“But not fighting them either?”
“No. Not fighting. Just interested.”
“Interested in fascism?”
Izzy gasps and clamps her hand over her mouth.
“Interested in Mosley?” Max’s voice is low and dangerous.
Bill carefully lays down his knitting and looks from Izzy to Max. “Look. You’ve gotta understand. Mosley was a great speaker. We used to listen to him out of my friend’s window. When he spoke you could feel yourself being swept up, and thinking he must be right. He seems to be able to explain everything.”
“Yeah, like Hitler and Franco and Mussolini and Stalin could explain everything.”
Max and Bill are both sitting very upright, as if squaring up to each other for a fight. Izzy’s face is a picture of horror at what she’s hearing.
“Well,” says Bill, picking his words carefully and watching Izzy’s expression, “they wouldn’t have had followers if they hadn’t said things which people agreed with.” Bill holds up his hand to stop Max cutting across him. “It was all wrong, what he said. I know that now, but it seemed so convincing at the time.”
Max’s voice is beginning to rise. “And when did you discover that? At Tobruk? When your pals got their legs blown off? When you got your first beating from a Nazi guard? Or not till the wind turned at Lamsdorf, and we could smell the smoke from the death camps? Eh? When?”
Max is on his feet, and bristling for a fight, but Bill stays sitting down, tense and ready to duck a blow, but not wanting to enrage Max any more. The effort to keep his voice calm makes it squeaky. “I said I was wrong, didn’t I?”
Ralph comes nearer, ready to intervene. “Come on, Max, he said he was wrong!”
But Max is yelling and pacing, “Yes, it’s all right to say it now. Now millions of people have had to die. It’s all right if it doesn’t affect you, isn’t it? He’s sitting pretty, isn’t he, with his fucking knitting and his fucking bint…?”
He flicks his hand toward Izzy, and she draws back in shock as if the word has hit her in the face. Bill leaps to his feet, and his knitting clatters to the floor. He stands between her and Max, with his fists up.
Ralph steps between them and grabs Max by the arms. “Stop it. Stop it now. Go outside and cool off.”
Max strains at his grasp. “I’ll take him outside and show the fascist bastard not to mess with the little Jew boy.”
Ralph starts to push him back toward the bedroom door, which opens as others are brought by the shouting.
“Get him out of here,” yells Ralph over Max’s furious, “Come outside. Come on, you fucking coward.”
As the other men drag Max out of the room, Bill can still hear him in the kitchen, swearing and kicking the furniture. Bill hopes he isn’t telling everyone that he’s is a fascist or, worse still, telling them about Izzy.
Ralph reads Bill’s thoughts. “I’ll go and make sure he doesn’t say anything about Cousins.”
And then Bill is left alone with Izzy, and disgust is clear on her face.
She spits out the whispered words, “Is true? Are you Nazi?”
Bill is anguished. “No, no! Listen, you have to understand. We were hungry. There was a depression. There wasn’t enough work. Everyone was blaming the Jews. Well, some of my mates perhaps, but not me. I’ve never told you this: My life was saved when I was delivered by a Jewish woman from the upstairs flat. I was born with the cord around my neck, and I was blue, but this woman knew what to do, and she literally breathed life into me. So I ain’t never been prejudiced. How could I be?” He pauses, trying to find the right words to make Izzy understand, not to hate him. He blunders on. “But when everyone keeps saying something you think it might be true…It was Jewish bankers and moneylenders they went on about. And foreigners coming over and taking our jobs, when so many English families was going hungry. I was fifteen, that’s all. And Mosley was a speaker like you’ve never heard. He could draw pictures in the air with his words, and you felt yourself pulled to him like a magnet. He made it all seem so clear, and he had answers. He was, like, I don’t know, some sort of prophet.”
Bill takes a stride toward Izzy with his hands out, but she steps back, searching his face as if asking what kind of man she has married. Bill’s hands fall to his sides.
“Do you really think that of me?” he says, sick with desperation. “Do you really believe I’m no better than these Nazi scum?”
How can Izzy think so little of him?
She whispers, “I not know you,” and he can’t bear the cold distance opening up between them.
“I was fifteen,” he repeats. “Out with my mates for a laugh and a few beers. We didn’t know that a few clever words could lead to all this.” He sweeps with his arm, and his gesture includes the Russian soldiers; the death camps; his friends, mutilated and killed in battle; four long years of imprisonment and starvation. “All this,” he repeats. “All this.”
His eyes search her face again, and not finding the love he expects to see, he sits down heavily.
“I not know you,” she repeats bleakly. He wishes she were angry with him, anything but this chill of no love.
“Didn’t you ever do anything stupid when you were fifteen?” he asks bitterly, then drops his head in his hands. If he has lost Izzy, he has lost everything. He might as well be dead.
There’s no sound or movement in the room for what feels to Bill like hours, and then Izzy is on her knees in front of him, lifting his head from his hands, kissing and kissing his face, whispering, “Sorry, sorry, sorry.”
“Shh!” He lifts a hand to her cropped hair. “Shh! It’s all right. As long as you still love me, it’s all right.”
In answer she kisses him on the lips, fiercely, as if her life depends on it.
When they pull apart, and he lifts her from her knees to sit next to him on the bed, and is saying, “Because if you don’t love me, it’s all for nothing, and I might as well…” there’s a light rap on the door, and it opens.
Ralph puts his head round the door. “Am I intruding?”
“No, come in. Shut the door,” says Bill, dreading the thought that Ralph now finds him abhorrent too. He wipes his face with the back of his arm, and Izzy slides a little away from him on the bed.
“It’s all right,” says Bill. “I mean, we’re all right. I’ve explained. I was just a kid. I was all wrong, a stupid idiot.” Bill searches Ralph’s expression and finds nothing but compassion in his eyes.
Bill’s anxiety lifts as Ralph says, “I know. I understand. Lots of people were taken in. Just as they were in Germany, in Spain, Italy, everywhere.”
Bill says sadly, “But Max’ll never see it like that.”
Ralph sighs. “No, he probably won’t. Not yet anyway. He wants to move to another room. He’s just said it’s a political disagreement. Frank’s offered to swap. You need to give him time, that’s all. It’s being cooped up like this.”
Max comes in and starts to clear his books from the little window ledge. He hesitates and hands The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists to Izzy.
Bill stands up and holds out his hand. “Look, Max. I’m sorry,” he says awkwardly. “Please don’t go.”