Human Voices. Penelope Fitzgerald

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      ‘Why wasn’t I asked?’

      But Sam was never asked to meetings.

      ‘We had two Directors and three Ministries – War, Information, Supply. They’d called it, quite genuinely I think, in the interests of truth.’

      The word made its mark. Broadcasting House was in fact dedicated to the strangest project of the war, or of any war, that is, telling the truth. Without prompting, the BBC had decided that truth was more important than consolation, and, in the long run, would be more effective. And yet there was no guarantee of this. Truth ensures trust, but not victory, or even happiness. But the BBC had clung tenaciously to its first notion, droning quietly on, at intervals from dawn to midnight, telling, as far as possible, exactly what happened. An idea so unfamiliar was bound to upset many of the other authorities, but they had got used to it little by little, and the listeners had always expected it.

      ‘The object of the meeting was to cut down the number of recordings in news transmissions – in the interests of truth, as they said. The direct human voice must be used whenever we can manage it – if not, the public must be clearly told what they’ve been listening to – the programme must be announced as recorded, that is, Not Quite Fresh.’

      Sam’s Department was under attack, and with it every recording engineer, every RPA, every piece of equipment, every TD7, mixer and fader and every waxing and groove in the building. As the protector and defender of them all, he became passionate.

      ‘Did they give specific instances? Could they even find one?’

      ‘They started with Big Ben. It’s always got to be relayed direct from Westminster, the real thing, never from disc. That’s got to be firmly fixed in the listeners’ minds. Then, if Big Ben is silent, the public will know that the war has taken a distinctly unpleasant turn.’

      ‘Jeff, the escape of Big Ben freezes in cold weather.’

      ‘We shall have to leave that to the Ministry of Works.’

      ‘And the King’s stammer. Ah, what about that. My standby recordings for his speeches to the nation – His Majesty without stammer, in case of emergency.’

      ‘Above all, not those.’

      ‘And Churchill.…’

      ‘Some things have to go, that was decided at a preliminary talk long before I got there. Otherwise it’s just a general directive, and we’ve lived through a good many of those. It doesn’t affect the total amount of recording. If you want to overwork, you’ve nothing to worry about.’ Sam said that he accepted that no-one present had had the slightest understanding of his Department’s work, but it was strange, very strange, that there had been no attempt whatever, at any stage, to consider his point of view.

      ‘If someone could have reasoned with him, Jeff. Perhaps this idea that’s come to me about the bees.…’

      ‘I protested against any cuts in your mobile recording units. I managed to save your cars.’

      ‘Those Wolseleys!’

      ‘They’re all you’ve got, Sam.’

      ‘The hearses. I’ve been asking for replacements for two years. They’re just about fit to take a Staff Officer to a lunch party, wait till he collapses from over-indulgence, then on to the graveyard. And I’ve had to send two of those out to France.… Jeff, were you asked to break this to me?

      ‘In a way.’ As they left the meeting one of the Directors had drawn him aside and had asked him to avoid mentioning the new recommendations to RPD for as long as possible.

      Sam was floundering in his newly acquired wealth of grievances.

      ‘Without even the commonplace decency … no standbys … my cars, well, I suppose you did your best there … my girls.…’

      ‘In my opinion you can make do with the staff you’ve got,’ Jeff said. ‘One of your RPAs was talking to me in the studio just now, and I assure you he was very helpful.’

      

      When he had done what he could Jeff walked out of the building. It was scarcely necessary for him to show his pass. His face, with its dark eyebrows, like a comedian’s, but one who had to be taken seriously, was the best known in the BBC. He stood for a moment among the long shadows on the pavement, between the piles of sandbags which had begun to rot and grow grass, now that spring had come.

      DPP was homeless, in the sense of having several homes, none of which he cared about more than the others. There was a room he could use at the Langham, and then there were two or three women with whom his relationship was quite unsentimental, but who were not sorry to see him when he came. He never went to his house, because his third wife was still in it. In any case, he had a taxi waiting for him every night, just round the corner in Riding House Street. He hardly ever used it, but it was a testimony that if he wanted to, he could get away quickly.

      RPD seemed to have forgotten how to go home. Mrs Milne suggested as much to him as she said goodnight. Her typewriter slumbered now under its leatherette cover. He gave no sign of having heard her.

      

      Long before it was dark men in brown overalls went round BH, fixing the framed blackouts in every window, circulating in the opposite direction to the Permanents coming downstairs, while the news readers moved laterally to check with Pronunciation, pursued by editors bringing later messages on pink cards. Movement was complex, so too was time. Nobody’s hour of work coincided exactly with the life-cycle of Broadcasting House, whose climax came six times in the twenty-four hours with the Home News, until at nine o’clock, when the nation sat down to listen, the building gathered its strength and struck. The night world was crazier than the day world. When Lise Bernard paused in doubt at the door of RPD’s office, she saw her Head of Department pacing to and fro like a bear astray, in a grove of the BBC’s pale furniture, veneered with Empire woods. He wore a tweed jacket, grey trousers and one of the BBC’s frightful house ties, dark blue embroidered with thermionic valves in red. Evidently he put on whatever came to hand first. Much of the room was taken up with a bank of turntables and a cupboard full of clean shirts.

      When he recognized who she was he stopped pacing about and took off his spectacles, changing from a creature of sight to one of faith. Lise, the crowded office, the neatly angled sandwiches, the tray with its white cloth suitable for grades of Director and above, turned into patches of light and shade. To Lise, on the other hand, looking at his large hazel eyes, the eyes of a child determined not to blink for fear of missing something, he became someone who could not harm her and asked to be protected from harm. The effect, however, was quite unplanned, he produced it unconsciously. All the old lechers and yearners in the building envied the success which he seemed to turn to so little account.

      ‘He just weeps on their shoulders you know,’ they said. ‘And yet I believe the man’s a trained engineer.’

      ‘Sit down, Miss Bernard. Have all these sandwiches. You look hungry.’ When he had put his spectacles on again he couldn’t pursue this idea; Lise was decidedly overweight. ‘I like to get to know everyone who comes to work for me as soon as possible – in a way it’s part of the responsibility I feel for all of you – and the shortest way to do that, curiously enough, I’ve found, is to tell you some of the blankly incomprehensible bloody idiotic lack of understanding that our Department meets with every minute of the СКАЧАТЬ