John Lawton - Riptide

‘I’m being sent home,’ he said. ‘I’m the man who knew too much.’

‘Is that really a hardship?’

‘I guess not. It’s not as though I were being deported. But… I had unfinished business here.’

‘Stahl?’

‘No-Stahl is finished business. Stahl is dead.’

Troy was shocked. He’d examined the man’s wound himself. It wasn’t serious.

‘Stahl killed himself. Jumped from a hospital window. I reckon your people have had the most hellish time covering up. But if you haven’t heard, then I guess they succeeded. Before he died he told me everything.’

Cormack ground to a halt, a tearful sadness in his eyes, his head shaking gently from side to side as though denying what he knew.

‘Which part of it was too much?’ Troy prompted.

‘All of it, I guess. Tell me… would you feel compromised if I told you? I have to tell somebody. I’d feel better telling you than Kitty. I don’t think she’d understand somehow.’

‘Fire away,’ said Troy, and he did.

Afterwards, Cormack seemed sadder than ever, as though a burden shared was a burden doubled. Little of it surprised Troy. Of course the Germans were going to invade. His dad had been telling him that for years. The bit about the slave state was new to him-but if you thought about it, it was merely an extension, the putting into practice, of everything they’d ever preached about the ‘inferior peoples’, the logical explosion of what they’d begun in Poland. The Jews and the Slavs were always going to catch it sooner or later. It was not surprising. It was shocking.

‘It leaves a bad taste in the mouth,’ Cormack said at last. ‘It leaves me wondering, guessing. Suppose it wasn’t Russia? I mean, supposing it was my country that was going to be attacked? Supposing Churchill and Roosevelt knew of an imminent attack on the States? Would they not tell us? Would they find it expedient to let it happen?’

Troy tried reassurance, the flat plains of uninspired logic. ‘I don’t think there’s a German bomber made that can reach America.’

‘You know what I mean. It’s the principle. I find it hard to have faith in a benign conspiracy.’

‘When will you be off?’

‘Two or three days, maybe four at the most. They’re sending me back on the clipper from Lisbon. In the meantime I’m hardly a prisoner. They’ve set no restrictions on my movements… and that kind of brings me to the other reason I called on you. I’ve been trying to find Kitty. I know the police let her go. And I phoned her sister Vera, but Vera doesn’t know where she is or else she won’t tell me. Never did figure out how to read Vera. I wondered-Kitty has

a room in Covent Garden, near the police station, she said. But I never went there. I never knew the address. I wondered if you knew.’

‘Fraid not. I never went there either. I think it’s Kitty’s little secret. But if I see her I’ll tell her.’

‘Could you tell her it’s urgent? I know everything is in a country that’s at war, but I mean it. It’s about as urgent as things can get.’

‘A matter of life and death, eh?’ said Troy.

‘Well… life, for sure.’

Troy watched him go down the yard towards St Martin’s Lane. Then he listened. He’d not heard a sound from Kitty while Cormack had told his tale, but he could hear her now.

Upstairs Kitty was in the bog, throwing up again. When she’d stopped, washed-out and drooling, Troy said, ‘Whose baby is it?’

‘What do you think, clever dick? Cal’s a good soldier. Uncle Sam gives him a gross of frenchies to see he don’t catch the clap, and he uses them. Wellie on, glasses off. Always in that order. And every single one stamped “Made in the USA”. You, you can never be arsed, can you?’

It was a going to be a red day. His red woolly dressing gown with the black piping. The last, late crimson wallflowers nestling in the cracks between the paving stones just beyond his window. A ruby red broom by the flint wall at the back of the terrace. Delicate, beautiful crimson bergamot like burst pincushions in the herb bed. A streak of pink in the sky, and a startling magenta legal pad to replace the blue one he had used up in the effort to finish his Russian leader.

Alex was searching for a red poem in an anthology of First War poets-Owen, Graves, Sassoon-weren’t half the poems of 1914-18 called Flanders Poppies?-when he noticed his younger son leaning in the doorway of his study.

‘Still on Russia?’

‘Need you ask?’

‘Wells still helping?’

‘Bert and I no longer see eye to eye on the matter. I shall write my piece, and Bert will surely write his.’

‘I thought I might give you a hand.’

‘Freddie-if your contribution is to be as helpful as your last, I may do better without it.’

Troy pulled out a chair and sat opposite his father.

‘I have news of the invasion.’

Alex scarcely looked at him, nicked through the index of first lines, still looking for a red poem.

‘Unless you have a date for it I doubt it will help. The world and his wife know it will come. When is what matters.’

‘June 22 nd. About dawn.’

He had his father’s attention now. Alex let the book fall closed and reached for a pencil.

About an hour later Alex had scribbled furiously over half a dozen of the magenta sheets. Troy said, ‘Are we ready for this?’

‘No,’ said his father. ‘We are not ready. Stalin has had most of the cream of the Red Army shot. We were better equipped in 1935 than we are now. But it will be the Germans’ greatest folly nonetheless…’

Realising he had unleashed a lecture where he had wanted merely an answer, Troy ducked out when the telephone rang. His father picked up the receiver and waved to him.

‘Alex?’

Beaverbrook. Again.

‘I thought I’d plan ahead a little this time. Winston wants to see the editors.’

This was wishful. Most of the newspapers would send deputies and flunkies to any briefing.

‘I was wondering-let me add your name to the list.’

‘When?’ said Alex.

‘Tomorrow at ten. In the bunker.’

‘The bunker?’

‘Cabinet War Rooms under Storey’s Gate-you know, round the back by Horse Guard’s Parade. Now-can I add your name to the list?’

‘What is it the Prime Minister has to say to us?’

‘You won’t know that unless you turn up. What do you say?’

‘I’ll be there. But Max-a favour. Just put “representative of Troy

papers”. Don’t put my name.’

‘Of course-it’s Winston’s show-he’d hate to be upstaged.’ Beaverbrook laughed at his own joke and hung up. Alex leafed through the pages of notes he had taken as his son talked. June 22 nd. He reached for his diary, wondering what day of the week that was. A Sunday-or, as Hitler most certainly saw it, very late Saturday night. Hitler pulled all his strokes on Saturdays. He had butchered Roehm and the SA on a Saturday, he had reintroduced conscription on a Saturday, he had retaken the Rhineland on a Saturday. Perhaps he thought to catch Russia napping or ‘gone fishin’?

In the morning Alex shaved and dressed in a black suit with waistcoat. It must be his age. At seventy-nine, even in summer a trip out seemed to require more layers than it had a year ago. He rang for Polly the housemaid. She came, still wearing her firewatcher’s outfit from the night before.

‘I ‘ope this is nothing urgent. A night on the roof is about as knackering as a night on the tiles.’

‘No matter, child. It is my wife I seek. Would you find her and ask her to have the Crossley brought round to the front. I am going into town. And do not say “blimey”, “stroll on” or any other of your cockneyisms. I am not housebound.’