Secret Protocols

by Peter Vansittart

  Unlike many compatriots, he always used ‘I’, never the defensive ‘one’. His face, though, so pocked, prematurely lined, its teeth so ragged, was as if depleted, by some faulty connection, and I remembered an Estonian belief that elves had once been giants.

  ‘Erich, Kierkegaard may be correct, the unhappy dwell in either past or future, never in the present. I once spent all day hard and wet, about a girl but when we met in the evening I found myself reading a newspaper, thus realizing that all was over. That’ll be your fate with that eldritch pair. Splendid word, eldritch. But they’re not as awful as they seem. They’re worse.’

  He had become vehement as a suitor. ‘Their gifts are treacherous. They’re temporary pets, seen everywhere but with no friends. You’re their potluck. We stroke their Fabergé heads but don’t open our front doors. They’ll let you down, plain as a button. Tinselled juvenile leads, in mind and texture, in a play that never gets production. As for you, you should become more a Heinrich der Horrid.’

  Could he, in his swagger, resent my straying from him? His possessiveness flattered, then amused.

  ‘Alex, it’s not only Sinclair …’

  ‘He’s not a critic, only a wasp. His notion of artistry is to tell a geranium to water itself, then watch it die. He never gets inside words, merely strokes them like peaches, with no more interest in painting than Noel Coward has in Swahili folksongs. He’s off-side, damned, barely legal.’

  ‘And Claire?’

  To utter her name gave a sharp spasm instantly dowsed by his ugly cough. ‘Over her, our sun shines even less. She’s got the balls, of course, one too many. Should you get her clothes off – doubtful as Macmillan’s flair for foreign affairs – you’ll find the mark of Medea. More than dry loins, black toes, lack of vitamin D.’ His insistence could have been that of a lawyer objecting to a bequest to charity. ‘It’s all summed up by Aquinas. Unanswerable.’

  ‘What is it?’

  His coarse grin infuriated. ‘Very sadly, it’s untranslatable. Let’s forget them. When you’re next in your Embassy, you may find the bosses polishing their gunwales. Things are in the wind.’

  Things might be in the wind, but colleagues reported nothing. Revising a pamphlet, trimming the Miscellany’s lay-out, I thought of eldritch. The word opened into the green and unearthly, persisting beneath crisis and turmoil, while courageous human refuseniks perished. A Sinclair risks only a muttered witticism, anonymously denounces a Malraux, a Nansen, at most extreme dances few insouciant steps on the scaffold, certain that he’s unable to die.

  Despite Alex, the two hovered near me, in off-moments and midnight hours.

  ‘We make a family, Erich.’ Sinclair allowed a lazy smile. ‘You may wish to smear our foreheads with elk-blood. And actually …’

  ‘Actually?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Still uninvited, I inspected their Ebury Street house, in a jumble of small hotels and where the child Mozart had composed early symphonies.

  No Claire stood at a window. Provocative by her reticence, she was also competent, reserving tables, booking tickets, checking cinema and late bus times, paying bills.

  My attempts at discovering their real natures were stalemated. Alex had correctly pointed to their lack of friends; they needed my company, if only as camp follower and on terms decidedly their own. Or his own. In return, I received his flip strictures delivered with monotonous moroseness, her reserve. I watched more than I listened, hoping a gesture, unconsidered remark or glance would reveal more.

  I read little of his criticism, discouraged by his feline talk. He approved Marcel Duchamp’s recommendation that a Rembrandt should be used as an ironing board;T.E. Lawrence was interesting only as a memorial to British duplicity; very few animals felt pain; Bergman’s The Seventh Seal could be forgiven only because it catered for my own ‘solitary and farouche being’. His favourite term of abuse was ‘Harmless’, employed too frequently. I practised Wilfrid’s cryptic, shadowy smile, not to refute him but in hopes of stirring Claire into the outright and rebellious.

  Did they share a bed? Had their parents ever hugged, even raised them? I flinched from answers likely from Alex.

  They sent me opulent Pralines Leonidas, perhaps knowing my dislike of them. He considered my The Forest Brothers worse than harmless; the perfect liberal Foreign Office brief. Claire only murmured that forests no longer had chance.

  Their silences differed, Sinclair’s vindictive or bored, hers inconclusively wondering. Faulkner’s death saddened her; he retorted that it was overdue, his books stifled. She did demur at what he considered the most useful work of art since the tiresome war: this was when a fashionable audience bayed applause for a composer who sat at a piano for a longish time, playing nothing.

