acquaintance. I hardly had any contact with the rest of the family.”
“Like I say, they seemed decent as you or I. Made no fuss when my Les was putting up the summer house at the back and got building sand all over their roses. Laughed it off. I remember him saying, Mrs. Stevens, it just doesn’t matter. Put my Les’s back out, though, it did. He’s upstairs now. Asleep, most probably. Separate rooms, we are, since he had that trouble.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Mrs. Stevens. But when they came to the house, was it the KSG or did—”
“—and you’d never have known, would you, to look at her?”
“Her? You mean…?”
“Ah…” Mrs. Stevens slaps her hand flat down on the table and leans forward, her brown eyes gleaming, almost childlike in her excitement. “So you still don’t know the truth of it? Well, that’s understandable, I suppose, cos, just like they say, you really never can tell. I mean, even you—I’ll be honest, Mr. Brook—it crossed my mind till I got a good look at you out of the dark. You can’t be too careful, can you?”
“No. I suppose not. I’m sorry, Mrs. Stevens, but I’m still confused.”
“Her real name, it seems, was something Polish before she married. All xs and ys and zs. Her parents came over here after the War, changed it to something proper.” She hurrumphs. “Hood, I think it was—but even that doesn’t quite right, does it?”
“I suppose they were thinking of Robin.”
“Robin?”
“Don’t mind me, Mrs. Stevens.”
“Not that I’ve got anything against the Serbs in their own country.”
“You mean Poles?”
“Yes. And a few of them over here—it’s understandable that they want to come, isn’t it—just as long as they don’t make themselves a burden, earn a decent living, talk like we do and don’t bother our children and keep themselves to themselves and make a proper effort to fit in.”
“So what was the problem?”
“She was a Jew, wasn’t she. All these years they’ve been living next door and acting all normal and hiding it from us. I mean, it’s the deceit I really can’t stand. And he must have known. Must have been in it with that job of his, and helped her fake the papers when they married. Her with coming round through that door in a sunhat sometimes to give me a few extra cuttings for the rockery Les was working on.” Mrs. Stevens raises her shoulders and shudders theatrically. “To think of it. It’s the dishonesty. And her nothing but a dirty little Jew.”
The cuckoo clock whirrs and pings. A wooden bird with glass eyes sticks out its head and stares down at us for a moment as it toots breathlessly. Eleven o-clock already.
It’s far later than I’d expected.
3
C LOUDS SWEEP IN ACROSS Oxford, thick and grey as wet cement. Rain brims over the low surrounding hills and washes away the hope of what had promised to be another spectacular summer. Cars hiss by on gleaming streets. Pedestrians dodge cascades from sluicing gargoyles. Queues of galoshes, wet coats and sodden umbrellas fill the doorways beneath college arches with a sick, rubbery smell.
Ascot is a wash-out; horses and high-heeled women sink deep in the paddock, hats are ruined and Best Boy, the King’s own horse and hottest favourite in years, pulls up lame in front of the Royal Box in a sea-spray of mud; a story that fills the front pages of next morning’s damp-at-the-edges newspapers. In the whitewashed yard of Oxford’s town prison on the hissing grey dawn, two men are hanged for their part in an attempted mail robbery. But few turn up to watch, and it barely makes page five of that evening’s Oxford Mail.
In Honduras, the British prefix lost to revolution in 1919 is restored when General Avetin succeeds in a bloody coup and asks to re-join the Empire. A car bomb in the Trans-Jordan kills fifteen German League of Nations soldiers. Plebiscites in the Gold Coast and Rhodesia confirm their population’s acceptance of newly-restored
“Like I say, they seemed decent as you or I. Made no fuss when my Les was putting up the summer house at the back and got building sand all over their roses. Laughed it off. I remember him saying, Mrs. Stevens, it just doesn’t matter. Put my Les’s back out, though, it did. He’s upstairs now. Asleep, most probably. Separate rooms, we are, since he had that trouble.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Mrs. Stevens. But when they came to the house, was it the KSG or did—”
“—and you’d never have known, would you, to look at her?”
“Her? You mean…?”
“Ah…” Mrs. Stevens slaps her hand flat down on the table and leans forward, her brown eyes gleaming, almost childlike in her excitement. “So you still don’t know the truth of it? Well, that’s understandable, I suppose, cos, just like they say, you really never can tell. I mean, even you—I’ll be honest, Mr. Brook—it crossed my mind till I got a good look at you out of the dark. You can’t be too careful, can you?”
“No. I suppose not. I’m sorry, Mrs. Stevens, but I’m still confused.”
“Her real name, it seems, was something Polish before she married. All xs and ys and zs. Her parents came over here after the War, changed it to something proper.” She hurrumphs. “Hood, I think it was—but even that doesn’t quite right, does it?”
“I suppose they were thinking of Robin.”
“Robin?”
“Don’t mind me, Mrs. Stevens.”
“Not that I’ve got anything against the Serbs in their own country.”
“You mean Poles?”
“Yes. And a few of them over here—it’s understandable that they want to come, isn’t it—just as long as they don’t make themselves a burden, earn a decent living, talk like we do and don’t bother our children and keep themselves to themselves and make a proper effort to fit in.”
“So what was the problem?”
“She was a Jew, wasn’t she. All these years they’ve been living next door and acting all normal and hiding it from us. I mean, it’s the deceit I really can’t stand. And he must have known. Must have been in it with that job of his, and helped her fake the papers when they married. Her with coming round through that door in a sunhat sometimes to give me a few extra cuttings for the rockery Les was working on.” Mrs. Stevens raises her shoulders and shudders theatrically. “To think of it. It’s the dishonesty. And her nothing but a dirty little Jew.”
The cuckoo clock whirrs and pings. A wooden bird with glass eyes sticks out its head and stares down at us for a moment as it toots breathlessly. Eleven o-clock already.
It’s far later than I’d expected.
3
C LOUDS SWEEP IN ACROSS Oxford, thick and grey as wet cement. Rain brims over the low surrounding hills and washes away the hope of what had promised to be another spectacular summer. Cars hiss by on gleaming streets. Pedestrians dodge cascades from sluicing gargoyles. Queues of galoshes, wet coats and sodden umbrellas fill the doorways beneath college arches with a sick, rubbery smell.
Ascot is a wash-out; horses and high-heeled women sink deep in the paddock, hats are ruined and Best Boy, the King’s own horse and hottest favourite in years, pulls up lame in front of the Royal Box in a sea-spray of mud; a story that fills the front pages of next morning’s damp-at-the-edges newspapers. In the whitewashed yard of Oxford’s town prison on the hissing grey dawn, two men are hanged for their part in an attempted mail robbery. But few turn up to watch, and it barely makes page five of that evening’s Oxford Mail.
In Honduras, the British prefix lost to revolution in 1919 is restored when General Avetin succeeds in a bloody coup and asks to re-join the Empire. A car bomb in the Trans-Jordan kills fifteen German League of Nations soldiers. Plebiscites in the Gold Coast and Rhodesia confirm their population’s acceptance of newly-restored
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