James Hilton: Collected Novels (31 page)

“Politically
reliable
? What’s that?”

“Rather vague, I admit…but perhaps elastic enough to describe something a diplomat’s wife should be. After all, Jeff had to handle fairly important matters—important, I mean, to British policy.”

“And you’re asking me if she always agreed with that policy? How on earth do I know? But I can tell you this much—I don’t always agree with it, and if that’s become a crime lately, by all means put me down on your black list.”

George had reacted normally to a familiar stimulus, and Millbay reacted normally to that type of reaction, with which he was equally familiar. He smiled. “We’re not as stupid as all that, Boswell, even at the Foreign Office. And our black list is largely a gray list—or should I use the phrase ‘neutral tints’?” He paused a moment, then asked quietly: “Did you know her when she was in Ireland?”

“No.” George caught the alertness of Millbay’s glance and countered it with a more humorous alertness of his own. Suddenly he laughed. “Look here…what are you driving at? Are you a detective or something?”

Millbay also laughed. “I might be the ‘something.’ To tell you the truth, I’m just a government official who once wrote a few novels.” George then knew where he had seen Millbay’s name, and also why he had not clearly remembered it; he was not much of a novel reader. Millbay continued: “Perhaps that’s why I’m handed all these wartime psychological problems. They’re quite interesting, though, as a rule…Take this woman we’ve been talking about—from all accounts she’s top-notch for sheer physical and mental courage against appalling odds. Yet all that—and every novelist knows it—doesn’t guarantee that she couldn’t be a complete bitch in other ways. Did you, incidentally, ever discuss Hitler with her?”

“Good God, no—the time I knew her was years before Hitler was even heard of. You’re not suspecting her of being a Nazi spy, are you?”

Millbay laughed again. “Stolen treaties tucked away in the corsage, eh?…Hardly…So you don’t think she’d have made a good spy?”

George answered: “From my judgment she’d make the worst spy in the world.”

“What makes you say that?”

George answered: “Of course it’s long ago that I knew her, but people don’t change their whole nature. What I mean is—if they’re…well, outspoken…not always too tactful…”

Millbay touched George’s arm with a half-affectionate gesture. “Thank you for confirming my own private opinion. I never did believe there was anything really wrong with her in
that
way—especially on the basis of the incident that gave rise to most of the talk…You heard about it, perhaps?”

“I don’t think so. What was it?”

“Some big dinner party in Batavia, with a crowd of officials, attachés, Army people, and so on. I was told about it by several who were there. Before the war of course—1932 or 1933. Conversation turned on Hitler, and most of what was said was unflattering—especially from the viewpoint of the career diplomat. Suddenly Livia said—‘Isn’t it odd that people who profess to follow a religion founded by a carpenter are so ready to sneer at someone for having once been a house painter?’ Quite a sensation! Of course she was tabbed as pro-Hitler after that, but I really don’t think she had to be. I think she could have meant exactly what she said…Because it is odd, when you reckon it up. With all the perfectly sound reasons the democracies have for hating that man, they choose to sneer at him because he once followed a trade. How do house painters feel about it, I wonder? If I knew any, I’d ask ’em.”

“I do know some, so I will ask ’em.”

“And then tell me? Well, anyhow, you can imagine that sort of remark didn’t do her husband any good professionally.”

“Aye, I can see that.”

They were still at the curbside, but a government car had driven up and the chauffeur was waiting. Millbay said hastily: “Sorry there hasn’t been more time to talk. Always interesting to compare notes about people one knows…Incidentally, if you’re free tonight, why don’t you dine with me? Then we’d have more time.”

George was free and accepted, though not without a misgiving that grew and crystallized during the afternoon into a determination to pursue a certain course of action if Millbay should make it necessary. Before they were halfway through the meal, at a service flat in Smith Square, Millbay
had
made it necessary. They had discussed general topics at first, but then Millbay had continued: “You know, Boswell, I’m still a bit curious about Livia Winslow. She always rather fascinated me, in a sort of way, and to meet someone else who knew her…well, I suppose it’s the novelist in me cropping up again, even though it’s years since I last published anything. And I certainly don’t intend to publish anything you tell me, so don’t worry.”

“Anything
I
tell you?”

“Yes—if you feel like it. I wish you would.”

“About what?”

“About Livia…that
is,
of course, unless you’d rather not discuss her.”

