Human Voices

by Penelope Fitzgerald

  Annie had to be back at Broadcasting House at 5.30, baby’s bottle was due at 6, the bombing, now that the evenings were drawing in, started at about 7, Mrs Staples, who was having a day off, wanted to be in early tomorrow, and for all of them there was the imperative of the nine o’clock news. As long as one was always a little ahead, the battle with the incessant minutes could be called a truce. ‘When does he wake?’ Annie asked, putting the somnolent baby back in the basket. ‘Oh, about ten minutes from now,’ said Mrs Staples. He was quietened then with some boiled water from a teaspoon, which he sucked, like an old man with a sweet, contemplatively, and then returned in the form of a fine spray.

  Teddy told Annie that it was a known fact that women of every age became broody during a war, and for several years afterwards. There was a straightforward biological explanation of that. Annie was prepared to believe him. But she had only described the baby’s activities to conceal her own bewilderment at what was happening to her. She had expected to feel indignant, as always, at any criticism of RPD, she had waited for her indignation to come like the return of hunger or sleep, but when she thought of Lise’s remarks, it was missing; without it she was at a loss, and then, worse still, its place was taken by a stranger, a kind of fury, a furious warm urgency to show Lise that she was wrong, but, also, to show RPD that she was right. How was it possible, though, to want to confront a man and tell him that he talked too much, and that he dealt in human beings, and so forth, and still love him? It is possible, her body prompted her. The only trouble is that you’re afraid it’ll be the end of all things, and then you’re ignorant, and don’t know how to go about it. But it is possible.

  Jeff Haggard resigned himself to being considered the baby’s father by most of Broadcasting House. After all, it was generally believed that when the morning mail came in he speeded up business by throwing away every third letter, also that when the French General Pinard had come to the studio DPP had said a few words to him which had caused him to fall down dead. When Barnett asked him, however, whether the Planning Department was to be held accountable for the damage to two blankets and a mattress in Cubicle 1 of the concert-hall, Jeff referred him to Recorded Programmes. The account duly came in, but this annoyance was of the kind from which Mrs Milne protected RPD. She dealt with the matter herself.

  Precisely at this point, Mac came through on the blower to Jeff to say he had set foot once more in this country to have a look round.

  ‘Still satisfied with your work?’ he asked.

  If there were any rumours about his resignation, Mac could be trusted to have heard them within a few hours. But Jeff did not reply, because he had no words, even to instruct himself, for the bitter loyalty he owed to the noble, absurd, ungrateful and incorruptible truthtellers whose survival, when peace came, must be precarious indeed. He didn’t flatter himself that his withdrawal would be received with anything but relief. Structurally he was a load-bearing element, but one that didn’t fit. Everything must look more reassuring when he had been replaced. The BBC, perhaps, counted on his being faithful enough to go. Jeff had a sure feeling for beginnings and endings. It could never be easy to leave, therefore it would be sensible to get into practice. He resolved, as the first break, not to help Sam again with any request, reasonable or unreasonable, or undertake any of the business of Sam’s department, private or public, at least for the next ten days. More than that would be unrealistic. But to set a time limit would define his resolution.

  This time Jeff came across Mac not in Broadcasting House, but in the darkened street, at the end of Portland Place. The sky was calm that night, with stars and shells high up. At the end of the road the guns in Regent’s Park fired intermittently.

  Mac was reading the Evening Standard by the light of a small fire on the pavement caused by an incendiary bomb. He wore a tin hat and his blue formal suit with a Press arm-band, and had drunk a certain amount of bourbon.

  ‘Who lives in all these places?’ he asked, looking at the tall faintly glimmering blocks which curved away like a stage set towards the park.

  ‘One of them’s the Chinese Embassy,’ said Jeff. ‘Sun Yat Sen threw rescue notes out of that window.’ They waited until the whole panorama was lit up by a shower of white magnesium flares, but all the blocks looked much alike. A little later the ground shuddered and they caught the sour smell of bursting gutted rooms as a terrace collapsed two or three streets to their right. ‘I’m here to do Britain: the Last Ditch,’ Mac observed. ‘Every night, twenty forty-five. CBC have booked their circuit at twenty-one hours. Anything they can do, I can have done it better.’

