A World of My Own (5 page)

It is a strange thing that sometimes that World of My Own seems to be influenced by the world we have in common. J.W. Dunne in his
Experiment with Time
might have argued that when I described Khrushchev as having the face of a saint (of a dead man) I had felt a presage of his dismissal, the news of which I learnt on the election-night broadcast of October 15, 1964, at the Savoy—where in the World of My Own we had dined together nine days before.

On a visit to Panama I was surprised that Omar Torrijos, who had become a great friend, was absent, for he had made an appointment with me. When at last he came he was much changed. I had brought my daughter to act as translator, but he had learnt to speak a little English. With us was a very dull English soldier, General Denniston. Others joined
us—a number of Americans, including a comic soldier in an untidy uniform who lent me a tattered volume of his published diary which I was not prepared to read. I was really there to warn Omar of an American plot. The Americans intended to foment disturbance with the idea of forcing him to leave Panama. Panama would then, like an island in the Caribbean, be used as a military base to blockade Central America. I couldn’t get Omar to understand the plot.

In November 1965 I spent what I can only describe as an unenjoyable weekend with Sir Alec Douglas-Home, as he then was, at his house in Oxford. I resented his smoothness, his Foreign Office manner, even his silk pyjamas (although they were almost indistinguishable from my own) and his silk shirt, which was embroidered in pale blue ‘Marquess of Home’, an odd inaccuracy. I had received several messages from an Indian friend about radical riots in Allahabad which I showed him, and Sir Alex strongly advised me against going to India as ‘there’s nothing to be done about that place.’

On my second night at his house I returned at about four in the morning after dancing—an extraordinary
thing for me to do—at a small party. An old friend had tried to teach me to waltz and then less successfully to tango. When I returned to Home’s house I found the lights on in his bedroom, and the manservant sweeping the floor. The chandelier had fallen and shattered.

‘Lucky it didn’t fall on your head,’ I remarked.

‘That goes without saying,’ Sir Alec replied with a kind of cold satisfaction.

I went to rescue my pyjamas from the newly washed laundry that the manservant had hung out to dry, and in doing so (I don’t really know how) I managed to get Sir Alec’s pyjamas stuck up with Scotch tape.

Perhaps because of this I left the house and made my way towards Trinity College. At the corner of the Broad the rain came down in torrents. I must have lost my way, for I found myself in a kind of shell-hole surrounded by water. There seemed to be some soil a few feet away, but when Ralph Richardson, who happened to be nearby, offered to test the ground he disappeared below the water. I could see the top of his head several inches down. He emerged again complaining that it was very cold. I managed to jump onto the dry soil, however.

I walked on a little way and Sir Alec joined me. He must have heard me leave, but very soon we were both in a hole again. The situation was so
strange that I began to make notes of what was happening, but the only paper available was in the form of white one-inch-square cards that Sir Alec carried. They seemed inadequate for writing, but apparently it was the custom to use them in the Foreign Office—perhaps a custom instituted by Lord Halifax, for I found his name in embossed letters on one of them.

All in all a weekend which I would prefer not to repeat.

I once passed an agreeable evening with another prime minister, Edward Heath. Heath asked me about Chile and I described Salvador Allende to him and spoke of the good impression I had of the Communists in his government.

I lent Heath the typescript of a new novel I had written and he read it at intervals during the evening.

We went on to a pub and an old man spoke to Heath of his son who was in the army, and how he wished to have him at home for some family celebration. Heath introduced himself—rather quaintly, I thought—‘I am the Right Honourable Edward Heath.’ He asked for the son’s military
number, but the old man couldn’t remember it. Heath told him to telephone his secretary the next day and everything would be arranged. To my surprise I found myself liking Heath very much.

Heath, it seemed, had been looking for an ambassador to Scotland, but no one wanted to accept the post. He even asked me and I refused. However when I read in the paper that no one else would accept, I went to him and told him I was ready to be appointed after all.

