He leaned back on his heels. “We at the Saturday Club are united in our belief that this is a waste of war, that Britain has no call to fight against Germany. Hitler is not our enemy. Who is our real enemy? The Jew. The Jew is our enemy—our common enemy, Germany’s and ours. The Jew is our absolute enemy who will shrink at nothing. He knows but a single goal: our complete destruction. And most important to us here in England, let me ask you, Cui bono? Meaning, who benefits from this war?”
A few in the audience started nodding. “Hear, hear,” said an older man with a cane in the front row.
Pierce looked around at his rapt audience. “The Jews, of course! Some here may say, ‘But there are decent Jews, after all!’ However,” Pierce raised a cautionary finger, “the very phrase ‘after all’ proves that these exceptions—mythical exceptions, based on rumor and gossip—are meaningless in our battle against the Jews. Even Martin Luther saw this ‘decency’ for what it was: ‘Know, dear Christian, and have no doubts about it, that next to the Devil you have no more bitter, poisonous, and determined enemy than a genuine Jew.… If they do something good for you, it is not because they love you, but because they need room to live with us, so they have to do something. But their heart remains as I have said!’ ”
Pierce looked at the upturned faces gazing at him in rapt attention. “I think of myself as a patriot, one who speaks out against this war in hopes of saving the lives of Englishmen and women. Germany is not our enemy. Hitler is not our enemy. Who is? The Jews! The Jews are our real enemy—and how they must be rubbing their hands together and laughing as they think about how much British blood will be shed.
“And this is the truth—the real truth—that the current British government, especially the warmonger Churchill, is determined to keep from you. But now you know the truth. And you—we—will not be fooled into going along with Churchill’s propaganda. We will do everything possible to keep Britain out of this war—this unnecessary, unnatural war.” He smiled, dimples flashing. “Thank you for your time.”
When the speech was over and the applause subsided, weak tea and stale biscuits were offered in the back room.
Pierce made his way around the room, shaking hands and offering words of welcome. When he reached the young woman, who’d helped herself to a cup of the steaming tea, he stopped. “And what did you think? Are you glad you came in out of the rain?”
“Interesting,” she replied slowly, taking a sip of tea and looking up at him. “Most interesting.”
“Come back and see us next week?”
She smiled coyly. “I might.”
“And may I ask your name?”
The young woman’s smile grew, and she showed tiny, pearly white teeth. “Claire.”
It was inconceivable to Maggie that they were in the garden on such a beautiful Saturday afternoon not to prune the roses but to build a bomb shelter. As in a shelter from bombs. Bombs raining down from the sky. Exploding. That sort of thing.
And yet here they were.
Maggie, Paige, Chuck, and the twins—Annabelle and Clarabelle—had each chipped in a few pounds for an Anderson, a shell-like hut made out of corrugated steel. Two curved pieces of steel acted as the roof and two were the walls, while two other flat pieces of steel, one with a door, made up the other walls. When finished, the shelter was supposed to be six feet high, four feet wide, and six and a half feet long, and in a pit four feet deep with at least fifteen inches of earth heaped on top of the whole contraption.
Under the hot cerulean sky, the girls surveyed the garden, tied pinafores around their waists, and picked up their shovels. They’d marked off the area to dig; now they just had to do it.
Chuck groaned. “Of course it had to rain this morning. Makes the dirt even heavier.”
“All right, ladies,” Paige declared, scanning the directions with the same take-charge attitude she’d used for party planning. “We’ve marked off the proper dimensions. Let’s start digging!”
Clarabelle and Annabelle exchanged a look and then started giggling. Although they weren’t that much younger than Maggie, Paige, and Chuck, with their pixielike physiques and tendency to laugh, they seemed like children sometimes.
Paige was not amused. “What?”
Annabelle, the slightly taller, firstborn twin, often spoke for the two of them. “It’s just that … you sound just like one of our schoolmistresses.”
Clarabelle began. “Miss—”
“—Poulter!” Annabelle finished. “Isn’t she just a dead ringer for Miss Poulter?”