by Diana Cooper
Conrad wrote:
The bull’s licence has come. He had to have a licence like a motor car. There are lots of rules, e.g. what to do if the bull dies and what to do if the bull is castrated, then what to do if the owner dies, but nothing about what to do if the owner is castrated. No one seems to think that matters.
Last night I heard Noël Coward explain on the wireless that “Don’t let’s be beastly to the Germans” was ironical. It seems that lots of people who heard the song just thought it was a pro-German expression of hope that we would let the Germans off lightly. It seems incredible, but it shows they are on their guard if inclined to be a bit literal.
I thought our last day’s mangel-pulling was paradise—an opportunity to say “Verweile doch, du bist so schön.”
If I had a wish I would like it to be 7 a.m. at Bognor and me just coming out to carry back your milk-pail and the whole day before me. I wouldn’t mind if it were raining as we could read Barchester and do the crossword by the fire.
It was never again to be.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Giraffe and the Duckling
IN Old Men Forget Duff told how, in October 1943, Anthony Eden asked him to call at the Foreign Office and invited him to go either to Algiers as British Representative to the French Committee of Liberation with the rank of Ambassador and the prospect of going on, as such, to Paris in due course, or alternatively to go as Ambassador to Italy, when the enemy were driven out of Rome, which was then expected to take place sooner than it did. Duff had no hesitation in preferring Algiers, and asked only for time to consult me before definitely accepting.
My face, I suppose, could not hide the shock of aversion that his first words, walking home from the commuter’s bus, “How would you like to be Ambassadress in Paris?” gave me. Nothing I would dislike more. I expect I said so, for I generally said all. Even without the farm’s loss to mourn, and the life that had soothed me into a new happiness, I shunned the very idea of such a position. I had aged. John Julius must remain in England for war and school. North Africa was far away, and only reached by skyway. I knew nothing of Algiers except that Mademoiselle’s eldest brother had done his service there in 1900. I shuddered at the thought of losing independence, of wearing conventional clothes again, of my stammering nursery French, of chaperonage by chauffeurs, of leaving Conrad, friends and Wade, the centre and hub, the map-rooms and planning in London. Were my excursions and alarums never to stop?
I don’t think that I gave more than a few feeble moans, and before we reached our door I was for going and Duff for staying. It was always that way, and a good way. I had remembered too that just before the war he had said “I should like to finish up Ambassador in Paris,” and I, hardly weighing the probability, had concurred and said “Yes, yes.” Now on this October evening I could see how he glowed with the fulfilment of an ambition, and a wave of my own old strength for adventure came welling back to join the tide.
And so I was off again on the next alarum. No one could give me any idea of Algiers; no one I knew had been there except those who had not come back. I felt unequal to diplomatic life. The French I knew was culled from the simpler passages of Les Malheurs de Sophie. The last day in London wore its nervous way through, shifting its hour of departure, arranging for my head to ache as acutely as my stomach quaked and quivered, and for John Julius to be nicer than he had ever been before. Off we set by car for the deep west, with John Julius on the box to see the last of us. At Lyneham the R.A.F. boys brought us to a firelit collation, and to darken that moment of cheer a lantern-jawed pessimist delivered us a short lecture on the dangers of the flight. We were issued with boots, helmets and a nosebag apiece for oxygen.
Once in the air I could see the world below through a chink in my black-out. I couldn’t tell if the silver floor were earth or water. The bright stars and the black corner of the wing seemed real enough. Strange though not to know the country you are crossing; Portugal or Spain must have accounted for the lights I saw. The dawn gave promise and soon it was day, and day showed the coasts of Europe and Africa. An hour or so of Morocco, Algeria and the hills of Atlas, every acre cultivated and rich but so wet that through the young growth one could always see the sun reflected (as mirrory as rice-fields). We were met at Maison Blanche, the airfield for Algiers, by Gaston Palewski, then Chef de Cabinet to General de Gaulle (referred to by all English-speakers as Wormwood), and by our Comptroller, called Freddie Fane, a man in appearance like a pocket Mephistopheles to whom in time I became devoted. He had been Secretary of the Travellers’ Club in Paris and was therefore sacrosanct in Duff’s eyes. He brought us plenty of bitter news, delivered as glad tidings. Without condolence he told us that we were to share the house with Mr and Mrs Rooker, that there was no cooking-stove, no heating or hot water, no car, no telephone, nothing in the nature of linen, china or plate, and that he was trying to find Italian prisoners as servants but so far had not succeeded.
