INDIFFERENT HEROES Page 2

  Judith watched her daughter with affection not unmixed with scepticism. Stanley, who expected a lot of his children, must insure himself against disillusion by equating expectation with performance. In spite of one or two shocks over recent years, he still persisted in the hope that, since he could not change, they would adjust to his need. Judith saw her children’s faults clearly, but did not worry about them unduly. Hers was a stabilizing, if not always sympathetic, influence. ‘You’ve got a button coming loose,’ she interrupted Claire’s recital. ‘Come here, before you lose it.’

  Stanley Fairley said to Louise, ‘Where is Alice?’

  ‘She’s reading to the children.’

  ‘But she should be here with us. They should all be here.’

  Louise got up. ‘You can have the kids. But Alice is going to help me in the kitchen.’

  When the children came running into the room, it was Ben who claimed their immediate attention. He delighted in young creatures; only those old enough to compete with him got the rough side of his tongue.

  In the kitchen, Louise was studying her sister. They had been good companions, but Louise had been unable to understand what had happened to Alice during the last few years. ‘I can’t see why she has worked herself up into this dreadful state about Katia,’ she had said to Judith. ‘It’s not as if there is anything she can do about it.’ Louise did not believe in crying over things which could not be undone. Had she been different, her marriage would have suffered. She said to Alice, ‘There’s someone here I recognize.’ She was delighted to see that sunnier companion she had loved so well. ‘Welcome back.’

  Alice, who felt she had changed almost out of recognition during the last weeks, wished she had been issued with uniform to clothe her new personality.

  ‘You’re going to like it, then, are you?’ Louise asked.

  ‘It’s marvellous! I’ve never felt so free.’

  Louise made a wry face. She had purchased freedom at a greater cost. Now, it seemed that she, who had first broken the mould, was to be the prisoner while Alice became the venturer. She was not a grudging person, however, and as she looked at Alice, she had real hopes for her. Alice’s was not a beautiful face. But where did beauty ever get a woman save into trouble? This was a good- natured face, more ready for laughter than tears; the face of someone with whom men would feel comfortable. Men were going to need quite a bit of comfort in the coming months.

  ‘Mind you make the most of it.’

  ‘Yes, I must, I must!’ Alice meant this with all her heart, and yet she had really very little idea of what it was she expected from the war. It sometimes seemed to her that life was like a film shown the wrong way round; so that when the war was over, she would come back to this moment in the kitchen with Louise, and she wouldn’t know until then what it had all been about.

  Louise said, ‘No more nonsense about Kashmir?’

  Alice frowned. Kashmir, that hidden house in Shepherd’s Bush, had had a special significance for her in her adolescence. She had had glimpses of it from the branches of a tree in the garden of her home. It lay, surrounded by green lawns and gardens, walled like a city, beyond the boundaries of time, beckoning, unattainable. At this stage in her life, Alice was concerned with the attainable. She said, ‘I don’t think about Kashmir now.’

  ‘That’s all to the good. You were a bit dotty about it once. In fact, you have had a number of dotty spells. So watch out.’

  Alice went into the larder. By the time she came out carrying a bowl of trifle, Louise had turned her mind to more immediate matters. ‘Did you know that Mummy plans to learn to drive an ambulance?’

  ‘Mummy!’ Ambulance driving should be left to young people like Daphne.

  ‘And Daddy, of course, is going to win the war on the Home Front.’ Louise spoke with more affection of her father than her mother. ‘And you, Louise, what will you do?’

  ‘I shall look after the children and knit socks for soldiers.’

  Alice laughed, sure that life would always have something special in store for Louise.

  ‘It’s all very well for you to laugh.’ Louise handed Alice a tray with the trifle on it and individual jellies for the children. ‘What excitement can there be here when everyone who is young and healthy has gone rollicking off abroad?’

  They went back to the sitting room where their father was talking about the sinking of the Rawalpindi. ‘The gallantry of that little ship . . .’

  ‘She wasn’t a little ship,’ Ben said irritably. ‘She was a converted liner – 17,000 tons, in fact.’

  ‘She was no match for battle cruisers,’ Stanley persisted.

