by D. J. Taylor
As they went off together down the Bayswater Road he knew that he could have taken her hand, had he wanted to, and she would not have resisted. The problem was that he didn’t want to. The fact that she liked him was, at any rate morally, about the one point in her favour, and his awareness of this made him ashamed.
The meeting was in a frail, broken-down building that had once belonged to a Theosophical society: high-windowed and with sagging rafters. In the vestibule an old lady sat guard over a jam jar full of sixpenny bits and a collection of pamphlets with titles like The Alien Menace, Leese on Peace, and Statement on the European Crisis. There was also a placard carrying the slogan the time to negotiate is now. He was a connoisseur of gatherings of this sort and knew their routines: the red glow of the paraffin heater; the trestle-tables pulled together to make a platform; the old men asleep in the back row. This was no exception.
‘Who’s speaking today?’ he wondered.
‘I think Miss Harris-Foster first. And then Captain Ramsay. They said Mr Leese might be here, but he doesn’t seem to have arrived.’
‘Is he the man who wrote that article about the Alien Occupations Bill?’
But what Miss Frencham said in reply was lost in a clatter of thrown-down walking sticks and colliding chairs as a fresh knot of people came into the room. There were about forty of them altogether: grim old characters in sober suits; a white-faced boy or two; elderly ladies in ancient fur coats plundered by moth. The light cast by the two electric bulbs was insufficient for the space, and this gave the room an oddly subterranean look, grey-tinged and inert. An imp-like woman, not more than five feet tall, had risen from her chair next to the trestle-tables and begun to speak: shrill-voiced yet compelling, like the governesses bidden to subdue the children’s parties of his youth.
Notebook to hand, neatly and dispassionately, like a doctor taking down symptoms, he found himself registering individual phrases:
‘… Not a question of giving any secret information to the Germans, unless events reach the stage they did in Spain … Don’t want to be ruled by the Nazis, or any foreigners, but even that is preferable to being ground to pulp under the heel of the Jewish financiers … Really only one war-aim: we are fighting the Jews … Poland and Czechoslovakia not British interests, but Jewish interests …’
He knew Miss Harris-Foster of old: Miss Harris-Foster who, if truth were to be believed, had once taken tea with Hitler, and had a letter addressed to the Führer und Reichskanzler Adolf Hitler, Reichskanzlei, Berlin returned to her by the censor a day or so after war was declared. At his side Miss Frencham sat gazing raptly in front of her, but with an oddly vigilant look, like an inquisitor in search of heresy. One false word from Miss Harris-Foster, you felt, and she would have risen to her feet to denounce her.
All this went on for some time. He wondered, as he so often did, what the people who came to meetings of this kind did when they were over. Did they go home and tell the other people they lived with that they had just heard Mr Chamberlain denounced as a warmonger, and that we were at war to preserve Jewish interests? Did they discuss the advantages of granting self-determination to the German-speaking peoples of Europe with the same matter-of-factness that they brought to the night’s radio programmes or pub opening hours? Miss Harris-Foster, he knew, lived in a service flat in Kensington with her widowed sister. Did the Führer come in with the breakfast tray, as it were, and go out again with the tea-things?
He was tolerant of what the newspapers rather gaily called the psychology of Fascism—he could understand that—but not of what hardly anybody called the psychology of appeasement, that irrepressible urge to give someone something that it was pretty clear he ought not to have. When he had first met Miss Frencham—Alicia—he had wondered whether she thought the whole thing a gigantic game, like the Girl Guides on a grand scale. Finding out that, on the contrary, she regarded it with an immense seriousness was both exhilarating and disappointing: the one because it confirmed his professional judgement; the other because it made clear to him the kind of person he was dealing with. There was no getting away from this.
Eventually it was over. The gust of applause that saw off the speakers surprised him with its intensity: like a football match won in the last minute; an unfancied horse turning the tables at the final fence. There was a retiring collection, to which he contributed a shilling and Miss Frencham a pound note. He looked round the room to see if there were any more faces to add to the half-dozen or so already recognised.
