Traitor's Gate (26 page)

‘Even then, I still took each day as it came. I saw men around me crack, but I kept on fighting. If anything I became braver. I was going to die for my country: I knew it and I accepted it. I thought a lot about your mother, and about you and Edward and the others. But all around me better men than me were dying: why should I escape?

‘Then one day at Passchendaele we were pinned down by the Hun. They had counter-attacked and were in danger of pinching off a salient held by a battalion of the Gloucesters. Directly in front of us, on a slight rise in the ground, lay a German machine-gun post. It was in a commanding position, pinning us down and cutting off any chance the Gloucesters had to retreat. We sent a company in to try to overrun the position, but they were all wiped out.

‘I volunteered to try to take the post by stealth. I set off with only six men, in the hope that the fewer of us there were, the less chance there was that we would be spotted. Battalion HQ ordered up a small artillery barrage, enough to give us cover, not enough to warn the Hun that something was up. We crawled our way closer and closer. We were about twenty yards away, when one of the Germans shouted out a challenge. I yelled back to him in my best Hamburg accent that we were wounded, and that we needed stretchers, quickly. There was a lot of shouting, and as a half-dozen stretcher-bearers scram­bled down towards us, we charged the post. They were taken by surprise. We were lucky: a couple of well-placed grenades, some lucky shots, and we took the emplacement. But they killed four of us.

‘So there was just me and Lance Corporal Roberts, a tough little dairyman from Frome. Anyway, we manned the machine gun and turned it towards the German lines. By that time my arm was shot to pieces.

 ‘They came at us, wave after wave of them, and we mowed them down. I don’t know how many men we killed. Dozens, maybe a hundred. It was a horrible sight, seeing all those bodies falling through the sights of the machine gun. I remember feeling more like a manic murderer than a soldier. But however many we killed, more came on. Roberts bought it, a shot in the throat. It was a devilish job firing the machine gun myself with one arm, but I managed somehow.

‘There was a lull, while they regrouped. They must have thought there was more than one person facing them. My own company hadn’t realized what had happened, I learned later that despite urging from some of the other officers, the company commander got himself in a blue funk and refused to order an attack to relieve me.

‘I knew the Germans would come and I knew they would get me. It was a question of how many of them I would kill before they did. I was surrounded by bodies, British and German. Some were still alive, groaning. There was one boy who had died only about five yards in front of the position. He looked about sixteen, but he must have been a little older. He had buck teeth and surprised blue eyes. He reminded me very much of little Willi Müller in the post room at the bank in Hamburg. Because of the way he had fallen those eyes were staring straight at me. He was quite dead, but he was accusing me.

‘Time stood very still. I was no longer scared. In my mind I was already dead. But suddenly I knew I wasn’t going to take anyone else with me. The scores of broken bodies that littered the field of fire in front of me were no longer enemy soldiers, but young men I had killed: sons, husbands, perhaps some fathers, post-room boys. If I close my eyes now, I can still see them, the grotesque shapes they formed as they fell. I knew I wasn’t a murderer, that I wasn’t evil, but I also knew that if I was going to die, it wasn’t going to be while I was in the act of killing other human beings.

 ‘So I stood up and I walked towards the German lines. Not with my hands up, not carrying a gun, just walking. I kept expecting a bullet to hit me, but there was nothing, no firing, nothing. I kept going until I got to the German trenches. They were empty; the Germans must have scarpered. Then I sat down. I don’t remember anything else. Apparently D Company found me sitting on the parapet, staring back towards our own lines. It didn’t take the medics long to chop off my arm. But it took months for them to repair my mind.’ He snorted. ‘Well, they never did. You know that.’

Conrad sat in silence next to his father.

‘I never killed anyone after that,’ he said. ‘I was hoping none of my sons would. And now you want to start another war.’

‘We both want the same thing, Father,’ Conrad said. ‘It’s just that I am convinced that the best way of preventing war is to help von Kleist. You must trust me, Father. You must help him.’

Silence.

Conrad could feel as much as see his father’s body tense. His jaw muscles tightened, his fingers rubbed at his moustache in an unnaturally fast rhythm. Conrad knew what would happen next. He had known from the moment his father had started talking about the trenches, but he had been too transfixed to stop him.

