Second Violin (31 page)

‘But your old man fought in the last war. Dammit, Walter, he fought alongside o’you. Don’t that make him British?’

‘I’m afraid it doesn’t.’

‘My son, my Danny, just gone off to enlist in the REME . . . don’t that make us British? My little girl, Sallie . . . she’s been evacuated to Wales along with the rest of the
kids in the street . . . don’t that make us British?’

Judy snatched the portrait of Billy and his father off the mantelpiece.

‘Look at this . . . just look!’

Only Troy did.

Hummel and Schuster looked at the tablecloth, Jacks and Stilton looked at each other. A few moments passed. Judy seemed suddenly weary and tearful, put the photograph back, went into her kitchen
and closed the door.

‘What now?’ Billy said softly.

‘We’re trying not to muck people about. We’re trying to be decent about summat that’s frankly indecent. But we’ve orders to follow. Some days we’ve just had
to knock on the door and tell some poor bugger to grab his things and come with us. There’s plenty round here not had so much as an excuse me. It’s because we know you –
it’s because I’ve known you since you were a nipper – that this is different.’

‘How different?’

‘Pack a case and be ready. It won’t be long. We can leave you to the end of the list. But chances are I can only let you know the night before, maybe not even that.’

‘And these two?’

‘Joe’d better be as prepared as you. He’ll go at the same time. Manny’s over seventy. We won’t be coming for him.’

Stilton turned to Schuster, ‘All you have to do is avoid restricted areas. And all that means is no trips to the seaside.’

Schuster nodded.

‘Pity,’ he said. ‘I always wanted to see Canvey Island.’

‘You better not,’ Billy said. ‘Sounds like you’ll be running the business. So, Joe . . . it’ll be you and me for the skylark, eh?’

‘
Ja
’ Hummel replied, not understanding anything but the bare fact of his impending internment. ‘De skylark.’

As they walked back to the car, Troy heard Judy call his name.

He turned, she walked up to him, reddened in the face, but dry-eyed now. He’d always loved Judy’s eyes – even when they had glared at him with contempt, he had loved
Judy’s eyes.

‘Do you know where they’ll take him?’

‘Not for certain. There are camps all over the country. Race courses, mills, anything that could be commandeered. But the odds are he’ll end up on the Isle of Man. Most
do.’

‘How long?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘The duration?’

‘I don’t know.’

Judy turned away from him, walked back to the house.

Troy said, ‘Judy, I didn’t ask for this assignment.’

But he was not even sure she’d heard him.

He got back into the car, sat next to Stilton, feeling faithless.

‘Do I detect a hint of history between you and Mrs Jacks, young Fred?’

Troy said nothing.

Not knowing how long he might be gone, Billy thought it a good idea that certain of his company papers be burnt. If his wife was right about this Blitz thing, nobody would ever
know and the next time the taxman came knocking he could just blame Hitler.

He and his daughter Lena sat by the hearth at midnight and fed papers into the fire.

‘Nice,’ Lena said. ‘Some of these summer evenings you can start to feel a bit of a chill.’

‘Sure,’ Billy said, non-commital.

‘Mum’s takin’ it better than I thought she would.’

‘Yeah, well. She’s got Danny to think about, ain’t she.’

‘He’ll be OK. You can call him stupid if you like, but he volunteered for the REME, didn’t he? If he’d waited for the call-up, what choice would he have had? Electrical
Engineers won’t be sloggin’ it out in France will they? More likely some cushy little billet in the West Country guarding army surplus radios.’

A pause.

They slurped tea. Billy favouring cup over saucer for once.

‘Dad? Why din’t you tell Mum about the tribunal?’

‘Why? ’Cos I felt a total pratt, that’s why.’

‘Eh?’

‘Havin’ to say how British I was.’

‘There’s people in this street’d’ve paid good money to see that.’

‘There’s worse . . . I had to point out I was Jewish . . .’

Lena giggled. Even Billy began to smile.

‘I mean, how thick can these toffs get? Not knowin’ a Jew when they see one. They might have known from the name, ’cos they kept referrin’ to me as “Mr
Jakobson”. Like you get Jakobsons in Surrey or Hampshire. Jakobson, my arse. I even sign cheques as Billy Jacks. But . . . it was a farce . . . me sittin’ there remindin’ them of
things I ain’t give a toss about in donkey’s years . . . bein’ British . . . bein’ Jewish . . .’

‘I never seen you so much as open a bible.’

‘Ain’t one in the house. Not since your zayde came back from the Somme with one of his balls shot off. Wasn’t exactly godfearin’ in the first place, but that made him a
screamin’ atheist, that did. He’s lost one . . . therefore there ain’t no God . . .’

