“He’s getting himself a degree in economics. Going into business to make real money, not own an African farm. How long do you think those blacks are going to want us English running their country? A handful of Englishmen running a country the size of the British Isles. It’s a fool’s paradise where the sun shines too much and shrivels up the skin. Harry’s family have been in these parts for nine hundred years. Harry wasn’t even born in Africa, let alone his father; Harry was born right here at Hastings Court. They call themselves Rhodesians. They’re Englishmen hiding under those big hats playing big white hunters. If our countries are going to war again for some obscene reason, so be it. We’ve done it all before, though usually we English fight beside you Germans against the French, if that makes any difference to war. You never know, maybe one day we Europeans will come to our senses and support each other instead of killing each other; and when we do, I want my children part of it, not part of some tin-pot country in Africa. Don’t you miss your children, Bergit?”

  “All the time.”

  They looked away from each other, both remembering what their lives were really all about.

  “I hear a car,” said Tina, breaking the momentary silence. “Sounds like the Morgan. I’ll bet they’ve all been to the pub. If Anthony has been perched on the back of the car seat I’ll skin him alive. Why do we never stop worrying about our children?”

  “Because they are all we have to leave behind in the world. They are our immortality. The only way we survive, unless you believe in going to heaven. Klaus says heaven, if it exists, is a lonely place. That inside all of us is too much evil just waiting to get out.”

  “Don’t you believe in the Bible? God’s creation of man?”

  “Darwin’s theory of evolution knocked that into a cocked hat, if that is the right British expression. If God created the world six thousand years ago, how come the dinosaurs became extinct sixty-five million years earlier? I’m agnostic: I don’t know. If there is a god in heaven he doesn’t much care what we do to each other, quite often in his name. You only have to live through a war and its aftermath to have little faith. Look at the Russians after the war and their own civil war. Communism threw religion out the window. Maybe one day they’ll believe again, when communism proves worse than what they had before. No one has found the perfect way to run society and no one ever will; too many conflicting interests.”

  “Come and have a cup of tea. I’ll bet Harry thinks we’ve been talking trivia.”

  Avoiding his mother and the inevitable inquisition, Anthony went to see Mrs Craddock and find out how near it was to lunch; he was starving, having eaten his breakfast what seemed to him hours ago.

  “In the conservatory today, Anthony. Among the plants and flowers. In my opinion it is going to rain at half past two when your lunch will be ready. And keep your paws off that trifle or I’ll have more to say than words.”

  “What are you roasting in the oven?”

  “Chicken.”

  “How many?”

  “Two.”

  “Will that be enough? I’m starving.”

  “Out you go, Anthony. Now!”

  “Smells absolutely delicious. Did I ever tell you, you are the best cook in the whole wide world.”

  “Every time when you are hungry.”

  Half an hour later Harry came across his wife as they all ran into the conservatory out of the rain. He and Klaus were laughing, having bolted the last fifty yards back from the Running Horses to keep from getting wet.

  “You two have a good natter? Thought we’d leave you alone. Do you know, if they didn’t close the pub at two o’clock none of those people would eat their Sunday lunch? Best law we ever made. The men get a good lunch, a good sleep and no hangover. The whole family sitting round the lunch table is the most important gathering in the world… So, what were you two talking about? Servants and children?”

  “Actually religion and the terrible state of the world,” said Tina. “Something you men would not understand further than what you were taught at school.”

  “Bishops was a very good school. Run by the church.”

  “That’s exactly my point. Do you know Mrs Craddock laid lunch in here knowing it was going to rain? How does she always know?”

  “What’s for lunch?”

  “Roast chicken, Dad,” said Anthony, taking his place at the improvised lunch table, fork and knife in his hands on the table held vertical. “Only two of them. I hope there’ll be enough for you.”

  “They are big birds, darling,” said his mother. “Very big. Now put down the knife and fork and wait for lunch like the rest of us.”

  “I tried to have a look inside the oven.”

  “You didn’t perch on the seat did you, Anthony?”

  “Of course not, Mother. Andre’s in love with the new barmaid. Her name’s Millicent. Talked about her all the way home.”

  “Tinus did not drive fast?” Harry asked Anthony.

  “Like a snail. Boring. I counted ten rabbits in the ten acres when we drove by.”

  “So you were perched on the back of the seat,” said Tina.

  “Mum, why do you always worry?… Tinus and Andre have gone with Frank to look at his rabbits.”

  The next morning Tinus Oosthuizen was the first to leave Hastings Court. His Uncle Harry was going to drive the Germans to Croydon Airport and their flight back to Germany later in the morning. Andre was staying, waiting for his rail pass up to London and what he told Tinus was going to be a brilliant career in the RAF, if he could stop himself hurling up before every flight. They agreed they were going to see lots of each other, which was reassuring for both of them.

  “I think he’s a spy,” Andre had said when they shook hands to say goodbye the previous night in Andre’s room. “He’s asked me twice what I will be flying when I join the RAF. Your uncle gave him a queer look a couple of times before they went drinking in the Running Horses. Then they were quite chummy… Don’t forget to get a hundred against Cambridge.”

