The Secret Ministry of Ag. & Fish (31 page)

Miss Peacock, a delightful middle-aged lady, plump but tightly corseted, had an office on the third floor, which she shared with a bevy of ‘debs’ manning the telephones, and her
assistant, a bosomy, deep-throated woman with a sexy voice and a come-hither look. Miss Peacock was in charge of ‘Listener Research’ and enthusiastically announced – she was an
enthusiastic kind of person – that reports on the programme had declared it very lively and well constructed. It was certainly lively, I’ll grant her that but . . . well constructed?
Well, I suppose everyone is entitled to his or her opinion – even the listener!

The hard-drinking newsreader, who had a particularly melodious voice and knew it, thought he was invincible. But that second episode signalled the end of his career at the BBC. When we turned up
for work the following day, he was no longer a member of staff.

Another member of the French Section staff who disappeared overnight was a French journalist who was supposed to be preparing the early-morning press review. Perhaps he needed a break from
reading the pile of first editions of the next day’s newspapers which were always delivered to Bush House shortly before midnight, but whatever the reason, the night watchman, doing his
early-morning rounds, discovered him and a secretary, who was supposed to be working on the press review with him, lying on a sofa in the head of Section’s office – the only item of
clothing between them a pair of dark glasses. The unlucky journalist made the fatal mistake of trying to bribe the night watchman to keep his mouth shut. Without that offence, he might have got
away with it. As it was with his colleague, both he and the secretary were out on their ear by the morning.

I later bumped into him on my first visit to Paris. He was then working on a French ‘daily’ – the French are more broadminded about these youthful lapses! He offered to show me
Paris, lent me his sister’s bicycle, and we spent a pleasant Sunday cycling round the city, seeing the sights. That was in 1949. I’m not sure I would venture to cycle round Paris
today!

In a similar vein a well-known English newsreader was arrested in the early hours of the morning and taken into custody by the police. He was drunk. Cooling off at around six o’clock, he
rattled the bars of his cell, insisting loudly that they must let him out, since he had to get to Broadcasting House in time to read the seven o’clock news. The police officer was
unimpressed.

‘Oh yeah?’ he replied. ‘And I’m Father Christmas.’ Unlike television, radio is faceless, so the poor newsreader wasn’t recognized. Shortly afterwards, an
amusing cartoon was posted on the noticeboard in Bush House showing a dishevelled, barefoot announcer, with tousled hair, open-necked shirt, collarless, no tie – an unthinkable sin at the
time – standing in front of the microphone, one hand clutching the bulletin, the other holding up his trousers, bunched together at his waist, with the caption: ‘Here is the seven
o’clock news, and this is Frank Phillips reading it – because nobody knows where the hell Freddie Allen is!’

The French Section was not unlike Montague Mansions, my first glimpse of SOE. A windmill – all the office doors wide open, and interesting people whirling incessantly in the corridors. One
morning, when I’d advanced into ‘Programmes’, I was asked to look after Joyce Grenfell when she came to record a talk. She was a charming lady, very tall. I felt quite petite
trotting along beside her. I also once went up in the lift with Laurence Olivier, just him and me. I didn’t immediately recognize him – in person he seemed much smaller than on the
screen. It was only when he removed his dark glasses, smiled and said ‘hallo’ in that unforgettably beautiful voice of his that I realized who he was and almost missed my floor!

Like SOE, the World Service in those immediate post-war years was a true democracy, where everyone was equal. In the canteen, heads of sections could often be seen sharing a table and chatting
animatedly with one of the many ex-servicemen who operated the lifts. I particularly remember one of them, because he had lost an arm in the war. Many years later I met him again. He was working in
Broadcasting House, where I had gone to record an interview after one of my books had been published, and I was very touched when he recognized me. He greeted me warmly, like an old friend.
‘Bush ’Ouse is not like it was in the old days, miss,’ he confided, as we rose to my floor. ‘Different clarse a’ people working there nowadays.’

