years since I watched you get on that chuffa-chuffa train, as you used to call them, at Radlett Station? I knew then, as the train pulled out and you were waving at me out of the window, that I wouldn’t see you again. As you disappeared into the smoke, I wanted to shout after you to come back. I glimpsed it in your face, that you knew what I feared, that you didn’t need me to warn you. You were doing what you believed was right. You didn’t need me at all, not any more. What you didn’t know, because I never told you, was how much I needed you then and have needed you since, every day, all my life.
We did everything together, didn’t we, Pieter? With Papa away at work up in London even during the school holidays, you were the only one at home I could really talk to. We swam, we cycled, we climbed trees, we learnt to drive together, learnt about girls together too. Learning to drive was a whole lot easier.
There came a day when we had both grown away from home, and were not big brother and little brother any more. I had left university and you were at drama college and were acting at Stratford-upon-Avon – Julius Caesar, it was, and you were the best actor in the play, no question. I was so proud of you in your toga, so envious of your great gift. How could that little boy who had trailed behind me in the forest, fencing off the wolves with his stick, longing to go to the stars, have become such a great actor?
We took a rowing boat out for a picnic on the river, tied up under a willow tree, and we talked properly, maybe for the first time. We argued, not angrily but passionately, about Hitler and Mussolini, about the war we knew was coming. I spoke of the futility and waste of war, of the barbarity and horror of the Great War, of how we must not descend to the level of the fascists and join in another conflict that would only serve to kill more millions. I insisted that pacifism was the only way forward for humanity.
And you surprised me with the force of your argument. You said that you had always respected my views, but that I was wrong, that pacifism would not stop Hitler, that the cruelty of fascism had to be confronted. Hitler had marched into Austria, and into Czechoslovakia and Poland, and everyone knew his tanks would soon be rolling into Alsace-Lorraine, you said. The freedom of Europe, of the whole world, was threatened. If it came to war, you would join up and fight. You said you loved acting, but you couldn’t go on making make-believe on the stage when the survival of everyone and everything you held dear was at stake. And I told you – and how well I remember saying it – that killing another human being, no matter how worthy the cause, was wrong, was as wicked as any evil, as any tyrant you might be fighting. Wars solve nothing. I was adamant.
You simply smiled at me as you were rowing, and said, ‘We must each do what we must do, Francis.’ Then you looked down at my bare feet in the bottom of the boat, and laughed. ‘Strewth, I had forgotten what big feet you have! That’s what they called you at school, you know, when you weren’t listening. “Big Feet”.’ You wriggled your own feet then, and said, ‘See those? Small feet, Francis. I always wanted them to be bigger, like yours. I think maybe we all have to get used to our own feet.’ This was my new brother, no longer little, a brother with a mind of his own, a wonderful man.
So you went your way, and I went mine. Neither you nor I wrote letters if we could help it. We met occasionally, awkwardly, at family gatherings which I never enjoyed. The family gloried in your success and would send me reviews from time to time. ‘Pieter Cammaerts is remarkable, a tour de force.’ ‘Pieter Cammaerts, a star in the making.’
And whilst you were gathering these accolades during that last spring and summer of peace, I was still trying to discover where my big feet might take me. You had always been so sure of yourself. You set out to be a great actor and that’s what you became. As for me, I found myself one day standing there in front of a class of forty children, trying to be a teacher. Teach and teach well, I thought, give the children the opportunities they deserve. That was the only way to make the world a better, more peaceful place.
You know me, Pieter, ever full of high-minded notions and pontifications. But these notions weren’t of much use to me in front of all those children, most of whom were not at all keen to learn. Being big and tall helped, I found. I frightened them at first. ‘Mr Giant’ they called me. ‘Big Feet’ too. I would sometimes hear a whispered chorus of ‘Fee fi fo fum’, when they saw me coming.
I learnt plenty from one or two other teachers at the school, Harry in particular. He taught me that you had to be on their side, and they had to know it, that mutual respect and affection was the key. I was discovering for myself that I had in the class forty expectant faces gazing up at me, forty intellects waiting to be stimulated, forty hearts waiting to be moved to laughter or tears, through stories and poems and plays. I had to get to know what made each of them tick, and to do that I had to learn to listen to them, and understand them. They had to know they had a friend in me as well as a teacher.
I tried to pass on to them all the things I had loved as a child, all I had done with you and Papa in the Ardennes. I walked the river banks with them, looking for otters and herons and kingfishers, walked the wild woods when the bluebells were out, discovered foxholes with them, watched larks rising over the fields. It was quite unexpected, but I fell in love with teaching, and knew quickly I would make it my life.
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