Human Voices

by Penelope Fitzgerald

  ‘Mr Brooks, you can’t expect him to sit here night and day just waiting for you.’

  The raid was at a low ebb, but there was a curious tension in the air, as though electricity had leaked like water.

  ‘But don’t you see, Annie, that some people are born to be deserted? I’ve tried to put off thinking about it, but this evening it’s become quite clear upon me that this kind of failure to help me is part of a pattern, it must be. It can’t be chance that it recurs so often. My wife left me, you know … I don’t know whether you, from your short experience, have formed any definite opinion of what I’m like?’

  ‘Yes,’ Annie said. ‘I’ve formed a definite opinion of what you’re like.’

  She saw that he was waiting, and there was no reason why she shouldn’t answer him as she had often done before. Certainly there was no call for her to drop all the cautious devices which had enabled her to go through each minute of every day without letting on to him what she felt. Not to give way, not to make a fool of herself, had been such reliable guides that to go forward without them was terrible to her. She felt herself pushed into an unknown country, not, curiously enough, by love, but by anger. Her relief at finding him safe and sound had turned into a kind of rage, which confused her at first, and then left her determined.

  ‘Aren’t you going to tell me?’ he asked confidently.

  ‘Honest, do you want to know?’

  ‘Honest, I do.’

  He was making a joke of it then. She collected her forces.

  ‘You’re selfish.’

  Still holding The Teddy Bears’ Picnic, he looked furiously up at her.

  ‘I don’t understand you.’

  Annie felt giddy, as when a great weight goes sliding.

  ‘There’s two ways to be selfish. You can think too much about yourself, or you can think too little about others. You’re selfish both ways.’

  No-one can calculate the impact of a blow on a man who has never been struck before. Annie lost a little courage as she looked at him, but she went on:

  ‘Take Mrs Milne. She works out her heart on your account. She’d stay longer than half-past five for you if she wasn’t a Permanent. Those matches she leaves for you, for instance. There’s not many her age would think of a thing like that. But you don’t take the trouble to know how she feels.’

  After a pause Sam said: ‘I do know how Mrs Milne feels. But I don’t care.’

  His humble tone disconcerted her. He seemed dismayed. Ready to stand up to him without giving an inch, seeing herself given her cards or even thrown out of the office neck and crop, she was caught off balance. He continued mournfully: ‘I don’t know why it was, Annie, but it never occurred to me that you would be likely to turn against me. I was foolish there, I daresay. We were talking just now about desertions.’

  ‘But I’m not deserting you!’ Annie cried. ‘It’s useful to know yourself!’

  ‘It’s painful. That’s not the same thing.’

  He raised his wounded head. Annie felt beside herself.

  ‘I wish I’d not spoken now. Or at least I needn’t have said quite so much. Less is more, sometimes.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound like you,’ said Sam sharply. ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Mr Waterlow did, when he was explaining to me about Satie.’

  ‘Why are you always listening to music with Waterlow? It’s ridiculous. Waterlow is ridiculous. No-one pretends that he isn’t, not even he does. It’s my belief that you’re always hanging about listening to commercials with Eddie Waterlow when you’re in fact being employed and paid to do something else. I don’t like Satie, either. Hell, I can’t stand him. You can listen to music inside your own Department. You can listen to it here in this room if you want to. I played you some Holst once.’

  ‘It was flat, Mr Brooks.’

  ‘I remember your saying that!’ Sam roared. ‘I nearly fired you on the spot when you said that.’

  ‘There’ll be no need to terminate my contract,’ said Annie, with a sudden inspiration. ‘I’m about to leave anyway.’

  ‘So that’s it! Everything you’ve said so far is leading up to a petty complaint about your hours. I’m well aware that you’re all working overtime. As it happens, I’m sending in an application to-morrow for four more juniors.’

  Now that he was fuming to and fro between his desk and his turntables, as he often did, she felt rather steadier.

  ‘I’m not leaving because of the overtime, Mr Brooks. I’m leaving because I love you.’

  Halted on the half turn, he looked almost frightened.

  ‘Do you mean you’re in love with me?’

  ‘No, I didn’t say that. I said I loved you.’

  So deep was his habit of demanding and complaining that he scarcely knew what to do with such a gift. Something had to be done, of course. ‘You’re very young,’ he attempted. ‘For some reason Establishment never bothered to tell me anything about you when they took you on, but I know you’re very young. In a few years’ time you’ll meet someone your own age –’

  ‘You’ve read that some time in some book or paper,’ Annie interrupted. ‘You can’t just quite think which one it is at the moment, but it’ll come back to you sooner or later.’

  He took off his glasses. It was capitulation. He stood reproved now by a delicate blur, the mere shape of a girl.

