Peter Vansittart - Secret Protocols

Little was final. Profounder intimacies were still delayed, beyond words, a nakedness beyond nudity, inaccessible to mere striving, like genius, like grace. A bud slowly unfolding.

We were out of the pram, not fledglings hoping to skate to the Pole or operatic ardents vowing to love for ever, though quarrelling at breakfast. We had both known dangers, had flinched at traffic lights, avoided lifts. A few might remain, though hidden.

I visualized transparent screens between us, successively removed by a confidence, a gift, accident, until almost none remained.

Her serenity, customary though not unfailing, matched her firm bones and mouth; occasional dejection might be symbolized by the never-explained invisible limp. Her reticences might be as much policy as instinct, but I knew better than to attempt mauling her to confess secrets best kept secret. My guesses grew not from cross-examination but from movements across her face, sleeping or awake – troubled, reflective, elegiac, sportive – from half-smiles and broken-off sentences. The deep eyes, now over-bright, now melancholy, about to fade into the dim smudges beneath them, could always be overtaken by scholar’s composure or what the English call glee. Talkative in public, at home she was quiet, absorbed in work, interested in music, planning an expedition in local nonsense and whatever passed.

More rarely, she disturbed me without revealing any obvious cause for alarm. As if to someone else, she wondered, ‘Where does it lead?’ then slipped her hand in mine, soft as a mouse. On the beach, after some laughing exchange, she exclaimed, ‘One thing can make me wretched.’ Showing no emotion, only cool, professional evidence, ‘When someone looks at his watch and says it’s time to go. Go where? These farewells. Something, perhaps inevitably. It is always goodbye.’

We had not married. Clerk’s signature, mayoral sanction, ecclesiastical benisons, guaranteeing little, would tilt the stable and harmonious into the bureaucratic. She laughed that zodiacal discrepancies discouraged such performance.

Growing together, we agreed on a code word, Stendhal , to be uttered if a dispute lost good humour, echoing the silver cock deposited on the dinner table by Herr Max. Stendhal had listed diverse states of love – oriental tyranny, absolute autocracy, disguised oligarchy, constitutional monarchy, revolution – to none of which we aspired.

‘Maybe, Erich, we are a republic, a collection of cantons, autonomous but cohering.’ Looking seaward, tidy Stockholm behind us, she said, ‘Winter’s going. I need South. So, I hope, do you.’

‘I respect rules’

Dick Haylock, white-haired, white-flannelled, in dark blue college blazer, his restless face always seeming in mid-munch, told us yet again. ‘We’re a case in point. We folded our tents to leave behind unpoliced streets, horrible music, mass-kissification, and, lest we forget, the Treasury. We dumped ourselves in this blessed place, by no means perfect. But…’ he tried on the word with stately emphasis, ‘our loyalty to Her Majesty has never faltered.’ It had Agincourt ring, almost a strut, as if we had argued. ‘She deserves her dues. Very tasteworthy, as a Cambridge man might say.’

We were having drinks on the patio of Mon Repos with its dwarf palms and tubs of blue and salmon-pink geraniums, the slack Union Flag giving his claim hangdog support. He always disappointed us by not rising to salute it, remembering a king-emperor, at this hour of the Sundowner, the Peg, the Stiff One. Nadja he usually addressed as ‘Dear Lady’, failing to amuse, though refraining from kissing her hand.

With us were Daisy Haylock and Ray Phelps, another subject of the Queen, in dull grey resembling some movie character so obviously villainous that he cannot be, only the film buff unsurprised that he really is. One side of his mouth was twisted into a permanent grin, the other always rigid, so that the effect was of humour and bitterness ceaselessly jammed together. His vocabulary, though limited, could surprise, now he now said, ‘FDR never understood me.’ His glance conveyed that Nadja and I likewise failed. ‘I like to say that the more you know the better off you are. I’ve a son in the RAF. Or is it the Navy, what’s left of it? Doesn’t matter, we’ll all meet in Samarkand.’ He nodded for Dick to refill his glass, then turned to the Duty Manager, his private term for Daisy, adding, ‘Upright as a lupin.’

We had worse acquaintances than Ray, though not many. Daisy’s glass was also empty, Dick feigning not to notice. She had just mentioned his love of literature, and I thought of the books in what he called his den: Gentleman Jim , The Amateur Gentleman , Gentlemen Prefer Blondes . She herself preferred chocolate boxes, ribboned, heraldic, golden, depicting ruined castles, ancient villages, lordly gardens and, inevitably, birds.

‘In the last war…’ Dick’s monologue was so well worn that we could prompt him, Nadja sometimes doing so. ‘The Armed Forces of the Crown recommended me elsewhere. I’m still forbidden to disclose where. You’d have seen me in mufti but I could tell you…’ Instead he retreated to parliamentary imprecision. ‘I have declared, in another place…’ His face, browned but desiccated, looked away, reference to the war always inducing a brief awkwardness, because of me, whom he rated as barely forgivable German. At our first meeting he scrutinized me as though taking a risk. ‘There were some tolerable Germans, though on the wrong side.’ With Nadja he was actually more wary, treating her, she said, as if she were his very competent secretary about to give him notice. With me, he was now more at ease, speaking, when we were alone together, in washroom or the den, as though we were fellow seducers with extravagant pasts. ‘Soho ladies who lit your breeches. With them we knew where the wind blew.’

Not quite sober, he was rheumily nostalgic, ignoring Ray’s attempt to intervene. ‘Dear old Richmond! The Sweet Lass of Richmond Hill!’ His attempt to whistle petered out, and he resumed, ‘Glorious Goodwood! Better times. Lord’s, the Club, people going in and out. Ministers asking you not to pass things on. Wightman Cup girls, Indian judges, Trevor Howard. I had very strong feelings, but…’ his sudden glumness made him more sympathetic, ‘I didn’t always know what they were.’

Daisy, probably despairing of more drink, lowered her head. I felt she knew only too well the nature of Dick’s feelings. No herb-grace o’Sunday.

The dry clatter of frogs had begun, slightly less interesting than the talk. Nadja’s restlessness at Mon Repos was, as always, inadequately concealed. I recognized incipient rudeness, until she suddenly sat up very straight. ‘Has anyone met the Swiss? At Villa Florentine?’

‘I think…’ Ray Phelps began, but Dick cut in like an efficient volleyer. ‘Dear Lady, there’s a mistake. They are not Swiss. But Latvians. Less good for business.’

Latvians. At least Alain could cease deploring prevalence of Swiss. Latvians, Vello’s countrymen, possible refugees, heroes of underground Europe. But suspect, even dangerous.

Ray was insisting on free speech. He must have seen my doubts and hastened to agree. ‘Such people usually have something to hide. Still, as the Russians say – or is it the Jews? – don’t worry, it’ll get worse. This Mr Beckett is always telling us, inasmuch as we can understand him. Don’t you think?’

About to signal to Nadja, and rise, I was detained by Dick’s solemnity. ‘We’re safe as houses here. We don’t need a Home Guard. All the same… I’ve been aware of something not quite shipshape. Not urban socialist spite or would-be Maquis. Something more than the usual grumbles. Some… I can’t find a word to put it.’