by D. J. Taylor
‘So why on earth wasn’t something done before?’
‘Everyone seemed to think that you couldn’t go marching into a gentleman’s home and start asking questions about his house-guests. That was until this morning, of course.’
‘If she’s anything like Anthea Carey I shall look forward to making her acquaintance,’ Hegarty said warmly. He had clearly forgotten about the dislocated finger he was supposed to have sustained in the incident in the lift.
At Hayward’s Heath they turned right and headed for West Grinstead. Here the Local Defence Volunteers were less in evidence and the roads were full of slowly moving agricultural vehicles. Hegarty, who had been scowling to himself for nearly twenty minutes, said out of the blue:
‘Do you know, speaking as the free citizen of a free country I strongly deprecate this war. Not in the way that Bannister and Ramsay do. Naturally one wants Hitler to be beaten. Who wouldn’t? But sooner or later somebody will come along who’ll realise that the only chance we have of winning will be to completely reorganise the way we go about doing things.’
‘“Only socialist nations can fight effectively”? I’ve heard that said a few times.’
‘All that, of course,’ Hegarty said seriously. ‘But then there’s the Empire too. The dear old Empire. I can’t see that lasting, even if they limit the war to Europe, which naturally they won’t.’
‘Aren’t you in danger of mistaking effects for causes?’
‘I suppose I am,’ Hegarty said. ‘It’s the price of patriotism, I daresay. Are you sure we turn left here? I thought this was the way to Bognor Regis.’
It had gone eleven by the time they reached the approach way to Ashburton Grange. As they rounded the bend in the road and the high, machicolated turrets rose before them, Johnson had a presentiment of doom. He knew they would not find what they had come looking for. It was as simple as that. The bleak, sheep-ridden fields running away to right and left seemed to abet these inklings of disquiet. There was nothing for them here.
And so it nearly proved. They had given up hammering on the front door, and were about to smash in one of the vestibule windows, when it swung unexpectedly open and a plump, ungainly girl with an over-large head stood in the doorway regarding them slyly.
‘I’m afraid the tradesmen’s entrance is round the back,’ she announced.
‘We’re not tradesmen,’ Hegarty told her sharply. It did not seem necessary to say anything else. There were rooks taking off from the gravel drive, odd shafts of sunlight falling in the space between the car’s wheels and the front of the house. They left the plump girl in the hallway and moved on into the main body of the house, where ancient Bannisters stared at them from their frames and in the middle distance someone was loudly crying.
The noise turned out to come from the kitchen. Here a white-faced and rather attractive girl with badly plucked eyebrows was leaning mournfully against the side of a table while a second girl with a figure exactly like a bolster dabbed at the back of her head with a towel. There was quite a lot of blood. It had gone over the attractive girl’s dress, fallen on the table and run in streaks down the fat girl’s forearms. Hegarty took in the situation instantly.
‘Here,’ he said courteously. ‘That’s not the way to do it. You’d better let me see. I’ve had medical training, you know.’
There was no gainsaying this authority. Meekly the fat girl surrendered her towel. The girl with the bloody head rolled her eyes and said, semi-hysterically:
‘I’m going to have that Miss Kirkpatrick summonsed. You see if I don’t.’
‘You’d find it an awful lot more comfortable if you lay down somewhere,’ Hegarty said. He was thoroughly in his element. When all this was over he would undoubtedly ask her for a date. The fat girl was lost in admiration. Johnson decided to investigate the drawing-room.
Here smoke was pouring from an over-stoked fire. Fragments of charred paper danced up above the flames into the chimney’s interior. There were at least three box files noisily incinerating; typed memoranda; sheaves of envelopes; other things. Johnson wondered about trying to rescue some of them. The sound of crying had stopped. Eventually Hegarty came into the room.
‘That was an unexpected bonus,’ he said. ‘Even if it was like a butcher’s shop.’ There were spots of blood on his fingers. His gaze fell on the fire. ‘No sign of Bannister,’ he explained. ‘I expect all this is a case of cherchez la femme.’
