Esprit de Corps: Sketches from Diplomatic Life

10. La Valise

“If there is anything worse than a soprano,” said Antrobus judicially as we walked down the Mall towards his club, “it is a mezzo-soprano. One shriek lower in the scale, perhaps, but with higher candle-power. I’m not just being small-minded, old chap. I bear the scars of spiritual experience. Seriously.” And indeed he did look serious; but then he always does. The aura of the Foreign Office clings to him. He waved his umbrella, changed step, and continued in a lower, more confidential register. “And I can tell you another thing. If there is anything really questionable about the French character it must be its passion for culture. I might not dare to say this in the F.O. old man, but I know you will respect my confidence. You see, we are all supposed to be pro rather than anti in the Old Firm — but as for me, frankly I hate the stuff. It rattles me. It gives me the plain untitivated pip, I don’t mind confessing.”

He drew a deep breath and after a pause went on, more pensively, drawing upon his memories of Foreign Service life: “All my worst moments have been cultural rather than political. Like that awful business of La Valise, known privately to the members of the Corps as The Diplomatic Bag Extraordinary. Did I ever mention it? She was French Ambassadress in Poland.”

“No.”

“Shall I? It will make you wince.”

“Do.”

“Well it happened while I was serving in Warsaw some years ago; an unspeakable place full of unspeakable people. It was the usual Iron Curtain post to which the F.O. had exposed its soft white underbelly in the person of Smith-Cromwell. Not that he was a bad chap. He was in fact quite intelligent and had played darts for Cambridge. But he was easily led. As you know in a Communist country the Corps finds itself cut off from every human contact. It has to provide its own amusements, fall back on its own resources. And this is where the trouble usually begins. It is a strange thing, but in a post like that it is never long before some dastardly Frenchman (always French) reaches for the safety catch of his revolver and starts to introduce culture into our lives. Invariably.

“So it fell out with us in Warsaw. Sure enough, during my second winter the French appointed a Cultural Attaché, straight from Montmartre — the place with the big church. Fellow like a greyhound. Burning eyes. Dirty hair. A moist and Fahrenheit handshake. You know the type. Started living quite openly with a girl in the secret police. Most Questionable fellow. Up till now everything had been quiet and reasonable — just the usual round of diplomatic-social engagements among colleagues. Now this beastly fellow started the ball rolling with a public lecture — an undisguised public lecture — on a French writer called, if I understood him correctly, Flowbear. Of course we all had to go to support the French. Cultural reciprocity and all that. But as if this wasn’t enough, the little blackhead followed it up with another about another blasted French writer called, unless my memory is at fault, Goaty-eh. I ask you, my dear fellow, what was one to do. Flowbear! Goaty-eh! It was more than flesh and blood could stand. I myself feared the worst as I sat listening to him. I had of course wound up and set my features at Refined Rapture like everyone else, but inside me I was in a turmoil of apprehension. Culture spreads like mumps, you know, like measles. A thing like this could get everyone acting unnaturally in no time. All culture corrupts, old boy, but French culture corrupts absolutely. I was not wrong.

“The echoes had hardly died away when I noticed That awful look coming over people’s faces. Everyone began to think up little tortures of their own. A whole winter stretched before us with practically no engagements except a national day or so. It was clear that unless Smith-Cromwell took a strong line the rot would set in. He did not. Instead of snorting when La Valise embarked on a cultural season he weakly encouraged her; he was even heard to remark that culture was a Good Thing — for the Military Attaché.

“At this time of course we also had our cultural man. Name of Gool. And he looked it. It was a clear case of Harrow and a bad third in History. But up to now we had kept Gool strictly under control and afraid to move. It could not last. He was bound to come adrift. Within a month he was making common cause with his French colleague. They began to lecture, separately and together. They gave readings with writhings. They spared us nothing, Eliot, Sartre, Immanuel Kant — and who is that other fellow? The name escapes me. In short they gave us everything short of Mrs. Beeton. I did my best to get an arm-lock on Gool and to a certain extent succeeded by threatening to recommend him for an OBE. He knew this would ruin his career and that he would be posted to Java. But by the time I had got him pressed to the mat it was too late. The whole Corps had taken fire and was burning with the old hard gem-like flame. Culture was spreading like wildfire.

