A Kiss for the Enemy (3 page)

Less happily, John's grandfather had, in 1860, felt an injudicious urge for grandeur on a larger scale. He had, in consequence, tacked on to the other end of the original building a library (the biggest room in the house), a billiard room, and a number of closets and washplaces which earlier generations had found unnecessary and which, although adding to comfort, were unsightly. The windows of these Victorian rooms were large, plain and disproportionate to the original (whose front they extended). Behind the library was a new dining room and extensive kitchens, also added in the Victorian era. Nevertheless, Grandfather Marvell had kept the colour tones of the house's exterior harmonious. He had used the same grey facing-stone, and the general effect was, by 1937, by no means disagreeable. Climbing creeper helped blend the work of one century with another. Like many English houses, Bargate was a hotchpotch, but a hotchpotch with some dignity and a good deal of charm.

John went into the inner hall. A man with hair now greying, clean-shaven, face weather-beaten, lined and kindly, he walked with a slight limp. It was impossible to imagine his quiet, courteous voice saying a hurtful or malicious word. Hilda Marvell smiled up at him from a chair where she was making entries in a notebook on her knee. She had, he knew, been listening to the broadcast ceremony from the Cenotaph in London.

‘Did it come through all right, my love?'

‘Oh yes! It was such a relief to think it was George there – everything bound to be done right. Before, one never knew.'

‘Perhaps that's a little unfair, darling,' said John mildly. ‘His predecessor always struck me as perhaps never happier than when among old soldiers. And I remember seeing him once, in 1917.1 suspect the War was one of his best times.'

Hilda shrugged her shoulders. She had felt little sympathy with the character and the predicament of King Edward VIII. She said,

‘Anthony doesn't agree with me, of course. I was unwise enough to say something of the sort to him and he snapped at me. He thinks our generation turned against someone who could have led us all towards a better future. He thinks –'

At this point, however, Anthony himself came into the inner hall.

‘I hope it's not the wrong day to ask, Mummy,' he said rapidly, ‘but I've just been on the telephone to a friend of mine. He rang up from London and asked if he could come down for the night tomorrow, Saturday. I told him it would be splendid.'

‘Of course it's all right,' said Hilda. ‘Why shouldn't it be, darling? I know we can manage one more.'

‘The thing is,' said Anthony, ‘he's a German. His name is F-F-Frido von Arzfeld. He was at Oxford for a month last term, on a reciprocal visit of some sort. Now he's come over to fence for his university. I told him in the summer to get in touch with us at any time. He's taken it up. He's charming.' He looked defiant. He had never mentioned Frido before.

There was a perceptible silence, momentary but definite. Hilda said,

‘That will be delightful. What university is he at in Germany?'

‘I think he's about to leave. Marburg.'

‘Your sort of age?' asked John.

‘A bit younger. He's done everything, university and all that, very young. Now he's going to start his military service, after Christmas. Of course, they've introduced universal conscription again. Everybody has to do it.'

‘I know that,' said John, a little drily.

‘Well, we shall look forward to seeing him tomorrow,' said Hilda. ‘Marcia will be down this evening. Otherwise we're on our own. Or at least, not quite – Stephen's coming over for
dinner and staying tomorrow night as well. He's on his way back from somewhere on the coast, some speaking engagement.'

Stephen Paterson, a Member of Parliament, was Hilda's younger brother by eight years. She murmured something and left the room. Adjustments would need to be made.

‘Do
you
mind, Dad?'

Anthony looked dissatisfied with the tranquillity in which his initiative appeared to have drowned. He sat down on the same sofa into which his father had subsided with
The Times
and turned to him with a suspicious half-smile. John felt the challenge and went through the motions of turning the paper's pages while replying with what he hoped could be taken as nonchalant detachment.

‘Mind what, old boy?'

‘My asking Frido here. My entertaining a Hun, a Boche. Your words.'

‘Of course not. All that was years ago.'

‘But you still feel it, don't you? You still feel hostility. Mistrust.'

John tried to appear judicious. He knew, and he knew that Anthony knew, that this was indeed so. And recent events –

‘I don't – at least I hope I don't – feel prejudice now. All bad on the other side, all honour with our own. I don't think I ever argued that. But at times – still, one must be patient, humble. Nobody had or has a monopoly of right. And if we can't see each other's virtues as well as vices after twenty years, it's a bad lookout for Europe.'

