Pantheon (19 page)

The room, however, was monastic in its simplicity. There was a bed, a chair, a desk and a basin and not much else. The asceticism of it appealed to him, but he did fleetingly wonder about Grey’s motives. Was he punishing James with this garret room, or had he deliberately wanted him away from the heart of Yale life, where he might meet fewest people – so keeping his secrets to himself?

James sat on the bed and wondered where he should begin. It was a Sunday, which made it impossible simply to present himself at an administrative office and ask where he might find the Oxford families. If this were Oxford, he would select a college at random, pop in and ask a porter, who were, after all, the best-informed people in the university.

He splashed some water on his face then headed down the stairs, two at a time. He was striding down College Street, deciding that he would stop at the first college he saw – the butler had told him there were ten to choose from – when he heard it: a drifting melody from across the road, the universally familiar sound of a church choir.

Among those Oxford mothers, there was bound to be at least one woman pious enough to attend, maybe even to give thanks for their safe passage across the Atlantic. Not Florence of course; she wouldn’t be seen dead in church. But someone who, on hearing James identify himself, might smile warmly and say, ‘Oh yes, I saw young Harry just this morning. They’re staying two minutes from here; I’ll take you there myself if you would like.’

He ran up the few steps leading to the doorway and went inside. To his surprise, the church was packed, every space on the wooden benches taken. No church in Oxford would get a turnout like this on a warm Sunday in July. Perhaps this was what the experts meant when they said America was a country founded by ‘the Protestants of the Protestants’ – religious zealots whose zeal, it seemed, lived on.

He stood at the back, loitering by the door, suddenly self-conscious. Should he affect to be a churchgoer, late to arrive but here in earnest? Or pose as a tourist, come to admire the gold-inlaid walls and pillars and to gaze at the half-dome above the altar, an artful compromise between grandeur and modesty?

James did a quick scan of the faces before him and recognized none of them. Not that he could conclude from that that there was no one here from Oxford: there might well be several, he just didn’t know them. Inwardly, he cursed the habits he had fallen into since his return from Spain. He had been fairly sociable as a student, avoiding the aristocratic crowd, but jolly enough with everyone else. He was popular in the rowing club; Daisy’s friends had always liked him. But after his return, he had turned inward; could not be bothered remembering names, barely even noticed faces. And now, when he needed the help of someone familiar, he was paying the price.

The music had ended and a cleric had taken his place at the pulpit. White-haired and in his early sixties by James’s reckoning, he looked more earnest than forbidding. The man cleared his throat, then said in an unexpectedly strong voice, ‘My fellow members of Yale. I’m glad to see so many of you here – proof, I guess, that you’ve all had a week so full of sin that you’ve rushed here to repent.’ A ripple of gentle laughter. ‘Well, you’re all welcome. This is God’s house, which means it’s your house. Welcome, welcome.’

The man’s style of speech was a surprise too. He was much more informal than any vicar James had heard speak in England. Even the way he stood seemed to be looser, as if he were wearing more comfortable shoes.

‘Now you heard the lesson we read earlier. From Isaiah,’ –
Eye-zay-ah
– ‘chapter two, verse four.’ There was a rustling of tissue-thin pages, as many in the congregation consulted their bibles.

The vicar’s voice boomed out loud, the word of God delivered with an American accent: ‘“And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”’ He paused letting the words linger a while. Then he spoke again.

‘I do not believe we can argue with those words. I believe their meaning is as clear as a freshwater stream: “in the last days”, when we are on the brink of redemption, we will put aside the tools of war. They play no part in the Second Coming of Jesus Christ our Lord. If we are to be worthy of His return, if we are to live life as it is meant to be lived, then we should start now, making ploughshares from swords and pruning hooks from spears. We would grow food, instead of death. We would water the ground with God’s sweet rain, not with the blood of our fellow man.’

There was an emphatic ‘amen’ from some in the room and an unmistakable silence from the rest. James was slowly becoming aware that this was no ordinary Sunday service.

