Permission to Resign

by Ann Bridge

  In a moment he was back again, ‘Sir Warren wishes to speak to you. I will put you through.’

  ‘Oh, but I didn’t want –’, but it was lost in the buzz of connection, and then I heard for the first time that low, peculiar, prolonged ‘Hullow?’ Yes, I was Mrs O’Malley.

  ‘I was in the middle of writing a letter to you,’ he said. ‘I’d written about six pages. Are you back in England?’ Yes, I was in London.

  ‘Well, can I see you?’ I said I hadn’t meant to ask to see him, or even speak to him – only to find out where he would be, just in case.

  ‘But I want to see you,’ he said. ‘Will you come and see me tomorrow? What time?’ Any time.

  ‘Well, will you lunch with me tomorrow? 1.30? Are you sure that suits you? At my flat will be best, I think – we shall be quieter there.’

  He told me how to find it and rang off, leaving me wondering more than ever what Owen would say to these goings on? Before I had even seen him, to meet with a member of the Labour Party, and to have arranged to lunch with Sir Warren Fisher!

  Then Joris came. I shall not put down the course of our conversation. It is enough to say that it gave me a very welcome assurance that there were people who wished to have us set right – an assurance that helped me very much later – and were prepared to speak and fight on our side if we would brief them up in our case. That they were not doing it solely for our beaux yeux was certain. I had seen for myself already what a weapon in the hands of the Labour Party it would be if Part I of the Report were proved to be substantially incorrect or even untrue – for what would then become of the prestige of Part III, which dealt with the Zinoviev Letter? It also gave me a fresh sense of the need for speed. This was Friday night, and the Zinoviev Debate was to take place on Monday. However, I could only listen to Joris, promise to put his views before Owen, and explain that till I had his permission I could say nothing at all – that indeed I had overstepped his express wishes even by our meeting.

  Then Jane and I drove down to Pendell, and I went up and found Owen in bed in the room at the end of the corridor by the Panelled Room. Of the impression that I got there that night I really cannot write. My honest, honourable man so stricken, so tormented, so desperately ill in mind and body. Who will blame me if then I said, ‘God do so to them, and more also, who through panic, haste, and prejudice brought him to this pass!’

  We talked before dinner and after till nearly ten, when he had to sleep. He took both my ventures quite calmly, and even seemed glad that I should see Fisher. On the subject of the Labour people he was adamant. Until his resignation was accepted, he said, he was still a civil servant, and his duty and loyalty were still imperatively binding on him. He forbade me formally to see Joris Young, or write to him, for the present. I rang up Hope and asked her to give Joris a message to say that Owen would see no one and say nothing, so that there was no point in my seeing him again as I had promised. I also rang up Vincent Baddeley and arranged to see him at the Admiralty between 3.30 and 4 p.m. next day – allowing ample time for Fisher, as I reckoned. And Sybil Thesiger, with whom I undertook to have tea about 4.30. (I had a vague idea of mobilizing Lord Chelmsford in some way; I knew he had been connected with the Labour Party, but believed he had left it – and anyhow I wanted to see Sybil.) How I kept these two appointments will be seen. And so to bed, after as strenuous a thirty-six hours out of it as I remember.

  Chapter V

  Next morning I breakfasted in bed, and spent an hour or two trying to collect my ideas and settle exactly what to say to Fisher. Owen assured me that I should have to hear rather than to speak – which proved true enough – and there was my letter, to which I might now expect an oral answer. In the end, I found that the most I could do was to clear my own mind on what were the essential points and the most conclusive arguments to keep before me, for use if I got the chance. Owen was, of course, anxious to prime me with what he wished to be said, implied, and understood. I remember his saying one thing with intense earnestness. I had been speaking of our hands being tied by the non-acceptance of the resignation.

  ‘But don’t hurry them to accept it,’ he said. ‘I don’t want it accepted. The longer they leave it, the more hope there is. Don’t break that thread.’

  It was a formidable encounter, this meeting with our executioner, who alone had the power, I was assured by everyone, to modify the sentence or maintain it. May Bell, most ardent of partisans, flung herself into the task of fortifying me for it. She gave sound advice as to points to raise and avoid. She passed my frocks in review, and chose with care one which seemed to her suited to the importunate widow’s role! And when I was dressed and leaving, she kissed me and said ‘Don’t worry, Mary Anne – there’s nothing so powerful as pluck!’

  I went up by train and went straight to see Will Arnold-Forster at the League of Nations Union. He was surprised and pleased at my having already got into touch with Fisher, but terrified at the line I told him I meant to take – namely in the last resort to let Fisher know that the Labour party felt that there was a case to take up. He begged me to promise him not to do this – which I wouldn’t do – I would only promise to be careful. He also gave me some useful information as to the line taken about Owen by the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Labour Party. He had to catch a train at King’s Cross, so I took him in my taxi as far as Baker Street, and dropped him there. Two minutes later I was ringing the bell at Treborough House.