With what was clearly something of an effort, Miss Frencham said: ‘If you liked, we could drop in at my house for a glass of sherry. It’s only a street or two away. My father would be delighted to meet you.’
‘It’s awfully kind of you,’ he said, ‘but I really must be getting back. The New York market will be opening, you see.’
There was a fiction that he worked as a stockbroker.
‘Well, perhaps another time.’
He knew that he had no earthly reason ever to attend a meeting of the League of St George again.
‘That would be very nice.’
She nodded seriously, as if they had just sealed some holy compact, perishable only by death. ‘Here,’ she said, ‘you must take some of these to distribute.’
‘Thanks,’ he said, without looking at the little pile of handbills she dropped into his palm, ‘I’ll do that.’ He gave her a valedictory tap on the arm. He had not meant to do this, but somehow he did—and once again the wire-rimmed glasses fell forward onto the bridge of her nose. When he looked back she was standing by the pamphlet stall, one hand poised over the jam jar full of sixpences, white-faced and traumatised, like a girl in a medieval painting.
In the Bayswater Road it was getting colder and the people seemed less manic. The doggerel poem on the handbill turned out to be an old one from the early days of the war.
Land of dope and Jewry
Land that once was free
All the Jew boys praise thee
Whilst they plunder thee
Poorer still and poorer
Grow thy true-born sons
Faster still and faster
They’re sent to feed the guns.
He kept one of the bills and stuffed the rest down a grating in the street. Miss Frencham would soon be drinking her glass of sherry in Powis Square, with the parlourmaid hanging up her coat. He did not find this incongruous. It was how a certain part of the English world worked: Captain Ramsay at the Eton–Harrow match; Mosley in his fencing gear. The carriage he sat in was empty and the war might never have been, and he occupied his time in writing an account of what he had noticed at the meeting.
Miss Harris-Foster. Much more virulent than when last seen. Denounced Chamberlain. Said that ‘world Jewry’ was responsible for ‘misunderstandings’ between Germany and Britain, instigators of present war. Maintained that no one should be willing to bear arms.
But important that nothing should be done which might prejudice this country’s interests. League members should play part in civilian defence/humanitarian work while striving to enlighten those with whom they are in contact as to the ‘real’ nature of factors which brought about the war.
Miss H-F received mixed reception. E.g. remarks about not bearing arms strongly applauded. Much less enthusiasm for comments about war-work.
Others present already known to B.1:
Captain Ramsay. Polished speaker. None of Miss H-F’s suppressed hysteria. Well received. Intends to proceed along lines of: (a) distribution among MPs, in clubs, services, etc., of memorandum aimed at refuting Prime Minister’s statement that Hitler can’t be trusted, dealing with issues of Austria, Bohemia and Poland and designed throughout to show that ‘world Jewry’ instigators of the war; (b) leaflets, placards and labels bearing anti-Jewish propaganda. Said had been in touch with Mosley with view to ‘arriving at a basis for co-operation.’ When pressed by BUF
members as to how far this co-operation might go, slightly evasive. Otherwise frank, open, made no secret of beliefs i.e. war result of Jewish ‘ramp,’ our real enemy Bolshevism, etc. Talked about ‘peace feelers,’ idea that these might be extended through neutral embassies, messages sent out in diplomatic bag. Would not criticise those who bore arms against Germany.
Lord Lymington. Made his usual speech. Admired the ‘new spirit’ emerging in Germany. War of benefit to none but ‘Jews and international Communists.’ Has links with Peace Aims Group. Solution lay in conference prior to negotiated peace. The King’s role crucial. HM had worked for peace before war declared; declaration against his wishes; should now be encouraged to work for peace again. This statement loudly applauded.
Alicia Frencham—
But the train had reached Piccadilly, and Johnson decided to leave the problem of Miss Frencham until later.
Back at the office the B.1 corridor was nearly empty, and he stood in his room with the door open, smoking a cigarette and turning over some papers about a meeting of the Liberty Restoration Committee in Acton. He was not even sure if the Liberty Restoration Committee needed an eye being kept on it. But you could never tell.
