Читать книгу The Interpreter - Philip Gibbs - Страница 10

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Once a week when he was in London he had lunch in a Soho restaurant called the Cheval Blanc, where he met another group of men—a rather distinguished group from the point of view of intelligence and range of knowledge—from whom it was always possible to learn something of the inside facts about the war and hear the frankest possible criticism of its conduct from the British side. There were four or five regular habitués—newspapermen and Government officials—at this lunch table in a restaurant which had escaped the blitz by some freak of chance, though it stood amid the ruins of its former competitors, and most of the street had been laid low. Others came at odd times and were queerly assorted—a war correspondent from Libya, a young airman who had been over Germany a score of times, a major general, an officer of the Coldstream Guards back on seven days’ leave, a portrait painter, a poet, a French officer on De Gaulle’s staff, the secretary to a Cabinet Minister, and several times the Cabinet Minister himself, amused by the free and brutal criticism with which he came under fire. He seemed to find it refreshing, or was glad, perhaps, that his sense of humour and his own cynicism passed the test.

This changing group of men centred about one of the newspapermen. It was his personality which attracted them to the table, as it was with John Barton who had met him first in Fleet Street. His name was Michael Dewhurst, not familiar to the general public, as he was a lead writer on one of the great dailies, and did not sign his articles. Before entering journalism he had been a don at Oxford, though nobody ignorant of that fact would have guessed it while listening to his violence of language, which at times would have shocked a bargee. John Barton knew him to be a most generous and lovable man, though he carefully disguised those attributes under a pose of cynical brutality. The French waiters in the little restaurant—there were two of them in addition to the patron—adored him, not only because of his liberal tips, but because he took an interest in their private lives, and did little services for their wives and children. As soon as he arrived they rushed to take his hat and coat with a “Bon jour, M. Dewhurst,” and gave shrill cries of laughter when he pulled their ears in the style of Napoleon, abusing them with a perfect knowledge of the Parisian argot.

He was a tall, heavily built man, with a high, bald forehead and a powerful, clean-shaven face which would have been handsome but for the scar of a wound received in the last war which ran down his left cheek from ear to mouth. He had a careless sense of humour, but underneath it John Barton discovered a desperate melancholy due to his detestation of war—this war particularly—and the impossibility of reconciling his ideals of life with the degradation of humanity by so much atrocious cruelty. Privately, also, he had a cause for melancholy, as John discovered. His wife, once a pretty actress, had killed herself by taking to the drug habit.

In earlier days, as a raw young American newly arrived in London, and sensitive to any criticism of his country, John would have resented Michael Dewhurst’s frequent knocks at the United States. They were sometimes ribald and always unsparing, but they were balanced by an equally devastating criticism of the English mind, English snobbishness, English generalship, and English self-complacency.

John Barton went to lunch at the Cheval Blanc on the morning he received the letter from the United States inviting him to give a lecture tour. He wondered whether he should show that letter to Michael Dewhurst, but was afraid that it might lead to ironical comment.

Dewhurst was alone when he arrived rather early, and was deep in conversation with Jean Tilques, one of the waiters, who departed with a shrill, explosive laugh at something Dewhurst had said to him when John came to the table.

“Hullo, Barton,” said Dewhurst. “I hope you’re feeling shamefaced and abashed as you damn well ought to be, being an American.”

John gave what the novelists used to call a hollow laugh.

“I don’t,” he answered, “being an American. What have the Yanks been doing?”

“That’s my quarrel with them,” said Dewhurst. “It was their infernal goading—mostly from your newspapermen—which drove us into this suicidal war, utterly unprepared as we were, and with no more chance of beating the Germans than a company of Boy Scouts. Now your isolationists in America are undermining Roosevelt’s position and policy by every dirty appeal to American self-interest to keep out of the war. That was a particularly poisonous speech yesterday by your Isolationist number one—Val D. Turner.”

“I agree,” said John. “But I didn’t write it.”

