Read Online A Place Of Strangers by Geoffrey Seed - Free Book Online Page B

was why – or how she got it.

 
    Chapter Ten
     
    So Evie’s father had disowned her. Snap.
    *
    Bea leaves St Ermine’s Hotel and collects Arie from the
café. They disappear into the discreet London smog, arms linked, safe from
those who would not approve. Bea tells Arie that Casserley is interested in
him.
    ‘He said they’re planning something special.’
    ‘What sort of thing?’
    ‘Casserley wouldn’t say but his people will contact you.’
    They hurry along pavements lacquered by the harsh electric
light spilling from little shops and restaurants. There is something of
Prague’s menace about the darkened streets and the strangers passing by, eyes
watchful from beneath the brims of hats. Bea, twelve years younger than Arie,
intelligent but self-centred and mercurial, feels that aphrodisiac sense of
power flowing from being privy to secrets. Matters of life and death are in her
hands. She is taking part in history. But Arie says nothing will prepare her –
or the world – for what is to come.
    ‘How can you know this?’
    ‘How does a poet know anything?’
    ‘But why would the Germans want to kill all the Jews? It doesn’t
make sense.’
    ‘Don’t you know? We and the Bolsheviks are conspiring to
dominate the world.’
    ‘No one can possibly believe that.’
    ‘Hitler says it’s true so the German people believe it.’
    ‘But they’re so cultured. Everyone knows.’
    ‘Yet they will hunt us down like vermin until we are no
more.’
    Bea has no reference points – no folk memory of pogroms or
burning ghettoes or a thousand years of Jew-baiting and blood letting. Arie
says even those who have will not understand, either.
    They reach Bea’s apartment where Arie will stay until the
future is decided. Her father, the Air Marshal, will not be informed. Bea plans
to see him in his rooms in Bentinck Street at the weekend. She had telephoned
and told him more of her escape from Czechoslovakia and the peril she had been
in.
    ‘We’re all in peril, Beatrice. That’s why there will be a
war soon.’
    Days pass. Arie goes out most mornings. He does not say
where he has been or what he has done. Bea knows better than to ask but feels
excluded and does not like that. He never returns before supper, sometimes even
later.
    Now he stands with his back to her, leaning against the
sink. The trousers of his dark suit shine with wear. He looks through the net
curtains at the children playing outside, swinging on a rope tied to the arm of
a gas lamp. Their shouts and laughter come through the slightly sulphurous air.
Bea wonders about Arie’s family. Where are they this night? She dare not ask –
and he never talks of them.
    Arie boils a kettle of water for tea. She notices how noiselessly
he moves. He pours. His fingers are taperingly long, like a musician’s. He sips
his tea which he takes with lemon, not milk, and one spoonful of white sugar.
    Then Bea’s telephone rings out. The unexpectedness of the
bell startles her. She rises to answer it but Arie is up from his chair first.
He motions her to stay still and quiet then goes into the hallway and lifts the
receiver. Bea hears him talking in a low voice but not in English. Arie returns
and finishes his drink. He offers no explanation. His eyes are hooded and
black. He is not sleeping properly.
    ‘Arie... look, I must know. I will be able to help you,
won’t I?’
    ‘In what way do you mean?’
    ‘To help with whatever assignment Casserley gives you.’
    Arie pours more tea for them, taking his time to find the
right words.
    ‘Beatrice, what is to come will not be like Prague.’
    ‘No, I realise that.’
    ‘This war started for some of us long since and in time, you
will see what happened in Prague was just a game... a little game like those
children outside might play.’
    ‘It didn’t feel like a game to me. It just made me want to
fight the Nazis even more.’
    ‘And so you will but you must not hope for something Major
Casserley cannot allow.