The Only Poet (24 page)

But for the most part it was ecstasy, if they embraced, or if they did not. Perhaps George's highest ecstasy was when for three days he had spared her his passion, and he felt in tune with her purity, so that like her he was unassailable. He felt a great pity for all other human beings. He even thought of the poor fat and mottled old fraudulent medium who had written to him about his article, and routed her address out of his notebook, and sent a letter telling her not to despair, because there was some truth in spiritualism, there were mediums so holy that they could pierce the veil between the worlds and could let loose the radiance of eternity on mortal man. It was unfortunate that just after that his passion broke loose and he was her lover more urgently for a night than, he thought, any man had any right to be to his wife. He was afraid he had offended her, for she was very remote all that morning, and would not go out with him, saying she wanted to write a letter. But she had really written a letter, she had nearly finished the box of pale blue fancy stationery they had bought.

As the time for his return drew nearer his distress grew more unconcealable. He would bury his face in the pillow, groaning, ‘I don't want to go back!' And she, poor thing, thinking she understood, thinking merely that he meant that he had been happy here and did not want to go back to his work, was kind to him. Sometimes he even played with the idea of not telling her. But he would not let the dead that are damned master him quite to that extent; even if he invoked their aid after he did it, he must align himself with the beloved saved by that one act of confession. He must, to raise one practical point, give her the chance of leaving him, of deciding, even though she would forgive his prostitution of what was to her a holy cult, whether she could face being his wife if he was exposed as a fraud. Remembering the sickening hours he had spent in a Public Library reading up the exposure of Momma in the nineties, he felt he had to put that to her; although he meant to put it to her in the dark house, where Momma's raps under their feet might somehow turn the balance.

So she said again, ‘You look so white!' when the cab stopped among the grassy ruts in the road that was already shadowed by the butt of the hill in front of the afternoon sun. George smiled at her, and told her to take her time in collecting the smaller packages, and lifted out the suitcases. Very slowly he carried them up the path and rang the bell at the front door. The patterns of clear glass on the panes of frosted glass seemed to let out darkness into the day, instead of letting the day into the darkness, as it was meant. When the old daily maid came he said, ‘How are you, Mary?' and carried the suitcase into the hall. For a minute he stood feeling the full weight of the shadow on his shoulders. Then his eye was caught by something on the hall table, and he bent forward. Then he straightened himself again and looked down the black staircase that led down to the basement. ‘Poor old Father!' he said. ‘Poor old Momma.'

He turned and went back into the garden, and called out to the cabman who was unstrapping the bigger suitcase, ‘No, wait a minute.' He was not sure whether he would ever take Ivy into this house. He thought not. There was a nice big villa opposite the station which called itself a Private Hotel, and they could stay there till he had settled up everything. There was a nice big garden where Ivy could sit. He suspected her of needing sun and fresh air as much as he did. He went to meet her as she came through the gate, took some of her packages, and began to lead her about the garden. ‘Here's where a big clump of snowdrops comes up every spring,' he said, and was touched to see that though nothing could be less interesting, she was interested for his sake. Abruptly he asked her if she would mind very much if they gave up being mediums, if they sold this house and went to somewhere like Swanage and kept a shop; and because he saw in her eyes the look of a trapped creature that feels at last kind fingers loosening the spring on its leg, he looked away and squeezed her arm and said, ‘That's what we'll do, then.' Then his eyes went back to the patch of earth where the snowdrops came, and he said irrelevantly, ‘Poor Momma, poor Momma.' He hardly knew why he said it, he was only filling in time while he wondered whether he would or would not tell her about the two pale blue envelopes, both readdressed, that he had found lying side by side on the hall table. But it did not matter, it would be all right anyway.

