Authors: Paul Ableman
“Meaning, you still hate his guts.”
Harvey coughed with what might have been amusement but I sensed a faint rebuke. He demurred:
“Not really. We’re both too old for that nonsense. But we haven’t much in common and I don’t get on with his wife.”
When we reached the house, we found that tea had indeed been prepared: thin sandwiches, scones, jam and cream—a lavish spread for those days. With the cups and saucers, the edibles were laid out on a small rustic table just outside the house and, as soon as we’d seated ourselves, a handsome, timid lady of about forty brought out the silver teapot and urn. Harvey introduced her as:
“Mrs Beamish.”
And she flushed and damn near curtsied. Harvey suggested that she join us for tea, but she said:
“No, thank you, sir. I have to finish in the kitchen.”
She was all “sirs” and feudal deference and Harvey, although benevolent and courteous, seemed to accept it as natural. So then Harvey and I had tea together and talked. But I found that I had to make the running and it began to aggravate me. What the hell was it?
Okay, so our situations were reversed. I’d figured that one out
in advance and thought I’d made allowances for it. In the States, Harvey had been my dependant. Oh sure, we’d started it all with his cash but from early on in the partnership I’d been the boss, the brains and the energy and Harvey had been happy to accept that. Here, of course, I was under his roof. He was independent and on his home territory. I’d never patronized him in the past but in a thousand subtle ways difference of rank asserts itself. Harvey was now my host and entitled to define the new limits of intimacy. But why did they have to be so goddamm narrow? During the hour we sat over tea I became more and more aware of a kind of tacit snub. He asked me nothing, beyond what
perfunctory
politeness required, about myself, America, Chicago, any damned thing. I’d anticipated that we’d have a real nostalgic bull session, chewing over old times, laughing and drawing close again. Hell, I
loved
this man and I wanted him to love me.
Instead, over the next few days, Harvey turned me by
imperceptible
degrees into a loud-mouthed Yank. Was he, perhaps
without
realizing it, getting his own back for the years when I’d been on top? I guess that must be it. Feeble creatures we are, Horace! Every gust of time blows us into a different shape. We think we’re made of granite or steel and we’re like quicksilver, flowing
helplessly
into new shapes. When the context of our lives changes, we change too. Try and transfer a love or friendship, or come to that an abiding hatred, across a few decades or continents and it’ll emerge a different thing, perhaps its opposite.
On the second evening, we went out to dinner with a rich farmer. There were eight or ten people at table and it was a very genteel occasion until the farmer’s ten-year-old son mischievously loosed three little pigs into the drawing-room. After that everything got wonderfully relaxed and it ended up with the host and me having a race on sows across the stable-yard. I won by twisting my sow’s ear but was disqualified for it.
The next day I walked into the village to telephone HQ. To keep in training, I ran half the distance and when I got back to the house, I heard voices from the library. In spite of Harvey’s claim that he lived like a hermit, there was really a continual flow of visitors, including a famous writer who lived nearby and was always darting in with a script for a radio speech or something for Harvey to criticize.
I reckoned the voices indicated the writer was visiting. He tickled me because he always called me “my dear chap” and so I made a bee-line for the library. It turned out only Harvey and Mrs
Beamish were there, standing by the fireplace. Harvey turned when he heard me enter and exclaimed:
“Good Lord, are you back already?”
“I ran some of the way—to keep fit.”
“Well—is there anything else, Mrs Beamish?”
“Oh no—no, sir.”
And the lady departed. But who did they think they were kidding? There had been in their postures and also, even though I’d originally taken her voice to be that of a man, in the tone of the conversation I’d dimly heard, an unmistakable hint of intimacy. If I’d marched in and found them coupling on the carpet I wouldn’t have been more sure that Mrs Beamish was Harvey’s mistress. The instant she’d left, I said playfully:
“Congratulations. She’s a fine woman.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Oh, quit kidding, Harvey. She’s your mistress, isn’t she?”
He said coldly:
“Mrs Beamish is married and has three children.”
From this unpromising start the session deteriorated. I got brasher and Harvey more and more reserved. We were both parodying ourselves but, cursing myself for having started it, I got hooked on making Harvey admit the relationship. He became equally determined not to and, although we somehow avoided a row, mainly by me tapering off feebly with something like “okay, let’s forget the whole thing”, it left a hostile chasm between us which lasted all the next day. On the evening of that day, which was my last before heading back to London, Harvey drove me to a country pub for dinner and afterwards to another pub that had an amazing view over cliffs and sea. We downed a hell of a lot of whisky and Harvey, who’d always had a weak head, got drunk. When the pub closed, I suggested that I should drive and Harvey agreed but his little car had such a weird gear-shift that I couldn’t handle it and so we telephoned for a taxi. In the taxi, Harvey, after a spell of silence, suddenly admitted:
“You were perfectly right.”
