Guy would not have been surprised had they left him standing, but the second-in-command rose, brought his chair round the table for Guy, and himself stood beside the interpreter.
Kanyi’s electric plant was again in difficulties. A single pressure-lamp lit the flat faces and round, cropped heads. All three military men were younger than Guy but their skin was weathered by exposure. All smoked captured Macedonian cigarettes and the air was heavy. The second-in-command offered Guy a cigarette which he refused.
The Minister of the Interior had a short white beard and hooded eyes that lacked shrewdness. He did not know why he was there. He did not know why he was in Begoy at all. He had enjoyed a sharp little practice in Split, had meddled before the war in anti-Serbian politics, had found himself in an Italian prison, had been let out when the partisans briefly “liberated” the coast, had been swept up with them in the retreat. They gave him a room and rations and this odd title “Minister of the Interior.” Why?
The interpreter spoke. “The General wishes to know why you went to visit the Jews today?”
“I was acting on orders from my headquarters.”
“The General does not understand how the Jews are the concern of the Military Mission.”
Guy attempted an explanation of the aims and organization of U.N.R.R.A. He did not know a great deal about them and had no great respect for the members he had met, but he did his best. General and Commissar conferred. Then: “The Commissar says if those measures will take place after the war, what are they doing now?”
Guy described the need for planning. U.N.R.R.A. must know what quantities of seed-corn, bridge-building materials, rolling-stock and so on were needed to put ravaged countries on their feet.
“The Commissar does not understand how this concerns the Jews.”
Guy spoke of the millions of displaced persons all over Europe who must be returned to their homes.
“The Commissar says that is an internal matter.”
“So is bridge-building.”
“The Commissar says bridge-building is a good thing.”
“So is helping displaced persons.”
Commissar and General conferred. “The General says any questions of internal affairs should be addressed to the Minister of the Interior.”
“Tell him that I am very sorry if I have acted incorrectly. I merely wished to save everyone trouble. I was sent a question by my superiors. I did my best to answer it in the simplest way. May I now request the Minister of the Interior to furnish me with a list of the Jews?”
“The General is glad that you understand that you have acted incorrectly.”
“Will the Minister of the Interior be so kind as to make the list for me?”
“The General does not understand why a list is needed.” And so it began again. They talked for an hour. At length Guy lost patience and said: “Very well. Am I to report that you refuse all cooperation with U.N.R.R.A.?”
“We will cooperate in all necessary matters.”
“But with regard to the Jews?”
“It must be decided by the Central Government whether that is a necessary matter.”
At length they parted. On the way home Bakic said: “Dey mighty sore with you, captain. What for you make trouble with dese Jews?”
“Orders,” said Guy, and before going to bed drafted a signal:
Jews’ condition now gravely distressed may become desperate. Local authorities uncooperative. Only hope higher level.
Next morning he received in clear:
P/302/B Personal for Crouchback. Message begins Virginia gave bath son today both well Crouchback message end. Kindly note personal messages of great importance only accepted for transmission Gilpin for brigadier.
“Query ‘bath,’ ” Guy told his signaler.
Three days later he received:
Personal for Crouchback. Our P/302/B for bath read birch. This not regarded adequate importance priority personal message. See previous signal Gilpin for brigadier.
“Query ‘birch.’ ”
At length he received: For birch read birth repeat birth. Congratulations Cape.
“Send in clear Personal Message Crouchback Bourne Mansions Carlisle Place London Glad both well Crouchback. Message ends Personal to brigadier thank you for congratulations.”
VII
Virginia’s son was born on June 4th, the day on which the Allied armies entered Rome.
“An omen,” said Uncle Peregrine.
He was talking to his nephew, Arthur Box-Bender, in Bellamy’s where he had taken refuge while his flat was overrun by doctor, nurse and his niece Angela.
The club was rather empty these days. Most of the younger members had moved to the south coast waiting for the day when they would cross the channel. There was no air of heightened expectancy among the older members. They were scarcely aware of the impending invasion. Social convention, stronger than any regulations of “security,” forbade its discussion.