George then said what he had made up his mind to say if this situation should arise. He said: “I don’t mind discussing her, but I’d better tell you something in advance. I was once married to her.”

“
Good God
! You don’t say?”

Till then George had felt slightly uncomfortable, but now, relaxed by his own candor, he could almost enjoy the other’s unbounded astonishment. He grinned across the table. “I dunno why I felt I had to tell you, but now I have done, I hope you’ll go ahead and give me any more news you have about her.”

“So you’re just as interested as I am?”

“Probably. That’s rather natural, isn’t it?”

“You haven’t kept in touch with her at all?”

“No—not since…” He left the sentence unfinished.

“And that was—when?”

“September first, 1921.”

“Well remembered, eh?”

George nodded.

Millbay gave him a slow, shrewd glance, then continued: “Jeffrey happens to be a friend of mine…Would you like me to talk about his marriage?”

“Aye—if
you
feel like it.”

“And you won’t mind if I’m frank?”

“We’d both be wasting our time if you weren’t, wouldn’t we?”

“Glad you think so. And in exchange will you give me your own frank opinion…afterwards?”

George smiled. “Nay, I’ll not promise that. Let’s hear your story first.”

I first met Jeffrey Winslow (Millbay said) in connection with the Kemalpan affair. I don’t suppose you heard much about that. It didn’t get publicized. Things like it are always apt to happen, and to happen with the same declension of eventfulness—that is to say, they begin excitingly—bloodshed in the jungle, perhaps—and end a year or so later with quiet voices pronouncing judgment across some departmental desk top in Whitehall. Mine was one of the quiet voices; I had all the papers relating to the affair before me, and I’d given several days to the most careful study of them. After all, you don’t squash a man’s career without good reasons, especially if he belongs to a family like the Winslows. I was as tactful as I could be. I rather liked the look of the fellow from the outset; he was neither truculent nor obsequious, and heaven knows he could have been either. He just sat at the other side of the desk—a little nervous, as was natural; he answered questions briefly and clearly, and there was a pleasant ring in his voice that I would have taken for sincerity had not the circumstances of the moment put doubts in my mind.

Of course the Kemalpan affair needs some explanation—that is, if you don’t already know about it. (George said he didn’t.) Oh well, I can put it in a few sentences. Kemalpan is a technically independent Sultanate that the British Government has a treaty with; Jeffrey Winslow was adviser to the Sultan on matters connected with imperial relations—somewhat of a nebulous job, but semi-diplomatic, with tentacles reaching into commercial and military spheres. Decidedly no plum—but not badly paid, and easy enough, as a rule, if you didn’t mind burying yourself in a place like Kemalpan. That, I should add, is the name of the capital city as well as of the state; the capital is inland, in the midst of jungle and rubber plantations; Winslow preferred to live with his wife at a settlement on the coast fifty miles away—healthier there, or so he reckoned. There’s a telegraph line between the coast and the capital, and a sort of rough trail that you can drive over in a Ford—but no good roads, no railway, and in those days no airline. These details are important in view of what happened. Also I should add that a small colony of British and Dutch rubber planters lived on their estates near the inland capital, and were on good terms with the Sultan, whose subjects they employed. The Sultan didn’t mind low wages for the tappers so long as he got a cut of the plantation profits—which he did, more or less, in the form of thoroughly legalized taxation. Quite a nice setup as long as it lasted, and it lasted throughout the twenties, when rubber rose to four shillings a pound; but later the fall to sixpence led to labor troubles, and by the mid-twenties these had reached danger point. All this is necessary to give the background to what happened in October ’34, when an insurrection in the capital threatened to depose the Sultan in favor of some native “leader” whom the planters called a Communist—it’s a conditioned reflex, you know. But it was true that the plantations couldn’t pay higher wages without going bankrupt, and equally true that the mob was in a mood to overthrow things if the Millennium didn’t appear overnight. The Sultan, who was a sly old debauchee with no real interest in life but graft and women, rapidly slipped into panic; meanwhile the planters with their wives and families moved in from outlying districts to seek protection in the royal palace—protection being a few hundred of the Sultan’s private army, poor in quality and doubtful in allegiance.