“How do you mean?”
“About Mrs Beamish. She is my mistress. Damned fine mistress too.”
At this, I poked him sharply in the ribs and indicated the driver who sat immediately in front of us, not separated by a partition, and who was doubtless a local man who would spread the happy tidings. Harvey grunted:
“What?”
He frowned hard at the driver, then nodded as if in
comprehension
and murmured:
“Of course.”
But to my amazement, a minute later he began again, in a loud, clear voice:
“Her first name’s Ellen. Only call her that in bed. My God, Tornado, we often come together. Marvellous. Never happened before.”
I hissed:
“Harvey! For Christ’s sake!”
And jabbed my finger fiercely at the driver.
He said loudly:
“Oh, balls to him. You know I’m sorry—sorry I’m such an old Pig.”
“No—”
“Yes I am—an old pig. I know bloody well—how much I owe you. I wouldn’t have that bloody house if it weren’t for you. Bloody fine house, don’t you think? Parts of it are fourteenth century—the fireplaces and—other parts. Moreover, she’s a bloody fine mistress. Mrs Beamish not the house. Now you’re probably
wondering
why I’m such a pig? I think it’s because I’m pretending to be an earl. I always wanted to be an earl. That’s the main reason I can’t stick my brother. He’s an earl and a goon. If he wasn’t an earl, I’d be an earl because I’d be the oldest son, do you see? The fact that he’s a goon doesn’t make me a goon, does it? Bloody fine mistress, Mrs Beamish.”
“Harvey, you’re being indiscreet.”
“Oh, balls to him, bloody old fool!”
He leaned towards the driver and bellowed:
“Bill! I say, Bill!”
Then he turned triumphantly to me and explained:
“He’s deaf as a post. Scandal really. He shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a motor car. But all the hale drivers have gone to the war. Now if I were an earl I could make speeches in the House of Lords. I could make a speech about Montaigne. Did you know that Montaigne had a friend who farted himself to death? I’d never marry her, you know, even if her husband died. She’s not suitable to be a non-existent earl’s wife. There’s no doubt that’s what I’ve been all my life: a non-existent earl. The point is, Tornado, you could never be an earl. You’ll probably end up a
general—oh, of course I know! You’re in some kind of hush-hush outfit. I’m not a goon, not at all.”
“How the hell did you—”
“Well I did. You’re a colonel—a special ops colonel. I know people—everywhere—war office. I know what you—but! You will never be an earl. Impossibility. If you’re an earl you can make speeches about anything. I could get up in the House of Lords and make a speech about sex. Excellent thing, sex. Do you know I didn’t have any sex at all for ten years and then one day Mrs Beamish was serving tea in the drawing-room and I just put my arm round her waist. She went on serving tea but I could feel her trembling. Then when she’d put the teapot down I pulled her down on to my lap. Simple as that. Is that a white horse? Yes, it is. It’s a white horse. Do you know I’m in a funny state these days. I want to die and I’m afraid of dying. I can’t think why God installed me on this earth. He never gave me a decent job to do.”
Harvey sighed deeply. I didn’t say anything because—well, I guess I was still hoping he’d weave into his drunken meanderings some word of kindness or affection for me. I watched the green tunnel ahead, bored out by our headlights, and waited for Harvey to resume but in a little while I heard a low bark and, glancing round, discovered he’d gone to sleep.
I was disappointed but I just gave a chuckle and didn’t dwell on it. It was about a year later that I brooded deeply on his drunken speech. I was in an airplane about a mile above Holland, waiting to pitch out and stab a general. Suddenly, watching for the red light to turn green, I remembered that car ride. I realized that I had actually been deeply hurt and concealed it from myself. After all, Harvey was—well, in a way the guy I’d been closest to. He’d been with me while I’d transformed from a raw hick into an
influential
and rich man and, what’s more, he’d been instrumental in that process. Then, in terms of sheer quantity of time, I’d known him longer than anyone else other than my parents. And it was quite clear from our last meeting that he didn’t have anything like the feeling for me that I did for him. I thought about it, as clouds drifted past, and I realized it wasn’t Harvey’s fault. I’d been good and loyal to him but considered him a satellite in my orbit. But naturally Harvey didn’t see himself as a satellite in my orbit. Just the reverse, he probably saw
me
as—I don’t know what, but
something
that intruded, maybe benevolently, into
his
life. For him, his own life was the big deal. Sure, I know—it’s obvious but, believe it or not, Horace, I don’t think I’d ever had such a thought until I
stood in that airplane on my way to slay the good family man and butcher who oppressed Holland in those days. Then I felt small, not in the night and the sky and the wilderness of war. I never doubted I could seat a dagger in a tyrant’s back, but I felt small in the swarm of egocentric midges which is mankind, each the pride of his little globe of affairs and each essentially ludicrous and alone. And then the signal light turned green and I pitched out into strife.
