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18a. And with Mosley as Home Secretary – the anti-Jew laws – we’ll be as Fascist as the rest of Europe soon.’ He felt himself redden when he spoke of the anti-Jew laws, and
glanced quickly at Jackson, but the older man didn’t seem to have noticed. He just nodded, considered for a moment, and then said, ‘Felt like this for long?’
    ‘I suppose I have. I know this has been building up for years. It’s all caught up with me since the election.’
    Jackson looked reflective. ‘You lost a child recently, I believe. An accident.’
    David hadn’t expected Geoff to tell him about Charlie. He answered ‘Yes,’ stiffly, giving Geoff a frown.
    ‘I’m sorry to hear it.’
    ‘Thank you.’
    Jackson cleared his throat. ‘You served in the war, Geoff said.’
    ‘Yes, in Norway.’
    Jackson smiled sadly. ‘The Norway campaign finished Chamberlain. Some say if Churchill had got the premiership at that time, we’d have carried on the war after France fell. I wonder
what would have happened then?’
    They were walking briskly now; despite his size Jackson did not seem to be out of breath. David said, ‘Norway was a mess. I’d seen men die, the Germans seemed – invincible.
After France fell I thought we had to make peace, I thought the Treaty was the only alternative to conquest.’
    ‘And Hitler promised to leave the Empire alone; many thought that generous. But Churchill said the Treaty would still lead to German dominion and he was right.’ He smiled at David
then, a pleasant social smile although his eyes remained sharp. David knew that in a very English way he was being probed, tested. There was something about Jackson that made him guess this man was
a civil servant like him, but very senior. He wondered where he was leading. Jackson smiled encouragingly. David took a breath and then dived right in, just as he had from the diving board as a
boy.
    ‘My wife’s a pacifist,’ he said. ‘I used to agree with her. She still maintains that at least we stopped the war. Though she knows Britain’s supporting what’s
going on in Russia. Endless bloody murder.’
    Jackson stopped and looked out over Highgate Ponds. In the same quiet voice he said, ‘The Germans can never win in Russia. They’ve been fighting for eleven years to realize their
goal: a state of German settlement stretching from Archangel to Astrakhan, some capitalist semi-colonial Russian state beyond that in the Urals and Siberia. But they’ve never managed it.
Every summer they edge a bit further east, they breach parts of the Volga line, every winter the Russians push them back with these new Kalashnikov rifles they’re making beyond the Urals
– millions of them, light and effective. And behind the lines, the partisans hold half the countryside. In some places the Germans just control the towns and the railway lines. Do you know
what happened after they captured Leningrad ten years ago?’
    ‘No-one knows that, do they? All we hear is that the Germans keep slowly advancing.’
    ‘Well, they’re not. As for Leningrad, the Germans didn’t go in, they just surrounded the city and left the population to starve. Over three million people. There’s been
complete radio silence from Leningrad since 1942. Nothing, not a cheep. When they took Moscow they turned the population out, put them in camps, and left them to starve. Same with the European
Jews. They’re all supposed to have gone to labour camps, somewhere in the East. We’ve seen the newsreels, nice wooden huts with flowers in the window and lawns outside. But no English
Jew has ever heard a word from friends or relatives who went there: not a letter, not a postcard. Nothing.’
    David stared at Jackson.
Does he know about me?
he thought. But nobody knew his secret, apart from his father. It was just that with the new laws people were talking about the Jews more.
He said, ‘There were what, six million people, seven, sent to the labour camps?’
    Jackson