The Iron Stallions (10 page)

‘Right, then. Consider yourself engaged.’

‘It’s usual to seal it with a kiss.’

‘I’ve a much better idea.’

Nobody seemed very surprised at the news of the engagement, and Toby Reeves gave them an amused look, as if he suspected what they’d been up to.

‘What’re you going to live on?’ he asked.

‘Ailsa says her money.’

Reeves grinned. ‘Well, there’s plenty for two.
I’m
certainly not going to worry about the rules. I’ll be marrying Chloe eventually so why not make it a double wedding? It could be quite a spectacle. It might even be our last chance. The Revolution’ll probably start any day now.’

The country, it was true, was staggering from one crisis to another and nobody in Parliament seemed to have any ideas on how to stop the rot. Schemes which were being put forward, surgical, cold-blooded and inhuman, were taking away what little the poor possessed while making remarkably little difference to those with money in the bank.

‘For God’s sake,’ Josh said. ‘Can’t those idiots in Whitehall realise that keeping the poor without money will only increase Communism?’

‘Perhaps somebody’ll set up as Hitler,’ Reeves said cheerfully. ‘He seems to be sorting out the Communists in Germany. He simply sets his thugs on ’em. By the time he finally gets into power, there won’t be any opposition – or any Jews either.’

How well Hitler was managing came home to Josh a few months later. He and Ailsa had taken over the top floor of a house in Richmond and met there whenever they could.

‘At least people these days don’t rush into marriage for sex,’ Ailsa said. ‘They know all about it beforehand and start looking for something else in a girl.’

She was already talking about marriage and his mother seemed delighted by the idea. He often wondered if she suspected what he and Ailsa got up to. Morals seemed to have slipped a little in the last few years but the feeling that some sort of Nemesis was approaching brought a different attitude. Everybody had read HG Wells’
Shape Of Things To Come
and, since the picture it presented was one of death, destruction and world-wide misery, young people were not inclined to waste time.

Josh was in bed when he heard the door bell ring. Ailsa had shot off to catch the train home because she wasn’t supposed to be there at all, and the floor was covered with her clothes. Sitting on the bed, drinking a cup of coffee, Josh frowned as the bell went again, insistent and harsh. Suspecting it was Ailsa back for something she’d forgotten, he rose and crossed to the door. To his surprise it was not Ailsa, but Konstantin. He looked exhausted, unshaven and was without baggage.

‘Konnie!’ Josh glanced behind him at Ailsa’s garments scattered about the floor. ‘What are you doing here? How did you get my address?’

Konstantin gave a tired smile. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me in, Josh?’

‘Of course.’ Josh opened the door and hurriedly moved about the flat, picking up clothes and tossing them into the bedroom. ‘Sit down. Got any luggage?’

Konstantin shook his head.

‘What’s it all about?’

‘Mother’s dead!’

‘Aunt Helen? What happened, Konni?’

Konstantin gave another tired smile. Josh, I’m hungry. I haven’t eaten for twenty-four hours. Do you think you could make me a cup of coffee?’

Startled, Josh stared at his cousin for a moment, then he sprang to life. ‘Come into the kitchen. It’s not very big. It’s a flat I use for week-ends in London and I share – well, that is–’

Konstantin smiled. ‘You’re probably wise under the circumstances, Josh.’

‘What circumstances?’

‘You may be fighting for your life before long. Hitler’s set on war and he’s after the presidency of Germany.’

‘But he can’t be president, Konni. He only runs a gang of thugs.’

‘It’s the thugs who’ll put him in power, Josh.’

‘What about Aunt Helen?’ Josh was busy at the cooker with a frying pan, bacon and eggs. ‘What happened?’

‘She was beaten to death.’

‘Aunt Helen! Jesus Christ and all His pink angels–!’

Konstantin gave a tired smile. ‘You sound like Grandfather Goff, Josh!’

Josh slammed a plateful of eggs to the table. ‘Bacon coming up in a minute. Bread over there. Konni, what in the name of God happened?’

‘You know Mother.’ Konstantin was bent over the plate now and spoke with his mouth full. ‘She was always very much a Goff but she’d also become a Von Hartmann. It’s a heady mixture, Josh – both families of strong character.’

Josh up-ended the frying pan on to his cousin’s plate. ‘Go on. Here’s the coffee.’ He poured two cups, and as he sat down at the opposite side of the table, they began to talk in a mixture of German and English.