  A neat little person with a charming youthful face, who was not dressed as a maid, opened the door and told me that Sir Warren was not yet come. I waited in the little drawingroom, trying to deduce the owner from his possessions. They were simple and undefined and did not help much. And then the door opened and I stood face to face with the enemy.

  A small man – slim, alert and spry, with grey hair and a youthful unworn face. Something rather sweet about the eyes and mouth. Bad, weak, obstinate hands. Very smart and natty in his dress, very smooth and urbane in his speech. ‘You can say anything to him,’ Owen had said, and so I found it; we talked easily from the outset – simply and almost naturally. We lunched – a martyrizing meal to me. Bunny who, though not in maid’s uniform, was in fact Sir Warren’s house-keeper (she had been his children’s nurse) and was in and out with the food; she was being pressed to stay, and pressed to eat, and pressed to allow Sir Warren to clear the table. Bunny and I are good friends now, but in my then state of nervous tension the peculiarity of these proceedings made me almost hysterical.

  Sir Warren began by lecturing me about sensitiveness. The sentences in my letter about ‘charity’ and ‘disgrace’ had upset him, as indeed they had been meant to do, and he argued with energy that charity was not charity but Love, and that to be asked publicly to resign from the Foreign Office contained no hint or element of disgrace. I disagreed rather gently. Then we repaired to the drawingroom with coffee, and started a regular dog-fight over the Report. We went through the points in my letter one after another, and to all but one his answer was the same – and a most curious one for a man in a position of such responsibility to give; namely, that he could write another Report which would meet all my objections and yet be much nastier than what he had written! The one point on which he budged was that of Owen’s having been fourth and not second in the department: ‘that ought to be verified,’ he said, and promised to do so. But on all the rest he would not budge one inch.

  Then an important thing happened. He was speaking with considerable animus and great severity of Owen’s voluntary statement to the Board that he had not asked Sir Eyre Crowe’s (Head of the Foreign Office) advice as to gambling in francs because Crowe would not have understood and would have ‘barked at him’ – the Board had considered this complete and damning proof that Owen had a guilty conscience over the francs business. I had to make a difficult decision here. What I had to tell on that point cleared Owen, if only I could make Fisher see it – but if I could not, it was corroboration up to the hilt of the Board’s view. I risk
ed it.

  ‘I know all about that,’ I said. ‘It was I who told him to consult Crowe.’

  ‘You did?’ Fisher was plainly astonished at this.

  ‘Yes. I told him before he began that I thought he had no business to gamble in francs, being in the F.O.; and when he persisted I told him that if he asked Crowe and Crowe didn’t mind, I should be satisfied.’

  ‘And what did he say to that?’ Fisher asked.

  ‘He said that he himself was satisfied that it was right, or he shouldn’t do it, and he had no need to ask anyone’s advice. And that was true – he did think it right.’

  Fisher considered this for some time, and asked me a few more questions; at last he said – ‘Well, I believe you – it’s a strange story, and it puts his judgement in a very odd light, but I believe it. But I wonder if I could make anyone else believe it?’

  It was clear that my plumping out so double-edged a statement, one moreover which I could so easily have suppressed, had made a considerable impression.

  But the dog-fight went on, more and more hopelessly. 3.30 had long passed, and my appointment with Vincent Baddeley. I let it go. 4.30 was approaching, and Sybil – I let that go too. I had a most insistent conviction that below all our words, and almost independently of them, a soundless struggle was going on between me and Sir Warren, and that unless I won in this round I should never have another chance. Nothing else mattered but somehow to beat him, to breach his defences. As the afternoon wore on, this emotional tension deepened. But I was getting tired out with the strain of picking my phrases and marshalling my arguments against such a skilled and remorseless opponent, and at last I gave that line up. There was a pause. I thought of the sentence in the last paragraph of Owen’s memorandum: ‘I ask not for justice but for mercy.’ I had better, I thought, ask for it too. But the words stuck.

  ‘I suppose ...,’ I began, staring hard at the top of the curtain and trying to steady my voice. ‘I suppose ...,’ I failed again.

  ‘What is it?’ said Sir Warren kindly – ‘Tell me – surely you aren’t afraid of saying anything to me now? Don’t be afraid – you needn’t be.’

  ‘I’m not!’ I said irritably. ‘I’m trying not to cry.’

  Then I got it out – ‘I suppose it would seem quite – ridiculous – to you if I were to ask – for mercy?’

  He said nothing at all in answer to that. He leaned his head on the wing of his chair and tapped, tapped, lightly on the arm of it with opened fingers. He closed his eyes, but I thought I saw tears. We sat so for ten minutes or more, and I stared at the curtain and held on, in some strange way, with my spirit.

  Then it occurred to me that he probably wanted to tell me it was hopeless, and found it hard to begin. In that case I ought to help him out, so I said, ‘Are you trying to tell me it’s impossible? Because if so, carry on.’

  ‘No,’ he said, raising his head and looking at me as if he had come back from a great distance – ‘No; I was asking for help. I can’t see yet. You must give me time.’

