I, Dreyfus Page 6

  I remember the day well. It was a Saturday, a day always reserved for my children and their entertainment. When the letter-box rattled with the post, Peter rushed to collect it. He was expecting his comic. He handed me a sheaf of envelopes, and I shuffled through them. There seemed little of interest except for one envelope which was clearly of a finer quality than the rest. It felt like linen. I turned it over and my heart stumbled. It was from the Palace. Lucy was in the kitchen, preparing omelettes, and I was glad that I could open it in private. As I read its contents, my hands trembled, and my face must have flushed for Peter said, ‘Are you all right, Papa?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I’m hungry, that’s all.’

  I waited for Lucy to return and for the serving to be done. And then I said, Did you sleep well, Lady Lucy?’

  I heard the title and relished its noble ring. I had not yet tried it on myself. Lucy looked at me with a worried smile. I am not given to small talk or tease and my question was entirely out of character.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

  ‘More than all right,’ I said. ‘Sir Alfred Dreyfus is very all right, thank you.’ Then before she could suspect that my mind had turned, I handed her the letter. She glowed as she read it. ‘For services to education,’ she said aloud and then repeated it with pride. She actually rose from the table to embrace me. My wife is not a demonstrative woman and this was a rare gesture. She handed the letter to the children, and they too, like Lucy, of natural reserve, embraced me. We were to keep it a secret it seemed, until my acceptance was accepted and it was officially announced. But I could not keep the news from my parents. Or from Matthew.

  ‘Let’s drive down and tell Grandma and Grandpa,’ Peter said.

  ‘And can Uncle Matthew come too?’ said Jean. ‘And Aunt Susan and Adam and Zak?’

  ‘We’ll take champagne,’ I said, ‘and surprise them.’

  So it was that we spent that Saturday in my childhood village. And the celebrations were secret and intense. The children kept practising our new titles and were happy to be sworn into the common secrecy. But we made plans for the investiture and the party that would follow.

  Oh the words for happiness are so readily available, and as I write of this event, I wonder where I will find the alphabet for my fall. But for the while I must stay in the happy arena. My banishment will come soon enough.

  Lucy and the children accompanied me to the Palace. At the time, Matthew and Susan lived in a grand mansion flat overlooking Hyde Park, and I had arranged a small luncheon there for family and close friends. And they had gathered there, toasting my honour, while I knelt before the Queen. I was not worried about the kneeling – heaven knows, I had had enough illicit practice – but this genuflection had nothing to do with Jesus even though my benefactress was head of the established Church. It was all over in a few moments. The excitement and intoxicated anticipation of the plain Mr Dreyfus waned with the rising of Sir Alfred. Somehow it was all an anticlimax. The journey had been more dramatic than its arrival.

  We posed for photographs in the Palace yard, Lucy, the children and I. At the time I did not know how famous that photograph would become, and how often it would be used in newspapers all over the world. In it, my face bears a bewildered look which turned out to be apt and fitting for the odious and vicious captions that would underline it. They would not even single me out. They would use the original grouping, including Lucy and the children, so that they might be contaminated with my infamy. But I must not think of that. All that belongs to the future, which requires an altogether different grammar.

  They were waiting for us at Matthew’s flat, our friends and family. I had invited some of my colleagues from school and a handful of my old-time friends from the village. We were a mixed group but all were united in doing me proud. As I sit here, in my cell, I often recall that gathering. It is a welcome light in the darkness of my surroundings. I dwell on it and wonder how it could ever have been real, or whether I had dreamt it, and it is a momentary but false relief in my continuing nightmare.

  The following day I returned to school to much teasing, bowing and tugging of forelocks from the staff. Even some of the boys risked it, but I let it lie, knowing that the novelty would soon fade. I concentrated on my work and the preparation of speeches for a lecture tour of training-colleges. I was even called in to speak to the Minister of Education to appraise him of the differences between state and private schooling. The knighthood helped of course, and through it I made many useful contacts. One of them even suggested I stand for Parliament. But politics was not my ambition. I still nurtured the hope of ruling the best school in the land.

