In Love and War (14 page)
Authors: Alex Preston
L’Ombrellino
Piazza di Bellosguardo
Firenze
28/4/38
Would you like to come for dinner on the 3rd? Just a few of the old-timers. You might come and bathe beforehand. Bring Bailey.
Alice Keppel.
Telegram: 2/5/38
Money received with thanks STOP Far too generous STOP Actually now not going to States at all STOP Will join Charlie in Valencia STOP Always fancied fighting the good fight STOP Come and join us STOP Viva las Brigadas Internacionales STOP Philip
[Selection of twenty-first birthday cards, postal orders, a copy of Fitzgerald’s
Tender is the Night,
Yevgeny Zamyatin’s
We
, a fountain pen.]
He hasn’t told Goad, or Bailey or Ada that it’s his birthday. It’s past eleven and he’s sitting in the bar of the Excelsior, drunk. He orders a gin fizz and goes to the lavatory where he urinates down the front of his trousers, singing ‘Domum’ to himself tunelessly. At the bar, he orders another drink and slumps on the stool. Despite the broadcasts, the money, the novel finally finished and typed up and sent off to Faber, he doesn’t feel he’s made a success of anything in Florence. And yet, he thinks, if he’d been offered this a year and a half ago in Shropshire – to be running the radio station, hosting vibrant cultural discussions with Ezra Pound and Bernard Berenson, invited to parties at Renaissance palaces in the hills of Fiesole – he’d have fainted. It’s partly that his expectations move several steps ahead of the events of his life – Goad smiles expectantly at him at the end of every broadcast and the face he returns grows ever more heedful and resigned, as if to say they could do so much better if only they had better equipment, more staff, more luminous interviewees – and partly that he’s different now: he walks a little slower, talks more carefully, drifts away during most of the Fascist broadcasts and looks towards the window.
Welsh Frankton,
Shropshire.
1st June.
Dear Esmond,
I was delighted with your letter, as was your mother. It seems extraordinary to us, marooned as we are out here in the wastes, that our son should be at the very centre of things, hobnobbing with world leaders. We listened to your programme on Manzoni’s
The Betrothed
with great interest in the library this evening.
Difficult stuff! Pavolini sounds a good sort – well done for getting him on. I understand that he has Il Duce’s ear, quite the coming man of Italian politics.
Great sense of relief that the problems in Czechoslovakia appear to have been resolved. Hitler perhaps not as bellicose as we had feared. Glad also that Chamberlain was so swift to bat down any talk of cosying up to the Russians. They’re the real enemy: remember that.
Good work on the latest instalment of advertising money. Be assured that it’s being wisely invested in the future of this great country.
Your mother sends her love,
Your Father.
P.S. I saw Pound in London – he’s barking but seems to have enjoyed your meeting. When do we hear the recording you made with him?
[Selection of letters and telegrams from: Birra Moretti, Wilier Triestina, Snia-Viscosa, Beretta, Danieli, De Agostini, La Stampa, Martini & Rossi, Romeo Motron. All confirm advertising subscription to Radio Firenze at the new rate of 1,000 lire per three-minute window.]
Hotel Las Arenas,
Valencia
15th July, ’38
Dearest Es,
Of the many things I might have become, I scarcely thought I’d end up a soldier. But that seems to be
how it’s all worked out. Simply thrilling out here. We travelled up the coast after getting a boat round the Straits. We could see the shelling of Alicante – whole place lit up like the sun had toppled down. Rather beautiful, actually. We came ashore at a kind of sandy isthmus called El Perellonet and then, under cover of night, made our way into the city. Italian warships like glimmering palaces out to sea. They fire the odd shell every so often but things seem to have quietened down since we arrived.
I’m driving an ambulance. The Nationalists are really quite on our doorstep here, so we’re always getting called to dash out and scrape up some poor chap who’s caught one in the head or arm. Charlie bought me a gun which I fire at pigeons on the roof. Not much of an aim yet, but I’ll need it soon enough, I would imagine, when the final confrontation comes. The Republicans are all thoroughly decent sorts. Lots of Brits, of course, but it’s the locals who up the pulse.
We’re staying in a hotel that’s been shelled. I can see the stars from my bed through a hole in the roof, but it’s mild enough and actually rather romantic. Charlie has insisted on teaching the chaps cricket. Rather a different game when it’s played between orange trees in the Plaça de la Reina after a few bottles of Rioja. I scored my first ever fifty as the light drew in last night, sound of gunfire and distant shells as I held my bat up to generally bemused spectators. Spaniards can’t play for toffee, of course. Charlie, who’s much better than me, hit a six that flew so far it ended up over enemy lines.