Dewhurst’s eyes flickered with a smile for a moment.

“No. I admit you take the other line. ‘Brave little England!’ and lots of sob stuff.”

John took this jibe good-naturedly. He knew the English well enough to stand a lot of leg-pulling.

“I was amused by reading your leading article this morning,” he said, by way of turning the tables. “It was not so critical of the Government as your conversation at this table last week, when you advocated poison gas for the whole Cabinet.”

Dewhurst laughed loudly.

“Touché,” he said. “I admit to being one of the world’s charlatans. The Defence of the Realm Act and other outrages against liberty for which we are supposed to be fighting compel me to violate the truth that is in me. One day I shall break loose and spend the rest of the war in Brixton prison. It’s the only honest domicile nowadays.”

A tall man in uniform wearing the badges of a brigadier came to the table and greeted Dewhurst.

“What’s your mood this morning?” he asked. “Are you out to attack the Army, or the Navy, or the Civil Service, or the Archbishop of Canterbury?”

“I’m not out to attack anybody,” answered Dewhurst. “I’m over-tolerant, Cowdray.”

Brigadier General Sir Champion Cowdray, wearing the D.S.O. and other decorations from the last war, grinned broadly.

“You have the over-tolerance of Torquemada,” he answered.

“Not at all,” said Dewhurst. “As a matter of fact, I was thinking this morning that we once produced a very good general.”

“Wellington? Marlborough? or Viscount Gort?”

“General Booth,” answered Dewhurst.

He was pleased at the effect of this little joke on a brigadier, who laughed and coughed, as if he had swallowed a crumb. “I must tell that in the War Office,” he said when he recovered.

Another man came to the table and nodded to Dewhurst. He was a naval officer with captain’s rank.

“Now we shall hear the truth about the Navy,” remarked Dewhurst with dark irony. “We may even learn why the Silent Service—a damned garrulous crowd really—pooh-poohed the menace of the submarine, and informed the public that their beautiful battleships were immune from attacks by aircraft.”

Captain Nicholas Coker of Naval Intelligence refused to blush.

“Don’t turn your guns on me, old boy, before I’ve ordered a little food. How about calves’ liver and bacon?”

He shook hands across the table with John Barton.

“You were splendid on Sunday evening,” he said. “My missus blubbed, and I confess to damp eyes myself.”

He was referring to a broadcast talk which John had done on the medium wave for English listeners.

“I’m glad,” said John.

Dewhurst snorted.

“We like to have praise from an American or any other foreigner. We wallow in self-pity and self-adulation. What we need is somebody to give us a kick in the pants. We’re not taking this war seriously even now. We’re still playing at Boy Scouts, and ‘Here we go round the mulberry bush,’ and ‘Ring-around-a-rosy,’ while our enemies, who are professional soldiers, create new forms of devilry with their national efficiency.”

“So it’s a general attack on our national efficiency today?” said the brigadier good-naturedly. “A nation of amateurs who play golf while London burns.”

“Quite true,” said Dewhurst. “That’s exactly what they do at week ends.”

“Didn’t Drake play bowls when the Armada was sighted?” asked the Naval Intelligence captain.

“For two minutes, to finish the game,” answered Dewhurst. “But our Cabinet Ministers and public officials have been playing golf for two years while our tanks in Libya still have only two-pounder guns, and while our shipping losses mount to monstrous figures of tonnage. But I must not be gloomy. I must not be a defeatist. Oh no, I must keep merry and bright, believing in the heaven-sent genius of those who lead us from one disaster to another, while forecasting the beautiful world we are going to make after the war which the Germans keep on winning. Jean, another bottle of moulin à vent.”

“Bien, m’sieur.”

Other men strolled in. Two newspapermen, the poet, Gerald Monk, and a young airman named Bellairs, who was Dewhurst’s nephew.

John Barton shifted his seat to get next to Gerald Monk, whom he liked a good deal, and for whose work he had considerable respect.

