It was a beautiful evening and they enjoyed the short walk along to the Royal Albert Hall. They were early and there was still plenty of sunshine to warm them in Kensington Gardens, where they took a seat on a bench and ate the remains of Ursula’s lunchtime sandwiches that she hadn’t had time to finish because she’d had to “run up and down” to Whitehall. “All I do really is move paper around. I think it’s what most people do. Not you, of course.”
“Thank goodness,” Teddy said, remembering the tedium of the bank. If by some chance he survived the war, what on earth was he going to do? The idea of an afterward filled him with dread.
His sister stood up and brushed crumbs off her skirt. “Best get going, don’t want to keep Beethoven waiting.”
They had good seats, the tickets given to Ursula by “someone.” She had hoped to bring her friend, Miss Wolf, but she’d had to cancel. “It’s very sad,” Ursula said, “she’s just learned that her nephew in the Army has been killed in North Africa. Miss Wolf is a simply splendid person, a shining star, and she is a great believer in the power of music to heal. And to hear Beethoven in the midst of war, especially this Beethoven, would have pleased her enormously.”
Which Beethoven, Teddy wondered? He read the programme notes. The Ninth. The BBC Symphony Concert Orchestra with the Alexandra Choir, Adrian Boult conducting.
“Alle Menschen werden Brüder,” Ursula said. “Do you think it’s possible? One day? That all men could be brothers one day? People—by which I largely mean men—have been killing each other since time began. Since Cain threw a rock at Abel’s head or whatever it was he did to him.”
“I don’t think the Bible’s that specific,” Teddy said.
“We have terrifically tribal instincts,” Ursula said. “We’re all primitives underneath, that’s why we had to invent God, to be the voice of our conscience, or we would be killing each other left, right and centre.”
“I think that’s what we are doing.”
The auditorium was rapidly filling up, people shuffling in, and they had to move their knees to one side several times to let people pass. Down below, the promenaders were jockeying politely for good spots in the arena. “These are rather good seats,” Teddy said. “Whatever man gave you them must like you a lot.”
“Yes, but they’re not the best seats,” Ursula said, seeming to find this remark very amusing. “Those were huge raids last week,” she said unexpectedly, the non sequitur knocking him off balance.
“Yes.”
“Do you think Hamburg is finished?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know. Probably. From seventeen thousand feet you can’t see much. Just fire.” The choir began to take their places.
“They took a real hammering,” Ursula continued.
“They?”
“The people. In Hamburg.” Teddy didn’t think of them as people. They were towns. They were factories and railway yards, fighter stations, docks. “Do you ever have any doubts?” she persisted.
“Doubts?”
“You know, about area bombing.”
“Area bombing?” It was a term he had heard, but not one that he had given a great deal of thought to.
“Indiscriminate attacks. The civilian population considered to be a legitimate target—innocent people. It doesn’t make you feel… uncomfortable?”
He turned and looked at her, astonished by her bluntness. (Uncomfortable?) “We don’t target civilians! Can you devise a war where no one is killed? We have to destroy their industry, their economy, if we’re to win. Their housing, too, if necessary. I’m doing—we’re doing—what’s been asked of us to defend our country, to defend freedom. We’re waging war against a deadly foe and we’re risking our lives every time we fly.” He could hear himself slipping into rhetoric and grew irritated, more with himself than Ursula, for surely she of all people understood the concept of duty.
Now let’s get the rest of them, Sylvie’s bishop had said yesterday.
“And how do you define ‘innocent’ anyway?” he pressed on. “Workers in factories that are making bombs? Or guns, or aircraft, or steel, or ball-bearings or tanks? The Gestapo? Hitler?” He was most definitely into hyperbole now. “And let’s not forget it was the Germans who started this war.”
“I rather think we started it at Versailles,” Ursula said quietly.
Teddy sighed, regretting his choleric response. Methinks he doth protest too much. “Sometimes,” he said, “I think if only I could go back in time and shoot Hitler, or, better still, kill him at birth.”
“But then, I suppose,” Ursula said, “you could keep going back, unpicking history all the way, until you arrived at Cain and Abel again.”
“Or the apple.”
“Shush,” someone said crossly as the first violinist made his way on to the platform. They joined in the applause, relieved to end the conversation. Ursula put her hand on his arm and whispered, “I’m sorry. I haven’t lost faith in the war. I just wondered how you felt. If you were, you know, all right.”
“Of course I am.” Teddy was grateful when, to much acclaim, Boult appeared. A great silence fell.