‘Was he one of our agents?’
‘I think he was.’
I went on to say that he might be useful for getting details of constructions in the town.
‘Are the French building the place up?’ he asked and I suggested we should take an evening drive together and see something of the European quarter, which was called Jiwena.
On another occasion I was packing my things with the help of L, a friend in the same secret organization. I pointed out that I must take some very light clothes because I would be going nearly straight on from the States to Samoa on my mission. ‘You’ll have time for a shopping spree,’ L said. I was proud at being given the mission and excited. At the air terminal I went up to the ticket counter and showed my ticket. ‘Philadelphia 8.’ I thought I saw a look of pity on the air hostess’s face. Two men came up to me and asked for a lift to the airport. I sensed danger but I had no excuse to refuse them, and anyway I wanted to accept the challenge. They left the building with me, one walking on each side. Of what followed I have no memory.
In January 1980 Kim Philby came to see me secretly in London. He was not as I remembered him—he was furtive and sharp-featured, and I was disappointed. He brought me an essay which he had written for the Spectator and I could honestly praise it. He had come from Havana by an English boat and I asked him whether he wasn’t afraid of being arrested on the boat—but he gave me vaguely to understand that he was safe now. All the same, when he came to leave he readily accepted my offer to walk in front of him. There was one man in particular he had seen come out of a room into the corridor who was dangerous.
With another man I was spying in Germany, dressed in the uniform of a German officer. We were very light-hearted about the whole affair and to escape we took a train that would cross the Swiss frontier. Nor were we very perturbed when a beautiful young woman demanded our papers. My companion, who was of a higher rank, said that our papers were packed in our luggage, and she accepted the excuse, only marking our tickets in pencil with the numeral 75. Another moment of difficulty came at the frontier, where we had to show our passports—and we had none. The chief passport officer was a pompous fellow less manageable than the girl; however, his rather ugly middle-aged wife proved to be on our side, and the dominating partner. She simply told him that the passports had already been examined.
My brother Raymond and I were carrying out espionage against the Nazis in Hamburg. We were together in a hotel on the seventh floor when we received a message from one of the employees—the police had come to the hotel suspecting that something was going on there but he had discouraged this search. None the less we felt it was time to leave, but before we could do anything two rough and brutal police entered demanding our papers. I was uncertain of Raymond’s cover story so I fumbled and pretended to search, for I knew our British passports would give everything away, while I waited to hear what he had to say. Perhaps it was Raymond who thought of the ruse we employed, of snatching their guns, clubbing them, and shutting the bodies in a cupboard. Then we left.
Our only hope was to escape by plane, but if we took an ordinary passenger plane they would want to see our papers. However, private planes were to be had at the airfield for a price, and Raymond knew whom to contact. So as not to be seen, we dived hastily past the open door of a room full of men talking—obvious government employees. In the room beyond, one small twisted figure with a bent and paralysed hand—like that of my friend John Hayward, who died the other day—was reading. We got quietly into chairs so as to give an effect of normality like that in the other room. Raymond spoke of our wish to hire a plane, but for a long time the man paid no attention. Then suddenly there was action. He led us at a run past an airport gateway to a helicopter. One of his men swung the propeller too soon and was reprimanded. I climbed in first. Raymond followed, then our pilot with the twisted hand. We rose vertically and I saw the city spread below us—we were safe.
IV
Statesmen and Politicians
For politeness’ sake I prefer to make no distinction between these two categories, for statesmen can also be politicians. In the Common World I have met a number of leading statesmen and with one exception (President Diem) I have liked them all—Ho Chi Minh, Daniel Ortega, Allende, Fidel Castro, President Mitterrand, and Gorbachev especially, but few of these appear in the World of My Own.
Mr Wilson
When I encountered him first, in 1964, the Wilsons had just finished dinner and the Prime Minister was relaxing at his ease on a brass bedstead. He spoke to me, as I thought, with an absurd hustings-air, about his intention of cleaning the slums up with one blow. I tried to prick his political manner.
‘How will you house all the inhabitants?’ I asked him. ‘If this were the tropics perhaps you could put them into tents, but it is England and winter is approaching.’
‘I shall lodge them temporarily in public buildings—town halls and the like.’
‘Do you think they will be content? Now they have one lavatory between several families. Under your plan they will have one lavatory for hundreds.’
I don’t remember his reply.
General de Gaulle
I have only a fleeting memory of de Gaulle, who during the Second World War in the Common World lived for a while in Berkhamsted, which was my birth place.
I was cutting up the bread ration and came to him with his share. ‘Crust or crumb, mon général?’ I asked him, but looking at the bread I saw how little was left of either. ‘Better both,’ I told him, and gave him all that was left.
Khrushchev
In the Common World I always felt a certain affection for Khrushchev in spite of his invasion of Hungary. In the Cuban crisis I felt he had made a favourable bargain with John F. Kennedy—no further invasion in return for no defensive nuclear weapons for Cuba, which in any case would have reached no farther than Miami. I liked the way he had slapped the table with his shoe at a meeting of the United Nations. Perhaps I was influenced in my affection by the meetings I had with him in My Own World in 1964 and 1965.
