The Broken Penny

by Julian Symons

  ‘Garden, Charles. Forty-five years old. Born Brightsand, father John Garden, a schoolmaster in Brightsand Elementary School, son of Reverend Charles Lester Garden, vicar of Stoneway, Hampshire. Mother Louisa, second daughter of Charles Hancock, solicitor, of Brightsand. And so on, family background, not very interesting. John and Louisa Garden both died in air raid, July 1941. Accurate?’

  Garden said nothing. Latterley turned a page. ‘So much for the parents, now for young Charles. Scholarship to Brightsand Grammar School, edited school magazine the Brightsander. Apprentice to chartered accountants. Gave up apprenticeship after two years, became bookshop assistant, formed – ahem – association with Patricia Maguire. Joined through her left-wing organisation WLR, or Workers’ League for Revolution.

  ‘Various jobs as railway porter, builder’s mate and market gardener. Short personal associations with Lucy Smith, Eileen Braxted, Clarissa Wayne-Morfleet. Member at various times of PFA (People’s Freedom Association), PPU (Peace Pledge Union), RCO (Revolutionary Communist Organisation), ILP (Independent Labour Party), et cetera, et cetera. Then there’s a list of about twenty movements you supported, arms for Spain, no more war, no conscription, and so on.’ The corners of Latterley’s eyes crinkled as he smiled. ‘I say, you did go it a bit, didn’t you?’

  ‘You should remember,’ Garden said. ‘Wasn’t it at an arms for Spain meeting that I first met you?’

  Latterley picked a piece of fluff from the sleeve of his blue suit. ‘Possibly, dear boy, but times change. Wise men change with them.’ He continued reading. ‘Went to Spain November, 1936, under auspices of ILP Lieutenant in POUM 29th Division. Returned to England July, 1937, and ceased to engage in political activity. Volunteered for service at outbreak of war, September, 1939.’ Latterley stopped reading. ‘Disillusioned?’ he said.

  Garden rolled the word over in his mind. ‘Not exactly. You might say I found politics were too complicated for me.’

  ‘War record,’ Latterley said, and then closed the folder. ‘No, I think we’ll leave it at that for the time being. You see, we know quite a lot about you.’

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘You’ve suddenly become a VIP.’

  ‘Why?’

  Latterley did not answer the question. ‘Tell me, Chas, you were a lieutenant out in Spain, but in the World War you twice refused to accept a commission. Why was that?’

  Plucking at one of the buttons on his shabby raincoat Garden rolled this question round too. ‘It would have been wrong.’

  ‘What on earth do you mean?’

  Slowly Garden formulated it. ‘The Spanish Republican army – well, the 29th Division anyway – was democratic. No saluting, the officers ate the same food as the men. The British army – that was different. It was a different kind of war.’ His faded blue eyes looked at Latterley, and he said without irony, ‘You were in the Min. of Inf., I suppose.’

  ‘Not at all.’ Latterley’s indignation was comic, but behind the comedy was he perhaps genuinely indignant? ‘I was in uniform from 1940, Africa, Italy and Normandy. Psychological warfare, you know, never less than twenty miles behind the front. Not that that was always far enough back. I ended up a colonel, and if the war had gone on another six months I might have been a brigadier.’ He stopped and giggled at Garden’s disapproving stare. ‘The trouble with you, Chas, is you’ve got no sense of humour.’

  ‘All right. Let’s get down to it. What do you want?’

  ‘What do I want?’ For a moment Latterley’s brown eyes, wholly serious, met Garden’s blue ones. In the stare they exchanged, there was undoubtedly a mutual antipathy; but there was something else too, some richer and more complicated emotion, hatred perhaps, or violent and destructive love. When Latterley spoke his voice was almost wooingly soft.

  ‘I just wanted to make sure that in these cynical nineteen-fifties there was one dyed-in-the-wool wrong-in-the-head idealist left in the world. You haven’t changed your views,

  I suppose? Don’t care much for the Communists, too totalitarian?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can’t approve of the Socialists, too imperialistic?’

