The first I knew of Mrs Cornelius’s presence at St Mary’s was the distinctive sound of her voice coining from the American wing, her familiar rendering of’A Little of What Yer Fancy Does Yer Good’. I thought at first I had gone mad or that I heard a record. She had been employed to entertain the GIs.
Slightly heavier than when last I had seen her but still able to fit into one of her wonderful sequinned evening gowns, she was as lively as always. When she saw me standing there her face flared with pleasure! The wounded men applauded heartily as she brought her number to a conclusion and ran towards me. I knew exactly what she would say:
‘Blimey, Ivan! It’s ther bad penny again! ‘Ow d’yer do it?’ She was delighted. She represented so much for me, but I think I, too, represented something to her. She thought my ability to survive all vicissitudes was miraculous. I, in turn, knew that, for all her humanity and my God-appointed good fortune, she remained my guardian angel.
We embraced to further enthusiastic applause. Those soldiers were a generous audience. She insisted I not leave the hospital until she finished her engagement. When she was ready I took her across the road to my lodgings, apologising for them. She told me her own digs were not much better since she had lost her ‘soldier’ to a German bomb when they blitzed the old Café de Paris. The West End apartment had been in his name, and she had been given notice. ‘Which woz just as eflin’ well. That caught a bomb too abart a month later!’ She laughed heartily at her good luck.
I was living across the road in Paddington Street at that time. Major Nye had helped me find my flat when I was returned to London. Classified as a friendly alien, I still had to go to the Isle of Man for a year where I met the charming Lord and Lady Mosley. Major Nye also obtained my release and found me a job at St Mary’s Hospital as a maintenance engineer.
Johnny Banks became an MP after the war. He, too, had helped me in 1939. For a while I lived with only temporary papers, working for the big Ford garage on the Harrow Road. I never lost my touch for an engine. After hostilities broke out I presented myself at the War Office to offer my services there. My Land Leviathan and Giant Mole, as well as my superairship, had still to be built, and then was the perfect moment to develop them. But they seemed more interested in my nationality than my plans. Again I found myself embarrassed. Because agreeing with them was the easiest way to go, as Johnny Banks explained, I let the British determine that I was a Polish refugee. A ‘free Pole’ as we used to say. I was still officially married to Mrs Cornelius. After we were united she had no objection to my using that advantage, now that I was at last in her country. ‘After all, Ivan, ya did me ther same favour, and one good turn deserves anover.’ Thus we were able to get a council flat, the first we had in Blenheim Crescent. We needed it. I had been badly disappointed.
In 1947 Johnny Banks and Major Nye’s friend in social services at Westminster Council were instrumental in helping us soon after Labour came to power. Nye agreed the British public had turned its back on Churchill. I was still not then naturalised, so I could not vote. I did, however, understand why things went the way they did. Americans still ask me, ‘How could the British set themselves against the man and the party who got them through the war? Who had defeated Hitler? What on earth was the cause of the Labour landslide?’ I find it hard to explain, myself. We trusted Churchill in war, I say, but not in peace. Even the King and Queen were not so popular in those days. Many knew they had planned to flee to Canada during our ‘darkest hour’. Certainly the royal couple had tried to make peace with Hitler through Lord Halifax, whom Roosevelt favoured as prime minister over Churchill. Halifax was a well-known and committed appeaser. The puritanical Americans liked him because he didn’t drink. Nobody except the public thought Churchill could lead us to victory in 1940, and nobody except the public thought Attlee could make the best of the peace. Attlee gave us the National Health Service, rationalised transportation, school meals and the Old Age Pension. When he did not bring the Golden Age, Churchill was voted back, but by then he was too old. I had the pleasure of meeting him once at the Polish Club. Even when I addressed him in the friendliest of words he was too drunk to speak.
I eventually moved across the road in Blenheim Crescent when Mrs Cornelius’s children were returned to her. After her marriage was annulled she got the larger flat at number 77. Then I lost my place and had to take the present one. Jerry, Frank and Catherine all believed I only married her to be eligible for accommodation. When Catherine decided I was actually their father, I think they understood. Rackman was my landlord for a while in Ladbroke Grove. He was Polish, but a genuine gentleman. Rackman never raised my rent, which was cheap enough, so by 1960 it made no sense to move anywhere else. Chelsea became impossible, as did Paddington and Pimlico. All those places have been gentrified now. I refuse to pay thirty shillings a week for a tiny furnished room and kitchenette!
I tell these young people how it used to be, but they have no desire to learn. They hate the past. It conflicts with their identities. They want everything to be romantic, even the worst of it. The past’s only function is as escape, to comfort them, to confirm their ambitions, their greed. Anything or anyone who contradicts their invented fictions is rejected, through anger, through mockery, through contempt. I try to help them see how it was; how a situation was complicated or hard to define or hard to foresee, and they insist on educating me in their versions of events. Even the camps. They watch TV or go to the pictures and know exactly how it was. They ask me why we did not resist, why we did not notice, why we ‘denied’ the truth.
‘And you are so different?’ I say.
But the past, like minorities, exists only so that they might feel superior.
‘Don’t listen to the effing Pole,’ I hear them say in the pub. ‘There he goes, sounding off again, the old fart.’ You bring them urgent messages. You try to help them. And they laugh at you, or worse.
SIXTY
Some people will exploit the few who possess a genuine desire to connect with their own history. As clairvoyants prey on the bereaved, these cynics prey on lonely men and women. They assume the authority of the dead. Even I have been deceived, and I am the least gullible of people. I am always sympathetic to those who suffer. My life has been one experience of betrayal after another. Yet perhaps the worst occasion was only a few years ago. Not something of which I speak often, just as we do not speak of the camps. Nobody wants to know. Mrs Cornelius herself has never been told the whole story. ‘Not now, Ivan,’ she tells me with a shudder. ‘It puts yer off yer tea.’ Or else it spoils her mood or comes at a wrong moment.
I can give you the perfect example of this kind of self-delusion. Rather shocking, it made me see myself in a thoroughly different light. One should always review one’s own responses and ideas from time to time, for the sake of intellectual clarity as well as one’s moral well-being. One should constantly challenge one’s own presumptions. Die Götter der Finsternis haben ihre Streitmacht gesammelt. Sie reiten auf dem Wind, der nach Western jagt. Die Briten sind schuld. Sie lassen alles Böse herein. Sie dulden den Osten im eigenen Land. Man betrachte die Portobello Road. Eine Kultur kann Licht und Dunkel nicht ewig im Gleichgewicht halten. Persien wusste das. Was haben die Briten aus ihrem Weltreich gemacht? Einen leeren Namen. Und Karthago bleibt bestehen. Der Moloch wird seinen Feuerschlund öffnen: und die Briten werden hineinmarschieren, einen ihrer Songs auf den Lippen. Weg mit ihnen, sie haben es verdient! Es waren schwarz gekleidete Männer und Frauen; wahrscheinlich hatten wir Samstag. ‘Sind sie Jude?’ fragte ein junger Mann auf Russisch. Nennt mich Judas. Oder Petrus. Ich wollte es nicht bestätigen.