Authors: Phillip Rock
S
EPTEMBER 1938
Albert Thaxton woke at dawn, a shaft of pale light filtering through a gap in the curtains and falling across his face. Rolling onto one side he groped for the rumpled package on the nightstand and fished out the last of the French cigarettes he had bought in Port Vendres after crossing the border. It was an obligation to the men of the O'Hara Detachment of the International Brigade to whom cigarettes had been more important than cartridges for their Mausers.
“Smoke some decent fags for me and the lads,”
Corporal Knott had told him on the morning he had left with the pack mules and the stretcher cases for Tarragona. He smoothed the cigarette with his fingers, lit it with a match, took a few puffs, and then ground it out in a crystal ashtray. His final link with Spain snuffed out. Dead in the bowl of glass as surely as the corporal and his men were dead by now in the bomb-holed wastes along the Ebro.
A servant brought coffee in a silver pot, toast, and a newspaper on the stroke of seven. He was dressed and shaved by then, standing by the open windows and looking out on the magnificent grounds of Abingdon Pryory.
“Good morning, sir,” the man said, placing the tray on a table. “Breakfast will be served on the east terrace at eight thirty.”
“A perfect day for it.”
“It is that, sir. A good omen when September dawns fair.”
“Is it my imagination or do I hear shooting?”
“Partridge season opened today. That would be hunters out Bigham way. A fair number of birds on the heath.”
That made him feel better as he drank his coffee and munched toast. The distant popping and thud of gunfire had carried over from his dreams and touched still uneasy nerves. Reading the paper was not cheering. A Jacob Golden editorial was splashed across the front page.
HITLER MUST BE STOPPEDâNOW
! It was Jacob at his most fervid, calling on the prime minister to order the immediate mass production of four-engine bombing planes, heavy tanks, and Spitfire fighters.
⦠Mr. Chamberlain must let Hitler and his henchmen know that Great Britain will back to the very hilt its commitment to the freedom and independence of Czechoslovakia. There can be no compromise with the forces of terror, no appeasement to those who would hurl mankind back a thousand years â¦
As persistent in his outcries as Marcus Porcius Cato crying
Delenda est Carthago
before the Roman senate. Though not as respected nor heeded. To many, just the Jew Golden slashing out at the Führer in a fit of pique. But the wire-service reports from Prague were not Jacob's inventions. A.P., U.P., INA, Reuters, all reporting the same ominous stories of Nazi demonstrations in the Sudetenland and of German troop movements along the Czech borders. Hitler screaming in a radio speech his willingness to go to war in order to “protect” the Sudeten Germans from their “intolerable suppression” by the Slavic race. British negotiators in Prague urging Dr. BeneÅ¡ to give in to Hitler's demand for the Sudetenland and by so doing create a more “homogenous” Czechoslovakiaâalso a Czechoslovakia stripped of its mountainous borders and elaborate concrete forts and antitank barriers. A nation shorn of its defenses and left naked to its enemies. A photograph on page 3. The British ambassador in Berlin smiling toothily at Hermann Göring. The
Post
caption:
WHY IS HENDERSON SMILING
? Why indeed.
He wandered down to the terrace and strolled hands in pockets beside the carved stone balustrade. Maids were setting the table for breakfast while footmen carried chairs through the open French doors of the breakfast room. The sun was warm and a slight wind stirred the trees. At the end of the terrace, stone steps curved down to the sunken Italian garden with its cypress and yew, roses, hyacinth, and marble statuary. He could see Lady Stanmore, a wicker basket over one arm, clipping long-stemmed blooms, and he walked down to her. “Good morning,” he said. “You're up early.”
She gave him a warm smile from under her floppy straw hat. “Good morning, Albert. Yes, it is a bit early for me. Fact is, I woke at a heathen hour and couldn't get back to sleep. Mind racing like an engine. So many things to do before this evening. Large parties are a trial, but I do enjoy them so.”
