Peter Vansittart - Secret Protocols

A character in a play that London had frenziedly applauded, brayed that no good causes were left. The Miscellany was now sent to the author, though without response.

Would Rilke have discerned gods in managerial England, of planning, City and parliamentary scandals, vomiting drunks and television aristocracy? But, this morning, a new Estonian poem shone like light compressed to a jewel, flashing golds and blues against London greys and vernal greens. From stories I regained old kitchen talk of learned birds, miraculous wells, trees inventing speech, the village ‘Shrewd One’ stating that no animal save the occasional bear possessed souls. For illiterates, like detectives and partisans, a bridge, footprint, low whistle had significance outside stories.

Not a poet, I planted myself in poems, with delight almost sexual chancing on Bernard Kangro’s verses.

Very tactfully, Mr Tortoise reminded me that the word soul had been the death of many poets.

In parodies of a heroic career, I was building a grandiose self: Malraux’s confidante, Trilling’s assistant, Spender’s intimate and rival editor, BBC reliable, almost a new being like Soviet Man, American Youth.

The facts dowsed such mish-mash. Midsummer was approaching, but Destiny refused an appearance. I would receive no curtain calls from posterity, was no more than prey to exile’s disease: irrational hopes and fears. Alarm at a posse of ambulances ranked opposite the Embassy, vanishing as soundlessly as it arrived. Late-night trains rushing unscheduled through post-midnight London allegedly loaded with nuclear waste. Morbid expectations dripped into dreams, telescoping the years. Rats fled Stalingrad, as, forewarned, at fire, earthquake, the voles and martens abandoned Helice, the island crushed by the sea, two millennia ago. My Midsummer Baldur, saviour and friend, princely, what Dutch called deftig , was as unlikely as Her Majesty tattooing on her thigh ‘Ban the Bomb’.

Summer offered flimsy treats: butterflies scattered above delphiniums, streets flashing with bare legs, children light-footed, perhaps light-fingered, ‘Got a fag?’ as if demanding protection money. A small coloured boy, serious, trusting, thrust at me with a leaf. ‘Is this Nature?’ A Barbados squad gaily collecting for Battle of Britain widows.

My landlady, herself a dumpling war widow, recommended the Midsummer Neighbourhood Festival. ‘It’ll do you good. Saturday. You’ll mix with the Right People.’

Possible, though with its transient population the neighbour-hood lacked neighbours.

Saturday was missal blue and green, my mood a kite, aloft yet tied to the earth of sparkling cafés and bandstands. In Paris, A Midsummer Night’s Dream had made me crave baroque transformations, passionate illusions. An English summer day could exorcize the glance over the shoulder, dangerous staircases, a warning to keep close to the wall. Morning and afternoon, merged in a pageant of calm Regency terraces, mellow gardens, sedate churches, the England of privacy, lordly strength reserved but powerful. Blemish stared down only towards evening, from a poster of a trollish riding-master, black-jacketed, peak-capped, with metallic face and belt, striding the future on huge letters, He Is Coming.

By now, the sky over the Museum was tinged red, and, beyond Bedford Square, in Coram Fields, dusk was filling with tinny, carnival percussion. Uneasy, but obedient to the landlady, I joined the crowds under coloured lights and garish advertisements: Toothpaste Cures , Have Another Pint , Flowers for All. Children’s playgrounds were ashine with stalls, kiosks, strippers’ tents, hot dog and ice cream tables, booths of Madame Katrinas, cosmic tricksters waiting behind zodiacal emblems, shuffling promises like counterfeit florins. A steamy, floodlit oval was ribboned off for tombola, small figures bouncing as if scalded for the waiters’ race and coronation of Miss Bloomsbury. Urchins smeared with chocolate and fudge capered wildly, as drums and guitars surged in swollen, electric rhythms and, ahead, dancers stamped, twisted, in fluid whirligig, swept by ever-changing lights, scarlet, violet, banana yellow, though with little exuberance. They were professional, mechanical; even the children seemed more scheming than carefree. Under a gilded canopy, youths in singlets marked Peace , Arsenal, were throwing darts into the enlarged, dark-eyed face of Anne Frank. A dim, impervious line of police stretched along Mecklenburg Square.

I hastened to a makeshift bar, drinking myself into other illusions. I was the Secret Agent, Hidden Hand, inconspicuous, negligent but, alone, armed against the underswell of crowds: favours withdrawn without warning, the guillotine at the end of the avenue. The rock beat, dodgem cars, mauve and amber flash-boards, the invitation in the latrine, assignations behind canvas, the cannabis whiff and warm, sex-ridden flesh, were all in some unconscious magnetic current, swirling towards an unseen goal, in a glare that made children’s games incongruous, the motionless police explicit and deadly.

An explosion of crimson, rush and good particles. In the manic hues, faces were dried, genderless, unfinished, emitting dull cheers for a giant, dazzling gin bottle, ‘Spinster’s Revenge’, above a piebald tower. Girls with bright-red grins hovered behind planks, selling balloons, toy bears, cakes, cosmetics. The music crashed, heavy air drooped, a flame waved like a sash beside a black, spring-heeled juggler jittering on a huge phallic cone frilled with blue bulbs, performing to a canned, Dionysiac scream, ‘Lovin’ you…’ All was muddled, congealing into a stew of teddy bears, candyfloss Queens and Mountbattens, a dwarf on crutches, a blow-up of Anthony Eden and Nasser fisting in boxer’s shorts. And then. Leaflets fluttered from the tower like shot gulls, someone stooped, picked one up, and, relay runner, slipped it to me. Europe for the Europeans. On cue, voices harsh as crowbars dragged across concrete acclaimed the unfurling of Union Jacks, distribution of The European , headlining, ‘One Free People, One Free Britain, One Free Europe’, some women yelling polecat against ‘Hordes’.

Trapped in hallucination, yet with rear-gunner attention, I glimpsed a Suzie twirling through kaleidoscopic rays clasping a blonde hippie, heard hoarse babble about the Age of Aquarius. ‘Dynamic Change Is Looming. Pisces Decadents Vanquish Hierarchical Powers of Europa and Albion.’

A chilly wind had begun, clouds sagged, dense with rain. A boy scowled, ‘She won’t go the whole hog.’ Leathered Freikorps in square black glasses barged past, whistling at a crude pennant, telegrams of hate, depicting Khrushchev as an ogling pudding, then more, Union Jacks, glaring birds from a diseased tropic and, in searchlight strength, a screen was covered with a bearded, fur-capped ape bayoneting a map of Europe.

‘More words to the square breath. To ditch the international punt-about, political anarchy, we must scrap potty nation-states, what Buchan called shoddy little countries. If I knew how to spit I’d do it now, at Northern Ireland and the promise of independent Scotland, let alone talkative Wales. Who in cock-robin needs Maltas, Luxemburgs, a Basque land, with UN votes outnumbering their betters? The Grand Duchess of Gerolstein is as obsolete as stout Cortez. Petty loyalties corrode like bad ink. To weep for Lithuania is tinker-bell sentimentality. I haven’t much time to explain, though see that it’s necessary.’