Esprit de Corps (8 page)

“His final feat of
placement
—he was dealing with central European Politburo members of equal rank—was to have the Embassy dining-table cut in half and a half-moon scooped out of each end. When it was fitted together again there was a hole in the middle for H.E. to sit in while his guests sat round the outer circle. Polk-Mowbray was furious. He suffers terribly from claustrophobia and to be hemmed in by this unbroken circle of ape-like faces was almost more than flesh and blood could stand.

“On another occasion De Mandeville dressed all the waiters in Roman togas with laurel wreaths: this was to honour the twenty-first birthday of the Italian Ambassador's daughter. On the stroke of midnight he arranged for a flock of white doves to be released—he had hidden them behind screens. Well, this would have been all right except for one Unforeseen Contingency. The doves flew up as arranged and we were all admiration at the spectacle. But the poor creatures took fright at the lights and the clapping and their stomachs went out of order. They flew dispiritedly round and round the room involuntarily bestowing the Order of the Drain Second Class on us all. You can imagine the scene. It took ages to shoo them through the french windows into the garden. The Roman waiters had to come on with bowls and sponges and remove the rather unorthodox decorations we all appeared to be wearing.

“But the absolute
comble
was when, without warning anyone, he announced that there would be a short cabaret to amuse the Corps at a reception in honour of Sir Claud Huft, the then Minister of State. The cabaret consisted of De Mandeville and his chauffeur dressed as Snow Maidens. They performed a curious and in some ways rather spirited dance ending in an abandoned
can-can.
It was met with wild applause: but not from Polk-Mowbray as you can imagine. He found the whole episode Distasteful and Unacceptable. De Mandeville left us complete with pigskin suitcases, flute-case, and chauffeur in the Great Rolls. We were all quite dry-eyed at the leave-taking. But it seemed to me then that there was a Moral to be drawn from it all. Never trust Personnel Branch, old man.

“As for poor Angela she was in sad case. Polk-Mowbray sent her to Rome for the Horse Show and—guess what? She up and married a groom. It was a sort of involuntary rebound in a way. Everyone was spellbound with shame. But she had the good sense to go off to Australia with him, where I gather that one needs little Protective Colouring, and there they are to this day. The whole thing, old man, only goes to show that You Can't Be Too Careful.”

9

Call of the Sea

“I have never really respected Service Attachés,” said Antrobus. “Some I have known have bordered on the Unspeakable—like that ghastly Trevor Pope-Pope. I don't know how he got into the Blues, nor why he was ever posted to us. He used to lock himself into the cipher-room and play roulette all day with the clerks. Skinned them all, right and left. He had no mercy on anyone. He also used to sell bonded champagne by the case to disagreeable Latin-American Colleagues for pesos. And to cap it all the fellow wore embroidered bedsocks.

“But as for ‘Butch' Benbow, he was one of the least objectionable service postings. He was naval attaché, you remember.”

“Yes.”

“The fact that he was so decent makes the whole episode inexplicable. I really cannot decide in my own mind whether he did sever that tow-rope or not. And yet I saw him with my own eyes. So did Spalding. Yet the whole thing seems out of keeping with Benbow. But who knows what obscure promptings may stir the heart of a naval attaché condemned to isolation in Belgrade, hundreds of dusty miles from the sound of the sea? And then, imagine being designated to a country with almost no recognizable fleet. There was nothing for him to do once he had counted the two ex-Japanese condemned destroyers and the three tugs which made up Yugoslavia's quota of naval strength. Nor can the horse-drawn barges on the two dirty rivers, the Sava and the Danube, have had much appeal. They filled him no doubt with a deep corroding nostalgia for the open sea and The Men Who Go Down To It In Ships. This might explain the sudden brainstorm which overpowered him when he saw the entire Diplomatic Corps afloat on the Sava. Human motives are dark and obscure. I find it hard in my heart to judge Benbow.”

“When was all this?”

“The year after you were posted.”

