Esprit de Corps (5 page)

Physically he was on the small side, pigeon-chested and with longish arms which ended in fingers stained bright yellow with nicotine. He had the mournful innocent eyes of a mongrel. “Ponting,” I said, “you'd better have a little rest before dinner.” He did not protest, but leaning heavily against me in the lift he said under his breath, but with conviction: “If ever I get the Nobel Prize it won't be for nuclear physics.” In my heart of hearts I could not help agreeing with him.

He laid himself out on his bed, kicked off his shoes, folded his arms behind his head, closed his eyes and said (in the veritable accents of Charlie McCarthy): “Quack. Quack. Quack. This is Ponting calling.” Then in a different voice: “Did you say Ponting? Surely not Ponting.” Then reverting again to the dummy he so much resembled: “Yes Ponting.
The
Ponting, Ponting of Pontefract.”

“Ponting,” I said severely.

“Quack Quack,” responded the dummy.

“Ponting, I'm going,” I said.

He opened his eyes and stared wildly round him for a moment. “Is it true that the Ambassador lives on nightingale sandwiches?” he asked. There were tears in his eyes. “The
Daily Express
says so.” I gave him a glance of cold dignity.

“I shall speak to you tomorrow,” I said, “when you are sober.” I meant it to sting.

By eleven o'clock next morning Ponting had not appeared and I sent the office car for him. He was looking vague and rather scared and had a large woollen muffler round his throat. His eyes looked as if they were on the point of dissolving, like coloured sweets. “Old man,” he said hoarsely, “was there something you wanted?”

“I wanted to take you to H.E., but I can't take you looking like an old-clothes-man.” He gazed down at himself in wonder. “What's wrong with me?” he said. “I bet you haven't got a shirt on under that scarf.” I had already caught a glimpse of a pyjama jacket. “Well, anyway,” said Ponting, “I can sign the book, can't I?”

I led him shambling through the Chancery to the Residence which I knew would be deserted at this hour. He made one or two hypnotist's passes at the Visitors' Book with streaming pen and finally delivered himself of a blob the size of a lemon. “It was the altitude,” he explained. “My pen exploded in my pocket.” I was busy mopping the ink with my handkerchief. “But you came by train,” I said, with considerable exasperation, “not by air.” Ponting nodded. “I mean the altitude of the Leaning Tower of Pisa,” he said severely.

I led him back to the Chancery door. “Can I go back?” he asked humbly. “It takes a few days to acclimatize in a new post; H.E. won't be shirty with old Ponting, will he?”

“Go,” I said, pointing a finger at the iron gates of the Embassy, “and don't come back until you are ready to do your job properly.”

“Don't be shirty, old boy,” he said reproachfully. “Ponting will see you through.”

“Go,” I said.

“In my last post,” said Ponting in a brooding hollow sort of way, “they said I was afflicted with dumb insolence.”

He traipsed down the drive to the waiting car, shaking his head sadly.

I was contorted with a hideous sense of desolation. What was to be done with a ventriloquist who played the banjo and spent half his time talking like a duck?

I went into the Chancery and took down the F.O. List to examine Ponting's background. His foreground had become only too apparent by now. He had had a number of posts, none of which he had held for more than a month or so; he had been moved round the world at breakneck speed, presumably leaving behind him in each town the indelible scars of a conduct which could only be excused by reference to the severest form of personality disorder. “Bitter fruit,” I said to Potts the archivist. “Look at this character's record.” He put on his spectacles and took the book from me. “Yes,” he said. “In every post it would seem to be a case of retired hit-wicket. Poor Ponting!”

“Poor Ponting!” I said angrily. “Poor me!”

After that I did not see Ponting for several weeks. Once, late at night, my Head of Chancery surprised him in the lounge of his hotel doing a soft shoe routine and playing the banjo to a deeply attentive audience of partly sentient journalists. The heavy smell of plum brandy was in the air. In those days it cost about fourpence a glass. Ponting did a little song, a pitiful little spastic shuffle, and brought the performance to an end by pulling out his bow tie to the distance of a yard before letting it slap back on to his dicky. Antrobus, then first secretary, witnessed all this with speechless wonder. “By God,” he said fervently, “never have I seen an Embassy let down like this. He popped his cheek at me in a dashed familiar fashion and said he had once acted in a pierrot troupe on Clacton pier. I couldn't bring him to his senses. He was …” words failed him. He reported the matter to H.E. who, from the armoury of his diplomatic experience, produced the word which had eluded Antrobus. “Bizarre,” he said gravely. “I gather this fellow Ponting is a little bizarre.”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“It's awfully peculiar,” he said. “Your predecessor was an Oxford Grouper. He was bizarre too. At press conferences he would jump up and testify to the most awful sins. Finally the press protested.” He paused. “If you don't mind my saying so,” he said, “a large proportion of the Information Section in the F.O. seems a bit … well, bizarre.” I could see that he was wondering rather anxiously what my particular form of mental trouble might be.

“I'm afraid Ponting will have to go.”

“Well, if you say so. But as he's been civil enough to sign the book I must give him a meal before he leaves.”

“It would be unwise, sir.”

“Nevertheless I will, poor fellow. You never know what he has on his mind.”

“Very good, sir.”

From then on Ponting became a sort of legendary figure. I tried to find him from time to time but he never seemed to be in. Once he phoned me to say that he was taking up a lot of contacts he had made and that I was not to worry about him. He had made a hit with the press, he added, everybody loved old Ponting and wanted him. I was so speechless with annoyance I forgot to tell him that telegrams suggesting his recall had already been sent to the Foreign Office. One day Antrobus came to my office; he appeared to be within an ace of having a severe internal haemorrhage. “This man Ponting”, he exploded, “must be got out of the country. Britain's good name.…” He became absolutely incoherent.