Box-Bender could not regard the birth of a nephew as happy. He had been disconcerted by Guy’s marriage. He had counted the months of pregnancy. He regarded the whole thing as a middle-aged aberration for which Guy was paying an unnaturally high price to the eventual detriment of his own children’s inheritance. “Omen of what?” he asked rather crossly. “Do you expect the boy to become Pope?”
“The idea had not occurred to me. Though I must admit Virginia has taken to religion in an extraordinary way during the last few weeks. Not exactly piety, you know; gossip. The clergy seem to like her awfully. They keep coming to call as they never did on me. She makes them laugh. She’s a much jollier sort of convert than people like Eloise Plessington.”
“That I can well imagine.”
“Angela has been a great help. Of course you must know all about child-birth. It has all been rather a surprise to me. I had never given it much thought but I had supposed that women just went to bed and that they had a sort of stomach ache and groaned a bit and that then there was a baby. It isn’t at all like that.”
“I always moved out when Angela had babies.”
“I was awfully interested. I moved out at the end but the beginning was quite a surprise—almost unnerving.”
“I am sure nothing ever unnerves you, Peregrine.”
“No. Perhaps ‘unnerving’ was not the right word.”
*
In H.O.O. H.Q. there was stagnation in the depleted offices. The more bizarre figures remained—the witch-doctor and the man who ate grass—but the planners and the combatants had melted away. In the perspective of “Overlord,” that one huge hazardous offensive operation on which, it seemed, the fate of the world depended, smaller adventures receded to infinitesimal importance.
“Brides-in-the-Bath” Whale ordered not a holocaust, but a relegation to unsounded depths of obscurity mountains of files, each propounding in detail some desperate enterprise, each bearing a somewhat whimsical title, all once hotly debated and amended, all now quite without significance.
Ian Kilbannock, without regret, realized that he had passed the zenith of his powers and must decline. He was already negotiating for employment as a special correspondent in Normandy. That was near home and the center of interest, but competition was keen. Ian had his future professional career to consider. His brief experience as a gossip-writer seemed irrelevant to the zeitgeist. The time had come, Ian believed, to establish himself as something more serious. There would be infinite scope, he foresaw, during the whole length of his life, for first-hand “war revelations.”
The Adriatic was suggested and considered. Burma had been offered and evaded. It was plain from reports he saw that it was no place for Ian. It might, on the other hand, be just the place for Trimmer.
“All Trimmer reports negative, sir,” Ian reported to General Whale.
“Yes. Where is he now?”
“San Francisco. He’s been right across the country. He’s flopped everywhere. It isn’t really his fault. He went too late. The Americans have hero
es of their own now. Besides, you know, they haven’t a fully developed consciousness of class. They can’t see Trimmer as the proletarian portent. They see him as a typical British officer.”
“Haven’t they seen the fellow’s hair? I don’t mean the way it’s cut. The way it grows. That’s proletarian enough for them, surely?”
“They don’t understand that kind of thing. As I see it we can only keep him moving west. I don’t think he ought to come back to the U.K. at the moment. There are reasons. You might call them compassionate grounds.”
“There’s a bigger problem on our hands—General Ritchie-Hook. He’s had a blood row with Monty and is out of work and keeps bothering the Chief. I don’t quite see why we should be regarded as responsible for him.”
“Do you think they could go as a pair and impress the loyal Indians?”
“No.”
“Nor do I. Not Ritchie-Hook, certainly. They’d soon stop being loyal if he had a go at them.”
“Oh, for God’s sake settle it yourself. I’m sick of the man.”
General Whale, too, knew he had passed the zenith of his powers and from now on could only decline. There had been a delirious episode when he had helped drive numerous Canadians to their death at Dieppe. He had helped plan greater enterprises which had come to nothing. Now he was where he had started in his country’s “finest hour,” with negligible powers of mischief. He occupied the same room, he was served by the same immediate staff as in the years of expansion. But his legions were lost to him.
