Peter Vansittart - Secret Protocols

A brief affair, not with a nymphet but with a solid Scottish typist, won me no access to what she termed her Diploma, and she soon departed to the superior Norwegian Embassy, Diploma intact.

Undismayed, remembering Pahlen, I energetically explored Thameside pubs, dank, slimy jetties, empty warehouses still tinged with spices, rank straw and sacking, the coarse vigour of tar and rope, of what had been the busiest port in Europe. Its moonlit waters had guided the Luftwaffe, and, like a hiccup, came temptation to throw into them wallet, visas, identity, renewing myself as a vagrant, stagehand, international courier.

This was lunacy. Rainy pavements, half-lights, uncertain vistas were exhilarating, and I remained eager for plaques, street names, statues to surrender meanings. I remembered Mother’s bewilderment by Dickens’s confession that only in crowds could he rid himself of spectres and that, without streets, he was not happy. No real gentleman, Mother ended, settling everything. London’s high-rise population must seclude other spectres, many who were not happy.

On buses, in pubs, at corners, I strove to understand London, by observing, by listening.

‘The Queen’s not interested in you, Dad.’

‘I wouldn’t be too sure of that.’

Apathetic to the blare of Haley and Presley, the unction and rhetoric of modish Theatre of Anger, of the Absurd, I saw more poignant drama in unexpected vistas of tree and lawn, the sumptuous squares – Residents Only – an old man in Richmond Park, London’s Umgebung , staring at a vandalized tree like Wilfrid before a Brancusi, a tiny child in a back alley gravely skipping, wordlessly singing, as she might have done in Troy. Off Goodge Street, a row of neat, tinted cottages must be residence of expensive whores, though when I repeated this a year later to a BBC drama producer drama was extended in her terse reply that she lived there.

London crowds, slangy, tolerant, joking, incurious, were less concerned with a Europe of Common Market, show trials, one-party despotism than with shallow war movies, the recriminations of retired generals, royal occasions, scandal. Mr Tortoise lamented that Britain was fatigued, embarrassed by past grandeurs, rebuffment at Yalta, supplication for US aid, the Suez farce. Self-mockery had replaced stoicism and purpose. He added that, in 1940, with Europe toppling, ravaged by military defeat and corruption, the British deftly convinced themselves that defeat was victory and, Blitz and invasion looming, had laughed, glad to be rid of futile Continental allies.

We stood with the Ambassador at the November Cenotaph rites, annual cohesion of monarch, arms, politics, the populace: plumes and metal, horse-hair head-dresses, flowers, sacred emblems, incantations, sacrificial solemnity. ‘But’ – Mr Tortoise was ambiguous – ‘don’t be misled.’

Sundays closed on London like a lid, darkening a fierce spirit once fanned by a rasping voice and a large cigar. Oh, to pull down the sky, wrap my head, become intoxicated with thought, free of the mournful silence, closed cafés, ill-tempered tourists. Spires threatened, passages echoed, shops were empty barracks. Yet surely, from behind corner or monument, must appear Baldur or Iduna, givers of happiness, who need no ticket, to whom managers defer, police touch caps, doors open without hands, wolves slink away.

These occur, literature emblazons them, but waiting is all, deliberate search is useless.

Any lustrous redeemer was buried in sterile winter. A wounded sun was reflected in icy puddles, flowerbeds were black. In days still short and dark, Mr Kaplan might be prowling a shadowy tunnel, a shabby tobacconist be front for conspiracy. In silly bravado, I dared myself to stand defenceless under a Kentish Town railway arch frequented by gangs. Behind drab curtains, a genius, bitter and vengeful, might be fingering codes for wholesale destruction. Baldur might prove a charming strangler, SMERSH stalker, imitation cowboy desperate for a name, Iduna a besmirching ogress or resentful ex-star.

