Winter of the World (22 page)

Lloyd sat down next to Robert and said conversationally: ‘How’s business?’

Robert was now the proprietor of a restaurant much favoured by the homosexuals about whom Ruby had been complaining. Somehow he had known that Cambridge in the 1930s was congenial to such men,
just as Berlin had been in the 1920s. His new place had the same name as the old, Bistro Robert. ‘Business is good,’ he answered. A shadow crossed his face, a brief but intense look of
real fear. ‘This time, I hope I can keep what I’ve built up.’

‘We’re doing our best to fight off the Fascists, and meetings such as this are the way to do it,’ Lloyd said. ‘Your talk will be a big help – it will open
people’s eyes.’ Robert was going to speak about his personal experience of life under Fascism. ‘A lot of them say it couldn’t happen here, but they’re
wrong.’

Robert nodded grim agreement. ‘Fascism is a lie, but an alluring one.’

Lloyd’s visit to Berlin three years ago was vivid in his mind. ‘I often wonder what happened to the old Bistro Robert,’ he said.

‘I had a letter from a friend,’ Robert said in a voice full of sadness. ‘None of the old crowd go there any more. The Macke brothers auctioned off the wine cellar. Now the
clientele is mostly middle-ranking cops and bureaucrats.’ He looked even more pained as he added: ‘They no longer use tablecloths.’ He changed the subject abruptly. ‘Do you
want to go to the Trinity Ball?’

Most of the colleges held summer dances to celebrate the end of exams. The balls, plus associated parties and picnics, constituted May Week, which illogically took place in June. The Trinity
Ball was famously lavish. ‘I’d love to go, but I can’t afford it,’ Lloyd said. ‘Tickets are two guineas, aren’t they?’

‘I’ve been given one. But you can have it. Several hundred drunk students dancing to a jazz band is actually my idea of hell.’

Lloyd was tempted. ‘But I haven’t got a tailcoat.’ College balls required white-tie-and-tails.

‘Borrow mine. It’ll be too big at the waist, but we’re the same height.’

‘Then I will. Thank you!’

Ruby reappeared. ‘Your mother is wonderful,’ she said to Lloyd. ‘I never knew she used to be a maid!’

Robert said: ‘I have known Ethel for more than twenty years. She is truly extraordinary.’

‘I can see why you haven’t met Miss Right,’ Ruby said to Lloyd. ‘You’re looking for someone like her, and there aren’t many.’

‘You’re right about the last part, anyway,’ Lloyd said. ‘There’s no one like her.’

Ruby winced, as if in pain.

Lloyd said: ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Toothache.’

‘You must go to the dentist.’

She looked at him as if he had said something stupid, and he realized that on a housemaid’s wage she could not afford to pay a dentist. He felt foolish.

He went to the door and peeped through to the main hall. Like many nonconformist churches, this was a plain, rectangular room with walls painted white. It was a warm day, and the clear-glass
windows were open. The rows of chairs were full and the audience was waiting expectantly.

When Ethel reappeared, Lloyd said: ‘If it’s all right with everyone, I’ll open the meeting. Then Robert will tell his personal story, and my mother will draw out the political
lessons.’

They all agreed.

‘Ruby, will you keep an eye on the Fascists? Let me know if anything happens.’

Ethel frowned. ‘Is that really necessary?’

‘We probably shouldn’t trust them to keep their promise.’

Ruby said: ‘They’re meeting a quarter of a mile up the road. I don’t mind running in and out.’

She left by the back door, and Lloyd led the others into the church. There was no stage, but a table and three chairs stood at the near end, with a lectern to one side. As Ethel and Robert took
their seats, Lloyd went to the lectern. There was a brief round of subdued applause.

‘Fascism is on the march,’ Lloyd began. ‘And it is dangerously attractive. It gives false hope to the unemployed. It wears a spurious patriotism, as the Fascists themselves
wear imitation military uniforms.’

The British government was keen to appease Fascist regimes, to Lloyd’s dismay. It was a coalition dominated by Conservatives, with a few Liberals and a sprinkling of renegade Labour
ministers who had split with their party. Only a few days after it was re-elected last November, the Foreign Secretary had proposed to yield much of Abyssinia to the conquering Italians and their
Fascist leader, Benito Mussolini.

