Irrepressible by Leslie Brody Read Free Book Online

in ceramic bowls. Down on the beach, some veterans of the Spanish Civil War had pitched tents. Decca and Esmond found a refuge among other young radicals. Though they talked of war and struggle, the way they lived day-to-day was by distraction, trying their best to keep their memories of Spain and their apprehension of the coming European war at bay, in exchange for a few hours of peace.

    At night, they sat on their veranda or out on the beach with the campers. Someone would roll cigarettes to hand around; someone would play a guitar, point out a constellation, quote a poem. “Murmur a little sadly, How love fled / And paced upon the mountains overhead / And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.” There were so many stars. Once in a while, someone would hiccup or change positions with a groan. In the quiet, you could hear another cork being pulled.
    Esmond and Decca had expected the loss of the war in Spain, but back in England in a happier time, it had seemed more of a diminishing horizon, twilight into darkness. Here, confronted by the most recent events as told by men and women of the International Brigades (from France, Germany, the United States, and England) who had witnessed them, the horrors of the endgame took shape. They heard about the retreats, the enemy’s vast superiority in firepower, tanks, and numbers, and the final plunge in morale.
    Some of them, in their earliest idealism, had believed that the example of their conviction—their “willingness to fight and die to prevent the spread of fascism”—would have influence. They believed it might take some time, but even if theirs was an underground current, it had the power to charge others. They had to persuade the leaders of neutral Western democracies to finally, even at the last minute, even in a deus ex machina moment, rescue Spain. There were so many lies, so many deaths, such a waste. As they drank their wine around campfires, the veterans on the beach discussed the newest race laws in Germany: laws forbidding Jews from having driver’s licenses, owning radios—even owning carrier pigeons. It was public knowledge that the Communists not already in prison were being arrested. Germany military aggression escalated every day. All of this was reported, every fascist act scrutinized in the English and European papers. With so much at stake, the intoxicated veterans of the International Brigades wondered aloud to their English comrades, Why won’t Britain act?!

    WHEN DECCA AND Esmond returned to London in August, they found that the government both counseled circumspection and continued to play down the growing dangers. A few years before, a scare had gone around the East End Jewish community. The rumor was that if Edward VIII hadn’t abdicated, he would have cut a deal with Germany to trade Britain’s Jews for entente. Decca felt nothing but contempt for the influential aristocrats and elite politicians (among them her relations) in favor of appeasement or a friendly alliance with Germany. “Their furled umbrellas so symbolic of furled minds.”
    Back from Corsica, with a wider perspective and now unprotected by the happy family’s haze that had surrounded them in Rotherhithe, Decca and Esmond set themselves on track. They told one another that the best way to commit to the antifascist cause was to abolish illusions and be single-minded.
    They moved to a smaller place in Edgware, to which they were soon tracked by a debt collector demanding action on Rotherhithe Street’s huge unpaid electricity bill. Since they were just scraping by, payment of such an enormous bill was “unthinkable.” It outraged them (they said only half-jokingly) to think that electricity, which ought to be free, was in fact a privilege. They considered a countersuit and brainstormed a strategy “on the grounds that electricity is an Act of God—an element like fire, earth and air.” A “pale, sad-looking youth in the employ of the London Electric Company” paced the