  I assured him that my time was his, and then we sat as before – but now, how strongly I wrestled with him in my soul. The soundless conflict had become the only one, and all the strength that I possessed I put out in it. I had no wish to draw it short – my untrained mind, my inexperience and my fatigue were no longer setting me at a disadvantage in this silent warfare.

  At last he raised his head again. ‘I must think it over,’ he said. ‘I can’t see yet,’ he repeated. ‘There is ideal right and ideal justice – there is mercy. They must fit in somewhere. Give me time to think.’

  And then he gave me his most solemn assurance that if he should come to think it right to show mercy, he would not let any considerations of consistency stand in his way; nor, so far as a man may promise for himself, would he allow any fear of inconsistency to influence his decision on the merits of the case.

  The defences were breached at last.

  We had tea. We spoke of other things – his family, religion. The tension was over but the emotion persisted. There was, curiously, relief shared between us – the contending hosts fraternized over creature comforts with smiles and little jokes. But his mind, below all this, still ran on the main problem. Before I left he rang up ‘Van’ (Robert Vansittart, the Prime Minister’s Principal Private Secretary) and told him to find the papers with Owen’s memorandum and resignation, and lock them up in his safe, to give more time for thought. He did not want the acceptance of the resignation to go out without his knowledge. I only learned much later how matters stood at that stage. The door was, apparently, about to be slammed, I got my toe in the crack just in time.

  As I left, my host said, ‘I hope you’ll look on me as a friend now?’

  I said, ‘Thank you very much.’

  ‘Bother thanks!’ said Sir Warren vigorously.

  ‘Well, shall I say I’m very glad?’

  ‘That’s better!’ he said, taking my arm kindly, ‘I’m very glad too.’

  It was 6.30 – I had been there five hours. A long battle – but in the first round I had won.

  Chapter VI

  I decided on Sir Warren’s advice not to tell Owen about the suspension of the resignation. The hope was very faint, and he was not fit to bear ups and downs of hope and fear. So my sheaves seemed pitifully slender when I returned to him that evening at Pendell. But to me – and to May – the achievement seemed astonishing. The night brought counsel and the morning fresh schemes. If one could breach Sir Warren’s defences, why not the P.M.’s? Why not go straight to Chequers, that very day? I got on to the telephone to Fisher and suggested this, rather timidly. He was all for it, surprisingly, and said he would ring up Van and see what he could do to arrange it. Meanwhile, we gathered in my room and looked out distances and roads on maps. There was Sir Austen Chamberlain too: why not him? Archie Bell sat listening astride a chair, saying nothing. At last he rose, and murmuring ‘Ye who have cars, prepare to drive them now!’ went out to see about petrol.

  But Van was against seeing the P.M. He was learning his Zinoviev speech by heart and would see no one. Try Sir Austen, who ought in any case to be seen first. I pursued Walford Selby on the telephone. I caught him at Brighton. He was returning to London that night by train. I suggested driving down, picking him up, and bringing him back to town myself. This was arranged. I also rang up Van once more and made an assignation with him for 7.30 p.m.

  We were all in rather better spirits by now. Sir Warren was closeted with Mr Vansittart, we knew. The thing, for all its desperation, was becoming a sort of game. The bureaucrats were being stirred up, and they were beginning to buzz. This was better than inaction in Switzerland, I reflected, as the Pendell Rolls purred down the Brighton road. As was becoming my custom, I sat perfectly still, not reading, just marshalling ideas and arguments.

  There was a large concourse at the Selby’s paternal house for tea. Dorothy, and some small Selbys. Sir Hubert and Lady Montgomery and some little Montgomerys. Old Mrs Selby. I sat next to Sir Hubert and talked about China. At last the company dispersed, Walford and I settled into the Rolls, and we could talk. Walford was very kind. His nice sincere face was full of concern. But he was also very official. There was of course no chance of anything being altered – that must be clear?

  ‘I lunched with Sir Warren Fisher yesterday’, I said.

  He started a little – ‘Really?’

  ‘And before I left he rang up Mr Vansittart and told him to lock up the papers, in order to suspend the acceptance of the resignation for the present.’

  Walford bounced in his seat at this announcement – and after that he really began to listen. As we swung up the road in the dusk I took him through the Report, pointing out the various mis-statements, the false suggestions, the gross inaccuracy over seniority. Walford warmed. I told him of Owen’s memorandum. He had never heard of it, and got angry. He, the Secretary to the Secretary of State, not to have been shown ...! I gave him a copy that I had in my despatch case. He asked
me to dine with him to continue the discussion. We paused at Pendell for a whisky and soda; he talked to Owen while I rang up Hope, bespoke a bed, and threw some clothes into a suitcase. Twenty minutes after we arrived, we set off again. Walford was momentarily deflected from the main theme by the furniture and panelling of Pendell, but was recalled without difficulty. Much of what I had told him was entirely new to him, and he became warmly partisan. When we reached Cadogan Gardens he went in to telephone to Fisher, and the indomitable chauffeur drove me on to Park Street to see Van, whom I had never met. He was standing before the fire in his lovely library, and I was taken at once with his strange face, his quickness and cleverness.