Well, I didn’t despatch that particular gauleiter. All I got in Holland was five machine-gun bullets in my guts and an agonizing repatriation in farm carts. Then I had four months in the hospital in Wales and I knew I was cured when the night sister let me feel her up. Then I did three successful missions in quick succession. On one of them, I took command of a partisan detachment in north-eastern France and we routed a German brigade. It was one of the most amazing achievements of the war and I was decorated with the Congressional Medal of Honour which is in my suitcase, Horace. They wanted to promote me to general but I refused to leave the field.
I killed fifty or sixty Japs but I never felt any remorse about it, any more than about the Germans, whereas the fact that I let the Perkins brothers destroy that Indian kid has haunted me ever since. I see that scrap of torn flesh laid out in the cottage kitchen, which is where they placed him for the police, and my guts squirm. It’s not rational. He was a crippled idiot, whose life was probably a burden to him and certainly to others while in the thundering arenas of Europe and the East I probably extinguished men of education and culture. Maybe I hurled bullets through an artist, blew to fragments a surgeon—but they were playing by the same rules. That’s it, Horace, rules. I didn’t make them. But, not always uncritically, I accepted them. When society proclaimed: this is a
laissez-faire
economy and the rules state that if you’re smarter than the next guy you can legitimately own and spend as much as a hundred or a thousand of your fellows, I played by those rules and got rich. When the rules said: you can kill your fellows so long as they wear those garments we designate: enemy uniform, why I went out and mowed them down. Without rules, the world would be hell because each man would be both hunter and quarry. I admit there are times the rules must be broken. For example, I honour the Germans of the German resistance.
Nevertheless
,
I have observed, Horace, that most of those who want to change the rules are motivated not by concern but by bitterness. What they seek is not justice but revenge. I always lived by the rules—but the ghost of that forlorn waif of the Andes reproaches me still.
I killed a lot of Japs but I saved about thirty of them, and that too was because of the rules. On Guam, we had about two
companies
of Japs holed up in some caves. We could get small arms fire and bazooka shells into the cave-mouths and the Japs hadn’t a chance but, as we knew, they’d probably fight to extinction. There was artillery coming up behind us but it had to be lugged through steep jungles and so we just kept pumping fire into the caves and wondering if the artillery would arrive in time to finish them off. About the middle of the third day, their answering fire tailed off and by the evening it had stopped completely. We figured they were all dead, either from our efforts or by their own hand but, as the light was fading, we decided to wait until morning before storming them. Just then a Jap emerged with a white flag. This was rare
because
they didn’t often surrender but he was waving his white flag wildly. We called through a hailer for him to come on down and he came stumbling towards us. When he reached us, his teeth were chattering and he could hardly speak. He had no English but he put his hands over his ears and rocked from side to side to indicate the nightmare they’d been through. Then he pointed at the caves and stuck out his tongue and rolled his head to indicate they were all dead but him. An interpreter came up and questioned him and then confirmed that he was the last survivor. So, still cautiously, we advanced on the caves. We were within grenade range when a mighty hail of fire came spewing out of those dark mouths. About twenty marines dropped like sacks. I went down too but from instinct not lead. Then we few survivors had to lay there, chewing bugs, under point-blank fire, until it got dark. I was one of about fifteen to make it back to our lines. There I learned that when the Japs had opened up, the one who’d carried the white flag had grabbed a pistol and killed two marines before the rest shot him. I never saw a bunch of our men more grim. But they had no chance or revenge because those lethal Japs would never surrender. Then someone had a bright idea. Back at base we had a yellow coward, one of the few I ever encountered, a Japanese colonel whose nerve had gone. I sent for him. It took two days to bring him up and when he arrived he was in bad shape with one eye swollen shut and big bruises on his face. I’d said in my message
that I didn’t expect them to treat him like an honoured guest. He was moaning and whining when he reached us. One of my captains held a dagger to his throat while the interpreter gave him
instructions
. Then, with pistols at his head, he broadcast an order to surrender. He had to repeat it a number of times but finally the Japs started emerging from their caves. When they were all lined up, my guys started debating whether to shoot them or hang them. Some guys had gimmicky plans like cutting off their pricks and stuffing them down their throats. There was a lynching mood in the clearing.
