Permission to Resign

by Ann Bridge

  He was very guarded, but said – ‘If I were acting for you professionally I should be satisfied with the way things are going.’

  After seeing Sir Claud, I went over to the Foreign Office to waste some of William’s time, which I did very contentedly till nearly six. Then I returned to Chelsea – but in Church Street it occurred to me to look up Gladys and Edward Maufe, so I dropped into No. 139. They were out, but Gareth was in, and gave me a cocktail and a very nice half-hour’s chat. So it was a quarter to seven when I finally reached Elm Park Road. I found the Crowe family in fortissimo agitation over my absence.

  ‘You are to ring up Sir Warren Fisher at once!’ said Clema.

  ‘He wants you very badly,’ observed Sybil gleefully. ‘He’s rung up seven times since five o’clock!’

  ‘You’ll want a taxi,’ said Eric practically.

  I went to the telephone and rang up Sir Warren.

  ‘Can you come down to the Treasury at once?’ he said.

  ‘Now? It will mean a taxi, I’m afraid.’ I said of course I would come if he really wanted me. Yes, he did.

  ‘I don’t think you’ll regret coming,’ he added.

  The last words set an unbearable hope leaping in my mind. Could it be? Could it really be success at last? I asked myself the question with a heart really beating almost to suffocation as the taxi raced up Eaton Square, along Buckingham Palace Road, along Birdcage Walk. I tried, as I had tried a hundred times before, to beat hope down. Probably it only meant that there was another fence to take. Perhaps I was to see Sir Austen, who had promised to see me before any final decision was arrived at, or even the P.M. The hurry looked like something of the sort. Only I would have sworn from the tone of his voice that Sir Warren was smiling when he said those last words down the telephone. Then I was at the Treasury. I was expected, and taken straight in – down the sea-green corridors, round the head of the back stairs, and once again I stood in the Permanent Secretary’s room.

  ‘Well, you’ve got what you wanted!’ said Sir Warren, when the door had shut behind the messenger. He stood in the firelight, smiling – if ever a human face ‘registered’ happiness, Sir Warren Fisher’s did then. I stared at him stupidly, and said nothing. He steered me to a chair, saying ‘Sit down.’ I sat down.

  ‘You’ve got what you wanted,’ he repeated, ‘but there are conditions you won’t like.’

  I found voice to ask what they were.

  ‘A year en disponibilité, and five years’ loss of seniority.’ He paused. ‘But you’ve got him back, and that’s the main thing, isn’t it?’

  It was. At the time the sanctions, frightfully heavy as they seemed afterwards, appeared scarcely noticeable. I sat back in my chair in a sort of dream, really hardly able to speak. The thing was done. Owen was not to leave the Service, and the work and love of his life was still to be his. And all this nightmare of suspense and effort was over. No need to struggle, and argue, and plead any more. No need to think and think, till my brain nearly cracked, what to say or do next any more. No need to fight down hopes and fears, and force oneself to eat, and sleep, and talk to people when one was ready to shriek with nervous distress; no longer any need to put on a face of brass and do battle with strange officials. I felt rather as I did when we got into Tarbert Harbour on Frolic, after thirty-six hours on deck rounding the Mull of Kintyre in a gale.

  The détente was so sudden and complete, after the weeks of strain, that it made me quite sleepy. I just leaned back and smiled foolishly at Sir Warren, who seemed quite content to sit smiling back at me, murmuring, ‘You’re pleased, are you?’ from time to time.

  At last I said, ‘I must send a wire to Owen.’

  ‘But you mustn’t talk about this yet, you know,’ said Sir Warren. ‘It isn’t public property. You can’t telegraph it.’

  ‘Not if I send it in Latin?’

  ‘Ah yes – I remember that you telegraph in Latin,’ he said. ‘How would you say it?’

  ‘I could say it in six words,’ I said.

  ‘What, then?’

  I told him: ‘Sub silentio – factum est – non nobis.’

  He considered it. ‘What do you mean by the last words?’

  I murmured the whole invocation – ‘Non nobis, Domine, non nobis, sed nomine tuo gloria.’

  ‘I wondered if you meant that,’ he said – and agreed to my telegraphing.