The preacher looked down at the lectern, a tiny gesture that suggested he was coming to a close. ‘I have been chaplain here for most of the last decade. You all know me well and you know my views. They are best summarized not with words, but by our Lord’s eloquent action. A small action, as it happens, but one that is still so radical, still so revolutionary. Struck on one side of his face, Jesus did not hit back. No, he did not. Instead he offered his other cheek. That’s right, he turned the other cheek. And that – that action that is so small but so large – is how we will abolish war. Even when we are provoked – and yes, our consciences are provoked by the violence in Europe – we will resist the urge to shed more blood. We will not fight war with war. As Isaiah says, “neither shall we learn war any more”.’

The words were very familiar to James. How many Quaker meetings had he sat through where the speaker, often his father, had repeated those same points, citing the same sources? The only difference this time, besides the accent and the charisma of the delivery, emanated from the congregation. James was used to hearing the case for pacifism presented to a room full of pacifists. Yet here was a man preaching to a crowd which, it was obvious, was anything but converted. The pastor had his supporters, but there was a low, unvoiced hum of discontent throughout that was undeniable. Now the preacher moved to address it.

‘As I say, you know my views. You don’t need to hear them again. And I know the Yale fellowship is not of one mind on this topic, that our community of scholars has been debating this question fiercely. That’s how it should be. And I want that debate to live here, in God’s house. For as the holy texts tell us, “These and these are the words of the living God.” These
and
these. There is always more than one view.

‘Which is why I’m sharing this pulpit today. I have invited Dr Ernest West from the Philosophy Department to speak about the theory of the just war. Not that I think there can be such thing—’ He stopped himself with a smile. ‘Forgive me, I’m used to having the floor all to myself. Dr West, please come and address the congregation.’

James watched as the room seemed to shift, a wave of energy rippling through it. Some sat forward in their seats, others pulled back and folded their arms into a posture of sullen disapproval.

The new man at the pulpit was younger and more uncertain. He was clasping a text, which shook slightly in his hands.

‘I’d like to thank Pastor Theodore Lowell for welcoming me here today,’ he began, as if addressing the wood of the lectern. ‘And I come before you humbled by the scale of the task. I want to persuade you that the right place for the United States of America is by the side of those Europeans fighting for their lives and against the tyranny of Herr Hitler and his Third Reich.’

‘America first!’

James swung around to his left in search of the heckler, but the acoustics had confused him. The voice could have come from any of the wooden benches on that side of the church. He looked up and saw that the speaker too was confused, thrown off balance by what he had heard. Dr West gathered himself and looked up to face his audience.

‘“America first”, you say and I understand that. I agree with it too. America should always put its interests first. But I tell you, this war
is
about our interests. Only Britain now stands between us and the Nazi menace. If Britain falls, then Germany will control the Atlantic. We could wake up any week now, any day now, with Nazi warships in Boston harbour and U-boat submarines off New York.’

The heckler was silenced by that and the hush of the church seemed to catch the speaker by surprise.

‘And let’s remember that Germany will not be alone in this part of the world. It has friends – in Mexico and Argentina and throughout Latin America. Just imagine what Hitler would be capable of with a network of military bases throughout that continent. I say to you, we would face the very same threat now faced by our British cousins: bombs. A Blitzkrieg could come from the south, German bombs landing on San Diego or Houston or Miami, even, who knows, Chicago. So I do put America first. I put American safety first.’

James noticed that the man’s voice was less nervy now; he was beginning to hit his stride. ‘That’s why we have a direct, vital interest in making sure Europe does not get swallowed up in Nazi tyranny. America cannot exist alone on this side of the Atlantic, hiding away from the world.’

‘Warmonger!’

The same heckler or a different one, James could not tell. Now there were a few cries in response: ‘Pipe down!’ ‘We came here to hear him, not you!’

