The Clockmaker's Wife by Daisy Wood

Author:Daisy Wood [Wood, Daisy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2021-02-22T17:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

London, January 2022

Ellie might have been closing in on Alice, but her grandmother hovered tantalisingly out of reach. The few facts she’d discovered so far about Eleanor Spelman only added another veil of confusion. Why had Eleanor been in London at the height of the Blitz? Had she brought her baby or left her behind in Oxfordshire? If so, who was looking after Alice? And Eleanor’s political leanings remained a puzzle that might never be solved. In her quest to find some answers, Ellie had made an ally in the Imperial War Museum research rooms. The librarian looked younger than her but dressed like an old fogey in a three-piece suit with a collar and tie; he’d waxed the ends of his moustache into tiny points. ‘Grant Collins,’ announced his name badge. ‘How may I help?’

Ellie had looked on the museum’s website and located some files relating to the British Fascist movement: letters, photographs and transcripts of interviews with suspected Fascist agitators. That seemed as good a place to start as any. She’d given the reference numbers to Grant Collins, who’d brought her stacks of dusty folders to look through, but she needed someone to give her an overall picture. So, taking Grant up on his offer of help, she told him the reason for her investigation and showed him the photographs of Eleanor on her phone, followed by the disturbing contents of her grandmother’s handbag. His eyes lit up behind the horn-rimmed glasses. It was a romantic story, if you were that way inclined: the grandmother who looked so like Ellie, tragically killed in the war, and her own elderly mother waiting thousands of miles away for news. Except for the fact Eleanor might have been a Fascist – which was unfortunate, to say the least.

Grant held the badge carefully, as though it might burn his fingers. ‘Of course, the British Union of Fascists had been disbanded in May 1940 and their leader, Oswald Mosley, thrown into jail.’ He had a precise, pedantic turn of phrase. ‘No one would dare wear an emblem like this in public, but there was still plenty of Fascist activity going on under the radar. A lot of people thought it was only a matter of time before the Germans invaded England, and some homegrown Fascists were jockeying for position, so to speak, waiting for their day to come.’

‘And what about the leaflet?’

‘Fairly standard propaganda. German planes would drop these alongside their bombs.’ He smiled encouragingly. ‘Not every Fascist was a pantomime villain, you know. Someone who’d lived through the previous war might have been desperate to avoid another one.’

‘You’re not reassuring me,’ Ellie said. ‘People must have known by then what Hitler was like. They could see the way that Jewish people were being treated.’

‘Oh, yes. But anti-Semitism was rife, remember, in all sections of society. “The Jew problem” was a commonly accepted phrase.’

‘How awful.’ Ellie gathered her shameful memorabilia. ‘Oh well, I guess I’ll never find out.’

‘Keep looking, you never know what might turn up.

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