Sam Bourne - Pantheon

‘Yes, of course. The families involved, mothers mainly, met several times to make preparations. Helped by various university officials of course. Discussing visas, legal guardianship, that sort of thing.’

‘I don’t suppose these meetings were on Thursday evenings by any chance, were they?’

‘They were as a matter of fact, yes: 5 pm at Rhodes House.’

So that’s why she had missed the last two walks with Rosemary and her Marxist Girl Guides. She was with other mothers, planning her escape — not to Norfolk or Bedfordshire, like other evacuees, but to America.

‘And who else knew about this? About Florence I mean?’

‘James.’

‘No. Go on, who’s this “we” you mentioned?’

‘I’m not sure this is healthy.’

‘Don’t worry about that. I’d like to know.’ He was trying hard to sound reasonable, as if they were no more than two Oxford dons trading college gossip.

‘Virginia, of course. Myself. Other concerned friends.’

‘Rosemary Hyde?’

‘I don’t think it’s necessary to mention any names, James.’

‘And why did this group of “concerned” friends believe that the one person who could not be trusted with this secret was the husband and father of the woman and child concerned? Why was that then?’

‘To repeat myself: we knew what you would say.’

‘And what was that?’

‘We knew you would say no.’

He couldn’t argue. Of course he would have said no. The very idea of his family becoming evacuees across the Atlantic, he could not have discussed it, let alone approved of it. He believed a move to Herefordshire or the Cotswolds amounted to a surrender to the Third Reich; but the United States? It was abominable. It represented an abandonment of the country, as if they were pulling down the shutters and shutting up shop, leaving Britain for the Nazis to inherit. They might as well run up the white flag now. How had these other men — the fathers of those one hundred and twenty-five Oxford children — ever agreed to such a capitulation?

And yet, these convictions dragged behind them a nag of doubt. He could not quite articulate it even to himself but he could feel it. It was the guilty sense he had that these other men, these other fathers, were allowed to take such extreme action to protect their young but that he was granted no such privilege. They would perform their act of sacrifice on the battlefield or, failing that, in some war ministry or other, now relocated in Oxford. But staying put, keeping his family in England even under Nazi occupation, even in the shadow of Hitler’s bombs, was the only act of resistance available to James Zennor. If he buckled on that, then he was doing precisely nothing to defy the fascist barbarians who had killed his friend and nearly destroyed him. There was nothing else he could do. And the realization of it — that he was using a woman and a not-yet three-year-old boy vicariously, to make up for his own failure to play any part in this essential and wholly just war — filled him with shame.

And then the mental recording of the words just spoken caught up with him. ‘What was that you said?’

‘James, I really cannot stay on the telephone much longer. I-’

‘You said, “This explains why you’re in this situation.” Now, what did you mean by that?’

‘I, I, I was referring of course to your wife being on that ship. That is to say… she knew you refused all talk of evacuation, which is-’

‘No. You meant something else. You said I’ve been like this a “long time”. You meant something else, didn’t you?’

‘James, please.’

‘DIDN’T YOU?’ He bellowed it, prompting more turned heads in the outer office. When Grey spoke again, James was sure he could hear a tremble in the older man’s voice.

‘Yes, I did. It was a slip, I’m sorry.’

‘I know all about slips. They never are entirely accidental, are they? What were you trying not to say?’

‘I regret you pushing me in this manner, James. But since you seem determined to twist my arm, I was referring to your recent…’ He paused again. ‘Rejections.’

‘You mean from the civil service? From the ministries? What about them?’

‘I have already said far too much.’

And then James saw it. ‘Oh, I don’t believe it. You bastard.’

‘How dare you speak to me that way! It was not down to me. I had next to nothing to do with it. They run their own checks, their own independent assessments.’

‘But they would have consulted you. Whitehall doesn’t order a box of bloody paperclips without asking what Professor Bernard bloody Grey thinks about it.’

‘It was not like that, James. You must accept my word on that. They had already concluded that you were… not suitable for sensitive work, long before they spoke to me about you.’

‘“Not suitable for sensitive work” is that how we put it now? And I thought my lot were fond of euphemism. Crackers, is that the word you’re looking for? Poor Zennor, he’s round the twist: is that what you told them? Saw a bit too much action in Spain and now he’s out of his mind. Eh? Would that be the gist of it, Professor? The “burden of the argument” as you philosophers like to put it?’

Grey sighed and then replied quietly. ‘Something like that, yes. And this little exhibition has only confirmed the accuracy of the analysis, Dr Zennor. Now I suggest you put down the receiver and head back to Oxford where Virginia and I will see what we can do for you.’

‘You’ve ruined my life.’

‘I am going to say goodbye now, James, before you say anything you will come to regret.’

And it was at that moment that James added another decision to the one he had already made. He had vowed the second he had learned where Florence had gone that he would somehow get to America and find his wife. But now he saw how he was going to do it — and just who would pay the price.

He lost track of the number of hours he spent pacing in and around Liverpool docks that day and yet, if you asked him to sketch the place or draw a map, he would have been blank. He had paid no attention to it, looking no further than the ground beneath his feet. He was a brain grappling with a problem: when he was like this, everything else, everything physical, was a distraction.

The problem in this case was multi-layered. The harbourmaster had shaken his head and sucked in his breath, leaving James in no doubt as to the near-impossibility of him sailing across the Atlantic any time soon or at least this side of a German surrender — and ‘Adolf doesn’t seem the surrendering type’. There were few ships daring to make the crossing now, running the gauntlet of German U-boats and their deadly torpedoes, like the missile that had taken out the Arandora Star. Those that did had to travel in convoys for their own protection, escorted by at least one or two warships, which meant ships could not sail as and when they pleased: they had to wait till there were enough vessels to constitute a group. Even if James was lucky, and there was another crossing, there were next to no regular passengers these days, travelling for simple business or pleasure. If they weren’t troops on the move, enemy aliens or POWs deported to Canada or young evacuees transported by the Children’s Overseas Reception Board, there had to be a damn good reason for an ordinary member of the British public to make the journey, which meant official permission. And the difficulties did not end there. At the other end, while a British subject could simply walk into Canada, to enter the United States required a visa.

There was only one person who could get James through all those hoops — and he had just called him a bastard down a long-distance telephone line. He was pretty sure that at the moment Bernard Grey would rather drop him to the bottom of the Atlantic than help him cross it.