James noticed that the pastor did nothing to impose order on his church, but was watching the unfolding scene with an indulgent smile.

Dr West chose to ignore the last interruption and press on. ‘We cannot hide ourselves away. We need Europe. Not just to buy our goods. Though I have to say America will only be the leading power of this twentieth century if we sell and trade with the rest of the world. And there will be no trade with Herr Hitler’s empire. No, we need a Europe that holds to the same ideals as we do.’

‘Our ideal should be peace!’

‘Of course it is. But you cannot make a pact with the Devil. And we should be clear what kind of enemy we face. “Know thine enemy”, that’s what the Bible tells us, doesn’t it, Pastor Lowell? And there can be no denying that we face a new and terrible enemy in Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party. America will not be able to live in a world where such brutality holds supreme. As President Roosevelt—’

‘Rosenfeld!’

‘As President Roosevelt has argued so forcefully, it is a delusion, a fantasy, to think that we can let America become, I quote, “a lone island in a world dominated by the philosophy of force”. Our ideals as Americans, the very ideals set out by our founding fathers—’

‘“Beware of foreign entanglements”, that’s what Washington said!’

‘I know what he said: you don’t have to shout his words at me. But these are different times. There was no threat then equal to the threat we face today, a dictator bent on ruling the world.’

There was more commotion now, as a small group to James’s right attempted to start a chorus of ‘America first!’ James fought the urge to stand up, march over to the pulpit and deliver a speech of his own. Did these people have no idea what was happening across the sea? He had left a country already at war, its men either at the front or preparing to defend the homeland; a place plunged into unbroken darkness at night, where people, including him, were digging holes in their gardens to shelter from bombs; where even a two-year-old boy like Harry was told to carry a gas mark lest Hitler attempt to fill the air with poison; where the enemy was a matter of miles away, just twenty-two of them in fact, Dover to Calais.

Yet here in New Haven war was a debating topic, with arguments to be made for and against. This was how Britain itself had been three or four years ago, back when Chamberlain reckoned he could make peace with Hitler. There had been debates like this, plenty of them, at the Oxford Union and elsewhere, with young gentlemen making speeches about whether they would fight for ‘King and country’ and all that. But not any more. That argument was over.

In the United States, however, here in this chapel, the argument was just beginning. He was suddenly aware, more keenly than he had ever been before, that Britain truly did stand alone. Stalin and the Soviet Union had become Hitler’s allies; Italy had joined in, declaring war on Britain a matter of weeks ago; France, Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg had fallen to the Germans. And America was still debating with itself.

It struck James with sudden, painful force. Britain was on the brink of extinction. If it were to survive, if its people were not to live under the boot-heel of the Gestapo, they would have to defeat the German menace with their own bare hands.

He didn’t wait for the speaker to finish, leaving him instead to take on the hecklers over whether Roosevelt was agitating for war as an excuse to build up the might of the federal government.

As he got up to leave, he caught sight of something that stopped him in his tracks. Someone he recognized. A face there, then gone. He scanned the congregation again only to see what he had seen before: the same sea of undifferentiated, unfamiliar faces. But the vague sense of recognition, someone spied in his peripheral vision, lingered. He craned slightly, to see around a pillar, but found nothing.

As quietly as he had entered, he retreated to the chapel door and left.

The gentle tap on the door did not wake him, though the offer of a cup of ‘the Lizzie’s own tea’ was welcome. He had woken early, relieved that today was Monday: that offices would be open, that all he needed to do was find the right secretary, in front of the right card index, who would swiftly run through the list of Oxford children and their new, temporary homes. And soon after that, he told himself, he would have Florence and Harry back in his arms. Today would be the day they were reunited. What he told himself was the hardest part – the shock, the separation, the long journey across the Atlantic – would be over. Whether Florence would see it that way, whether she would immediately embrace him as if nothing had happened, whether the mere fact of his having come all this way would nullify the concerns that had driven her away in the first place – on those questions James preferred not to linger.