The crisis developed within a matter of hours, while the Winslows were at their home on the coast; Winslow wired the news to London, which was part of his job, and was told to await instructions. A day later those instructions were sent. He was told to assure the Sultan that the British Government would back him to the full in suppressing the revolt, and that therefore the capital must be held at all costs until such assistance was forthcoming…

Now this was the point. Those instructions were
sent
, and we had evidence later that they reached the coast settlement where Winslow lived; but he swore he never got them. Thus he didn’t give the Sultan any assurance of British help and the Sultan promptly gave in to the rebels. There followed a nasty little affray at the palace in which three white men and two white women were butchered. Well, that was the Kemalpan affair…nothing very remarkable, but thoroughly reprehensible from every official standpoint, and a year later we were still holding inquiries about it in Whitehall, still collecting more evidence that the instructions to Winslow had actually been transmitted and must have been received by him, though he still swore that they hadn’t.

A further point cropped up: the telegraph line from the coast to the inland capital had been cut, so that if Winslow
had
received his orders he could only have properly obeyed them by making the fifty-mile trip in person over the rough trail; and this, with most of the intervening country in the hands of the rebels, might not have been so safe. In fact, it might have been decidedly unsafe—which was why he couldn’t have relied on anyone else to do the job. So you see where all this is leading…and where it had already led on that foggy Friday in November ’35, when I first talked to the fellow in my office. Was his denial of having received instructions just the only thing he could think of as an excuse for having been scared? If that were the true interpretation, it added up to something rather serious.

You know, it’s a queer thing when you have to talk to a gentleman in the social sense who has somehow broken the code of a gentleman in the ethical sense. You can never quite come to grips with the situation. You fence and evade and know that he knows all the time what you’re really thinking. I never, for instance, came anywhere near hinting to Winslow that he might be both a liar and a coward, yet he must have known that that was the inevitable implication behind all the questioning. And presently it all boiled down to that simple question: Had he or had he not received those instructions? He stuck to it that he hadn’t, and he sounded convincing, but long experience has left me with the opinion that lies are, if anything, easier to tell convincingly than the truth. Besides, evidence that the instructions
had
reached him was almost watertight, so I had to accept it. But of course I did not say so. I said, quietly and politely: “Well, Winslow, we seem to have reached a deadlock. Maybe there’ll be some further evidence…if so, perhaps you’ll be good enough to come here again.”

He answered then, with a certain austere dignity which I liked (whether he were a liar and a coward or not): “Of course I will, but it’s nine months now since I was advised to come home on leave, and since then I’ve been kept waiting for the inquiry to finish. It’s rather a strain, in some ways. Besides, I should very much like to go back to my job.”

It was then my duty to tell him that there was little chance of his ever resuming that kind of job under government service. He took it very well. He said he was sorry—which I knew did not mean any kind of confession, but merely that the outcome was a blow to him. I said I was sorry too—and by that I did not mean that as a liar and a coward he deserved any special leniency, but merely that it grieved me, as a member of the so-called ruling class, to see another member acquitting himself out of style. You see what snobs we all are…Anyhow, I shook hands with him and wished him well and didn’t expect to see him again.

But I just couldn’t get the fellow out of my mind. He’d interested me—not only because the departure from tradition is always more interesting than the tradition itself, of which one gets a little bored when one is, as I am, a somewhat cynical conformist. I should be believed, no doubt, if I said that after talking to Winslow I paced up and down my office floor wondering if, in his place, I should have behaved any better. Yet actually I didn’t wonder at all, because I knew. I have fought in wars, and there have been several occasions on which I risked my life, not because I was brave, nor because I hated the enemy, but because risking my life was the thing to do in those particular circumstances, and all my training had been to make me act both accordingly and automatically. That’s one of the reasons why Winslow interested me—because his training had been, if anything, more traditional than mine.
Who’s Who
and Debrett were sufficient authorities for that. He’d been to a good public school and to Oxford, had then passed into the Diplomatic and been an attaché at the embassy in Vienna. Quite brilliant at Oxford, by the way, and with his family connections he must have been exactly the type for whom one would forecast a distinguished future. All of which added to the mystery—for why, if one came to think of it, should such a fellow ever fetch up at Kemalpan? That was decidedly
not
the thing to have done…and since it was unlikely that anybody would take Kemalpan from choice, what had forced him into it? Well, there were people I knew who could throw out a few hints. Our friend Sprigge is the expert there. Scandals, women,
mésalliances,
bad checks—he can usually tell you. In Winslow’s case it was a divorce—which in those prim days didn’t help anyone…and I needn’t say more about that to you.