He nodded at the basket. “Doing the floral arrangements?”
She laughed. “A bunch for my own enjoyment.” She eyed his tall, slender frame critically. “You look as though you've put on some weight.”
“I'm certain I have. Feel tip-top.”
“Not too tip-top I hope, or Jacob will send you back to Spain.”
“I doubt that, Lady Stanmore. Nothing left to write there except an obituary. The storms shift.”
“The whirlwinds.” A troubled look crossed her face like a shadow. Then she brightened and turned back to a rose tree. “I've enjoyed having you here the past few days. I'm very glad Martin talked you into coming down. What shall I do when you leave? No one to speak German to! It's a beautiful language.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Schiller's
Don Carlos
. Heine. Rainer Maria Rilke ⦠no relation, I'm sure, but one never knows. Such a sensitive, mystical poet.” She held a rose to her forehead. “
Fühlst du die Rosen auf der Stirne sterben?
Do you know, I've been married to Anthony for nearly fifty years and he's never learned to speak a word of it.” She dropped the flower in the basket and moved slowly along the path from bush to bush. “We went to Germany once. Nineteen twelve ⦠and we stayed for four months. Everyone at my cousin Friedrich's spoke English. They took pride in that, so I suppose it wasn't necessary for Anthony to learn a few words, but I do think it would have been a nice gesture on his part.”
“Where did your cousin live?”
“Outside Berlin ⦠in the Grunewald. Oh, my, I thought we lived on such a grand scale here at the Pryory, but Friedrich lived like a prince ⦠and a prewar prince at that. I think that even the servants had servants! And every one of them in their own special livery according to their task. There was even a boy whose sole function was to polish boots, dressed to the nines in a tight green jacket with brass buttons and a little pillbox hat. So long ago now. I've never been back. I considered going after the war, but ⦔ She sighed, clipped a rose and laid it gently in the basket. “How could I? So much hate and bitterness. A gulf between us that seemed unbridgeable. They were in ruin and we were the victors. Though God knows, where pain is concerned there was little to choose between us. Friedrich had two sons, about the same age as Charles. Nice boys ⦠they stayed with us one summer. Otto was killed in the war and Werner was wounded. A Nazi now, Martin tells me.”
“Yes. Minister of munitions, or something on that order.”
She smiled bitterly and clipped a dead stalk. “Ironic. A minister of the very things that destroyed his world and his body. Is it so impossible to learn something from the past? If all of us who remember the war banded together in one body we could make war impossible ⦠sweep it onto the dust heap of history with all the other forms of human sacrifice.”
“I wish it were that simple.”
“So do I. But one can always hope.” She took his arm and they began to walk toward the steps and the terrace. “I'm sure you will be going back to work soon. The news must be reported or what would we do over our morning coffee? Try to remain objective, Albert. Jacob has become so strident lately ⦠so bellicose ⦠like Mr. Churchill. I trust my heart. I know there must be millions of people in Germany who are as dismayed by Hitler's excesses as we are. The nation of Goethe, after all, as well as Nietzsche. Those people must be encouraged to add their voices to the cry for peace.”
He said nothing, holding on to her arm as they climbed the steps. She was nearly seventy, still beautiful, a light in her eyes as she talked of sterling dreams. He thought of the young Luftwaffe pilots of the Condor Legion sweeping low over the vineyards at Tamarite de Litera in their new Messerschmitts, strafing the workers just to test their guns.
Lord Stanmore was sitting down for breakfast, helped into his seat by his grandson, eighteen-year-old Colin Mackendric Ross. Colin, six-feet-three-inches of lanky height, wore faded blue jeans, a cotton check shirt, and shiny boots. A red bandanna was tied loosely around his neck.
“You look almost excessively American this morning, Colin,” Hanna said.
“Exactly what I told him,” the earl grunted.
Colin grinned broadly. With his reddish hair and tanned, freckled face he looked like an illustration in a cowboy novel. “What's your opinion, Albert?”