  “Good to see you again, Andre.”

  “Me too.”

  The first blush of dawn was barely showing Tinus the shape of the trees outside his window as he buttoned up his shirt. His suitcase was packed for his return to Oxford. Twice in the night when he woke, Tinus had heard the owls hooting in the moonlight which shone over the end of his bed; when he had a journey to take the next day Tinus never slept properly, never sinking into deep sleep all night. There was something agitating about a journey whenever he was going.

  As he pulled on his trousers and buttoned himself up he knew there was one last task for him to perform at Hastings Court.

  The corridor outside his room was pitch-dark. No one ever left the electric lights on at night at the Court. Putting on the lights would throw a beam under the bedroom doors and wake people. Feeling his way carrying his suitcase, Tinus began walking down the old corridors, trying not to make the floorboards creak.

  Downstairs he left through the front door. His feet crunched on the gravel where the new dawn showed him the green Morgan all on its own, waiting for him to get in and start the engine. Tinus opened the passenger door and put the suitcase on the near seat. Then he walked away with the birds singing their dawn chorus all around him from the bushes and the trees, most of the calls still foreign to him. On the farm in Rhodesia Tinus knew every bird and animal by its call, the variety far greater than he ever heard in England.

  An animal barked from far away, one clear bark in the quiet early morning: to Tinus, the sound of a bush buck not a dog. A dog always repeated the bark many times, sometimes all night, something Tinus had understood as a child living on the farm in Rhodesia.

  “Probably an old fox,” he said to himself, walking down the last path through the yew trees to the ancient burial ground of the Mandervilles. Tinus wanted to say hello to his great-grandfather Manderville, who had been so important to him during his growing up years on Elephant Walk; especially after his father was shot dead.

  “So much wisdom, Grandfather. So much you said to me still sounds in my head, saving me problems, giving me advice even though you are dead.”

  The new grave had been easy to find among his other ancestors, some sunk so low in the ground the gravestones were only inches above the grass and weeds. Some, Tinus suspected, had gone down forever below the surface. The very old graves of men and women long gone from this earth, without whom he knew he could never have found life.

  It was strange and comforting to be among the graves of his ancestors, only knowing one of their lives, trying to imagine them love and laugh, play and call as children, grow old and grey and finally, exhausted, go to earth.

  “What of those buried far away?” he said to himself. “Grandfather Sebastian killed by the Great Elephant, buried in Africa. All part of my tangled life, of what I am to give my children.”

  Head bowed in front of the new grave and headstone, Tinus paid his respects for a long time as the light of day found its way between the trees, searching out the graves of the Mandervilles.

  Then Tinus went quickly, light of heart, feeling proud as he walked back up the path. At the car he opened the driver’s door of the Morgan, got in and began the drive to Oxford, leaving the old house behind, still asleep, yet to wake to the new day and the parting of so many ways.

  Harry Brigandshaw drove the car into Whitehall just before lunch. He had seen off the von Liebermans at Croydon Airport a few miles south. All of them wondered if they would ever see each other again, leaving Harry sad and silent as the twin-engine aircraft lifted into the air. Losing good friends, he told himself, was far easier than making them.

  The receptionist at the Air Ministry gave him a look of inquiry as he passed the desk on the way to his small office down the far end of the corridor.

  “You have a visitor, Colonel Brigandshaw. He’s been waiting a long time.”

  “Had to go to the airport.”

  Most of the ranks used at the Air Ministry were the new titles adopted by the Royal Air Force after the war when it morphed from the Royal Flying Corps; the RFC had used army ranks and worn Crown uniforms. Harry thought he was the only airman in the building they still called a colonel. In the new way he would have been a group captain, which to Harry did not seem quite right. Maybe, as he said to himself, the new generation of flyers like Andre and Tinus would be familiar with the new ranks; in the meantime he was Colonel Brigandshaw, Royal Flying Corps, Retired.

  Seeing Timothy Kent in his office staring out the window over Horse Guards Parade came as no surprise. Harry had been expecting him, if not so quickly. When the man turned round and saw Harry he looked agitated. The door had been left open as if to hurry Harry up.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting, Tim. Not that I knew you were coming. Had to drop von Lieberman and his wife at Croydon Airport.”

  “So they’ve gone?”

  “Flew away up into the air. I waved to them.”

  “It’s not the uncle we worry about. The cousin is an out and out Nazi.”

  “Cousin Henning has a stutter.”

  “How do you know, Harry?”

  “Sit down, Tim. You’re making me nervous. Nothing is ever quite what it looks to be. I gave him Poling so we shall see if and when hostilities break out. At the end of the visit Klaus gave me his word of honour he would not divulge the information, so we shall see. Luckily the mast is well away from the bunker with the radar screens and the airmen. That much I did not tell him.”

  “He had no idea you were testing him from the start?”

  “At the start I did not even believe you, Tim. You chaps think there is an enemy agent behind every door. Hence the slogan you have hatched up in event of war: ‘walls have ears’. Not very original.”

