Human Voices. Penelope Fitzgerald

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      ‘He’s irresponsible.’

      ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say so.’

      ‘There was a considerable financial investment in this project, and Brooks was well aware that copies of the recordings were to be buried certain fathoms in the earth as a memorial for future generations.’

      ‘You could still do that,’ Jeff replied. ‘There mayn’t be any doors that creak by then. Mine doesn’t now.’ All the doors in BH were fitted with self-closing devices of an irritating nature.

      It was not Jeff’s habit to soothe, but as usual the case he made for his friend, only just over the borderline of detachment, and gradually becoming more serious, proved effective. Sam never heard of these discussions. He continued like a sleepwalker, who never knows what obstacles are removed, and by what hands, from his path.

      And Sam was not the only member of the Corporation who confided in Jeff. That was surprising, in view of the imperturbable surface he presented, which gave back only a stony resonance, truthful and dry, to the complaints of others. But his advice was excellent, and he could be relied upon, as so few could, not to wait for a convenient opening to start on his own grievances. Perhaps he hadn’t any, certainly he admitted to none. His calmness was really recklessness, as of a gambler who no longer felt anything was valuable enough to stake. That in turn was not likely to make him popular. Those who valued his cold judgement when they needed it, very naturally resented it when they didn’t. To see the Director of Programme Planning miscalculate might have been a relief, but during the first nine months of the war no hint of such a thing arose – never, until the affair of General Pinard.

      

      ‘You’ll get your boy back, then,’ said Della to Lise. A strong line was best, in her opinion. Everyone knew that Lise considered herself engaged and that Frédé was some kind of electrician with the French 1st Army. The way things were going they’d have to bring the French over here, there was nowhere else for them to go.

      ‘But that will be quite impossible,’ said Tad, demonstrating with his map. ‘You underestimate the obstacle of the English Channel.’

      ‘In that case, if you want my advice, you’d do best to forget him,’ said Della. ‘After all, he never gave you a ring, did he?’

      Lise had not proved any better at her work than Della, which made some sort of bond between them.

      Vi’s merchant seaman wrote making apparent references to home leave, but a good deal of his letter had been blacked out by the censor. What a job having to go through other people’s personal letters, Vi thought, they must feel uncomfortable, you had to pity them.

      

      On June 10 1940 the French Government admitted that Paris could not be defended, and left for Bordeaux. Between the débandade and de Gaulle’s arrival on the 17th, there was a bizarre moment of hope when the Government learned that General Georges Pinard had escaped to London, flying his own light aircraft, and bringing with him nothing but a small valise and one junior officer. He went straight to the Rembrandt Hotel.

      Historians have not yet decided – or rather, they have decided but not agreed – as to who sent the General on his desperate mission. Certainly no-one could have been more welcome. Whereas de Gaulle was practically unknown in Britain, Pinard was instantly recognizable, with his coarse silvery moustache, the joy of worn-out cartoonists, and his nose broken by a fall from a horse and flattened out of its French sharpness. His name was one of the few that the public knew well and it created its own picture.

      The General was a peasant’s son from the flattest, wettest and most unpicturesque part of France, where the provinces of Aisne and Somme join. Born in 1869, he grew up with the Prussian occupation; the army rescued him from hoeing root vegetables, and he rose at a moderate speed through the ranks. Improbable as it seemed, he was a romantic, a Dreyfusard and a devotee of the aeroplane – indeed, his lectures on the importance of airpower delayed his promotion by several years. However, he cared nothing for Empire, nothing for impossible ambitions, only for the stubborn defence of the solid earth of his country. In the Great War, he was with one of the only two divisions not affected by the mutiny of 1917. He always slept excellently, and it was said that he had to be wakened by his orderly before every battle.

      When the Ecole Supérieure de Guerre was reopened in 1919, Pinard was one of the first to be appointed, and was looked upon as a sound man, a counterweight, with his peasant blood, to the impossible de Gaulle. In 1940, in spite of his advanced age, he had managed to get himself the command of the 5th Armoured Division, which, in the middle of May, had made a last counterattack against the German advance.

      A romantic, then, though limited by earth and sky, but nothing in his military career explained his curious fondness for the English. This could be traced to his shrewd marriage with a very rich woman, addicted, as Pinard was himself, to racehorses. Between the wars he had become a familiar figure at bloodstock sales, and at Epsom and Ascot. Much photographed at every meeting, he was always cheerful, and most important of all, nearly always a loser. That was the foundation of his great popularity over here, something he had never attained in France. On his wife’s money, he became an Anglophile. He learnt to love because he was loved, for the first time in his life.

      

      At half-past eight on the 14th of June the Director General’s office told DPP that General Pinard was going on the air as soon as it could be arranged. ‘He wants to broadcast to the English nation and it seems it’s a matter of great urgency. It’s all been agreed.’

      ‘Well, the evening programmes must shove over a bit,’ said Jeff. ‘I’ll see to it.’

      ‘It’s more than that. We want you down in the studio.’

      ‘What for?’

      ‘Don’t you speak fluent French?’

      ‘Well?’

      ‘He wants you there when Pinard comes.’

      ‘He speaks perfectly good English, with a strong French accent, which is exactly what you want.’

      ‘The point is this – the War Office is sending someone and so is the FO, and the DG and DDG don’t think it will look well if we can’t produce a French speaker from our top level in BH.’

      ‘What do you want me to say?’

      ‘Oh, it might be a few sentences of greeting. Some hospitality may be considered appropriate. I suppose there’d better be some absinthe, isn’t that what they drink?’

      ‘The General prefers cognac,’ Jeff said.

      ‘Have you met him, then? That might be extremely useful.’

      ‘I met him in a dugout, behind a village called Quesnoy en Santerre, twenty-three years ago.’

      ‘I’ve never heard you talk about your war experiences before, Haggard.’

      ‘This wasn’t an experience. We were supposed to be taking over from the French, then it turned out that we were retreating. I was Mess Officer and I stayed to see if the French had left any brandy behind, they did sometimes. Pinard came back with exactly the same idea in mind. He was a captain then. I don’t flatter myself that he’ll remember this incident, by the way.’

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