“You’re not a little fellow, George. You’re a very shrewd dictator who
made up his mind years ago to have his own way in Browdley—and you HAVE
had it, against a big majority who’ve been either against your ideas or
indifferent to them—and the methods by which you’ve succeeded have been
slyness, smartness, blarney, importunity, intrigue, compromise, a certain
amount of downright trickery, and a vast amount of personal charm! But you
prefer to call it democracy!”
By the time they reached that kind of point in argument George was usually
in a good humour and his normal cheerfulness renewed.
He never realized the majestic and in some ways rather
terrifying alchemy
of English life so much as when he attended official conferences in London.
He had been attending them for years, until now they were something rather
like routine, but he always remembered his first one—when, as a young
man just elected to the Browdley Council, he had been sent as its delegate to
a consultation with high officials of one of the Whitehall ministries.
Because the Government in power was of the opposite political party to his
own he had expected to be frostily received and was full of carefully
rehearsed truculence that evaporated at the first calm, polite, and curiously
impersonal meeting with people whom he had thought of as his enemies. But it
had left him baffled afterwards. “Talk about raising the standard of
revolution!” he had reported, when he got back to Browdley. “It was hard
enough to make anyone raise a couple of eyebrows!” Was it possible that
London did not know what a potentially dangerous man he was? Or did not care?
Or both knew and cared, yet was imbued with some classic spirit that would
only return cool civility for warm antagonism? After he had attended half a
dozen more such conferences, George’s bafflement lessened, not because he had
entirely solved the problem, but because he had come to terms with it; it was
as peculiar, yet could seem as normal, as the normally peculiar smell of the
London tubes.
By now, of course, he was not baffled at all. Whenever he visited the
Ministries on business he met important men who knew him, who called him
George, who took him to lunch and kidded him good- humouredly about his being
teetotal. The war years had only continued, with some intensification, the
natural process of all the years; and when, as sometimes happened, George
spent half a day at the House of Commons, he found himself surrounded by a
platoon of ex-firebrands who held official positions. “Too bad you aren’t
here, George,” he had often been told. “You’d have been at least an
under-secretary by now.”
“But then I wouldn’t have been Mayor of Browdley,” answered George,
seeking to console himself from force of habit, yet no longer really needing
to. He liked London; but to be a stranger to it, even a familiar stranger,
kept him alive to that same majestic and rather terrifying alchemy of English
life, as slow and sure and relentless almost as the grinding of the mills of
God.
That it had helped to save England after Dunkirk and during the blitz
autumn of 1940, George thought very probable. For then its virtue had shown
like good bones under the flesh—especially its abiding combination of
firmness and benignity, so that the same machine of government could jail a
baronet for a rationing offence and organize the distribution to small
children of Mickey Mouse gas- masks. Nothing was too small, and no one too
great, to be beyond the range of that cool-headed but never cold-hearted
survey. And George, administering Browdley, had tried to generate something
of that dual mood in microcosm.
And yet… whenever he went to London he felt the strength of Browdley in
him, rebelling against certain things.
One morning, walking briskly along Whitehall after a
meeting with
officials, George ran into a man named Sprigge whom he had first met years
before on the Terrace of the House of Commons. George was pleased to be
remembered, and willingly accepted the other’s invitation to have lunch at a
near-by club. They talked about the war and politics; Sprigge said that since
their previous meeting he had lived a good deal in China and the Malay
States, getting out just in time after Pearl Harbour. It was natural then for
George to ask, with an air of casualness, if he had ever come across the
Winslows.
“You mean Jeff Winslow, brother of Lord Winslow?”
“Aye, that’s him.”
“Knew him well, my dear chap. Often dined at his house. Good parties he
used to give—not so starchy as the really official ones, because, as he
used to say, he wasn’t really official. You see, he was attached to the
Sultan of Somewhere-or-other, and that made a difference. The lady next to
you at dinner might be an Italian spy or an Egyptian princess or a Javanese
snake-charmer—used to be fun finding out… Was he a friend of yours
—Winslow?”
George answered: “Not—er—exactly, but I knew his father
slightly—and I’ve also met his son.”
“And as a result of that you’re sort of interested in the middleman,
eh?”