“A series of unforgettable evenings now began, old boy. Each mission thought up some particularly horrible contribution of its own to this feast. The nights became a torture of pure poesy and song. An evening of hellish amateur opera by the Italians would be followed without intermission by an ear-splitting evening of yodelling from the Swiss, all dressed as edelweiss. Then the Japanese mission went berserk and gave a Noh-play of ghoulish obscurity lasting seven hours. The sight of all those little yellowish, inscrutable diplomats all dressed as Mickey Mouse, old boy, was enough to turn milk. And their voices simply ate into one. Then in characteristic fashion the Dutch, not to be outdone, decided to gnaw their way to the forefront of things with a recital of national poetry by the Dutch Ambassadress herself. This was when I began to draft my resignation in my own mind. O God! how can I ever forget Madame Vanderpipf (usually the most kind and normal of wives and mothers) taking up a stance like a grenadier at Fontenoy, and after a pause declaiming in a slow, deep — O unspeakably slow and deep — voice, the opening verses of whatever it was? Old boy, the cultural heritage of the Dutch is not my affair. Let them have it, I say. Let them enjoy it peacefully as they may. But spare me from poems of five hundred lines beginning ‘Oom kroop der poop.’ You smile, as well indeed you may, never having heard Mrs. Vanderpipf declaiming those memorable stanzas with all the sullen fire of her race. Listen!

Oom kroop der poop

Zoom kroon der soup

Soon droon der oopersnoop.

“And so on. Have you got the idea? Perhaps there is something behind it all — who am I to say? All I know is that it is no joke to be on the receiving end. Specially as she would pause from time to time to give a rough translation in pidgin for Smith-Cromwell’s benefit. Something like this: ‘Our national poet Snuger-pouf, he says, eef Holland lives forever, only, how you would say? heroes from ze soil oopspringing, yes?’

“Then she would take a deep breath and begin afresh.

Oom kroop der poop

Zoom kroon der soup.

“In after years the very memory of this recitation used to make the sweat start out on my forehead. You must try it for yourself sometime. Just try repeating ‘oom kroop der poop’ five hundred times in a low voice. After a time it’s like Yoga. Everything goes dark. You feel you are falling back into illimitable space.

“By this time Smith-Cromwell himself had begun to suffer. He leaned across to me once on this particular evening to whisper a message. I could tell from his popping eye and the knot of throbbing veins at his temple that he was under strain. He had at last discovered what culture means. ‘If this goes on much longer,’ he hissed, ‘I shall confess everything.’

“But this did go on; unremittingly for a whole winter. I spare you a description of the cultural offerings brought to us by the remoter tribes. The Argentines! The Liberians! Dear God! When I think of the Chinese all dressed in lampshades, the Australians doing sheep-opera, the Egyptians undulating and ululating all in the same breath.… Old boy, I am at a loss.

“But the real evil demon of the piece was La Valise. Whenever culture flagged she was there, quick to rekindle the flame. Long after the Corps was milked dry, so to speak, and had nothing left in its collective memory except nursery rhymes or perhaps a dirty limerick or two, La Valise was still at it. She fancied herself as a singer. She was never without a wad of music. A mezzo-soprano never gives in, old boy. She dies standing up, with swelling port curved to the stars.… And here came this beastly attaché again. He had turned out to be a pianist, and she took him everywhere to accompany her. While he clawed the piano she clawed the air and remorselessly sang. How she sang! Always a bit flat, I gather, but with a sickening lucid resonance that penetrated the inner ear. Those who had hearing-aids filled them with a kapok mixture for her recitals. When she hit a top note I could hear the studs vibrating in my dinner-shirt. Cowed, we sat and watched her, as she started to climb a row of notes towards the veil of the temple — that shattering top E, F, or G: I never know which. We had the sinking feeling you get on the giant racer just as it nears the top of the slope. To this day I don’t know how we kept our heads.