It was not meant as a joke, but Johnson, hunkered down in front of the fireplace, his face scarlet from the heat of the Bannisters’ incriminating bonfire, fire-iron poised above the cover of what looked like a scorched exercise book, began uncontrollably to laugh.
Chapter 23
Beverley Nichols’s Diary IV
3 March 1940
When one thinks of the nervous strain to which one has been subjected over the past two weeks—and indeed over the six months that preceded them—it is a wonder one has the strength to write anything at all. On the other hand, there is one’s duty to one’s beliefs, not to mention that very considerable and exacting audience, posterity …
Naturally, my first thought when I heard of the événements on the French border—it is remarkable how the Gallic sense of irony extends even to war-reporting—was of profound regret: all our schemes in disarray; the wrong horse backed, &c.; not to mention an unutterable disgust at such bare-faced duplicity. To absolutely encourage the idea of a negotiated peace while secretly plotting to attack the Maginot Line! This kind of subterfuge, as I remarked to Victor, beggars belief.
Equally naturally, these sentiments immediately replaced by a great wave of patriotism (not that I have ever been motivated by anything other than patriotism throughout this whole affair)—the country in danger, the duty of every true Briton, &c. In fact, so overwhelmed was I by these emotions that I very nearly rushed out to the recruiting office in the high street and offered myself for military service on the spot.
In the end, decided not to do this—it is something that Noël, in that devastating way of his, would call ‘the path of least resistance’—and contented myself with writing a slashing article for Drawbell, saying that, with the government in chaos, Winston is clearly the man to lead us through these dark days.
In fact, I have a suspicion that Lord Halifax would make a far better Prime Minister—there is something rather ghastly and antediluvian about Winston—but this is clearly a moment at which one must temper one’s opinions to the public mood. The public mood, needless to say, that of Albion Imperilled: all the Conservative MPs with the least connection with Ramsay falling over themselves to make patriotic speeches; the Labour pacifists silent to a man. A letter in The Times from some fatuous Quaker suggesting that what is needed is rational discussion and the mutual acceptance of opposed views, at which, I am afraid to say, I laughed out loud.
Meanwhile, there is the yet more alarming question—not to put too fine a point on it—of one’s personal safety. Having heard nothing from anyone connected with the Faction for several days and, to be frank, rather dreading the return of Mr Hegarty, I decided to telephone Victor at the House.
He confirmed what I suspected: viz., Ramsay has been arrested, together with Kent from the American Embassy. Bannister, I discovered to my horror, is dead—although the news has not yet been released to the papers—either destroying himself or through some grotesque accident; no one seems quite to know. Also thought to have been playing some absolutely treasonable game of his own, letters from German ministries found at his house, &c. A dreadful story of a girl mixed up in the affair—apparently Kent’s mistress and no better than she should be—being detained against her will at Bannister’s house in Sussex.
All very shocking, and yet confirmed to me, on reflection, the instability of certain of the persons one has been dealing with. There is, for example, such a thing as prudence, which I do not believe that Ramsay ever possesse
d for a moment …
All this complicated, necessarily, by the fact that one has a social life and that it continues around one even though the Secret Services may be camped out in one’s front garden. At Mary Ridgely Carter’s the other night, for instance, I had to listen to an excruciating discussion of the ‘traitors in our midst’ and what ought to be done with them. Felt like saying that, judged by these stringent criteria, I was a traitor myself, but contented myself with remarking that personal motivation not always readily explicable, that it was sometimes possible to do one’s best while appearing to do one’s worst, &c.
Mary very fierce against ‘collaborators’ and ‘fifth columnists’ who should be ‘shot on sight.’ This made me wonder, with a sinking feeling, what might happen to Commandant Allen and the fanatical ladies, and, with even more of a sinking feeling, what might happen to myself. According to Victor, who I fancy knows a good deal more about all this than he lets on, the famous book has been destroyed, so that is a relief.