As he spoke we turned into a very beautiful, measureless Belle au Bois Dormant demesne. As far as eye could see was jungle of palm and cypress-covered hills, green as jade. We came to a Moorish door, a courtyard, hammam and tiles, cypress and arches. The home of Omar, I thought, Jamshid’s palace—but inside! O dear, ugliness can produce pain and this ugliness was of a colossal kind, combined with gloomy darkness, paralysing cold and dusty, musty squalor. The style was ragged palmist—a dingy junk-shop, brass tables and hubble-bubbles green with verdigris, heavy brass beds thinly overlaid, unvalanced and equally green, exposing cracked chamber-pots, baths brownly stained, lavatory pans not describable, no looking-glasses or curtains, no washerwoman (there being no soap), no anything, sans, sans, sans.
Harold Macmillan, whose official position we were taking over, lived not far away in a desirably vulgar villa, and it was on his good grace that we were to depend for warmth, food and baths. Algiers was totally bereft of any buyable thing—not a plate, hammer or nail, not a sheet of paper could be bought. Glasses were beer-bottles cut down, with jagged lipsticked edges. Streets and streets of shuttered shops, and the few that were open closed at 11 a.m., cleared of what they had to sell. I tried those first few mornings to buy essentials—soap, electric bulbs, candles, pillows, toilet-paper, matches. Not a hope. It was very discouraging. Cold wrapped us round. It was warmer outside the thick walls than within them. North Africans cater for summer’s heat and forget December’s frost. I slept in my fur coat, shaking it out vigorously for day wear. In the morning we would heat water on a primus stove and improvise a towel. Tinned milk and acorn-coffee for breakfast, warmed by the only occupant of the palace, a skittish, greasy, not unlovable old maid called Louise, who, when winter’s discontent and dearth were over, became my friend. Duff was undaunted—he the sybarite, me the Mark Tapley; our roles were reversed. Freddie Fane, the London link (a lock of White’s hair), gave him confidence, serenity and the comfortable giggles of old club jokes, while I moped on a dilapidated pouffe and wondered how I could conjure up some djinn from a bottle to produce me courage, coal, a gift of tongues, pink spectacles, a cow, some geese and goats, and most of all Wadey, my maid, to cosset my frailty.
6 January
Darling Conrad, Duff has not yet had a bath. Anne Dupree, daughter of Ambassador Chilton who was in Hendaye during the Spanish war, teaches me diplomatic ways and takes me shopping. I bought with triumph two minute five-candle-power lamps, one pink and one blue, both painted (bowls and shades) with Scottie dogs. They will help us to read and dress by. I lie awake with galloping out-of-hand thoughts, some niggling ones about ash-trays, others about British prestige and Duff’s dignity. A conflict goes on as to whether to be strong or accommodating, whether to persevere with these Augean stables or leave them uncleaned, hoping for H.Q. staffs to move out in two or three months, and face uncomplaining this miserable squalor. Freddie has found some prisoners. They sleep on stone. I’ve got a petty-fire burning in one of the brothel-like sitting-rooms; so far brushwood is the only fuel, so feeding it is on
e man’s whole-time job. Mrs Rooker and I sit unthawed in front of the frivolous flames.
Harold Macmillan is our saviour. He’s a splendid man. He feeds us and warms and washes us. One day he’ll be Prime Minister. I’ve put my money (nay, my shirt) on him. He’s my horse. This afternoon a reception was given at his villa. I was greatly dissatisfied with its tone. It was said by most of the staff to be our introduction; it was also to be the Minister’s leave-taking. We were not stood to receive with Harold but were steered through as guests and introduced to no one. There were two hundred invités and one passed us to another. As de Gaulle sent a proxy, I felt that Freddie might have represented Duff. Catroux was there, and legions of Generals, Ministers, Senators, Norwegians, Czechs and Yugoslavs. I stood and sweated and struggled with my French the best I could. A “few words” are not so hard. One develops a set piece explaining how one can’t speak, and a short description of the night-flight and one’s away with the next stranger. “Comment trouvez-vous Alger?” is a hard one. The newcomers talk only of their discomforts. The topic is as monotonous as drink was in American prohibition days. The older hands aren’t the least épatés by one’s groans and sordid disclosures. Their standards are at rock-bottom and they’ve none of them had butter for months.
