Farthing

  The oldest one was called Tania. She was Russian, or anyway Ukrainian, which isn't quite the same thing. She was ten. Abby had been teaching her English. "We're going on a boat tomorrow night," she told me. "It's to Canada, not America. They don't allow Jewish people into America, not any."

  "We're going to come with you if we can raise enough money," I said. "We're going to pretend to be your mother and father."

  "We'll be quiet," she said. "I speak the best English, Rivkele speaks it very badly, and Naddy and Paul don't speak it at all. They do speak French though. In some parts of Canada people speak French, Abby says."

  "Naddy and Paul don't sound like Jewish names," I said.

  "They aren't, but they don't know what their real names are," she informed me. "They were hidden by French people who gave them those names—then those people were caught, and taken to the camps. We were all at a camp, and we were all going to be gassed, only we were lucky and got away."

  I was astonished at how self-possessed she was, and how calmly she accepted all these horrors. Up until then, sitting there in the basement, it had been exciting, in a way, even when it was terrifying, even when it had been boring, on the train. Selling the things had been rather fun. I hadn't really felt what poor David had been feeling all this time, the absolute loss of our old life, our home, everything. It suddenly occurred to me to wonder what I was going to do in Canada, how I would live when the money from selling the things was gone. Would I have to sell the Ringhili diamond? No, I assured myself, that was sacrosanct, however poor we were. I would pass that on to my daughter when she married, whoever she married, whether or not I disapproved. I didn't know if the baby I was carrying would be a son or a daughter, but I felt sure that one day I would have both.

  David guessed somehow that I was feeling miserable. He came and sat by me, with his arm around me. We told stories to the children, and where they didn't understand we put in words in other languages. David and Tania and Rivkele knew some Hebrew, and I knew some French, though my French still wasn't very good, even after school and Switzerland and all the trips buying clothes in Paris and everything. They laughed at me, even Paul, and it did them good to laugh. David said we'd have to play games that taught them English, and started a singing game that they all loved. I could see that he was going to be a wonderful father. Eventually little Paul went to sleep on David's shoulder, and he carried him off to bed. We sent the others to bed too. Abby had set up four cots in one of the rooms for them. They were used to sleeping together, Tania said, though they had done it in some funny places. Counting off the funny places, which were enough to make my blood run cold, they fell asleep.

  Abby came down and sat with us for a while and told us how to get in touch with her. We arranged for her to get in touch with David's parents after a few months, by going to see David's father at work as if she wanted a loan. We thought that would be safe enough. I kept feeling surges of something between excitement and fear—we're really going, we're really leaving the country, police and people are really searching for us. Our descriptions had been broadcast on the BBC. Yet we kept sitting there, drinking tea and chatting as if nothing was happening.

  "How do you get the children?" I asked.

  "There's a guard at one of the camps who rescues as many as he can of the condemned," she said. "It's almost always children because the others wouldn't make it. Children are very resilient, I find, though sometimes the experience makes them resentful and angry. These four are good children. You'll find them a good ready-made family."

  I blinked, but David said, in the half-dark, "I think we already have."

  "They have tickets for a boat leaving Southampton tomorrow, calling at Halifax and then New York. People will be watching the boats, but they'll be looking for a couple, not a big family. You're a plausible family, at least, color-wise. I sometimes get gypsies, very dark, and once a Negro girl whose mother had been a nightclub singer in Paris, before. These four are all Jewish."

  "I'm amazed that Jews in Europe are still having children," I said, unthinkingly.

  "What, when you're having a baby yourself?" Abby asked. I'd told her earlier, and she'd congratulated me. "People have babies whenever they have hope, and while hope is thin in Europe, it isn't quite dead. The new children are coming from newly conquered areas, like the Ukraine, and countries voluntarily submitting to the rules of the Reich, like Bulgaria and Romania, whose Jews felt safe until recently, in the same way that British Jews thought they were safe."

  I went cold all over at the thought of those things happening in Britain, happening to people I knew. I could see that they would though—the process was almost inevitable from the moment Mummy killed Sir James. Maybe they would send the Jews off to Hitler's camps, or maybe they would form camps of their own, because it wouldn't only be the Jews, any more than it was in the Reich; it was also anybody who disagreed with the way things were organized. The Jews were just the easy way to get started.

  "Tania said Naddy and Paul don't know their real names," I said.

  "They don't know their real names or who their parents were, or even if they're really Jewish, and they never will now that the people who were sheltering them have been taken to the camps. Naddy was only four, and Paul was a babe in arms. It'll be your responsibility to let them know who they are now, because they'll never know who they once were."

  "Are you asking us to take on those four in the long term?" I asked.

  "Yes. Normally, they'd have gone to a Friends orphanage in Halifax, where we'd have tried to find homes for them. But I'm getting the papers changed to say you're all a family, emigrating. It's cover for you and for them, but it does mean you'll have to take care of them."

  "Of course we will," David said, without hesitation, sounding better than he had for days. "We'll be glad to. And if there's anything more we can do later, when we're established, we'll do that too, of course."

