The List by Martin Fletcher

Author:Martin Fletcher
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books

THIRTEEN

They were only allowed in because Edith was so heavily pregnant. At the door the stewards were turning away dozens of refugees who came in support; to allow in more Hampstead residents qualified to sign the petition, the stewards said. But Edith pointed to her tummy and fluttered her eyes and they were ushered through. They slid past some seated residents at the back of the hall and took their places.

“Where are all the flags? The signs?” Otto said, leaning over Ismael. “That Face the Facts meeting was like a zoo, this is like a coffee evening.”

“Tea,” said Georg.

“I’ve never been inside a church before,” said Edith, looking around. “It’s very bare.”

“It’s just the meeting hall,” Georg said. “This isn’t the real church, this isn’t where they pray.”

“We should pray this all does some good.”

By ten past eight every chair was taken and people lined the walls and sat on the floor in the front. The stewards had to turn people away; fire risk, they said. The air was jolly, smug even, good people come together to do good. Which didn’t mean they were a pushover. Reverend Cleverley Ford, Holy Trinity’s vicar, called for a moment of prayer, which was immediately rejected by a lady in the front row who called out, “This is a political meeting, not a church affair,” while a man several rows behind her shouted, “How dare you interrupt the vicar in the House of Our Lord?” and a man right behind him shouted, “Pipe down!”

Ismael laughed and nudged Otto. “They haven’t even started yet!” But when the speeches began, without prayers, a wave of encouragement washed over the refugees. The Reverend Chalmers Lyon read warm messages of support from the biologist Julian Huxley and the actress Peggy Ashcroft and the philosopher C.E.M. Joad. Joad had written, “Fascism, with all its beastliness, is not the prerogative of one country. Its first beginnings are often hard to detect but this petition is, I think, one of them. Let us have no truck with it.” The reverend, whose powerful build and almost aggressive stance surprised Edith, said “hear, hear” to the words he had just read, and sat down smiling.

A Mr. Brailsford spoke next. He could have been talking about Georg and Edith, and indeed surveyed the audience while he spoke, as if looking for examples. “Every avenue has been closed to refugees in this country and many of them have to earn money by working in their own homes. Some of them give music lessons, others do small household repairs, others try to start small businesses. Many of them I know live in one small room…”

Edith relaxed into her chair, her shoulders sagged with relief; she had been so uncertain. Despite Georg’s dismissal of it, the prospect of being hounded from Britain just when her baby was born had terrified her, as if there was no place for her on earth to rest—in a world with a thousand doors, none opened for her—yet here, in church, she at last heard the words she longed to hear.

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