Antrobus waved his cigar and settled himself more deeply in his favourite arm-chair. “It was a slack period diplomatically and as always happens during slack periods the Corps busied itself in trying to see which Mission could give the most original parties. The Americans gave an ill-judged moonlight bathing party on the island of Spam during which the Corps swam as one man into a field of jellyfish and a special plane had to be chartered to bring medical supplies to those who were stung. Then the Italians, not to be outdone, gave a party in a ruined monastery surrounded with cherry orchards—a picturesque enough choice of
venue.
But the season was well advanced and they had entirely failed to take into account the Greater Panslav Mosquito—an entomological curiosity to be reckoned with. It is the only animal I know which can bite effortlessly through trousers and underpants all in one flowing movement. We all came back to Belgrade terribly swollen up and all different shapes and sizes. Then the Finns gave a concert of Serbian folk-music to which the band turned up drunk. Finally it seemed to Polk-Mowbray that it was our turn to be creative and a chit was passed down asking for ideas.

“I think it was De Mandeville who suggested a river party. Certainly it was not Benbow's idea; he had been very subdued that winter and apart from confessing that he was clairvoyant at parties and dabbling in astrology he had lived an exemplary life of restraint.

“Nor, on the face of it, was the idea a bad one. All winter long the logs come down the River Sava until the frost locks them in; with the spring thaw the east bank of the river has a pontoon of tree-trunks some forty feet wide lining the bank under the willows so that you can walk out over the river, avoiding the muddy margins, and swim in the deep water. The logs themselves are lightly tacked together with stapled wire by the lumberjacks and they stay there till the autumn when they are untacked again and given a push into mid-stream. They then float on down to the sawmills. Here, as you know, the diplomatic corps swims all summer long. Though the muddy banks of the stream are infested with mosquitoes the light river wind ten yards from the shore creates a free zone. And jolly pleasant it is, as you probably remember.

“Well, this was the site selected for a river party by candle-light—the summer nights are breathlessly still—and Polk-Mowbray threw himself into the arrangements with great abandon. First of all he made sure that over the selected area the logs were really tacked firmly together. An immense tarpaulin was then spread and nailed down.

This made a raft about a hundred feet by sixty—big enough even to dance on. The Sava water cushioned the thing perfectly. A light marquee was run up and a long series of trestles to take a buffet. It promised to be the most original party of the year—and I'm not sure in retrospect whether it wasn't the most original I have ever attended. De Mandeville and his chauffeur were in the seventh heaven of delight; they organized a wickerwork fence round the raft with little gates leading to the dance floor and so on. There was also a changing-room for those who might decide to stay on and bathe. All in all it was most creditable to those concerned.

“The Corps itself was in ecstasies as it climbed the brightly painted gangplank on to the raft with its gaily lit buffet and striped marquee. Everyone turned up in full splendour and Polk-Mowbray himself made what he called his Special Effort: the cuff-links given to him by King Paul of Greece, the studs given to him by Queen Marie of Rumania, the cigarette-case by De Gaulle, and the cigar-cutter by Churchill. Darkness and candlelight and the buzz of Diplomatic exchanging Views was offset by the soft strains of Bozo's Gypsy Quartet which played sagging Serbian melodies full of glissandos and vibratos and long slimy arpeggios. It was an enchanting scene. The Press Corps was represented by poor Tope (Neuter's Special Correspondent) who was rapidly transported into nirvana by the awfully good Bollinger.

“You will ask yourself how the thing could possibly have gone wrong—and I cannot answer you for certain. All I know is that out of the corner of my eye I think I caught sight of a figure—was it Benbow?—sneaking furtively among the willows on the bank with what seemed to be a hatchet in his hand. More I cannot say.

“But I can be definite about one thing; while everyone was dancing the rumba and while the buffet was plying a heavy trade, it was noticed that the distance between the raft and the shore had sensibly increased. The gangplank subsided in the ooze. It was not a great distance—perhaps ten feet. But owing to the solid resistance such a large raft set up in the main current the pull was definitely outward. But as yet nobody was alarmed; indeed most of the members of the Corps thought it was part of a planned entertainment. I suppose most of the passengers on the
Titanic
turned in the night before the iceberg with just the same comfortable sense of well-being.