  Each, like saints and devils, had symbolic colour. His, the artful sheen of midnight marble, hers the subdued gloss of a lawn under cloud. They made a sexless hybrid, an illuminator’s fancy, but, could she but be detached, Claire might be brought into some semblance of a wider day.

  Nonsense, I could hear Alex say, you’ll ride the emotions and survive disgracefully.

  Sinclair, nevertheless, surprised me by admitting he had a favourite song, a medieval lyric often heard on the BBC Third Programme, blending boys’ voices and deep maturity, tender harmonies and harsh descants, the words disconcertingly obscene.

  Another occasion was more startling. Having looked at Claire as if for permission, he hesitated. Always pale, delicate in skin and physique, he seemed, very exceptionally, nerving himself to speak.

  ‘We had to go north, for an exhibition. Later, we went walka-bout on the moors. And there we saw something. It made us remember you.’ I had to wait, showing and feeling unconcern, while he treasured his treat. ‘Your gold-braided Excellencies will have missed a note if they don’t know it. It wasn’t a Regency parlour lined with Persian lambskin, for Britten and Pears on a spree.’ His little laugh was malicious. ‘No. Not much better. A New Town, probably being raised on Yank money. No roads seemed to lead to it. All access forbidden. One vast aerodrome – I don’t use airport – ugly as a fart. Armed sentries everywhere. It was designed like a Peruvian temple, visible only to eyes in the sky. Locals wouldn’t talk of it, or swore it didn’t exist, but we saw more than we were meant to. We’ve the knack of not being seen.’ His own eyes gloated, but I at once remembered the First Secretary’s hidden diagram, illustrating a hypothetical Britain in atomic crisis.

  Realizing he had startled me, Sinclair spoke faster, perhaps more inventively. ‘All around it was white, not quite natural. Like painted snow. Or fungoid grass. Further off, scorched. We met one man, like us, slightly lost. He was scared, said the moor wouldn’t recover, then wished he hadn’t.’

  He had embroidered too much. Now, unconvinced, I looked at Claire for tolerant dissent, but she sat in silence, trim, hands folded, as a child might to a story that changes with each telling while remaining believable.

  No child, Sinclair was the dwarf who cackles at crossroads, with riddles like traps. He now looked as if about to dance, creamy with satisfaction, eyes as if carved. Even his dark-green tailored jacket seemed to glow. But the more he spoke, the less his impact. He seldom knew how to cut a story. ‘I believe in omens. What we saw, really did see, was one. I can tell you another. Alex has a short lifespan. Outcome of treacherous planets and of having climbed a rocky plinth. At best, he’s got five years. But you, dearest Erich, will last centuries. Longer than the pangs of the Messiah. Though, for Claire and me …’ For that instance, his new, troubled silence humanized him, a critic overtaken by doubts. At the wilful reference to Alex, I wanted Alex’s outdoor spirit, vigorous, if not scatheless.

  Trees were turning gold, then russet. Several times Claire appeared about to speak to me alone, to confide, but always desisted. There would be no twists of soul, no gleam from ‘Ogygia’, only a couple of London kids who would vanish in the first cold of winter, skating arm in arm in dainty lines on a thinning surface.


  13

  History, never in short supply but often procrastinating, abruptly went into quickstep, entire populations gathering like volunteers for the block. With few warnings, embassies were alerted by coded telegrams, the public alarmed by tall headlines, watching the sky as ancestors had awaited Spanish topsails or Old Bony’s grenadiers. Or in summer 1939, the last weeks of peace when the Pact was signed. All London slowed, in a brief silence that Estonians compared with that when a student pays his debts and Mother to a goose passing over her grave. No Danger, a Downing Street spokesman reassured, No Danger as such.

  The Balance of Terror had tilted, Russia testing thermonuclear weapons, the Soviet Bloc and Maoist newspapers rejoicing in the Soviet megaton bomb. Fleet Street accused Russia of establishing suspect fishing bases on Cuba.

  Tensions quickened. The Organization of American States expelled Cuba: Kennedy’s anti-Castro invasion fiasco in the Bay of Pigs had earlier incited angry demonstrations in many European cities. Not yet refuted were allegations that the CIA had dispatched poisoned cigars to Castro.

