“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!”