‘You're a fair man, Dad. But what do you feel in your heart?'

‘I think the thing I feel strongest of all – by far – is that I never want to see a war again. And certainly not against Germany. Nor against anyone else for that matter.'

‘Well, you'll have that in common with Frido, anyway. His great obsession is that we've got to be friends. He sees England
couleur de rose.
'

John considered his son carefully. He was very proud of him. Anthony could be intolerant, hasty and short of patience. What young man of spirit could not? He would, with luck, always have the courage to challenge conventional wisdom while retaining the wit to conclude – and, perhaps, the humility
to admit in due course – where he was wrong. Anthony was a fine-looking young man, John thought complacently, a strong body and an interesting, handsome face. ‘Hilda's son,' his father often said to himself with love, but he felt personal satisfaction too. And what was youth but a time to flex all muscles, particularly those of the intellect, and try all adventures, not excluding those of the mind? John rejoiced in Anthony's natural elegance, in the grace of his movements, in his agility of mind and body. Now Anthony leapt to his feet, mood changed, clouds dissolved, stutter not in evidence.

‘You understand things very, very clearly, Father!' John thought it untrue, but he felt warmed and grateful. He felt blessed. ‘He's a kind-hearted boy,' he said to himself, inadequately.

‘Yes,' said Anthony, ‘Frido thinks we're marvellous. Gets us all wrong of course.' He was smiling now.

‘And what,' asked John, ‘does he think of his Chancellor?' The Nazis had been in power for four years.

‘Of Hitler? Harder to be really sure. His family, I gather, are dead against. They're very
ancien régime
, I suspect, and for them Hitler's a nasty little upstart with a raucous voice and some undesirable friends, that sort of thing. Frido feels a good deal of that, I think. And he's a decent as well as very charming chap. You'll agree, I know. But of course he'd certainly say that they – the Nazis – have done a lot for Germany. And I think they feel that the SA – the Brownshirts – were sorted out in 1934 and the early excesses (as he'd put it) were got under control.' Anthony smiled again. He was recalling Frido.

‘And what are they going to do for the rest of us, does he suppose?' said his father. He did not particularly invite an answer. The question was more comment than interrogation. Muttering how far behind he was with correspondence he moved towards his study. Anthony remained standing, gazing at a large, smouldering log that looked poised to roll forward undesirably. His mind was elsewhere. The dark room enclosed him, rustling, creaking and whispering.

Frido von Arzfeld found it almost impossible to think, during dinner, of anything except the exquisite girl sitting on his left.
On his right was his hostess. Opposite, at the oval table, sat his hostess's brother, Stephen Paterson. At the other end, John Marvell was between his two children, with Marcia on his right, next to Frido, and Anthony between his father and uncle. The table was set in a large bay window in the dining room, itself a part of Grandfather Marvell's improvements, panelled in not unsuccessful imitation of the inner hall.

Marcia had the same smooth, pale skin as her brother, but her hair was brown rather than black and her dark eyes shone where Anthony's more frequently smouldered. Everything about her seemed to glow. It was impossible to imagine her except smiling. She seemed never still, a creature full of dancing movement. Tall – taller than her mother – she was slender, with delicate wrists and ankles. Her voice was gentle like her father's, and rather deep.

Frido's manners were perfect. Familiar by now with English ways, he reckoned he knew which gestures were out of order. He did not raise his glass of claret to Mrs Marvell and he had got over his earlier surprise that his companions were apt to start drinking wine as soon as their glasses were filled. He had replied with easy correctness to his hostess's enquiries about the University in Marburg and felt little surprise that she clearly had never previously heard of it. He had been told that the English, unlike the French, cooked without skill and ate without discrimination. This might, he supposed, often be true, but at Oxford, more often than not, he had lunched and dined in sumptuous style. And here, certainly, the dinner was delicious.

As if reading his thoughts, the voice on his left said,

‘How do you like English cooking, Frido?'

