Читать книгу The Interpreter - Philip Gibbs - Страница 13

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Through the American Embassy arrangements were being made to get John Barton by the Pan American Airways to New York from Lisbon, and by a British plane to that port of call. All this took time, with many papers to fill up before he could secure an exit permit from the United Kingdom and the magic password of priority, without which there might be long delays in Lisbon, the Clipper having a long waiting list. As the time drew near for his departure, Barton was aware of his increasing reluctance to leaving England. It amounted, indeed, to a passionate regret. After his first exasperations—he felt them still at times—he had come to love England and the English. He had made many friends among them, but what bound them to him now was his share in their ordeal by fire. He had sat in shelters with them under air bombardments, he had visited cities like Bristol and Coventry after nights of terror and destruction, and had talked with these people among their ruins, when they stood amid their dead. He had waited with them for invasion, knowing, as they did, their weakness in defence after the downfall of France, and the rescue from Dunkirk. He had been through the Battle of Britain, when the boys of the R.A.F. had been the knights-errant of the skies, challenging great odds, and winning a supreme victory in the air, so saving England. He had met these boys—hundreds of them—and had been to their airdromes, waiting for their return when any were missing. Their valour, their laughter, their high spirits, their little superstitions, their slang, and their jaunty way with death—going out to meet it without a tremor—had made him marvel. He had seen English life in its hours of darkest tragedy, and had gone deep into all its wartime activities. He had talked with the merchant seamen who worked their ships through minefields, dodged the wolf packs and sharks of the Atlantic and all other seas—the lurking menace of German submarines and surface raiders, in foul weather, in gales and snowstorms, under dive bombers and torpedo-dropping aircraft. They took all this as part of their job, and when their ships sank under them their only anxiety after their rescue was to find another ship and sign on again for the same service and the same risk.

He had gone into the munition factories, where men and women—masses of young women—were working for long hours under heavy strain to speed up production and get weapons into the hands of the fighting men who were their husbands and brothers. He had heard their shrill laughter when he had pulled off an American wisecrack. He had joined with them in singing choruses during their lunch-time entertainments, and in conversation with factory girls, and steel workers, and dock hands and riveters, he had heard their doubts and disappointments, and moments of despair, because the war went from bad to worse, and the Germans were always winning. He had shared those doubts and disappointments. There was plenty to criticize in the English setup. Ghastly mistakes had been made by those responsible for the higher strategy of the war. We had heard a lot about that from Dewhurst and other critics. The jolly optimism of the generals and naval commanders had not been justified. Their self-complacency was at times appalling in their underestimate of the enemy’s strength, in their amateur spirit against professionals and experts. Whitehall and its swarming officials seemed to strangle and frustrate the war effort by red tape and delaying action. He had seen frightful incompetence in high quarters. He had come up against British snobbishness, and British arrogance, and stupidities, entrenched and immovable—inconceivable and unbelievable stupidities, which had made him boil with rage inside himself, or laugh with harsh bitterness as an American onlooker, thwarted by the censorship in his own work, which was meant to be of service to England. And yet, all that was wiped out now in his mind, when he was about to leave England, by the spirit of the people; by their wonderful qualities of steadfast endurance under a frightful ordeal; by a historical tradition covering a thousand years, which made them endure adversity with grim patience, which made them risk death with gay fatalism, which caused them to carry on a semi-normal life in a casual, matter-of-fact way, even with games, and garden tea parties, and conversation in restaurants or drawing rooms, when only a miracle could save their nation from defeat and death. The miracle had happened when Hitler attacked Russia.

John Barton hated to leave England now, even for a few months, because it would be an exile of the soul. He was wedded to England through his dead wife. He wanted to see the war through in England, or die with his friends there, if he had the luck to find such a good death. There might be another winter of bombing—he wanted to be in it, he didn’t want to quit. He would feel out of it all in his own country.

Yet he couldn’t shirk that trip to the United States. The call back had come from the leader of the American folk. All his friends thought he might do a great service for England. They were wrong, he thought, but even a remote chance of that could not be ignored without a guilty conscience. He was dedicated to the service of Anne’s people. In doing this job he would be fulfilling Anne’s wish. She wouldn’t have let him off.

“I hope to God,” he said to himself one night in his little bedroom in Dawn Cottage, his suspenders hanging down, and one boot in his hand, “that I make a dent on isolationism over there. People seem to think that I have a gift of words. They get emotional, though I can’t think why, over things I speak and write. I suppose my stuff gets over, somehow. I guess it’s because I feel what I say. It’s the feeling that comes through. It would be a bit of a miracle if I could weigh down the scales, even by a straw’s weight, in favour of a fighting alliance between America and England.” He remembered, suddenly and vividly, some words he had spoken to Anne when they were on a ship driving steadily across the Atlantic to England, in time of war. They were standing out on deck under the stars. They were talking gravely—not like a honeymoon couple—about the chances and terrors of this war.

“Before the end comes,” he told her, “my people will be with you.”

He was startled by the remembrance of these words which had never come into his head since.

Perhaps they were prophetic. Perhaps his trip to the United States might help to make them fulfilled—just by a hair’s breadth, just by the weight of thistledown. That was his next job. He would put everything he had into it.