  ‘Her armaments weren’t,’ Ben conceded. ‘But she was a bigger boat.’ He could foresee years of heroism ahead, and was resolved to take an early stand against it.

  ‘Granny’s taken her teeth out,’ James said, sidling up to his mother.

  ‘Well, don’t look, darling,’ Louise replied. ‘I expect she’s got a pip stuck. She’ll put them back soon.’

  Catherine was sitting astride her father’s leg, playing ‘Ride a Cock Horse to Banbury Cross’. Guy’s adoration of the child was almost painful to see. Claire was being nice to Aunt May in a rather lofty way, illustrating the fact that she was the clever one of the girls by talking about a Neanderthal site in Acton. Aunt May, pleased and bewildered, was giving little gasps, interspersed with inappropriate titters.

  When they had finished eating, they gathered round the piano to sing. Claire played, and the children occasionally reached out a hand to press down a note. ‘We must sing Ben’s song,’ Alice said. Ben’s song was ‘Marching through Georgia’. He had once claimed that his American father had been a descendant of General Sherman. This afternoon, for some reason he could not understand, it seemed important to put Alice straight on this matter before she departed to play her part with those who go down to the sea in ships, and do business in great waters.

  ‘I’m not really related to him.’

  ‘Oh Ben! And I always believed it.’

  ‘You mustn’t believe everything a man tells you, Alice, or you’ll end up in trouble.’

  He, too, had grown up in a strict Methodist home, and now, in spite of himself, there was a shade of puritanical severity in his tone. Alice flushed. Really, she thought, Ben was becoming rather tiresome. Or perhaps she was more sophisticated? She had once been impressed by him; with that hooked nose and chiselled mouth and general air of controlled ferocity, she had imagined him to be a person one could trust in a tight corner. But might not other qualities be more serviceable? How much of life is spent in a tight corner? She turned away and joined in singing, ‘We’re Going to Hang Out the Washing on the Siegfried Line’.

  Stanley Fairley, more than a shade puritanical, did not like the song although he approved of the sentiment. He followed Louise out of the room when she went to prepare the children’s bath.

  ‘I would have liked us to sing a hymn,’ he said. ‘I suppose that would spoil the party?’

  Once, he would have insisted, and that would have been an end to it. But the foundations on which he had based his authority had been shaken, first by Louise’s pregnancy, and then by the disappearance of Katia Vaseyelin. He was more prone than ever now to fits of depression, when he tended to look helpless and vulnerable, as the very dominant can if the power which drives them inexplicably fails. Louise was touched to see him so tentative. She admired him because, however wounded he might be by life, he would always rouse himself for another attack. She did not regard the targets of his attacks as important. Louise would have identified wholeheartedly with Don Quixote: it was the tilting which signified, not the windmills. Now, she laid her cheek against her father’s and said, ‘Of course we shall sing a hymn.’

  When they returned to the sitting room, she announced, ‘We’re going to sing “Eternal Father” – for Alice, now she’s a sailor.’

  They all sang, and Ben, once he had decided it was a bit of a joke, put an arm round Alice’s sho
ulder and gave voice in a lusty baritone:

  ‘O Trinity of love and power,

  Our brethren shield in danger’s hour;

  From rock and tempest, fire and foe,

  Protect them whereso’er they go . . .’

  ‘Are you coming home with us, darling?’ Stanley asked Alice when the party broke up soon after six. ‘Rumpus would love to see you.’

  ‘I’ve got to be back in quarters by ten, and I’m meeting Ted at the Corner House first.’

  ‘Is that your old Zeeta’s boy friend?’ Louise asked.

  ‘He’s in the Rifle Brigade now.’

  ‘How sickening!’ Claire exclaimed. ‘I shall marry a pacifist.’ When they reached the main road, she insisted on hurrying ahead, saying she must take Rumpus out for his walk.

  ‘Look after yourself, my love,’ Judith said to Alice.

  ‘I’ll be all right. But if anything ever did happen, you wouldn’t have to be sad, you know. This is the most important thing in my life.’

  ‘I expect we’d squeeze out a tear,’ Judith said drily.

