A Kiss for the Enemy Read Free

before. He felt a current of sympathy pass between them.
    â€˜We never want anything like that again. I hate seeing them.’
    â€˜My father,’ said Frido quietly, ‘also lost his arm.’
    â€˜Well, never again! War, killing, destruction – it’s madness, evil madness! Of course there are things like this wretched business in Spain. But between European nations – like last time – My God, No!’
    â€˜I agree.’
    â€˜So-called patriotic emotion – it’s often tribal, animal emotion. Intolerance. The wolf-pack. Like those drunken fools this evening. As for war – well in spite of – oh, everything – I think that’s something most people are determined not to repeat. Never again.’
    â€˜I ndeed,’ said Frido. ‘I ndeed. Never, never again.’

Chapter 2
    John Marvell stopped his large black Packard in the middle of Flintdown High Street, switched off the engine and climbed stiffly from it, one leg as ever aching somewhat. The driver of the baker’s van behind him followed suit. The owners of two parked cars at the curb, returning to them with business in the little market town completed, paused and looked at their watches. A number of people came to shop doors and stood quietly. Flintdown church clock started to strike eleven. Unreliable, despite the ministrations of the verger, it was always corrected to within seconds of ‘the wireless’ before this occasion. That November morning in 1937 was cold and sunny, ‘Not unlike,’ thought Marvell, ‘that other morning, years ago.
Our
eleventh of November.’
    Flintdown was now silent. The whole of England was silent. At this hour, on this day, ‘Eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month,’ people withdrew absolutely for two minutes from the pressure of daily living, of getting and spending and chatter. Work stopped. Machines were still. Travel was checked. All stood bareheaded – in church, in the street, at their place of work, in their homes. The old remembered sons. The middle-aged – John Marvell was forty-seven, his wife forty-three – remembered brothers, lovers, husbands: above all, comrades. The young – those under the age of thirty – recalled parents. And the children, who recollected nothing directly, had grown up beneath the shadows of a great melancholy, a corporate sadness.
    The notes of the church clock continued to reverberate through Flintdown, echoing, measured, relentless. It took thirty-five seconds for the hour to strike. After the last note, two minutes would elapse – nobody needed a signal to mark the end of this extraordinary, united act of homage. So it had been decreed from the first year of victory. England could haveaccepted no less dignified an annual gesture. After two minutes folk would begin to walk quietly on, talking little. The first car door would close without fuss, the first engine apologetically start. Traffic would move again, commerce be resumed. Few people would refer directly to the experience just shared. There would be an occasional comment, understated, a relief of feelings:
    â€˜My husband just has to stay at home, he has to listen to it on the wireless, from the Cenotaph –’
    â€˜My sister lives near Croydon, they have the aeroplanes there, last year one came over during it – during the silence! It was all wrong, it could have waited, couldn’t it! After all …’
    â€˜I liked it when we had the special service, the bugles and that, no matter the day of the week, there’s fewer go to that now, save the Legion.’
    But on the whole, Flintdown resumed its business without introspection. For two minutes there had been peace, broken by no human voice, interrupted by no sound contrived of man. For two minutes, although they certainly did not think of the matter thus, Flintdown had been at prayer, quiet, vulnerable and receptive.
    John Marvell,