I’m going to bowl a few grenades at him tomorrow. It’s all just too bloody exciting.
Anyway, I thought you’d want my address, and if you could spare some cash I’d appreciate it. Think of it as contributing to the forging of the heroic new me.
Philip.
One evening, light still trembling outside the windows of the studio. Ada signals the end of the transmission. They’ve recorded a programme on Murray Constantine’s
Swastika Night
, recently translated into Italian. It seems a very daring subject – the novel had, after all, been a choice of the Left Book Club – but it is, thinks Esmond, important that they engage with material like this. The novel imagines a future where the Nazis and Japanese have defeated the heroic Brits, and now squabble with each other over their Fascist empires. It is futuristic, bold, horrifying in the way it takes the unstable present and ramifies it into a vision of the totalitarian world to come. Esmond had enjoyed the book, Goad hadn’t.
–
A most engaging debate
, Goad says, standing and stretching, pulling on the blazer which he had hung on the back of his chair. –
Perhaps the best yet
. He smiles at Esmond. –
It wasn’t too––?
Goad thinks for a moment, scratching the skin of one hand. –
No, it was fine. Our uncertainty tallies with the culture, I suppose, the uncertainty of the present moment in Europe. I think we did well. Now I must be off, good night, you two
.
Esmond and Ada coil wires, dust the instrument panel, seal up the discs and store them in the rack on one side of the room. He has deliberately avoided speaking to her about the Manifesto of Racial Scientists, about the new laws in place regarding the Jews. Now she wraps her shawl around her neck and stands in
the doorway. –
Esmond
, she says. He looks up. –
I don’t want any special favours, I don’t want you to get in trouble on my behalf, but I want you to know that I enjoy working here.
He lights a cigarette and blows the smoke towards the cornices of ceiling. –
Of course,
he says. –
There’s no question. I’ll make sure of it
.
When she has left, he sits at the open window, breathes the summer air, smiles peacefully. He thinks of Murray Constantine’s words, which he had quoted in the broadcast and which Goad had repeated two or three times in reply:
They will make a world in which it is impossible for a man to love his own daughter
.
Ministry of the Interior
Palazzo del Viminale
Rome
21/8/38
Sir or Madam –
As the listed employer of Ada Liuzzi, who is registered as Jewish/other non-Aryan on the Census dated August 1st, 1938, carried out by the Italian Office for the Study of Race (under the guidance of Dr Guido Landra), please advise by return of post if Ada Liuzzi is employed in a position whereupon her duties could be described as falling into one of the following areas:
a) Government, politics, local or regional council work, other general administrative role within the apparatus of the Italian State;
b) Banking, moneylending, other employment in which the worker has control over the exchange, transfer or deployment of sums of money larger than 5,000 lire per calendar month;
c) Teaching, lecturing, professorships, any work which brings the named person into regular contact with children or students;
d) Military (including carabinieri), air force, navy, local police, fire service, or any other position requiring access to weapons of any kind;
e) Other educated profession where the named person’s Jewish/other non-Aryan status could reasonably be assumed to represent a threat or potential threat to the economic, military, moral or educational health of the nation.
It is your responsibility as employer to ensure that the Jewish/non-Aryan person is correctly employed.
Please also confirm whether Ada Liuzzi has been charged with any crime in the past ten years, and if so the nature of this crime. Please also list any previous or outstanding arrest warrants.
Please inform if Ada Liuzzi became an Italian citizen on or after 31st December, 1919.
Viva Il Duce!
[Enclosed with following letter: article from
The Times
entitled ‘Nuremberg and Aussig’.]
Welsh Frankton
Shropshire
12th September
Dear Esmond,
It seems I spoke too soon. Situation in Sudetenland bloody bad. Mosley has put several calls in to the Führer urging him not to act hastily, letting him know that the eyes of the world are upon him, but
I fear they don’t have the close relationship they once did. You’ll see I’ve clipped an article from
The Times
calling on the Czechs to cede the territory to the Germans. Eminently sensible and we can only hope that it is the view inside Whitehall.
Runciman’s attempts to mediate were shambolic, and Nevile Henderson made a buggery of things in Berlin. I remember a time when the Brits were known for their diplomacy. You can just see that bastard Stalin perched over all of this, rubbing his hands with glee. Chamberlain flies to Berchtesgaden tomorrow; he’s got a good head, and he’ll need it. You could picture this all unspooling rather quickly, with the Poles and the Russians and that madman Konrad Henlein all buttoning their coats. If Germany does decide to wade in, the Czech will be wiped out in a flash. It’s interesting, Esmond – difficult times, of course, but interesting.
