Time and Time Again

by James Hilton

  'TILL IT WAS ALL OVER'

  The autumn of 1939 brought the phony war and the song that so dismally suited it--the one about hanging out the washing on the Siegfried Line. As a visible symbol of the same period there was the portable boxed gas-mask, never used, emblem of false preparedness as well as a preposterous nuisance.

  Charles had sent Jane and Gerald to the country (Jane's sister's house on the outskirts of a small Cheshire town) as soon as war was declared. He joined her at weekends, but preferred to spend the other days in London, meeting people and trying to learn what was really happening. It was a time when being officially on leave meant little; one looked around for some emergency use for oneself. Charles found none. Many men of his age and of equal status were similarly preoccupied. No older than the century, he was clearly young enough for most kinds of service, and though he did not imagine he could be usefully employed against the Siegfried Line, he would go anywhere and do anything if anybody in authority suggested it. Of course nobody did. At the Foreign Office it was assumed there would be plans for him by the time his leave was finished, but the Office was in a polite chaos owing to the return of so many personnel from enemy territory. Charles spent long lunch-times at his club talking to other men equally stranded and restive.

  One day towards the end of his leave he was summoned by a Private Secretary named Gosford. It was a dark morning; a yellowish fog totally obscured the trees of St. James's Park and Gosford himself seemed electrically bright behind the desk as he swivelled round to shake Charles's hand. He had had a career of such sensational brilliance that though he was Charles's junior by several years, the pages of Who's Who supplied an accurate measure of comparison-- almost half a column as against barely an inch. Yet, of course, in an Etonish All Souls' fashion, he was friendly enough, if that be considered friendly at all. Charles knew, respected, and only slightly disliked the type.

  'How are you, Anderson? . . . Sit down. . . . Smoke? . . . God, what a day! Don't you wish you were basking on the Copacabana beach?'

  Charles's South American post had not been Rio, but he did not think it worth while to make the correction. He smiled, took the proffered cigarette, and murmured congratulation on Gosford's recent K.C.M.G. Gosford replied deprecatingly: 'Oh, well . . .' and then, to add tartness to the flavour: 'I suppose they just had to after Pelham-Frobisher got one.' Charles knew Pelham-Frobisher as an official in the Treasury, but that was all; he supposed the joke lay in some inter-office politics of which his absence had made him ignorant.

  Presently Gosford lit a cigarette himself and studied Charles through the smoke. 'You're living in London now, Anderson?'

  'At my club for the time being. My wife's in Cheshire with the boy.'

  'Ah, very sensible. . . . You don't go to your family place then-- let me see, isn't it Beeching?'

  Charles wondered how Gosford had known or why he had bothered to find out. 'Yes, I go fairly often.'

  'Your father live there still?'

  'Yes.'

  Gosford swivelled another twenty degrees till his face was cut into layers of light and shadow by the green-shaded desk lamp at eye- level. 'I'd like to ask you a few questions about Sir Havelock if you don't mind. Rather personal questions.'

  'Certainly. What's he been up to now?' This slipped out, as perhaps it should not have done from a trained diplomat, yet it was useful sometimes to give rein to the functions of an equally trained subconscious, and Charles, as soon as he had spoken the words, was not wholly regretful.

  Gosford picked up the cue as Charles had known he would. 'Oh? Does he often--er--misbehave?'

  'He can be rather naughty--at times.'

  They were both fencing with these words of innocence.

  'What ARE some of the things he's been up to?'

  Charles thought a moment. 'I think the last was a mousetrap that didn't kill the mice but kept them imprisoned so that he could release them afterwards. . . . He had to drop it--the servant problem was quite hard enough at Beeching.'

  Gosford smiled faintly. 'Are you on good terms with him?'

  'Personally, yes. Of course I don't see eye to eye with all his opinions and enthusiasms.'

  'Has he visited Germany recently?'

  Charles was startled by the question, but also puzzled.

  'I don't know that he ever has. For the last ten years he hasn't been anywhere out of England; that I'm certain of.'

  'What does he do with his life--at Beeching--so far as you know?'

  'He has hobbies. Some of them a bit eccentric, but not all. Old tombstones. Latin inscriptions. Ornithology. Writes to The Times?

  'He likes letter writing?'

  'I'd say he must.'

  'Well, he's in real trouble about it now. He's been sending letters to Hitler and Goebbels.'

  After all the preliminaries the gist of the thing came out like that, in a simple sentence, for Gosford had a technique of his own. Charles countered it by underplaying his reaction. 'Oh dear,' he said, in the manner of an old lady who has dropped her knitting. Then he added, establishing a small line of resistance: 'I deplore his taste, but surely until September that was no crime?'

  'He's been trying to communicate since, through a known German spy in Bucharest.'

  Charles was shocked and silent.

  Gosford watched him for a moment, then continued: 'Of course our Intelligence has been intercepting it all--they're not QUITE such fools. . . . Does all this surprise you--or doesn't it?'

  Charles answered carefully: 'Nothing about my father surprises me very much, but he's an old man, almost eighty, and I know him well enough to feel sure that any correspondence he's been having with Hitler and Goebbels is a waste of time . . . and I mean THEIR time.'