He found himself blushing. Despite practice he had not yet got used to the fact that even unmarried women of good family used first names to strangers within minutes of meeting. Or so it appeared. He had also been told that it was a mark of poor breeding to discuss food or praise it in a private house. Yet here was this divine girl tempting him to do exactly that. This, late during the meal, was the first conversational opening to his left. It unfortunately coincided with a lull in other conversation and a gentle smile towards him by his hostess who had heard the question. His answer would be listened to
by all. It was of absolutely no importance but it would be listened to by all.

‘It is excellent, I think. Some of our dinners that Anthony and I had at Oxford were wonderful. But nothing, Mrs Marvell,' Frido said, turning politely to Hilda, ‘was better than your hospitality this evening.'

‘English beef,' said Hilda, smiling. ‘Unexciting, I'm afraid.'

‘Unexciting.' Frido cogitated on the term. Stephen Paterson did not intend to spend the evening discussing food. A short, plump, ambitious man with a roving eye, he liked to turn every occasion, every contact, to good account, to store useful information, to cull or create impressions. He had a young German captive at his brother-in-law's table and he wanted value from the fact.

‘I imagine the food situation's pretty tricky in Germany isn't it, von Arzfeld? Friend of mine was paying some sort of official visit the other day – Coblenz, I think it was – and found that your Government have decreed on one day in the week there's to be no meat served or eaten! Import-cutting and all that. Can't be very popular.' His voice was loud.

Hilda wondered for the hundredth time how wicked it was to dislike her younger brother so much – she who had loved her elder brother so extravagantly. She would have been unsurprised to learn that parallel reflections were, at the same moment, going through the minds of both her husband and her son.

‘It is true,' said Frido, turning his courteous gaze on Paterson and speaking his slow and somewhat pedantic English, ‘that in Germany at present there is, in every week, a day without meat in the restaurants and so forth. Vegetables are served on those days. The reason for it was explained by our Government. I do not think it is very unpopular. There are some shortages in Germany, yes. It is a question of making our economic position strong and independent. That is what we are told.'

Stephen Paterson helped himself to some fruit.

‘Your economic position might be stronger if you didn't spend so much money on expanding your Army, your Navy and your Air Force. Isn't that true?'

John Marvell felt uneasy. This young man was Anthony's
friend. John couldn't let him be hectored about his own country's policies when in a foreign land.

‘Well –' he said. But Frido showed no sign of embarrassment or discomfiture.

‘I believe that is so. Although it is also true, I think, that all the work and the manufactures have meant more people active and earning and spending money. For a little.'

‘For a very little,' said Stephen, ‘until the day of reckoning comes. We all have to trade. We all have to make things to sell to other people. Not guns for soldiers to carry on their shoulders in those big parades of yours.' His tone was intentionally goading.

‘But I think,' said Frido, ‘that very many German people want to see our soldiers with guns on their shoulders – in those big parades of ours.' He smiled as he said it. The silence at the table became more pressing. The conversation had assumed a new dimension.

John Marvell had pushed a decanter of port to his left hand. Anthony, in the aftermath of jaundice, was drinking nothing. Stephen helped himself. Hilda disliked the talk's turn and tried to catch Marcia's eye, to draw her from the table. Then she would be able to say, ‘Coffee in the drawing room tonight, John. Please don't be too long.' But Marcia was looking at Anthony. Hilda intercepted a grimace.

‘Well,' said Stephen, ‘you've spent some time at Oxford. You know by now, if you didn't know before, that Herr Hitler's got people very worried. Very worried indeed.'

Frido looked attentive. At moments like this he found himself, quite inappropriately, thinking of his own family and home. There his father, who had lost an arm in that same ‘
Kaiserschlachf
in which Hilda's brother had died, lived the life of a recluse, conscientiously tending the woods he loved, his family's inheritance. The older von Arzfeld took part in neither social nor public life, an old soldier ten years John Marvell's senior, contemptuous of demagogy, mistrustful of politicians all. ‘They would get on with each other, those two,' thought Frido. Frido had lost his mother in 1920, in the hungry years when his sister, Lise, was born. His elder brother, Werner, had been six years old. A withdrawn, brooding father and a house empty of their mother had given to the children
an austere childhood, distinguished by their love for each other and for Arzfeld, its woods and meadows, small streams and ancient house walls.