  At the Embassy nerves were frayed, with scenes over misplaced memos, cryptic communiqués, dubious translations. What was Uthant? Who was Maria An Two Venus? How interpret Chudid or Fossil Algae? Even Mr Tortoise unexpectedly swore, very coarsely.

  The First Secretary announced that aerial photography had exposed those fishing bases as installations of ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads, only a short flight from Florida. This was at once official. The entire world paused as Kennedy demanded their instant removal. Indignant, in professional righteousness, he listed long-range missiles trained on the USA, fortified by plutonium stockpile, 40,000 Russians, Castro’s victorious Red Army. On screens, Khrushchev, bumptious, pudgy, explosive, denied such bases as lying excuses for imperialist aggression which had stolen not only Texas and California but castrated America’s rightful inhabitants.

  In Britain, Mr K kept his precarious popularity, the young relishing his ill-fitting suits and anti-American shoe-thumping at the UN. The likes of Dolly thought him ill-bred but a tub of folksy wisdom. At the Embassy, we remembered his merciless cruelty as Stalin’s satrap, his anti-Semitism and greed for power. By the weekend, however, in London, in most cities, eyes were taut, breath unsteady, children kept indoors, in a new stillness, like that when Stalin died or when, in appalled hush, London multitudes heard that Elizabeth Tudor was dying and waited as if for plague or famine.

  Queues formed for unlikely buses, for stationary trains or for no apparent purpose. Zealots wanting to raise cheers for Castro and Che only met faces blank as windows. Newsagents sold out of maps of Cuba, black and red circles showing the Soviet emplacements, the statistics of American skyscrapers within missile capability. As crisis escalated, many were not stoical but listless, bored, helpless.

  A parliamentary question elicited a reply that the USA possessed two hundred atomic reactors, Britain thirty-nine, its H-bomb in gift of the Super Mac nod. The USSR’s stocks were unknown, fanciful or limited by incompetence. This reassured few, though for two days most protest was silent, Hands off Cuba appearing overnight on walls, striking at Kennedy’s pledge, ‘We’re going to take out those missiles.’ A bloodless riot convulsed Liverpool, and angry crowds outside the US Embassy, within which Marines stood armed. Several women, patient, with bowed heads, lined in silent protest outside the Soviet Embassy.

  London editors were rivals in irony, one remedy for weakness. A leading article weightily congratulated White House for heroically supporting altruism and fair play and praised the Kremlin for magnanimity in sacrificing Marxist dogma for bulk purchase of Middle West grain. A radio psychologist revealed that, under wartime pressure, 5,190 people showed traits of a criminal species, classified, that recoils from praise. He added that father-fears could now be expected from 43 per cent of children. An evangelist quoted Martin Luther to the respectful in a Highbury park, ‘Christ and John the Baptist praised war. Scripture teaches that God has ordained man to make war and to strangle. War is a very small misfortune. In truth, it is very special love.’

  On television, Alex ignored Cuba, save for remarking that the Children’s Crusade was now believable. In London and Paris, the Left rallied, printing illustrations not of Castro’s defences but of American military bases ringing the USSR: Okinawa, Japan, Turkey, Spain, West Germany, Britain; arms dumps in Greece, Pakistan, Taiwan, South Korea, South Vietnam. Daubed on our Embassy, Who is the Real Aggressor? Old kerosene lamps were already almost unobtainable, in fear of power failure and sabotage.

  Alex and I were too busy to meet, but he often telephoned, on odd corners of the day, unflurried by visions of mountains crumbling, seas mounting to Andean heights, electronics demented.

  ‘Most crises are bluff. I’ve a biggish bet with Louise that Mr K will kick for touch. He’s got sharp-shooting Mao not only backing him but behind his back. People always overrate Russia. Cringe, it wallops you. Stand up straight, and it falters. It’s cruel but almost as corrupt as the JFK kitchen lot. Personally, I’ve always found Kennedy’s charm offensives highly offensive. Meanwhile, mein Herr, we’ll meet soon and rearrange the world. Don’t waste time mooning for Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair. We may have to die in harness. More likely, by sly fortune, prosper greatly.’

  He had been seen in a Trafalgar Square demonstration, without witness to which faction he supported.

  Ticker tapes were choking with events, real or supposed: Scottish picketing an atomic submarine dock, laser vibrators trained on Birmingham, protestors besieging Harwell and Aldermaston. The First Secretary imposed food-hoarding and reported issues of arms to police.

