Human Voices

by Penelope Fitzgerald

  A romantic, then, though limited by earth and sky, but nothing in his military career explained his curious fondness for the English. This could be traced to his shrewd marriage with a very rich woman, addicted, as Pinard was himself, to racehorses. Between the wars he had become a familiar figure at bloodstock sales, and at Epsom and Ascot. Much photographed at every meeting, he was always cheerful, and most important of all, nearly always a loser. That was the foundation of his great popularity over here, something he had never attained in France. On his wife’s money, he became an Anglophile. He learnt to love because he was loved, for the first time in his life.

  At half-past eight on the 14th of June the Director General’s office told DPP that General Pinard was going on the air as soon as it could be arranged. ‘He wants to broadcast to the English nation and it seems it’s a matter of great urgency. It’s all been agreed.’

  ‘Well, the evening programmes must shove over a bit,’ said Jeff. ‘I’ll see to it.’

  ‘It’s more than that. We want you down in the studio.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Don’t you speak fluent French?’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘He wants you there when Pinard comes.’

  ‘He speaks perfectly good English, with a strong French accent, which is exactly what you want.’

  ‘The point is this – the War Office is sending someone and so is the FO, and the DG and DDG don’t think it will look well if we can’t produce a French speaker from our top level in BH.’

  ‘What do you want me to say?’

  ‘Oh, it might be a few sentences of greeting. Some hospitality may be considered appropriate. I suppose there’d better be some absinthe, isn’t that what they drink?’

  ‘The General prefers cognac,’ Jeff said.

  ‘Have you met him, then? That might be extremely useful.’

  ‘I met him in a dugout, behind a village called Quesnoy en Santerre, twenty-three years ago.’

  ‘I’ve never heard you talk about your war experiences before, Haggard.’

  ‘This wasn’t an experience. We were supposed to be taking over from the French, then it turned out that we were retreating. I was Mess Officer and I stayed to see if the French had left any brandy behind, they did sometimes. Pinard came back with exactly the same idea in mind. He was a captain then. I don’t flatter myself that he’ll remember this incident, by the way.’

  ‘I see, well, that isn’t really … did he seem to be a good speaker?’

  ‘He didn’t say very much on that occasion.’

  ‘In a sense it hardly matters whether he is or not. It’s a morale talk, he’s expected to fly on to Morocco to organize the resistance there, he’ll want to encourage himself as well as us.’

  General Pinard arrived brushed and shining, to the relief of the Talks Producer, who believed, in the old way, that appearances were projected through the microphone. His silent young aide wished to accompany him into the studio, but was detained in the rather crowded continuity room. Pinard sat down behind the glass panel, his eyes resting for a moment upon everybody present.

  ‘He won’t wear headphones,’ the Talks Producer told Jeff. ‘It seems he doesn’t like them. He prefers to go ahead on a hand cue.’

  ‘I don’t think we should grudge him anything.’

  The canteen’s brandy, Martell 2 Star, left over from Christmas, was brought out. The General raised his hand in a gesture of mild, but emphatic, refusal. That meant that no-one could have any – a disappointment to everybody except Talks, whose allocation for the month had already run out. The brandy would now do for the Minister of Coastal Defence, due later that evening. But these considerations faded as the General’s presence was felt. He waited in immaculate dignity. Behind him lay France’s broken armies.

  A piece of paper was put in front of him. He looked at it, then moved it to one side.

  In the continuity studio it was hardly possible to move. The War Office’s Major, the Foreign Office’s liaison man, sat awkwardly on high stools. The young French aide stood warily on guard. The Acting Deputy Director General suddenly came in through the soundless door to join them. DPP leant in a corner, looking up at the ceiling.

  ‘Don’t forget it’s your duty to put everyone at their ease,’ he said to the Talks Producer.

  ‘He didn’t look at my notes and suggestions. We need a run-through.’

  ‘You’ve no time. I did what I could for you, but we can’t alter the nine o’clock. You’re on in forty-three seconds.’

