London: October 1940
Arthur Kornfeld and Viktor Rosen travelled up to London on the same train. Bureaucracy had messed them about. Granted their freedom, they had left the Isle of Man on the same boat as the two Stepney tailors—the belligerent Abel Jakobson, who preferred his anglicized Billy Jacks, and mild-mannered, big-eared Viennese refugee, Josef Hummel—but an identity check as they docked at Liverpool had split them up and Jacks and Hummel found themselves on an earlier train, Kornfeld and Rosen on a later.
“They might have waited,” Kornfeld said.
“Why so bitter about it? We have just spent more than three months incarcerated with them. I in the same room as Jacks. You can count yourself lucky you didn’t share with him. An opinion on everything. They probably no more want to chat to us on a four-hour train journey than I to them.”
“I had thought better of it Viktor. I had thought better of us all. I had come to think of us as family.”
He was not the only one.
Rod Troy met them at Euston. RAF blue and wings pinned to his chest. He’d been free since August.
“I just saw Joe and Billy, not more than an hour ago. I knew if I hung on I’d catch the two of you sooner or later. I can’t hang about. I’ve a couple of questions and then I must dash. Are you okay for rooms?”
“Of course,” Rosen replied. “I still have my apartment in Chelsea. It’s been mothballed while I was at His Majesty’s Pleasure. Arthur will spend a day with me before he goes down to Cambridge.”
“Fine. Make that two days. I’m in town on RAF business but I’ve a forty-eight-hour pass starting tomorrow. Due back at base on Saturday evening. I’ve Saturday lunch arranged. You two, me, Billy, Joe—a reunion.”
“But,” said Rosen, “we have scarcely parted.”
“You might have . . . I haven’t clapped eyes on you blokes for two months. I want to hear Arthur and Joe dispense wisdom, I want to hear you play the piano, I want to hear Billy grumble about something . . . and I want you all to meet my little brother.”
“Rod,” Kornfeld said, “I really must get back to Cambridge. I’m sorry. I would love to—”
Rod clapped him on the shoulder.
“Another time, Arthur. There’ll be plenty of other times. We’ll make it into a regular reunion.”
After he’d gone, in a taxi heading south to Chelsea, neither spoke until they had reached the bottom of Gower Street. Then Rosen said, “I didn’t know he had a brother.”
“Then Viktor, dare I say, you did not listen to the man. Rod is one to take the burden of the world upon his shoulders, and none more burdensome than this brother that peppers his conversation.”
“Really? Can’t say I noticed. Black sheep of the family I suppose?”
“Au contraire. Would you believe the boy is a Scotland Yard detective? Sergeant Troy?”