  But it was to be almost five years before that opportunity arose. By then, I was forty-five years old and a knight of the realm, with an established reputation in an academic field. I considered myself highly qualified. The headmaster of that great school was about to retire and I decided to wait until the vacancy was advertised. But they came to me. In other words, I was approached. And faintly overwhelmed. I was invited to the school to dine at High Table.

  About twenty of us were seated, most of them members of staff. I sat next to the reigning headmaster, with the head of music on my other side. We adjourned to the great library for coffee and I mingled with those with whom I’d had no opportunity to converse at table. The headmaster led me across the room to meet Smith of geography.

  ‘You’ve got something in common,’ he said. ‘You’re both village boys.’

  ‘I grew up in a village in Kent,’ I said.

  ‘Mine was in Yorkshire,’ Smith offered. ‘My father was the curate in the village church.’

  Smith was amiable enough and I wondered why I suddenly felt cornered. I suppose that the words ‘church’ and ‘curate’ were reminders of those origins that I was disposed to conceal. I decided to play along with him.

  ‘We had a beautiful church,’ I said. ‘My parents were married there, and I was baptised by the same vicar who married them.’

  I needn’t have given them all that information. I wasn’t exactly telling them I was a Christian. But I was giving them enough reason to believe that I was nothing else. I was shamefully satisfied.

  It was a pleasant evening and not for one moment did I sense that I was being interviewed. I had the impression that the job of headmaster was mine for the taking. And indeed, within the week an official letter arrived offering me the post.

  When I think of it now, it was an eccentric appointment. It is true I was English-born, but I wore no trimmings of the church, to which the school was closely linked. On the other hand, I bore no obvious signs of my true origins, and if they had guessed at them, they must have chosen to pay them no attention. Or they may well have been seduced by my title and reputation. Whatever their reasons, my appointment was cause for yet another family gathering and celebration.

  I sense that my readers might well be fed up with all this success and happiness, and in their irritation are entitled to asked, ‘For God’s sake, who gets cancer? And when?’

  The answer is my father. And the time is now.

  I was due to take up my new posting in September at the beginning of the school year. I was still seeing out my last term at Hammersmith and we were wholly occupied with examinations. I was at work in my study when a call came in from Lucy. I knew it must be urgent for she rarely rang me at the school. I feared for the welfare of my children. I took the call immediately. My mother had phoned from Kent. ‘Papa is desperately ill,’ she said. I feared to ask the nature of the illness and I hoped that Lucy would not inform me. But her silence told me that, whatever the diagnosis, it was fatal.

  ‘Does Matthew know?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. He’s going down after work. He wants to know if you want a lift.’

  ‘Tell him to pick me up,’ I said. I wanted the call to end. I was afraid that Lucy might elaborate. And for the same reason, I refrained from calling Matthew. And again, for the same reason, our journey back to the vi
llage was a silent one.

  My mother had heard the car and she was on the doorstep to greet us. She walked down the rose-throttled pathway, and waited. I studied her face for clues. But I saw only her usual smile of welcome. And then, as we reached her, my father surprisingly appeared on the doorstep. He looked pale it is true, but I so firmly expected him in a bed and moribund that I was overjoyed at his presence. My mother stretched out her arms to hold us, an unfamiliar gesture, and I was afraid.

  ‘It’s bad news,’ she said. ‘Papa has cancer.’

  I looked at my father, and on his face was a look of deep shame. As if he had sinned mightily and was asking for forgiveness.

  ‘Let’s go inside,’ Matthew said.

  Silently we all stepped into the kitchen. My mother had prepared the table for supper and we sat around it wordlessly. I held my father’s hand. I had expected it cold, but he squeezed my fingers with its warmth. My mother set about serving. She had clearly spent time with its preparation, and the dishes were complex and delicate. It was as if we were once again celebrating. I noticed that my father ate slowly and with little appetite, but he relished the wine, raising his glass to drink to our health, a toast which broke my heart. We were silent throughout and it was not until the dessert was served that the silence was broken.