Madame Sara's Magic Crystal

This savagely satirical short story lampoons the Allies' attitude towards Yugoslavia and its factions during the Second World War, as Rebecca West perceived it. It was found in manuscript and typescript form in a file marked ‘Unpublished'. The reason for this is to be found, Diana Stainforth writes, ‘in Rebecca West's diary/memorandum of 1942/44, where she says, concerning a visit to Buckingham Palace, “There I met Sir Orme Sargent, Assistant Under-Secretary of State for the Foreign Office, whom I had last seen when I lunched with him at the Ritz. He had persuaded me that the recognition of Marshall Tito was made by reason of our military necessities, and for no other reason. I had sent him ‘Marshal Pierrot' (the alternative title), a parody of our press comments on Tito, which imagined the emergence of such a Communist puppet in France, and had informed him I was not publishing it, thus giving guarantee of my willingness to sacrifice myself to the needs of the country”.'

Marshal Pierrot

I
n the North of London a wedge-shaped block of flats balances on the top of an Express dairy which is situated between a cemetery and a reservoir much used by sea-gulls in time of storm. In the topmost of the flats Madame Sara, clad in a long robe of clairvoyants' purple, is to be found sitting among that rickety kind of bamboo furniture which is so often found on the frontier between the worlds. She is much the least authentic crystal-reader I have ever discovered in a lifelong search for the psychically gifted, but I frequent her society less for the sake of her revelations of the future than for the beautiful example she affords of fidelity in love. At the turn of the century she had a love affair with a journalist, which she now dismisses lightly by remarking how bad and mad and sad it was, but oh! how it was sweet. All the same she never sees anything in her crystal except newspaper-cuttings. An occasional private letter may creep in, but very rarely. I consider that after forty-three years that is a feather to stick in Fleet Street's cap.

Usually I get little entertainment from her crystal-reading. I can wait till next Sunday to read the cookery column from
The Sunday Pictorial,
which is the kind of thing her unconscious digs up from the future. But the other day I got something from her which interested me. I don't, mind you, believe a word of it. It is plainly impossible that we should ever betray a number of French generals, and that we should ever impose on France first an unauthorized Commander-in-Chief and then a puppet Government. Yet, somehow, the whole thing seems to remind me of something. But I will let my readers judge for themselves.

(From the
Daily News-Lamentations,
15 May 1944)

The present struggle will probably be known to historians as the Half-hearted War. It is unfortunate that the inertia which has always characterized the Prime Minister seems from the very outset to have left its mark on the enterprise, which is supremely important because it practically marks our first entrance into the fighting arena – of the Second Front. We start this enterprise with a black mark against us, in view of our inexplicable tardiness in embarking on it. Readers will remember that it is more than a year since a Gallup Poll of children under eight showed that seventy-five per cent of little boys of that age and seventy-two per cent of little girls could understand that to reach the Continent, it was only necessary to cross the Channel.

It must now be admitted that, though the invasion has now started, we are doing little to lift that black mark from our name. No detached observer can doubt that the Second Front is being grossly mishandled. For what reason it is hard to understand, there have been heavy casualties; and the failure to establish complete social order in the invaded areas, even after as long a period as three weeks has elapsed since the first landings, can only be ascribed to widespread Fascist sympathies in our military and administrative units. Progressive opinion must keep a vigilant eye on the course of events, and must remember that if we want an early victory against Fascism we must always be ready to blame without reserve every person who is holding any position of responsibility whatsoever, and outside that field of certainty must be ready to suspect everything, of whatever nature. The one source of satisfaction in an otherwise gloomy landscape is the emergence in France of what seems to be likely to be a real popular leader, in the person of Marshal Pierrot. His partisan troops have apparently done valiant work all over France, which it may be hoped will act as an inspiration to the British and French regular armies. His firm and manly proclamations, which declare that he and his men, who number about a hundred thousand alone, can claim to represent France, strike a sound democratic note.

(From any newspaper, Madame Sara couldn't say which. 17 May 1944)

As well as the communiqués issued from the British and French military headquarters, there has been a bulletin issued by Marshal Pierrot. He states that his men have had brushes with the enemy at Tours, Orléans, Bourges, Clermont-Ferrand, and many other points in Central France. A bridge near St Etienne has been destroyed, and the Paris-Lyons railway has been blown up at several points.