  ‘You could put it that way.’

  ‘And of course you hate all Right-wing governments worse than poison.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s what I thought.’ Latterley sighed. ‘It does me good to meet you. And now I must take you along to meet – somebody else.’

  Garden stood up, shaking his head like a large and irritated dog. ‘I’ve had enough of this. If you can’t say what you want, let’s leave it at that.’

  Latterley took a beautifully brushed bowler hat from a stand behind him, put it on and said, ‘How do I look?’ There was something so comic about his perfect seriousness that Garden burst out laughing. ‘That’s my Chas,’ said Latterley indulgently. ‘As a professional do-gooder you’d never forgive yourself if you missed the chance of helping Section Three. And doesn’t it give you a thrill, Chas, to be engaged in something so tremendously hush-hush? It really is, I assure you. I’m only a pawn in the game.’

  They passed Miss Harbottle on the way out. She did not look up from War and Peace.

  Chapter Two

  A five-minute journey in Latterley’s bright little beetle of a car took them to a quiet street near Horse Guards Parade. Latterley used a key to open a grey-painted door that led into a small grey-painted lobby with a telephone in it. He picked up this telephone, dialled and spoke so softly that Garden could not hear what he said. Then he suddenly disappeared, with the effect of passing through the wall. Garden went over to the grey wall and saw the thin line of a concealed door. He remembered Latterley’s childish enjoyment of intrigue and secrets from long ago. In two minutes Latterley reappeared, saying, ‘Sorry about the spy stuff.’

  This time Garden noticed the small knob that he pressed. The door swung open, and closed behind them. They walked up a dimly lighted spiral staircase. At the top this suddenly brightened, as Latterley opened another door. The door led to a room in which a man was standing before a fireplace, legs wide apart, hands behind his back.

  Garden had never met the man who faced him, but he still felt the shock of recognition. The heavy eyebrows beneath a dozen strands of hair plastered slantwise over the skull, the jutting chin, thick neck and solid body – these were gifts to cartoonists which they had been quick to use. For this was the famous industrialist and one-time Minister of State whose behind-the-scenes influence had in the past been reputed enormous; who had once been shown by a celebrated cartoonist as a puppet-master dangling his party’s leaders on strings and saying blandly: ‘But of course I have no influence over their actions.’ In the past there could be no doubt that he had influenced their actions, as any man must who voices the beliefs and hopes of masses of people, and says that they can be fulfilled. During the war his immense energy had been set to the task of increasing production of war material. He had done so with a great deal of success, but also with a disregard for the niceties of position and even at times for ordinary courtesy that had made enemies spring up wherever he walked. In opposition to these enemies he had placed his fame as a business genius, the backing of a small band of personal followers and the great skill in debate by which he emerged triumphant again and again from the most unpromising situations. But Parliamentary triumphs may be illusory. He had made too many enemies. He could not be ignored, but in post-war administrations he found himself placed in posts manifestly inadequate to his talents. He alienated more people by the bad grace with which he took them, and by the furious lobbying through which he attempted to regain power. His influence waned, his followers fell away and for the last two or three years he had taken little active part in politics, devoting all his time to managing his great Multiple Steel Corporation. Was he, as some said, biding his time, or had he done with politics altogether? Was he the one honest man in a crowd of time-servers and place-seekers, or the most unscrupulous politician of them all? Garden, like many other people, had
not made up his mind.

  They were in a square, plainly furnished room with two doors, the concealed one by which they had come up, and a big oak door for public use. Latterley said, ‘You know Sir Alfred?’ with the merest tinge of inquiry in his voice. When Garden nodded he sat down beside the oak door, put his bowler hat on his knees and thoughtfully contemplated the knife-edge crease in his trousers. One side of the room was almost taken up by a big window that looked out sideways on Whitehall. On another wall were portraits of Lloyd George and Winston Churchill. The great man paced up and down the length of the room, stopping to stare briefly in a belligerent manner out of the window. Garden noted that he carried himself with his head pushed out above the broad shoulders, just as the cartoonists showed him.