  The producer pressed his switch.

  ‘How would you like to be introduced, General?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Pinard replied. ‘I am in uniform, but I am a soldier without a post, an officer without authority, and a Frenchman without a country.’

  ‘The English people know your name quite well, sir.’

  ‘Use it if you wish. But make it clear that I am speaking to them as an individual. I have something to say from the heart.’

  ‘How long is this going to take?’ asked the programme engineer. No-one knew, it was open-ended. The PE’s face tightened with disapproval.

  ‘My dear friends,’ General Pinard said, ‘many persons who have occupied the stage of history have been forgiven not only their mistakes, but their sins, because of what they did at one moment only. I pray that for me, this will prove to be the moment.’

  It was a quiet, moving, old man’s voice, with a slight metallic edge.

  ‘It gives me a strange feeling to speak to you this evening, and even stranger, after all that has happened in the past few weeks, to think that I should be speaking the truth, and that so many of you should be willing to hear it. Old soldiers like to tell stories, and old generals most of all. That kind of story is called a giberne.’

  The producer passed a note: Should we translate at the end? ADDG wrote: I think a few untranslated French words give the right atmosphere. Jeff wrote: Don’t worry, he’s not going to tell it anyway.

  ‘This evening I am not here to indulge myself with a giberne. I have come to tell you what I saw yesterday, and what you must do tomorrow.

  ‘But perhaps you will say to yourselves, “I am listening to a Frenchman.” He is French, and I am English and I don’t trust him, any more than I would have done these past five hundred years, let them make what alliances they will. And today above all I don’t trust him, this evening I don’t trust him, because his country has been defeated. You know that every road leading to the south is impassable, every road is crowded not only with troops in retreat, but with families on the move, the old, the weak and the very young, the bedding, the cooking-pots, the scenes to which we have become so terribly accustomed since Poland fell.’

  ‘What’s this about cooking-pots?’ said the engineer to his JPE. ‘He may be going to break down. Watch the level.’

  ‘So, to repeat, you will think: I shan’t trust this man.… And we French, do we trust the English? The answer is: not at all. In the past weeks, most of all in the past twenty-four hours, I have heard you called many hard names, I don’t only mean by colleagues in the Conseil de Guerre but every soldier and every little shopkeeper on the road. They say that you led us unprepared into war with Germany and that having done so you have deserted us. And perhaps “in the misfortunes of our friends there is something not displeasing to us”. Well, in that case you must be satisfied. We are ruined, and we blame it on you.

  ‘Why then when I began to speak to you did I call you “friends”? That is a word that means so much that I understand no language is without it. I use it to you, and I mean it. The truth is that I am here this evening, in spite of all I have said, because I care deeply for England and the English.

  ‘Well, is this nonsense, or is the old man weak in the head? No more unsuitable task could be imagined than for a general, worse still, an aged general, to show his feelings. And those who hold power in France at the moment did not wish me to come. They tried to prevent me, but I came.’

&nbs
p; Without warning, General Pinard’s voice rose to the level of the parade ground, and the engineer, caught on the hop, allowed it to blast fifteen million listeners.

  ‘But, believe me, I am not here to flatter you! That would not be the duty of friendship. Dear listeners, dear Englishmen and women, dear people of the green fields, the streets and the racecourses that I know so well – I have seen my nation lose hope, and I say to you now that there is no hope for you either, ne vous faîtes pas aucune illusion, you have lost your war. I tell you – do not listen to your leaders – neither those who are ready, as they always have been, to depart from these shores to Canada, nor to the courageous drunkard whom you have made your Prime Minister.’

  The Talks Producer stared round from face to face, his hand on the censor switch, waiting for orders. The Foreign Office confronted the War Office.

  ‘Who’s going to stop him?’

  ‘I don’t know who authorized him to speak. I understand it was the War Cabinet.’

  ‘I’ll get on to the PM’s office,’ said the Assistant Deputy Director General.