I was glad to read in your letter that you have developed such affection for Filippino Lippi. I don’t remember seeing this particular triptych when I was in Florence. I never really told you about that tour back in ’06. I went with Arthur Fitzroy and Chummy Little straight from Cambridge. We arrived in Florence at night, driving into the narrowing throat of the valley, using the great dome to guide us. It’s strange, but I can only recall small details of the city from that time. I remember waking the next morning in our hotel – the Excelsior – and looking out over the rooftops of the town, but almost nothing else. The room of Botticellis and Lippis at the Uffizi, of course, the insides of certain
churches, Cellini’s Perseus. But it’s as if it was too much for my mind to hold. Every time your mother and I returned to Florence, it was like drawing back a curtain to reveal bright treasures of memory.
Enough of my rambling. You have great things to do. Mosley is staying with us. He and Diana are always after news of you. We are both struck by how well you and Goad work together – a thoroughly engaging duo. Funny the way in which things work out, isn’t it? That all of this now feels fated – that you should leave Cambridge, go out to Florence, make a man of yourself. Then – who knows? – come back and do great things for the Party at home, or fight like a lion in the war when and if it comes.
Your mother sends her love,
Your Father.
Faber & Faber
24 Russell Square,
London, WC1
23rd September, 1938
Dear Mr Lowndes –
I greatly enjoyed the draft of
In Love and War
that you sent me. A rather good idea to take a well-known figure like Hulme and re-tell his life as fiction. I thought you got the essential clash between his bawdiness, his brutality and his brilliance absolutely spot-on. I also very much
enjoyed the way you worked his poetry, his letters, his life, into your fiction.
I would like to ask you to take another run at the passages describing his life in battle. It seems to me that these are where the novel stumbles. Ask your father – he was there with him. Read Sassoon (if you haven’t already, and your prose rather suggests you haven’t). It is a fact that whilst so many of those who know what it was like to fight in the trenches are still with us, there is something of a moral duty for the writer to convey the truth of war as clearly and cleverly as possible. It doesn’t seem to me that your novel does this.
If you are able to fix this, I should think there’s a good chance that we’d be interested in publishing. It won’t hinder things that your father’s name, and your own work on the wireless confer upon you a certain celebrity. We won’t make you rich, but Faber & Faber is a fine publishing house and we’d be very glad to have you on board.
Sincerely,
Richard de la Mare.
Via dei Forbici, 35c
Firenze
1.10.38
Dear Esmond –
It was most kind of you and Father Bailey to treat us to such an exceptionally good dinner last
week. I am only sorry it has taken me such a long time to write and thank you. As you can imagine, things are rather difficult for our family at the moment. I don’t like to go into things too deeply in front of Ada (or indeed her mother, who is, as you saw, suffering from a deep sadness at the turn events have taken), but you can imagine the sense of betrayal we are feeling just now. I – who have given everything for this government, for this country – my country – and for the Fascist cause – that I should no longer be thought of as an Italian, that my passport should be confiscated and returned defiled, that
La Nostra Bandiera
, which has supported Il Duce for more than a decade, should be closed down – All of this seems incredible to me.
I enclose a petition signed by several of my prominent friends – you will note the first name is that of Giovanni Gentile himself – supporting my exclusion from the punitive racial laws which have so hampered my ability to continue in the service of a cause in whose integrity I continue to believe with all my heart. I acknowledge the need for the Charter of Race, given that so many of those who insist on swimming against the tide of history – the members of Giustizia e Libertà, the leaders of the Communist unions – are Jewish. It seems sensible also to deny the great blessing of Italian citizenship to the recent miscegenated product of our African adventures. But to someone like me? It is a great travesty.
As a figure in the public eye, I’d be very grateful if you would sign this petition. I have been let
down by many of those I counted amongst my dearest companions, but we are lucky to live at times such as these when the bonds of friendship are put to the test and we may winnow out the lickspittles and toadies. Perhaps you’d pass it on to Father Bailey once you sign it, and ask him to send it the way of anyone else he thinks might help my cause.
I’m aware that you have been put under some pressure over Ada’s continued employment at Radio Firenze. I wanted to offer you my sincere thanks, and that of my wife. We love our daughter and know she loves working with you. See you for dinner on Wednesday as usual, I hope.
With my most cordial salutations,
Guido Liuzzi.