‘Oh?’ Ursula said, distracted by a particularly broody hen. ‘I had a baby.’
‘What?’
‘I’m a mother,’ Izzie said, seemingly unable to resist sounding dramatic.
‘You had a baby in California?’
‘No, no,’ Izzie laughed. ‘Years ago. I was just a child myself. Sixteen. I had him in Germany, I was sent abroad in disgrace, as you can imagine. A boy.’
‘Germany? And he was adopted?’
‘Yes. Well, more like given away. Hugh saw to it all so I’m sure he found a very good family. But he made him a hostage to fortune, didn’t he? Poor Hugh, he was such a rock at the time, Mother would have nothing to do with it. But that’s the thing, he must have known the name, where they lived, etcetera.’ The hens were making a dreadful racket now and Ursula said, ‘Let’s get out of here.’
‘I always thought,’ Izzie said, taking Ursula’s arm and walking her round to the lawn, ‘that one day I would talk to Hugh about what he did with the baby and then perhaps try and find him. My son,’ she added, trying out the word as if for the first time. Tears started to roll down her face. For once, her emotions seemed from the heart. ‘And now Hugh’s gone and I’ll never be able to find the baby. He’s not a baby, of course, he’s the same age as you.’
‘Me?’ Ursula said, trying to grasp this idea.
‘Yes. But he’s the enemy. He might be up there in the sky’ – they both automatically glanced up at the blue autumn sky, empty of friend and foe alike – ‘or fighting in the forces. He might be dead, or going to die if this wretched war goes on.’ Izzie was sobbing openly now. ‘He might have been brought up as a Jew, for God’s sake. Hugh wasn’t an anti-Semite, quite the opposite, he was great friends with – your neighbour, what’s his name?’
‘Mr Cole.’
‘You do know what’s happening to the Jews in Germany, don’t you?’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ Sylvie said, materializing suddenly like a bad fairy. ‘What are you making such a fuss about?’
‘You should come back to London with me,’ Ursula said to Izzie. The Luftwaffe’s bombs would be more straightforward for her to deal with than Sylvie.
November 1940
MISS WOOLF WAS treating them to a little piano recital. ‘Some Beethoven,’ she said. ‘I’m no Myra Hess, but I thought it would be nice.’ She was correct on both counts. Mr Armitage, the opera singer, asked Miss Woolf if she could accompany him if he sang ‘Non più andrai’ from The Marriage of Figaro and Miss Woolf, particularly game this evening, said she would certainly have a go. It was a rousing performance (‘unexpectedly virile’ was Miss Woolf’s verdict) and no one objected when Mr Bullock (no surprise) and Mr Simms (quite a surprise) joined in with a rather ribald version.
‘I know this one!’ Stella said, which was true of the tune but not the words as she sang enthusiastically, ‘Dum-di-dum, dum-di-dum, dum-didum-dum,’ and so on.
Their post had recently been augmented by two wardens. The first, Mr Emslie, was a grocer and had come from another post, having been bombed out of his house, his shop and his sector. He, like Mr Simms and Mr Palmer before him, was a veteran of the previous war. The second addition was in possession of a more exotic background. Stella was one of Mr Bullock’s ‘chorus girls’ and confessed (readily) to being a ‘striptease artiste’ but Mr Armitage the opera singer said, ‘We’re all artistes here, darling.’
‘What a bloody fairy that man is,’ Mr Bullock muttered, ‘put him in the army, that would sort him out.’ ‘I doubt it,’ Miss Woolf said. (And it did rather beg the question why the strapping Mr Bullock himself had not been called up for active service.) ‘So,’ Mr Bullock concluded, ‘we’ve got a Yid, a pansy and a tart, sounds like a dirty music-hall joke.’
‘It is intolerance that has brought us to this pass, Mr Bullock,’ Miss Woolf reproved him mildly. They had all been decidedly tetchy – even Miss Woolf – since Mr Palmer’s death. They would be better off saving their grudges for peacetime, Ursula thought. It wasn’t just Mr Palmer’s death, of course, but also the lack of sleep and the relentless nightly raids. How long could the Germans keep it up? For ever?
‘And, oh, I don’t know,’ Miss Woolf said quietly to her as she made tea, ‘it’s just the general sense of dirtiness, as if one will never be clean again, as if poor old London will never be clean again. Everything is so awfully shabby, you know?’
It was a relief, therefore, that their little impromptu concert party was good-natured, everyone seemingly in better spirits than of late.
Mr Armitage followed his Figaro with an unaccompanied and impassioned rendition of ‘O mio babbino caro’ (‘How versatile he is,’ Miss Woolf said, ‘I always thought that was a woman’s aria’) that they all applauded wildly. Then Herr Zimmerman, their refugee, said he would be honoured to play something for them.
‘And then are you going to strip, sweetheart?’ Mr Bullock asked Stella, who said, ‘If you want,’ and winked in complicity at Ursula. (‘Trust me to get stuck with a load of bolshie women,’ Mr Bullock complained. Frequently.)
Miss Woolf said, looking worried, ‘Your violin is here?’ to Herr Zimmerman. ‘Is it safe here?’ He had never brought his instrument to the post before. It was quite valuable, Miss Woolf said, and not just from a monetary point of view, for he had left his entire family behind in Germany and the violin was all he had from his former life. Miss Woolf said that she had had a ‘harrowing’ late night ‘chat’ with Herr Zimmerman about the situation in Germany. ‘Things are terrible over there, you know.’
‘I know,’ Ursula said.
‘Do you?’ Miss Woolf said, her interest piqued. ‘Do you have friends there?’
‘No,’ Ursula said. ‘No one. Sometimes one just knows, doesn’t one?’
Herr Zimmerman produced his violin and said, ‘You must forgive me, I am not a soloist,’ and then announced, almost apologetically, ‘Bach. Sonata in G Minor.’
‘It’s funny, isn’t it,’ Miss Woolf whispered in Ursula’s ear, ‘how much German music we listen to. Great beauty transcends all. Perhaps after the war it will heal all too. Think of the Choral Symphony – Alle Menschen werden Brüder.’
Ursula didn’t answer as Herr Zimmerman had raised his bow, poised for performance, and a deep hush fell as if they were in a concert hall rather than a rundown post. Some of the silence was due to the quality of the performance (‘Sublime,’ Miss Woolf judged it later. ‘Really beautiful,’ Stella said) and some out of respect perhaps for Herr Zimmerman’s refugee status, but there was also something so spare about the music that it left plenty of room for one to engage deeply with one’s thoughts. Ursula found herself dwelling on Hugh’s death, his absence more than his death. It was only a fortnight since he died and she was still expecting to see him again. These were the thoughts she had put away for a future time and now the future was suddenly on her. She was relieved not to be embarrassed by tears, instead she was plunged into an awful melancholy. As if sensing her emotions, Miss Woolf reached out and gripped her hand firmly. Ursula could feel that Miss Woolf herself was almost vibrating with emotion.
When the music finished there was a moment of pure, profound silence, as if the world had stopped breathing, and then instead of praise and applause the peace was broken by the purple warning – ‘bombers within twenty minutes’. It was rather odd to think that these alerts were coming from her own Region 5 War Room, sent by the girls in the teleprinter room.