Even so, there is no knowing what Ramsay, or one of the others, may say… . Very nearly resolved to go to Scotland Yard and make a clean breast of it, but then told myself that this would be tantamount to walking into a lion’s den and asking if anyone were hungry …
I continue to reassure myself that I acted for the best in the light of information available to me, and that is what I shall say, whether asked by personal friends or the gentlemen in Jermyn Street. And of course there is the fact that in this affair, as in any other, one can never choose one’s associates.
Still, thinking that nothing could be lost, and that much might be gained, by a decisive gesture, I rang up Alan Clutton-Brock, who is in charge of the public relations department at Bomber Command, placed my cards squarely on the table and demanded: did he have a vacancy? It turns out that they need someone to tour aircraft factories in the north of England and write them up for official publications.
Hearing this, I immediately volunteered my services. It will mean a lot of tedious train journeys through some of the most dismal country in England and having to interview burly ladies with spanners, but at a time like this it is incumbent upon one to make sacrifices. Also it will be nice to see Gavin and Brian again, both of whom I gather are ‘on the staff’ …
6 March 1940
The Germans now at Reims.
Was sitting gloomily in the drawing room wondering whether, if people are tired of reading about one’s gardens, it would be possible to write about one’s cats, when Gaskin arrived in, or rather floated into, the room bringing an envelope on a silver tray. This, marked OHMS, but bearing a stamp rather than an official frank, and addressed in a hand I did not recognise, contained the following letter:
My Dear Nichols,
And so our plans have gone awry, and we have all been grievously misled! I have, of course, spent countless years attempting to decipher the Teutonic mind, but confess myself baffled by its deceits. Naturally I am pained beyond measure—not only by the calamity into which we are now plunged, but by the abuse of our good faith. Needless to say, were it within my power to reward you for your Herculean efforts in the cause of peace I should do so.
As it is not, I merely send my good wishes and heartfelt thanks.
Yours sincerely
Edward R.
Very nearly made a copy of this and sent it to Hardinge, but in the end allowed prudence to get the better of me. Instead put it in the japanned box along with the letters from Melba, King Constantine, Coolidge, and Lloyd George for my biographer to find and make of what he will.
To say that it is nice to find oneself so thoroughly vindicated and to receive the compliments of one’s sovereign would be an understatement!
Later. Woke up at 6:30 a.m. in one of those dreadful hotels around the back of Paddington Station, with the noise of a pneumatic drill coming from beyond the window and the unmistakeable sounds of fornication echoing from the next room. Y, the cause of what Henry James would call this rash and insensate step, had already left. Very cross, on examining my wallet, to find that £10 had disappeared from it. When one thinks of all one has done for a youth who, if he had his just deserts, would be playing the accordion on a cruise liner, it is enough to make one’s blood boil.
Slunk home through the wet streets to find a letter on RAF paper stating that Mr B. Nichols was requested to report for duty on the following Monday at an address in the Marylebone Road. Felt like informing them that Mr B. Nichols had been reporting for duty on an almost daily basis for the past six months. On the other hand, if the events of this time have taught one anything, it is that discretion is the better part of valour …
Epilogue
1941
Down in the Whitehall basements there was a dearth of natural light. This gave the people who tracked along their subterranean corridors a curiously blanched look, as if they were suffering from mortal illnesses. The few nautical men who passed this way seemed, if anything, even odder, their sun-wrecked skin turned unexpectedly swarthy by the combination of half-tones and shadow.
Sometimes, flitting along the passages from one cavernous room to another, Cynthia stopped at the noticeboards in the hope of diversion, but these, too, were drained of colour. Some of the notices were as much as a year old and referred to aspects of the war long vanished into history. Things were better in the large conference chamber in which she now sat, where a skylight sometimes let in sunshine from the street and there was actually a water-jug and some glasses, but even so the figures grouped around the elliptical table had an inhuman cast: effigies, perhaps, plundered from some long-sequestered vault, or a selection of Madame Tussaud’s waxworks brought here for safe-keeping.
