Ben came over. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked sharply.
‘Nothing.’
‘Come on. Let’s get some breakfast.’ He took Frank’s arm and led him to the door.
Downstairs, the others had already eaten and were sitting round the table smoking, the old woman he had seen the night before bustling about with plates. Geoff stood up. ‘Morning, Frank. Feeling better?’
‘A bit woozy.’ I’ll pretend to be more dopey than I am, he thought.
The woman brought him a plentiful breakfast, bacon and eggs and porridge, toast and butter. Frank found he was very hungry. As he ate the others all watched him. The foreign woman was there. He saw there was a touch of a slant to her eyes. Her expression as she looked at him was kind but there was a hardness in her face. David had shaved, too, but still looked washed-out, though Geoff seemed like his old self, puffing away on his pipe.
Afterwards Ben gave him his pill – just one small pill, his usual dose, and the foreign woman brought him an identity card with the name Michael Hadleigh on the front. She leaned over him, those slightly slanted eyes staring into his, and said in accented English, ‘Just in case we get asked for identity cards for any reason, this is your name. Look at it and remember it. Do you think you can do that, Frank?’
‘Yes, yes, I can.’ He wondered where she came from. The accent didn’t sound German, thank God.
‘I’ve a doctor’s letter as well, not a real one but it looks authentic enough. It says you’ve got TB and we’re friends taking you to a sanatorium in London. If anyone asks us to show them our ID cards they’re likely to let us past quickly, people are frightened of TB. There’s more of it around every winter now.’
‘Pretty clever, eh?’ Geoff said.
Frank said, ‘Yes, it is.’
Natalia turned to him, a little apologetically. ‘Before we go we’d like to wash your hair and tidy it up. Would you mind?’
‘No,’ Frank said, touching his uneven fuzz. It sounded a good idea. ‘Are we likely to get stopped?’
‘No,’ Geoff said reassuringly. ‘But you never know these days.’
‘Especially with what’s happening with the Jews,’ Natalia agreed.
‘What have they done with them?’ Frank asked. ‘I heard they’d all been taken away.’
‘We don’t know,’ David answered bleakly. ‘They’ve put them in resettlement camps outside the towns. But we don’t know what’s going to happen from there.’
‘Maybe they’re going to take them by train to the Isle of Wight. Maybe the Germans will kill them there,’ Geoff said. ‘Perhaps Beaverbrook will keep them where they are for now, dangle them in front of the Germans as a bargaining chip.’
‘They’ll hand them over to the Germans, all right,’ David said bitterly. ‘They’ll take them to Eastern Europe and finish them off.’
‘Barbarians!’ Colonel Brock burst out suddenly, standing up. ‘Never had too much time for the Israelites myself, but this – it’s barbarism, barbarism!’
The door opened and his wife came in, excitement glowing in her face. She looked at David. ‘I’ve just had news over the radio,’ she said. ‘From our people in London. Your wife’s safe, our people have got her!’
David’s whole body flooded with relief. Colonel Brock came over and shook his hand vigorously. ‘Thank God! Congratulations, old chap!’ Geoff clapped him on the shoulder. Frank saw David look over at Natalia. She gave him a tight little smile, and a nod.
Mrs Brock continued, ‘You’ve all to stay here a few days.’ She had seemed nervous last night but the news seemed to have energized her. ‘There are roadblocks round Birmingham. That’s good, though, because they must think Dr Muncaster’s been taken there.’ She gave Frank a quick look; like her husband she seemed a little frightened of him. ‘The submarine will be off the south coast to pick you up at the weekend. In the meantime, when it looks quieter, you’ll all go down to London.’
Her husband asked, ‘Do we know where on the south coast?’
‘No, they’re not telling us yet.’
Colonel Brock nodded. ‘That’s wise.’ He looked around the group. ‘Well, looks like you’ll be here for a while. Please don’t go out, and stay away from the first-floor windows. Passers-by can see up there from over the wall.’
‘We’re safe here?’ Geoff asked.
