Alex Preston - In Love and War

Esmond and Ada coil wires, dust the instrument panel, seal up the discs and store them in the rack on one side of the room. He has deliberately avoided speaking to her about the Manifesto of Racial Scientists, about the new laws in place regarding the Jews. Now she wraps her shawl around her neck and stands in the doorway. — Esmond , she says. He looks up. — I don’t want any special favours, I don’t want you to get in trouble on my behalf, but I want you to know that I enjoy working here. He lights a cigarette and blows the smoke towards the cornices of ceiling. — Of course, he says. — There’s no question. I’ll make sure of it .

When she has left, he sits at the open window, breathes the summer air, smiles peacefully. He thinks of Murray Constantine’s words, which he had quoted in the broadcast and which Goad had repeated two or three times in reply: They will make a world in which it is impossible for a man to love his own daughter .

Ministry of the Interior

Palazzo del Viminale

Rome

21/8/38

Sir or Madam –

As the listed employer of Ada Liuzzi, who is registered as Jewish/other non-Aryan on the Census dated August 1st, 1938, carried out by the Italian Office for the Study of Race (under the guidance of Dr Guido Landra), please advise by return of post if Ada Liuzzi is employed in a position whereupon her duties could be described as falling into one of the following areas:

a) Government, politics, local or regional council work, other general administrative role within the apparatus of the Italian State;

b) Banking, moneylending, other employment in which the worker has control over the exchange, transfer or deployment of sums of money larger than 5,000 lire per calendar month;

c) Teaching, lecturing, professorships, any work which brings the named person into regular contact with children or students;

d) Military (including carabinieri), air force, navy, local police, fire service, or any other position requiring access to weapons of any kind;

e) Other educated profession where the named person’s Jewish/other non-Aryan status could reasonably be assumed to represent a threat or potential threat to the economic, military, moral or educational health of the nation.

It is your responsibility as employer to ensure that the Jewish/non-Aryan person is correctly employed.

Please also confirm whether Ada Liuzzi has been charged with any crime in the past ten years, and if so the nature of this crime. Please also list any previous or outstanding arrest warrants.

Please inform if Ada Liuzzi became an Italian citizen on or after 31st December, 1919.

Viva Il Duce!

[Enclosed with following letter: article from The Times entitled ‘Nuremberg and Aussig’.]

Welsh Frankton

Shropshire

12th September

Dear Esmond,

It seems I spoke too soon. Situation in Sudetenland bloody bad. Mosley has put several calls in to the Führer urging him not to act hastily, letting him know that the eyes of the world are upon him, but I fear they don’t have the close relationship they once did. You’ll see I’ve clipped an article from The Times calling on the Czechs to cede the territory to the Germans. Eminently sensible and we can only hope that it is the view inside Whitehall.

Runciman’s attempts to mediate were shambolic, and Nevile Henderson made a buggery of things in Berlin. I remember a time when the Brits were known for their diplomacy. You can just see that bastard Stalin perched over all of this, rubbing his hands with glee. Chamberlain flies to Berchtesgaden tomorrow; he’s got a good head, and he’ll need it. You could picture this all unspooling rather quickly, with the Poles and the Russians and that madman Konrad Henlein all buttoning their coats. If Germany does decide to wade in, the Czech will be wiped out in a flash. It’s interesting, Esmond — difficult times, of course, but interesting.

I was glad to read in your letter that you have developed such affection for Filippino Lippi. I don’t remember seeing this particular triptych when I was in Florence. I never really told you about that tour back in ’06. I went with Arthur Fitzroy and Chummy Little straight from Cambridge. We arrived in Florence at night, driving into the narrowing throat of the valley, using the great dome to guide us. It’s strange, but I can only recall small details of the city from that time. I remember waking the next morning in our hotel — the Excelsior — and looking out over the rooftops of the town, but almost nothing else. The room of Botticellis and Lippis at the Uffizi, of course, the insides of certain churches, Cellini’s Perseus. But it’s as if it was too much for my mind to hold. Every time your mother and I returned to Florence, it was like drawing back a curtain to reveal bright treasures of memory.

Enough of my rambling. You have great things to do. Mosley is staying with us. He and Diana are always after news of you. We are both struck by how well you and Goad work together — a thoroughly engaging duo. Funny the way in which things work out, isn’t it? That all of this now feels fated — that you should leave Cambridge, go out to Florence, make a man of yourself. Then — who knows? — come back and do great things for the Party at home, or fight like a lion in the war when and if it comes.

Your mother sends her love,

Your Father.

Faber & Faber

24 Russell Square,

London, WC1

23rd September, 1938

Dear Mr Lowndes –

I greatly enjoyed the draft of In Love and War that you sent me. A rather good idea to take a well-known figure like Hulme and re-tell his life as fiction. I thought you got the essential clash between his bawdiness, his brutality and his brilliance absolutely spot-on. I also very much enjoyed the way you worked his poetry, his letters, his life, into your fiction.

I would like to ask you to take another run at the passages describing his life in battle. It seems to me that these are where the novel stumbles. Ask your father — he was there with him. Read Sassoon (if you haven’t already, and your prose rather suggests you haven’t). It is a fact that whilst so many of those who know what it was like to fight in the trenches are still with us, there is something of a moral duty for the writer to convey the truth of war as clearly and cleverly as possible. It doesn’t seem to me that your novel does this.

If you are able to fix this, I should think there’s a good chance that we’d be interested in publishing. It won’t hinder things that your father’s name, and your own work on the wireless confer upon you a certain celebrity. We won’t make you rich, but Faber & Faber is a fine publishing house and we’d be very glad to have you on board.

Sincerely,

Richard de la Mare.

Via dei Forbici, 35c

Firenze

1.10.38

Dear Esmond –

It was most kind of you and Father Bailey to treat us to such an exceptionally good dinner last week. I am only sorry it has taken me such a long time to write and thank you. As you can imagine, things are rather difficult for our family at the moment. I don’t like to go into things too deeply in front of Ada (or indeed her mother, who is, as you saw, suffering from a deep sadness at the turn events have taken), but you can imagine the sense of betrayal we are feeling just now. I — who have given everything for this government, for this country — my country — and for the Fascist cause — that I should no longer be thought of as an Italian, that my passport should be confiscated and returned defiled, that La Nostra Bandiera, which has supported Il Duce for more than a decade, should be closed down — All of this seems incredible to me.

I enclose a petition signed by several of my prominent friends — you will note the first name is that of Giovanni Gentile himself — supporting my exclusion from the punitive racial laws which have so hampered my ability to continue in the service of a cause in whose integrity I continue to believe with all my heart. I acknowledge the need for the Charter of Race, given that so many of those who insist on swimming against the tide of history — the members of Giustizia e Libertà, the leaders of the Communist unions — are Jewish. It seems sensible also to deny the great blessing of Italian citizenship to the recent miscegenated product of our African adventures. But to someone like me? It is a great travesty.