A World of My Own Read online

  The girl replied, ‘The only thing is—don’t let them put you up in a hostel if you stay the night.’

  ‘Aren’t there hotels?’

  ‘They are just as bad.’

  I had decided to do nothing about my canvassing. All I longed for was to see Horden. I had planned to be back in London for dinner, but all the same I enquired about a late train when I got out. I was a little apprehensive that it might have already left and I would find myself staying in a disagreeable hostel. However all was well, there was a late train at 10.25.

  The girl took my hand and told me she would show me the town. I said, ‘First the two of you will have a drink with me.’ I could see the bars were full of laughing people. ‘You are not teetotallers?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ the girl said.

  ‘Then you choose the nicest pub.’

  All the time there stayed with me that sense of inexplicable happiness. If only I could go back one day to the little town of Horden which exists in My Own World, but not in the world I share.

  II

  Some Famous Writers

  I Have Known

  An odd thing about this World of My Own is that it contains no living writers. It seems that a writer whom I have the pleasure of knowing must die before he enters my secret world.

  Henry James

  On April 28, 1988, I found myself on a most disagreeable river trip to Bogotá in the company of Henry James. The boat left after midnight and we had to find our way along the quay in complete darkness, carrying our hand baggage. I would have turned back if it had not been for the determination of the great author, and my admiration for his work.

  What made things worse was the loud voice of an official—invisible in the darkness—who was continually shouting threats. ‘Anyone who tries to come on board without a ticket will be fined one thousand dollars.’ In the crowd pushing to get onto the boat it was impossible even to show our tickets.

  There was no place to sit—we just managed to squeeze ourselves into a corridor tightly packed, mainly by women—but I heard no complaint from Henry James. At some place on the river the boat stopped for a few minutes and a few passengers got off. Surely, I urged James, we could take the opportunity and escape too, but no, James wouldn’t hear of it. We must go on to the bitter end. ‘For scientific reasons,’ he told me.

  Robert Graves

  One night I had a happy encounter by the roadside with Robert Graves, who looked as young as when I had known him in the Common World when he lived near Oxford in 1923. He was pleased to see me again and recalled a chance meeting we had once had on the Italian frontier, which I had forgotten. I told him how much I had always admired his poems, even in the twenties, and how I still treasured a copy of his first poems, Over the Brazier.

  ‘Do you remember,’ I asked him, ‘my own awful book of verse, Babbling April, about which you were kind in the case of one poem?’ I teasingly added, ‘Now the book is fetching even a higher price at auction than your own first book.’

  Jean Cocteau

  In November 1983 I met Jean Cocteau at a party and was pleasantly surprised. As I told him frankly, I expected to find his eyes cold, but they were understanding, even affectionate. His boyfriend turned up a little later dead drunk.

  Ford Madox Ford

  Talking to Ford Madox Ford I wanted to express my admiration for one of his books, which concerned the Spanish Civil War. He said he had never written such a book. Searching in vain for the title, I went to my bookshelves to find a book of his which might list the other. I found only two volumes in the Bodley Head edition—one a book of essays which I didn’t know at all. His other titles were not given. Suddenly (several times I had begun to say For Whom the Bell … but checked myself) the title came to me—Some Do Not.

  We went for a very pretty country walk together. He told me of a legend that the Holy Virgin, standing on a hill, had bent down and picked out of the river we were passing a man who was drowning seven miles away from her.

  ‘But the land is quite flat,’ I said.

  ‘Not if you look closer. It slopes down past that old millhouse to the lock.’ People had spoken to me of the woman who kept the lock—a wonderful cook with a great interest in local history, which she tried to pass on to her sons.

  We began to cross a field—nervously on my part, because it contained one large bull and a young one that showed itself too interested in our movements. I edged back on the road and, looking round, I saw the young bull had mounted on Ford’s shoulders. He didn’t seem disturbed.

  I walked on to the lock to wait for him. There was a delicious smell of cooking and the woman was talking to a neighbour. The lock was just at the entrance to a small town. Ford joined me. The woman said she recommended soup and fish. We said we would go into the town and buy a bottle of wine. She offered to send her son, who was dressed in a sort of smock like an old-time agricultural labourer, but we insisted on going. As we went Ford said to me, ‘Have you noticed that men don’t like wearing anything that comes below the knee?’

  T.S. Eliot

  I was working one day for a poetry competition and had written one line—‘Beauty makes crime noble’—when I was interrupted by a criticism flung at me from behind by T.S. Eliot. ‘What does that mean? How can crime be noble?’ He had, I noticed, grown a moustache.

  W.H. Auden and Evelyn Waugh

  Rather strange circumstances brought the two writers together. I had been part of a group who had managed to beat a gang of guerrillas, but the chief of the gang, Wystan Auden, had escaped. He was hidden somewhere in the brushwood which we were carefully searching. I had armed myself with a kitchen knife, for he was the most dangerous of our enemies. Suddenly he broke cover and dashed into a nearby house. He had been shot by Evelyn Waugh and was bleeding from his wounds.