‘Yes. So far as the neighbours are concerned we’re just a couple of retired local worthies.’ He nodded at his wife. ‘Mrs Brock’s the producer of the village Christmas panto.’
Natalia said, ‘We ought to hide the car. Just in case.’
Colonel Brock nodded. ‘Quite right. I’ll put it in the garage, under a dust sheet. So,’ he said emphatically. ‘We all know where we are then, eh?’
They stayed there four days, not leaving the house. The weather remained cold and dry, with frosts each night. Frank spent most of the time in his bedroom. There was always someone with him, usually David or Ben. He said as little as possible and to his relief they kept their word and didn’t ask him about what had happened with his brother. Sometimes they played chess, a game for which Frank had always had a gift. Ben gave him his drugs regularly, and always watched carefully to make sure he swallowed the pill. At night, as at the hospital, he had a double dose to make him sleep. He wondered how much Ben had given him on the night of their escape. He saw little of Natalia or the Brocks, though from his window he would see Mrs Brocks going out from time to time, presumably to the village, and twice a day Colonel Brock took the black Labrador, like its master stiff and elderly, for a walk. When they met for meals Ben would sometimes try to provoke the colonel into an argument. One evening the colonel showed them a gold-gilt carving of the Hindu elephant-headed god Ganesha, a beautiful thing. ‘Picked it up in Bombay for a song,’ he said proudly.
‘Looted it from the subject peoples, eh?’ Ben said.
The colonel reddened and Frank thought he would explode, but he only snapped, ‘I paid the fair market price.’ Frank wished Ben wouldn’t do things like that.
He still intended to do away with himself if he got the chance, but they watched him constantly. Meanwhile he tried to find out as much as possible about what was going on. In their room he asked Ben about his past, how he came to be working in the asylum.
‘I was already there when you came,’ Ben said. ‘There’s a lot of people in the Resistance now, we’re everywhere. There’s sympathizers, and activists, in most of the bigger asylums.’
‘How did you come to be in that job?’
Ben smiled, showing crooked teeth. ‘A few years ago I’d been in trouble up in Glasgow. Fighting the Fascists. They decided I needed a new identity and a new job. I’d got into trouble when I was a lad, too. So I got a new name and applied to train as a mental health nurse. It’s easy to get into, even these days, the job disnae exactly attract thousands of applicants. And I can handle myself, that’s important in the job.’
‘So Ben’s not your real name?’
He shook his head. ‘No. Mind, I’ve been Ben Hall for so long I’ve near forgotten my old one.’
‘What sort of trouble did you get into when you were young?’
Ben shrugged. ‘I got put in a Borstal when I was seventeen, I got radicalized in there. Afterwards I was a union organizer in Glasgow, for the Party, trying to get people to stand up for themselves. A few fights, too, when they sent the Auxies in.’
‘The party – you mean the Communist Party?’
‘That’s right.’ He looked at Frank. ‘We’ve never been frightened of getting our hands dirty.’
‘Killing people, you mean,’ Frank said.
‘Ye cannae make an omelette without breaking eggs.’
Frank thought of Russia, all the prison camps the Germans had discovered. ‘Poor eggs,’ he said.
‘Ye’ve nae idea what life’s like for poor people.’ Ben glowered. ‘Prices going up, wages going down, locked up if you protest or strike. That last strike I organized, in the shipyards. We marche
d into Glasgow, a peaceful demonstration, plenty of Labour and non-political people wi’ us, but as soon as we got near the city centre the Auxies came out with batons, just hitting out at anybody, and when we tried to run they had a crowd of SNP thugs waiting for us in the side-streets. They laid into us with knives and knuckledusters while some cunt in a kilt stood on some steps playin’ the bloody bagpipes. One of them hit me on the head. I’d’ve been a goner if some of my pals hadnae got me away. That’s when it was decided I needed a change of identity. They’d had me marked out.’
Frank looked at him. ‘We had a teacher at Strangmans who was a Scottish Nationalist. History teacher, always going on about the English landlords and the Highland clearances.’