  ‘I had no idea,’ he said.

  ‘That’s what I was getting at. You’ve no idea about others, and you don’t notice what makes them suffer. Do you remember the ring with the red currant?’

  Sam floundered. ‘Did you have one? I think I remember your having one.’

  ‘You gave it me.’

  ‘Have you kept it, then?’

  ‘I would have done, if it hadn’t begun to go off.’

  She almost felt like asking him to put his glasses back. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be able to go on much longer without touching him.

  ‘Dear Annie,’ he said to her, ‘I don’t think I can talk to you here. I want to take you out with me somewhere. There’s only one café open now, that’s the Demos. We’ll go and have a drink and start from the beginning.’

  Her happiness was greater than she could bear.

  ‘That’ll be very nice.’

  ‘It won’t be all that nice,’ said Sam, feeling compunction, and amazement at himself for feeling it. Annie, for her part, knew that unlike many in BH he wasn’t given to feeling he needed a drink. Their lives were shaking into pieces. ‘What are we going to do, Annie?’ he asked in bewilderment. She put her arms round him. Good-bye, Asra, she thought. God knows what’s going to become of you now.

  The ADDG’s meeting did not last long, and Jeff felt the tenderness of what might perhaps be a last occasion as he ascended to the outer air. On his way up he met Willie Sharpe, carrying a pile of new recordings for War Report.

  ‘Have these,’ he said, offering a handful of cigars.

  ‘I don’t smoke, Mr Haggard.’

  ‘I didn’t think you did. They might come in useful as bribes.’

  He was conscious of Willie’s round blue gaze, rejecting the word. ‘Tell me, do you consider that either myself or your present Head of Department are likely candidates for your new society?’

  ‘Not just as you stand, perhaps,’ Willie admitted. ‘But a good society transforms its members. By the way, sir, were you expecting to see RPD this evening?’

  ‘Quite the contrary. I don’t even know where he is.’

  Willie looked faintly troubled.

  DPP walked out past Reception, who seized the opportunity to ask him whether he wasn’t put in mind of Ypres, passed a word with the sentries, and stood outside, looking up at what he could hardly make out, the carvings of Prospero and Ariel on the stony prow of Broadcasting House. He could very well remember Eric Gill at work on those graven images, high up on the scaffolding, his mediaeval workman’s smock disarranged by the breeze, to the scandal of the passers-by. The sculptor and the figures had both appe
ared shocking then. Now very few people ever bothered to look at them, and that was reassurance in itself.

  Prospero was shown preparing to launch his messenger onto the sound waves of the universe. But who, after all, was Ariel? All he ever asked was to be released from his duties. And when this favoured spirit had flown off, to suck where the bee sucks, and Prospero had returned with all his followers to Italy, the island must have reverted to Caliban. It had been his, after all, in the first place. When all was said and done, oughtn’t he to preside over the BBC? Ariel, it was true, had produced music, but it was Caliban who listened to it, even in his dreams. And Caliban, who wished Prospero might be stricken with the red plague for teaching him to speak correct English, never told anything but the truth, presumably not knowing how to. Ariel, on the other hand, was a liar, pretending that someone’s father was drowned full fathom five, when in point of fact he was safe and well. All this was so that virtue should prevail. The old excuse.

  Barnett came out for a breath of air and stood at DPP’s side for a minute, looking up not at Broadcasting House, but at the stars.

  ‘You know, I’d give a good deal to be able to read the heavens like a map, Mr Haggard. It’ll be my hobby, when we get to the end of all this.’

  I don’t know why I’m leaving this place, Jeff thought, or these people.

  Reception emerged just then, and said that DPP was wanted on the telephone.

  ‘It’s an outside call, not a very good line, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Where from?’

  ‘That I’m afraid I can’t say, sir.’

  ‘Well, who is it?’

  ‘It sounds like RPD, sir.’

  ‘Jeff, I’ve been trying to get you. Listen, you know how often I’ve felt that I needed one human being to rely on, just one, I mean, out of all those millions on millions, someone who’d be prepared to listen when I wanted to talk and perhaps have some kind of understanding, not of my own troubles, but of the troubles other people create for me. You know how often I’ve said that.’

  ‘Well?’ said Jeff.

  ‘And how often, too, I’ve been disappointed.’

  ‘I know that too. As a matter of curiosity, where are you speaking from?’

  ‘That’s what I’ve rung up to tell you. I want you to come to the Demos Cafe, the Greek place in Margaret Street, D-E-M-O-S, Demos.’

  ‘I’m familiar with the word,’ said Jeff. ‘I just don’t want to go there.’

  ‘Listen. I’m here with one of my RPAs, I think I’ve told you about her already, I mean Annie Asra. We’re very happy. Something rather unusual has turned up, in that she told me not long ago that she was in love with me, no, that she loved me.’ Sam rattled the receiver violently. ‘Are you following me?’