My first meeting with him was at the Savoy, with a group of Russians including Mr Tchaikovsky, whom I had met in the Common World in Moscow when he was editor of Foreign Literature magazine. Khrushchev looked cheerful, healthy, and relaxed, and he was only amused when two of his party disputed noisily. We talked together about the method of financing films in England and the bad influence of the distributors. I said that this was one difficulty the Russians did not suffer, but Khrushchev told me that films in Russia were often delayed for six months as a result of overspending and then waiting for bureaucratic permission to increase the budget. He was very cordial and invited me to lunch the next day.
On the next occasion (for of the lunch I remember nothing) I sat next to him at dinner and he spoke no word to me until near the end, when he remarked that I had left a lot of my chicken uneaten. ‘So much the better for the workers in the kitchen,’ I said. ‘Surely a Marxist believes in charity.’
‘Not in Vatican charity,’ he replied with a smile.
Perhaps he had that exchange in mind when we found ourselves sitting together again at dinner. It was a Friday and he glanced at my plate. I was eating beef. He commented with a smile, ‘Meat on a Friday? I thought you were a Catholic.’
At our last meeting he was personally dealing with visas for the Soviet Union. He noticed that my profession was listed as ‘writer’, and he expressed the hope that I would write about his country. I noticed how very clear and blue his eyes were, and when I rejoined my friends I told them, ‘When you see him close, he has a beautiful face, the face of a saint.’
My view of him, I found, was not universally shared in Moscow. One day I was in a crowd outside the Kremlin. A podium had been raised and they were waiting for the leaders to appear. From another podium a young man began to address the crowd. He made fun of Khrushchev and mimed some anecdote of an international gathering at which Khrushchev had pulled roubles from his pocket and scattered them to
show their uselessness.
It is a strange thing that sometimes that World of My Own seems to be influenced by the world we have in common. J.W. Dunne in his Experiment with Time might have argued that when I described Khrushchev as having the face of a saint (of a dead man) I had felt a presage of his dismissal, the news of which I learnt on the election-night broadcast of October 15, 1964, at the Savoy—where in the World of My Own we had dined together nine days before.
Omar Torrijos
On a visit to Panama I was surprised that Omar Torrijos, who had become a great friend, was absent, for he had made an appointment with me. When at last he came he was much changed. I had brought my daughter to act as translator, but he had learnt to speak a little English. With us was a very dull English soldier, General Denniston. Others joined us—a number of Americans, including a comic soldier in an untidy uniform who lent me a tattered volume of his published diary which I was not prepared to read. I was really there to warn Omar of an American plot. The Americans intended to foment disturbance with the idea of forcing him to leave Panama. Panama would then, like an island in the Caribbean, be used as a military base to blockade Central America. I couldn’t get Omar to understand the plot.
Sir Alec Douglas-Home
In November 1965 I spent what I can only describe as an unenjoyable weekend with Sir Alec Douglas-Home, as he then was, at his house in Oxford. I resented his smoothness, his Foreign Office manner, even his silk pyjamas (although they were almost indistinguishable from my own) and his silk shirt, which was embroidered in pale blue ‘Marquess of Home’, an odd inaccuracy. I had received several messages from an Indian friend about radical riots in Allahabad which I showed him, and Sir Alex strongly advised me against going to India as ‘there’s nothing to be done about that place.’
On my second night at his house I returned at about four in the morning after dancing—an extraordinary thing for me to do—at a small party. An old friend had tried to teach me to waltz and then less successfully to tango. When I returned to Home’s house I found the lights on in his bedroom, and the manservant sweeping the floor. The chandelier had fallen and shattered.
‘Lucky it didn’t fall on your head,’ I remarked.
‘That goes without saying,’ Sir Alec replied with a kind of cold satisfaction.
I went to rescue my pyjamas from the newly washed laundry that the manservant had hung out to dry, and in doing so (I don’t really know how) I managed to get Sir Alec’s pyjamas stuck up with Scotch tape.
Perhaps because of this I left the house and made my way towards Trinity College. At the corner of the Broad the rain came down in torrents. I must have lost my way, for I found myself in a kind of shell-hole surrounded by water. There seemed to be some soil a few feet away, but when Ralph Richardson, who happened to be nearby, offered to test the ground he disappeared below the water. I could see the top of his head several inches down. He emerged again complaining that it was very cold. I managed to jump onto the dry soil, however.
I walked on a little way and Sir Alec joined me. He must have heard me leave, but very soon we were both in a hole again. The situation was so strange that I began to make notes of what was happening, but the only paper available was in the form of white one-inch-square cards that Sir Alec carried. They seemed inadequate for writing, but apparently it was the custom to use them in the Foreign Office—perhaps a custom instituted by Lord Halifax, for I found his name in embossed letters on one of them.
All in all a weekend which I would prefer not to repeat.
Edward Heath
I once passed an agreeable evening with another prime minister, Edward Heath. Heath asked me about Chile and I described Salvador Allende to him and spoke of the good impression I had of the Communists in his government.