“Picturesque. Gary Cooper in
The Plainsman
.”
He straddled a chair as though swinging into a saddle. “Thought I'd show off my new Texas boots.” He extended a foot. “Genuine Gila lizard.”
His grandfather grunted again and avoided looking at them. “Are you joining us this morning, Hanna?”
“I don't think so, dear. I had some cocoa and toast. I'll take the flowers now, Albert. You sit down and have your breakfast.”
“She eats like a bird,” the earl said as she walked away.
“Like Mama,” Colin said. “Always watching her figure.”
“And a figure worth watching,” the earl said, smiling for the first time that morning. “A grand old girl.”
Colin winked at Albert. “Not so much of the âold,' Grandpa. She might hear you.”
Footmen brought the food on heated silver trays: kidneys, Yorkshire ham, eggs, local sausage and bacon, white bread toasted to a pale gold. Perfectly prepared and elegantly served on Meissen breakfast plates. The warm wind carried the scent of the rose gardenâperfume, fertilizer, and damp earth. Different scents in Catalonia, Albert was thinking. Boiled mule meat if the men were lucky, and the perfume of the dead. He ate his breakfast without dwelling on the difference or suffering any pangs of conscience. He had just turned twenty-five, a war correspondent and as much an old campaigner as the men he wrote about. And old soldiers took their pleasures as they came and were grateful for them.
“What were you and Hanna chatting about in the garden?” the earl asked.
“Oh, one thing and another. War and peace ⦠Hitler's Germany.”
Colin made a wry face. “Holy Mo! What a subject on a sunny morning.” He turned his face to the sun. “Why can't England be like this every day in the year?”
“We're quite grateful for the odd week or two. This is not California.”
“You're telling me, Gramps.”
“Yes, Colin, that is precisely what I am telling you. When in Rome, and all that. I trust you will change before our guests arrive. And kindly stop referring to me as
gramps!
It sounds like a disorder of the bowels.”
The earl picked at his food, drank a cup of tea, and then excused himself from the table.
“Talk about Grandmama eating like a bird.”
“He doesn't look well this morning.”
“He's okay. Just sulking. His new doctor wouldn't permit him to get up before dawn and go tramping out with guns. I don't understand the joy in blowing some poor old partridge to pieces anyway. But, to each his own.” He rolled a fragment of toast into crumbs between restless fingers. “How much longer are you going to be on the sick list?”
“Off of it now. My boss is coming tonight and I'll be given an assignment I expect.”
“Where?”
Albert shrugged and took a sip of coffee. “The Berlin desk would be my first choice, but Goebbels may revoke press credentials for the
Post
. That's the rumor. A Jewish, warmongering rag, he calls us. I'll probably go to Prague, unless the crisis blows over.”
“Storm in a teacup, if you ask me.” He rolled another piece of toast into pellets and flicked them from the table with his thumb. “You always wanted to be a newspaperman, didn't you?”
“Since I was sixteen.”
“Martin told me once that you had a scholarship to Balliol and turned it down. Why?”
“I didn't feel I needed the Oxford experience. I went to London University, did odd jobs for INA ⦠free-lanced for the
Post
⦠got a practical education and then went my merry way.”
“I feel the same about Cambridge. I dread the start of term.”
“It won't do you any harm.”
“The only person I'll know there is my friend Derek Ramsay, and he'll be two years ahead of me. I'll be odd man out.”
“You will in lizard-skin boots, that's certain. They'll probably call you Tom Mix.” He could tell by the somber expression on the boy's face that this was not a laughing matter. “You really are concerned about it, aren't you?”
“Sure. I don't belong in Cambridge. I'm not smart enough.”
“You were smart enough to pass the examination.”
“Yeah, with a discreet pull from Uncle Charles. The bursar is a fellow classmate from Eton. My going to an English university was my mother's idea, and I got talked into it.”
“Where did you want to go? Stanford?”