‘The Brownshirts have been beating up the Jews, as you’ve probably read in the papers,’ Konstantin said.

‘Yes, I’ve read it,’ Josh admitted. ‘But Aunt Helen wasn’t a Jew.’

‘She had Jewish friends. She saw the Nazis beating them up. She went to their help and–’ Konstantin’s eyes filled with tears and he pushed his plate away unfinished.

Josh thrust it under the grill and offered a packet of cigarettes. Konstantin took one, lit it, and got hold of himself.

‘You can’t believe the injuries she suffered. She couldn’t see. Her nose was broken. She was covered with blood. She – she–’ Konstantin’s voice broke again ‘–she lived for two days. The doctor said her kidneys were ruptured, she had three broken ribs and a fractured skull. I went to the Nazi Party Office and when I told them we weren’t Jews, they said people who helped Jews were classified as non-Aryan sympathisers and got the same treatment. In the end, they simply threw me out.’ He put the cigarette down. ‘I’ll finish that food, Josh, now, I think. I’m all right.’

Josh scooped the plate from under the grill and Konstantin bent over it again, the cigarette smoking on the saucer alongside him.

‘I found out who did it, Josh. Or, at least, who was the leader of the gang. I swore I’d get him.’

‘Did you tell Karl-August?’

‘Yes. It did no good. He thinks like them that the Jews are to blame for Germany’s troubles and all he did was make excuses for them.’

‘What about Elena and Carlota?’

‘Elena’s married to an industrialist, as you know, and the industrialists are supporting Hitler because they’re frightened of the Communists.’

‘And Carlota?’

‘She went to Russia.’ Konstantin pushed his plate away and picked up the cigarette. ‘Does that surprise you? One of the proud Von Hartmanns becoming a Communist? Believe me, Josh, stranger things are happening in Germany these days. You’re lucky to be English.’

‘Go on.’ There was more, Josh knew.

‘We buried Mother,’ Konstantin said. ‘Then I went to the library and found father’s old pistol. I shot the leader of the gang who did it.’

‘Murdered him?’

‘I didn’t see it as murder, Josh. It was my intention to shoot every one of them, in fact, but I realised that if I stayed they’d get me and probably even rope in Elena and Karl- August. I walked around all day, wondering what to do. Then I decided I’d better leave, but when I went home to pack they were in a car outside waiting for me, so I turned round and went to the station and bought a ticket to Aachen on the frontier. I stayed there for two days and by that time all the money I’d been able to put my hands on was gone. All I had left was enough for a ticket to the coast and across the Channel.’

Konstantin sighed, stubbed out the cigarette and helped himself to another.

‘And now?’

‘I’m going to America, Josh. They’re broad-minded there.’

‘We’re broad-minded here.’

Konstantin shook his head. ‘It could harm your career.’

‘Damn my career!’

‘Nevertheless, Josh, I’m going to the States. They look kindly on Nazi refugees. They’ve allowed several Jews Mother helped to go there, so I have friends.’ Konstantin gave a sad embarrassed smile. ‘Unfortunately, I shall need help. I need the fare, and a visa. I also need clothes.’

‘It’s as good as done,’ Josh said. ‘There’s room at Braxby for a dozen like you. I can get my hands on money to take you to Yorkshire. I can also see the Colonel and I know he’ll give me leave to help sort you out. I can be home within a couple of days, and make all the arrangements for you.’

Konstantin stared at him, tried to stammer his thanks, then quietly began to weep. As the tears ran down his cheeks, Josh pulled him to his feet.

‘How long since you slept?’

‘Two days.’

‘You’ll sleep now. Josh led his cousin to the bedroom and began to pick up Ailsa’s clothes. ‘Sleep until this evening. Then I’ll put you on the train to Yorkshire and telephone Mother. If I can’t get her, there’s still no problem. Aunt Jane’s at the farm nearby. They’ll look after you until Mother appears.’

Bavaria seemed to have been transformed. Red Nazi banners with their crooked crosses moved lazily in the warm breeze, there were brown-shirted men on every street corner and a distinct aggressive confidence in the air. Hitler had made it clear where Germany was heading and anyone who was likely to object was behind bars or had fled.

It had been Josh’s intention to go to the South of France for his honeymoon but Leduc had changed his mind.

‘This is 1934, Josh,’ he had said briskly. ‘There’s a war coming and it might be a good idea to know what we’re up against.’

