Second Violin (16 page)

He found himself standing next to a dishevelled old man wearing what appeared to be cricket whites, a man well prepared for lunch as half of yesterday’s seemed still to be drying on his
shirt and trousers, which trousers, Alex surmised, were held up by a knotted old Harrovian tie. It was Mungo. A scotch and water in one hand, a specimen dead moth in the other.

‘It’s a Clifden Nonpareil,’ Mungo said without introduction. ‘You can tell it by the blue hindwings.’

Alex plumped for the obvious response, ‘Rare, is it?’

‘Caught two in Kent in ’36. Not seen another until last night when this little chap tapped on me windowpane. Attracted by the poplars in the street, I suppose. There are several
British
Catocala,
the red and crimson Underwings, for example, but this isn’t one you’d ordinarily regard as anything but a migrant . . . a sort of stray dog of the moth
world.’

Mungo looked at Alex for the first time. They’d met dozens of times, but Alex was fairly certain that all of Daffy’s men blurred into one from the husband’s point-of-view.

‘I suppose you’re here to put the world to rights?’

‘When am I not?’ said Alex.

‘Well, now’s your chance . . . the wife’s new specimen has arrived . . . another bloody stray.’

Alex followed the old boy’s gaze and saw a man in the doorway about Cazalet’s age and about the same height – but less handsome, a hint of brutality in the broad, flat face, a
severity in the close-cropped hair – without a monocle or a duelling scar and in a civilian suit of tasteless brown, still so obviously a German officer of some sort – a man born to
horseback and military service.

Alex turned back, but Mungo had vanished into his study and Daffy was introducing, word for word and at length, the Graf Lieutenant-Colonel Gerhard von Schwerin to the room.

He greeted Alex by saying that he had long been an admirer, and Alex replied, ‘Of what are you a Lieutenant-Colonel, Count von Schwerin? From what pack have you strayed to
London?’

‘I . . . er . . . don’t understand.’

‘Oh ignore him, Count,’ Daffy cut in. ‘He’s been talking to Mungo. I’d be prepared to swear he has. It’s one of Mungo’s thingies, one of his ill-chosen
words. All Alex means is “what’s your unit?” and as you’re here incognito, my dear, feel no obligation to tell him.’

But von Schwerin said, ‘My unit, Sir Alex? The Abwehr. I work for Admiral Canaris, of whom you have surely heard? A stray dog of the highest order.’

And Alex looked at Churchill and Churchill looked back at Alex, the both of them realising that when Daffy had said ‘treat’ she had meant it.

At lunch Alex was seated next to their hostess, with Cazalet on his right, and Wells on her left. Von Schwerin was placed where he could be of most use, between Churchill and Macmillan. Alex
was, he knew, here to observe rather than participate. And he hoped Wells would shut up long enough for them to hear what von Schwerin had come five hundred miles to tell them all.

‘It is the gravest crisis Europe has seen these twenty years. More – I would say, without implied respect, that Hitler will plunge us all into war the way Napoleon did. And what were
the wars of Napoleon but a world war for which we did not yet have the name?’

Churchill was slow off the mark, left too long a pause for Wells to nip in.

‘Is it not inevitable? The inevitable end of mankind in an armageddon of its own making. Our destiny since we crawled out of the primeval slime?’

‘I’m sorry, Mr Wells? Inevitable? There is nothing inevitable about Adolf Hitler. I cannot see the force of destiny in the rise of an Austrian corporal . . . a tyrant who grew out of
your ill-conceived treaties and our politics . . . not from our “natural evolution” . . . indeed, if he is destiny why then were we given so many opportunities to stop him?’

‘The Rhineland,’ Churchill muttered.

‘Austria,’ said Macmillan.

‘Czechoslovakia,’ said Cazalet.

‘Bert,’ Alex cut in. ‘How long would you like the list to be? A dozen violations of international treaties. They are political moments – mostly ones we missed – not
strata in the rocks.’

If they’d been alone, Alex knew, Wells would have come back at him with a lunchtime thesis as long as a French loaf. But with Daffy doubtless pinching him under the table, he deferred with
uncharacteristic modesty and said, ‘And what’s next on Hitler’s list, Count?’

‘Need you ask? He means to take the Polish corridor, to reclaim Danzig and link up with the rump of East Prussia.’

