At that moment, however, her star was in the ascendant. Planters are not renowned for their intellectual attainments. Yet every planter had made money out of the rubber boom. I, who had been a scholar, had failed to profit by my golden opportunities. This was the measure of my business capacity in her eyes. I was a fool.
There was worse to come. The news of my moral delinquencies had preceded my arrival. There had been gossip. My uncle had been accused of neglecting me, and, if he was too good a sportsman to bother to defend himself, other relatives in the Malay States had undertaken the task for him. The shadow on my grandmother’s face, when she greeted me, was the shadow of Amai.
Every day I was made to feel myself a moral leper. I was dragged to church. If the sermon was not actually preached at me, it was interpreted in that sense afterwards by my grandmother. The scarlet woman was conjured up before my eyes on every conceivable occasion. I was too weak to fish or shoot. Instead, I went motoring with my grandmother. Every drive was the occasion for a lecture. Every scene of my boyhood was recalled and pointed to adorn a moral tale. I was told to lift up my eyes to the hills, until even my beloved Grampians became a plague-spot and a canker of self-torture. To this day I hate the right bank of the Spey, because that year my grandmother’s shoot was on that bank.
That October in the Highlands undid all the good which Canada had done for my health, and, shattered in mind and body, I returned to the South of England to place myself once more in the hands of the doctors. I visited two malaria specialists in Harley Street. Their reports were grave. My heart was seriously affected. My liver and spleen were enlarged. My digestion was ruined. The process of recovery would be slow, very slow. I could never return to the Tropics. I must not walk up-hill. Exercise was out of the question. Even golf was forbidden. I must be careful, very careful.
I returned to my father’s home in Berkshire and, freed from the moral domination of my grandmother’s personality, began at once to recover. In spite of the English winter and frequent bouts of malaria, I put on weight. I cast my drugs and tonics into the outer darkness and confined my medicine to a brandy-flip a day. In three months I was playing Rugby football again. So much for the experts of Harley Street.
CHAPTER SIX
MY PARTIAL RECOVERY, however, did not solve the question of my existence. The malaria had left me with an impaired will-power and an unhealthy morbidness. If a certain amount of morbidity in the thoughts of a young man is normal, the lack of will-power, which is a characteristic reaction of tropical fevers, is serious and not easily remedied. I had no ambitions of any kind. In a delightfully vague manner I desired to be an author. I was given a special room in my father’s home, and there I sat through the winter, writing sketches of Eastern life and short stories with morbid settings and unhappy endings. I engaged in desultory correspondence with various literary agents. At the end of six months I had succeeded in placing one short story and two articles. My receipts were smaller than my postages bill.
And then one May morning my father sent for me. There was nothing peremptory about the command, no reproach in what he said. He talked to me—as I hope I shall be able to talk to my own son when his turn comes—suggesting rather than ordering, studiously safeguarding my sensitiveness, solicitous only of my welfare even if that welfare entailed more sacrifices and more self-denial on his part. He pointed out to me what many others have pointed out before: that literature was a good crutch, but scarcely a pair of legs, that I did not seem to be making much headway, and that security of occupation was the master-key to happiness in life. At twenty-three I was too old for most government examinations. There was, however, the general Consular Service. It was a career in which my knowledge of foreign languages would reap their full benefit and which would give abundant scope to my literary ambitions. Had not Bret Harte and Oliver Wendell Holmes been members of the American Consular Service? In slow and measured sentences my father expounded the pleasures of a life of which he knew less than nothing. Then, like the Fairy Godmother, he produced his surprise packet—a letter from John Morley announcing that he had been able to procure for me a nomination for the next examination. Years before, my grandfather, a staunch Conservative and one of the earliest Imperialists, had opposed Morley at Arbroath, and such is the sporting spirit of English political life that twenty years afterwards the great man had seen fit to bestir himself on behalf of the grandson of the defeated candidate.
