Peter Vansittart - Secret Protocols

No gilded auditorium or perfumed salon but a murky tavern beneath Montmartre, where a chanteuse hoarsely intoned:

Candelabras and buffets, shirt fronts, crimson sashes and rosettes, pearls, diamonds, bare shoulders and the latest coiffures. Young breasts, indistinct smiles, ambiguous pouts, metropolitan allusions. Galerie Maeght, an exhibition at Paul Facchetti’s, de Stäel’s suicide, some scandal about Céline uttered with bored languor, a glimpse of Cocteau, echoes of his purr that none of the battles of 1917 had been more violent than that over his ballet Parade , chatter about Camus and the lustrous Maria Casarès, then repetition of his epigram that he preferred Committed People to Committee Literature. His novel La Peste had cast a chilly glance at my own lack of commitment.

This quai d’Orsay soirée was honouring instigators – Swiss, French, German – of the Conférence du Monde . More sashes, tiaras, insignia, the front rank of the Légion: the deferential, the lofty, the polished, the creamy, some like distinguished hyenas, some like swans on dry land, some dignified as cranes. De Gaulle had been silent but Free French generals, Liberation heroes, were present, with the Banque Governor, the Ambassador to the UN, François Mauriac, Georges Pompidou, Jean Borotra, Malraux, Raymond Aron, Denis Saurat, André Maurois… rebelling the Protest Manifesto of Aragon, Joliot-Curie, Jean Genet, de Beauvoir, Sartre, Thorez, the secretary of the Trades Union Federation… indicting the Conference as a Zionist, anti-Soviet, anti-Peace conspiracy, in the pay of American capitalists and Swiss fascists who had profiteered by refusing Jewish refugees access to their own funds and, at Hitler’s behest, closing the frontier.

Laughter was noisy, if mechanical, out of bald heads, painted mouths, faces like confectionery, smart but fragile, endangered by emotions too lively. Many shared degrees of resemblance, cousinhood, like melodious puns, and exuding the nostalgic, lulling as hay. ‘The Countess did her best…’ ‘That year the harvest was so rich that…’ ‘When carriages arrived…’

Wilfrid had immediately attracted a circle, so that, thankfully, I could wander at will, surely unobserved. There was theme – the Conference – but presumably no story. Then, from within scintillas of the white-fronted, black-tailed and invisibly plumed, I overheard, sharp, and in this affluent mêlée unalluring as gripe to the guts, a reference to the Herr General.

I was still immobilized when one of this group, French, bearded, with the crisp white mane of a butler or senator in an American musical, detached himself and, formal but affable, nodding me into a windowrecess. I felt obscurely grateful. Less so, however, when he found it natural to speak to me in German, at which several turned around, candidly inquisitive or assuming unnatural impassivity.

‘You must forgive my intrusion, but I almost know you. I have seen you at La Gasconade with the good Wilfrid. You must be of very considerable help in his designs. Despite your youth, estimable, enviable, you must be one of us.’

Gratitude vanished down the drain. Contradicting the affability, the eyes within stained, waxy pouches were too shrewd, his words, each one counterfeit, warned me of a trap, a trace of espionage. He murmured his name, indistinct under the hubbub, resembling, improbably, ‘Dr Miracle’, one of those marginal theatrical characters appearing within scenes of stress or impasse. Whatever the stranger’s name and title, Dr Miracle might be appropriate, making him older than himself, a perennial ingredient in French politics, European plots, dangerous liaisons. He was offering me a cigar, which I hurriedly refused and pretended to be concerned with the star wine. He selected one for himself, from a gold case elaborately chased, with the studied care of a professional performer, then began his aria, pitched to the Herr General.

‘You appear interested in your noteworthy compatriot. I was honoured to shake his hand when he visited the Maginot Line in ’37. Complex times, so easily misunderstood. But in which we could not afford to lose. For him to be caught by monsters…’ Surprisingly, he changed course, chuckled, replaced his cigar, unlit, then pressed my arm, looking around as he might do at Longchamp races, inspecting likely winners, detecting losers, appraising his bets.

‘There’s old Marcelle, in this angle of vision double-headed, double-tongued, whispering venom into the Senegalese gentleman, if I choose the correct definition. In Vichy days, we called her the Diplomatic Bag, open to patriots and scum alike. Herr Ernst Jünger named her in his renowned collection of beetles…’ His sudden rapidity implied a remark oiled by frequent repetition, though he immediately slowed, in civilized restraint. ‘The Marshal treated her well, as he was intended to do. She was, you may not know, very useful to the Franco-German committee. None knew better the consequences of a Bolshevized Europe. De Gaulle cast her into outer darkness, but she may have had her revenge. He is to be imagined in a state of controlled despair and becoming his own desolate temple.’

I did not imagine this, and Marcelle resembled an over-painted, over-drinking hotel manageress, but he was scrutinizing me with some care, his white eyebrows seeming to me gruff; a waiter thankfully closed in with a bottle, I gulped, rather too hastily, and was relieved to see Wilfrid near me, bending forward, birdlike, to listen to the editor of Libération , hitherto cautious about the Conference, and though his back was towards me, half-concealed by long, fluttering gowns and twinkling evening bags, I knew that he would divine my predicament.

Dr Miracle, now illuminated, now shadowed, by the slow tide of guests and the stock chorus line of journalists, radio and television officials, and those the Americans were terming free-loaders, had become unconvincingly avuncular.

‘Erich…’ That he knew my name increased my suspicions. ‘If I may presume to call you so… our hosts, whose tastes and opinions I profoundly respect but cannot be said to share, tell me you are in part English. Well…’ he tapped me as he would a barometer, ‘it might still be wise not to discourse too loudly on that. Not to, as it were, boast.’

It was as if I had proposed to leap on to a chair, flourish the British flag, toast both Queen Elizabeths, but he ignored my demur. ‘The English, forgive me a thousand times, are inclined to belittle the efforts of others, and claim what is not rightly their own. They have contrived, for example, to present themselves as saviours of our continent, while concealing the disreputable and furtive. You may not have been told of the Orphans Affair.’ He looked at me, expecting and receiving my headshake. ‘In the early days of Occupation, under American pressure – I have never understood their need to gratify a specialized minority – Vichy issued certificates allowing a thousand children of Hebrew persuasion to sail to England, where their generous brethren had guaranteed support.’

Whether or not intentional, his voice and manner had silenced a number of the scented, ribboned, stately, now listening, several feigning not to. ‘But London forbade it, I cannot tell you why. The children did depart, France did not in all essentials require them, but not to sainted Albion but to Poland for what it was agreed to call resettlement. It is a grievous example of English adaptability. London’s flair for spiritual imperception befitting a nation built upon opportunism. England or, if you like Britain, indeed Great Britain, despite its fanfares and investments, in this light actually lost the war.’