  ‘Don’t barricade yourselves in, dear English people, do not take down your rusty shotguns. The French are a nation who have always cared about their army, while you have never cared about yours. Be sure that it won’t protect you now, and most certainly you cannot protect yourselves. When the Germans arrive, and at best it will be in a few weeks, don’t think of resistance, don’t think of history. Nothing is so ungrateful as history. Think of yourselves, your homes and gardens which you tend so carefully, the sums of money you have saved, the children who will live to see all this pass and who will know that all governments are bad, and Hitler’s perhaps not worse than any other. I tell you out of affection what France has learnt at the cost of terrible sacrifice. Give in. When you hear the tanks rolling up the streets of your quarter, be ready to give in, no matter how hard the terms. Give in when the Boche comes in. Give in.’

  A terrible fit of coughing overwhelmed the microphone.

  ‘He’s overloading,’ said the programme engineer, in agony.

  ‘Messieurs, brisons là … je crève …’

  ‘What does he mean by that?’ asked the producer, unnerved, seizing DPP by the arm.

  ‘What do you think he means?’ said Jeff. ‘He’s not feeling well.’ The General’s right hand, lying on the table in front of him, opened and shut. He tried to force himself to stay sitting upright, but could not. His face, with its heavy silver moustaches, had turned bluish red.

  The young aide was almost in tears. He had remained silent, no French junior officer speaks in the presence of his superior, clearly now he was at the end of his endurance. Jeff, who could move very quickly, picked up the bottle of Martell and taking the aide with him went into the other studio, emptied the BBC’s glass of water onto the floor and filled it with brandy for the poor trembling old man. With a very different gesture now, the hand rejected it.

  ‘Surtout pas ça.’

  The duty officer rang through. There had been many complaints. For the past ten minutes there had been total silence on the Home network. The fifteen million listeners had heard nothing. But their reaction was not surprise so much as a kind of relief, the interruption of their programmes being exactly the kind of thing which everyone had expected from the moment war was declared, but which had failed to happen, holding the listeners’ attention in a supersaturated solution which had failed month by month to crystallize. The public put even greater confidence in the BBC, because for ten minutes it had failed to speak to them.

  ‘Of course I pulled the plugs on the General,’ said Jeff. ‘I felt that what he was going to say wouldn’t, on the whole, be helpful to the nation at this particular juncture.’

  ‘How in God’s name did you know what he was going to say?’ ADDG asked, jolted and disturbed to the very depths of his Old Servantship.

  ‘I didn’t know. I guessed.’

  ‘I don’t get it. He seemed quite all right to me when he arrived.’

  ‘I didn’t think so.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It was something he said to me in the corridor, just before he got to the studios.’

  ‘I didn’t notice, I came down later.’

  ‘He did recognize me, after all. I ought to have realized that generals always do remember faces, otherwise they don’t become generals.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He said: I am going to repeat my former advice.’

  ‘Meaning what?’

  ‘I told you about the St Quentin front and the cognac. There was plenty left but it wasn’t drinkable, it had got mixed up with dead Germans. I was going to see what I could salvage just the same, but Pinard stopped me. He said, “Soyons réalistes”.’

  ‘And you went ahead, entirely on your own initiative, because of that?’

  ‘It’s time to be realistic … I thought I’d better be on the safe side.’

  ‘If you call it that. Why in the name of God didn’t you consult me? In ordinary circumstances you wouldn’t have been in the studio at all. Of course, I admit that as things turned out we’ve been saved from a very dangerous incident, it might have caused I don’t know what despondency and panic, furthermore it would have given the M.O.I. and the War Office exactly the chance they’ve been looking for to step in and threaten our independence and press for governmental control – I grant you all that, I suppose in a sense one ought to congratulate you, perhaps you’re expecting to be congratulated.…’ He paused. Jeff had never been known to expect anything of the kind. ‘Leaving that aside, you acted without authority, and as a member of the administrative staff meddling with the equipment you’ve risked a strong protest from the unions. I don’t know what to say to you. Heads will roll. He was a privileged speaker. Do you intend to do this sort of thing often?’