Before this new onslaught of my father’s kindness, my defences broke down. Doubtless, his manner of dealing with a recalcitrant and self-indulgent offspring was too gentle. But I have studied at close hand the methods of the stern, relentless father, and the results have brought neither happiness to the parent nor discipline to the children. If, viewed from the angle of material success, my life has been a failure, my father has the consolation that in a flock of six I have been the only black sheep and that to all of us he has remained not only a wise counsellor but a friend and companion from whom not even the most shameful secret need be withheld.
As I read the Morley letter, I looked into the mirror of my past life. The reflection gave me no satisfaction. I had been an expensive investment for my parents. Hitherto I had paid no dividends. It was time that I began. To the unqualified relief of my father I graciously consented to burden the Civil Service Commissioners with the correction of my examination papers.
Before I could enter the precincts of Burlington House there were certain formalities to be fulfilled. Almost immediately I had to undergo a personal inspection by a committee of Foreign Office inquisitors. Dressed in my most sombre suit, I travelled to London, made my way to Downing Street, and was piloted into a long room on the first floor of the Foreign Office, where some forty or fifty candidates sat waiting their turn in various degrees of nervousness. The procedure was simple but tedious. At one end of the room there was a large door before which stood a Foreign Office messenger. At intervals of ten minutes the door would open, an immaculately dressed young man with a sheet of paper in his hand would whisper to the messenger, and the messenger, clearing his throat, would announce in stentorian tones to the assembled innocents the next victim’s name.
By the time my turn came the room was nearly empty and my nerves had gone back on me. I was in agony lest there had been some mistake and my name had been forgotten. I saw myself forced into making some sheepish explanation. Only terror lest my boots should creak prevented me from tiptoeing to the messenger to set my doubts at rest. Then, just when I had given up hope, the frock-coated messenger raised his voice, and this time the rafters re-echoed with the name “Mr. Bruce Lockhart.” With flushed face and clammy hands I crossed the threshold of my fate and passed into the inner temple. My mind was a blank. My carefully rehearsed answers were completely forgotten.
Fortunately, the inquisition was less formidable than the waiting. In a narrow oblong room six senior officials sat at a long table. For a moment I stood before them like a prize bull at a cattle show undergoing the scrutiny of six pairs of bespectacled or bemonocled eyes. Then I was told to take a seat on the other side of the table. Again there was a pause while the inquisitors rustled with their papers. They were extracting my curriculum vitæ—that record of suppressio veri and suggestio falsi which like the questionnaire of an insurance company every candidate is obliged to produce before he can present himself for examination. Then, with the politeness of Stanley addressing Livingstone, the chairman smiled at me benevolently: “Mr. Lockhart, I presume,” and, before I knew where I was, I was being questioned about my experiences as a rubber planter. I imagine most of the inquisitors were interested personally in the rubber market. At all events I underwent a rapid cross-fire of questions about the merits of different shares. As my knowledge was greater than that of my examiners, my confidence returned, and I expanded with volubility and authority on the dangers and possibilities of the Malayan Eldorado. I hope they took my advice. It was inspired with caution derived from the experiences of my own over-optimistic relat
ions.
Then, just when I felt completely at my ease, I was brought back to earth with a sudden bump. Hitherto I had been playing the schoolmaster to a band of attentive and enthusiastic schoolboys. Now the rôles were to be suddenly reversed. Across the smooth plains of this pleasant and entirely satisfactory conversation came an icy blast from a stumpy little man with a wrinkled forehead and iron-grey moustache.
“And will you tell us, Mr. Lockhart, why you left this terrestrial Paradise?”
My knees rocked. Had the omniscience of the Foreign Office already discovered the escapade of Amai? It had been glossed over in my testimonials. It did not figure in my curriculum vitæ. The speaker was Lord Tyrrell—at that time plain Mr. Tyrrell—and there and then, with an instinct which has rarely played me false, I registered him as a potential enemy. With an effort I pulled myself together.