A pause.

They slurped.

‘Still,’ Lena said. ‘It gets yer.’

‘Eh?’

‘You can play the sarcastic old sheeny for all it’s worth, Dad. But I’ve seen twenty years of your act . . . grumpy, stingy, whiney . . . you’ve played most of the seven
dwarfs . . . but this has really got to you.’

‘I never thought about bein’ Polish much. And not once did I ever think about bein’ German. I was two when we left Danzig. Don’t remember it at all. For the next couple
of years we lived wherever your zayde laid his hat. A few months in Cracow, almost a year in Rotterdam. Pogromed here, pogromed there, old Macdonald had a pogrom . . . and that ain’t strictly
true neither . . . we just moved . . . moved before it happened. “One step ahead of the Cossacks,” he always used to say. Not that he ever saw a Cossack. I got vague memories of
Rotterdam, and I remember landing at Tilbury, just like Manny and Joe did, but the old man . . . he filled me up with his memories. Told so many tales. It’s like I could remember Cracow and
Rotterdam and all the other places . . . but I can’t really. And the strange thing is, he took to England. As far as your zayde was concerned, he was English. OK, so we never had a bible in
the house . . . but we had a Union Jack.’

‘Till he died. Then you binned it.’

‘Like I was sayin’. He took to England. Became English. Didn’t give a toss about bein’ Jewish no more. I never had a
bar mitzvah.
The Rabbis come round he’d
just tell ’em to bugger off. Only thing he kept out of bein’ born a Jew was speakin Yiddish. And I’ve always liked that. Yiddish says things English can’t.’

‘You never passed it on to me and Danny and Sallie.’

‘What would be the point? Your Mum’s a cockney
shikse
through and through. She’d never learn Yiddish. Knows enough to call me a
putz
when she’s narked and
that’s about it. Anyway . . . the other thing the old man passed on to me was something he didn’t feel . . . but like I caught it from his memories . . . I don’t care about
nationalities, he did . . . I don’t care about bein’ British, he did. I can’t explain it. I just grew up that way. Like I was more shaped by his tales of being the Wanderin’
Jew than I was by the streets of London. If London took me in, that was fine. But I took it for granted. I didn’t much think about it. Now that may sound ungrateful to you, you bein’
English an’ all, but that’s the way it was. That’s the way it was for a lot of Jews . . . anywhere that didn’t boot you out was where you stayed. And I always felt it could
have been anywhere. Just so happens it was England, it was London, it was Stepney. Of the three the only one that matters the price of a bag o’fish an’ chips is Stepney.

‘I suppose I should say thank you to England. Took me in, gave me a home. But if it does this to me I won’t forgive it. Me and your zayde spent thirty years building up a business.
How long will it last now?’

‘I can manage. With Manny to do the tailoring.’

‘Manny’s a tailor. He don’t know nothin’ about buyin’. Leastways not in London. And no disrespect to the old boy . . . but the real talent’s Joe. Joe can cut
and sew fit for Savile Row.’

‘Dad, I’ve fiddled your books for you since I was sixteen. I’ll manage.’

‘Kept – not fiddled!’

‘That’s why we’re sitting here filleting the paperwork and sending half of it up in flames, is it? ’Cos we keep straight books? Leave it out, Dad.’

‘As soon as I’m somewhere I’ll write to you. Send you an address.’

‘If they let you.’

‘Maybe we can keep it all together long distance.’

‘Trust me, Dad. You brought me up to have brains, didn’t you?’

‘I brought you up to look after number one.’

‘Yeah . . . well now I’m lookin’ after you.’

Another pause.

They slurped.

Three floors up Hummel lay on his narrow bed. He had taken down his portrait. His suitcase stood packed at the foot of it.
Juif Errant
once more. He lay like an English knight depicted in
brass upon a tombstone, legs crossed at the ankles, hands clasped across his chest. His eyes looked up to the ceiling, slanting down to meet the wall. His eyes looked up to the heaven he had never
perceived, to the God he had never believed in, and his lips mouthed the silent word Job had never uttered, ‘
Wieder
?’

Sunday morning came.

Troy was awoken by a hammering at his door.

Kitty’s head rose up from deep in the sheets.

‘Wossat? Wot time is it?’

‘It’s gone ten. And I’ve no idea who it is, but at this time on a Sunday they can just bugger off.’

Troy tiptoed naked to the window, parted the curtain half an inch and found himself looking down at the top of some bloke’s trilby. The man drew back a couple of paces from the door,
looked down the alley, pulled up his sleeve and looked at his watch. Troy stepped back.