  I thought about having four ready-made children, immediately, and I tried to feel cheerful about it, but I couldn't help feeling that it would be a bit of a burden with no nursemaid or governess or anything.

  The next morning, Abby sold the jewel case and the hairbrush in Southsea, for a hundred and ten pounds, and I sold another bracelet and a whole mess of earrings in two different shops in Portsmouth, for eighty pounds. I put a shawl over my head, partly to look like a poorer kind of woman, but also to disguise the wound a bit. Even with make-up it was visible if you looked closely.

  That gave us enough money for the papers, though Abby said time would be tight and we might have to take the next boat, a week later. I bought a few things, chocolate for the children, and drawing books, and crayons, and things to read to them, and books for David and me. I bought myself War and Peace because it was so long and because I'd never read it, and I bought David the new book from the man who wrote that animal book that was so popular a few years before, some kind of scientifiction thing called Nineteen-Seventy-Four. He always loved Wells and Verne, and I thought something like that would take his mind off things. Abby bought us some clothes—I didn't dare buy them myself because clothes shops seemed like the kind of place they might be looking for us, though much more likely in London than Portsmouth.

  Then I did something terribly risky. I took a pile of pennies and went into a phone box and rang Daddy. I rang him at work, not at the House, and not at home either where I'd have had to speak to servants and possibly Mummy. I knew now that Mummy would do whatever she could to track us down and hurt us. But to speak to Daddy in the office I only had to dial direct, which was all right, because I knew the codes, and then go through one secretary. I knew what to say, which was that I was Mark Normanby's new secretary and could she put me through. I was through to him in half a minute.

  "Hello, Daddy?" I said.

  "Luce! Bunny, where are you?"

  "I'm in a call box," I said. "I'm safe. What I want to know is, how could you go along with this?"

  "It rather ran away with me," he said. "Y
ou know how these things do. Come home, Bunny, I'll see you won't be hurt."

  "But David will," I said. "You just went along with it? You mean you knew it was happening?"

  "Vaguely," he said. "Your mother did mention something about it. I knew that chap was going to shoot at me, but he was supposed to miss, dammit, he wasn't supposed to hit you. I'm sorry about that."

  "She mentioned something about murdering a friend of yours and framing my husband?" I asked.

  "She didn't say anything about that," he assured me. "It was just supposed to be Jews and terrorists generally. I didn't even know you'd been invited until I saw you at dinner on Friday."

  "Daddy, I don't know how much of this is Mark and how much is Mummy, but now that it's started it'll keep going like a snowball rolling downhill until there's no liberty and nothing left, as bad as the Bolsheviks, worse, as bad as the Reich. You think you're in control, and you can be now; you can stop it if you speak out, now, but soon it'll be too late, you'll be afraid as well. Stop it now, Daddy. Go on the radio and tell everybody what's been done. You didn't want to kill Sir James, and surely you don't want to live in a country where that's the way to power?"

  "But Luce, you're being absurd," he said. "It's nothing like the Bolsheviks. It's people like us who keep the Bolsheviks out, to stop the little people crawling upwards hand over hand, dragging us all down by the coattails. I didn't disapprove of your marriage, although your mother did. I wanted you to be happy. Come back. I'll do what I can for Kahn."

  "Congratulations on being Chancellor," I said. "I don't expect I'll see you again, or speak to you, but I wanted to say goodbye."

  "Where are you?" he asked. The pips were going, and I didn't want another three minutes. The last I heard was his voice saying plaintively, "Luce? Bunny?"

  I wasn't his Bunny, or anybody's Bunny. I hadn't been for years, really, but it was only then that I noticed, and felt different. Daddy could just drift into murder and fascism, but I refused that entirely, for myself and for the future. It was the way I'd thought before, about living in a tiny flower garden in the midst of fields of manure. I couldn't close my eyes to the fact that keeping the flower garden meant pushing other people off into the manure. Daddy might mean what he said about doing something to help David, though I didn't think he'd really be able to do it, but even if he could it wasn't enough if other people like David who didn't have pull were being pushed off. That's why the law has to be impartial and has to be fair, and that's what Abby explained to me from the time I was old enough to think about these things at all. I wish Daddy had had someone like Abby to explain it to him. I wish everyone had, or if they had, that they'd paid attention.

  In the afternoon, Abby came down to say our tickets and papers had come through, and that we were sailing from Southampton on the evening tide. She also said the railways were being watched very carefully, so we'd have to take a risk, both on the train and on the boat. She said our descriptions and photos were all over the papers, and all over the wireless as well, and everyone seemed sure David had done it, even the Manchester Guardian, which was usually Abby's byword for liberality and giving the benefit of the doubt.

  We looked at our papers and practiced our new names. Then Abby made up my face very carefully. My scrape was the thing that was hardest to disguise. She lent me a hat that shaded my face to some extent, but I was still afraid someone would see it. She came down with us to the station.

  The children were excited. They wanted to go on the train. David had been telling them about trains and drawing trains for them. They were really a wonderful distraction for David, just what he needed. They'd been in the boat before, so the ship all the way to Canada didn't seem as exciting as the one-hour train trip. Abby bought the tickets, and waved us off. There were more police, but they hardly glanced at us. I carried Paul and kept my face down over him. I thought I'd do the same going onto the boat.

