Eggar was occupying a tiny ramshackle room, marked off by a pasteboard partition. The building was overcrowded, and, somewhat to his chagrin, he could not be accommodated according to his rank. One window had been blown out, and was not yet boarded over. It was a cold morning, and bitter draughts kept sweeping in. Eggar sat there in his black coat and striped trousers, muscular, vigorous, cheerful. He did not mind the cold. He worked like an engine, and he would be sitting in that arctic room until late at night, plodding through the day’s stack of files.
He greeted me with his effusive cordiality, man-to-man, eyes looking straight into eyes.
“Between ourselves,” he said, “I think I’ve got a job for you.”
“I’m pretty well booked,” I said.
“I know you’re not disponible. I know you’re getting well-thought-of round here. I hear your minister thinks the world of you.” Eggar was a generous-hearted man, and he was genuinely pleased that I should get some praise. Also he was thinking of one of his own simple, cunning, pushful moves. “But I want you for something important. I think we may be able to extract you for a week or two.”
“I do rather doubt it,” I said. “What do you want me for?”
“You’ve kept in touch with young Calvert, have you?”
The question surprised me.
“Yes.”
“Well, this is strictly in confidence — we’re particularly anxious that it shouldn’t get round, for reasons that I’m obliged to keep to myself. Strictly in confidence, young Calvert has received a letter from a German friend of his. I don’t want to give you a wrong impression. There’s nothing to blame Calvert for. He has behaved perfectly correctly.” Eggar told me the story of Romantowski’s letter over again; he produced a copy of the original, and I listened to another translation.
“Very curious,” I said.
“It may be useful,” said Eggar. “We’re finding out whether this chap Romantowski is really living at that address. If so, we want to chase it up.” He explained, as he had done to Roy, that they were uncomfortably short of news from inside Germany. “We think it might be worth the trouble of sending Calvert to talk to him.”
I nodded.
“Yes, we shall probably send Calvert out,” said Eggar. He looked at me, and added: “If we do, we should like you to go with him.”
“Why?”
Then Eggar took me completely aback.
“Between ourselves, Eliot, you ought to know. You ought to remember that two or three years ago Calvert was inclined to see some good points in the German set-up. I don’t count it against him: a lot of people did the same. I’m not saying for a minute that today he isn’t a hundred per cent behind the war. But we can’t afford to take chances. I should be more comfortable if you went and helped him out in Switzerland. I expect he would be more comfortable too.”
It was informal, rough-and-ready, fixed up like an arrangement between friends. It was the way things got done. I felt a new respect for Eggar’s competence.
I could not escape being persuaded. If they wanted news badly enough to send Roy, it was as well that I went with him. Eggar beamed at me triumphantly. He would not have got me ordered there against my will, but now all was clear, he said, for him to call upon my minister. It was quite unnecessary, for the minister was the least ceremonious of men; I could have explained it to him in five minutes.
But he was also a uniquely influential man, and Eggar was determined to know him. On its own merits, it was a good idea to despatch me to look after Roy; Eggar could always keep one eye on the ball. But the other eye was fixed elsewhere. From the moment he had thought of sending me, Eggar had been determined to make the most of the opportunity. It was an admirable excuse to introduce himself to the minister; he was out to create the best of impressions. He would never have a finer chance.
33: Journey into the Light
“We’ll get you there somehow,” said Houston Eggar heartily, when I asked about our route. The more I thought of it, the more my apprehensions emerged. In fact, it was so difficult to arrange the journey that it was cancelled twice. Each time I felt reprieved. But Eggar was determined that we should go, and at last he managed it.
The Foreign Office had been able to trickle a few people in since the fall of France, and Eggar used the same method for us: but even so, and getting us the highest priority, he took weeks to produce our papers complete. The delay was almost entirely caused by the French, for we needed a visa through Vichy France.
Though I viewed the journey with trepidation, I could not help being amused at the technique. For we were to fly to Lisbon in the ordinary way; there was nothing comic about that, but then the unexpected began; we were instructed to catch a German plane from Lisbon to Madrid, and another on the standard Lufthansa route from Madrid up north through Europe. We were to get off at Lyons, though the plane went on to Stuttgart. It had been done several times before by visitors on important missions, said Eggar: like them, we should carry Red Cross papers, and he expected all would be well. The French at last gave way. Eggar told us as though he had done all the difficult part, and ours was trivial; but, as a matter of fact, he was beginning to feel responsible.
He became slightly too genial, and stood us a dinner the night before we left.
We flew from Bristol on a halcyon spring afternoon. But we saw nothing of it, for the windows of the aircraft were covered over, and let in only a dim, tawny, subfusc light. The dimness made my plan for getting through the journey a little more difficult; I had to reckon on three hours’ sheer fright before we landed at Lisbon, and to help myself through I read quotas of fifty pages at a go before letting myself look at my watch. I had taken the Tale of Genji with me. Subtle and lovely though it was, I wished it had more narrative power. I could not keep myself from listening for unpleasant sounds. Once more I cursed and was ashamed of my timidity. I very much envied Roy.
He was lively, exhilarated, much as he had been in the most joyous days. He had been exhilarated ever since he was asked to make the journey. He seemed glad that I was going, as though it had been a holiday when we were much younger; he had not shown the slightest suspicion or resentment; he had not asked a single question why I should be there. Yet I felt he was too incurious. He could not accept it as naturally as he seemed to. He was much too astute not to guess. Still, his face lit up at the news of our journey, just as it used before any travel. He had always been excited by the thought, not of anything vague like the skies of Europe, but the unexpected and exact things which he might hear and see: I remembered the post-cards that used to arrive as he went from library to library: “Palermo. The post office here has pillars fifty-six feet high, painted red, white and blue.” “Nice. Yesterday a Roumanian poetess described her country and France as the two bulwarks of Latin civilisation.” “Berlin. The best cricketer of German nationality is called Maus. (All German cricketers appear to have very short names). He is slightly worse than I am, slightly better than you.”
He was excited again in just that fashion, as we got into the aircraft. He was stimulated, became more brilliantly alive, through the faint tang of danger. I envied him, reading my book with forced concentration, hearing him chat to a Portuguese business man. He knew that I should be frightened, that I should prefer to be left sullenly alone. His imagination was at least as active as mine, but it produced an utterly different result: the thought of danger made him keen, braced, active, like a first class batsman who requires just enough of the needle, just enough tingle of the nerves, to be brought to the top of his form. Portuguese was a language Roy had never had reason to look at, but he was asking his acquaintance to pronounce some words: Roy was mimicking the squashed vowel sounds, apparently with accuracy, to judge from the admiring cries.