In 1950, just before I left the BBC, I voted in a general election in England for the first and last time. In those days before computers it took ages, possibly days, for the final election
results to be announced. I remember sitting on the stairs outside the Central Desk News Room on the second floor – there no longer being any more room inside – listening to the results
as they came through. I was with Pam, one of my friends from the French Section, the daughter of a well-known filmmaker. Pam was married to a chappie in the Dutch Section. I think he was there too;
we were quite a crowd. We were all biting our fingernails, being frightfully dramatic and wailing, ‘What shall we do if they don’t get in?’, ‘they’ being the Labour
Party. We’d all voted Labour, simply because our families were staunch Conservatives. Pam’s father-in-law was a minister in the recently formed Dutch government, so her husband would
most certainly have been a Labour supporter, just to be different. He may even have influenced his wife’s choice. None of us having had time to work through our rebellious stage and indulge
in our teenage crisis during the war, we were no doubt being ridiculous and having it then, fiercely opposing everything our families stood for.

Now I understand the routine. Our five children did exactly the same, in rapid succession, one after the other.

When I joined the BBC in late August 1945 I decided to put the war and my time in SOE behind me, but I discovered that I couldn’t. People from the past kept popping
up’ in unexpected places, as Buck and Lise had done. And it was inevitable that meeting them again, and being able to share in a way one was never able to share with anyone who had not been
part of ‘the racket’, kept that past alive.

In 1939, when war was declared, I had been a happy, self-assured teenager with my future mapped out. I knew exactly what I was going to do. I planned to go to Oxford and take an arts degree
before going on to study medicine: doctors in those days were often literary people. Then, after stunning the world with my incredible medical expertise, I intended to marry a tall, dark, handsome
man who would whisk me off to a thatched cottage in the country, suitably staffed of course, with a pony poking its head over a paddock gate, and there produce six boys, all with red hair.
I’d arranged it all, even down to the wedding, imagining myself floating down the aisle lost in a mist of tulle and old lace, the cathedral bells clanging, the organ thundering, and a cloud
of little pages and bridesmaids tripping along behind me. The only thing I hadn’t organized was the bridegroom! But I considered that a minor detail which could be sorted out at the last
minute!

Then Herr Hitler decided otherwise and . . . the lights went out all over Europe. When they went on again, I was no longer a happy, carefree, self-assured teenager, I was a woman, a woman who
had suffered, a very different person from the girl I had been in 1939. We were all different. It was impossible to be otherwise.

I had thought I could turn my back on the war, close that door and start afresh. But the memories seemed to colour my every waking moment and sometimes my dreams. In an effort to forget I
refused to join the club which former members of SOE had started. I shunned old friends, those I had worked with and especially those young women whose men had survived. I didn’t want to
share in their happiness. I realize now how foolish and selfish I was. But perhaps it was my way of coping.

The youth who had survived the war went crazy. They were heady with the newfound freedom peace brought, blinded by the brilliant lights blazing and flashing across the city again, drunk with the
sudden release of tension and fear, and the heartbreak of war. And I joined the crowd. London was swinging in those immediate post-war years. A spate of musicals had arrived from the United States:
Oklahoma!, Annie Get Your Gun, Carousel,
each one more gay and colourful than the one before. The Café de Paris came into its own again, and in order to attract a younger clientele
they founded the Guinea Pig Club, offering Sandhurst cadets and young subalterns an evening with dinner and the cabaret for a guinea. And, of course, ‘ringside’ tables to show the world
how young and swinging they were. Geoffrey immediately became a guinea pig, and I often made up the numbers when their party needed an extra woman.

There were rumours at the time of a budding romance between the young Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip, a handsome naval officer, and every time they arrived, or even if the princess came
with a party of friends without her handsome prince, the band would immediately break into: ‘People Will Say We’re in Love’. It was reported that one evening in the ladies’
powder room Princess Elizabeth rebuked her younger sister, Princess Margaret Rose, as she was then known, for putting on too much lipstick, whereupon Margaret was heard to reply, ‘You look
after your Empire and leave me to look after my face.’ Though how true this is, I cannot say.