“What's he done now?” I asked. Antrobus for once was not very articulate. He had met Ponting, dressed as a Roman centurion, walking down the main street of the town at twelve noon that morning. He had been, it seemed, to a fancy dress ball given by the Yugoslav ballet and was on his way back to his hotel. “He was reeling,” said Antrobus, “absolutely reeling and speechless. Rubber lips, you know. Couldn't articulate. And the bastard popped his cheek at me again. And gave me a wink. Such a wink.” He shuddered at the memory. “And that's not all,” said Antrobus, his voice becoming shriller. “That's by no means all. He rang Eliot at three o'clock in the morning and said that H.E. didn't understand the Trieste problem and that he, Ponting, was going to openunilateral negotiations with Tito in his own name. I gather he was prevented by the tommy gunners on Tito's front door from actually carrying out his threat. Mark me, we shall hear more of this.” Ponting's future never looked darker. That afternoon we got a call from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. They wished to deliver an
aide mémoire
to the Embassy. Montacute went. He was the new Counsellor. He came back an hour later mopping his brow. “They say Ponting is a Secret Service agent. Unless we withdraw him he'll be declared
persona non grata.”
I gave a sigh of relief. “Good. This will force the F.O.'s hand. I'll get off an Immediate.” I did. The answer came back loud and clear that evening:
“Edgar Albert Ponting posted to Helsinki to leave by earliest available means.”

Armed with this telegram I set out to find him. He was not at the hotel, nor at the only two restaurants available for foreigners. He was not at the Press Club though Garrick of the
Mirror,
who was expiating his sense of frustration in triple
slivovitzas,
told me he'd seen him. “He was trapped in the lift some hours ago. Dunno where he went afterwards.” I finally ran him to earth in a Balkan
bistro
with an unpronounceable name. He was sitting at the bar with a girl on each side. His face was lifted to the ceiling and he was singing in a small bronchial voice:

I'm the last one left on the corner,

There wasn't a girl for me,

The one I loved married anovver,

Yes anovver, yes anovver,

Oo took 'er far over the sea.

He was so moved by his own performance that he began to cry now, huge round almost solid tears which rained down and marked the dusty bar. This sort of behaviour is fairly normal among Serbs whenever they are drunk and the tragedy of The Great Panslav idea comes to mind. The girls patted him sympathetically on the back. “Poor old Ponty,” said Ponting in hollow self-commiserating tones. “Nobody understands Ponty. Never felt loved and wanted.” He blew his nose insanely in a dirty handkerchief and drained his glass. This cheered him. He said in a good strong cockney voice:

Come fill me with the old familiar jewce

Mefinks I shall feel better bye and bye
…

“Ponting,” I said. “There's some news for you.”

He took the telegram in shaking fingers and read it out slowly like a peasant reading the Creed. “What's it mean?” he said.

“You're off tomorrow. There's a crisis in Helsinki which brooks of no delay. Ponting, the F.O. have chosen
you.
Your country is calling.”

“Ta ra ra ra,” he said irreverently and stood to the salute. We were all irresistibly impelled to do the same, the Serbian girls, the bartender and myself. It was the last memory I was to carry away of Ponting. I have often thought of him, and always with affection and respect. Some years ago I saw that he had transferred to the Colonial Office, and from that day forward, believe it or not, you could hardly open a newspaper without reading about a crisis in the colony where Ponting happened to be posted. Maybe it's only the sheer momentum of Ponting's influence which is pushing the Empire downhill at such a speed. I shouldn't be at all surprised.

6

White Man's Milk

“The Grape,” said Antrobus with a magisterial air as he stared into the yellow heart of his Tio Pepe, “the Grape is a Rum Thing. I should say it was the Diplomat's Cross—just as I should say that in diplomacy a steady hand is an indispensable prerequisite to doing a job well.… Eh? The tragedies I've seen, old boy; you'd never credit them.”

“Ponting?”

“Well, yes—but I wasn't even thinking of the element of Human Weakness. But just think of the varieties of alcoholic experience which are presented to one in the Foreign Service. To take one single example—National Days.”

“My God, yes.”

“To drink vodka with Russians, champagne with the French,
slivovitz
with Serba,
saki
with Japs, whisky and Coca Cola with the Yanks … the list seems endless. I've seen many an Iron Constitution founder under the strain. Some get pooped by one drink more than another. There was a Vice-Consul called Pelmet in Riga.…”

“Horace Pelmet?”

“Yes.”

“But he didn't drink much, did he?”

“No. But there was one drink which he couldn't take at all. Schnapps. Unluckily he was posted to Riga and then Oslo. At first he was all right. He used to get slightly dappled, that was all. Then he started to get progressively pooped. Finally he became downright marinated. Always crashing his car or trying to climb the sentries outside the Embassy. We managed to hush things up as best we could and he might have held out until he got a transfer to a wine-growing post. But what finished him was a ghastly habit of ending every sentence with a shout whenever he was three or four schnapps down wind. You'd be at a perfectly serious reception exchanging Views with Colleagues when all of a sudden he'd start. You'd hear him say—he started quite low in the scale—“As far as I, Pelmet, am concerned”—and then suddenly ending in a bellow: “British policy IS A BLOODY CONUNDRUM.” I heard him do this fourteen times in one evening. The German Minister protested. Of course, poor Pelmet had to go. They held him
en disponsibilité
for a year or so but no Chief of Mission would touch him. He died of a broken heart I believe. Took to wood-alcohol on a big scale. Poor fellow! Poor fellow!”

He sighed, drained his glass and raised a long finger in the direction of the bar for reinforcements. Merlin the steward replenished the glasses silently and withdrew.