Meanwhile Peter had finished Tory MP, to be published by The Left Bookclub (Gollanz). Hitler was invading more and more of Europe. Rumours of war were everywhere and trenches were being dug in Hyde Park.

Chamberlain came back from a visit to Hitler waving his bit of paper – the valueless treaty he fondly imagined would bring Peace in Our Time!

My father, now headmaster of Stratford Grammar School in the East End, rang me up at work. One of his English teachers, a young pacifist, had realised our failure to stand up to Hitler meant war, walked out into the sea and drowned himself.

“What’s your Peter doing now?” my Dad asked.

“Nothing much. He’s just finished writing a book.”

“Have you a phone number for him?”

I had, so my Dad rang him.

“I’m in a jam, Peter,” he said, “I need someone on Monday morning to teach English. It would pay you £5 a week”. He explained about the suicide, and that he wanted someone at once to give the school something to talk about other than the tragic death. Peter went over to Stratford that Friday afternoon and was shown round. He had always said that there were three things he would never do – teach, get married, and join the civil service – but the £5 a week seemed like riches and it was only temporary. He agreed. He would obviously have to lodge with us as he could not travel from Bexley.

This presented slight problems.

My father had left my mother for another woman in 1935, the year I went to Oxford, but no-one at Stratford Grammar School knew. Actually, he was living with a Mrs Parker and her two children, a ten minute walk away, and travelling to school on a 108 bus through the Blackwall Tunnel. If anyone rang him at his supposed home, as they frequently did, the drill was to say “I’m sorry – you have just missed him. Can I get him to ring you back?” Then we immediately rang his new number and passed on the message.

Now it was going to be even more complicated! My father should have been living at 44 Lee Park, but wasn’t. Peter was going to live at 44 Lee Park but shouldn’t be, because no-one at school was supposed to know there was any connection between him and the headmaster.
Luckily we were well used to such complications. My father never told his mother and sisters that he had left home, and they came every year to spend Christmas day with us. So at