The B.1 corridor was at its worst in the early afternoon. The cigarette smoke hung in the cornices and the strip-lighting made the faces of the secretaries who passed beneath it look like pieces of cold boiled veal on a butcher’s slab. A full colonel in red tabs came crashing down the row, peering suspiciously through the open doorways as he went, and then disappeared into B.3, where his voice could be heard loudly asking directions. The place was full of these bewildered migrants: civil servants sent after files; emissaries from the services publicity departments. Security was lax. ‘One of these days,’ Hegarty had said, ‘I shall hand over a file to some messenger boy with a chit and he’ll drop his bloody parachute on the floor as he goes out.’
It was about three o’clock. From one of the nearby cells sounded a snatch of dance music, which meant that someone was (illegally) tampering with a short-wave radio. The suspicious colonel’s voice had disappeared now, swallowed up in the clatter of tea-trolleys being bumped into each other and the smash of filing cabinets. Just when it seemed that everything had grown too intolerable to be borne, there was a sound of whistling from along the corridor and Hegarty came into the room. He was wearing a mackintosh buttoned up to the neck and there was a small red mark on the side of his face that had not been in evidence before.
‘Been back long?’ Hegarty was always terrified that his regular absences from the office would be made more conspicuous by the sight of other people tethered to their desks.
‘About a quarter of an hour.’
‘Splendid. If anyone asks, you can say that we came back together.’
‘But nobody ever does ask.’
‘That’s as may be. I heard Davenport say only the other day that he thought time-keeping was getting damnably slack. His words. I didn’t think people used expressions like “damnably slack” anymore, but apparently they do. How was the League of St George?’
‘Appalling.’
‘Why so?’
‘I wouldn’t mind it so much if they genuinely thought they had the country’s best interests at heart. But as far as I can see most of them are actively pro-Nazi.’
‘Who was there?’
‘The usual lot. Miss Harris-Foster. Ramsay. Lymington. That chap from the BUF we saw with the undercover agent in Sloane Street the other week.’
‘Mrs Tanqueray-Smith?’
‘Not that I recall. Now you come to mention it, I wondered why she wasn’t there.’
Hegarty’s face showed the same delight it had worn when a visiting major-general had spilled a cup of coffee over his dress uniform.
‘The reason, my dear fellow, why Mrs Tanqueray-Smith wasn’t there, or at the monthly meeting of the Christian Patriots, or the British People’s Party’s fortnightly committee, is that according to intelligence that came over the wire this morning she has recently accepted a position at the German Air Ministry.’
‘Well, I never. How on earth did she get out?’
‘I don’t know. How do any of them get out? Travel through some neutral territory and apply at the border, I suppose. At least my conscience is clear. I told you about Mrs Tanqueray-Smith months ago.’ He looked unexpectedly crestfallen, as if suddenly reminded that the work they were engaged on was not a glorious game, but something impenetrable and serious. ‘Anyhow, what will you say about the League of St George in your report?’
‘I don’t know. I can’t get very worked up about Miss Harris-Foster.’
‘Leipzig Lil? Why not?’
‘I looked up her file. Do you know she joined the Imperial Fascist League as far back as 1929 when there were just half a dozen of them sitting in a room in Craven Street with Mussolini’s photograph on the wall? And somebody who had tea at her flat said she had an antimacassar with the words “Perish Judah” embroidered on the back. I can’t get very worked up about Miss Harris-Foster.’
‘And the Honourable and Gallant Member for Peebles?’
‘Ramsay? I’d say he was definitely unbalanced. Thinks the Protocols of the Elders of Zion came down from the Mount with the Ten Commandments. And then there’s his line about “peace feelers” going out through the neutral embassies. If anyone should be putting out peace feelers it’s Lord Halifax, not a back-bench MP. Apparently he and Bannister and some of the others had a grand confabulation down at Bannister’s place in Sussex just the other weekend. When does an honourable and legitimate desire for peace turn into collaborating with your country’s enemies?’