‘Father?’

Lord Oakford muttered something through clenched teeth.

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t hear that.’

‘I said: You little shit!’

‘Father, I—’

‘All those good men who died in Flanders, you couldn’t give a fuck about them, could you?’ Lord Oakford’s eyes were suddenly blazing. ‘You’ve forgotten what they suffered – you never knew what they suffered, you took it all for granted. You just want to start another little fight, Bolshies against the Nazis, Britons against the Germans. Well, I won’t let you, do you hear? I won’t let you.’ He was shaking with anger, his eyes glittering with an unnatural excitement.

‘Father, that’s not quite fair—’

‘I would have thought if there was one thing I have taught you it is that we must never
ever
fight another war. Why can’t you and your friends understand that? It must never happen again. It may be that evil men like Hitler get away with more than they deserve but at least millions of young soldiers won’t die.’

Conrad felt the anger rise within him. His father’s words stung. They were so unfair! He knew that he should ignore them, that they were a result of the damage his father had suffered that day in 1917, which was as real if not as visibly obvious as his empty sleeve. But this was a time when he needed his father’s support. The stakes were so much higher than just the relationship between them. Without his father’s support Conrad did not know how he would persuade the likes of Lord Halifax to listen to von Kleist. Lord Oakford’s sudden emotional occupation of the moral high ground had become a ritual in their arguments, as if his wounds and his Victoria Cross gave him a right to it. This right had never been challenged before, but Conrad realized that he had to challenge it now, before it was too late.

‘You’re a coward, Father.’

‘I’m
what
!’ Lord Oakford’s eyes blazed in fury. No one had ever called him a coward. He was self-evidently not a coward, which was why he was such an effective pacifist. For his son to accuse him of cowardice—

‘You’re a coward. There are brave men in Germany, friends of mine, who are willing to risk death to stop Hitler. They need your help. They know that it is inevitable Hitler will start a war, and when he does it will be a horrible one. You know that too – you know war is coming, that’s why you are in such despair. Well, do something about it. Take a risk too. It might not work, but it will be better than sitting back and letting Hitler destroy Europe unopposed. I thought you more than anyone would have the courage to act. I see I’m wrong.’

‘Your impertinence is insufferable. I will not listen to this.’ Lord Oakford scrambled awkwardly to his feet with his one good arm. ‘I’m going back. Don’t come with me. And I want you out of the house by luncheon!’

‘You’re running away, Father!’ Conrad called as he watched Lord Oakford hurry down the hill, the sleeve of his left arm flapping. Monty, after a plaintive glance at Conrad, loped after him.

He had no idea how long his father’s black mood would last now it had been ignited. Past experience would suggest that it could be over in a day, but in this case Conrad thought that highly unlikely. A week was average, although a month was a possibility. Either way, his father would stick by his command that he leave the house by luncheon. Wearily, Conrad followed him down the hill into the wood.

When he got back to the house, the atmosphere had already changed. Reggie passed him in the hall on his way out and glared at him. ‘You had to pick a fight with him, didn’t you? He’s been fine for three months; you show up and you set him off. I’m surprised you have the front to come here at all.’

‘Go to hell, Reggie,’ said Conrad wearily, and climbed the stairs to his room to pack.

Ten minutes later there was a soft knock on the door. It was his mother, a frown firmly set on her forehead.

‘Oh, Conrad, did you have to?’ she said, sitting on his bed.

‘I’m sorry, Mamma. I didn’t do it on purpose, although I half expected it to happen.’

‘Do you always have to provoke him? The rest of the family steer clear of certain subjects. If you could only do that too he wouldn’t explode every time you came to visit and we would see so much more of you. I’d like that, Conrad.’

Conrad smiled at his mother. She had been a stunning woman when she was younger. As a grown man, Conrad had seen photographs of her from that time in a new light. From his boyhood he remembered a maternal smile and the warm comfort of her embrace; the photographs showed a striking beauty with a full figure and big seductive eyes under long lashes. Now in her fifties, she had put on weight, but she still had an air of quiet vitality about her.

‘I would like it too, Mamma. But this time I really did need to talk to him about the war, the coming war. I needed him to listen.’ He told his mother all about von Kleist and Theo.

