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  Fred covered this area once every five weeks, close-to-home journeys by train, farther ones by the Wolseley, spending one out of four at Villa Borghese. Most of the boarding-houses and ‘private residential hotels’ were closed for the duration, but the railway ones were still patronised by travellers. For the time being, his petrol allowance was about the same, leaving enough over from his circuit to take the family for a run on Sunday. The signposts had been taken down, a crackpot scheme in his view, pure propaganda, as it assumed German parachutists wouldn’t bring their own maps – or couldn’t read them. But it certainly confused the natives who still had to keep the country going and find their way from place to place. No bother to him. He knew the roads by heart and could always drive the family to a village of thatched cottages with a pretty green beside ancient oaks where he and the kids could knock a ball about. The boy wasn’t keen on cricket but his sister Kay was a promising bat, often bowling or catching Fred out. Rose preferred sitting in the car with the Sunday Mirror, all the windows closed, smoking a Du Maurier. On long summer afternoons, they’d round off the outing in a country pub but, now winter had come, they had to be home by dark as driving in the black out wasn’t fun. In any case, there was ‘Hi, Gang’ on the Forces Programme at 6.30 with that American comedian who’d married Churchill’s daughter, which a lot of people thought infra dig but Fred reckoned a pretty smart move on his part,typical of so many Jew-boys.

  Kay and Theo shared the back seat. Either could be sick at any moment, due to the smell of petrol and leather upholstery. Passing along the empty roads, Kay and Rose often sang songs of the moment:

  That certain night, the night we met

  There was magic abroad in the air… or I like New York in June

  How about you?

  And Theo would sneer that that sort of music was all commercial, at which Fred snorted with laughter and asked him where he thought he’d be without commerce. Kay was brighter than the boy, of course, and it was assumed at school and at home that she was headed for one of the better universities, by which they meant Oxbridge which Fred had thought was a place apart till the manager of Weymouth branch told him it was a portmanteau of Oxford and Cambridge. Theo acted the goat when he should have been studying and, judging by his fortnightly report cards, would be lucky to scrape a School Certificate, leave alone Matriculation. Fred wasn’t sure what the word meant, but had been advised by the chief buyer of drysaltery that it would ensure him a job for life in the civil service, which was Fred’s long-term plan for the boy. The last time he’d nagged Theo, the noodle had replied that exams were only for swots who wanted to spend their lives in white coats looking at unborn babies, which sounded a bit near the bone to Fred so he dropped the subject rather than be drawn into bodily functions. Theo was a nice enough boy, except on that occasion when Fred had decided without warning to pick him up from school Saturday midday, having spent the morning, as usual, in the firm’s city depôt handing in his weekly sales figures and trading discount goods with the other reps to top up the meagre family rations. After a quick pint in The Drawbridge, he’d driven up Park Street, parked the Morris at the school gate and crossed the playground to talk to the Sergeant porter whose vantage point was in a glass booth under the entrance porch. Fred felt the fees were steep enough to allow him this privilege. As the two men stood passing the time of day, Fred was impressed, even alarmed, by the outrage this old soldier assumed when he spotted any boy slouching, sidling, swaggering or in any way offending the military manner he tried to impose on the school. If a culprit got close enough, Sergeant aimed a flick with his cane, usually missing as the boy dodged, then winking at Fred with the sort of adult complicity that made Fred feel almost at his ease in the otherwise humbling atmosphere. The nippers, he thought, were evidently in awe of the man and jumped to his growled commands.

  He watched his son come swaggering along the dark corridor, garlanded with gas-mask, bursting satchel and blue raincoat, honking with other broken-voiced boys, till he caught sight of Fred standing beside Sergeant.

