Sam Bourne - Pantheon

As quietly as he had entered, he retreated to the chapel door and left.

The gentle tap on the door did not wake him, though the offer of a cup of ‘the Lizzie’s own tea’ was welcome. He had woken early, relieved that today was Monday: that offices would be open, that all he needed to do was find the right secretary, in front of the right card index, who would swiftly run through the list of Oxford children and their new, temporary homes. And soon after that, he told himself, he would have Florence and Harry back in his arms. Today would be the day they were reunited. What he told himself was the hardest part — the shock, the separation, the long journey across the Atlantic — would be over. Whether Florence would see it that way, whether she would immediately embrace him as if nothing had happened, whether the mere fact of his having come all this way would nullify the concerns that had driven her away in the first place — on those questions James preferred not to linger.

He washed and dressed quickly, taking directions for the old campus, a quadrangle of lawns and redbrick colonial buildings that were neither modern, nor ancient in the Oxford sense but rather of an eighteenth-century colonial style rarely glimpsed in England. He found the administrative building and went inside, following the signs.

The Dean’s office boasted an outer area roomy enough for two secretaries and which, James noted, was probably twice the size of Bernard Grey’s entire study. Clearing his throat, he announced himself.

‘Hello, my name is Dr James Zennor, here to take up a fellowship from Oxford,’ he began, attempting his most charming smile. ‘I’ve come about the Oxford children.’

To his great relief, the woman — in early middle age and with a wave of brunette hair so unmoving it appeared to be sculpted from rock — smiled back. Encouraged, he explained his situation, that his wife and child were among the evacuees and that he had come to join them. Having learned his lesson in Liverpool, he asked if she might check her files and let him know where a Miss Florence Walsingham or Mrs Florence Zennor was now resident.

The secretary’s relentlessly professional smile did not waver. ‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible, Dr Zennor. These records are strictly private and confidential.’

He had expected that. ‘Of course. I wouldn’t ask you to divulge the details of anyone but my own immediate family. Here’s my passport, just so there is no doubt as to my name. If my wife is here under her married name, it will be a simple matter of matching me with your records. I’m happy to wait.’ It was an effort to resist the urge he had to push past her and ransack the files himself, but he forced himself to take a couple of paces backward, deliberately relaxed.

‘Sir, perhaps I was not clear,’ the secretary said, her face still frozen into a rictus of apparent delight. ‘The Dean has left very specific instructions that the Oxford children and their parents are here as guests of Yale and, as such, we cannot divulge any private information.’

‘But I am one of the parents! I am Harry’s father. Harry Zennor. Just check your list.’ He gritted his teeth in an attempt to remain polite. ‘Please.’

‘Dr Zennor. If you would care to write to the Dean, I’m sure he will-’

‘Ah, you need him to give authorization. I understand. Well, perhaps I could see him now, if he’s available. The Dean, I mean.’

‘What I was going to say is that if you wrote to the Dean, he would explain to you what I have tried to explain.’

‘Could I speak to the Dean, please?’ The temperature in his bloodstream was rising, he could feel it beginning to bubble.

‘I’m sorry, sir, but the Dean is not available.’

He advanced again, menacing. ‘He’s behind that door, isn’t he?’

‘Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to step away from the desk.’

‘Now you listen to me,’ he said, leaning in. ‘I’ve just travelled across the Atlantic, and then from Canada all the way here. I want to see my wife and child. That’s all.’

‘Please sir, step back. Otherwise, I will have to have you removed.’

The woman stood up and moved rapidly to the empty desk behind her, where she reached for the telephone and, with her back to James, spoke hurriedly into it. She seemed genuinely frightened.

James retreated, aware that he had gone too far, that he had already made a hash of it. When the far door opened, he was not surprised to see a stocky man in a cheap uniform enter. Instinctively, James raised his hands, showing his palms in a gesture of surrender, and headed for the door.

Outside, in the sunshine, he wanted to howl with rage, to break a window with his fists, such was his frustration.

He walked briskly away, trying to formulate a plan. The silver lining was that he had clearly come to the right place; the secretary with the plastered-on smile had not looked at him blankly as she might have done: she knew about the Oxford children. The bad news was that her instructions had clearly been strict and unambiguous, as if he had asked her to breach a state secret. He wondered why.

He was pacing down College Street now, past the brick facades of the colleges and into a parade of modern-looking shops, as if he had stepped out of the eighteenth and into the twentieth century. He stopped by a ‘drugstore’ that advertised a ‘soda fountain’. He had seen one of those at the pictures, but could hardly believe it was real. He went inside.

The place was filled with students, sipping milkshakes or drinking coffee. James took a seat at a window table and looked at the options on the menu wedged between the salt and pepper pots: eggs fried, scrambled, boiled or poached; a three-egg omelette; buttermilk pancakes with blueberries optional; cheesecake, poundcake, pecan pie. On it went, promising a banquet, plates spilling over with food and glasses filled to the brim, enough to stuff the bellies of the greediest, most gluttonous diners. A three-egg omelette! Three! That was eleven days’ rations blown in a single breakfast. And what would it be like to eat a cake that was made from real butter? He could hardly remember how such a delicacy tasted.

By the door was a stack of newspapers: the Yale Daily News. The main story on the front page told of the imminent retirement of the university football coach; only lower down and far less prominent was an item related to the war. There had been a conference in Havana of all the governments of the western hemisphere, apparently to discuss their common interest in ‘neutrality’. Neutrality? The very word made him sick. The Nazis were on the rampage: to be neutral was simply to step out of their way. You saved your own skin and someone else got clobbered.

An unnerving thought came to him then: he was as alone in this country as Britain was alone in the world.

Though he was hungry, he ignored the waitress heading his way, got up and walked out, feeling disgusted. He kept walking until drawn by a sign promising ‘Imported Pipes, Tobaccos and Cigars’. It was called the Owl Shop, but it also appeared to have a bar. Even though it was not yet nine thirty in the morning, and he strongly doubted they would serve a real drink, he suddenly craved one. But a cigarette would be a decent consolation prize. He went in and bought a packet of Pall Malls.

He lit up straight away, sucking the smoke deep into his lungs, then, at the very moment he should have exhaled, breathed in deeper — a trick he had learned from Harry Knox and not forgotten — and gazed ahead, unseeing, as the nicotine snaked its way through his system.

‘Can I help you, sir?’

It was the man behind the counter. Without realizing it, James had been staring. Except only now did he see how young this bartender was. Slight and with bad skin, he looked like a schoolboy.