  I followed him and stuck my kitchen knife into his side, but he seemed unhurt by my blow and began a literary discussion of which, strangely enough, I can remember nothing.

  Next night I found myself at a party, again with Auden, and I do remember our conversation then. I expressed my preference for living in England rather than in the United States because English literature was far richer than American. Shakespeare made all other writers into dwarfs and there could be no jealousy among dwarfs. American literature, having no such giant, gave room for jealousy.

  Auden replied that all the same he was content in America. Although he was no scientist, he held a position in the science faculty of the university. He gave an impression of lazy well-being, tilted back in his chair.

  I said, ‘It would be fun if you could discover one small scientific principle so that we could speak of “The Auden Digit”.’

  Our hostess now left us alone, saying, ‘Help yourselves to drinks.’ We both agreed that the larger the bottle of whisky, the easier it was to welcome her invitation.

  D.H. Lawrence

  It was the Duke of Marlborough who introduced me to D.H. Lawrence. I found him younger and better groomed than I had expected. He was quite friendly towards my work.

  Sartre

  I remember having a discussion with Sartre. I had made notes of various questions to ask him, and I tried to be very precise. I apologized for the badness of my French, which prevented me from being as precise as I wanted to be, and Sartre said kindly, ‘You speak French very well, but,’ he added, ‘I don’t understand a word you say.’

  Then he became amiable and referred to a book of mine which Robert Laffont had published in France, the English title being The Origin of Brighton Rock. It was a reproduction of a childish manuscript in brown ink—a story with animal characters—and it was illustrated by Beatrix Potter. Sartre very much admired her drawings, but he said nothing of my writing.

  Solzhenitsyn

  I met Solzhenitsyn one day in 1976, with another man who was speaking of a new magazine he was planning, and I suggested he should ask Solzhenitsyn to contribute to the first six numbers. He replied very insultingly that he couldn’t bear Solzhen
itsyn’s small eyes and his high hypocritical moral tone.

  On another occasion I was giving a party for Solzhenitsyn, who seemed to be known more as a painter than as a novelist, in my apartment in Moscow, which was crowded with pictures even along the passages. He was late and I had my doubts whether he would be allowed to come. I had left the door ajar to show that we were not afraid. I wondered whether he would enjoy his visit because there were so many twittering ladies around.

  A stocky man in a beard whom I recognized as a KGB type arrived at the door and I thought we were in for trouble, but then I saw that Solzhenitsyn was with him, very badly dressed. The bearded man had some children with him and, having delivered the painter, he turned to go downstairs. I ran after him, thinking it was politic, and asked him if he would like a cup of tea. He said no, but if his children could have some caramels.… I took them from a bag which I had bought a few days earlier for my grandchildren. Suddenly he began to show an interest in the pictures. ‘They are so lovely,’ he said, and for a moment I thought he was going to weep with longing and nostalgia. I took him along the passage and showed him more. I was looking for a large painting of Solzhenitsyn’s to show him what a great painter his prisoner was, but it had mysteriously vanished—I could find only a small one. I deliberately did not take him into a room which contained only Art Nouveau.

  Edgar Wallace

  I met Edgar Wallace only once, at a party, and he told me he preferred his Australian stories but they were not a success because they offended English readers. I asked him about his hardback rights and he said that his publisher, Collins, was putting them up to auction. As we left the party together he asked me jokingly if I was responsible for the story going around that he had had sexual relations with E.M. Forster. I denied it and said I thought the true story concerned his relations with Hamish Hamilton.

  III

  In the Secret Service

  My experiences in M.I.6 in My Own World were far more interesting than the desk work which I performed during three years in the Common World. Curiously enough, of the dozen or so characters I knew then only a couple found their way into the world I am writing of now. So perhaps the Official Secrets Act did cast its shadow even there. Of my experiences perhaps the most adventurous, and more in the spirit of the CIA than of M.I.6, was a certain mission to Germany.

  I remember entering a richly furnished drawing-room where Goebbels was sitting in a gilt armchair. There were several other people in the room and I stood by a marble mantel waiting my opportunity, for I had with me a secret weapon for killing Goebbels—a cigarette of which the fumes would be quickly fatal if inhaled.

  I tried to stand close to my victim, holding my cigarette where the fumes would reach him, but I grew impatient and thrust the end of the cigarette up his nostril, then fled from the room. I hoped that the poison would act quickly, and that there would be a confusion which would delay pursuit.

  The street was empty and I turned right—then, realizing that I might be seen from the windows, I came back, keeping too close to the wall to be visible, and turned left. I took several side streets, but I had to return to the main street because I had been instructed to go to the North Station and take a train. There were no soldiers or police in sight, but of course they might now be waiting ahead of me.

  I was tempted to turn into a park where there were long empty vistas, but I obeyed orders and almost at once the station came in view—a small local station. Here I found my contact, and a train was already coming in. I took two tickets to the end of the line and realized too late that I had made a bad mistake, for the end of the line proved to be Wapping, and surely to take a ticket to Wapping betrayed me as a foreign agent. The frontier station was the station before Wapping, and I was certain that there we would be intercepted. However we must have passed safely through or I would not be alive now to tell the story.