  *

  Theo had felt blood rush to his cheeks and his heart leap like a fish. There followed the three most embarrassing minutes of his life so far, apart from Gale Sondergaard telling him (in front of Margo) that he was still young enough for a half-fare. Now, spotting Theo’s hand nonchalently stuck in a raincoat pocket, Sarge went into his brilliant parody of a drill pig on a barrack square. He was almost as well-loved a figure as Jimmie Lunceford. His frenzies of umbrage reminded him and Inky Black of old Donald MacBride in the Marx films or Eric Blore in the Astaires. Theo could be sure of a laugh at his end of-term show by making that face and doing pretend-whiplashes with the cane. In the presence of parents, though, Sarge played a double-bluff, pretending to wink at the oldsters while the bods all knew he was having them on. Once they’d reached the car, Theo made Fred swear by whatever gods he held dear never again to venture beyond the gates. Turning the ignition key and pulling the throttle knob, Fred smiled and shrugged, probably thinking Theo was really afraid of Sergeant’s put-on anger. Gawd strewth, strike me pink and luvaduck guvnor! Theo despaired of older people sometimes, even fairly decent ones like old Fred.

  *

  Kay, on the other hand, welcomed her father at her school and showed him off to her nubile classmates. She reminded Fred of that cat that walked alone in the Just-So Story he’d read them when they were nippers. She kept herself to herself, as in Kipling’s drawing of it on that long road through the forest. To assuage twinges of guilt about using the business car for pleasure, he sometimes gave her schoolfriends lifts home, even if they lived as far afield as Henleaze and other places Rose dreamt of moving to after the threat of Nazi Germany had been seen off. Her escape-by-marriage from the poor streets down near the Metropole (before it was de Luxe) wasn’t enough for her. She wanted to climb even higher, to Sneyd Park beyond The Downs. Fred had no such craving. Villa Borghese was more than elevated enough for him.

  Sometimes Kay and her friends were picked up before Theo got on. Then he’d have to climb in and sit beside them on the back seat, even have one of them on his lap, all the others giggling. In the rear-view mirror Fred saw his face, a study in scorn and loathing. Strange how boys of Theo’s age still scoffed at girls. Fear, probably.

  Theo couldn’t help getting the horn when one of these women was on him and he prayed she wouldn’t feel the knob pressing against her thighs through the skirt. He reckoned Kay knew this and encouraged her coven of professional virgins to make eyes at Fred while actually mocking Theo’s manhood by giving him the jack. They all did Vivien Leigh’s tinkling laugh, though Kay’s was best, and whoever was on his lap would roll about when the car cornered to make his horn bigger, probably on purpose. If he could keep it hard till they reached Villa Borghese, he’d toss off in view of all those starlets and Miss Poland on the walls.

  *

  Now, on the Sunday run, Fred looked across at beautiful Rose, glammed up in the passenger seat and his left hand moved over to caress her knee. She gave a warning look, rolling her eyes towards the back seat where the young ones sat. This afternoon they’d been to Blaize Castle (where Theo and Inky often played Robin Hood, swapping the Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone roles, both liking villainous Guy of Gisbourne best) and back through Westbury where Rose could admire the beautiful houses, each in its own garden, with kids on swings or playing French cricket. Fred and Rose had looked over one that was for sale and she later told her mother with awe about the labour-saving hatch from kitchen to dining-room. Villa Borghese had once seemed to both women a hilltop palace. Now they complained of its dark corners and blessed up-and-down steps. Fred had come to the west country from Kent and with that move thrown off his own modest Medway upbringing. Mother-in-law Tilda embodied the poverty that Rose had risen above, the memory of it always threatening to climb the hill like floodwater and drown her again. The old lady’s lapses frightened them both. Fred had learnt the importance of props and gestures: fawn felt spats
and Homburg hats that he wore for Business; bridge-parties and whist-drives; annual travellers’ balls where Rose could oblige with a ballad; and above all his imminent admission to the Masonic Lodge. It was a relief that Tilda spent weekends at her rented flat down the hill, as Fred made clear he liked to enjoy these with his family, not always to be reminded of Tilda’s infra-dig origins.