“I had a very bad attack of malaria,” I said. And then I added feebly: “but I’m playing ‘rugger’ again now.” This afterthought was a happy inspiration. A sportsman with a monocle and the lean spare figure of an athlete came to my rescue.
“Are you a relation of the Cambridge googly bowler?” he asked. (My brother—a double Blue and “Rugger” International—was then at the height of his athletic fame.)
“He is my little brother,” I said simply. And with that password I received the official blessing and passed out again into the sunshine.
So far so good. There remained, however, the more serious obstacle of the written examination. The more I considered my chances, the less I liked them. In that year of grace there were only four vacancies. The number of registered candidates exceeded sixty. Practically all had been preparing for the examination for several years. Several had been in the first twenty the previous year. Half a dozen had taken first-class honours at Oxford and Cambridge. I had done no scholastic work of any kind for three years. Now I had only ten weeks in which to prepare myself for an examination, which not only was highly competitive, but which included, among its obligatory subjects, law and economics. Of law I had not read a single line. Political economy was to me an occult and mysterious science. Truly, indeed, the outlook seemed hardly worth the effort.
My father, however, was enthusiastically optimistic. I transferred myself to London and entered the most successful “crammer” of those days. The experience plunged me into even deeper gloom. For one long week I attended my classes with unfailing patience and punctuality. The other candidates were finishing off where I was beginning, and the lectures on law and political economy—doubtless, admirably given, but intended rightly for advanced students—were sheer waste of time. My despair roused me to action, and I took a rapid decision. I wrote to my father and told him that I must leave the “crammer” and that I proposed taking my chance on the other subjects and engaging the services of the law coach and the political economy coach for private tuition. My father agreed to the extra expense. As my fees for the term had been paid in advance, the “crammer” authorities made no objection.
My law coach was a born teacher. My political economy coach was a German genius who had gone to seed on snuff and whisky. Together we “gutted” Marshall and Nicholson, and, as we did our work in German, I was enabled to kill two subjects with one fee.
My plan of campaign involved three hours a day with my coaches and whatever work I chose to do by myself. There were, however, disturbing distractions. An uncle, who after ten years of incessant labour had made a fortune, had come to London to enjoy himself. He had fallen in love with a charming South American who required a chaperon. He required someone to engage the attentions of the chaperon, and the most tractable and easily managed someone was myself. He made me give up my modest rooms in Bayswater and took me to live with him in his hotel. Every evening we dined en partie carrée, went to a theatre and then to supper at the Ritz or the Carlton. It was scarcely the best preparation for a sadly unprepared candidate, but with the supreme egotism which characterises most successful business men my uncle had no idea of the harm he was doing. On the contrary, he hounded me off to my coaches’ rooms every morning and informed me that if I failed to pass I should be cut out of his will. I laughed and continued to drink his champagne. He has since married twice, and the chances of my heritage have been wrecked, partly, on the quicksands of my own follies, but mainly through the arrival into this world of four flourishing cousins, who are young enough to be my own children. In the intervening years, however, he has rewarded my chaperonage a thousandfold, and to-day, but for my reckless extravagance, the sum total of his generosity would be yielding me an income of some five hundred pounds a year.
In this spirit of preparation I approached that fatal first week in August when with a strange lack of consideration the Civil Service Commissioners unfold the doors of Burlington House to the youthful hopes of the nation. I give a detailed account of the proceedings for the benefit of those pedagogues who believe in the futility of all examinations. In my own experience they will find an ample justification for their theories.
