Penelope Fitzgerald - Human Voices

Tad was silent for a moment. ‘Then he would be familiar with the ten second cue?’

‘He invented it. It’s called the Haggard cue, or the Jeff, sometimes.’ Teddy laughed, louder than the din of crockery.

‘God, Tad, you’ve made me happy to-day. Jeepers Creepers, you’ve gone and explained the ten second cue to DPP …’

Their table rocked and shook, while Tad sat motionless, steadying his cup with his hand.

‘Doubtless Mr Haggard will think me ludicrous.’

‘He thinks everything’s ludicrous,’ said Willie hastily.

Teddy laughed and laughed, not able to get over it, meaning no harm. He wouldn’t laugh like that if he was Polish, Willie thought. However, in his scheme of things to come there would no frontiers, and indeed no countries.

The Director of Programme Planning ordered a second double in his dry, quiet, disconcerting voice. Probably in the whole of his life he had never had to ask for anything twice. The barman, knowing, as most people did, that Mr Haggard had run through three wives and had lost his digestion into the bargain, wondered what he’d sound like if he got angry.

The whisky, though it had no visible effect, was exactly calculated to raise DPP from a previous despair far enough to face the rest of the evening. When he had finished it he went back to his office, where he managed with no secretary and very few staff, and rang RPD.

‘Mrs Milne, I want Sam. I can hear him shouting, presumably in the next room.’

On the telephone his voice dropped even lower, like a voice’s shadow. He waited, looking idly at the schedules that entirely covered the walls, the charts of Public Listening and Evening Meal Habits, and the graphs, supplied by the Ministry of Information, of the nation’s morale.

RPD was put through.

‘Jeff, I want you to hear my case.’

DPP had been hearing it for more than ten years. But, to do his friend justice, it was never the same twice running. The world seemed new created every day for Sam Brooks, who felt no resentment and, indeed, very little recollection of what he had suffered the day before.

‘Jeff, Establishment have hinted that I’m putting in for too many girls.’

‘How can that be?’

‘They know I like to have them around, they know I need that. I’ve drafted a reply, saying nothing, mind you, about the five thousand discs a week, or the fact that we provide a service to every other department of the Corporation. See what you think of the way I’ve put it – I begin quite simply, by asking them whether they realize that through the skill of the recording engineer, sound can be transformed from air to wax, the kind of thing which through all the preceding centuries has been possible only to the bees. It’s the transference of pattern, you see – surely that says something encouraging about the human mind. Don’t forget that Mozart composed that trio while he was playing a game of billiards.’

‘Sam, I went to a meeting to-day.’

‘What about?’

‘It was about the use of recordings in news bulletins.’

‘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.