  ‘I hope we shan’t often be within measurable distance of invasion.’

  ‘I don’t like that, Haggard.’

  ‘I don’t mind withdrawing “measurable”.’

  ADDG had judged the reactions of the Ministries correctly. No-one, it was true, could deny that to let General Pinard’s appeal, so wretched, so heartfelt, go out to the unsuspecting public would have been a setback. Equally, it was no-one’s business, now that the General had been taken seriously ill, to decide what kind of a setback it might have been. This left more scope for attack. The BBC, in face of the grave doubts of the Services, who felt the less said the better on every occasion, persisted obstinately in telling the truth in their own way. But their own way was beginning to look irresponsible to the point of giddiness. And if directors of departments were to take a hand in decision-making of this order, what guarantee could there be that other French leaders who might cross the Channel in the hope of continuing the struggle would not be cut off in their turn? This last remark was part of a combined directive from the Ministries, which also suggested a formula: Haggard might be complimented on his presence of mind and packed off to one of the Regions for the duration. A new post could surely be created if necessary.

  The BBC loyally defended their own. As a cross between a civil service, a powerful moral force, and an amateur theatrical company that wasn’t too sure where next week’s money was coming from, they had several different kinds of language, and could guarantee to come out best from almost any discussion. Determined to go on doing what they thought best without official interference, they spoke of their DPP’s artistic temperament which could not be restrained without risk, and when asked why they’d put this freakish impresario in charge of planning, they referred to his rigid schedules and steely devotion to duty. Then, after a few days, it became known that the Prime Minister had heard the whole story and thought it was excellent. He’d particularly liked the phrase ‘to pull the plugs on someone’, which he hadn’t, apparently, come across before.

  The Pinard affair was closed. But it did nothing to lessen that distance or difference between DPP and some of his colleagues, which they felt as
an atmosphere of faint coldness even when they needed his help. Jeff Haggard was useful because if he felt a matter was worth taking up he didn’t mind what he said or who he said it to. Look at what he’d done, over the years, for Sam Brooks! Undoubtedly, also, he was clever. But they felt, perhaps out of a sense of self-preservation, that no-one can be good and clever at the same time.

  ADDG, with the leniency of someone who has been unjust in the first place, considered that Haggard’s nerves might have been overtaxed. The planning of the complete Home and Forces programmes, in all their delicate bearings, couldn’t be undertaken with impunity.

  ‘I think I’ll advise him to read a few chapters of Cranford every night before he retires to bed. I’ve been doing that myself ever since Munich. I think, you know, that Mrs Gaskell would have been glad to know that.’

  The whole notion was comforting, but in fact Jeff had never been nervous and was now arguably the calmest person in the whole building. He didn’t regard himself as either lucky, or in disgrace, but, if he was either, the feeling was quite familiar.

  On the night of the 16th of June General Pinard died in the King Edward VII Hospital for Officers. It was impossible to send the body back to German-occupied territory and an awkward funeral took place at Notre Dame de France, off Leicester Square. The BBC sent a wreath, with a card on which Jeff had written À Georges Pinard: mort pour la civilisation. On the 17th of June de Gaulle arrived in this country.

  Like Pinard, he had brought only a small suitcase. He was lodged in the Rubens Hotel and given permission to broadcast and to raise his own army.

  There were French sailors camping at Aintree, French airmen in South Wales, two battalions of légionnaires at Tufnell Park, French gunners, chasseurs and signals at Alexandra Park. ‘You’ll never find him,’ Vi said to Lise, ‘we’ll all do our best, though. What does your family think?’ But Lise’s father, who had been a cashier at Barclay’s Lyons branch, had brought his family back to England in January and was now a cashier in Southampton. He wasn’t favourable to the idea of Frédé and never had been.