Free The Other Side of Love by Jacqueline Briskin Page B

stately fanfare, and the flag-bearers of all the nations entered, followed by the teams. When all the athletes stood assembled on the infield, the Olympic banner was ceremoniously hauled down. Eight men were
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    needed to carry it outspread to the biirgermeister of Berlin.
     
    The orchestra sounded, and a vast white-clad chorus broke into the farewell hymn. Here and there groups of German spectators crossed their arms, clasping the hand of the person next to them. The linking spread through the amphitheatre to the athletes, and all were joined, swaying to the voices.
     
    Slowly the lights in the great stadium went out. The flame of the Olympic torch drew all eyes. From the loudspeaker system a clear voice called:
    “I summon the youth of the world to Tokyo four years hence.”
     
    As though a mighty hand were descending on the sacred fire, the Olympic flame that had blazed steadily for the past sixteen days was deliberately snuffed out.
     
    Thus far the closing ceremony had gone as planned. Now that the Games had officially ended, the spectators were intended to move towards the well-lit exits. But something spontaneous occurred. The majority remained, standing to raise their right hands and sing first
    “Deutschland iiber Alles’, then the
    “Horst Wessel Lied’. After the strident march beat had faded into the night, the German fencer next to Kathe muttered:
    “Why don’t they shine the spotlight on the Fiihrer? This is his Olympics.”
     
    There were similar mutterings all through the darkened stands. A group of masculine voices on the floor of the stadium shouted:
    “Sieg Heil! Unser Fiihrer Adolf Hitler! Sieg Heil!”
     
    Others joined in, and the shout spread outwards and upwards. The stone amphitheatre reverberated with the cadenced screams.
     
    Sieg Heil!
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Part Two
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    1936-8
    While the rest of the world went about the business of making a living, rearing families, dancing
    “The Lambeth Walk’, and enjoying Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Germany was bathed in the fiery glow of a thousand torchlight rallies.
     
    SIR AUBR P KlNGSMITH,
    A Brief History of Europe between the Wars

Chapter Nine
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    I
    “Not another word. You’re going back up to Oxford,”
    Euan Kingsmith , said in a low voice whose dangerous fury reached across the dinner-table to his son.
    “I won’t hear any more Frognall idiocy!”
    By
    “Frognall idiocy”
    Euan meant any step that to his mind could remotely lead to a financial decline akin to that suffered by his wife’s family.
    “Why can’t you let me finish, Father?”
     
    “There’s nothing further to say. Ton it you’ll pack your bags
    and first thing tomorrow morning yoiM get in your motor-car.
     
    It’s Oxford for you, and that’s that! If I’d only had your chances.”
     
    (Euan’s often-voiced plaints about his lack of educational oppor-
    | tunities ignored the facts: true, his formal schooling had ceased at
    , fifteen, but that had been his choice. Itching to enter the business,
    j! he’d seen extraneous knowledge as a waste of his time and his
    i father’s money.)
    ij
    “I’m appreciative, but reading Literature seems trivial compared
    << with what’s going on in the world.”
     
    1’A fat lot you know about the world! At nineteen”
    ‘Twenty,”
    Aubrey interjected.
    “So long as you’re under my roof,”
    Euan shouted,
    “you will do as you’re told!”
    Elizabeth Frognall Kingsmith’s terrified gaze focused down the length of the long oval table at her husband. She had sat at this Sheraton table in this diningroom - called the Blue Room because of blue Wedgwood ovals set above the doors - since childhood. In those
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    days there were no scenes of this type. Sometimes she wondered if Quarles had ever heard violence like the hisses and roars that erupted from Euan in all the years since 1707, when Thomas Frognall had raised the rambling cream-painted brick walls. The Frognalls were reticent bookish people who hugged their