  My happiness was very deep just then. As I looked across at Sir Warren I remembered the first time I had sat in a chair opposite him saying nothing, and had felt that everything depended on breaching his defences somehow. A forlorn hope if ever there was one – my Albuera. This was my Waterloo. The campaign had lasted exactly a month, from 17 March to 16 April. Twenty-four hours later, sitting in the same chair, after an appalling reaction in the small hours, I said something of this to Sir Warren – of how forlorn the hope had seemed; how immense, remorseless and overwhelming the powers arrayed against me, the whole huge official machine – ‘Fixed of old and founded strong’ – and how small, helpless and incompetent I had felt myself by comparison.

  ‘I don’t think you need complain,’ Sir Warren said then. ‘For an unarmed knight-errant I don’t think you’ve done so badly!’

  But that first evening we hardly spoke at all. Sir Warren was perfect to me, just letting me be to get over my joy by myself. About 8.15, he took me down and put me into a taxi and escorted me back to Elm Park Road. Concealment from Lady Crowe was, of course, impossible, and after supper I told her. She kissed me with tears in her eyes.

  I may as well explain here what the sequence of events had been behind the scenes which led up to this happy consummation. It will be remembered that on 30 March Sir Malcolm Ramsay submitted to Sir William Tyrrell the memorandum concocted by himself and Sir Warren Fisher, but finally written by him and signed by all three members of the Board. This memorandum, I am assured, reinforced most strongly the plea for mitigation of sentence. It even went so far as to ask what the Foreign Office would gain by hunting O.O’M. into the wilderness with a grievance and a bitter sense of injustice, which might tend to drive him into the arms of those parties in the State whose business it is to foment disaffection – a euphemistic question which showed that the official mind was not wholly blind to the possible uses to which the Labour party might legitimately put the facts and criticisms of the Report which, the resignation once accepted, the O’M.s might equally legitimately publish. The memorandum admitted the error in seniority contained in the verdict, and submitted that, what with one thing and another, Mr O’Malley’s case became a question of finely balanced points of motive – and that in such a case, surely he might be given the benefit of the doubt.

  This memorandum went on from Sir William Tyrrell to, apparently, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who minuted it by a reference to his previous minute. (On an earlier occasion Mr Churchill had minuted the dossier to the effect that the Berthelot case seemed to him to constitute a precedent for reinstating Mr O’Malley – an ingenious suggestion very neatly designed to forestall the Francophile fears and hesitations of Sir Austen Chamberlain.) On Wednesday in Easter week, 11 April, Sir William Tyrrell went down to Chequers, where the papers already were, and took the opportunity of getting the Prime Minister to minute them, which he apparently did in a favourable sense. The dossier was then sent to Sir Austen Chamberlain – who wrote on it ‘So be it’ – and was returned to the Treasury. There it was lying, wound up and finished, while Sir Warren was spending that horrible day with us at Pendell Court.

  On his return to the Treasury on Monday, Sir Warren found the papers. Sir Austen’s remark seemed to him a little vague; and it seemed vague also to Sir Claud Schuster, to whom he showed it. Sir Claud felt able to make that reassuring remark to me at 3.30, in view of the minutes by the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. But before Sir Warren told me anything he wished to make quite certain what it meant. It was late in the afternoon before he could see Sir William Tyrrell and ask him ‘Does that
mean reinstatement?’ Yes, it did; subject to the sanctions already mentioned. It was then that Sir Warren began his telephoning. And all the while, if he had only known it, I was sitting within a few yards of him, gossiping to William in the Foreign Office.

  Chapter XIII

  It might seem proper to close this account here. It would certainly be more artistic than any continuation. But artistry is not – self-evidently – here aimed at. And the final stages throw such a curious and entertaining light on the methods of public departments and on some people that I think them worth recording.