A couple of days before he left Sandhurst I received an SOS from my little bro. ‘You remember Archie, don’t you?’ I didn’t. ‘He was one of the party the last time
we went to the Café de Paris,’ Geoffrey explained. ‘Henrietta was with him. Well she’s let him down. He’s frightfully cut up about it. He was taking her to the
passing-out ball on Friday and she’s changed her mind: decided at the last minute to go to her best friend’s engagement knees-up instead. It’s too late now for him to invite
anyone else, so I’ve offered him you. You’re coming to the passing-out parade, so you’ll be there anyway. I told him you’re terribly old. Twenty-four. But, as he said,
“I can’t be fussy at this stage, old chap. I’ll have to take what I can get.”’

So I swallowed my hurt pride and went. And had a wonderful time. Archie picked me up in his old boneshaker, which appeared to be held together with bits of string and sealing wax. We almost made
it to the top of the hill when it fell to bits. Archie got out, opened the bonnet, poked about, scratched his head, then gave the engine a few resounding whacks with a shooting stick. ‘I must
have run out of petrol,’ he announced apologetically, when his efforts produced no visible result. He gave me a sweet smile. ‘If you wouldn’t mind getting out and giving the old
girl a push, once we get to the top of the hill we can roll down to the garage at the bottom.’ I did mind but I didn’t see I had any choice. The other alternative would have left us
stuck there so, hitching up my trailing ball gown, I got out and pushed.

Several chauffeur-driven limousines carrying the season’s ‘debs’ to the passing-out ball cruised by, treating us to astonished stares. But no offer of help. We finally
slithered to the garage, where Archie asked the attendant for a pint of petrol. He looked at him scathingly, shook his head and cast his eyes skywards – I think he was used in impecunious
Sandhurst cadets – before complying with his request. When Archie handed him the money, he sniffed and said, ‘I s’pose you wouldn’t like me to cough in your tyres as well
while I’m at it?’ Archie assured him that it wouldn’t be necessary. We finally spluttered through the Sandhurst gates and made it to the ball in one piece. I danced till dawn to
the lilting tunes of Humphrey Lyttleton’s band, which later was not allowed to play at Sandhurst, since Humphrey had been at Eton with so many of the cadets that he was treated as one of the
party. After a splendid evening, which I wouldn’t have missed for anything, in the pink and golden light of early morning we all punted down to Bray for breakfast.

I was pleased afterwards that I had accepted this rather unusual invitation, since not long after Archie left Sandhurst to join the Gloucesters in Korea he was taken prisoner. Even in my
miserable, self-centred state, I’d have had the grace to feel guilty if I’d got on my high horse and taken umbrage and deprived him of his passing-out ball.

Shortly afterwards, in Copenhagen, I met a young Dane who asked me to marry him. Bjorn and I became engaged but mercifully, before we married, the whole situation exploded. I was terribly
unhappy, and so was he. I didn’t understand what had happened, and I don’t think he did either. I had thought I was in love with Bjorn. Perhaps I was. I realize now that I was desperate
to find the love I had lost. To be loved again. I thought that with Bjorn I could replace the love I had lost when Bill did not return, which is where I made my mistake. One cannot replace one love
with another. Each is separate and special.

Before I came to my senses, I was to go through this experience again a few years later when one of my brother’s fellow officers, who had been with him in Malaya, proposed to me. I met
Andrew at a New Year’s Eve regimental ball. I danced with him, but no more than with the other men in our party, so I was surprised when, the following morning, he rang me at the hotel where
I was staying the night and invited me to lunch. Lunch drifted into tea and, finally, he offered to drive me back to London. He said he was going that way, and that it wasn’t a detour, but I
don’t think that was strictly true. Before we parted he asked me whether I would care to accompany him on the following Saturday to a point-to-point meeting near where he was stationed. That
meeting drifted into dinner and another drive back to London. I didn’t enquire where he got his petrol coupons from. Petrol was still in short supply and strictly rationed. The following
weekend he was on duty but he invited me to the traditional curry lunch in the mess after church parade.