  ‘Mr Garden. Are you a patriot?’ The words were spoken in the thick heavy voice, with a trace of north-country accent, that television, radio and Parliamentary debates had made famous.

  Garden took his time to consider. ‘Not in the sense that the word’s generally used. At least, I put my duty to other people a long way above duty to my country.’

  ‘So do I.’ The great head thrust forward challengingly. ‘But patriotism sometimes has more than its narrowest meaning. You were a patriot during the war, isn’t that so?’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Volunteered for service September, 1939, served in France 1940, Africa, 1942, Italy, 1943, twice refused a commission.’ Garden thought with some amusement: that’s why Latterley didn’t bother with my war record, he knew it was going to be recited here. ‘Why was that?’ Sir Alfred asked. ‘Why refuse a commission, eh?’

  Garden hesitated. Latterley stared down at his trousers. ‘Private reasons. Neither here nor there.’

  ‘All right. But your CO recognised you as a good man, recommended you for a special task. The switch, Geoffrey.’ There was a click, and a light showed above a map of Europe on the wall. A long pointer was in Sir Alfred’s hand. ‘In 1943 you were dropped – here.’ The pointer’s tip rested on the country where Garden had lived and worked as a partisan for the last eighteen months of the war, and for a little while after the war ended. ‘There are moments when nationalism and internationalism meet, when our duties to our country and to our fellow men point the same way. You felt that during the war, didn’t you?’ The pointer tapped insistently on that country shaped like a broken penny, the break making a jagged edge of coastline. ‘Am I talking your language? Do I make sense?’ The small eyes beneath the thick brows considered without condescension, even with friendliness, Garden’s battered face and old clothes.

  ‘It makes sense,’ Garden admitted. ‘But what’s it got to do with anything here and now?’

  ‘This, Mr Garden. You’ve reached another point in time where patriotism and internationalism pull the same way. You can help the government, you can help your fellow men and you’re one of the few people who can. There’s something you haven’t noticed about that map. It’s out of date. Look now upon this picture – and on this.’ He lifted the map and flung it back on the wall, to show another. Here were the same countries, but now instead of being in variegated splashes of green, brown and red, they were all a single colour. ‘Before the war Central Europe was split into a dozen semi-feudal states whose rulers plotted against each other and tagged along at the coat-tails of any important power who would give them protection and back their claims in border-line squabbles. That’s all over.’ Sir Alfred’s voice was booming now, striking against the walls and bouncing back into the room. Lloyd George and Churchill looked down appreciatively on him. ‘Central Europe has been unified by the Communists, artificially and by force. Free speech has gone, the right of assembly no longer exists, all heresies, whether religious or social, are punishable by disgrace or death. As an internationalist, does that seem to you a thing you can approve?’

  ‘No. But what’s it got to do with me?’

  Sir Alfred pulled a chair near to Garden, and straddled it back to front. ‘This new map of Europe may be changed again soon. The regime in power in at least one country may fall. Can we enlist your help in bringing about that change?’

  ‘Which country?’ But Garden knew the answer. Sir Alfred merely tapped with his pointer the country shaped like a broken penny.

  From his place by the door Latterley laughed. ‘Don’t look so disconcerted, Chas, to find yourself on the side of the angels.’

  ‘The country is overripe for revolt.’ Sir Alfred was talking more quickly now. ‘Its economic position, as an industrial country with a relatively high standard of living derived from export trade, has made it peculiarly vulnerable to exploitation. We have agents at work there, and they report that the abrupt drop in the standard of living has caused intense anger. Half a dozen resistance movements are working against the government and they could overthrow it tomorrow if they worked together instead of independently. As it is, they waste a good deal of their time in fighting against each other. There is only one influence that could unite these warring groups.’

  Garden sat back in his chair with an exhalation of breath that could hardly be called a sigh. ‘Arbitzer.’

  ‘Professor Jacob Arbitzer, yes. I see that you are beginning to understand me.’

  Almost sulkily Garden said, ‘I still don’t see what Arbitzer, here and now, has to do with me.’