“Polk-Mowbray himself was concerned, it is true, though he did not lose composure. ‘Can't some of you secretaries get out and push it back to the bank?' he asked; but the water was already too deep. For a long minute the lighted raft hung like a water-fly on the smooth surface of the river and then slowly began to move downstream in the calm night air, the candles fluttering softly, the band playing, and the Corps dancing or smoking or gossiping, thoroughly at peace with itself. There was at this stage some hope that at the next bend of the river the whole thing would run aground on the bank, and a few of us made preparations to grab hold of the log pontoons or the overhanging willows and halt our progress. But by ill luck an eddy carried us just too far into the centre of the river and we were carried past the spit of land, vainly groping at the tips of bushes.

“By now our situation deserved serious thought. There was literally no stop now until we reached Belgrade and here—the sweat started out on me as I thought of it—the Danube joins the Sava and causes something like a tidal bore, a permanent whirlpool. While the Sava is comparatively sluggish the Danube comes down from Rumania at about fourteen knots—impossible to swim in or ford. The point of junction is just below the fortress of Belgrade, a picturesque enough spot for those on dry land.…

“It was about five minutes before the full significance of our position began to dawn upon the Corps and by this time we were moving in stately fashion down the centre of the fairway, all lit up like a Christmas tree. Expostulations, suggestions, counter-suggestions poured from the lips of the diplomats and their wives in a dozen tongues.

“Unknown to us, too, other factors were being introduced which were to make this a memorable night for us all. Yugoslavia, as you know, was hemmed in at this time by extremely angry Communist states which kept her in a perpetual state of alarm by moving troops about on her borders, or by floating recriminatory and sometimes pornographic literature down the rivers which intersected the country—in an attempt, one imagines, to unman Serbian Womanhood, if such a thing be possible. At any rate, spy-mania was at meridian and the Yugoslav forces lived in a permanent state of alertness. There were frequent rumours of armed incursions from Hungary and Czechoslovakia....

“It was in this context that some wretched Serbian infantryman at an observation post along the river saw what he took to be a large armed man-of-war full of Czech paratroops in dinner jackets and ball-dresses sailing upon Belgrade, the capital. He did not wait to verify this first impression. Glaucous-eyed, he galloped into Belgrade castle a quarter of an hour later on a foam-flecked mule with the news that the city was about to be invested. The tocsin was sounded, while we, blissfully unaware of this, sailed softly down the dark water to our doom.

“It was lucky that there was only one gun in Belgrade castle. This was manned by Comrade Popovic and a scratch team of Albanian Shiptars clad in skull caps of white wool and goatskin breeches. (Fearsome to look at because of his huge moustache and shapeless physique the Shiptar is really a peaceable animal, about as quarrelsome as a Labrador and with the personality of a goldfish.) Usually it took the team about a week to load the Gun, which was a relic left behind them by the departing Visigoths or Ostrogoths—I forget which. Strictly speaking, too, it was not an offensive weapon as such but a Saluting Gun. Every evening during Ramadan it would give a hoarse boom at sunset, while a pair of blue underpants, which had been used from time immemorial as wadding for the blank charge, would stiffen themselves out on the sky.

“Nevertheless, when the news of the invasion reached Comrade Popovic he realized in a flash that the defence of the city depended entirely on him. He closed his eyes for a brief moment and saw himself receiving, in rapid succession, the Order of the Sava, The Order of St. Michael First Class, the Order of Mercy and Plenty with crossed Haystacks, and the Titotalitarian Medal of Honour with froggings. He set his platoon the task of scraping together a lethal charge capable of scattering the invaders as they came round the bend in the river. This was to be composed of a heterogeneous collection of beer bottle tops, discarded trouser buttons, cigarette-tins and fragments of discarded railway train. The aged gun was slewed round after a violent spell of man-hauling and brought to bear upon the target area.