When on that Monday morning I took my place in the queue of perspiring candidates, my prospects were so poor as to relieve me personally of all anxiety. The disadvantages of my unpreparedness were obvious. Against them I could set two advantages: I was more of a man of the world than my fellow-competitors and, having, as I thought, no chance, I had no nerves. I had perhaps one other advantage and certainly one enormous piece of luck. That summer was the hottest summer England had experienced for many years, and I liked heat. That year, too, for the first time an essay was included in the French and German papers—an innovation which had escaped the vigilance of the “crammers” and which left the candidates to their own slender resources. In the choice of subjects for the French essay was included Kipling’s tag of “East is East and West is West.” I fastened on it eagerly, drawing on my Malayan experiences and paraphrasing whole pages of Loti which I knew by heart. I enjoyed that examination, feeling completely at my ease in the face of a new adventure. My one embarrassment was the paper on political economy. There were ten questions of which we had to answer not more than six. Unfortunately, my knowledge embraced only four. There was, however, one question on which I was a minor expert. I wrote pages on it, scribbled short and non-committal answers to the three other questions, and then added a polite footnote to the effect that two hours was too short a time in which to answer a paper of this nature.
On the Thursday evening, having completed my written papers, I said good-bye to my coaches, who had worked with me every night of the examination. As we shook hands, my German mentor handed me a sealed envelope.
“You will open it,” he said, “on the day the result is declared. The envelope contains my prophecy of the successful candidates. I am rarely wrong.”
As soon as he had gone, I opened the letter. He had placed me fourth, and in celebration of a joke which was truly “kolossal” I dined at the Carlton and went to the theatre.
There remained only the oral examination on the next day to complete my ordeal, and I considered I was entitled to some relaxation. Nevertheless, the oral examination was nearly my undoing. My German oral was at ten in the morning. I do not know if my late night was to blame, but with the German examiner I lost my head. He was altogether too suave and too enticing. Before I knew where I was, he had drawn me into a conversation about Malaya. From that starting point he proceeded to question me, for his own edification, on the different processes of tapping rubber. Even in English this is a technical and difficult basis for an ordinary conversation. In a foreign language it was frankly impossible, and, although my knowledge of German was considerable, I knew that I had made a failure of my German oral. I left the room cursing myself for my stupidity and determined not to be caught again in the same manner. When I came out into the sunlight, I was in a quandary. My French oral—the climax of my week’s ordeal—was not until five o’clock in the afternoon. All my friends had left for Scotland or the Continent. How was I to fill in the long blank between ele
ven and five? I hesitated and then stepped boldly across the street. Opposite Burlington House was the “Bristol Bar,” the favourite haunt of the foreign women who frequented the London of the pre-war days. Stimulating my courage with a sherry and bitters, I made the acquaintance of two elderly but extremely voluble Pompadours. I gave them a free luncheon and free drinks, in return for which they talked French with me. I went for an hour’s walk in the Green Park and returned at three-thirty for more alcohol and more French. By a quarter to five my volubility was immense and my accent almost perfect. Then at five minutes to five I walked steadily across the road for my French oral.
Once again, like a convict with a warder, I was kept waiting in the long corridor until the examiner’s cell was free. This time, however, all trace of nervousness was gone, and I entered the room with the courage of a seasoned veteran. A mild looking professor with pince-nez and a drooping moustache looked up from his desk and placed the tips of his fingers together.
“Can you tell me the name of the French Dreadnought recently launched at Brest?” he asked.
I shook my head and smiled.
“No, Sir,” I said with a fine precision. “I do not know and I do not care. I have only half an hour in which to prove to you that I know French as well as you do. Let me talk of other matters.”’
Then I made a lucky shot. He had a slight English accent and, before he could interrupt me, I beat down his defences.
“You are Professor S——,” I said, “and last week I reviewed a book of yours in the Maître Phonétique”
My conduct was a breach of the anonymity which is supposed to be enjoyed by all Civil Service examiners, and the Professor promptly reproved me without admitting or denying the accuracy of my identification. The damage, however, had been done. The conversation had been turned to phonetics in which science I was an expert and he only a beginner, and from that moment I was safe. For long past the regulation period the Professor continued to be absorbed in our conversation. I had wound up the mainspring of his interest, and, when finally I said goodbye to him, I knew that, however badly I had done in German, my French oral had been a brilliant success.
Memoirs of a British Agent Page 5