*
There was stagnation at Ludovic’s station, also. The staff-captain remained. The instructors had been recalled. No new clients appeared for the parachute course. But Ludovic was content.
He employed a typist in Scotland. He had chosen her because she seemed the most remote from enemy action of any of those who offered their services in the Times Literary Supplement. Throughout the winter he had sent her a weekly parcel of manuscript and received in return two typed copies in separate envelopes. She acknowledged the receipt of each parcel by postcard but there was a four-day interval during which Ludovic suffered deep qualms of anxiety. Much was pilfered from the railways in those days but not, as things happened, Ludovic’s novel. Now at the beginning of June he had it all complete, two piles of laced and paper-bound sections. He ordered Fido to basket and settled down to read the last chapter, not to correct misprints, for he wrote clearly and the typist was competent, not to polish or revise, for the work seemed to him perfect (as in a sense it was), but for the sheer enjoyment of his own performance.
Admirers of his pensées (and they were many) would not have recognized the authorship of this book. It was a very gorgeous, almost gaudy, tale of romance and high drama. But it was not an old-fashioned book. Had he known it, half a dozen other English writers, averting themselves sickly from privations of war and apprehensions of the social consequences of the peace, were even then severally and secretly, unknown to one another, to Everard Spruce, to Coney and to Frankie, composing books which would turn from the drab alleys of the ’thirties into the odorous gardens of a recent past transformed and illuminated by disordered memory and imagination. Ludovic in the solitude of his post was in the movement.
Nor was it for all its glitter a cheerful book. Melancholy suffused its pages and deepened towards the close.
So far as any character could be said to have an origin in the world of reality, the heroine was the author.
As Ludovic read the last pages he realized that the whole book had been the preparation for Lady Marmaduke’s death—a protracted, ceremonious killing like that of a bull in the ring. Except that there was no violence. He had feared sometimes that his heroine might be immured in a cave or left to drift in an open boat. These were chimeras. Lady Marmaduke, in the manner of an earlier and happier age, fell into a decline. Her disease was painless and unspecified. Under Ludovic’s heavy arm she languished, grew thinner, transparent, the rings slipped from her fingers among the rich coverings of her chaise-longue as the light faded on the distant, delectable mountains. He had hesitated in his choice of title, toying with many recondite allusions from his recent reading. Now with decision he wrote in large letters at the head of the first page: THE DEATH WISH.
Fido in his basket discerned his master’s emotion, broke orders to share it, leapt to Ludovic’s stout thighs, and remained there unrebuked, gazing up with eyes of adoration that were paler and more prominent than Ludovic’s own.
*
“What I long to know,” said Kerstie, “is what went on between Guy and Virginia after she settled in Carlisle Place. After all there was a good month before her figure began to go.”
“It’s not a thing I should care to ask her,” said Ian.
“I don’t think I can now. We made it up all right after our tiff—it’s no good keeping things up ever, is it?—but there’s been a cold-ness.”
“Why are you so keen to know?”
“Aren’t you?”
“There’s been a coldness between me and Virginia for years.”
“Who was there this evening?”
