Peter Vansittart - Secret Protocols

Inexorably, tapes ground on. Dow Jones, Stock Exchange, Bourse and Tokyo falls. Scared parents begging Canadian visas, a CND warrior decamping to Ireland, teenage truancy rampant, peace placards everywhere quivering like geese. A Sydenham couple allegedly gassed their baby, pleading compassion. A Bristol teacher complained that her husband and herself shared an identical nightmare of a bloody thumb-print staining a mushroom cloud. Grounds for divorce, Alex said, in seven American states. A girl rushed naked across Barnes Common, agitating for peace. Bookshops were briskly selling Atlantic charts and astrological patterns, tabloids repeating the prophecy of the fall of a citadel in a month of troubles, attributed to Nostradamus. A postcard appeared of two bandits, K and K, astride the globe, wrangling over a Cuban cigar, while midgets crawled into caves. On the Sunday, jivers massed in Piccadilly Circus, Eros draped with a poster of two bowler hats inscribed Another Fine Mess . In churches, prayers strove to avert black snow, pilotless bombers, vengeance powerful as gale force sha . As they had done a decade ago, in the last great London fog, pedestrians buckled, folded hands, knelt. The ordinary – office, school, football, bed – must soon be an act of bravado. Letters to the press foretold mobsters’ rule, a Ragnarok, Arabs and Lefties desecrating St Paul’s, Christians and looters violating mosques and synagogues. In such delirium, Eulenspiegels would caper in the Mall, the Queen light a pipe in the Abbey, dressy Warren Street car-touts transform to fuckall sharpshooters.

In Ipswich, a Rastafarian prophet promised cataclysmic retribution for regicide, adding, in afterthought, that no death was complete. Faces, upturned from shoulders drooping, shrinking, must be seeking a charismatic saviour, a John Rabe, amoral but cleansing.

A ministerial statement denied any necessity of underground shelters, adding that few were available to the general public, making the General Public sound like an unlicensed pub. Industrial absenteeism soared, roads and railways were congested, strikes were promised. Another White House bulletin declared that though the missile sites must be dismantled blockade was more effective than invasion, preferably supervised by the UN. Khrushchev retorted by indicting degenerate imperialism. On television, a science-fiction novelist, unusually cheerful, showed an animated tableau of European cathedrals rendered fragile as wax, statues melting, white flame then dissolving islands, forests, Edinburgh, to spectral blossom, whales dwindling to bone and gristle, seas rolling up in a screaming universe, the Atlantic a monstrous bubble, then a venomous drain, exposing the barnacled Grand Staircase of the Titanic . All this, he ended, smile splitting his face, should Soviet warships head for Cuba.

Embassy routine continued. Visitors arrived, secretaries stacked and filed, safes were emptied, the Miscellany Two proofs punctually delivered, though all attention was beamed on Washington, Moscow, Havana. An Oxford historian broadcast that for the first time since 1740 Britain, an allotment gone to seed, had no world role. ‘A refreshing historical turning-point.’

When the Foreign Office admitted that Mr K had ordered the fateful sailing, switchboards were slurred, then jammed. Head teachers reported hysteria in schools, mass truancy; pro-Castro marchers were assaulted near the Monument by youths arm-banded with Union Jacks and Stars and Stripes. Several councils reminded voters that they had established themselves as nuclear-free zones. Experts debated whether the Pentagon would usurp the White House, whether the crisis was best understood by those born under Libra. Hotels and restaurants lamented cancellations, though bars were crowded.

The last flick of the Great Wrath. In twenty-four hours the Soviets would sight the Line of Steel, while Cuba seethed, Congress demanded Resolute Action and Bertrand Russell denounce Kennedy and Macmillan as the wickedest men in history, worse than Hitler. Crossing roads, pedestrians glanced more at the sky than at advancing traffic. Clouds might conceal monstrosity. A tabloid guaranteed that thousands of coffins were being stacked in Epping Forest. My landlady confessed that her stomach felt like a trapped bird.

Work over, I sought nothing but streets. Cleopatra’s Needle was draped with No War. Don’t Vote. Be. A group beneath the Achilles statue remained motionless, held tight, as if frightened to move. A pub saloon exhibited a blood-red rash: MAD = Mutually Assured Destruction. My journalistic credentials gained me admittance to a college cafeteria where several recognized me as the North Star, a girl handing me a sheaf of leaflets. Action without UN remit was criminal, a Kennedy was excluded from any moral stance. Another girl clasped my arm. ‘You can tell us where to go.’ I could not, but my silence won respect and a Sudanese lecturer congratulated me for a pamphlet that he misconstrued as anti-British, supporting Russell’s Committee of One Hundred.

They were all at last alarmed, beads, tattoos, joss sticks, plastic roses, mantras failing them. Where had all the Flowers Gone? A few began a chant and counter-chant:

But it trailed away, disconsolate, helpless.

Other youth, other times: on eve of a pogrom, a Jewish child had sung:

Last spring, in this little hall, under the admonition, Support Academic Freedom, Professor Eysenck had been refused hearing for his lecture on genetics. Fascists Have No Right to Speak.

On all sides, young people were surrounding me, urging me, as if I possessed secret influence, even power. Could I telegram Khrushchev, get Russell to address them, organize a Scandinavian bloc? A Grapevine Charley excited them by relaying that three army divisions, influenced by the Sovereign Powers of Albion, had mutinied between Amesbury and Stonehenge. A vast youth in double-breasted gabardine and rainbow belt handed me an LP. ‘Top charts, man. Swings you senseless.’

Sleeve of gold trumpets, bald naked girl. Blurb in black and gold: ‘Cast Deep in Your Pocket for Loot. If You Don’t Have Bread, Knock Over that Blind Man, His Wallet’s There. If You Put the Boot In, Another Copy Sold.’

The Chimera Club, Soho, cavernous, hard-benched, smoky with candles in bottles, costly, reminded me of Left Bank boîtes I had known with Suzie: intimate, closed to the brutalities above, lulled by drink and canned jazz. The minute floor square was jammed with clasped, barely upright dancers, heads on each other’s shoulders, hot, unsteady, affecting unconcern with headlines and turmoil, though near us, an Observer literary critic, sprawled over a table, was mumbling invitations to his Welsh bunker. Opposite, the painter, Moynihan, sat brooding, muscular amongst over-bright eyes and brittle outlines. Bottles continually replaced those only half-finished, a young bearded sculptor suddenly shouted incoherently, then collapsed over his drink like a heap of washing. Mirrors, dulled, as if already scorched, distorted the angles of heads, sliced eyes apart, pumped hands into the swollen and flabby. Drooling over a blond youth, a wealthy Labourite drooled, ‘Wagner scares me rotten’, his grimace blaming the throbbing, insipid Creole rag, his voice faking what he must think proletarian.

Alex returned after a few steps with a green-suited girl, heavily mascara’d, stiff cheeked, probably drugged. A jowled, mottled face loomed between us, blue eyes moist and smeared. ‘Thank God we’re finished. Where were you in 1940, Alex?’

Alex, rumpled, scowling pantomime ruffian, coughed unmelodiously. ‘In Moscow, of course. Selling the country.’ Then resumed his account of afternoon adventures. He, too, had been entangled with the young. ‘They rushed to me for advice, as though I was a committee of public safety. Except, of course, for a few cheers for the IRA and a need to abolish the Lords, they didn’t know what they wanted. I told them that I loathed all they said and would fight to the death to prevent them saying it, but they’d not heard of Voltaire, so the joke fell flat as Mao’s profile.’