Worse still, Germany was rearming and aggressive. Just a couple of months ago, Hitler had violated the Versailles Treaty by sending troops into the demilitarized Rhineland – and Lloyd had
been horrified to see that no country had been willing to stop him.

Any hope he had that Fascism might be a temporary aberration had now vanished. Lloyd believed that democratic countries such as France and Britain must get ready to fight. But he did not say so
in his speech today, for his mother and most of the Labour Party opposed a build-up in British armaments and hoped that the League of Nations would be able to deal with the dictators. They wanted
at all costs to avoid repeating the dreadful slaughter of the Great War. Lloyd sympathized with that hope, but feared it was not realistic.

He was preparing himself for war. He had been an officer cadet at school and, when he came up to Cambridge, he had joined the Officer Training Corps – the only working-class boy and
certainly the only Labour Party member to do so.

He sat down to muted applause. He was a clear and logical speaker, but he did not have his mother’s ability to touch hearts – not yet, anyway.

Robert stepped to the lectern. ‘I am Austrian,’ he said. ‘In the war I was wounded, captured by the Russians, and sent to a prison camp in Siberia. After the Bolsheviks made
peace with the Central Powers, the guards opened the gates and told us we were free to go. Getting home was our problem, not theirs. It is a long way from Siberia to Austria – more than three
thousand miles. There was no bus, so I walked.’

Surprised laughter rippled around the room, with a few appreciative handclaps. Robert had already charmed them, Lloyd saw.

Ruby came up to him, looking annoyed, and spoke in his ear. ‘The Fascists just went by. Boy Fitzherbert was driving Mosley to the railway station, and a bunch of hotheads in black shirts
were running after the car, cheering.’

Lloyd frowned. ‘They promised they wouldn’t march. I suppose they’ll say that running behind a car doesn’t count.’

‘What’s the difference, I’d like to know?’

‘Any violence?’

‘No.’

‘Keep a lookout.’

Ruby retired. Lloyd was bothered. The Fascists had certainly broken the spirit of the agreement, if not the letter. They had appeared on the street in their uniforms – and there had been
no counter-demonstration. The socialists were here, inside the church, invisible. All there was to show for their stand was a banner outside the church saying The Truth about Fascism in large red
letters.

Robert was saying: ‘I am pleased to be here, honoured to have been invited to address you, and delighted to see several patrons of Bistro Robert in the audience. However, I must warn you
that the story I have to tell is most unpleasant, and indeed gruesome.’

He related how he and Jörg had been arrested after refusing to sell the Berlin restaurant to a Nazi. He described Jörg as his chef and longtime business partner, saying nothing of
their sexual relationship, though the more knowing people in the church probably guessed.

The audience became very quiet as he began to describe events in the concentration camp. Lloyd heard gasps of horror when he got to the part where the starving dogs appeared. Robert described
the torture of Jörg in a low, clear voice that carried across the room. By the time he came to Jörg’s death, several people were weeping.

Lloyd himself relived the cruelty and anguish of those moments, and he was possessed by rage against such fools as Boy Fitzherbert, whose infatuation with marching songs and smart uniforms
threatened to bring the same torment to England.

Robert sat down and Ethel went to the lectern. As she began to speak, Ruby reappeared, looking furious. ‘I told you this wouldn’t work!’ she hissed in Lloyd’s ear.
‘Mosley has gone, but the boys are singing “Rule Britannia” outside the station.’

That certainly was a breach of the agreement, Lloyd thought angrily. Boy had broken his promise. So much for the word of an English gentleman.

Ethel was explaining how Fascism offered false solutions, simplistically blaming groups such as Jews and Communists for complex problems such as unemployment and crime. She made merciless fun of
the concept of the triumph of the will, likening the Führer and the Duce to playground bullies. They claimed popular support, but banned all opposition.

Lloyd realized that when the Fascists returned from the railway station to the centre of town they would have to pass this church. He began to listen to the sounds coming through the open
windows. He could hear cars and lorries growling along Hills Road, punctuated now and again by the trill of a bicycle bell or the cry of a child. He thought he heard a distant shout, and it sounded
ominously like the noise made by rowdy boys young enough still to be proud of their new, deep voices. He tensed, straining to hear, and there were more shouts. The Fascists were marching.

