“You mustn’t mind,” said Mr. Bentley. “In this country we think much more of men of letters than we do of journalists.”
“Does being a man of letters get me to Scapa?”
“Well, no.”
“Does it get me a Polish interpreter?”
“No.”
“To hell with being a man of letters.”
“I’ll get you transferred,” said Mr. Bentley. “The Press Bureau is the place for you.”
“There’s a snooty young man at that bureau looks at me as if I was something the cat brought in,” complained the author of Nazi Destiny.
“He won’t once you’re registered with him. I wonder, since you’re here, if you’d like to write a book for us.”
“No.”
“No? Well I hope you get to Scapa all right… He won’t, you know,” added Mr. Bentley as the door closed. “You may be absolutely confident that he’ll never get there. Did you ever read his book? It was exceedingly silly. He said Hitler was secretly married to a Jewess. I don’t know what he’d say if we let him go to Scapa.”
“What do you think he’ll say if you don’t?”
“Something very offensive I’ve no doubt. But we shan’t be responsible. At least, I wonder, shall we?”
“Geoffrey, when you say well known as a Left Wing writer, do you suppose that if the fascists got into power here, I should be on their black list?”
“Yes, certainly, my dear fellow.”
“They did frightful things to the Left Wing intellectuals in Spain.”
“Yes.”
“And in Poland, now.”
“So the Press Department tells me.”
“I see.”
The Archimandrite dropped in for a few moments. He expressed great willingness to write a book about Axis intrigues in Sofia.
“You think you can help bring Bulgaria in on our side?” asked Mr. Bentley.
“I am spitting the face of the Bulgar peoples,” said His Beatitude.
“I believe he’d write a very good autobiography,” said Mr. Bentley, when the prelate left them. “In the days of peace I should have signed him up for one.”
“Geoffrey, you were serious when you said that I should be on the black list of Left Wing intellectuals?”
“Quite serious. You’re right at the top. You and Parsnip and Pimpernell.”
Ambrose winced at the mention of those two familiar names. “They’re all right,” he said. “They’re in the United States.”
Basil and Ambrose met as they left the Ministry. Together they loitered for a minute to watch a brisk little scene between the author of Nazi Destiny and the policeman on the gates; it appeared that in a fit of nervous irritation the American had torn up the slip of paper which had admitted him to the building; now they would not let him leave.
“I’m sorry for him in a way,” said Ambrose. “It’s not a place I’d care to spend the rest of the war in.”
“They wanted me to take a job there,” said Basil, lying.
“They wanted me to,” said Ambrose.
They walked together through the sombre streets of Bloomsbury. “How’s Poppet?” said Basil at length.
“She’s cheered up wonderfully since you left. Painting away like a mowing machine.”
“I must look her up again sometime. I’ve been busy lately. Angela’s back. Where are we going to?”
“I don’t know, I’ve nowhere to go.”
“I’ve nowhere to go.”
An evening chill was beginning to breathe down the street.
“I nearly joined the Bombardier Guards a week or two ago,” said Basil.
“I once had a great friend who was a corporal in the Bombardiers.”
“We’d better go and see Sonia and Alastair.”
“I haven’t been near them for years.”
“Come on.” Basil wanted someone to pay for the cab.
But when they reached the little house in Chester Street they found Sonia alone and packing. “Alastair’s gone off,” she said. “He’s joined the Army in the ranks. They said he was too old for a commission.”
“My dear, how very 1914.”
“I’m just off to join him. He’s near Brookwood.”
“You’ll be beautifully near the Necropolis,” said Ambrose. “It’s the most enjoyable place. Three public houses, my dear, inside the cemetery, right among the graves. I asked the barmaid if the funeral parties got very tipsy and she said, ‘No. It’s when they come back to visit the graves. They seem to need something then.’ And did you know the Corps of Commissionaires have a special burial place? Perhaps if Alastair is a very good soldier they might make him an honorary member…” Ambrose chattered on. Sonia packed. Basil looked about for bottles. “Nothing to drink.”
“All packed, darling. I’m sorry. We might go out somewhere.”
They went out, later, when the packing was done, into the blackout to a bar. Other friends came to join them.
“No one seems interested in my scheme to annex Liberia.”
“No imagination. They won’t take suggestions from outsiders. You know, Sonia, this war is developing into a kind of club enclosure on a race-course. If you aren’t wearing the right badge they won’t let you in.”
“I think that’s rather what Alastair felt.”
“It’s going to be a long war. There’s plenty of time. I shall wait until there’s something amusing to do.”
“I don’t believe it’s going to be that kind of war.”
This is all that anyone talks about, thought Ambrose; jobs and the kind of war it is going to be. War in the air, war of attrition, tank war, war of nerves, war of propaganda, war of defence in depth, war of movement, peoples’ war, total war, indivisible war, war infinite, war incomprehensible, war of essence without accidents or attributes, metaphysical war, war in time-space, war eternal…all war is nonsense, thought Ambrose. I don’t care about their war. It’s got nothing to do with me. But if, thought Ambrose, I were one of these people, if I were not a cosmopolitan, Jewish pansy, if I were not all that the Nazis mean when they talk about “degenerates,” if I were not a single, sane individual, if I were part of a herd, one of these people, normal and responsible for the welfare of my herd, Gawd strike me pink, thought Ambrose, I wouldn’t sit around discussing what kind of war it was going to be. I’d make it my kind of war. I’d set about killing and stampeding the other herd as fast and as hard as I could. Lord love a duck, thought Ambrose, there wouldn’t be any animals nosing about for suitable jobs in my herd.
“Bertie’s hoping to help control petrol in the Shetland Isles.”
“Algernon’s off to Syria on the most secret kind of mission.”
“Poor John hasn’t got anything yet.”
Cor chase my Aunt Fanny round a mulberry bush, thought Ambrose; what a herd.
So the leaves fell and the blackout grew earlier and earlier, and autumn became winter.
chapter 2 WINTER
Winter set in hard. Poland was defeated; east and west the prisoners rolled away to slavery. English infantry cut trees and dug trenches along the Belgian frontier. Parties of distinguished visitors went to the Maginot Line and returned, as though from a shrine, with souvenir-medals. Belisha was turned out; the radical papers began a clamour for his return and then suddenly shut up. Russia invaded Finland and the papers were full of tales of white-robed armies scouting through the forests. English soldiers on leave brought back reports of the skill and daring of Nazi patrols and of how much better the blackout was managed in Paris. A number of people were saying quietly and firmly that Chamberlain must go. The French said the English were not taking the war seriously, and the Ministry of Information said the French were taking it very seriously indeed. Sergeant instructors complained of the shortage of training stores. How could one teach the three rules of aiming without aiming discs?
The leaves fell in the avenue at Malfrey, and this year, where once there had been a dozen men to sweep them, there were now four, and two boys. Freddy was engaged in what he called “drawing in his horns a bit.” The Grinling Gibbons saloon and the drawing-rooms and galleries round it were shut up and shut off, carpets rolled, furniture sheeted, chandeliers bagged, windows shuttered and barred; hall and staircase stood empty and dark. Barbara lived in the little octagonal parlour which opened on the parterre; she moved the nursery over to the bedrooms next to hers; what had once been known as “the bachelors’ wing” in the Victorian days, when bachelors were hardy fellows who could put up with collegiate and barrack simplicity, was given over to the evacués. Freddy came over for the four good shoots which the estate provided; he made his guests stay out this year, one at the farm, three at the bailiff’s house, two at the Sothill Arms. Now, at the end of the season, he had some of the regiment over to shoot off the cocks; bags were small and consisted mostly of hens.