“Quite a salon. Perdita had brought Everard Spruce. There was someone I didn’t know called Lady Plessington and a priest. It was all quite gay except for the midwife who kept trying to show us the baby. Virginia can’t bear the sight of it. In a novel or a film the baby ought to make Virginia a changed character. It hasn’t. Have you noticed that she always calls it ‘it,’ never ‘he.’ She calls the midwife ‘Jenny.’ Old Peregrine speaks of the child as ‘Gervase.’ They’ve had it christened already. When he asks how Gervase is, Virginia doesn’t seem to cotton on. ‘Oh, you mean the baby. Ask Jenny.’ ”
*
When Virginia’s baby was ten days old and the news was all of the Normandy landings, the dingy tranquility which enveloped London was disturbed. Flying bombs appeared in the sky, unseemly little caricatures of aeroplanes, which droned smokily over the chimney tops, suddenly fell silent, dropped out of sight and exploded dully. Day and night they came at frequent irregular intervals, striking at haphazard far and near. It was something quite other than the battle scene of the blitz with its drama of attack and defense; its earth-shaking concentrations of destruction and roaring furnaces; its respites when the sirens sounded the All Clear. No enemy was risking his own life up there. It was as impersonal as a plague, as though the city were infested with enormous, venomous insects. Spirits in Bellamy’s, as elsewhere, had soared in the old days when Turtle’s had gone up in flames and Air Marshal Beech had taken cover under the billiard-table. Now there were glum faces. The machines could not be heard in the bar but the tall windows of the coffee-room (cross-laced with sticking plaster) fronted St. James’s Street. All heads were turned towards them and a silence would fall when a motor-bicycle passed. Job stood fast at his post in the porter’s lodge, but his sangfroid required more frequent stimulation. Members who had no particular duties in London began to disperse. Elderberry and Box-Bender decided it was time they attended to local business in their constituencies.
General Whale made an unprecedented move to the air-raid shelter. It had been constructed at great expense, wired, air-conditioned, and never once used. It had been a convention of H.O.O. H.Q. that no attention was paid to air-raid warnings. Now General Whale had a bed made there and spent his nights as well as his days underground.
“If I may say so, sir,” Ian Kilbannock ventured, “you’re not looking at all well.”
“To tell you the truth I don’t feel it, Ian. I haven’t had a day’s leave for two years.”
The man’s nerve had gone, Ian decided. He could now safely desert him.
“Sir,” he said, “with your approval I was thinking of applying for a posting abroad.”
“You, too, Ian? Where? How?”
“Sir Ralph Brompton thinks he could get me sent as war correspondent to the Adriatic.”
“What’s it got to do with him?” asked General Whale in an access of feeble exasperation. “H
ow are military postings his business?”
“He does seem to have some pull there, sir.”
General Whale gazed at Ian despondingly, uncomprehendingly. Three years, two years, even six months ago there would have been a detonation of rage. Now he sighed deeply. He gazed round the rough concrete walls of his shelter, at the silent “scrambler” telephone on his table. He felt (and had he known the passage might so have expressed it) like a beautiful and ineffectual angel beating in the void his luminous wings in vain.
“What am I doing here?” he asked. “Why am I taking cover when all I want to do is die?”
*
“Angela,” Virginia said, “you’d better go too. I can get on all right now by myself. I don’t need Sister Jenny any more really. Couldn’t you take that baby down with you? Old Nanny would look after it, surely?”
“She’d probably love to,” said Angela Box-Bender, doubtful but ready to hear reason. “The trouble is we simply haven’t any room for a single other adult.”
“Oh, I don’t want to move at all. Peregrine will be quite happy with me and Mrs. Corner once the nursery is cleared. Mrs. Corner will be over the moon to see the last of it.” (There had been the normal, ineradicable hostility between nursing sister and domestic servant.)
“It’s wonderfully unselfish of you, Virginia. If you really think it’s the best thing for Gervase…?”
“I really think it’s the best thing for—for Gervase.”
So it was arranged and Virginia comfortably recuperated as the bombs chugged overhead and she wondered, as each engine cut out: “Is that the one that’s coming here?”
VIII
In the world of high politics the English abandonment of their Serbian allies—those who had once been commended by the Prime Minister for having “found their souls”—was determined and gradually contrived. The king in exile was persuaded to dismiss his advisers and appoint more pliable successors. A British ship brought this new minister to Vis to confer with Tito in his cave. The Russians instructed Tito to make a show of welcome. Full recognition for the partisans and more substantial help were the inducements offered by the British and Americans. Meetings “at the highest level” were suggested for the near future. And as an undesigned by-product of this betrayal there resulted one infinitesimal positive good.