Ethel raised her own voice as the bellowing outside got louder. She argued that working people of all kinds needed to band together in trade unions and the Labour Party to build a fairer society
step by democratic step, not through the kind of violent upheaval that had gone so badly wrong in Communist Russia and Nazi Germany.

Ruby re-entered. ‘They’re marching up Hills Road now,’ she said in a low, urgent murmur. ‘We have to go out there and confront them!’

‘No!’ Lloyd whispered. ‘The party made a collective decision – no demonstration. We must stick to that. We must be a disciplined movement!’ He knew the reference to
party discipline would carry weight with her.

The Fascists were nearby now, raucously chanting. Lloyd guessed there must be fifty or sixty of them. He itched to go out there and face them. Two young men near the back stood up and went to
the windows to look out. Ethel urged caution. ‘Don’t react to hooliganism by becoming a hooligan,’ she said. ‘That will only give the newspapers an excuse to say that one
side is as bad as the other.’

There was a crash of breaking glass, and a stone came through the window. A woman screamed, and several people got to their feet. ‘Please remain seated,’ Ethel said. ‘I expect
they will go away in a minute.’ She talked on in a calm and reassuring voice. Few people attended to her speech. Everyone was looking backwards, towards the church door, and listening to the
hoots and jeers of the ruffians outside. Lloyd had to struggle to sit still. He looked towards his mother with a neutral expression fixed like a mask on his face. Every bone in his body wanted to
rush outside and punch heads.

After a minute the audience quietened somewhat. They returned their attention to Ethel, though still fidgeting and looking back over their shoulders. Ruby muttered: ‘We’re like a
pack of rabbits, shaking in our burrow while the fox barks outside.’ Her tone was contemptuous, and Lloyd felt she was right.

But his mother’s forecast proved true, and no more stones were thrown. The chanting receded.

‘Why do the Fascists want violence?’ Ethel asked rhetorically. ‘Those out there in Hills Road might be mere hooligans, but someone is directing them, and their tactics have a
purpose. When there is fighting in the streets, they can claim that public order has broken down, and drastic measures are needed to restore the rule of law. Those emergency measures will include
banning democratic political parties such as Labour, prohibiting trade union action, and jailing people without trial – people such as us, peaceful men and women whose only crime is to
disagree with the government. Does this sound fantastic to you, unlikely, something that could never happen? Well, they used exactly those tactics in Germany – and it worked.’

She went on to talk about how Fascism should be opposed: in discussion groups, at meetings such as this one, by writing letters to the newspapers, by using every opportunity to alert others to
the danger. But even Ethel had trouble making this sound courageous and decisive.

Lloyd was cut to the quick by Ruby’s talk of rabbits. He felt like a coward. He was so frustrated that he could hardly sit still.

Slowly the atmosphere in the hall returned to normal. Lloyd turned to Ruby. ‘The rabbits are safe, anyhow,’ he said.

‘For now,’ she said. ‘But the fox will be back.’

(ii)

‘If you like a boy, you can let him kiss you on the mouth,’ said Lindy Westhampton, sitting on the lawn in the sunshine.

‘And if you really like him, he can feel your breasts,’ said her twin sister, Lizzie.

‘But nothing below the waist.’

‘Not until you’re engaged.’

Daisy was intrigued. She had expected English girls to be inhibited, but she had been wrong. The Westhampton twins were sex mad.

Daisy was thrilled to be a guest at Chimbleigh, the country house of Sir Bartholomew ‘Bing’ Westhampton. It made her feel that she had been accepted into English society. But she
still had not met the King.

She recalled her humiliation at the Buffalo Yacht Club with a sense of shame that was still like a burn on her skin, continuing to give her agonizing pain long after the flame had gone away. But
whenever she felt that pain she thought about how she was going to dance with the King, and she imagined them all – Dot Renshaw, Nora Farquharson, Ursula Dewar – poring over her picture
in the
Buffalo Sentinel
, reading every word of the report, envying her, and wishing that they could honestly say they had always been her friends.

Things had been difficult at first. Daisy had arrived three months ago with her mother and her friend Eva. Her father had given them a handful of introductions to people who turned out not to be
the crème de la crème of London’s social scene. Daisy had begun to regret her overconfident exit from the Yacht Club Ball: what if it all came to nothing?