  Gosford opened a desk drawer and took out a file. 'Care to look at some of the letters?'

  Charles spent the next ten minutes reading them and pretending to be still reading when actually he was thinking. They were photostatic copies. Those from Havelock were in his undisguised handwriting and on Beeching note-paper. In brief--and considering the magnitude of the subject they WERE brief--they told the Germans what to do to clean up the world. They also assured their addressees of Havelock's personal admiration and that they could count on him as a supporter of any English movement similar to theirs. The English government was denounced as effete and the English people as ripe for dictatorship if a strong man should arise, and there was a definite hint that in default of any other suitable candidate Havelock would not consider himself too old for the job.

  The return letters were fewer and shorter. Neither Goebbels nor Hitler had sent any, but those of underlings were non-committally flattering and one of them mentioned a source that would supply the names of other Germanophile Englishmen with whom Havelock might care to make contact. It looked as if the Nazis had been only mildly impressed by Havelock as an Englishman of title and substance who might just conceivably be worth cultivating--a small possible cog in the machinery of the master plan.

  Charles handed back the letters with a close concealment of his concern. 'I still say he's wasting their time.'

  Gosford put the letters back in the drawer. Then he contemplated the yellow windows that were getting yellower. Already the fog had percolated into the room so that one could hardly see the full- length portrait of some eighteenth-century statesman above the marble mantelpiece.

  'You know, Anderson, we English have missed the tremendous test of armed invasion for a couple of centuries or so, and this immunity has led us to indulge in the most comforting and therefore the most dangerous illusion--that we're fundamentally different from other people. I don't believe we are. I don't believe an Englishman can jump off a cliff without falling. I don't believe that a hostile army, if strong enough, couldn't land here, or that if it did, it would find no Englishman ready to co-operate. . . . So you see how interesting these letters are--especially the one that mentions a source from which certain other names can be obtained.'

  'Yes. I see that.'


  'Of course we know that source and we have those names.'

  'IMPORTANT names?'

  'I'm sure it would surprise you if I told you.'

  Charles did not ask for an elucidation, because he guessed that so donnish a speaker as Gosford would not be equivocal except deliberately. Gosford suddenly got up and paced across the room. 'You see where this leads us, Anderson? If the government has to start making arrests, it might be difficult not to include Sir Havelock.'

  'I see that too. Though perhaps on account of his age--'

  'A point certainly. Of course it's all outside my province except so far as it concerns your own immediate future. It would be a pity if you were in a position to be embarrassed by anything unpleasant that might occur.'

  Charles nodded, and out of the bitterness of his heart answered: 'Yes, it would be embarrassing to be at a reception in a neutral capital when the B.B.C. announces the arrest of one's father for high treason.'

  Gosford gestured slightly against this dramatization. 'Please understand I'm not forecasting any such thing. When does your leave expire?'

  'The twenty-fifth.'

  Gosford made a note on his desk pad. 'I ought to be able to tell you more before then. Don't do anything yet.'

  'What CAN I do? Seems to me I'm pretty helpless. . . . Perhaps, though, I ought to tackle my father--find out at least if he realizes how serious it is. Any objection?'

  'I have none. And I don't see why . . .' Gosford stopped pacing and put an arm on Charles's shoulder. He became human and the humanity made him sixth-formish. 'Look, Anderson, this is the damnedest situation. Your father's probably being watched, and there's nowhere he can run to even if he tried, so what harm can it do to talk to him all you want? He may have done nothing at all but just write letters. On the other hand, these are incalculable times and there are circumstances that might arise . . . a parachute landing, for instance. What would he do in such a case? Do YOU know? Does anybody know? That's the sort of problem the authorities are up against.'

  Charles suddenly thought of the Tunnel of Love, with his father popping out of the canvas chute on to the lawn. The thought gave him ease to meet Gosford's greater cordiality with his own as he answered: 'You mean what would he do if German parachutists came down on his land at Beeching? Well, he might shoot them if he had a gun and they didn't shoot him first. Or he might ask them into the house and offer them brandies and soda. Or he might recite them a poem he'd just composed. . . . That's the sort of problem I'M up against.'

  * * * * *

  Charles found his father in quite a rollicking mood; wartime excited him, and local hostility (for he had made no secret of his political views) did not make him unhappy. His whole life, since the age of forty, had been a training to accept the penalties of disfavour, and this was only the climax of it, all the more endurable because at such an age many things become easier, to compensate for many others that become harder.

  When Charles began, without much preamble: 'I'm afraid, father, you've got yourself in a considerable mess'--something flicked across his memory; it was Havelock, two decades before, making almost the same remark, though in sharper accents, on that last day of Charles's last term at Cambridge. 'You were in a damned mess and I got you out of it.' Perhaps if Charles could have added the second half of the sentence he might also have copied the sharper accents; as it was he could give no such assurance and therefore spoke quietly. He just told Havelock what had happened, without elaboration or drama.