‘What,’ said Macmillan, ‘about this proposal for an extraterritorial road?’

‘It is nonsense,’ von Schwerin replied. ‘There is no plan for a road of any kind. Hitler saying there is merely lulls the Poles into thinking he will negotiate. The truth is he
will negotiate nothing.’

‘Surely,’ Cazalet said, ‘surely he realises that would mean war?’

‘War with whom?’

It was pretty much the last retort any of them had expected of von Schwerin, and von Schwerin knew it. As Cazalet almost gasped for breath at the audacity of it, von Schwerin slowly turned his
head to take in everyone in the room and be certain that his bluntness had hit home.

‘With us! With the British!’ Cazalet said too late.

Von Schwerin could not be made to feel the urgency Cazalet had put into his words. But ‘we shall fight’ was becoming such a worn and shabby phrase. ‘We’, as von Schwerin
had pointed out, had passed many stages at which it might have been deemed prudent or honourable to fight, and we hadn’t.

‘Mr Cazalet, I was with Hitler last autumn. I cannot remember who said what to provoke the remark, but I distinctly heard him say, “I saw the British at Munich . . . they are
sheep.” Now, you are in the Reserve are you not?’

‘Yes, but how did you know that?’

‘I’m in the Abwehr – shall we say it’s my job to know? If I were you, Mr Cazalet, I’d dust off my khaki and get ready for war.’

This stilled the table into silence for a few moments, and silence gave way if not to small talk then to smaller talk.

Alex found he could see himself in the words of future diarists, the chronicles-to-come . . . half the men at table (and Daffy was the only woman) most certainly kept diaries. He knew Nicolson
did, he knew Duff Cooper did and he’d be willing to bet Cazalet did. He doubted Churchill could find the time and equally doubted Wells would bother, but Wells and he were pretty well
contemporaries . . . it was what the younger men wrote that momentarily flashed through his mind: ‘Lunch at Daffy’s . . . found myself sitting next to Alex Troy. My God, he’s
looking old. And he’s not really on the ball any more. Didn’t seem to understand the German situation at all.’ So that was his fate . . . to be an entry in someone’s diary
published twenty or thirty years hence. His father had ended up as a footnote or an index reference in lives of Tolstoy and Kropotkin. Tolstoy’s first biographers had provoked the old man to
a restrained form of rage, and a flurry of letters dashed off to the literary editors of the national newspapers, some of which even printed them – in particular, the
Observer
had
seemed delighted with his witless reworking of Twain’s ‘reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated’.

‘Do you keep a diary, Daffy?’

‘There are many ladies who would think that an impertinent question, Alex. But I am not one of them, and it so happens I do.’

‘Hmm . . . am I in it?’

‘Alex, darling, we’ve known each other twenty-five years or more. Of course you’re in it. And no one should be recording today’s little chat – not in their diaries
and certainly not in their newspapers. Now, change the subject.’

The woman had a point. How did men like von Schwerin get away with this in a nation where the disaffected could vanish overnight? Von Schwerin was by no means the first of Admiral
Canaris’s casual envoys – unlike the others he seemed to be taken seriously. The risk was enormous. How would this man survive if a word of what he was saying leaked out? It was, it
seemed, a remarkable act of trust in the British . . . the sceptical, unbelieving, hesitant, appeasing British.

Cazalet returned to the subject with coffee. ‘What else might we do to prepare for war, Count. My khaki has been dusted off a while now.’

Von Schwerin smiled at this, turned to Churchill, turned back to look at Cazalet.

‘Well . . . you might persuade the man on my right to rejoin the cabinet.’

Churchill looked up, smiling modestly at the obvious truth in von Schwerin’s words.

‘Really, Count. Do you think I’m that frightening?’

This brought smiles and laughter from everyone.

‘Well, you scare the hell out of me.’

‘This brought guffaws, table slapping mirth, that enabled Daffy to rise and end the meal on a high.

Out in the street, Alex’s car waited, the chauffeur holding the back door open.

‘Are you and Winston going to the House?’ Alex asked Cazalet. ‘I’m driving right past.’

‘I am. And I’m sure Winston is. But I doubt he will consent to ride with me.’

Alex looked back to the open doorway. Churchill was still deep in conversation with von Schwerin. Two men clutching hats and making wild gestures.

‘Then let us leave him to it.’