‘He wasnae much good then. It was mostly Scottish landowners who cleared the Highlanders out of their crofts for sheep. The SNP.’ His face wrinkled with distaste. ‘There were some Fascist sympathizers among them that founded the SNP. Everything for the glorious nation. Some romantic-minded left-wingers too, but they got kicked out after 1940. You know, the Nats opposed conscription in 1939, sayin’ it wis against the Act of Union for Scots to be conscripted into the British army. That was more important to them than fighting the Nazis.’ Ben laughed bitterly. ‘Whenever a party tells you national identity matters more than anything else in politics, that nationalism can sort out all the other problems, then watch out, because you’re on a road that can end with fascism. Even if it doesn’t, the idea that nationality’s some sort of magic that can make other problems disappear, it’s like believin’ in fairies. And of course nationalists always have to have an enemy, the English or the French or the Jews, there always has tae be some other bugger that’s caused all the problems.’
Frank didn’t answer. He was a little scared by Ben’s passion.
‘That Edinburgh school you were at, did you get bullied for being English?’ Ben asked.
‘Not really. Though sometimes they’d shout English – well, and a rude word. But I’m half-Scottish, my dad was Scottish.’
Ben looked at him curiously. ‘How d’yae feel about Scotland?’
Frank shrugged. ‘As you said once, I’m sure there are places just as bad in England. I don’t care about whether people are Scottish or English, all this stupid nationalism. I agree with you there. But I’m not a Communist either.’
Ben nodded, smiled sadly. ‘Ye’re a good man, Frank, ye’ve nae malice in ye.’
Frank hesitated, then said, ‘You remember you told me it was in my hospital notes that I got my bad hand through an accident at school?’
‘Aye.’
‘Well, it wasn’t an accident.’
‘You mean someone did it deliberately?’ Ben looked shocked, though Frank wouldn’t have thought anything could shock him.
Frank shook his head. His head felt a little odd suddenly. He had said too much.
Frank found it easier talking to David and Geoff. They would reminisce about their time at Oxford. Still trying to find out as much as he could, Frank asked them how they had come to join the Resistance.
‘For me it was seeing the blacks cleared off their lands in Kenya, to make way for settlers.’ Geoff took his pipe from his mouth, pointed the stem at David. ‘Then I recruited this chap.’
‘What did you do to help?’ Frank asked.
David looked him in the eye. ‘Passed government secrets on to the Resistance.’
‘Did you get found out because of me?’
‘No. No, that was because of a mistake I made.’
‘And your wife didn’t know?’
‘I couldn’t involve her. She’s a pacifist, you see.’
‘I suppose I am too,’ Frank said. ‘But these days – it can be just an excuse not to get involved, I suppose.’
David frowned. ‘Sarah’s no coward.’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean – I meant, I’m the coward. I always have been.’
‘I don’t think so, old chap.’ Geoff looked at Frank squarely. ‘Not after what you tried to do in the hospital.’
Frank changed the subject. He turned to David. ‘Well, if we get away, you and your wife will be reunited.’
‘Yes. Yes, I suppose we will.’ He sighed.
‘It’s odd being here, isn’t it?’ Geoff said. ‘Being on the run makes you feel – isolated.’ He frowned. I’ve been isolated all my life, Frank thought. Yet he felt less alone here than he had anywhere, ever.
On the third day at the Brocks’ house, when he was sitting playing chess with Ben, Natalia, the European woman, knocked at the door and came in. Frank thought she seemed to be avoiding the men. She hardly spoke to David, she seemed to avoid his eyes. Maybe she didn’t like David, though Frank couldn’t see why. He knew that Natalia was the leader.
She sat down at the table opposite Frank. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘we’re off tomorrow. We’ve just heard over the radio. We are to drive down to London, there’s a place for us to stay south of the river until things are ready for us on the south coast.’
‘Great,’ Ben said. ‘I’m fed up sitting roond here. What d’you think of that, Frank?’