  I had supper with Sir Warren Fisher on the following day, Tuesday, as arranged at Pendell. Norman, his son in the Navy, was there – a nice boy. After dinner he faded out, and Sir Warren and I had a long talk. He spent a fair amount of time telling me of his first impressions, and what he had thought and done, and why. It was the first instalment of the long subsequent process of piecing together the sequence of events of which I had not known at the times at which they happened. Sir Warren was as always very nice – rather inquisitive, a little concerned about fractions; at that time he always gave me the impression of someone trying to make a canary perch on his finger who was afraid that any loud noise might frighten it away. I stayed very late. He asked what Lady Crowe would say? Nothing, I told him; British matrons like myself did as they chose.

  ‘But if she does say anything, I shall tell her that “following the ill example set, if not indeed yielding to persuasion”, like that innocent child Commander Maxse, I stayed and had a second glass of port with you.’

  Quoting his Report at him generally shut Sir Warren up, and it did then. He got plenty of it. We used to tell him how when any of the children committed any small crime by accident, there was a nursery chorus of ‘You well knew what you were doing!’

  I had expected Owen to come up from the country that day, but he only arrived on Wednesday. He stayed with the Blands. Meanwhile, I had got on to Portia on the telephone and asked her to get Sir Arthur Willert (who does the Press arrangements for the Foreign Office) to meet me as soon as possible. I wished to make sure that the public announcement, when it came, should be properly done, and my limited experience of Government departments had led me to the view that if you want a thing properly done by them it is as well to see about it yourself. The final upshot in this instance confirmed me in this belief. Portia secured Sir Arthur for lunch on Wednesday, and we met there. He and I stayed behind after lunch and discussed publication. Sir Arthur saw snags to every alternative. It was very hard, he said (most truly), to think of any formula which would not make either the Board, or the Foreign Office, or the politicians look considerable fools. We drove together to the Foreign Office, where he proposed to take counsel with Sir William Tyrrell, whose fertile brain might, he hoped, produce some resourceful solution. Whether the timid, almost furtive, and exceedingly discourteous method finally chosen was the one invented by Sir William I cannot say. I hope not.

  I dined that night with William Strang in Soho. It was a jubilant evening; we were nearly wild with happiness. We went on afterwards to the Blands, where we found Owen with Nevile and Portia, also a little exaltés, all of them. Owen and Nevile together have a regrettable tendency to become ribald, and they did so now. At a certain stage in the proceedings, someone asked if it was a fact that twice recently Mary Anne had been seen leaving the Treasury with Sir Warren Fisher after 8 p.m., and if this was the sort of ‘inflexible and fastidious’ correctitude of behaviour which one might expect from the Head of the Civil Service?

  I had to admit the facts, adding ‘Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?’ Portia cried out that this must be capped.

  Now, Sir Warren Fisher’s private secretary is the excellent Mr Knox, and without a pause Nevile murmured from his corner ‘Knox una est dormienda!’

  I continued during the next day or so to think about the Press. Sir Arthur Willert had told me that he was going on leave the day after I saw him, so there was no chance of finding out any more from him. To the Press as such I could not go direct, and, in my uncertainty, I turned, as often before and since, to that most faithful of friends, Billy Villiers Cooper. I went out and had tea with him in his charming house in Gloucester Place. I told him in confidence about the reinstatement. He was delighted. I regret to say that I could not resist telling him also Nevile Bland’s mot.

  He was more delighted still; and said, with that peculiarly attractive Edwardian smile of his, ‘Tell me about Fisher – is he captivated or intimidated?’

  This is just what I should have liked to know myself, but ‘A little bit of both,’ I said, adding prudently, ‘I think.’

  Then I told him how much I wished that when any public announcement was made, there should be some veiled reference at least to the grosser errors in the Report, which I detailed to him. Billy listened attentively, made some notes, and said finally that he thought he could manage the Spectator all right. This was what I had been hoping for – Billy was ‘on’ the Spectator, whatever precisely that may mean. But he startled me then by asking if I would like him to write to Geoffrey Dawson? This was almost too good to be true. Of course The Times mattered more than any other paper, but I had no idea that Billy was on those terms with any of the powers thereof. I said yes enthusiastically, and we proceeded to a discussion of ways and means. Of course nothing could be done till the public announcement was imminent; but I naturally assumed that we should get some official intimation at least a day in advance of publication, which would allow time to arrange matters. (So far we had heard nothing more official than what Fisher had told me privately.) We settled that he should prepare his statement for the ‘Dictator’, as Billy always called it, and his letter to G.D., and then await a wire from us – ‘Move’. So much for that.

