said Penny. “if you were to end up there, it would only confirm your worst
fears about the English.”

1 know that, but
my
...
“ he began, as he pulled up his
trousers for a second time.

“And in any
case, I heard my father tell Mr. Clarke that he only added your name to the
final list to please your mother.”

Penny regretted
the words the moment she had said them.

Keith’s eyes
narrowed as he stared down at a girl who didn’t normally blush.

Keith used the
second edition of the school magazine to air his opinions on private education.

“As we approach
the second half of the twentieth century, money alone should not be able to
guarantee a good education,” the leader declared.

“Attendance at
the finest schools should be available to any child of proven ability, and not
decided simply by which cot you were born in.”

Keith waited for
the wrath of the headmaster to descend upon him, but only silence emanated from
that quarter. Mr. Jessop did not rise to the challenge. He might have been
influenced by the fact that Keith had already banked C1,470 of the £5,000
needed to build a new cricket pavilion. Most of the money had, admittedly, been
extracted from his father’s contacts, who, Keith suspected, paid up in the hope
that it would keep their names off the front pages in future.

In fact, the
only result of publishing the article was not a complaint, but an offer of C 10
from the Melbourne Age, Sir Graham’s main rival, who wanted to reproduce the
five hundred-word piece in full. Keith happily accepted his first fee as a
journalist, but managed to lose the entire amount the following Wednesday, thus
finally proving that Lucky Joe’s system was not infallible.

Nevertheless,
Keith looked forward to the chance of impressing his father with the little
coup. On Saturday he read through his prose, as reproduced in the Melbourne
Age. They hadn’t changed a single word-but they had edited the piece down
drastically, and given it a very misleading headline: “Sir Graham’s Heir
Demands Scholarships for Aborigines.”

Half the page
was given over to Keith’s radical views the other half was taken up by an
article from the paper’s chief educational correspondent, cogently arguing the
case for private education. Readers were invited to respond with their
opinions, and the following Saturday the Age had a field day at Sir Graham’s
expense.

Keith was
relieved that his father never raised the subject, although he did overhear him
telling his mother, ‘The boy will have learned a great deal from the
experience. And in any case, I agreed with a lot of what he had to say.”

His mother
wasn’t quite so supportive.

During the
holidays Keith spent every morning being tutored by Miss Steadman in
preparation for his final exams.

“Learning is
just another form of tyranny,” he declared at the end of one demanding session.

“It’s nothing
compared with the tyranny of being ignorant for the rest of your life,” she assured
him.

After Miss
Steadman had set him some more topics to revise, Keith went off to spend the
rest of the day at the Courier. Like his father, he found he was more at ease
among journalists than with the rich and powerful old boys of St.

Andrew’s from
whom he continued to try to coax money for the pavilion appeal.

For his first
official assignment at the Courier, Keith was attached to the paper’s crime
reporter, Barry Evans, who sent him off every afternoon to cover court
proceedings petty theft, burglary, shoplifting and even the occasional bigamy.
“Search for names that just might be recognized,” Evans told him. “Or better
still, for those who might be related to people who are well known. Best of
all, those who are well known.” Keith worked diligently, but without a great
deal to show for his efforts. Whenever he did manage to get a piece into the
paper, he often found it had been savagely cut.

I don’t want to
know your opinions,” the old crime reporter would repeat.

I just want the
facts.” Evans had done his training on the Manchester Guardian, and never tired
of repeating the words of C.P. Scott: “Comment is free, but facts are sacred.”
Keith decided that if he ever owned a newspaper, he would never employ anyone
who had worked for the Manchester Guardian.

He returned to
St. Andrew’s for the second term, and used the leader in the first edition of
the school magazine to suggest that the time had come for Australia to sever
its ties with Britain. The article declared that Churchill had abandoned Australia
to its fate, while concentrating on the war in Europe.

Once again the
Melbourne Age offered Keith the chance to disseminate his views to a far wider
audience, but this time he refused – despite the tempting offer of £20, four
times the sum he had earned in his fortnight as a cub reporter on the Courier.
He decided to offer the article to the

Adelaide
Gazette, one of his father’s papers, but the editor spiked it even before he
had reached the second paragraph.

By the second
week of term, Keith realized that his biggest problem had become how to rid
himself of Penny, who no longer believed his excuses for not seeing her, even
when he was telling the truth. He had already asked Betsy to go to the cinema
with him the following Saturday afternoon.

However, there
remained the unsolved problem of how you dated the next girl before you had
disposed of her predecessor.

At their most
recent meeting in the gym, when he suggested that perhaps the time had come for
them to... Penny had hinted that she would tell her father how they had been
spending Saturday afternoons. Keith didn’t give a damn who she told, but he did
care about embarrassing his mother. During the week he stayed in his study,
working unusually hard and avoiding going anywhere he might bump into Penny.

On Saturday
afternoon he took a circuitous route into town, and met up with Betsy outside
the Roxy cinema. Nothing like breaking three school rules in one day, he
thought. He purchased two tickets for Chips Rafferty in The Rats of Tobruk, and
guided Betsy into a double seat in the back row. By the time ‘The End” flashed
up on the screen, he hadn’t seen much of the film and his tongue ached. He
couldn’t wait for next Saturday, when the First Eleven were playing away and he
could introduce Betsy to the pleasures of the cricket pavilion.