“Smith-Cromwell was by this time deeply penitent about his earlier encouragement of La Valise and at his wits’ end to see her stopped. Everyone in the Chancery was in a bad state of nerves. The Naval Attaché had taken to bursting into tears at meals if one so much as mentioned a forthcoming cultural engagement. But what was to be done? We clutched at every straw; and De Mandeville, always resourceful, suggesting inviting the Corps to a live reading by himself and chauffeur from the works of the Marquis de Sade. But after deliberation Smith-Cromwell thought this might, though effective, seem Questionable, so we dropped it.

“I had begun to feel like Titus Andronicus, old man, when the miracle happened. Out of a cloudless sky. Nemesis intervened just as he does in Gilbert Murray. Now La Valise had always been somewhat hirsute, indeed quite distinctly moustached in the Neapolitan manner, though none of us for a moment suspected the truth. But one day after Christmas M. De Panier, her husband, came round to the Embassy in full tenu and threw himself into Cromwell-Smith’s arms, bathed in tears as the French always say. ‘My dear Britannic Colleague,’ he said, ‘I have come to take my leave of you. My career is completely ruined. I am leaving diplomacy for good. I have resigned. I shall return to my father-in-law’s carpet-factory near Lyons and start a new life. All is over.’

“Smith-Cromwell was of course delighted to see the back of La Valise; but we all had a soft corner for De Panier. He was a gentleman. Never scamped his frais and always gave us real champagne on Bastille Day. Also his dinners were dinners — not like the Swedes’; but I am straying from my point. In answer to Smith-Cromwell’s tactful enquiries De Panier unbosomed.

“You will never credit it, old man. You will think I am romancing. But it’s as true as I am standing here. There are times in life when the heart spires upward like the lark on the wing; when through the consciousness runs, like an unearthly melody, the thought that God really exists, really cares; more, that he turns aside to lend a helping hand to poor dips in extremis. This was such a moment, old boy.

“La Valise had gone into hospital for some minor complaint which defied diagnosis. And in the course of a minor operation the doctors discovered that she was turning into a man! Nowadays, of course, it is becoming a commonplace of medicine; but at the time of which I speak it sounded like a miracle. A man, upon my soul! We could hardly believe it. The old caterpillar was really one of us. It was too enchanting! We were saved!

“And so it turned out. Within a matter of months her voice — that instrument of stark doom — sank to a bass; she sprouted a beard. Poor old De Panier hastened to leave but was held up until his replacement came. Poor fellow! Our hearts went out to him with this Whiskered Wonder on his hands. But he took it all very gallantly. They left at last, in a closed car, at dead of night. He would be happier in Lyons, I reflected, where nobody minds that sort of thing.

“But if he was gallant about this misfortune so was La Valise elle-même. She went on the halls, old boy, as a bass baritone and made quite a name for herself. Smith-Cromwell says he once heard her sing ‘The London Derriere’ in Paris with full orchestra and that she brought the house down. Some of the lower notes still made the ash-trays vibrate a bit but it was no longer like being trapped in a wind-tunnel. She wore a beard now and a corkscrew moustache and was very self-possessed. One can afford to be in France. He also noticed she was wearing a smartish pair of elastic-sided boots. O, and her trade name now was Tito Torez. She and De Panier were divorced by then, and she had started out on a new career which was less of a reign of terror, if we can trust Smith-Cromwell. Merciful are the ways of Providence!

“As for poor De Panier himself, I gather that he re-entered the service after the scandal had died down. He is at present Consul General in Denver, Colorado. I’m told that there isn’t much culture there, so he ought to be a very happy man.”