  ‘I have three months,’ my father said.

  I thought, in three months he could travel the world. In three months he could write a book. In three months he could compose a symphony. He could plant a tree and see it bud. Three months was all one needed for a lifetime.

  ‘Is there no treatment?’ Matthew dared to ask.

  ‘It’s the pancreas,’ my mother said. ‘It’s inoperable.’

  ‘But there must be something.’ Matthew was almost weeping.

  ‘There’s chemotherapy,’ my father said. ‘It’s a horrendous treatment, and even if it works it would give me only a little more time. And that time would have no quality. I’ve decided against it,’ he said.

  But you must try it,’ Matthew pleaded. ‘Please Papa.’ He spoke like a child begging a favour. Even his voice had re-broken.

  ‘It’s Papa’s decision,’ my mother said.

  My father took Matthew’s hand. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘They will look after me. They have promised I shall feel no pain. I am prepared. And I shall go gently.’

  I felt my anger rising. His going, gently or not, was simply not allowed. But I knew too, that only he could make the choice. That was his inalienable right.

  ‘You must come back with us to London,’ Matthew said. ‘You must stay with us. We’ll all look after you.’

  ‘I want to die at home,’ my father said.

  He used the word with no hesitation. ‘Die’ was the very last word I was prepared to use. He could have cancer, an inoperable one, an untreatable one, but he didn’t have to die. Dying was in another department altogether. My father was setting the pace and I didn’t want to follow him. But his decision had been made and was unarguable.

  ‘Let’s say no more about it,’ my father said.

  ‘What about you, Mama?’ I asked. ‘How will you manage?’

  ‘The nurses will come daily,’ she said. ‘And at night. Whenever I want them. We’ll manage,’ she said helplessly. ‘I just hope you will come as often as you can.’

  ‘I’ll stay here,’ I said. ‘I’ll commute daily.’

  ‘So will I,’ Matthew said.

  My father laughed weakly. ‘It will be like old times,’ he said.

  And so we commuted, Matthew and I, silently, twice daily by train. We said little to each other on those journeys. We both held our tongues on that shared sorrow, and close as we had always been to each other, our bondage was now indissoluble.

  During the weeks that followed, Lucy and Susan and our children came down to the cottage for the weekends, and we all sat with our father and shared tales of the past. In time, he took to his bed. The daily paper lay unread at his side, and his favourite music was unheard. During his last weeks, my term came to an end, and all day I lay beside him and held his hand. One day I noticed that the dressing-table had been moved so that my father could not glance in the mirror that faced his bed. He appeared not to notice the change. At least he made no comment on it. And no one mentioned how his colour had turned yellow. Occasionally he spoke, but most of the time he stared vacantly, as if in deep thought. And from time to time he would turn towards me and smile. But what was most disturbing was the frequency with which he looked at his watch as if to check on how much time was left of the three months that had been promised him.

  It was a Saturday and the summer days were shortening. Time crawled relentlessly, but for my father it sprinted towards his deadline. On that day, he struggled to sit upright. I lifted him against the pillows and I was appalled at his feather-like weight. He looked at his watch once more, stared for a while, and then he began to speak. His voice sounded disembodied, as if it were coming from another place and another time. Which indeed it was.

  ‘It was Émile,’ he said. ‘Little Émile. He caught her with the milk.’ Then he looked at his watch again and smiled.

  I called everybody to his bedside and we all held on to his hands. Tightly, as if by holding him, he would not leave us. We watched as his lips began to move.

  ‘Shema Yisrael,’ he muttered. That was all. Then he was gone. And we sat there and looked at him. Unbelieving.

  I heard the beat of my heart, which threatened to burst. It was my father’s farewell that was breaking me. All his life he had refused to recall the Rue du Bac. All his life he had turned his back on the ‘why’ of his exile. And with his last words, he had acknowledged both.