  I hugged Abby goodbye fiercely. I wished so much that she were coming with us, though I knew she couldn't and she was doing more good where she was. We piled into a compartment, which we had all to ourselves and settled down. We waved as long as we could see Abby standing on the platform. I didn't know if I'd ever see her again.

  The children soon got tired of the train. We passed the first part of the journey playing noughts and crosses and drawing stories. The older ones liked me to draw something for them to color, so I did that too, though I wasn't very good. I could manage women in long dresses, and cats—Abby taught me a very good way of drawing a cat, all in one line. It wasn't very natural, but you could tell what it was. They thought it was wonderful. I started to feel that I might be able to deal with being a mother after all.

  "Where will we live in Canada?" Tania asked as we jolted out of one of the little stations.

  "We'll land in Halifax," David said. "That's a big port, bigger than Portsmouth, I think, as big as Southampton. It'll be exciting. We'll see flying boats and ships there. Then after Halifax I think we'll go on the train, a long long way, all day on the train, inland, through Nova Scotia and New Brunswick."

  "Are those countries?" Tania asked. She was opposite me. Paul was next to me—he'd fallen asleep and was leaning against me, rather heavily. You wouldn't think a three-year-old could be so heavy.

  "No, they're parts of Canada. Provinces," David said.

  "You must have been frightfully good at geography," I said, enviously.

  He laughed. "I've just looked at maps," he said. "You need to get good at maps to be a pilot."

  "Are you a pilot?" Rivkele asked. "A flyer of aeroplanes?"

  "Yes, or at least, I was," David said. "I think I will be again, now. It'll be different from being a banker, but you can't be a banker without capital. Maybe later I'll have capital again, and I can go back to banking. We'll see. But for now, I think we'll go to Montreal. That's in Quebec, the part of Canada where people speak French. They don't mind Jews so much there—at least, that's what I've heard. In the war, I had a friend in the squadron who was Quebecois, and that's what he told me. We'll find somewhere to live, and you can go to school and grow up, and our new baby will be born, and things will be all right."

  I believed it, when he said it, sitting in the train, bucketing onwards through the quiet green countryside, not knowing if we'd ever get to Canada or even whether we'd get safely on the boat. It was still quite likely that the police would catch us and hang David and repatriate the children to the death camps and probably lock me up in a madhouse. But we were going on in hope, to a new life, new names, new possibilities. Things would be very different.

  I sat there, David against my side and Paul heavy on my other side, and thought back over the last week—it was less than a week, from Saturday afternoon when David had come in furious at Angela Thirkie mistaking him for the waiter, until Thursday afternoon when we sat in the train going to a new life. I decided there and then to write all this down. To have a record of it, to publish it if possible, if there is some press somewhere in some country that isn't afraid of the consequences of ceasing to appease these people, and maybe one day even in England. Maybe one day we'll go home, when England is truly free again, and not just giving lip service to freedom while sinking deeper and deeper into oppression.

  "I love you," I said. "Are you frightened?"

  "I'm terrified, but I love you too," David said, and kind of nuzzled against my neck in that lovely way he has.

  Then the train pulled in to Southampton station.

  32

  Everything made sense; all the inconsistencies and implausibilities that had plagued Carmichael were gone. If he hadn't been so afraid, he'd have been ready to sing. He made it to London, to the Yard. There was nowhere to park. He had to leave the car on a newfangled American meter in Lincoln's Inn Fields and walk the rest of the way, fearing snipers, fearing immediate and sudden death as he had not since the end of the war. They had killed Agnes Timms, and he knew more than she knew.

  Inside the Yard, Stebbings was sitting a
s usual in his cubicle. He beckoned to Carmichael. "The Chief wants to see you immediately you come in," he said. His tone was even, as always, but Carmichael thought he seemed somehow less friendly than usual.

  "He doesn't want me to write up my report first?"

  "Immediately," Stebbings said, shortly. He had it written down on a notepad in front of him, Carmichael noticed. "Carmichael: immediately." His name was underlined.

  Carmichael went to the lift preparing arguments to use to his Chief. He was within his deadline. He had wrapped the case up. They could take it to the Director of Public Prosecutions as it was. Agnes Timms's murder was one more piece of evidence, and he and Royston had both heard what she had to say and could testify to it. He was elevated, again leaving his stomach behind as he rose, and at last stepped out into the Chief Inspector's office.

  The view was splendid. Clouds were streaming south across London, and he had a bird's-eye view.

  Penn-Barkis was sitting at his desk, fingers pressed together. "I take it you've finished with the Thirkie case?" he asked.

  "Yes, sir," Carmichael said, sitting in the chair in front of the desk that Penn-Barkis indicated. If he could not see the view, at least he wouldn't be distracted by it. "Let me explain it to you."

  On the long drive back, Carmichael had put it all together and now he could lay out a clear picture of the Thirkie murder that made sense. He spoke without any interruptions at all. Penn-Barkis sat still with steepled fingers, listening intently.