  ‘Come now, we needn’t engage in dialectics.’ Sir Alfred pushed his chair forward so that it was within a foot of Garden. Craters were visible in the powerful nose; the whole skin, seen thus close, had a coarse strength; hairs sprouted plentifully from nose and ears. ‘Let’s consider in a little more detail the history which Geoffrey dug out for me. In 1943 you were dropped by parachute into the country, which was German-occupied. The mission to which you belonged was assigned to make touch with Arbitzer, find out if his all-party resistance group was really fighting the Germans, and if the report was satisfactory to get help to them. Colonel Hallam, who headed the mission, was killed by stray shots from a German plane. The other officers, Captain Mackenzie and Lieutenants Jones and Pollock, were killed in an ambush. You took charge of what remained of the mission, got to Arbitzer and became friendly with him. Personally friendly, so that when someone else was sent out to take charge of the mission, Arbitzer insisted on dealing with him through you. After the war you stayed on when Arbitzer formed his broad-based Provisional Government, including the Communists. What happened then is an old story. The Communists gained control, Arbitzer was demoted to Vice-President and then suddenly accused of treachery to the workers. He got out of the country just in time, with your help, getting his head grazed by a bullet wound as you crossed the frontier. After he left, there was a general round-up of politicians favourable to him. You were featured in the Communist press as the English agent-provocateur, Garden.’ Sir Alfred permitted himself a brief baring of yellowish teeth.

  Garden’s battered red face had not changed its expression. ‘Well?’

  Sir Alfred jumped up suddenly. The chair clattered to the floor. Latterley drew himself up stiffly as though he expected some kind of physical assault to be made on him. ‘Well, well – it’s not well at all.’ Six long paces took him to the window, from which he stared angrily out. ‘He must go back, he must go back at once, do you understand? In the years that he has been away Arbitzer has become a legend. He need only show himself and the country will rise to him. And you must go with him. Do you realise what it would mean to Britain, to Europe, to the whole free world, if we had a footing – there.’ Again the pointer tapped the broken penny.

  ‘I see that, but I don’t see why I must go with him. Suppose I told you that I have had enough adventure, that I want a quiet life.’

  Latterley spoke from the door. ‘Now, my dear Chas, do you really expect us to believe that?’ He began to laugh on a delicate, high note. Sir Alfred joined in with a gusty bellow that shook his body. After a moment Garden laughed too.

  ‘Another point,’ Sir Alfred said when he had stopped laughing. ‘The Gard
en mission – shall we call it that – must be absolutely unofficial. If anything goes wrong we will try to help you privately, but we must disown you publicly. You must not in any circumstances get in touch with any of our few remaining officials in the country. The position is difficult enough at present. We can’t afford an international incident on your behalf.’

  ‘I understand that. I still don’t see why you want me at all.’

  Latterley shook his head in a kind of despairing mockery. ‘I said we should have to tell him, Chief.’

  The great head nodded indulgently. ‘You did, Geoffrey. When Arbitzer came to England, Mr Garden, you were responsible for finding him a home. How long is it since you have seen him?’

  ‘About three years.’

  ‘Yes. We have seen him – unofficially, you understand, always unofficially – more recently than that. Last week, in fact. He is not the man he was. Fortunately that is not important. The point is that Arbitzer is willing to go back only if you accompany him.’

  ‘You mean he makes that a condition?’ Garden asked incredulously.

  ‘Not exactly. How shall I put it? From what Geoffrey tells me, you will understand things better when you see Arbitzer.’ The hairy hand went up to stroke the great chin. ‘I suggest at least that you go down and talk to him – acting, of course, through the proper channels, which Geoffrey will tell you about. From what Geoffrey says, Arbitzer needs a staff to lean on, and you can be the staff. In fact, we are relying on you, Mr Garden.’

  Garden thought of the cool-minded idealist whom he had known so well and admired so much, who had been grateful for help but had certainly not needed a staff to lean on. ‘There’s no doubt that he wants to go back?’