  “Is he an enemy agent?”

  “Probably. Probably not. How the hell do I know? I’m a farmer from Africa where we don’t find enemy agents behind doors, or behind bushes.”

  “Harry, it’s serious. Information during wartime is the most important asset. If you know what the other bugger is up to you can do something about it. MI6 may not be glamorous but it can win or lose a war. I want to know everything he said.”

  “I gave him my word I would keep my mouth shut.”

  “I can make it an order.”

  “Then go to hell. They may call me colonel at the desk but I left the Royal Flying Corps at the end of 1918 and went home far away, which Klaus suggests is a good idea for me and my family right now. You know, Tim, if Rhodesia ever got into trouble and wanted help, do you think England would come to our aid like we did in 1914?”

  “It’s a colony for goodness sake. Anyway, you’re English. You were born right here along with your family back into antiquity.”

  “We are a self-governing colony in control of our own police and military.”

  “Harry, don’t let’s argue. What did he say?”

  “The one bit I will tell you. Uncle Werner saved the lives of one hundred and sixteen Jews. So make that one out. Now I have a favour to ask you. A friend of my nephew wants to join the RAF.”

  “Why?”

  “Probably because he doesn’t have anything better to do. I suggested it. He’s South African, a Boer, Rhodes Scholar to Oxford. Scored a century against Cambridge last year. Top class rugby player. Can you get him into officer training school for me? An Air Ministry interview? A rail pass from Leatherhead to Waterloo? He’s staying with us at Hastings Court.”

  “Can he fly?”

  “Yes, he can. Rather well, according to my nephew. Just one problem. He hurls before every flight and doesn’t like heights. I need the rail pass today.”

  “So you won’t tell me anything?”

  “Not a word.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Andre Cloete. I’ll write it down.”

  “We need as many pilots as we can get.”

  “I know you do. So now may I do some work? I’m late into the office as it is.”

  Not far down the road in Fleet Street Bruno Kannberg was having his own problems with authority. In the morning when he went into the office and made some routine phone calls to government departments, looking for confirmation or denial on a story he was writing for the Daily Mirror on the number of air raid shelters in London (Bruno’s research had not come up with one, other than the underground train network that was one large air raid shelter if they turned off the electric power to the rails), it was as if every door was slammed shut in his face. No one would talk to him.

  By the time Harry Brigandshaw ate the sandwiches made for him by Mrs Craddock for his lunch, Bruno had phoned every publisher holding a copy of his book on the King Edward abdication that claimed the reason for the King stepping down in favour of his brother George had more to do with the former Prince of Wales’s clique being inclined to fascism as a better alternative to communism, rather than his love for Mrs Simpson and his desire to be with the woman he loved. Suddenly no one wanted to touch Bruno’s book or even talk to him.

  By three o’clock in the afternoon he was standing in Arthur Bumley’s office facing reality and the smirk on his editor’s face.

  “Farting against thunder, Kannberg. Go back to your office. Phone all those publishers you told me had yet to see your manuscript and by tomorrow lunchtime, everything will seem back to normal if you withdraw your book from publication. You have stirred the proverbial shit and likely stumbled on some truth that would gladden Adolf Hitler’s heart. Some minor cover-ups through history have been for the greater good. Dear oh dear, can we believe all we are told? Whatever; the King abdicated and poor brother George has the job, luckily with a woman who makes by far a better queen than a now thrice-married American, however many laughs it might have given Roosevelt, the man of the people, the man with the New Deal. He’s out, Bruno, not Roosevelt, the real or unreal threat eliminated from the body politic and everyone else gets on with the job. I also had a phone call from our own esteemed publisher. Dump your book, Kannberg, or the Mirror dumps you.”

  “Whatever happened to the freedom of the press?”

  “You should know better than to believe in that bit of fiction. It’s only a free press when those with real power want it to be. There are many ways to stop an unpleasant story. We are mere puppets, Kannberg. We do what we are told whether we like it or not. Be grateful for what you made out of the true and unabridged story of Genevieve. Don’t be greedy. How are you enjoying marriage? I’ll bet when it comes to your wife you do what you’re told. Now off you go and make those phone calls. By the by, I still think it’s a damn good book. It’s all timing. Your timing was lousy. Even America hates fascists. I want that air raid shelter story by lunchtime tomorrow. That’ll sell newspapers. Frighten the holy shit out of them when they find out there’s nowhere to hide, which in turn will make Mr Chamberlain and his government pull out its collective finger. And that’s called the power of the fourth estate, the power to rally the people. You can call it your revenge.”

  “I thought the government was doing a cover-up or ignoring the threat?”

  “No, they want you to scratch their arse. Now bugger off.”

  “I get less now I’m married than before.”

  “Don’t cry to me. I warned you of women’s cunning. It’s the only power they’ve got. Ask Mrs Simpson, though my guess is she said he wouldn’t get it unless he married her. Throughout history the power of women has trumped many a king and once launched a thousand ships.”

  “Thank you, Mr Bumley.”

  “My pleasure to help. Just close the door behind you.”

 

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