  Even after long experience there was never any certainty how his father would take things. This time Charles had been prepared for an outburst, some tremendous diatribe against England, the government, democracy, and all they stood for; but instead Havelock merely shrugged and poured himself more port. 'All right then. They can jail me. I've jailed plenty in my time. One thing, though, I won't need counsel. I'll defend myself.' It was clear from his eyes that he was already composing a great speech from the dock. Charles was ready to deflate this mood. In fact for some time deflation had been his familiar weapon in dealing with his father's ebullitions; it had proved better than indignation or censure, and was specially suited to Charles's own temperament. He had long ago ceased to hope that his father could be reformed or would ever become much different; the problem, therefore, was to come to terms with an insolubility. Charles had often found himself in a similar position in regard to some professional issue, but if one accepted from the outset the philosophic idea that certain problems in life (as in mathematics) MIGHT be insoluble, it was easier to tackle them, to shirk them, to pretend they did not exist, or by starving them of attention to find one day that they had solved themselves. Charles, therefore, tried to regard his father as something like the Macedonian Problem to those who lived in Macedonia; and it was comforting then to reflect that many people living in Macedonia were doubtless completely unaware that there was such a thing.

  So he said now, pricking the bubble as he saw it expand: 'I wouldn't count on them letting you make any speech. If you've done nothing but write a few stupid letters they'll probably never even bring you to trial. You're just the small fish that gets into the net with the big fish, but they can't let you out till they've hauled in the catch.'

  Havelock didn't like that. 'I don't know that I'm such a small fish.'

  'Oh, come now, it's a bit late in life for you to make history-- even as a traitor. Don't imagine you're a Colonel Lynch or a Roger Casement.'

  'That's not very civil, Charles.'

  'What do you expect from me--congratulations?'

  'Of course I know you don't agree with my views.'

  'I not only don't agree with them, but if I knew any real evidence that you were seriously mixed up with the Germans I'd hand you over to the authorities myself. But of course I know you're relatively harmless.'

  'Charles, that's not a nice thing to say.'

  'Well, aren't you?' And with a sort of impish derision Charles continued: 'For instance, there's all this talk of Germans landing by parachute. Supposing one of them did, on your front lawn, what would you do? Not what would you say--or write--but what would you DO?'

  Havelock pondered a moment, then his eyes lit feverishly. 'You know what? I think I'd telephone the police and have them send old Daggett. That fellow's been so officious lately about blackout curtains it would teach him a lesson. I'll bet he'd run if he even SAW a German!'

  Charles was handicapped by his sense of humour at a moment like this, however serious he knew the matter to be; but he forced himself to clear up one detail that still puzzled. 'How was it,' he asked, 'that you had the name and address of a German spy in Roumania?'

  'Professor Fontanescu? I didn't know he was a German spy. I just asked him to forward a letter through the German Legation there. Mere courtesy, after all. He was the man you asked me to write to about the Red-necked Phalarope. Don't you remember?'

  Charles remembered. He had met the Professor once at a Bucharest reception, and learning he was an ornithologist had thought it might interest his father to be put in touch with a brother enthusiast. That was all.

  'You know, Charles,' Havelock continued reproachfully, 'if this fellow was a German spy, you really ought to have warned me. You were on the spot out there . . . Isn't it the sort of thing you diplomatic people should have been aware of?'

  It certainly was; but they hadn't.

  * * * * *

  Charles went to see Gosford the next day and reported the conversation, adding lamely: 'You may find it hard to believe, especially about Professor Fontanescu and the Red-necked Phalarope, and I daresay there's not likely to be any corroboration except from my father himself--and even he might not be in a mood to give it.'

  Gosford was cool. 'This isn't much of a time for having moods.'

  'I know that very well.'

  'Or even for believing things that are hard to believe. Sir Havelock, after all, had a legal training--he must have known that to communicate with the enemy in wartime by ANY method woul
d constitute an offence.'

  'I agree that he must have known.'

  'Yet what you tell me now seems--almost--as if you were trying to establish some degree of innocence?'

  Charles paused unhappily, then nodded. 'Yes, that's so. Some degree of innocence. It's curious you should have used the phrase. Some degree of wickedness, but also some degree of innocence. That's my father all over.'

  'I don't think it can really affect the situation much.'

  'Probably not. Which is why I've written a letter of resignation. Here it is . . . for use if and when.' Charles placed it on the desk. It was in an unsealed envelope and he paused in case Gosford wanted to read it. When there was no move to do so, Charles continued: 'That's about all, except one thing--the result of some thought during a rather sleepless night . . . It seems to me my father oughtn't to be at a place like Beeching nowadays. Not only because of parachutists. He's talked as well as written foolish things--there's quite a bit of local feeling against him. I think he'd be better off in or near London where he can be--not exactly under my surveillance, because I suppose I'll have some kind of work to do somewhere--but at least I can keep a more frequent eye on him than in the country. . . . I don't know how far it can help matters, but it might . . . and perhaps, if I'm lucky, it will . . .'

  Charles spoke the last words with difficulty. He had been hoping the letter of resignation would be refused, but Gosford had already put it in his pocket without reading it. Now Gosford got up as if to signify that there was nothing else to be discussed, no promise he could ask for or give, nothing more to do but let events take their course. All he said was: 'I assure you, Anderson, there are times when I feel tempted to resign myself.'