Gaston Palewski took me to lunch at the Inter-Allied Club, where all the upper homeless eat. He made me skip while he skipped (conversation unhindered) to get warm after being three minutes in this house. He may go as representative to Moscow. I hope not, as he’s good to me and takes me to the Kasbah and to palaces. I picked from some Omar garden a sprig of rose geranium and absinthe herb and felt less dejected. Colonel Warden* sends for us to Marrakesh. I talked to him on the telephone and that re-animated me. He is to do something about our lodging and a car. There are no taxis, no hitch-hiking, nothing but trams which they warn you are typhus-ridden. At Harold Macmillan’s, after a welcome wash, I flung myself on someone’s bed and slept for an hour to be woken by Randolph’s clarion call. He had just arrived with Brigadier Fitzroy Maclean, the partisan hero, on wing to see his father.
Randy is to stoke Winston up into giving some orders in our favour. General Eisenhower, for instance, has a fine house which he has vacated today, and which his successor, Jumbo Maitland Wilson, hopes to take over immediately. We might, with pull, get it. Then Air-Marshal Tedder has just left a little Parisian gem, having been asked repeatedly to bequeath it to us. He refused against real pressure from Macmillan, on the grounds that he must leave it to his American successor. Seeing these civilised houses has stirred Duff into action, or anyway outraged reaction. After all why the hell should these warriors, who are supposedly fighting a war in Italy, loll in luxurious immunity, while we permanent missionaries, with orders to entertain and impress, are left nothing but sties?
The only people who live like real ladies in painted rooms and white satin feather-beds with heat radiating from every niche, indirect lighting, washerwomen and slaves, are the higher ranks of the Allied Forces. They should hie to their tents, hangars and hammocks and leave these soft delights to middle-aged diplomats. Duff’s U.S. opposite number is in a gorgeous villa, the Commander-in-Chief Mediterranean and his Sparks and Flags live in a luxury palace warm as a stove; the Russians have three villas. We must be known as His Majesty’s Goofs. It’s the army v. civilian war, as old and strong as sex. It began in the Stone Age. All these slights and strains, plus no water, no eating in, no sofa, no scope for my job of feeding and cheering the dejected (I might as well be a Mussulwoman) make me feverish from 4 a.m. till 7 a.m. I’m sure a kettle would boil and splutter if stood on my head, as it did on Sir John Simon’s in Low’s cartoons.
From these first days we were welcomed and cherished by General and Madame Catroux, who lived exactly opposite our gates. His Spahi and Senegalese sentries challenged us from the doors of authority. Owning no car we could not wave our Union Jack. Once in their warm Mahommedan house, we met many of the mighty and ex-mighty; General Giraud, a more wooden Kitchener of Khartoum, looked too young for his years. One felt his key had been lost and if one found it and wound him he would walk nicely round and round. General Pechkoff, Maxim Gorki’s adopted son, I was drawn to at first sight for being Russian and poetic, for being a General in the Foreign Legion and for having one arm. (He was later to become French Ambassador in Tokyo.) There was the great General de Lattre de Tassigny, of whom much more later, and his famous Personal Assistant, Eve Curie, the nonpareil of efficient amazons. La Générale Catroux had sparks flying out of her own Ambulance’s khaki while showing unexpected tenderness towards us. Two reliable khaki supporters lived at the Catroux gate—Minou de Montgomerie, the Egeria of the Free French flying like a bee over the long North African littoral in V.I.P. aeroplanes, and Elizabeth de Breteuil, equally privileged, generously built, cheerful and confident, loved greatly by her friends as by the women’s military units that she trained. What leisure these redoubtable women found was dedicated to keeping us warm and cheerful. Together we cowered over their inadequate stove, sipping glasses of hot brandy and water. At the Catrouxs’ we met many good men and true—René Massigli, René Capitant, René Mayer, Diethelm, Tixier, Emmanuel d’Astier de la Vigerie, Lapie, all resistant as the Great Wall of China.
