Geoff lived in Pinner, near David’s Kenton home, and they would often meet for a swim and tennis on Saturday mornings. Afterwards they would sit in a corner of the tennis club bar, talking politics – quietly, for few in the club would have sympathized.
One Saturday in the summer of 1950, Geoff had been telling David about events in Kenya. ‘A hundred and fifty thousand settlers they’ve got there now,’ he said with quiet intensity. ‘It’s bloody chaos. Unemployed families from Durham and Sheffield brought over with promises of free farms and unlimited native labour. They give them a three-month course in farming, then hand them a thousand acres of bush. They wouldn’t have a clue if it weren’t for the blacks. But it’s the blacks’ land. There’s real trouble starting among the Kikuyu. Blood’s going to get spilt. Some of these builders of this proposed new East African Dominion are going to wish they’d never left home.’ He gave one of his angry barks of laughter.
David hesitated, then spoke quietly. ‘Some of the Dominion governments are getting very concerned about what our new government’s doing. The Canadians and New Zealanders are talking about leaving the Empire. They’re very worried in the Office.’ David was being indiscreet, to a degree he would not have been even a year before. He went on to talk about protests from New Zealand about the latest British trade union bans. When David finished Geoff sat looking at him in silence, then whispered, ‘There’s a friend of mine you might like to meet.’
David felt a stab of anxiety as he realized he had been saying too much. ‘I think you’d find views in common,’ Geoff continued. ‘In fact I’m sure you would.’
David looked back at him. Immediately he wondered if Geoff meant someone in the Resistance. With Geoff’s angry restlessness, he recognized he might. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. He thought of Sarah, at home, grieving for their dead son.
Geoff gave a tight little smile, waved an arm. ‘I’m not talking about committing to anything. Just talking to someone who – sees things the way we do. It helps to realize you’re not alone.’
Part of David wanted to say no, change the subject to sport or the weather, end the conversation. But then an angry impatience came over him, chasing away the fear.
Geoff introduced him to Jackson a week later. It was high summer, the sun hot in a cloudless sky. David met Geoff at Hampstead Heath Station and they walked to the top of Parliament Hill. Courting couples strolled along hand in hand, the women in bright, white-skirted summer dresses, the men in open-necked shirts and light jackets. There were families too; children were flying kites, bright colours against the blue sky.
David had been expecting Geoff’s friend to be someone their age, but the man sitting on a bench was in his fifties, with iron-grey hair. He got up at their approach; he was tall and bulky but moved quickly. Geoff introduced him as Mr Jackson and he shook David’s hand with a firm grip. He had big, solid features and keen light-blue eyes. He gave David a broad smile.
‘Mr Fitzgerald.’ He spoke in a voice that Sarah’s mother would have called la-di-da. ‘Delighted to meet you.’ His manner had the easy public-school confidence, what they called effortless superiority, that always made David, the grammar-school boy, feel slightly defensive.
‘Let’s take a turn,’ Jackson said cheerfully.
They walked towards Highgate Ponds. A group of teenage boys in Scout uniform were putting on a gymnastic display; three stood in a row, two more balanced on their shoulders, a sixth climbing slowly to form the pinnacle. Several people were watching. A scoutmaster gave instructions in a quiet voice. ‘Slowly now, distribute your weight carefully, that’s the key.’
Jackson stopped to watch. ‘Goodness me,’ he said quietly. ‘I remember when Scouts used to help old ladies across the road. It’s all gymnastics and military exercises now. Of course they’re afraid of a forced merger with the League of Fascist Youth.’
‘People wouldn’t stand for that,’ David said. ‘They’d take their sons out.’
Jackson laughed softly. ‘Who knows what some people will stand for, these days?’ He turned away, striking out across the heath, Geoff and David following. Jackson, slowing down, spoke quietly to David. ‘Geoff tells me you’re unhappy with the way the poor old country’s going.’
‘Yes, I am.’ David hesitated, then thought, to hell with it. ‘They’ve got away with rigging the election. More and more people are getting arrested under Section 18a. And with Mosley as Home Secretary – the anti-Jew laws – we’ll be as Fascist as the rest of Europe soon.’ He felt himself redden when he spoke of the anti-Jew laws, and glanced quickly at Jackson, but the older man didn’t seem to have noticed. He just nodded, considered for a moment, and then said, ‘Felt like this for long?’
‘I suppose I have. I know this has been building up for years. It’s all caught up with me since the election.’
Jackson looked reflective. ‘You lost a child recently, I believe. An accident.’
David hadn’t expected Geoff to tell him about Charlie. He answered ‘Yes,’ stiffly, giving Geoff a frown.
‘I’m sorry to hear it.’
‘Thank you.’
Jackson cleared his throat. ‘You served in the war, Geoff said.’
‘Yes, in Norway.’
Jackson smiled sadly. ‘The Norway campaign finished Chamberlain. Some say if Churchill had got the premiership at that time, we’d have carried on the war after France fell. I wonder what would have happened then?’
They were walking briskly now; despite his size Jackson did not seem to be out of breath. David said, ‘Norway was a mess. I’d seen men die, the Germans seemed – invincible. After France fell I thought we had to make peace, I thought the Treaty was the only alternative to conquest.’
‘And Hitler promised to leave the Empire alone; many thought that generous. But Churchill said the Treaty would still lead to German dominion and he was right.’ He smiled at David then, a pleasant social smile although his eyes remained sharp. David knew that in a very English way he was being probed, tested. There was something about Jackson that made him guess this man was a civil servant like him, but very senior. He wondered where he was leading. Jackson smiled encouragingly. David took a breath and then dived right in, just as he had from the diving board as a boy.
‘My wife’s a pacifist,’ he said. ‘I used to agree with her. She still maintains that at least we stopped the war. Though she knows Britain’s supporting what’s going on in Russia. Endless bloody murder.’
Jackson stopped and looked out over Highgate Ponds. In the same quiet voice he said, ‘The Germans can never win in Russia. They’ve been fighting for eleven years to realize their goaclass="underline" a state of German settlement stretching from Archangel to Astrakhan, some capitalist semi-colonial Russian state beyond that in the Urals and Siberia. But they’ve never managed it. Every summer they edge a bit further east, they breach parts of the Volga line, every winter the Russians push them back with these new Kalashnikov rifles they’re making beyond the Urals – millions of them, light and effective. And behind the lines, the partisans hold half the countryside. In some places the Germans just control the towns and the railway lines. Do you know what happened after they captured Leningrad ten years ago?’
‘No-one knows that, do they? All we hear is that the Germans keep slowly advancing.’
‘Well, they’re not. As for Leningrad, the Germans didn’t go in, they just surrounded the city and left the population to starve. Over three million people. There’s been complete radio silence from Leningrad since 1942. Nothing, not a cheep. When they took Moscow they turned the population out, put them in camps, and left them to starve. Same with the European Jews. They’re all supposed to have gone to labour camps, somewhere in the East. We’ve seen the newsreels, nice wooden huts with flowers in the window and lawns outside. But no English Jew has ever heard a word from friends or relatives who went there: not a letter, not a postcard. Nothing.’