‘He’s got a son in the army.’
‘He’s got a chap in the American Embassy telling him the contents of Roosevelt’s telegrams, if what I hear’s true.’
‘And what about the seductive Miss Frencham? Did she ask you back for sherry again?’
‘A harmless fanatic.’
‘No such thing. She’s Rear-Admiral Sir Gervase Frencham’s daughter, and we all know about him.’
‘We do?’
‘“The man who has Hitler’s photograph on his desk,” as the Daily Mail so regularly reminds us. So, what shall you tell Davenport?’
‘What I said. Ramsay certainly can’t be allowed to go around London saying that kind of thing. And the BUF chap we saw in Sloane Street definitely ought to be picked up.’
‘I’m with you there.’ There was a laborious, thundering noise in the corridor, like a Tyrannosaurus rex in flight, and the afternoon tea-trolley went by. ‘But will Davenport be, too? That’s the question.’
‘Why shouldn’t he? It’s his job.’
‘Just a hunch,’ Hegarty said. The skin of his face was pale to the point of translucence, blue-tinged like skimmed milk. ‘One of life’s little mysteries.’
‘Talking of life’s little mysteries, how did you get that mark on the side of your head?’
One of the things about Hegarty—one of the many things—was that you could never tell precisely what the expression on his face meant. Just now it could have been panicked, chastened, bashful, quietly triumphant, or a combination of all four. He said: ‘Let’s just say I got an unexpectedly poor reception. Like the one you’re going to get from Davenport, I shouldn’t wonder.’
‘I doubt he’ll leave a mark on the side of my face.’
‘But he might put one on your file,’ Hegarty said. ‘It amounts to the same thing.’
As a general rule the higher you climbed into the building, the less hospitable it became. Mostly this was to do with the absence of people. There were no secretaries’ consoles beyond the third floor, and no messengers, and even such piecemeal symbols of civilisation as wastepaper baskets unexpectedly gave out. Quite who typed the memoranda circulated there and where they were ultimately disposed of, only the section heads knew. Nearly always des
erted, but rarely soundless—frequently alive with the tramp of feet moving in counterpoint far out of sight—the corridors had other ways of emphasising their detachment from the ordinary course of human life.
Two floors below, the noticeboards advertised rugby teams, lost property, departmental soirées. Here they carried information so abstruse as to almost be in code, full of odd jargon and jagged truncations. Mtg 26 ult. General purps. Authorised personnel to attend. B.B.O. (ops). Presumably people who wrote and pinned up such notices knew what they meant. Hegarty had once said: ‘Someone could make a great deal of money by printing a guide to departmental shorthand. I mean, what does Exp. Gen. B.B.D. mean? I’ve seen half a dozen things like that on memos since I got here and never had the slightest idea what they’re about. It’s the same with people’s titles. Who is the Asst P.B.C. (Div.)? He could be the Deputy Head of Intelligence or the man who staffs the first aid post for all I know.’
On the other hand, whoever had designed these infinitely sinister backdrops, laid down the pale, threadbare carpets, applied the lemon-yellow paint to the peeling walls and been responsible for the carbolic soap smell that hung over the corridor from dawn to dusk, had not lacked all aesthetic sense. You could see this in the clumps of photographs that turned up every so often in the lobbies, or flanking lift-shaft doorways. They had nothing to do with the work of the department, but depicted ancient colonial scenes: a dozen men in solar topis and khaki shorts gathered around a dead tiger; an elephant rolling a log with its trunk; Eastern temples; pagodas glinting in the Burmese sun. ‘Ghastly things,’ Hegarty had commented. ‘The white man’s burden and some of its incidental rewards. Makes me think of being read Kipling at prep school. I wonder how Davenport can stand looking at them.’
No one quite knew how Davenport had become a section head. He was supposed to have been a National Government MP who had lost his seat in the general election of 1935, and then to have worked in Naval Intelligence. None of this inspired confidence. ‘Probably filed the VD returns at Portsmouth Military Hospital,’ Hegarty had said.