  ‘I’ve always wondered about your methods of newsgathering, Mac,’ said Jeff, accepting a cigar. ‘I see you do it in the most economical way possible. I admire you for that. You’re preparing to walk straight into LG13, wait for the call-sign, and read them the front page of the Standard.’

  ‘You’ve never appreciated me,’ said Mac equably. ‘You just want to talk me into making sacrifices. I’ll tell you what my network are paying me to do. I’m not broadcasting from the roof of BH because your people won’t let me. I’m not doing street interviews because they won’t let me do those either. But straight after the lead story I’m giving a summary of opinions from anyone I’ve talked with in the course of the day.’

  ‘My taxi-driver.’

  ‘You’ve never let me get near him, chief.’

  ‘He wouldn’t help you if you did,’ said Jeff. ‘He’d probably want your job. He asked me for an audition yesterday.’

  Firemen approached to extinguish Mac’s small blaze. No longer able to see his paper, he folded it up and put it in his suit pocket. Jeff lit the cigar, which proved in the cordite-heavy air to taste as strong as the canteen’s tea. They turned away together.

  ‘Primarily I’m here to find out the reaction of the British people to attack from the air,’ Mac continued.

  ‘They don’t like it.’

  ‘Then how come they’re all hurrying back to London?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Jeff. ‘My Listeners’ Habits charts show the population of London as down by a third. That’s statistics.’

  ‘Statistics can prove sweet Brer Rabbit,’ said Mac. ‘I toured the stations this morning and you couldn’t move for people arriving with their baggage.’

  ‘Well, after all, it doesn’t need explaining. We’re only really at home in the middle of total disaster. You’ll have to speak up for us, Mac. We’re mad, and, if we win this war, we’re going to be very poor.’

  ‘Where do we go?’ Mac asked. The Devonshire Arms, which he favoured, had been knocked down on the previous night.

  ‘Is there anyone you’ve got to see?’

  ‘I don’t need any personalities, I told you, only the ordinary man.’

  ‘Mac, you don’t know any ordinary men. You’re a correspondent, you don’t have time to meet any. You wouldn’t recognize one if you did.’

  ‘I have and I could,’ Mac insisted.

  ‘When and where?’

  ‘Want to bet?’

  ‘Five pounds.’

  ‘We’re in business.’

  Mac thought it best for them both to have a drink on it. ‘I’ll take you to see an ordinary man now,’ he declared, with great intensity.

  ‘What time are you through to New York?’ Jeff asked, feeling that he ought to be absolutely sure on this point.

  ‘Twenty forty-five. But I’m not going on the air unless you come with me to see the ordinary man.’

  ‘I’ll come with you to see the ordinary man.’

  Mac observed that he had made a mistake in looking so often at the flashing sky. Never much good at seeing in the dark, he was considerably worse after tracing the net of searchlight beams and the scattered brightness overhead. However, he’d sent out a stringer the night before to count exactly the number of steps from his flat to Broadcasting House, from Broadcasting House to the Langham, down Regent Street to the Ritz bar. ‘We’ll head for Trafalgar Squar
e,’ he said, and while the night crackled and droned around them he steered Jeff forward, earnestly counting the paces.

  They took five hundred and sixteen down Regent Street, where the buses, caught in the raid, waited patiently for a green light. ‘I knew a poet once,’ said Mac, coming to a halt. The remark had no connection with anything that went before.

  ‘There are poets here too,’ Jeff pointed out. ‘T.S. Eliot is here. You can see him going to firewatch at his publishers most nights. He moves in measure, like a dancer.’

  ‘He’s successful, he’s a Harvard man. The one I knew wasn’t.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘He lost the will go to on. He found he hated to write. Finally he didn’t go any farther than the middle of Brooklyn Bridge.’