  John arrived in London on Thursday from Switzerland, escorted by Lady Montague Pollock – my little John, whose unconscious happiness during those first days of misery at Chateau d’Oex had made more costly demands on my self-control than anything else that happened. We spent the night at Lady Crowe’s, and in bed the next morning, during our habitual morning-tea chat, I told him very simply and briefly, now that all was well, the story of the past seven weeks. Dear John – all might now be well, but there had been unhappiness for those he loved best, and he cried a little. Sir Warren had suggested a final meeting before we left London, and we asked him to tea at Rumpelmayers on our way to our train at Paddington. John studied him with large honest eyes throughout the meal. At the end of it Sir Warren took out a note-case and offered him a pound note. John flushed scarlet, and looked at me. I nodded. Sir Warren had earned the pleasure of that tip.

  What follows will not be believed, but it is true.

  As we drove off in the taxi John said to me, ‘I think Sir Warren Fisher is quite a good sort of man, really, Mummie.’ I agreed. ‘I don’t think’, pursued John, as the taxi turned into Berkeley Street, ‘that it was quite his fault that he took the wrong line about Daddy at first.’

  ‘Don’t you, John? I’m glad.’

  ‘No,’ said John meditatively. ‘I don’t think he’s the sort of man to do anything wrong, deliberately.’ He paused for some time and then – ‘I thought all that about him’, said innocent John, ‘before he gave me the pound.’

  I told Sir Warren this next time I saw him. He was amused – but I think he was also both touched and gratified by the child’s verdict. Anyhow, when John, at his own request, was taken to the Treasury to get Sir Warren’s real signature on the said pound note above the printed one (since few people, as John pointed out, get a tip with giver’s name printed on it!), Sir Warren not only signed the original note (after carefully explaining to John that this rendered it worthless, and being assured by John that he didn’t mind) but gave him another more useful one as well!

  All this time, Sir Austen Chamberlain was in Holland with his family, and the announcement of O.O’M.’s reinstatement was presumed to be hung up pending his return. He got back on 24 April. I was aga
in in London by then, staying with Sybil Thesiger, and on the 25th, I lunched with Sir Warren Fisher. He was going off the same day by the midnight train to Glasgow, to see the Lanarkshire coalfields for the Industrial Transference Board enquiry. We lunched at a little restaurant in Craig’s Court, which he patronized because it was run by a friend of his. He spent a good part of lunch telling me how Van had shown him a rather extravagant letter of thanks and joy which I had written, and how they had conned over the last paragraph together. The last paragraph, as I remember, ran something like this: ‘I have been reading Tribute [Van’s last volume of poems] and I can’t help wishing that you would write a poem for me, to say what I feel. At present I can only think of it all confusedly as Owen having “his late espoused saint brought to him like Alcestis from the grave”.’ This was hyperbole, of course; but I thought it would have been sufficiently obvious to Van, or indeed to anyone, that I was referring to Owen’s having the love and work of his life restored to him. But those two dear affectionate mugs put their heads together and decided that this was my way of telling Van that as a result of my recent efforts Owen and I were now a reunited couple! I was dumbfounded. That Warren should invent such an idea was odd enough, but that Van should have even conceived (a) that I should refer to myself as anyone’s late espoused saint and (b) that I should have elected to tell him, whom I hardly knew, that Owen and I were reunited, even if we were, still passes my understanding, and at the time passed my patience very considerably. I was extremely repressive with Sir Warren.

  He had told me in the morning that he had a meeting at three, but I found that he had put it off till 3.30. We strolled into St James’s Park after lunch and sat there in the sun, talking – little thinking what was going on on the other side of Parliament Square; it was 3.45 before we parted in the Horse Guards. I called on William and had tea with him, and then started back to Sloane Street. I was dining in Soho with Ursula Nettleship and Charles Orde to see ‘Young Woodley’, but I had a little time in hand and went along to Royal Avenue to look up Enid Smedley. I went so far as to tell her to look out for some news sometime.