“Hullo, Barton,” said Monk in his melancholy way. “What train did you get this morning? I looked for you on the platform.” They both lived at Spurfold and often travelled together from Guildford.

Needless to say, Gerald Monk did not live on the financial proceeds of his poetry. He was doing work of a mysterious character for the Ministry of Information.

“Hard work, but not helping to win the war, I fear,” he said once with a twisted smile on his lean face, with his dark, brooding eyes. He had a great admiration for John’s sister Judy—for her gaiety, and courage, and common sense. He himself had no gaiety, no courage according to his own account, and no common sense. But John found him charming, all the same.

“The only person for whom I have respect at this table,” said Dewhurst, “is our friend, Gerald Monk.”

“That’s very gratifying,” said Monk quietly. “Why?”

“Because he doesn’t pretend to be a jolly optimist while we go on losing the war, and because he writes poetry with the full knowledge that no one can possibly understand it except himself—and then only occasionally. Recite some of your latest jingle, Monk. I am greatly in need of laughter.”

“I never can remember a line I write,” answered Monk.

“What a comfort to you that must be,” remarked Dewhurst. “They say that our heaven-sent leader can quote yards of verse. It probably clutters up his brains so that he doesn’t quite know whether he will send the Guards to die in the jungle in Malaya, or whether to prepare defensive positions in Tibet until the Fleet is ready to evacuate the women and children and the last remnants of the Australian Army somewhere in the Persian Gulf.”

“Dewhurst,” said General Cowdray, “sometimes you talk sheer blather. If I were you, my dear fellow, I should lay off attacking a man who has given a great lead to the British nation.”

“I admit the blather,” said Dewhurst amiably. “But I will not deny myself an occasional word of criticism against our national hero. I know all his qualities, and they are great, but I have an uneasy feeling, not without the evidence of recent history, that he is leading us up the garden path to a great black pit of disaster at Journey’s End. He was born under an unlucky star. I could quote you a bit of Greek about that, but I won’t because you would think I was trying to put one over on you. Instead, I propose a toast.”

“Don’t make it too bitter, old man,” said Captain Nicholas Coker of Naval Intelligence. “I come to this table for pleasant recreation, not for a draught of moral poison.”

“Gentlemen,” said Dewhurst, “let us raise our glasses of ginger ale, or what not, to that benignant champion of democracy, that kind, sweet soul who believes so ardently in the liberty of the individual—Joseph Stalin, our noble ally.”

A slight uneasy laugh went round the table. None of these men believed in Stalin’s benignity or love of liberty.

It was John Barton who answered Dewhurst.

“I raise my glass to him willingly and gladly. May he keep the Germans back from Moscow. It was a miracle which brought him on to our side. Where should we have been now if the Germans and Russians had fought together, instead of against each other?”

“Hitler’s one fatal blunder,” said Brigadier General Cowdray. “I’m backing the Russians if they can hold out until the winter. The German Army will perish in the snows, they will be stricken with typhus and pneumonia, they will lose their feet by frostbite, and Hitler’s prestige will go to a low ebb with his people, who will want to know what is happening to their sons. The German Army is not clad for a winter campaign.”

“Is that a fact, Cowdray, or is it one of your bits of propaganda? Be honest with us.”

“It’s a fact,” said Cowdray.

“I hope to God it’s true,” said Dewhurst. “But so many of these alleged facts don’t stand up to the light of day. Hitler was going to run out of oil seven months ago. We had it at this table from a Government expert. We were to get air supremacy last April; we’ve dropped that fairy tale. America was coming into the war, giving us a new weight of man power. The isolationists are going to see about that, aren’t they, Barton?”

All eyes were turned to John Barton.

“We shall be in one day,” he answered, “but you mustn’t be in too much of a hurry. Give the President time. Step by step he is leading American opinion forward. Cash and Carry, the Lend-Lease Act, but he has to educate a nation to which the war seems very remote. I don’t think the isolationists are winning, though they’re making the hell of a noise. I’m backing the President against them all. He has the people with him. He knows exactly how far he can go, and how fast. He has an uncanny feeling of the public pulse.”