  Many houses in Falcondale Road had For Sale Apply Within signs in the windows, as their owners were eager to bolt somewhere further off for fear they blitzed this city too. The asking prices were rock-bottom. No wonder, said Fred, with the impending likelihood of property being bombed to smithereens and/or occupied by Nazis. The jealousy that London had got it all so far was mixed with relief that they hadn’t. Rose and Tilda reckoned people here could be just as brave as the blessed Cockneys, given the chance. It wasn’t their fault this was a safe area. So far there’d only been the odd incendiary dropped for fun just so that the filthy swine could watch the damage from up above. Fred said the Jerries up there were terrified and jettisoned the fire-bombs on the way back from raiding the South Wales docks just across the Bristol Channel.

  He took the scenic route across the Downs, past the zoo and through Clifton. Theo thought of what old Mrs. Hampton had said about that part being built on the spoils of empire. In prayers, Earl Hines and visiting vicars were always on about the Merchant Venturer founders but Mrs. H reckoned they were a load of crooks and slavers who’d started the zoo to house the animals they’d caught in India or Africa, and Clifton College was a public school where the next load of rugby-prefects were trained to go out and boss natives about. This confused him so he thought instead about what would happen if the zoo was bombed and the animals escaped, running wild all over the Downs, and Alfred the gorilla came charging out of shrubberies just where some bloke had taken off one of those WAAFs’ bras. It would be quite like that flickergraph he’d done in Songs of Praise.

  *

  “What is a Film Society exactly?” Fred asked, as the boy climbed out of the Morris on College Green.

  “It’s to see the sort of films you can’t see in the ordinary cinemas.”

  “Hello hello! What sort’s that?”

  “French.”

  “I’m surprised at them allowing that in the library,” Rose said.

  “Is that the sort you mean, son?” Fred asked with a quickening of interest.

  “I don’t know, do I? German and Russian too.”

  “I foresee disappointment,” Kay said, “and fully expect he’ll spend a tedious hour watching tractors and peasants trying out their new milking-machines.”

  Theo slammed the car-door on her and pressed his face to the window, sliding it downwards and rolling his eyes like old Charles Laughton as Quasi.

  He watched Fred drive off past the Cathedral and made his way to the Central Library’s main doors.

  SIX

  The fresh air on College Green was a relief, as the insides of cars always made him feel sick, with their pongs of petrol, leather upholstery and a scented polish the cleaners used at the firm’s garage where Fred had it serviced free. And if anyone farted – him, Dad, Mum, Kay or Tilda – it hung about for hours, because if you tried to wind down the windows Rose complained it was a gale and would make her hair look like the wreck of the Hesperus.

  He’d never used the central library, didn’t know how, only gone once on a school visit with Jimmie Lunceford. Outside it looked as old as the cathedral and Cabot Tower and he wasn’t surprised to find himself climbing another load of the sort of stone stairs they had at school, clumping along dark stony passages and ending up in a high panelled room with pointy windows that felt like church but with more books. Mrs. Hampton, wearing a headscarf and overcoat, welcomed him with a nice smile, as though she’d really been looking forward to seeing him. She introduced him as a provisional new member to three men and a woman, all still in their outer clothes. As they spoke, steam came from their mouths like visible words. George worked the projector and puffed at a pipe and Vera was his wife, a couple Theo guessed had come on the motor-bike and sidecar he’d seen parked outside. Vera, who knew as much about films as Rose did, poured tea from a Thermos and handed him the mug. As a newcomer he was given sugar-cubes and milk but told to bring his own next week. Like the others, he warmed his hands on the mug. An oil-heater was doing its best to take the chill off.

  Stone and Moss were younger, though not by that much, and Theo had met their sort when Fred had made him go to Sunday school once or twice and reckoned they’d come to argue as much as watch. He guessed pretty soon that Vera was only a member because of George and George was only there to work the projector. He sat beside the machine letting his smoke drift across the rays of light, making the picture even dimmer.