  Rumour stalked the streets, as if in Shakespearian drama. Kennedy, almost one of us, youth had said, was sick, diplomatically or from failure of nerve. Macmillan had invited himself to Washington, Macmillan had been rebuffed, Macmillan was reading Trollope. The White House announced that the President, never fitter, had ordered a Line of Steel, naval blockade of Cuba. A congressman addressed millions, ‘We’re either a first-class power or we are not. Clear the bastards out!’ Kennedy followed. ‘A clandestine and reckless threat to world peace.’ Fleet Street urged Macmillan to advise and consent. To what? The pre-emptive Bomb, as Russell had once urged? A conference? Dignified retreat? A Syrian spokesman accused Israel of fomenting global peril to distract attention from an impending attack on Egypt. A ‘device’ was reported defused in Red Square, Moscow; two suspects were arrested in the White House garden. Simultaneously in Paris, West Berlin, Stockholm appeared a cartoon of Khrushchev dangling puppets – Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia – bawling ‘I’m Not Stalin’s Shit.’ From Ecole Normal Supérieure, a former Maoist philosopher asserted that a black triangular object seen over Marseilles confirmed Jung’s belief that such phenomena fill psychic vacuum. With Mr Tortoise, I speculated on Kensington, exhumed centuries ahead, with books and pens incomprehensible as dinosaur and pterodactyl.

  Telegrams multiplied; we had insufficient cipherists. South American ministers were huddling over Red Agents’ instructions, a military coup threatened Argentina. Spies were arrested in Mexico, were mysteriously released, had never existed. From Estonia, an underground estimate of Russian naval strength was so inordinate that we reckoned it a KGB trick. The Ambassador reminded us that, until his mid-term elections were past, Kennedy could not risk loss of face.

  Inexorably, tapes ground on. Dow Jones, Stock Exchange, Bourse and Tokyo falls. Scared parents begging Canadian visas, a CND warrior decamping to Ireland, teenage truancy rampant, peace placards everywhere quivering like geese. A Sydenham couple allegedly gassed their baby, pleading compassion. A Bristol teacher complained that her husband and herself shared an identical nightmare of a bloody thumb-print staining a mushroom cloud. Grounds for divorce, Alex said, in seven American states. A girl rushed naked across Barnes Common, agitating for peace. Bookshops were briskly selling Atlantic charts and astrological patterns, tabloids repeating the prophecy of the fall of a cita
del in a month of troubles, attributed to Nostradamus. A postcard appeared of two bandits, K and K, astride the globe, wrangling over a Cuban cigar, while midgets crawled into caves. On the Sunday, jivers massed in Piccadilly Circus, Eros draped with a poster of two bowler hats inscribed Another Fine Mess. In churches, prayers strove to avert black snow, pilotless bombers, vengeance powerful as gale force sha. As they had done a decade ago, in the last great London fog, pedestrians buckled, folded hands, knelt. The ordinary – office, school, football, bed – must soon be an act of bravado. Letters to the press foretold mobsters’ rule, a Ragnarok, Arabs and Lefties desecrating St Paul’s, Christians and looters violating mosques and synagogues. In such delirium, Eulenspiegels would caper in the Mall, the Queen light a pipe in the Abbey, dressy Warren Street car-touts transform to fuckall sharpshooters.

  In Ipswich, a Rastafarian prophet promised cataclysmic retribution for regicide, adding, in afterthought, that no death was complete. Faces, upturned from shoulders drooping, shrinking, must be seeking a charismatic saviour, a John Rabe, amoral but cleansing.

  A ministerial statement denied any necessity of underground shelters, adding that few were available to the general public, making the General Public sound like an unlicensed pub. Industrial absenteeism soared, roads and railways were congested, strikes were promised. Another White House bulletin declared that though the missile sites must be dismantled blockade was more effective than invasion, preferably supervised by the UN. Khrushchev retorted by indicting degenerate imperialism. On television, a science-fiction novelist, unusually cheerful, showed an animated tableau of European cathedrals rendered fragile as wax, statues melting, white flame then dissolving islands, forests, Edinburgh, to spectral blossom, whales dwindling to bone and gristle, seas rolling up in a screaming universe, the Atlantic a monstrous bubble, then a venomous drain, exposing the barnacled Grand Staircase of the Titanic. All this, he ended, smile splitting his face, should Soviet warships head for Cuba.