(From the report of a correspondent attached to French Military Headquarters, published in any newspaper, 19 May 1944)

… Towards dusk a painful incident occurred. Some of the troops returning from the engagement I have just described made contact with certain French guerillas, believed to be followers of the so-called Marshal Pierrot. The regular troops hailed them as friends, but the guerillas opened fire and killed and wounded many of them.

(Again from any newspaper, 15 June 1944)

Marshal Pierrot's Radio Station today broadcast yet another attack on the French Regular Armies now fighting on the Second Front. He declares that his partisans frequently find themselves attacked by German and French regulars acting in concert, and that they have found many documents proving that certain French Generals have signed pacts with various German commanders, promising them immunity from aggressive action, provided that they themselves are left free to hunt down Marshal Pierrot and his men.

(From the
Daily Toiler,
17 June 1944)

We are able to give the text of an agreement between General de Chose, commander of the French armies in the Loire district, and General von Ding, commander of the German armies in the same area. This shameful document was apparently signed the day after General de Chose and his gang of traitors had landed on the shores of France in barges made by the blood and sweat of British working-men. It provides that General de Chose should hand over to the Germans twenty tanks, thirty Bren guns, a number of Wellington boots, and four thousand hand grenades, on condition that they permitted him to pass freely about the countryside to harass Marshal Pierrot and his men.

(From ‘Simon's Diary' in
The New Simpleton,
30 June 1944)

I must own that I was very favourably impressed by the three French soldiers who arrived here last week in order to acquaint British public opinion with the treachery of the French generals. Unfortunately I speak no French, and they speak no English, but what they said was translated by interpreters whose impartiality was guaranteed by their membership of the Union of Democratic Control. But in any case the quiet, unassuming manner of the three soldiers spoke for itself. I do not know why some people have been doubtful of these men because they happen to have arrived in London via Sweden. They are obviously of peasant stock, and peasants very easily lose their way when travelling. It also seems to me quite unimportant that when they first arrived in London they went to Free French headquarters, expressed themselves as anxious to rejoin the French army in France, and accepted the usual allowances, returning only after a lapse of some days to say they had made a mistake and that all the French generals were traitors. This again seems to me a very natural error for peasants to make.

Certainly, I found their story of what they had seen going on in France quite plain-sailing and convincing, though sad enough in all conscience. According to them, the French Generals always greeted each other with ‘Heil, Hitler!' ‘A bas les ouvriers!' ‘Merde les pauvres!' ‘Passez muscade!' and other recognized Fascist salutes. They made no effort to fight the Germans, and constantly entertained the German higher command to extravagant lunches and dinners. They frequently shot large numbers of their own soldiers who were reported to have democratic sympathies, and regularly went out every evening to ambush Marshal Pierrot's men, whom they brought home and tortured with utmost barbarity. All this seems very credible.

(From the
Sunday Tory,
30 July 1944)

Reports from the British Military Mission attached to the headquarters of Marshal Pierrot which, under the leadership of Brigadier Prendergast Macwhirter, MP, and Major Thomas J. Smith, DCM, are very encouraging. They suggest that in Marshal Pierrot we at last have a French leader in whom we can feel full confidence as a representative of his people, and with whom we will at last find Anglo-French collaboration a happy and easy task. He is a typical Frenchman. Born in Alsace in 1892, he fled to another country in 1914, and remained abroad until 1928 when he entered France. There he has since led an active life as a strike-leader, often acting in opposition to the orthodox Trade Unionists. He freely opposed the present war in its earlier stages, speaking eloquently at many meetings held to discourage the workers from participating in an imperialistic struggle, but after June 1941 he revised his opinion of how to serve the real interest of France, and ever since has been the life and soul of all that was significant in French resistance.
     This interesting career has made a truly magnetic personality. He is strongly built, with penetrating eyes and a firm chin, and his manner is at once simple and commanding. He is adored by his men, being stern but just. He rides on a white horse and is said sometimes to walk on the water.