  Hazel switched out the overhead lamp, shaded since the blackout to light a small area directly below. Just before the picture came on, he saw her slip on her glasses, like she had in The Regent. While the French film was on, Stone and Moss kept snorting with laughter or tut-tutting as though something rude had been said, though the words underneath weren’t a bit funny so Theo reckoned these were among the huge mass of jokes he wouldn’t understand till he was older. After three years of French lessons with Artie Shaw, he found he could only understand the title: Day Lifts Itself or Gets Up but Mrs. Hampton suggested Break of Day. The picture quality was only a little better than he’d seen at kids’ birthday parties when they showed the Keystone Kops or Mickey Mouse; the sound boomed and crackled from a speaker beside the screen, decoding a track that was all vowels and sudden loud music and seemed to have been recorded in the North Baths. This didn’t matter much, though the jumps and slips and flickering did and the times when it all groaned to a halt and George had to get up and lace the next reel. This was a first for Theo but he easily read the titles, except when the white letters happened to be against a white part of the picture.

  When ‘Fin’ came on, the next word Theo understood, George caught the spinning reel and began rewinding.

  “Weird and wonderful,” he said.

  Mrs. Hampton took off her glasses and turned the light on.

  “It was good to see that again,” Stone said, the Adam’s apple in his neck bobbing up and down like a ping-pong ball on a jet of water in a fairground.” I’m inclined to agree with Manvell that it’s Carné’s masterpiece.”

  “Which is where I must take issue with both you and Mister Manvell,” Moss said, smiling and tugging at his brindled beard.” Though it may be lèse-majesté. For me it’s altogether too black-and-white.”

  Theo wondered how a film without technicolour could have been anything else.

  “Where,” Moss went on, “one can’t help asking, are those greys? As it is, the innocent girl, the wicked women of the world, the inarticulate working-man caught between, the evil and perverted showman all seem mere humours, personifications of moral forces Carné wants to cast into a crucible –”

  “Which is surely the whole point,” Stone broke in, “that these figures are no mere individuals but mythopeic archetypes.”

  “What did you think, Vera?” Mrs. Hampton asked.

  “Well, I wasn’t going to say anything but, since you ask, I’m not surprised France fell like a rotten apple if they’re all as depressed as that.”

  George smiled at her.

  “Well said, love. They got the moral fibre of a flock of geese.”

  “I don’t see this as an exposition of the shortcomings of The Third Republic,” Stone said, with a slight smile in Theo’s direction.

  “Don’t you?” Mrs. Hampton said, “I do. However wonderful it is as a film, I agree with Vera that it shows only too well the moral malaise France found itself in, sitting like a rabbit waiting for the snake to gobble him up.”

  “Hazel, please grant the artist the right to express himself in signs and symbols, as Chekhov did with his seagull, Ibsen with his wild duck.”

  “That was then, before their revolution. But it’s too late no
w for all that nineteenth century nudging and winking. We need artists who’ll say what they mean… unambiguously.”

  Moss tapped the arm of his chair with his cigarette-holder like Theo had seen a snotty prefect do the one time he’d been to a school debating society.

  “Which brings us, I think, rather neatly to the subject of the film on general release this week, which I hope you all managed to see.”

  “We didn’t, no,” said Vera, “it’s too far to come in the black-out, all the way from Patchway. We thought we’d wait till it comes to the Cabot.”

  “I strongly urge you to,” Moss continued, “if only for the chalk-and-cheese contrast with what we’ve just seen. To compare Yankee Populism at its most effective with the defeatism of the ancien régime.”

  “Effective,” Stone said, “only if you respond like one of Pavlov’s dogs to the familiar stimuli the film deals in. The old Capra recipe with a few fresh flavours.”

  Theo felt the veins in his forehead pulsing and pounding. This blue-jawed bastard was picking holes in a masterpiece.

  “Of course,” Moss agreed at last, “one recognises the stock characters, – hillbilly hero, lovably embodied by a famous star, cynical city girl-friend gradually converted to his homespun goodness, the decent man gone bad who repents in time to provide the happy ending without which no Hollywood product is thinkable –”