‘They make sense to me,’ his mother said. ‘I am amazed by how meekly my fellow countrymen put up with that monster. I’m glad there are some people in high places who will stand up to him. We must help them.’

‘That’s what I thought. But Father told me about the day he won his VC. And then he just became totally unreasonable.’

‘He told you about that?’ Lady Oakford said, her frown deep­en­ing. ‘No wonder he is upset. I didn’t think he would ever talk about that again.’

‘I can see why he doesn’t. And I understand why he wants to avoid a war.’

‘But isn’t this the best way to do that?’ Lady Oakford said.

‘I think so. And I had hoped to convince him, but he wouldn’t listen. In the end I called him a coward.’

‘You did what!’ Lady Oakford looked shocked.

‘He knows I’m right, Mamma, but that will just make him more upset. It will take a lot of bravery for him to admit to himself and to me that he is wrong about appeasement and Hitler should be got rid of. But now I’ll have to approach Lord Halifax myself. I believe he likes me well enough, but you know how grand he is. I’m not sure he’ll listen to me.’

‘I could write to him, if you like.’ Conrad was surprised to see his mother blush. ‘He’s such a cold fish it’s hard to tell, but I’ve always thought he had a bit of a thing for me.’

Conrad laughed. ‘Mamma! Now there’s a thought. Thank you, it might help. Now, I’d better get Tyndall to take me to the station.’

‘Where will you be going in London? You’re welcome to stay at Kensington Square, of course.’

‘I think I’d better not,’ said Conrad. ‘It would just aggravate Father when he found out. I’ll stay at the club.’

His mother rose and embraced him. ‘I’m glad to see you trying to do something.’ He felt dampness on his cheek. She pulled back, her eyes wet. ‘Oh, Conrad, I hope there won’t be another war with Germany,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I could stand it if there was.’

The strange thing was she said it in German, a language she hardly ever spoke to him any more.

In London, Conrad installed himself at his club. The first and most important person for him to approach was Lord Halifax. He knew he could rely on his mother to fire off a letter to him that evening, but he would have to wait until Halifax had received it before trying to contact him himself.

Somehow Veronica tracked him down. There was a note wait­ing for him at his club telling him he should ring her when he arrived in London. This he did, and she suggested that they meet up at the Café Royal for cocktails.

She was, of course, looking stunning, in a blue dress he didn’t recognize, pearls and the exquisite sapphire earrings that his parents had given her. But she left him unmoved.

‘You seem a little jollier than last time I saw you,’ she said, sipping her gin and it.

‘Do I?’

‘You’re not learning to love the Nazis, are you?’

‘Certainly not,’ said Conrad. ‘Things are getting worse. Much worse.’

Veronica leaned back in her chair and smiled. She was an astute reader of human emotions, especially Conrad’s. ‘I know what it is.’

‘Really?’ said Conrad.

‘What’s she like?’

‘Who?’ Conrad had no intention of discussing Anneliese with his wife. But he did offer her a cigarette and then a light.

‘Well?’ said Veronica, her eyes amused.

‘Well what?’

‘Do you want that divorce now?’

Conrad was about to give his usual answer, but he stopped himself. Veronica noticed his hesitation but held her peace.

Why not? thought Conrad. Why the hell not? His life would undoubtedly be better not being married to Veronica. And there was Anneliese. Perhaps one day, somehow, he would be able to get her out of Germany.

‘All right,’ he said.

‘Oh, darling!’ Veronica leaned over the little table and kissed him on the cheek. ‘But you will do the gentlemanly thing, won’t you?’

‘I suppose so. Although I have no idea how to go about it.’

‘Don’t worry, Diana told me all about it.’ Veronica grabbed her bag and rummaged in it. ‘Go and see this man,’ she said, handing him the card of E. S. P. Haynes, Solicitor. ‘He’ll sort it all out.’

‘Well, he’d better get his skates on. I’m going back to Berlin in a few days.’

‘Go and see him tomorrow, will you please, darling? Diana says he’s frightfully efficient.’

Conrad frowned at his wife. ‘You seem very keen on all this. Are you working on one of your schemes? You think once we are divorced you can get Linaro to leave his wife, don’t you?’