  ‘These are hard times for poets,’ said Jeff. ‘Poetry has suffered its fate. Let’s only hope that music doesn’t follow it.’

  ‘Every man writes poetry once in his life, did you know that?’ said Mac. ‘Look,’ he added, ‘we can find some girls later.’

  ‘Keep counting,’ replied Jeff.

  Down Coventry Street they passed doors with tiny slits of light, just enough to catch the eye. These were the rendezvous for Europe’s Free Forces, soldiers who were sad and poor. They turned right and the area of starry sky widened out, showing that they had entered an open space.

  ‘One thousand two hundred and sixteen. Trafalgar Square.’

  ‘I’d say there was a crowd gathering over there,’ said Mac. ‘Round that truck.’ His sight seemed to have improved.

  Discreetly shaded lights were moving round a parked lorry, which seemed to be loading up. The men and women concerned moved gravely, pointing their torches towards the ground. If it was a ritual, then it was surely a funeral rather than a celebration. On the lorry was a single huge dark wrapped object, impossible to identify, the centre of all their coming and going. Patiently they were trying to secure the canvas with pieces of string that were several inches too short. Two policemen stood leaning against an empty stone plinth, evidently in two minds whether to help or not.

  ‘What’s happening?’ said Jeff, speaking to what he could glimpse of an elderly man.

  ‘We have come to move the king.’

  He walked slowly off, as if spellbound.

  ‘How come they didn’t do this by daylight? asked Mac in amazement. ‘When they could see what they were doing?’

  ‘I daresay they’ve been at it for ages. They’re amateurs, and that has its disabilities, advantages too, of course.’

  ‘What amateurs? What have they got on the truck?’

  ‘If this is the south-east corner, it’s got to be the Charles the First statue. That makes them some kind of Royalist society. I suppose they’re taking him out of harm’s way.’

  A woman in the darkness confirmed this, saying mournfully: ‘The king is going into hiding.’

  ‘Next thing you know you’ll have a republic,’ said Mac, and then, stepping forward, ‘John McVitie, representing the National Broadcasting System of America. Speaking as a sympathetic onlooker, I’d be grateful if you cared to tell me how you set about packaging King Charles.’

  ‘Sawdust,’ said another man, this time a very young one. ‘But it was a long time coming, so we waited.’

  ‘That’s a lot to do for anyone. Can you tell me where you’re thinking of taking him?’

  Silence, except for London’s outer defences, pounding away like a distant ring of drums.

  ‘And naturally you can’t say when you expect to bring him back?’

  ‘There will be omens,’ said the melancholy woman. The lorry driver was cautiously trying his engine. ‘White birds will fly, as they did before the martyrdom.’

  ‘Why not?’ said Mac.

  Jeff made him sit down beside the boarded-up fountains. ‘There’s no justice in this thing. Some attract all the love and care. Milton’s statue in Cripplegate went on the very first day, but he got no co-operation.’

  Mac reminded him that he had said these were hard times for poets. ‘I’ll tell you something, though, it’s upset me that these people should be taking away the king when we’re committed to go and see this ordinary man.’

  ‘That’s perverse of you, Mac. One thing leads to another.’

  Jeff was pretty sure that he’d no idea where to go next; in any case, they only had twenty minutes before studio time. Mac, however, seemed to rally, and they patrolled the square again as far as the mouth of the Underground, marked by a faint glow.

  ‘This is where we go down,’ said Mac, counting the steps out of habit, and blinking in the frowsty yellowish light.

  On the platform it was difficult to walk freely, since the LPTB’s bunks occupied the walls in tiers, and other shelterers had arrived to take possession of their marked areas, bringing with them folding chairs and tables, and in some cases cooking-stoves. Others were waiting until the live rail was switched off at midnight to spread out their mattresses on the line itself. Meanwhile, the trains were still running, and those waiting to travel in them were confined to the extreme edge of the platform, nervously clinging to their bags and newspapers, aliens, where they had once been the most important people there. The shelterers, though friendly, crowded up to them, nudging them with kettles, and apologizing with the air of those in the right as they set up the evening’s games of cards and chess. When a warm block of air preceding a tube’s arrival was pushed out of the tunnel, the travellers recovered their dignity for a few moments. The doors opened and they were carried out of reach, while the alighting newcomers got ready to pick their way through occupied territory. Then the night world, created by the violence above ground, settled down, without dispute, to nine hours of their own devices.