The Prime Minister at Marrakesh was recovering from an alarming attack of pneumonia. I wrote to Conrad:
The Colonel has never been off the line, arranging, postponing, advancing and rearranging our visit to him. The idea was that he wished to see de Gaulle first and then us. De Gaulle puts it off from day to day, chops and changes, and in my opinion doesn’t mean to go—probably thinks it beneath his dignity—so for the moment we go alone tomorrow for a few days. I hope to have the Colonel’s own wings which Randolph is borrowing to bring him back today.
The Colonel’s telegrams to Harold Macmillan and others are ever so sharp. I’m glad, as I used to think those Duff received in Singapore were a little acid. These are much worse, perhaps due to cross convalescence, or is it waxing too great? I must get up now. We’ve asked Leslie Henson, Tommy Trinder and Joe Brown in for a drink at noon. It will make a change.
10 January
We’re off today; de Gaulle goes in two days, so I was wrong. It’s early and the sun is just rising on a clear sky. The mountains must be crossed. Oxygen perhaps? Tremors begin. I shall peer down on the snow-laden shoulders of Atlas and pray not to add my burden to his.
Marrakesh
Here I am on top of the deep romantic chasm, where Alph the sacred river runs. It’s wonderfully hot; the sky is without blemish of cloud. We’ve just had a terrific lunch al fresco—stuffing ham and chickabiddy smothered in mayonnaise, fruit and gateaux, washed down with shandygaff. It’s been a most wonderful entr’acte in the grim, cold misery of Algiers. We flew here in the Colonel’s fine plane. Four hours it took, and I weathered them. An ample champagne collation was served, and three charming young gentlemen were thrown in for good measure.
The party is a circus. It’s lodged in a millionairess’s pleasure dome, all marble and orange-trees, fountains and tiles, in the richest Mahommedan style. We live in the hotel (two bed, two bath, one sitting-room). We are guests of the United States Army, so a tray with gin, whisky, two sherries, coca-colas and a carafe of fruit-juice, plus all the American Lifes and Times, are laid out for our delectation. At the villa there is a big set-up of decoders, W.A.A.F.s, map-room, secretaries at two a penny, your old doctor of the Yeomanry, Lord Moran. The Colonel’s wife and W.A.A.F. daughter Sarah were on the airfield to meet us and buzzed us by U.S. car, complete with immense white star on its camouflaged side, to the pleasure dome. There was our old baby in his rompers, ten-gallon cowboy hat and very ragged oriental dressing-gown, health, vigour and excellent spirits. Never have I seen him spin more fantastic stuff, the woof of English and the warp of Slang. Max [Beaverbrook] the Calvinist is here, dressed in black and utterly uncontributive to the general pool of chatter.
There is a lot of talk about our housing prob
lems and plans for purging officials who obstruct our hopes. No sign of Wormwood yet. The meeting was due on the 12th and we were to return to Algiers the same afternoon. January 11th was to be picnic day, but it’s always picnics here.
In the evening we walk in the souks (i.e. markets) and buy what we can. I’ve bought the stuff for a dress, a pair of candlesticks, two pairs of shoes, a large straw hat of native design (of course), eleven metres of white linen, etc. Bumf unprocurable, sunglasses unprocurable, but the whole place offers a thousand times more than Algiers does.
After dinner the weaving goes on until 1 or 2 a.m., interrupted by abortive plans for our flight home and sudden new veerings and volte-faces on the Wormwood front. Our man asked a little arbitrarily for an insufficiently starred French General, de Lattre, to be brought. This has been refused, so tonight there was an explosion followed by threats of being too ill to have an interview with the Giraffe at all. Duff is the oilman. Meanwhile the town is being beflagged and the local chieftains, smelling the news, are assembling without the city wall. I hate to leave and miss the drama.
12 January
Woken up at eight by the telephone telling us all plans were altered and would Duff go up to the villa quick, quick.
Later