“Our propaganda over there is rotten,” said Dewhurst. “They send all the wrong people. English snobs who talk down to them, English fatheads who put their backs up. I know the Americans. There is one thing they won’t stand for, and that is being patronized. Isn’t that true, Barton?”

“It certainly is,” said Barton. “But we liked your Ambassador, Philip Kerr.”

“What about the man we’ve sent now?” asked Dewhurst. “He will frighten them by his look of austere virtue. He won’t speak the same language as the newspaper reporters, who are pretty rough guys and quick to size a man up. He will freeze their marrow bones.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” said John cautiously. “I think he will win their respect. He is a man of perfect integrity, and they like that.”

“What we ought to do,” said Dewhurst, “is to send over a real spellbinder, who would rout the isolationists and sweep the country.”

“It has to be done from within and not from without,” said John. “Roosevelt is the only man.”

“There’s another,” said the naval officer.

“Who’s that?” asked John, casting about in his mind.

“It’s a fellow who speaks on the wireless,” said Captain Coker. “An American who loves England, and understands us.”

“Raymond Gram Swing?” asked Barton.

The naval officer shook his head.

“He’s good, yes, but a bit dry, don’t you think? No, I mean a fellow named John Barton.”

“Hear, hear!” cried the general.

“Hear, hear!” said Gerald Monk the poet, with a smile at Barton.

“You’re pulling my leg,” said Barton, slightly flushed. “I’m no orator.”

“God forbid,” said General Cowdray. “We don’t want oratory nowadays. We want sincerity, and simplicity, and the human touch.”

“It’s personality that tells,” said Gerald Monk. “The spirit behind the words.”

They dropped the subject, somewhat to John Barton’s relief. Michael Dewhurst put out one of his fantastic ideas.

“There ought to be a staff of professional pessimists to counteract the jolly optimism of our generals, naval men, and Cabinet Ministers. It would be their job to examine the worst that might happen, and make plans accordingly. There ought to be one of the gloomy and critical fellows on every headquarters staff, acting as a cold douche to the generals, especially at breakfast time. The chief of staff ought to have at least two, to point out the flaws in his strategy and prophesy disaster for lack of men, insufficient material, and the amateur spirit of our commanders in the field.”

“I would nominate you as chief of the Pessimist Brigade,” said General Cowdray. “But you would have a malign influence.”

Dewhurst gave a laugh and a groan.

“Some of you fellows think I’m a defeatist. But it’s because I want to win this war that I get alarmed by our false optimism. We’re deceiving the people. We’re deceiving ourselves. We underestimate the hellish strength and efficiency of our enemy. They have the interior lines. We have to fight geography as well as Germans. It takes three months for one of our ships to reach Singapore by way of the Cape. We are on the outside edge.”

“I’m in despair about this war,” said Gerald Monk in a low voice. “It’s too horrible. I don’t see how we can win.”

John Barton heard those words of despair and answered them. It was an answer also to Michael Dewhurst.

“If I were a stranger at this table,” he said, “I should go away with the idea that the English people had lost all hope, and that the war was as good as lost. But I know that behind all Dewhurst’s cynicism and criticism there is a burning love for England, and a kind of rage because things are going badly here and there.”

“Only here and there?” asked Dewhurst, raising his eyebrows and smiling ironically at the American correspondent.

Barton continued to have his say.