  At the far end of the platform four men, wearing macintoshes much like everybody else’s, were sitting on the ground on a rug. They were playing nap. Each of them had a hand of cards and some of the tricks appeared to have been made, but they sat quietly, waiting. The nearest man, whose face and hair were both between brown and grey, looked up at Mac.

  ‘Glad to see you.’

  ‘How did it come, Mr Brewster, did you win?’

  ‘We’re starting the hand where we left off last night. The all clear went at a quarter to five, just after you left. All right, so you’re back. What do you advise me to play?’

  Mac looked round at the others. ‘Any objections?’

  They shook their heads amiably. Mac considered, then selected the ten of diamonds and laid it on the platform. Brewster nodded in cautious admiration.

  ‘Just ordinary play,’ Mac said.

  Jeff wondered whether he had five pounds on him.

  When they got back to Broadcasting House Mac went straight to the studio and gave a news talk which was remembered long afterwards, and which in fact was quoted at length in his biography, According to Mac. They had counted their steps all the way back, and arrived with twenty seconds to spare.

  12

  Jeff, who had gone back upstairs to his office, observed the door-handle give an apologetic rattle, or two, then burst open, while the walls curved inwards towards each other with elastic force, and, when it seemed quite impossible, sprang back again. Shortly after this came the sound of water cascading through the intestines of the building.

  He was a few minutes late in going down to the basement for the late night Deputy Director General’s meeting. To say that he had been for a walk, however, was a sufficient excuse. ‘Very hazardous,’ ADDG declared. ‘It’s said there are parachute bombs falling on North London. We’ve been discussing whether they ought to be called aerial torpedoes on the Nine O’clock. Defence wants that, but the news readers say they can’t get the words out. Nobody in the building seems to be able to pronounce “aerial”.’

  ‘Ayeerial torpedoes … airial torpedoes … ayereeal torpedoes …’ murmured Director (Talks), Director (Public Relations) and Director (Home).

  ‘Who’s reading?’ asked Jeff.

  ‘It
’s the Halibut again. We can rely on him.’

  ‘Certainly we can. He started in opera. It takes more than a few bombs to make a singer give up his part.’

  The subject of the meeting was the familiar one of how to carry on. Engineering had skilfully ensured that the BBC, switching from one transmitter to another, need never go off the air. Maintenance was probably at work already on the broken pipes, Catering brewed away remorselessly in the basement, but the problem remained: what should the voices say?

  ADDG sighed. ‘You can’t make “Heavy damages and casualties have been reported” sound reassuring.’ He wore a kindly, puzzled, clerical frown. ‘More encouraging music, I think, and talks from serving airmen, if the RAF will let us. We really look to DPP to shift the next few evenings about, as usual.’

  When she felt the building shake Annie went straight along to RPD’s office.

  ‘Did I tell you to come?’ he asked, slightly lowering the volume of The Teddy Bears’ Picnic.

  ‘I came to see whether you were all right.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I be?’

  ‘The whole building shook just now.’

  ‘I was testing.’ He looked vaguely about him. ‘But you can sit down, Annie, I did want to see you, as it happens. I’ve had something of a disappointment. Let me tell you about it. At certain stages of my work I’ve been in the habit of consulting a colleague who joined the Corporation at the same time as I did, and might, I suppose, as he’s much less specialized, be thought to represent a broader outlook. Now, about half an hour ago, when a totally unnecessary difficulty came up – the Post Office, with ludicrous obstinacy, refused to give me any more land lines – this colleague, who I’ve regarded hitherto as my oldest friend, wasn’t available. He’d gone out with some American or other.’