  Stanley groaned. ‘Don’t speak of such things!’

  After they had seen Alice on to her bus, Judith and Stanley decided to walk home; and Claire, who in reality was too nervous to go far on her own, joined them. Stanley was excited by the evening and wanted to relive parts of it which had particularly moved him. Judith was thinking of the family breaking up. She comforted herself with the thought that it had held together despite Louise’s bombshell, so it would probably survive the present dislocation.

  She had sometimes wondered how long Louise would continue to love this rather dull young man, and she had thought she had seen signs of tension. Now, here he was, bright as new in his uniform! She hoped Alice would not come home with something of the same kind in navy blue. Give me Ben any day, she thought; cross-grained he might be, but there was the makings of a man there!

  ‘It was a very good evening, wasn’t it?’ Stanley said, as they came to their own home. ‘We’re a lucky family.’ He did not look at the house next door where the Vaseyelins, who were not a lucky family, lived.

  Chapter Two

  3 September 1939-February 1940

  On the Sunday that war broke out, Alice and Claire had stayed home to listen to Mr Chamberlain’s broadcast, while their mother and father went to chapel. On this momentous occasion, Mr Fairley was content that his daughters should be involved in the affairs of the material world while he and his wife attended to matters spiritual.

  Mr Chamberlain sounded very sad, and Alice and Claire sat in the living room looking solemn as they listened. When the air raid siren sounded almost immediately after the broadcast, they put saucepans on their heads, and sat in the cupboard under the stairs. Alice was surprised by her own composure. Soon, however, she began to feel rather silly. Claire, who did not like enclosed spaces, said she would ‘rather die than stay here any longer’. They went into the front garden. Jacov Vaseyelin was leaning over his gate. He pointed to the sky where a barrage balloon was lofting itself like some heraldic creature floating on its back. ‘Pretty!’

  The man who lived in the house opposite was herding his complaining family into a car. He called out to Alice and Claire, ‘You had better come with us. We’re getting out into the country.’ He was in a panic. They looked at him with disfavour, and declined the invitation. Later, when their parents returned from chapel, calm and smiling, they felt proud of them, as though a battle had already been won. The all-clear sounded without anything having happened. Mr Fairley said, ‘I expect that was just to get us used to the idea.’

  Soon after this, Jacov and his brothers went out. An hour later, Mrs Vaseyelin arrived at the Fairleys’ front door to say she had mislaid her front door key and could not get into the house. Stanley Fairley had to climb through the larder window. This was not the first time he had had to do this. Mrs Vaseyelin’s difficulties did not stop with her front door key. She ran out of money. At one time, this was something she would not have acknowledged. Gradually, however, the barrier of pride which had held her aloof from her neighbours was breaking down. She would come to the Fairleys late in the evening, asking if they could lend her money for the gas meter. Stanley Fairley would oblige, but when she had departed he would rage about her behaviour. A compassionate man, he was aware that his anger was out of all proportion to the provocation.

  If ever there was a woman in need of Christian charity, that woman was surely Mrs Vaseyelin. She seemed one of those marked from birth for ill-fortune. Her father was Heinrich Steine, a German Jew, who married a Russian girl who had Jewish blood. The daughter of this union was blessed with a Slavonic beauty – broad cheekbones, big, hollowed eyes, and a quite unexceptional nose. As a child she spent much of her time with her grandparents in Russia. Here, she met and married the youngest son of Count Gregori Vaseyelin. His parents made no secret of their antipathy for the Jews. Consequently, communication with the German family had almost ceased by the time that war broke out in 1914. It was only with the coming of the Revolution that the importance of relatives abroad – and rich ones, at that – became apparent. Although Stefan Vaseyelin was reluctant to live in the same country as his wife’s parents, he was prepared to accept financial assistance, on the grounds that in the past the parents had ‘done little enough for their daughter’. The Vaseyelin family struck camp in Lithuania. By this time, their beloved daughter, Sonya, was dead. They had one other child, Jacov. A daughter, Katia, was born in 1920. By 1923, warned that their lives were in danger, they had fled to Poland. Here, twin boys were born. Soon, they again had reason to fear for their safety. Avoiding Germany, as a matter of pride rather than prudence, they came eventually to England in 1926. Nine years of deprivation and fear – and the close proximity of young children – had put intolerable strains on a marriage which required, if it was to survive, a spaciousness of living in which the partners could be distanced from each other. Mr Vaseyelin lived apart from his family, leaving his wife to cope with a situation which was quite beyond her capabilities.