“I don’t go about in blinkers. I know there’s a hell of a lot to criticize in this country and its government. I could do a hell of a lot of criticizing if I weren’t an American accepting English hospitality and recording English heroism day by day. It would be darned easy for me to turn a searchlight on the ghastly mistakes that have been made in the higher strategy of the war, and on all the red-tape stuff, and snob stuff, and official obstruction in Whitehall and its purlieus. I’ve come up against a lot of it myself—the immeasurable stupidities of the censorship—and the blind conceit of Jacks in office. God knows that if I painted that side of the picture I could startle and horrify my American public. Some of my colleagues—I mean other American correspondents—can’t resist that temptation. But I’m not tempted. I know it would be an utterly false picture of England and the English spirit. I’ve been about a bit in this country, visiting its factories, and dockyards, and bombed cities. I’ve spent a few weeks now and again with the R.A.F., and down at Portsmouth with the naval cadets. I’m always sloping round the shelters and the pubs where I meet the common folk of this old island. All that gives me the other side of the picture, and it’s mighty bright! It shines with the spirit of a great people. I’m abashed by so much heroism among ordinary men and women. I’m kind of ashamed by their faith when I yield to frightful doubts. When I come in touch with the merchant seamen in their hostels down by the docks—they’ve all been torpedoed once, and mostly three times—I know that the spirit of Drake and the old sea dogs is still alive. Those boys of the R.A.F. are like young gods without fear of all hell. The women are just marvellous—those kid girls with a little curl at the back of their heads. And when I think of England’s weakness after Dunkirk, I’m staggered by the way in which her present strength has been built up. Somewhere in the Government, and somewhere behind it, there must be some good brains. The way the food situation has been handled in this country is a marvel. The work going on in the dockyards, mostly done by old fellows of fifty and onwards, is just a miracle. We sit here at this table indulging in free criticism, and taking a gloomy view of the situation—and I’m all for strong criticism and a bit of satire that’s good—but I’m backing the spirit of England as I’ve seen it. It’s like a burning flame. All the tradition of your history is in it. In the long run it will never be beaten.”

The men at the table in this Soho restaurant listened to this young American and did not interrupt his monologue. They were smiling a little as they watched his face, but without irony.

Even Dewhurst’s eyes softened as he listened intently to this flow of words. It was he who reached out his hands when Barton came to an end abruptly.

“Thanks, Barton,” he said, without affectation. “It’s good for us to hear that from an American.”

“Finely put, Barton,” said General Cowdray. “A great tribute to England, my dear fellow, and utterly sincere, I’m sure.”

“Oh, I know the other side all right,” said Barton with a laugh. “Not a pretty picture, General.”

“But you keep it in its right perspective,” said the brigadier. “That’s a rare quality.”

He rose from his chair and said: “Now I must return to my labours.”

“Don’t go yet,” said Dewhurst. “The longer you keep away, the better chance we have of winning the war. Have another coffee.”

The general hit him a light blow on the shoulder and said: “You cynical devil!”

The others left in the course of the next ten minutes.

Barton was left at the table with only Michael Dewhurst.

He pulled a letter out of his pocket. It was the one from Washington.

“Could you glance at that?” he asked.

Dewhurst read it attentively and handed it back.

“Of course you’ll go,” he said. “It’s your line of country. Besides, it’s a royal command.”

“I want to get out of it,” said Barton. “I don’t want to leave England until the war is over.”

“Why not?” asked Dewhurst. “It’s a damn good country to leave. Avoid the winter blitz, my son.”

“I’m staying here,” said Barton doggedly.

“No, you’re not,” answered Dewhurst, “if I know anything about you. I’m quite sure you won’t shirk the best service you can do for England and her hard-pressed islanders.”

He smiled through his glasses at Barton and added a few words.

“Tell your people what you told us at lunch today. It would have them on their feet. The isolationists would want to take you for a ride.”

“Oh, well, I suppose I shall have to think it over,” said Barton. “I hate the idea of going.”

“I hate the idea of going to my office,” said Dewhurst drily. “But I’ve got to go.”

He glanced at the clock and clinked on his glass for one of the French waiters, who came running to him.

“L’addition, mon vieux.”

The patron had a word with him.

“The Vichy traitors go from bad to worse,” he said. “It is time someone killed Laval. It is time old Pétain dropped down dead.”

John Barton left the restaurant. He had an early appointment at Broadcasting House.