‘Good bloody grief, it’s Steerforth.’

‘Wot?’

‘Steerforth. Outside. On the doorstep.’

‘Wot’s he want?’

‘I’ve no idea. I haven’t set eyes on him since the day he thumped me in the tunnel by the Russian Tea Rooms.’

‘Then don’t answer.’

‘I’m not going to. I’ve two days off. I don’t care what wop or Kraut he wants nicked. He can get somebody else.’

After sex, a bath, more sex (unplanned) and another (colder) bath, Troy caught the Northern line up to Hampstead, and saved on petrol. Lunch with his parents and whatever ad hoc family could be
arranged. Some combination of sisters, brothers-in-law, the odd uncle. But the man sitting clutching a trilby hat in the hallway as Troy let himself in just after noon wasn’t a brother, a
brother-in-law or an uncle. He was a copper.

‘Have you been looking for me? I was at home all morning,’ Troy half-lied. ‘There really was no need . . .’

Steerforth stood up. Knowing the man would not stand in the presence of a junior officer just for the sake of it, Troy turned to the door of the morning room to see who had appeared.

His father said, ‘Come in now, if you would, Chief Inspector.’

And noticing Troy added, ‘You too, Freddie. Your timing seems little short of magic.’

Alex held the door wide, Troy looked at Steerforth, Steerforth looked at Troy.

‘I know what you’re thinking, son. But I didn’t ask for this.’

‘Ask for what?’

‘You mean they didn’t send for you?’

‘Send for me?’

‘O’course not . . . you could hardly have got here from the West End in . . .’

‘Gentlemen, if you would,’ Troy’s father cut Steerforth short.

Steerforth was out of his depth. Rank was no match for class. Troy extended an arm and waved him into the sitting room, past his father to face the assembled Troys. His mother looking ashen, his
father looking solemn, Uncle Nikolai looking tousled as though they had dragged him from his bed for this . . . and Rod looking unreadable – not calm, not anxious, a neutrality that Troy
found baffling. Steerforth pulled out his warrant card.

Troy’s father said, ‘Not necessary, Chief Inspector. No one doubts your identity.’

Steerforth put the card back into his inside pocket, but when the hand emerged it was clutching instead a small brown envelope.

‘Mr Rodyon . . . Aly . . . Aly . . .’ he looked down at the name and was grinding to a halt over the pronunciation of the patronymic when Rod baled him out.

‘Rodyon Alexeyevitch Troy,’ Rod said. ‘That’s me.’

‘It’s a letter of instruction, Mr Troy, telling you to report for internment the day after tomorrow, under the Registration of Aliens Act 1939. I won’t read it out. I’m
quite sure your brother will explain it all to you. It isn’t a warrant. It could be, of course it could be, it’s just that under the circumstances . . . well . . . we didn’t think
it was necessary. I won’t be sending an escort either . . . I didn’t think that was necessary.’

Troy noted the change from plural to singular in the course of Steerforth’s decision-making. Rod took the envelope from Steerforth, slipped out the single sheet of folded foolscap, read it
at a glance and said, ‘10.30 it is. St Pancras Station. I’ll be ready.’

‘Thank you, Mr Troy. Thank you for not making this difficult.’

‘Not making it difficult!’ Troy exploded. ‘What the bloody hell is going on?’

Rank took over from class. Steerforth said quietly, ‘A word outside if you please, Sergeant.’

Troy followed him to the front door, out into the street.

Steerforth turned on him, all but purple with rage, a vein throbbing prominently in his forehead, but his voice controlled – the anger simmering not boiling. The moustache twitching
– again.

‘I tried to tell you, but you don’t bloody listen, do you? I tried to tell you. I didn’t ask for this collar. I’m stuck with it ’cos I follow orders. Now, I accept
that you don’t understand the word “orders”, which is why, in my opinion, you’re a gobshite of a copper, a whippersnapper who’d be filing paperclips if you were on my
team. But you’re not, and I’m stuck with you all the same. But mark my words, son, I did you a big favour today. I could have come along here with a pair of uniform bobbies and dragged
your brother off in a Black Maria. I didn’t. Why? Because I’ve some respect for your father, and I’ve some consideration for your mother, and like it or not, you’re a
copper, and coppers stick together. I hate to say it, but you are one of us. I wish to God you weren’t, but you are. If I were Stanley Onions I’d have you back in civvy street tomorrow
morning. But I’m not Stanley Onions. I’m the poor sod who he stuck with you. Now I suggest you get back in there and explain to them all.’