He was relieved
to find that Penny didn’t try to contact him during the following week. So on
Thursday, when he went to post another letter to his mother, he fixed a date to
see Betsy on Saturday afternoon. He promised to take her somewhere she had
never been before.

Once the first
team’s bus was out of sight, Keith hung around behind the trees on the north
side of the sports ground, waiting for Betsy to appear.

After half an
hour he began to wonder if she was going to turn up, but a few moments later he
spotted her strolling across the fields, and immediately forgot his impatience.
Her long fair hair was done up in a ponytail, secured by an elastic band. She
wore a yellow sweater which clung so tightly to her body that it reminded him
of Lana Turner, and a black skirt so restricting that when she walked she had
no choice but to take extremely short steps.

Keith waited for
her to join him behind the trees, then took her by the arm and guided her
quickly in the direction of the pavilion. He stopped every few yards to kiss
her, and had located the zip on her skirt with at least twenty-two yards still
to cover.

When they
reached the back door, Keith removed a large key from his jacket pocket and
inserted it into the lock. He turned it slowly and pushed the door open,
fumbling around for the light switch. He flicked it on, and then heard the
groans. Keith stared down in disbelief at the sight that greeted him. Four eyes
blinked back up at him. One of the two was shielding herself from the naked
light bulb, but Keith could recognize those legs, even if he couldn’t see her
face. He turned his attention to the other body lying on top of her.

Duncan Alexander
would certainly never forget the day he lost his virginity.

THE TIMES

21 NOVEMBER 1940

H
ungary Drawn
into Axis Net:

Ribbentrop’s
Boast that “Others Will Follow”

LUBJI LAY ON the
ground, doubled up, clutching his jaw. The soldier kept the bayonet pointing between
his eyes, and with a flick of the head indicated that he should join the others
in the waiting lorry.

Lubji tried to
continue his protest in Hungarian, but he knew it was too late. “Save your
breath, Jew,” hissed the soldier, “or I’ll kick it out of you.” The bayonet
ripped into his trousers and tore open the skin of his right leg. Lubji hobbled
off as quickly as he could to the waiting lorry, and joined a group of stunned,
helpless people who had only one thing in common: they were all thought to be
Jews. Mr. and Mrs. Cerani were thrown on board before the lorry began its slow
journey out of the city. An hour later they reached the compound of the local
prison, and Lubji and his fellow- passengers were unloaded as if they were
nothing more than cattle.

The men were
lined up and led across the courtyard into a large stone hall.

A few minutes
later an SS sergeant marched in, followed by a dozen German soldiers. He barked
out an order in his native tongue. “He’s saying we must strip,” whispered
Lubji, translating the words into Hungarian.

They all took
off their clothes, and the soldiers began herding the naked bodies into
lines-most of them shivering, some of them crying. Lubji’s eyes darted around
the room trying to see if there was any way he might escape.

There was only
one door-guarded by soldiers-and three small windows high up in the walls.

A few minutes
later a smartly dressed SS officer marched in, smoking a thin cigar. He stood
in the center of the room and, in a brief perfunctory speech, informed them
that they were now prisoners of war. “Heil Hitler,” he said, and turned to
leave.

Lubji took a
pace forward and smiled as the officer passed him. “Good afternoon, sir,” he
said. The officer stopped, and stared with disgust at the young man. Lubji began
to claim in pidgin German that they had made a dreadful mistake, and then
opened his hand to reveal a wad of Hungarian peng6s.

The officer
smiled at Lubji, took the notes and set light to them with his cigar. The flame
grew until he could hold the wad no longer, when he dropped the burning paper
on the floor at Lubji’s feet and marched off.

Lubji could only
think of how many months it had taken him to save that amount of money.

The prisoners
stood shivering in the stone hall. The guards ignored them; some smoked, while
others talked to each other as if the naked men simply didn’t exist. It was to
be another hour before a group of men in long white coats wearing rubber gloves
entered the hall. They began walking up and down the lines, stopping for a few
seconds to check each prisoner’s penis.

Three men were
ordered to dress and told they could return to their homes.

That was all the
proof needed. Lubji wondered what test the women were being subjected to.

After the men in
white coats had left, the prisoners were ordered to dress and then led out of
the hall. As they crossed the courtyard Lubji’s eyes darted around, looking for
any avenue of escape, but there were always soldiers with bayonets no more than
a few paces away. They were herded into a long corridor and coaxed down a
narrow stone staircase with only an occasional gas lamp giving any suggestion
of light. On both sides Lubji passed cells crammed with people; he could hear
screaming and pleading in so many different tongues that he didn’t dare to turn
round and look. Then, suddenly, one of the cell doors was opened and he was
grabbed by the collar and hurled in, head first. He would have hit the stone
floor if he hadn’t landed on a pile of bodies.

He lay still for
a moment and then stood up, trying to focus on those around him. But as there
was only one small barred window, it was some time before he could make out
individual faces.

A rabbi was
chanting a psalm-but the response was muted. Lubji tried to stand to one side
as an elderly man was sick all over him. He moved away from the stench, only to
bump into another prisoner with his trousers down. He sat in the corner with
his back to the wall-that way no one could take him by surprise.

When the door
was opened again, Lubji had no way of knowing how long he had been in that
stench-ridden cell. A group of soldiers entered the room with torches, and
flashed their lights into blinking eyes. If the eyes didn’t blink, the body was
dragged out into the corridor and never seen again. It was the last time he saw
Mr. Cerani.