Esprit de Corps: Sketches from Diplomatic Life

5. For Immediate Release

“Most F.O. types”, said Antrobus, “are rather apt to imagine that their own special department is more difficult to run than any other; but I must say that I have always handed the palm to you Information boys. It seems to me that Press work has a higher Horror Potential than any other sort.”

He is right, of course. Antrobus is always right, and even though I am no longer a foreign service type I am proud to be awarded even this tardy recognition when all is said and done.

A press officer is like a man pegged out on an African ant-hill for the termites of the daily press to eat into at will. Nor are we ever decorated. You never read of a press officer getting the George Cross for rescuing a reporter who has fallen into his beer. Mostly we just sit around and look as if we were sickening for an O.B.E.

And what can compare with the task of making journalists feel that they are loved and wanted — without which they founder in the Oedipus Complex and start calling for a Parliamentary Commission to examine the Information Services? Say what you like, it’s an unenviable job.

Most of the press officers I’ve known have gradually gone off their heads. I’m thinking of Davis who was found gibbering on the Nan Tal Pagoda in Bangkok. All he could say was: “For Immediate Release, absolutely immediate release.” Then there was Perry who used to boil eggs over a spirit-lamp in the office. He ended by giving a press conference in his pyjamas.

But I think the nicest and perhaps the briefest press officer I have ever known was Edgar Albert Ponting. He was quite unique. One wonders how he was recruited into so select a cadre. He was sent to me as second secretary in Belgrade. I had been pressing for help for some time with a task quite beyond me. The press corps numbered some fifty souls — if journalists can be said to have souls. I could not make them all feel loved and wanted at once. Trieste with its ghastly possibilities of a shooting war loomed over us: propaganda alone, I was told, could keep the balance — could keep it a shouting war. I turned to the Foreign Office for help. Help came, with all the traditional speed and efficiency. After two months my eleventh telegram struck a sympathetic chord somewhere and I received the information that Edgar Albert was on the way. It was a great relief. Fraternization with the press corps had by this time raised my alcohol consumption to thirty slivovitza a day. People said they could see a pulse beating on the top of my head. My Ambassador had taken to looking at me in a queer speculative way, with his head on one side. It was touch and go. But it was splendid to know that help was at hand. It is only forty odd hours from London to Belgrade. Ponting would soon be at my elbow, mechanically raising and lowering his own with the old Fleet Street rhythm press officers learn so easily.

Mentally, I toasted Ponting in a glass of sparkling Alka Seltzer and called for the Immediate file. From Paris came the news that he had not been found on the train. After a wait of four days a signal came through saying that he had been found. He was at present in St. Anne’s due for release later in the day when his journey would be resumed. I was rather uneasy as I remembered that St. Anne’s was a mental hospital, but my fears subsided as I followed his route and saw him safely flagged into Switzerland and down into Italy. There was an ominous pause at Pisa which lasted ten days. Then came a signal from the Embassy in Rome saying that our vice-consul there had located him and put him on the train. This was followed by an odd sort of telegram from Ponting himself which said: “Can’t tell you what impression Leaning Tower made on me old man. On my way. Avanti. Ponty.”

At Venice there was another hold-up, but it was brief. Our vice-consul was away. It appeared that Ponting had borrowed 1,000 lire from the consulate gondolier and represented himself to the clerks in the consulate as a distressed British subject domiciled in Lisbon. All this was of course disquieting, but, as I say, one gets used to a highly developed sense of theatre in press officers. They live such drab lives. Once he was through Trieste and Zagreb, however, I began to breathe more freely, and make arrangements to meet him myself.

The Orient Express gets in at night. I had planned a quiet little dinner at the flat during which I would unburden myself to Ponting and brief him as to the difficulties which faced us. (A visit from the Foreign Minister impended: rumours of Russian troop movements were at meridian: trade negotiations with Britain were at a delicate phase: and so on and so forth.)

He was not at the station: my heart sank. But Babic, the Embassy chauffeur, interrogated the wagon-lit attendant, and we learned with relief that Ponting had indeed arrived. “He must have walked,” said the attendant, “he had very little luggage besides the banjo. A little case like a lady’s handbag.”

We drove thoughtfully up the ill-paved streets of the capital and down Knez Mihailova to the only hotel set aside for foreign visitors (all the others had been turned into soup-kitchens and communal eating-houses). He was not at the hotel. I was standing at the desk, deep in thought, when the circular swing-doors of the hotel began to revolve, at first with slowness, then with an ever-increasing velocity which drew the eyes of the staff towards them. Somebody not too certain of his bearings was trying to get into the hotel. It seemed to me that he was rather over-playing his hand. By now the doors were going round so fast that one thought they would gradually zoom up through the ceiling, drawn by centrifugal force. Ponting was inside, trapped like a fly in amber. I caught sight of his pale self-deprecating face as he rotated grimly. It was set in an expression of forlorn desperation. How had this all come about? Could he have mistaken these massive mahogany doors for a bead curtain? Impossible to say. He was still holding his banjo to his bosom as he swept round and round. There was an impressive humming noise as of a nuclear reactor reacting, or of a giant top at full spin. Ponting looked dazed but determined, like a spinster trapped in a wind-tunnel. A small crowd of servants formed at a respectful distance to observe this phenomenon. Then without warning the second secretary was catapulted out of the swing-doors into our midst, like someone being fired out of a gun into a net. We recoiled with him, falling all over the staircase. For a brief moment his face expressed all the terror of a paralytic whose wheel chair has run away with him and is heading straight for the canal. Then he relaxed and allowed himself to be dusted down, gazing anxiously at his banjo all the time. “Thank God, Ponting, at last you’re here,” I said. I don’t know why I should take the name of God in vain at a time like this; the words just slipped out.