  But despite his prayer, a prayer that echoed with millions of other Shemas through the ovens, despite his final avowal, he was buried in the village churchyard by that same now-ageing vicar who had married him with my mother. It had been his wish to be buried there, as a final instalment of a life of deception. And as I stood by the grave and threw in my handful of earth, I recited the Shema in full, that prayer, never knowingly learnt, but implanted at birth in every Jewish heart. Despite the church burial, despite the vicar and despite the Jesus funeral, despite that lifelong deception, I sat on a low stool for seven days, and mourned my father.

  We begged our mother to come and stay with us in London. But she refused. She would not leave my father’s graveside. So we stayed with her, Matthew and I, and daily we viewed her withdrawal. She refused food, sleeping most of the time, and on the exact spot where he had left her, willing herself to join him. She prayed constantly. I don’t know to whom nor in what language. It took her three weeks of ceaseless pleading to receive an answer and one morning, Matthew and I found her at peace at last. She had died of nothing else but death.

  We buried her next to my father, as an acknowledgement of that lie she had lived, and that small plot of land gave the Dreyfus family a territorial right on the country of their exile.

  We were orphaned now, Matthew and I, and we began to smell our own mortality. But we were not the last of the Dreyfus line. That as yet unsullied name would continue, and we found solace in our children.

  I am tired now. Grief-exhausted. That recall has shaken me. My supper tray lies untouched on my table, but I have no appetite. Tomorrow perhaps I shall begin to write of my new school and take some compensating pleasure in my longed-for promotion. I shall be Sir Alfred once again, and the head of the finest school in England.

  Chapter 11

  Sam Temple spent much of his time dodging calls from Bernard Wallworthy. But he recognised that the publisher was entitled to some information, if not proof of the progress of Dreyfus’s confession, so he picked up the phone and dialled the number.

  Wallworthy was cool. He resented Temple’s avoidance. It fed his ever-lurking anti-Semitism. Sometimes he regretted ever having involved himself with that lot. They were always trouble. But he was mindful too of the vast profits entailed in the deal. ‘I have phoned you a
number of times Mr Temple,’ he said. ‘It would be a matter of common courtesy to return my calls.’ What did Temple’s kind know of common courtesy, Wallworthy thought. It was a waste of good words on them.

  ‘I’m very sorry,’ Sam Temple lied, ‘but I was waiting to hear from the governor of the prison. I’m hoping to visit Mr Dreyfus this week. And then hopefully I shall have some news for you.’

  ‘I don’t want news,’ Wallworthy said sharply, ‘I want words.’

  ‘I must first ascertain that he is willing to show them to you,’ Sam said firmly, and added that there was nothing in the contract that obliged his client to show work in progress.

  ‘Look here, Temple,’ Wallworthy spluttered, ‘I’ve a great amount of money riding on this deal. Dreyfus is a novice writer, if a writer at all. It would be a simple act of common courtesy’ – again words wasted on the two of them – ‘to show me a sample of what he has done.’

  ‘I’ll try and persuade him,’ Sam said. ‘But I wouldn’t hold your breath.’

  Sam put down the phone. He wasn’t sure that Dreyfus could be persuaded and his client was Dreyfus, not Bernard Wallworthy. He rang the governor, who reported that Dreyfus had been ill. He had no appetite and spent most of his time sleeping or pacing his cell. The doctor could find nothing physically wrong with him. He had diagnosed, unsurprisingly, a state of depression and prescribed some pills. ‘A visit would do him good, I think,’ the governor suggested.

  ‘I’ll be along this afternoon,’ Sam said.

  But first he had to see Lucy. News from Lucy, though indirect, would help lift Dreyfus’s spirits. She had written to Temple with her new address and had requested a visit. He rang her new number and arranged to call on her that morning. Lucy and the children had moved a good distance from their old tenancy to a flat south of the river and when Sam entered he was happy to notice that it was very different from their former home. It was more spacious and certainly more finely appointed. He noted too some significant additions. There was a mezzuzah on the front door of the apartment and on other doors too, and on the sideboard in the dining-room was a silver menorah, the candelabra for the festival of Chanukah. Mrs Dreyfus was laying her tardy cards on the table.