James Herbert - ‘48

‘Dinner’s coming along nicely.’ Cissie was in the doorway to the Princess Ida Room, wiping her hands with a cloth. ‘So I’m going to socialize for a bit. I think a large g-and-t would go down very nicely right now.’ She tossed the cloth onto something behind her and headed our way.

‘You’ve earned it.’ Muriel quickly busied herself at the drinks table, glad to turn her back on the tension between Stern and me, I guess. ‘I think I’ll have another one, myself.’

Fumes from the portable oil cookers kept drifting through from next door to mix with the smell of melting wax, but they didn’t spoil our feast any. We kicked off with oatmeal soup and dumplings, followed by ‘brisket of beef’, as Cissie announced, and while tinned beans and peas may have been a poor substitute for turnips and parsnips, they didn’t spoil the taste of this particular meat pie. Together with potatoes and carrots (fresh, from my own home-grown stock), it made one of the finest meals – no, the finest meal – I’d had in three years, and by the time we’d finished pudding – semolina and Prince Roly – we were all fit to bust.

I was at the head of the table for no other reason than that I’d left my jacket over the chair there, and on my right was Cissie, who wore a coffee-coloured, below knee-length evening dress, which was a mite too tight for her. Muriel was on my left and our conversation throughout the meal had been minimal – she was still edgy, probably afraid trouble might flare up between myself and Stern at any moment Stern sat next to her, old Potter opposite him. Cagney was under the table by my feet, well fed and snoozing, content to be among friendly people again (although he’d given a small warning growl every time the German got too close), and at the far end of the table, facing me, was a strange, almost exotic creature, silent, unmoving, and black, with a pink napkin tied around its neck. Muriel had introduced me to it when we’d first sat down to eat.

‘Meet Kaspar,’ she’d said. ‘He’s our guest this evening because the Pinafore Room used to be used by members of what was known as The Other Club, a collection of, well, rather eminent people, and politicians – Winston Churchill was one of them. The politicians dined here whenever parliament was in session, industrialists and other powerful men joining them. You’ll see there’s seating for fourteen around this table, but whenever there was an empty chair and the number of people present was an unlucky thirteen, they brought out Kaspar the cat. They tied a napkin around his neck and served him every course.’

There was something I didn’t like about the three-foot-high black animal. Maybe it was its down-turned head and pointed ears, or its sinuous, snake-like tail that looped round in an almost full circle, or its arched spine etched with scrawls that looked like esoteric writings. I couldn’t figure out why, but as the evening wore on, I realized it was just the creature’s dark, brooding presence that made me feel uncomfortable; there was something ominous about it, as if it were a portent of doom rather than a good-luck charm. Now, over coffee and brandy, and some fine cigars Potter had scrounged from somewhere, the seal of the box they came in unbroken, the conversation returned to Kaspar.

‘We found it on a shelf at the back of the room,’ Cissie was explaining. ‘We thought it would add some dignity to the proceedings.’ She giggled at Muriel, hand to her mouth like a schoolkid. She’d joined the menfolk in the brandies. ‘D’you think it’ll bring us luck?’

I reserved judgement and it was Stern who answered.

‘I have never understood if the black cat means good or bad fortune to the English. Are you saying it is good?’

Potter piped up. ‘Always said meself if a black mog crosses yer path, yer in for a spot of bad luck.’

‘No, no, that’s wrong,’ argued Cissie. My grandad always told me a black cat was good luck.’

‘Wasn’t that only on one’s wedding day?’ put in Muriel.

‘No!’ Cissie and Potter cried together.

‘There are only five of us around this table anyway,’ I pointed out, stabbing the air with my cigar. Blue smoke drifted towards the ceiling.

‘Well spotted.’

I shrugged at Cissie’s sarcasm.

‘We were just making up the numbers.’ Muriel gave her friend a worried glance. ‘I mean to say, we’re hardly a crowd, are we? What kind of discussions do you suppose they had in this room? With all those important club members – ambassadors, dignitaries, newspaper owners and editors, as well as the politicians themselves – some very momentous decisions must have been made. No church people were allowed in, by the way. But the Prime Minister himself-’

‘Don’t matter, neither way.’ It was out of character for Potter to interrupt Muriel; it’d been plain throughout the evening that he regarded her upper-class credentials with some respect, if not awe. It seemed too much whisky, wine and brandy had blurred the class division for him, and I, for one, was glad to see it. ‘Don’t matter how grand they was, how much power was in their hands, they come down with the plague jus like everybody else. ‘Cept us. We didn’t Money couldn’t buy it off, an nor could fame. Neville Chamberlain – the gerk, I mean berk – to Jessie Matthews, Ivor Novello to Herbert Morrison, Martin bloody Bormann -’scuse me, my dears – to Groucho Marx, all dead, see? Unless…’ He waved his finger around the table. ‘Unless they was like us, our blood thingy. We’re special, see? All the others…werl, all the others…’ He seemed at a loss. ‘Werl, they’re gone. Finished.’

‘Then why do you still patrol the streets, Mr Potter?’ The German was leaning forward, a cigar between his fingers. ‘If almost everybody else is gone, why do you continue with your work?’

The logic didn’t please the old boy. ‘I should give up me duty jus ‘cos things’ve changed? Without orders to stand down? With the Luftwaffe still knockin ten bells out of London? You Germans never did understand us English, did yer?’

‘And you English never quite understood we did not want war with your country. The Führer had a great…’ he considered the right word ‘…affinity with many of your people.’

‘Oh no, not very many.’ Cissie looked about ready to toss her wine at Stern. ‘What you really mean is he had an affinity with a certain type of Englishman. Some of our so-called ruling class didn’t think Adolf Hitler was such a bad chap.’

‘That is not quite correct,’ Stern replied, as smooth as Conrad Veidt. ‘A good number of the English common people understood the Jewish problem, for instance. And I think all classes accepted our right to play a major role in the governance of Europe.’

‘Only other Fascists believed that.’

‘Please let’s not argue among ourselves.’ Muriel obviously didn’t like this turn in the conversation.

The German was quick to respond to her plea. ‘I did not mean to cause disagreement between us, but you must understand that I, too, loved my country, and I have suffered as much as anybody in this room.’

I placed my empty brandy glass on the table and dropped the butt of my cigar into it. My hands remained on the tabletop, about a foot apart, fingers clenched. ‘Oh yeah, we understand, V ilhelm. After all, you were a good German, weren’t you? A good, fighting Nazi.’

He regarded me warily, trusting me not one little bit. ‘All Germans are – were – not Nazis.’

‘Hoke…’ Muriel warned.

‘Of course not.’ I leaned forward. ‘And you, personally, never really had the chance to fight us, did you? You got yourself shot down right at the beginning of the war, so we can’t hate you, can we? You hardly had time to cause much damage, and besides, you were only a navigator anyway, so didn’t personally pull any triggers or push any buttons.’