War Cry. Wilbur Smith

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СКАЧАТЬ in England regularly puts girls up for both the Oxford and Cambridge entrance examinations, with considerable success.’

      ‘So if I went to the other Roedean, I might be able to get into Oxford?’

      The teacher laughed. ‘Well, I suppose so, Saffron. But you would have to work rather harder than you do presently. There are very few places for young women at England’s great universities, so competition to get in is very fierce indeed.’

      To some teenage girls, those words might have been enough to put them off the very idea of university education. But Saffron was different. The thought of going halfway across the world to engage in a winner-takes-all contest filled her with excitement and enthusiasm.

      ‘Have I been any help to you, my dear?’ the teacher asked.

      ‘Oh yes, Miss,’ beamed Saffron. ‘You have been a very great help indeed!’

      Of all the discoveries Saffron had made since arriving at her new school, the most surprising was that she enjoyed her lessons much more than she’d expected. She was hardly an intellectual, for whom thought was preferable to action, but she had a quick mind, grasped ideas easily and, because she enjoyed the feeling of getting things right, worked to make that happen as often as possible. Sadly, however, there were so many other things going on in her life that work was not always possible, or not in Saffron’s view at any rate, with the result that her school reports were filled with teachers’ pleas that if only Saffron could possibly give her studies her full concentration and effort, great things would surely follow. Now, however, she had a purpose, a goal at which to aim. And once she had her mind set on something, she pursued it with a determination a terrier would have envied.

      In mid-January 1934, Saffron flew back down to Johannesburg with her father for the start of the new school year. She assured him that she was perfectly capable of handling the journey alone, for she had already flown unaccompanied from South Africa to Kenya and back again for her mid-year holidays, but he insisted. ‘What kind of a father would I be if I didn’t take my daughter all the way to school, at least once a year,’ he said. ‘Besides, who’s going to pay for all your shopping if I’m not there to do it?’

      That was a point to which Saffron had no counter, for another expedition to the emporia of Johannesburg was required to replace everything that she had either broken, worn out or grown out of during her first year. When they went to the outfitters, Leon doffed his hat to Miss Halfpenny, gave her a winning smile as he said how charmed he was to see her again and obediently did as he was told when Miss Halfpenny said, ‘Father may leave us now. We ladies will manage quite nicely by ourselves.’

      Leon felt an unexpected pang of disappointment at his dismissal. But there was something else, too, a bittersweet realization provoked by two little words: ‘We ladies.’ That was what Miss Halfpenny had said, and she was right. Saffron was becoming a young lady. She wasn’t just his little girl any more. And as much as Leon was proud at the woman he could see his daughter becoming, it saddened him, too, to say goodbye to his little girl.

      Five thousand miles from Johannesburg, at the Meerbach Motor Works, a sprawling citadel of industry that covered several square kilometres in the southeast corner of Bavaria, Oswald Paust, the Head of Personnel, was coming towards the end of his annual report to the company’s trustees. ‘After many months of hard work, the task of ridding the company of all Jewish employees, as well as other undesirable races, workers with any form of mental or physical deformity, no matter how minor, and sexual or political deviants is very nearly complete,’ he proudly asserted. ‘I can now confirm that Jews, who used to form some 4.2 per cent of the workforce, have entirely disappeared from all our factories, workshops, design studios, maintenance depots and offices …’

      His next words were drowned out as the trustees banged the palms of their hands against the boardroom table around which they were gathered as a sign of approval.

      ‘As I was saying …’ Paust went on. ‘There are six remaining cases of so called “Mischlinge”, which is to say mongrels who have one Jewish parent, or one or more grandparents. I am presently in discussions with representatives from the SS Race and Settlement Main Office to determine whether the fact that none of them shows any signs of Jewish appearance, or practises any Jewish religious or domestic customs, entitles them to any special consideration. I am deeply indebted to Herr Sturmbannführer von Meerbach for his assistance in this regard.’

      More palms were slapped against the great oak tabletop and the massive, brooding figure at the end of the table nodded his head in acknowledgement of the tribute.

      ‘The work has not, of course, been without difficulties,’ Paust said, in the tone of a man who has taken on a great burden, but borne it willingly. ‘It was relatively easy to weed out the communists, since we already knew who the troublemakers and strike leaders were. These people have never kept their affiliations quiet. Establishing the deviancy of suspected homosexuals, however, required considerable investigation, which proved expensive. Nevertheless, a little over one per cent of our workers were found to be practising homosexuals and lost their jobs as a consequence. It must be noted, unfortunately, that the loss to our workforce from these two groups was disproportionately skewed towards higher skill occupations, so that our legal, accounting, marketing, design and research departments have been quite severely affected and may take some months to recover from the loss of experienced and, if I may say so, talented personnel. Of course it is no surprise that the Jew, with his greedy, disputatious nature, should gravitate towards legal and financial work, while the effeminacy of homosexuals may give them a certain aesthetic flair in the design of advertising posters, for example, or even aircraft fuselages. But I feel sure that the trustees will accept that any short-term loss of company income will be more than outweighed by the benefits of knowing that our workers are all decent, healthy Aryan folk.’

      This time the banging was markedly less hearty. As keen as the trustees were to ensure that they maintained the highest standards of racial, sexual and political purity, they were even more interested in maintaining the highest possible profit. SS-Sturmbannführer Konrad von Meerbach had dropped his aristocratic title in favour of his Nazi rank, but he remained chairman of the company that bore his name. Clearly irritated by the want of enthusiasm for Paust’s conclusions, he made a point of slamming his great lion’s paw of a hand, its back covered with a furry mat of ginger hair, so hard that all the pens and coffee cups sitting in front of the company trustees rattled with the impact.

      ‘Thank you, Paust,’ said von Meerbach, rising to his feet. He was still young, in his very early thirties, but his physical stature – for he had the massively muscled shoulders, thick chest, tree-trunk neck and glowering brow of a heavyweight boxer – and inborn air of dominance gave him the authority of a much older man. ‘I am deeply appreciative of your efforts and I am sure that all my fellow trustees would wish to join me in applauding your achievements.’ He gave half-a-dozen hearty claps, prompting six of the eight other attendees at this meeting of the Meerbach Family Trust to take the hint and join in with equal heartiness.

      The only two whose applause seemed perfunctory at best were a thin, nervous-looking woman in her mid-sixties, whose fingers were otherwise occupied holding a long, black cigarette holder, and a young man sitting next to her. He was not clad in a formal business suit and stiff collar, as the other men present all were, but preferred a jacket cut from heathery grey-green tweed, a flannel shirt and a knitted tie over a pair of grey worsted trousers. He looked like an academic or some form of intellectual – neither of which was a remotely complimentary description in Germany any more – and the impression of nonconformity was reinforced by the sweep of dark blond hair that insisted on flopping down over his right eyebrow no matter how often he swept it back up to the side of his head. He could, however, afford to treat Konrad von Meerbach more casually than the others did for he was his younger brother, Gerhard, and the woman sitting next to him was their СКАЧАТЬ