‘All right.’ Frank thought, when will I get a chance to do it, to kill myself? His heart began to pound as he realized he didn’t want to go through with it now. But he must. Natalia was looking at him keenly.
‘Do you feel up to travelling, Frank?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you trust us?’ she asked, in her disconcertingly direct way. ‘Do you believe we’re trying to get you out?’
‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘I do now.’
‘Good. You have to be ready to do just as we tell you.’
‘Because the Germans will be after us?’ He met her look.
‘Yes. But the heat’s died down now. And we’ve got our new identities, a cover story.’
‘They could still catch us.’
‘There’s always a risk. But we’re confident, or we wouldn’t be taking you away from here now.’
Ben said, ‘That’s right.’ He turned to Natalia. ‘He’s talkin’ a lot more now. Quite chatty sometimes, aren’t ye, Frank?’
Natalia looked at Frank. ‘If by any chance we were captured,’ she said seriously, ‘they wouldn’t take us alive. We’ve made plans to make sure of that.’
‘What plans?’
‘We’ve decided to tell you, we think it’s better you know. If we’re taken, we have pills to take. Poison.’
‘What about me?’
She shook her head. ‘No, I’m sorry.’ Frank thought, they’re frightened I’d take my pill the first chance I got. She said, ‘I’d take care of it, Frank, I promise.’ She looked into his eyes. ‘If it comes. Do you trust me?’
He didn’t answer. He believed Natalia, but he desperately feared she might fail; the whole mission might fail. The forces ranged against them were so strong. He thought of the German policeman who had visited him in the asylum. Whatever happened, he couldn’t fall into that man’s hands again.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
THEY LEFT ON THE MORNING OF Friday, the fifth of December. The weather was still cold and frosty; it felt strange to Frank to be out in the open air again. The car they had arrived in was brought out of the garage; the previous evening Geoff and Colonel Brock had fixed on new number plates. David was to drive, Natalia sitting beside him in the front passenger seat, a map on her knees. Colonel Brock and his wife came out to see them off. Frank was about get into the car, Ben’s hand on his arm, when the colonel unexpectedly leaned forward and shook his hand, very gently. ‘Good luck, old chap,’ he said awkwardly.
A weak sun was starting to melt the frost covering the trees and hedgerows. Geoff had told Frank they planned to take quiet country roads for the first part of the journey, then join the motorway near Northampton. Frank stared out of the window at the empty countryside. He found himself thinking about what had happened to the Jews. He wasn’t surprised by what the government had done; he’d always known those in charge were capable of anything now. H
e remembered there had been a Jewish boy at Strangmans, Golding. There was actually less anti-Semitism at the Presbyterian school than in other places Frank had been; their religious prejudices were directed at Catholics, not Jews. All the same Golding had stood out as different, not attending assembly or religious knowledge classes, but otherwise he had always conformed, been good in class and always part of a crowd of boys. He had sometimes shouted ‘Monkey!’ and ‘Spastic!’ after Frank like the others. Frank had asked himself how Golding, an outsider, had been able to belong while he couldn’t. What was it about him? They had gone for him since the first day; it had been like a snowball that rolled on, getting bigger and bigger, nothing and no-one to stop it. Well, he thought with heavy desperation, it doesn’t matter now.
Following the circuitous route Natalia had traced on the map they passed through a village called Sawley and then came to a fork in the road. To his horror Frank saw a Black Maria turned sideways to block the entrance of the right-hand turning, the one they were going to take. Two young Auxiliaries in heavy blue greatcoats, rifles slung over their shoulders, stood blocking it, stamping their boots in the cold. Frank felt everyone in the car tense.
David turned the wheel to take the left-hand turning, but one of the Auxies waved them to stop. He approached the car, slouching across the road, the barrel of his rifle gleaming in the winter sun. David slowly wound down the window and the Auxie leaned in, nodding to him. He didn’t examine their faces closely, he didn’t seem that interested. His chubby face was red with cold.