I lent Heath the typescript of a new novel I had written and he read it at intervals during the evening.
We went on to a pub and an old man spoke to Heath of his son who was in the army, and how he wished to have him at home for some family celebration. Heath introduced himself—rather quaintly, I thought—‘I am the Right Honourable Edward Heath.’ He asked for the son’s military number, but the old man couldn’t remember it. Heath told him to telephone his secretary the next day and everything would be arranged. To my surprise I found myself liking Heath very much.
Heath, it seemed, had been looking for an ambassador to Scotland, but no one wanted to accept the post. He even asked me and I refused. However when I read in the paper that no one else would accept, I went to him and told him I was ready to be appointed after all.
He looked exhausted and a little suspicious of me, so I explained that the only reason I had at first refused was that I felt incapable. But I would do my best. Perhaps as a mark of friendship we went swimming together in a muddy river, and to show keenness for my job I suggested we should hold a World Textile Fair in Scotland. He replied that David Selznick had once told him that such fairs might possibly do good in the long run, but that the last one had ruined many small local industries.
Yuri Andropov
It must have been about seven years after my meeting with Khrushchev that I encountered Yuri Andropov, at that time head of the KGB. He had recovered from his sickness and come to London on his way to Stockholm for a disarmament conference. He honoured me by making use of my services for note-taking. I liked him. He was an immensely tall man and there was something wrong with his right hand, which was apt to flap in a disconsolate way. I remember he told me of his great admiration for the poetry of A.E. Housman.
François Mitterrand
In December 1983 I had a brief encounter with President Mitterrand in London. He was walking to Paddington Station via Hyde Park. I told him how much I disliked Chirac and I would have added Giscard d’Estaing if Giscard had not joined us at that moment.
Fidel Castro
In June 1984 I was visiting Castro in Cuba. We walked around chatting in a friendly fashion and came to halt beside a poor man who was weeping. He had just buried a small child in a tiny grave he had dug himself.
Castro tried to comfort him by telling him that now his child would suffer nothing, know nothing. But the man was not comforted. I crossed myself and he at once stopped crying and shook my hand. He said, ‘I feel you are one of those who think there may possibly be something after death.’
Ho Chi Minh
Visiting President Ho Chi Minh, I found him very courteous, and he explained the difficulties which had made him refuse my previous visit. He took me for a walk in the countryside surrounding his HQ. One had to keep a weather-eye open for American bombers. A helicopter approached and I wondered whether it was American, but it proved to be one of ‘ours’ and landed. A very pretty European girl appeared and began to walk off on her own. ‘Is she safe?’ I asked Ho Chi Minh and he called after her, ‘Come back. You don’t know what our boys mightn’t want to do with you.’
Oliver Cromwell
A lot of noise in the streets outside the flat where I was living—military commands, etc. It seemed very unusual. I tried to find out what was happening from the radio without success—it wasn’t the hour for news. I went out and saw Oliver Cromwell walking down the street. I realized why he had once been described as the shadow cast by a crab. I had not expected to see him for at this moment they were voting in the army for and against his policy of executing Charles I. He sat down with a group of people and began to talk to them in French. He said Charles was in effect being killed by the doctrine of divine right. Without that a compromise would have been possible. News of the voting came—only an old officer had voted against Cromwell. ‘He wants to shake the temple,’ Cromwell said, ‘but not destroy it. That would be fatal.’
V
War
I was visiting Berkhamsted when I learnt that, with the permission of the British government, the United States planned to drop four hundred parachutists and take over the town at four A.M. in order to capture me. It was then nearly midnight and I tried in vain to thin
k of somewhere to go. I checked on the time with two friendly police officers. One of them questioned whether there might not be some resistance.
‘No,’ I argued, ‘they’ll behave very well and probably bring balloons for the children.’
I went back to my room and was handling my passport which would certainly betray me, when the drop occurred early—at midnight. I found myself in a room, under arrest. To the American plainclothesman in charge of me I said, ‘When I get out of here I’ll have the pleasure of hitting you—I shall be hitting a police officer for the first time.’
A voice behind me said, ‘Do you really mean you’ve never hit a policeman before?’ I looked around. It was my old friend Claud Cockburn, who was also under arrest.
We watched the American troops through the window. I had hoped they would disgrace themselves by looting and raping, but to my disappointment they seemed to be behaving correctly.
In February 1965, after an air raid, German parachute troops landed in a quarter of London where I was living. With a friend I tried to get away by car, but I made the mistake of leaving behind a compromising letter dealing with espionage. As we drove away we passed two German soldiers who made no attempt to stop us. But a moment later we saw others approaching and we made another mistake by backing and turning, which aroused suspicion in the soldiers we had passed. We were arrested. Apparently they possessed a complete dossier on me, including a photograph taken with a concealed camera of my meeting in a hotel room with a German whose face I remembered from my trip down the Occupied Territories in 1924. They also appeared to have a tape recording of our voices. The game now seemed really up, and I felt almost resigned to the torture chamber, with an intellectual curiosity as to how long I would hold out. They possessed a radiogram of my body which would be of help to them.