But I just wasn’t buying it, Horace. There were rules which said that prisoners of war were entitled to safe internment. I was the senior officer and responsible for enforcing the rules. I didn’t feel much confidence in my officers who were as full of vengeance-lust as the men so I did the classical thing. I drew my pistol, fired it and, in the hush, bellowed:
“No one’s going to shoot anyone. No one’s going to hang anyone. These are prisoners of war. You may not like them and you may not like their tactics. I don’t myself. But I wouldn’t like ours if we shot them in cold blood. As you know, it wouldn’t bother them. They’d shoot themselves if they had the chance. Now they zapped us by a mean trick but we got them out of those caves by a trick too. You’re a detachment of American marines not a lynch-mob and you’re going to obey army discipline. So I’m going to put up this gun and anyone who wants to shoot a Jap is first going to have to shoot his commanding officer.”
Then I holstered my gun, Horace, and looked around at them, proud and fearless. And the truth is I was so exhilarated with my speech and my posture that I really was fearless. After a moment, it became clear that I’d won. So I said:
“Okay, fellows, I want five guards to deliver thirty-two—that’s
thirty-two
—prisoners to base. The rest of you—let’s cook up some chow and get a night’s sleep.”
I became a kind of trouble-shooter in the Pacific, Horace. I couldn’t operate behind enemy lines any more because, being a different race, I could no longer merge with the enemy. I performed a variety of curious missions, and these necessitated flying all over the Pacific in bombers and transports. I probably spent weeks, in total, droning across the huge ocean. One night, I recall, I was reading a book in the navigator’s bay of a Fortress when the pilot exclaimed: “Christ.” I scrambled up to the flight deck and he pointed and exclaimed:
“Hell of a shindy going on down there.”
It was a remarkable sight, Horace. We were passing over some small island—I forget its name—which, as I learned later, our forces had assaulted that very afternoon. In pitch darkness, a battle was raging. All around, to the horizon, stretched the great swamp of night but below us was a glimmer of fury. We were passing to one side of the island and I said to the pilot:
“Fly right over it.”
“Shit, Colonel, we might catch a tracer—”
“That’s an order, Captain.”
So, still bitching, he obeyed. I let him climb some and then we sailed directly over that fire-stage. Flares were popping up. Belches of flames from cannon and mortar seared out everywhere and the delicate trails of tracers arched over the palms. A minute later and we were out again over the blank Pacific and the flickering isle merged into blackness behind us.
I was given a curious assignment, Horace, which resulted in my performing an act of brutal violence which I remain proud of to this day. A guy called Lieutenant Getz, who turned out ironically to be of German descent, was calling on his men to lay down their arms. This lieutenant had a baby face and had been commissioned in the field for bravery. He was none too bright and would never have mounted from the ranks any other way. So I naturally asked the General why they didn’t just court-martial him and shoot him. The General said that this lieutenant was popular with his men and they didn’t want to court-martial him, except as a last resort, because that particular battalion had suffered from a martinet colonel and was thought to be in a mutinous mood. So I droned a few thousand miles across the Pacific and got acquainted with Getz. I said:
“You’ve been a good soldier, Getz. You’re a hero. What is this shit?”
And you know what his explanation was, Horace? He’d been detailed to escort a couple of hundred prisoners down from the hills and one night when he did his rounds he’d found one of his guards yacking away with a prisoner in Japanese. He’d naturally inquired into this irregular situation and the guard had explained that his father had been an engineer and had built some power stations in Japan between the wars. For this reason, the guard had lived in Japan as a kid and learned the lingo. It turned out that the guard, who was a corporal, had discovered that the prisoner was a toy manufacturer which, it so happened, he was too. So
they’d been discussing possible business co-operation after the war. At the time, Getz merely rapped the guard and told him to stop conversing with prisoners. But it set him thinking, somewhat as follows:
“It kept tugging at me, Colonel, and I couldn’t figure out why at first. Then I began to get with it. A Jap’s one thing, a toy manufacturer is another. I mean, hell, Americans are toy
manufacturers
too. Americans are human beings. If that guy was a toy manufacturer, maybe he was also a human being. I mean, you wouldn’t expect no monster to be a toy manufacturer, would you? Okay, so if he could be a human being, maybe other Japs could be human too. I kept watching the prisoners and they didn’t just look like Japs any more. I kept imagining them as garage owners, miners, any goddamm thing. See what I’m getting at? They kept turning into human beings. From there I went on to the idea that maybe we can only burn and drill each other if we stay ignorant. If we can fix the other guy as the enemy, why then we can blow his head off. But once he turns into a toy manufacturer, you can’t do it. So I figured it was my duty to reveal this to the other guys. I figured if everyone understood this they couldn’t have wars any more.”