He introduced himself in rather a mincing fashion. His eyes were certainly glassy. I put him down as a rather introverted type. I must say, however, that his opening remark “could not but” (as we say in despatches) fill me with misgiving. “This ‘slivovitza’,” he said hoarsely, “it’s a damn powerful thing. I’m practically clairvoyant, old man. You mustn’t be shirty with old Ponting.” He wagged a finger forlornly, helplessly. He looked as if he too needed to feel loved and wanted.

Physically he was on the small side, pigeon-chested and with longish arms which ended in fingers stained bright yellow with nicotine. He had the mournful innocent eyes of a mongrel. “Ponting,” I said, “you’d better have a little rest before dinner.” He did not protest, but leaning heavily against me in the lift he said under his breath, but with conviction: “If ever I get the Nobel Prize it won’t be for nuclear physics.” In my heart of hearts I could not help agreeing with him.

He laid himself out on his bed, kicked off his shoes, folded his arms behind his head, closed his eyes and said (in the veritable accents of Charlie McCarthy): “Quack. Quack. Quack. This is Ponting calling.” Then in a different voice: “Did you say Ponting? Surely not Ponting.” Then reverting again to the dummy he so much resembled: “Yes Ponting. The Ponting, Ponting of Pontefract.”

“Ponting,” I said severely.

“Quack Quack,” responded the dummy.

“Ponting, I’m going,” I said.

He opened his eyes and stared wildly round him for a moment. “Is it true that the Ambassador lives on nightingale sandwiches?” he asked. There were tears in his eyes. “The Daily Express says so.” I gave him a glance of cold dignity.

“I shall speak to you tomorrow,” I said, “when you are sober.” I meant it to sting.

By eleven o’clock next morning Ponting had not appeared and I sent the office car for him. He was looking vague and rather scared and had a large woollen muffler round his throat. His eyes looked as if they were on the point of dissolving, like coloured sweets. “Old man,” he said hoarsely, “was there something you wanted?”

“I wanted to take you to H.E., but I can’t take you looking like an old-clothes-man.” He gazed down at himself in wonder. “What’s wrong with me?” he said. “I bet you haven’t got a shirt on under that scarf.” I had already caught a glimpse of a pyjama jacket. “Well, anyway,” said Ponting, “I can sign the book, can’t I?”

I led him shambling through the Chancery to the Residence which I knew would be deserted at this hour. He made one or two hypnotist’s passes at the Visitors’ Book with streaming pen and finally delivered himself of a blob the size of a lemon. “It was the altitude,” he explained. “My pen exploded in my pocket.” I was busy mopping the ink with my handkerchief. “But you came by train,” I said, with considerable exasperation, “not by air.” Ponting nodded. “I mean the altitude of the Leaning Tower of Pisa,” he said severely.

I led him back to the Chancery door. “Can I go back?” he asked humbly. “It takes a few days to acclimatize in a new post; H.E. won’t be shirty with old Ponting, will he?”

“Go,” I said, pointing a finger at the iron gates of the Embassy, “and don’t come back until you are ready to do your job properly.”

“Don’t be shirty, old boy,” he said reproachfully. “Ponting will see you through.”

“Go,” I said.

“In my last post,” said Ponting in a brooding hollow sort of way, “they said I was afflicted with dumb insolence.”

He traipsed down the drive to the waiting car, shaking his head sadly.

I was contorted with a hideous sense of desolation. What was to be done with a ventriloquist who played the banjo and spent half his time talking like a duck?

I went into the Chancery and took down the F.O. List to examine Ponting’s background. His foreground had become only too apparent by now. He had had a number of posts, none of which he had held for more than a month or so; he had been moved round the world at breakneck speed, presumably leaving behind him in each town the indelible scars of a conduct which could only be excused by reference to the severest form of personality disorder. “Bitter fruit,” I said to Potts the archivist. “Look at this character’s record.” He put on his spectacles and took the book from me. “Yes,” he said. “In every post it would seem to be a case of retired hit-wicket. Poor Ponting!”

“Poor Ponting!” I said angrily. “Poor me!”

After that I did not see Ponting for several weeks. Once, late at night, my Head of Chancery surprised him in the lounge of his hotel doing a soft shoe routine and playing the banjo to a deeply attentive audience of partly sentient journalists. The heavy smell of plum brandy was in the air. In those days it cost about fourpence a glass. Ponting did a little song, a pitiful little spastic shuffle, and brought the performance to an end by pulling out his bow tie to the distance of a yard before letting it slap back on to his dicky. Antrobus, then first secretary, witnessed all this with speechless wonder. “By God,” he said fervently, “never have I seen an Embassy let down like this. He popped his cheek at me in a dashed familiar fashion and said he had once acted in a pierrot troupe on Clacton pier. I couldn’t bring him to his senses. He was …” words failed him. He reported the matter to H.E. who, from the armoury of his diplomatic experience, produced the word which had eluded Antrobus. “Bizarre,” he said gravely. “I gather this fellow Ponting is a little bizarre.”

“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.