“That’s it,” George agreed. And then, to steer the conversation very
gently: “I remember his father expected so much of his career.”
“Well, he was a brilliant fellow—no doubt about that.” Sprigge
paused, then added: “Wasted, though, the way things turned out.”
“Wasted?”
“Perhaps that’s too strong a word. But he’d have done well in the regular
Diplomatic if he’d stayed in it… and also if… well, anyhow, perhaps it
wasn’t his fault that he didn’t. Not ALTOGETHER his fault.”
George said nothing.
“Of course I’m only repeating things I’ve heard—but there was said
to have been some scandal about his wife—an earlier divorce or
something. And then other matters… later… well, one shouldn’t
gossip.”
“Did you meet the boy?”
Sprigge shook his head. “He was at school in England. I suppose he’s of
age now to be in the fighting somewhere.”
“Aye,” said George thoughtfully. He would have liked Sprigge to go on
chattering, but just then a fellow club member said ‘hello’ in passing and
Sprigge insisted on making an introduction—Henry Millbay, the name was,
which to George seemed familiar though he could not exactly place it. Millbay
shook hands, declined a drink, and regarded George with a certain friendly
shrewdness while, to re- start the conversation, Sprigge went on: “We were
just talking about Jeff Winslow—the one who was in Malaya… Boswell
knows the family… Ever meet him out there, Millbay?”
Millbay shook his head, and the subject was dropped.
Half an hour later, after talk that would have been more agreeable had he
not been thinking of other things all the time, George remembered an
appointment and took his leave; but in the club lobby, as he was retrieving
hat and coat, Millbay overtook him. “I’m a busy man too,” he commented, with
just the slightest derogatory implication that Sprigge was less so. “Wonder
if we’re going in the same direction?”
They found they were not; nevertheless Millbay kept George chatting for
several minutes on the pavement outside. Presently he said: “I didn’t want to
talk much in front of Sprigge, who’s the biggest male gossip in London, but
he said you knew the Winslows—Jeff Winslow…”
“I didn’t actually know HIM,” George answered.
Millbay’s glance quickened. “Oh, you mean you knew her?”
George experienced again, and for the first time in years, that old
sensation of a fist grasping his insides. “Aye, but a long while ago.”
“Rather remarkable woman.”
“Aye.”
“She’s just home from a Jap prison-camp in Hong Kong. I saw her the other
day.” Something in George’s face made Millbay add: “Part of my job, you know,
to interview repatriates. The idea is to get information about the enemy.
They all knew plenty, but it was mostly horrors… Of course HER story was
particularly interesting to me because I’d known her and her husband before
the war… Remarkable woman.”
“Aye.”
“Even if I hadn’t known that already I’d have thought so after
interviewing some of the other women. They said she looked after English and
American children in the prison-camp. Seems to have been so bloody fearless
that even the Japs let her have her own way as often as not. Anyhow, she got
the kids extra food and medicines when nobody else could.”
“What about her husband?”
“She didn’t know. Nobody knows. After the first few months the Japs took
to separating the men from the women and shipped the men to another camp
—some said in Japan itself. Incidentally, she needn’t have been
interned in the first place—there was a chance for some of the women to
get away, but she insisted on staying with Jeff. At the Foreign Office we’re
still pressing enquiries about him, but so far without luck, and it’s hard to
be optimistic.”
George then asked, so softly that he had to repeat the question: “Do you
know anything about the boy?”
“He was in the R.A.F. and got smashed in one of the Berlin raids. I think
he’s discharged now, and up at Cambridge. The mother’s staying at the family
place in the country.” Millbay paused as if to give George time to realize
where the conversation stood again, but George, though realizing it, said
nothing. Presently Millbay smiled and added: “I’ve told you a lot—now
you tell me something. What did you think of her?”
“Of… HER?”
“Yes. Of Livia Winslow.”
The utterance of the name made George stammer: “I—I thought she was
what you called her—REMARKABLE.”
“Did you know her at all well?”
“Aye, pretty well… but years ago, as I said.”
“Then maybe you can answer one specific question—was she—
er—when you knew her—politically—er— reliable?”
“Politically RELIABLE? What’s that?”