  The trials which she had undergone had drained her vitality. By the time she came to live in Shepherd’s Bush, she seemed insubstantial as a ghost, leaving only a faint trace on her surroundings. So she continued for many years. Then, in 1936, came the news that her Jewish parents had been taken away by the Nazis to an unknown destination; and her surviving daughter, Katia, who had been staying with them, had also disappeared. At first, it seemed the shock had loosed her already tenuous grip on life. Then, a year later, Anita, the old family nurse, who had accompanied her through all her trials, died, leaving her bereft of her one support. Surprisingly, instead of withdrawing entirely from the world, which would have been sad, but no inconvenience to anyone save herself, she began to make her presence known.

  She involved her neighbours not in her grief, which might have been interesting, but in the minor mischances of her daily life, which was tiresome. The woman who had only ventured out in the evenings to meet her husband after he had finished playing the violin outside a tube station or the Shepherd’s Bush Empire, had been a source of mystery and speculation. The person who was forever in need of small change, or help over a lost key, a misplaced milk book, was merely a nuisance. They thought she was going to pieces. In fact, she was making a last attempt to claw her way back to life, to find some point of reference, a human contact. Unfortunately, at this time, most people were overloaded with worries of their own as war drew nearer – the gas masks were handed out, the sandbags began to pile up, the Anderson shelters were delivered. How could they be expected to notice that a struggle of a different kind was taking place in this alien, wraithlike woman? At the most, she met with exasperated kindness; but no arms were outstretched, no doors flung wide. And indeed, had this happened, it was doubtful whether she would have known how to respond. When one well-meaning neighbour took her to a meeting of the WVS, she told Judith Fairley disdainfully, ‘The people were very boring and spent the evening packing
clothes for evacuees.’

  Stanley Fairley reacted to Mrs Vaseyelin as if she had the plague. He knew that he must not turn from her if he was to retain his self-respect; but whenever he was in contact with her he feared her slow contagion. In her house, he experienced something akin to panic. The Vaseyelins were victims. A sense of impending evil hung around their house. Mr Fairley was much concerned with matters of right and wrong, on which he was usually ready to risk a pronouncement; but he was not well-equipped to deal with evil.

  ‘She must have money!’ he fumed to Judith, after one late evening visit from Mrs Vaseyelin. ‘Jacov is supposed to be so successful in the film world, now.’ He adhered to the view that films, by and large, were sinful, and that the wages of sin were invariably high.

  ‘I’m never sure what Jacov actually does,’ Judith said. ‘And, in any case, I don’t think Mrs Vaseyelin is short of money so much as company. She comes in here when she gets desperate.’

  He gazed at her in dismay. ‘You’re not going to ask her in?’

  ‘No.’ Judith was not in the habit of asking her neighbours in. She was prepared to help when help was needed, and to keep an eye on the house to make sure that Mrs Vaseyelin was up and about. Further than that, she had no intention of going. Years of running a house had made her ruthless in the matter of ensuring that her time was not wasted.

  The subject of the Vaseyelins came up when Ben Sherman was visiting the Fairleys.

  ‘I don’t know what she will do when Jacov is called up,’ Mr Fairley said. ‘He does a lot of the cooking.’

  Mrs Vaseyelin took no part in the running of the house. The shopping was done by the twins, Boris and Nicolai, who were in their last year at school.

  ‘Do they get a good meal?’ Ben asked. He was not so much concerned with the welfare of the younger Vaseyelins as with Judith’s refusal to be involved. There was a gritty determination in Judith which Ben admired. She was holding out against the demands of universal motherhood; just as he was holding out against the idea that young men should be in a hurry to join up before they were conscripted.