In Hyde Park, nuclear disarmers held placards like riot shields, watched by a woman, furred, pearled, indignant. She had been very tenderly feeding robins and now straightened, glowering at me. ‘Why isn’t everything cleaned up? Abroad…’ she looked wistful, almost attractive, ‘they were allowed, well… gas.’

Becoming ethnically mixed as ancient Rome or Antioch, the capital remained unknowable, often alarming. I felt panic in a subterranean car park on brooding, thinly lit levels, familiar from gangster movies, when a sudden footfall seemed gunshot; also when an inscrutable van halted alongside me, my head within range. A fruit barrow stationed near the Embassy might hide explosives, like the single boot beneath a Clapham bench. The furtive was rival government. Our shelves had catalogues of lethal inks, poisoned washing powder and vests, hollow canes, diagrams of crossed wires and inconspicuous knobs. New versions of the Hidden Hand, World Plotters, Wise Men of Zion, the Four Just Men, Professor Moriarty, once sold on railway platforms.

In this London, doorstep salesmen were suspect. In a surreptitious leaflet a turbaned head was captioned, ‘I Want Your Job, Your Woman, Your Boys.’ Strangers’ eyes could be clues in the plot: screwed hard, they menaced.

Aerosol Man sprayed silent chorus, signatures of terror. Kill for Peace, Kaffirs Out, Jewful of Greed, Fuck Work : dark passwords, though scarcely Lenin in October. How many realized danger from an Oxfordshire house where insufficient evidence protected a woman who had placed a Russian spy as a secretary within the British atomic arms organization?

Early spring. Another London uncovering itself, graceful stages of seduction. Light broadened, trees were clotted with green, feet quickened. Madame Katrina, Earl’s Court clairvoyant, foresaw that Midsummer would give me a momentous encounter. Pending this, a thick-bearded Indian in the gardens accosted me. ‘Great Britain!’ Moist brown eyes protruded, stiffened, ‘Queen, Duke. Top Grade? No.’ Then clapped hands and disappeared. Not a miraculous saviour from golden air, nevertheless, green leaf, red blossom in patrician, electronically protected Belgravia, daffodils flaunting in the Embassy garden, all signalled good fortune. Not so the sirens floating around me, always intent on someone else. Sallow girls in the tube, dark girls on grass, girls with thrilling bottoms and Arletty eyes, laughing Italians and discreet Spaniards, Bengalis gliding in saris, glistening athletic Swedes, festive American girls high on repartee, all with escorts, making for tennis, swimming or palais de dance , to jitter like crazed marmosets.

A clear eye glittered like a key, perfume lingered after she had gone, frustration smudged the wet dream. Copulations must be seething throughout April, Bacchic seizures of life, but I had to attempt solace from scents of a box hedge, at once transporting me to Mother’s rose garden, or from a disused north London railway line vanishing into tunnels, woods, into stories. Anticipating summer harlequinades, a park band restored the Europe of Strauss and Lehar, Auber and Offenbach. I was always helpless against tunes, lulling, reclining, jaunty, teasing, thumping. An old, once loved Austrian song caught my breath:

Prayers get answered, usually ironically, stamping the month like a thumb print. I needed what the English called Fun, but, in a mischievous English way, received only answer to prayer.

On broken pavement, desolate, yet within sight of St Paul’s, I found a bomb site, a jagged turmoil of bricks, rubble, rusted metal, smashed glass, befouled tins, dark filth amongst the saplings, nettles, foxgloves – puzzling nursery name – barely natural sunflowers, swollen and garish after centuries of oblivion, now lolling over slabs of stucco. The ruin must have been preserved by City speculators, though Poles or Germans could have cleared it in a fortnight. Flowers were scentless as blisters. From them rose an apparition, not slender but thin, female, in blotched jeans, hair in Medusa tangles, eyes, circled by mascara, fixed as a lip-reader’s but cat-like with spite. The face, ill or defiant, tightened. Young but not youthful, she must see a foreigner, thus more willing to pay, and finally she touched her crotch.