  ‘I follow you, but I don’t quite see how it concerns me,’ Jeff said.

  ‘I’ve told you, I want you to come here at once.’

  ‘No, Sam.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’m going home.’

  ‘You haven’t got a home,’ Sam replied. ‘Your presence here is essential.’

  ‘Look here,’ said Jeff. ‘Have you left this girl all this time sitting by herself at a table?’

  ‘She’s not by herself. The head waiter is complimenting her on having found a lover. We explained everything. They’re all Greeks here, you know.’

  ‘You’re intending to live with this girl?’

  ‘I shall take her back with me to Streatham. I’ve got a house there, you know. With some nice things in it,’ he added more doubtfully.

  ‘In that case, there’s nothing more that I can contribute,’ said Jeff. ‘All I can do, like the head waiter, is to offer my congratulations. Kiss her white hand and foot from me, as Petrarch puts it.’

  ‘My God, I don’t need Petrarch to tell me to do that,’ shouted Sam. ‘You haven’t even begun to get my point. I want you to come here and talk so that you can put my case to DDG in the morning.’

  Jeff waited.

  ‘I’m leaving the Corporation, Jeff.’

  ‘Sam.’

  ‘I’ve handed in my resignation as from to-night.’

  ‘Do you mean that you’re seriously contemplating leaving because you’re going to sleep with one of your RPAs? Everyone thinks you do anyway.’

  ‘Jeff, you’re not trying to understand me. But you have to grant me one thing, whatever else goes I’ve always prided myself on this one thing, I mean that I’ve got a proper attitude towards my staff. You were reproaching me only the other day, I can’t remember exactly how it arose, but you suggested that I couldn’t even remember the name of one of my girls. Well, you see now that you got it wrong. Annie and I want each other, but that unquestionably means that I can’t stay in my Department. I can’t stay for as much as another week. If I did, what kind of example would that be for my juniors?’

  The silence lasted so long that Sam began to rattle again at the telephone. Through the din Jeff could hear the clashing of dishes and even a service lift in the background, also, he thought, protesters anxious to get at the telephone themselves.

  ‘You’re my oldest friend!’ Sam roared.

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘I want to talk to you!’

  ‘You can’t.’

  Nevertheless he hesitated.

  The BBC never had time to keep any formal archives. There is no adequate account of the deaths of General Pinard, or of Dr Josef Vogel, or of DPP. Everyone who saw DPP that night, however, agreed that his moment of hesitation before he left BH was quite uncharacteristic of him.

  The parachute bombs had been coming down soundlessly for some time, and it was later established that one of them was resting, still unexploded, against the kerb in Riding House Street. In size and shape it approximately resembled a taxi, and passers-by in fact mentioned that they had thought it was a taxi. It was understandable therefore that DPP, who appeared anyway to have something on his mind, should walk up to it, and, confusing it in the darkness, try to open what might have been, but was not, a door. Anyone might have done this, but it was tragic that it should have been an Old Servant, and within a few yards of Broadcasting House.

  The Assistant Deputy Director General, when doing the obituary, was doubtful, however, as to whether he should describe Jeffrey Haggard as an Old Servant, in spite of all that he had done for the Corporation. Even after so many years, he seemed hardly that. ‘His voice in particular,’ he finally wrote, ‘will be much missed.’

  Other Works

  Also by Penelope Fitzgerald

  THE GOLDEN CHILD

  THE BOOKSHOP

  OFFSHORE

  AT FREDDIE’S

  INNOCENCE

  THE BEGINNING OF SPRING

  THE GATE OF ANGELS

  THE BLUE FLOWER

  THE MEANS OF ESCAPE

  EDWARD BURNE-JONES

  THE KNOX BROTHERS

  CHARLOTTE MEW AND HER FRIENDS

  A HOUSE OF AIR: SELECTED WRITINGS

  SO I HAVE THOUGHT OF YOU: THE LETTERS OF PENELOPE FITZGERALD

  Copyright

  Fourth Estate

  An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

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  First published in Great Britain by William Collins Sons and Co. Ltd 1980

  Previously published in paperback by Flamingo 1997, 1988 and 2003

  First published in Great Britain by Fourth Estate in 2014

  Copyright © Penelope Fitzgerald 1980

  Introduction © Mark Damazer 2014

  Preface © Hermione Lee 2013

  Series advisory editor: Hermione Lee

  Cover design by nathanburtondesign.com

  Cover photograph © Corbis

  Penelope Fitzgerald asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  Source ISBN: 9780006542544
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  Ebook Edition © January 2014 ISBN: 9780007373819

  Version: 2014-01-22

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