  Somehow I learnt of some new material concerning Kim Philby. Apparently he had recruited Ernest Hemingway to report on refugees from Hong Kong. Hemingway was very short of money and he earned in this way about five pounds a week, which he badly needed for his family.

  In 1980 I met the Russian ambassador at a large party. I spoke to him just before leaving and asked him if he would like to read a critical piece which I had written about M.I.6. He said he would. I had no sense of being a traitor—it seemed to me a good thing for both sides that he should read it.

  On one occasion I was catching a plane to Dakar, but there was some confusion at the airport when I had to send a telegram to the M.I.6 representative there announcing my arrival next morning. From Dakar I would be going on to Freetown in Sierra Leone, where Trevor Wilson, whom I had known in the last world war and also in Vietnam, was our representative. I happened to overhear a crossed line on the telephone. Some official was asking for a photo of me—apparently the Chinese Press Bureau could supply one. ‘They’ll make me look like a Chinaman,’ I thought to reassure myself.

  In London I had been working with others in a large room resembling my old sub-editors’ room at The Times. I was investigating a double agent who seemed to be connected with a German spy called Serge. I was told that the head of M.I.6 was particularly interested in the case and I felt a certain pride in telephoning him directly in front of my colleagues.

  My immediate superior, who much resembled George Anderson, the chief home sub-editor on The Times in my days there in the twenties, told me, ‘I doubt whether he’ll speak to you. He’s just ordered his glass of port.’ But speak to me C did, beginning the conversation by exclaiming at what libellous articles had appeared in two weeklies, the Spectator and the New Statesman, the week before. ‘We’ll sue unless they can prove their facts,’ I said, ‘and this week too.’

  C then came down to see me—a trim, amiable little man with a monocle. One of my colleagues—who closely resembled Colonel Maude, who had been assistant chief sub-editor when I was on The Times—joined in our talk. I recounted how this week the New Statesman had printed that the former C had left top secret information addressed to the head of the Foreign Office lying on his desk for anyone to read.

  In June 1965 I found myself back in West Africa for the Secret Service. At a railway station my bags were stolen by an African whom I had mistaken for a porter. I went to see the English Stationmaster—a typical colonial type—in his office. ‘Can I speak to you?’ I asked and he replied rudely, ‘Not now.’

  I became angry and insisted. I knew he disliked me because of my undefined position in the colony. An African was brought before me, dressed in a long white robe, and I said he was certainly not the thief. The man had been travelling by the same train and I asked him if he had seen anything. At that moment I saw out of the corner of my eye someone with the same striped shirt that the thief had worn.

  ‘This is the man,’ I said, but when he turned his face I saw that he was a wizened white man.

  Later that year I was working in Turkey for M.I.6 and I found myself in serious trouble. I had asked for an increase in salary and this had led to a long inquisition. It had begun discreetly enough when they wanted to know how much a year I spent on drinks. As I got all my drinks duty free at airports I couldn’t produce a figure higher than two hundred pounds, which, I think, they regarded with suspicion.

  A new man, a General Gates, arrived in uniform from London and started going the rounds of the big lounge in which we sat, introducing himself. My mistress was with me, looking very pretty, wearing an expensive fur jacket. I said, ‘It’s not a question of wasting money—I could earn much more if I got out of the Service and went home.’

  I felt myself under suspicion of treachery. The general reached me on his rounds and coldly extended two fingers. He said he was going to read us a list of people in the organization who had proved unsatisfactory.

  As a deliberate act of defiance I began to walk away, but I saw that my mistress remained talking to one of my colleagues. It seemed strange to me that the general was going to speak in her presence. I
suspected that he had assumed she was my wife and had been thoroughly vetted.

  A woman stopped me. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Shopping.’

  I saw the woman looking with suspicion at my mistress’s face. She was probably wondering whether I could afford such a mistress on my salary. She said, ‘We’ve received a message from Egypt. They want you there because of your knowledge of Cairo.’

  ‘That’s absurd,’ I said. ‘I don’t know anything of Cairo. I’ve only stopped off there once between planes.’ I felt convinced when I looked at her that M.I.6 were planning to have me murdered there.

  I decided to ask for political asylum in Turkey and I went to the immigration authorities. They refused to help me, but I told them to think again, and I showed them evidence I had of a bribe of five hundred pounds which had been taken by the head of their service.

  All seemed to settle down and I was sent on to a French tropical town as an M.I.6 officer to join another officer. A senior officer whom I will call M had just come on another tour of inspection. I rather unkindly described him to my colleague as an obvious Secret Service type—‘a cross between a foxy businessman and a major.’

  As usual much of one’s work consisted of giving an impression of work, and M was suitably impressed. We spent most of our time in the hotel. Someone there raised a hand in greeting. This gave me an opportunity. I told M, ‘He’s in the colonial administration. I knew him in Saigon.’