As it happened, Ailsa loved it. Outwardly, there was the same warm friendship, the men in their lederhosen, white stockings and feathered hats, the girls in their spotless blouses and dirndl skirts, all claiming that the British and the Germans came from the same stock. In the beer gardens the sparrows still picked up the crumbs under the horse chestnuts and the orchestras still played Strauss. Only in the evening when you danced in that curiously stiff Germanic way was it different, and then the pounding music sounded like marching songs.

It wasn’t hard to find out the things Leduc was interested in. Josh made no secret of his profession or rank, assuming that his questions would be treated merely as those of an interested fellow-professional, and the young German officers he cultivated while Ailsa was shopping were all excited at Germany’s growing strength, and inclined to be boastful.

‘Our armoured divisions will have reconnaissance units,’ they said. ‘Field artillery and anti-tank units, to say nothing of half-tracked armoured infantry carriers. They’ll be unique and powerful weapons capable of executing any operation of war without external aid except that of aircraft, self-sufficient, versatile and capable of breaking a front on their own. They will be the spearhead of an advancing army and the tank brigade will be its armoured tip.’

After seven days, Toby Reeves, who had shipped his car over and motored through France, appeared with Chloe to join them.

‘Thought we’d nip up to Berlin,’ he suggested. ‘Supposed to be the wickedest city in Europe.’

Though Berlin had the same atmosphere as the rest of the country, it was more intense there. The Nazi party seemed everywhere and the people seemed cock-a-hoop with confidence. The Hartmann house, however, was occupied by brown-shirted men who had changed it into an area office, and the Hartmanns seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth. It left Josh faintly depressed and when his depression began to touch the rest of the party, Reeves dragged them all out to a night club.

‘Bit of slumming,’ he said. ‘Good for the soul.’

The night club was a sleazy place full of smoke and was peopled by transvestites.

‘The bloody place’s nothing but pansies,’ Reeves observed loudly.

They were entertained by a girl wearing long black stockings with black suspenders across her fat white thighs and a comedian whose stock-in-trade was his femininity.

‘There’s something wrong with this bloody country,’ Reeves said wonderingly as they left. ‘And I think they’re going to give us a lot of trouble before we’re finished.’

How much, they soon knew.

Ailsa was sitting up in bed doing her nails with the breakfast tray beside her when a knock came on the door.

‘It’s Toby,’ a voice called. ‘Are you two decent or are you up to something you shouldn’t be up to?’

He seemed excited and when he produced the newspaper they saw why.

‘Hitler’s shot everybody in sight,’ he said. ‘Even his pals. He’s got no opposition to him anywhere now. If President Hindenburg pops off – and the poor old bugger’s eighty-seven – he’ll be running the show. In my book, that seems to mean the war’s just a bit nearer than it was yesterday.’

Just how much nearer became obvious even as they stepped off the boat train in London. The newspaper sellers were shouting that Hindenburg was dead and that Hitler had taken the office of President as well as that of Chancellor, with the title of Führer. Sure of his position now, he had already started to make it stronger by terrorism, and was already flouting treaties and making no secret of his intention to restore Germany to her original power.

‘Well, at least,’ Leduc said, ‘if that doesn’t wake up those idiots at Westminster, nothing will.’

To Toby Reeves’ surprise, Chloe decided to marry someone quite unexpected – a Scottish landowner with a castle in Perthshire.

The wedding was held at Braxby and, among a Highland contingent in kilts, Josh and Toby Reeves appeared in full-dress uniform of green and gold, schapskas, plumes and all, Reeves still wearing a slightly hurt, bewildered look.

For two days Braxby seemed full of Goffs who had not been seen for years because they had ‘gone foreign’ by disappearing to outlandish places such as Sussex, Norfolk and Devon.

‘Granny’s house’s all yours, brother dear,’ Chloe whispered as she kissed Josh goodbye. ‘I’m going in for motherhood and I’ve got a better house. With turrets.’

When Josh returned to barracks, the first movements towards mechanising the regiment began to take place. There were still horsed regiments in the British army and still a distinct objection among those in power to converting them to tanks. In Parliament, ex-cavalry officers, their faces red with rage, were shouting ‘No tinkering with the cavalry!’ and even as Hitler announced enormous increases in the German army, British army estimates were showing that the amount of forage for horses had increased by four hundred per cent while the increase for motor fuel had increased only by a hundred per cent.