It was the guy’s simplicity that made his ideas so hard to buck. He had only the most rudimentary notion of politics and, although he listened with furrowed attention, when I explained about democracy and totalitarianism and nationalism and stuff, I could see I wasn’t really getting through to him. Every session we had, and we had about a dozen, ended the same way. I’d say:
“So now that you’ve got that straight, Willy, you can see why you’ve got to stop this agitation? Check?”
“Well, I don’t know, Colonel—”
Then, feeling frustrated anger beginning to boil up again, I’d come in quickly with:
“If you keep it up, Willy, you’re sure as hell going to find
yourself
preaching to a firing-squad.”
“I don’t see that I can do any different, Colonel.”
Finally, HQ began to splutter and demand a resolution to the situation and it dawned on me that we were sure as hell going to have to hit this guy. And at that thought, I felt kind of sick. He might be a goon but he was a brave and, in his way, a noble man. There was something wrong with the system if one saint, as he began to seem to me, had to be exterminated while a million
rednecks
drew their pay. But what the hell could I do? I had an idea.
I arranged for one last talk. As we talked we walked, which we often did, and I steered a path towards a rocky part of the coast. After the usual hassle, I put the question to him for the last time and when, as I’d fatalistically reckoned was inevitable, he began:
“Well, I’m not sure—”
I shoved him off a low cliff. It was some thirty feet high and he might have cracked his skull on a rock. I’d thought: hell, if that happens it’ll be less revolting than the run-up to a firing-squad. But my judgement was sound, Horace. He broke a leg and three ribs and although the pathetic freak swore I’d shoved him over the cliff, no one believed him and we were able to hospitalize him for a couple of months and then invalid him out of the army.
It was in a plane that I heard about the big one. I was with a detachment of marines going back to Hawaii on leave. I was the only officer. I asked the pilot to beam some news back to us through the cabin speaker. We came in part way through the news broadcast and, as the words registered, I felt a thrill of awe: “estimated one hundred thousand dead—Hiroshima—the first atomic bomb—” The news wasn’t totally unexpected. In senior officers’ messes throughout the Pacific it had been clear for some time that
something
special was on the way. Whenever the matter of the final assault on Japan came up, there seemed to be a general present who wasn’t too interested in the discussion, who seemed to know, or guess, something that made the discussion irrelevant. Security was pretty good but a lot of the top guys had some kind of intuition about the birth of the nuclear age.
After the broadcast, as the plane bucked along through a
turbulent
stream, I sat still, trying to imagine it. A single plane flies over a city, releases a single bomb and that city evaporates. Then another fact, in its way just as amazing, pierced through to me. The guys, the marines, had clamoured for pop music as soon as the news had ended. I looked about the main cabin. Some of the men were horsing about and everything was normal. As far as I could tell, that apocalyptic message hadn’t meant a damned thing to them!
A month later I was in Tokyo, trying to weed out Jap fanatics. I found some and one was shot, but I soon discerned that no one really gave a fuck any more. The tough talkers who’d been saying: we’ll shoot all the yellow bastards, now just wanted to gulp saki and screw Japanese dames. The brisk civilians, with rimless glasses, that came pouring in were already thinking of markets and trade agreements and a bastion of democracy in the Far East. I watched them, Horace. I watched senior officers squatting on reed mats,
smilingly taking tea from kimonoed Japanese ladies. I watched their wives cooing over Netsuki and dwarf trees in the markets. I listened to guys who were into history expounding the traditional friendship between the United States and Japan. Where had the enemy gone?
Don’t get me wrong, Horace. I’m not saying I wanted to raise a tower of skulls. I hadn’t got a policy to set against the official one. I was just dazed by the ease of transition, by the way a Jap could change overnight from a ruthless killer into a bowing charmer. For me, the images kept merging. One morning, I awoke to find a Japanese porter bending over me to wake me, which I’d requested the night before, and the next instant we were rolling around on the floor with my hands squeezing his throat. Another time, in a restaurant, I heard staccato explosions from a misbehaving vehicle. Before I could reassure myself, I found myself running, doubled up, for the door, feeling for the automatic I no longer carried. Finally, I went to an army shrink and he said the syndrome was common, although I hadn’t detected it in anyone else, and that I should relax some.