Cazalet followed Alex into the back seat of the Rolls. When the door closed and the car moved off he said, ‘One cannot doubt the wisdom of Count von Schwerin’s remark . .
.’

‘Even if it is merely an echo of the British popular press.’

‘Quite. And what neither the papers nor von Schwerin seem to grasp is the speed with which Winston makes enemies, and the tenacity with which he holds on to them.’

‘You?’

‘Oh Alex, it’s not just me. You saw Harold Macmillan in there. There’s a whole generation willing to sit at his feet and do his bidding . . . but if we deviate from his line .
. . if we contest him on things that are minor in comparison to the prospect of war . . .’

‘Such as?’

‘Well . . . it doesn’t pay to have a good word for the Soviet Union.’

‘Not many of you have.’

‘And India. That’s why he cuts me, because I am in favour of India’s independence. And that is anathema to Winston. Yet, much as I endorse it and he opposes it, it is a mere
inkblot on the greater picture. It should not divide us over Germany. But he lets it do just that. You know, I think that German came here with the notion that there is a Churchill faction. He may
be right, but the chief obstacle to that faction cohering around Winston and acting as one and speaking with one voice is Winston himself. Take Austria, for example. I have first-hand knowledge. I
was in Vienna only a few weeks after the Anschluss. I could have painted a vivid picture for him of what the Germans are doing there. He wouldn’t listen to a word I said.’

‘And?’

‘And what?’

‘I lived a while in Vienna. For a while Vienna was home. I have not been there these thirty years. So tell me, how was Vienna? I’m listening even if Winston isn’t.’

Cazalet sighed, ‘I suppose it all comes down to the looks on people’s faces. The middle-aged know they’re done for. No one over thirty-five smiles any more. The Jews know
they’re done for, the aristocrats know they’re done for – I had at least half a dozen people begging me to get them jobs in England. A Jewish doctor wanted to be my gardener. A
count von somewhere or other said he’d valet for me! Alex, Vienna was desperate.’

Dropping Cazalet in Parliament Square, Alex found Vienna would not leave his thoughts. He could see streets of cobblestones and coffee houses. He could almost taste the coffee. And so he went in
search of Vienna. To a meeting to which he had long been invited, and which for reasons he would surely be told later, he had as long put off.

The Rolls pulled up in front of a vast Edwardian villa, 20 Maresfield Gardens, Hampstead, NW3 – almost walking distance from Alex’s own Hampstead house. He’d
had opportunity, if not occasion, aplenty to walk over. He never had. But doubtless the man inside would be able to tell him why.

The maid asked, ‘Who shall I say is calling?’

‘Alex Troy.’

There was a bustle from within as she announced his name, as though something had been knocked over. Then he bustled out into the lobby, stood before him, a tiny white-bearded man in a baggy
cardigan, looking startled, as though awakened from an after-lunch nap, hastily putting on his round tortoiseshell spectacles, seizing Alex’s right hand in both of his.

‘Alex!’

‘Professor Freud.’

‘Ach . . . we are both too old for titles. Call me Sigmund. Come . . . come . . . everything is pretty much as it was.’

And it was. Stepping into Freud’s library was to step back into the Vienna of forty years ago. A room heavy with the weight of a gilded age. The burden of dreams. The same paintings on the
wall – the tell-tale Oedipus and the Sphinx – a portrait Alex had never asked about but which he assumed to represent Moses – the same books on the shelves: Goethe and the
complete Shakespeare in individual German volumes.

‘Of course I could not leave with everything. But there is nothing like a putsch to make you have a purge.’

Alex looked at the desk and the nest of tables crammed full of classical figurines. He remembered the day he’d asked Freud about collecting them. He’d never grace his own study with
the word ‘collection’ – Alex didn’t collect he just hoarded – and Freud’s answer, that these figurines had only survived, and survived unchanging, because
they’d been walled up in tombs for years. It was a metaphor for the unconscious – the unconscious scarcely changed because it was entombed.

Freud led the way from the library to the consulting room at the back of the house. The couch was the same couch – the analysands’ couch from Berggasse, draped in a heavy,
geometric-patterned red Persian rug. And at the end of the couch, out of sight of anyone reclining, the green velvet tub chair where Freud himself had sat – the disembodied voice.

To have lain down, to have stretched out would have been bliss – bliss and a bridge too far. They took armchairs and faced each other. Equals.