“Rather vague, I admit… but perhaps elastic enough to describe something
a diplomat’s wife should be. After all, Jeff had to handle fairly important
matters—important, I mean, to British policy.”
“And you’re asking me if she always agreed with that policy? How on earth
do I know? But I can tell you this much—
I
don’t always agree
with it, and if that’s become a crime lately, by all means put me down on
your black list.”
George had reacted normally to a familiar stimulus, and Millbay reacted
normally to that type of reaction, with which he was equally familiar. He
smiled. “We’re not as stupid as all that, Boswell, even at the Foreign
Office. And our black list is largely a grey list—or should I use the
phrase ‘neutral tints’?” He paused a moment, then asked quietly: “Did you
know her when she was in Ireland?”
“No.” George caught the alertness of Millbay’s glance and countered it
with a more humorous alertness of his own. Suddenly he laughed. “Look here…
what are you driving at? Are you a detective or something?”
Millbay also laughed. “I might be the ‘something’. To tell you the truth,
I’m just a Government official who once wrote a few novels.” George then knew
where he had seen Millbay’s name, and also why he had not clearly remembered
it; he was not much of a novel-reader. Millbay continued: “Perhaps that’s why
I’m handed all these war-time psychological problems. They’re quite
interesting, though, as a rule… Take this woman we’ve been talking about
—from all accounts she’s top-notch for sheer physical and mental
courage against appalling odds. Yet all that—and every novelist knows
it—doesn’t guarantee that she couldn’t be a complete bitch in other
ways. Did you, incidentally, ever discuss Hitler with her?”
“Good God, no—the time I knew her was years before Hitler was even
heard of. You’re not suspecting her of being a Nazi spy, are you?”
Millbay laughed again. “Stolen treaties tucked away in the corsage, eh?…
Hardly… So you don’t think she’d have made a good spy?”
George answered: “From my judgment she’d make the worst spy in the
world.”
“What makes you say that?”
George answered: “Of course it’s long ago that I knew her, but people
don’t change their whole nature. What I mean is—if they’re… well,
outspoken… not always too tactful…”
Millbay touched George’s arm with a half-affectionate gesture. “Thank you
for confirming my own private opinion. I never did believe there was anything
really wrong with her in THAT way—especially on the basis of the
incident that gave rise to most of the talk… You heard about it,
perhaps?”
“I don’t think so. What was it?”
“Some big dinner-party in Batavia, with a crowd of officials, attachés,
army people, and so on. I was told about it by several who were there. Before
the war, of course—1932 or 1933. Conversation turned on Hitler, and
most of what was said was unflattering— especially from the viewpoint
of the career diplomat. Suddenly Livia said —‘Isn’t it odd that people
who profess to follow a religion founded by a carpenter are so ready to sneer
at someone for having once been a house-painter?’ Quite a sensation! Of
course she was tabbed as pro-Hitler after that, but I really don’t think she
had to be. I think she could have meant exactly what she said… Because it
IS odd, when you reckon it up. With all the perfectly sound reasons the
democracies have for hating that man, they choose to sneer at him because he
once followed a trade. How do house-painters feel about it, I wonder? If I
knew any, I’d ask ‘em.”
“I do know some, so I will ask ‘em.”
“And then tell me? Well, anyhow, you can imagine that sort of remark
didn’t do her husband any good professionally.”
“Aye, I can see that.”
They were still at the kerbside, but a Government car had driven up and
the chauffeur was waiting. Millbay said hastily: “Sorry there hasn’t been
more time to talk. Always interesting to compare notes about people one
knows… Incidentally, if you’re free tonight, why don’t you dine with me?
Then we’d have more time.”
George was free and accepted, though not without a misgiving that grew and
crystallized during the afternoon into a determination to pursue a certain
course of action if Millbay should make it necessary. Before they were
halfway through the meal, at a service flat in Smith Square, Millbay HAD made
it necessary. They had discussed general topics at first, but then Millbay
had continued: “You know, Boswell, I’m still a bit curious about Livia
Winslow. She always rather fascinated me, in a sort of way, and to meet
someone else who knew her… well, I suppose it’s the novelist in me cropping
up again, even though it’s years since I last published anything. And I
certainly don’t intend to publish anything you tell me, so don’t worry.”