Apart from the table and the water jug, the room also contained a framed map of the Mediterranean on an easel, several packing cases, and some tins of corned beef. A fog of cigarette smoke hung permanently above the table and gathered in the cornices, and an asthmatic senior officer from one of the women’s services who had once been invited there for a briefing had fallen into a dead faint within minutes.
It was about half-past eleven in the morning, and the figures around the table—a general, two lieutenant-colonels, three ministry officials, and a man with a cockney accent who represented one of the big grocery concerns—were discussing Near Eastern supply chains. They did this in a courteous but faintly exasperated way, as if they suspected that nothing they said would be of any value, while fearing that some higher authority might question the results of their deliberations at a moment’s notice.
A month ago Cynthia would have transcribed each sentence that was spoken onto the shorthand pad on her lap. Now she was content to wait for an occasional resonant phrase. It was rare for anyone to ask her to read one of these utterances back, rarer still for any comment to be made about the minutes of the previous meeting circulated at the start of the one that followed.
Just now they were discussing whether it might be possible to procure certain items of tinned food in Cairo rather than shipping them over from Gibraltar. Canned pilchards, Cynthia wrote. Desirability of continuous supply. General Chesterton questioned nutritional value.
Of all the faces around the table, that of the cockney-accented grocer was the most animated. It was hard to tell if he was simply amused by the company on which he had stumbled or merely wanted the tasks set before them to be accomplished as efficiently as possible. He had a brisk exchange of views with one of the lieutenant-colonels, and Cynthia wrote: canned pilchards a staple of the working-class diet. This was the third committee Cynthia had worked for. The other two had been concerned with groundsheets and medical supplies and had, on balance, been more interesting.
At a quarter-past twelve there was a brief suspension of activities while the committee quietly reconstituted itself. The general and one of the lieutenant-colonels packed up their briefcases and left. On cue, other people emerged from the vestibule and began to occupy the
vacated seats.
Cynthia took out a bar of chocolate that Lucy’s squadron leader had given her, ate the topmost square and then returned it to her handbag, while one of the ministry officials stared at her enviously. Treats of this kind were becoming difficult to arrange. It was not until the newcomers had sat down, availed themselves of pens and pencils, and taken out their files that she realised that one of them was Peter Wildgoose.
Her first thought was that it was a pity that someone so immaculately dressed should be compelled to attend such a humdrum gathering. After this she contrived to examine his features, which were the same as she remembered them, if slightly thinner. She continued to take notes over the next half-hour without having any idea of what she had written down. Somewhere overhead an air-raid siren sounded and then fell silent.
If Peter Wildgoose had noticed her he did not betray the fact, but when at one o’clock they adjourned for lunch he came over to where she sat fastening up the straps of her handbag and said:
‘This is an unexpected pleasure. I thought you were in the country somewhere.’
‘I was,’ she said. ‘But it’s terribly boring in Hampshire in the winter and the people I was staying with were going off to Wales to start a mushroom farm… . Peter, what on earth are you doing here?’
Peter Wildgoose laughed, so loudly that the cockney grocer turned and winked at him in a way that suggested only a sense of duty kept him from seizing his arm and launching into a comic song. ‘Professional expertise,’ he said. ‘The products of the Wildgoose empire are in great demand just now. They need a ton of margarine a week in the Near East these days, and apparently I’m the only man who can supply it.’
The lieutenant-colonel was hovering a yard or two away, but Peter Wildgoose waved him off. ‘You’ll have to excuse me, Roddy,’ he said, ‘but I haven’t seen this young lady in an age and I really must take her to lunch. That is, if there is anywhere round here where one can get any. I say,’ he went on. ‘I see an old friend of yours was making a nuisance of himself the other day.’