He looked exhausted and a little suspicious of me, so I explained that the only reason I had at first refused was that I felt incapable. But I would do my best. Perhaps as a mark of friendship we went swimming together in a muddy river, and to show keenness for my job I suggested we should hold a World Textile Fair in Scotland. He replied that David Selznick had once told him that such fairs might possibly do good in the long run, but that the last one had ruined many small local industries.

It must have been about seven years after my meeting with Khrushchev that I encountered Yuri Andropov, at that time head of the KGB. He had recovered from his sickness and come to London on his way
to Stockholm for a disarmament conference. He honoured me by making use of my services for note-taking. I liked him. He was an immensely tall man and there was something wrong with his right hand, which was apt to flap in a disconsolate way. I remember he told me of his great admiration for the poetry of A.E. Housman.

In December 1983 I had a brief encounter with President Mitterrand in London. He was walking to Paddington Station via Hyde Park. I told him how much I disliked Chirac and I would have added Giscard d’Estaing if Giscard had not joined us at that moment.

In June 1984 I was visiting Castro in Cuba. We walked around chatting in a friendly fashion and came to halt beside a poor man who was weeping. He had just buried a small child in a tiny grave he had dug himself.

Castro tried to comfort him by telling him that now his child would suffer nothing, know nothing.
But the man was not comforted. I crossed myself and he at once stopped crying and shook my hand. He said, ‘I feel you are one of those who think there may possibly be something after death.’

Visiting President Ho Chi Minh, I found him very courteous, and he explained the difficulties which had made him refuse my previous visit. He took me for a walk in the countryside surrounding his HQ. One had to keep a weather-eye open for American bombers. A helicopter approached and I wondered whether it was American, but it proved to be one of ‘ours’ and landed. A very pretty European girl appeared and began to walk off on her own. ‘Is she safe?’ I asked Ho Chi Minh and he called after her, ‘Come back. You don’t know what our boys mightn’t want to do with you.’

A lot of noise in the streets outside the flat where I was living—military commands, etc. It seemed very unusual. I tried to find out what was happening from the radio without success—it wasn’t the hour for
news. I went out and saw Oliver Cromwell walking down the street. I realized why he had once been described as the shadow cast by a crab. I had not expected to see him for at this moment they were voting in the army for and against his policy of executing Charles I. He sat down with a group of people and began to talk to them in French. He said Charles was in effect being killed by the doctrine of divine right. Without that a compromise would have been possible. News of the voting came—only an old officer had voted against Cromwell. ‘He wants to shake the temple,’ Cromwell said, ‘but not destroy it. That would be fatal.’

I was visiting Berkhamsted when I learnt that, with the permission of the British government, the United States planned to drop four hundred parachutists and take over the town at four
A.M
. in order to capture me. It was then nearly midnight and I tried in vain to think of somewhere to go. I checked on the time with two friendly police officers. One of them questioned whether there might not be some resistance.

‘No,’ I argued, ‘they’ll behave very well and probably bring balloons for the children.’

I went back to my room and was handling my passport which would certainly betray me, when the drop occurred early—at midnight. I found myself in a room, under arrest. To the American plainclothesman in charge of me I said, ‘When I get out of here I’ll have the pleasure of hitting you—I shall be hitting a police officer for the first time.’

A voice behind me said, ‘Do you really mean you’ve never hit a policeman before?’ I looked around. It was my old friend Claud Cockburn, who was also under arrest.

We watched the American troops through the window. I had hoped they would disgrace themselves by looting and raping, but to my disappointment they seemed to be behaving correctly.

In February 1965, after an air raid, German parachute troops landed in a quarter of London where I was living. With a friend I tried to get away by car, but I made the mistake of leaving behind a compromising letter dealing with espionage. As we drove away we passed two German soldiers who made no attempt to stop us. But a moment later we saw others approaching and we made another mistake by backing and turning, which aroused suspicion in the soldiers we had passed. We were arrested. Apparently they possessed a complete dossier on me, including a photograph taken with a concealed camera of my meeting in a hotel room with a German whose face I remembered from my trip down the Occupied Territories in 1924. They also appeared to have a tape recording of our voices. The game now seemed
really up, and I felt almost resigned to the torture chamber, with an intellectual curiosity as to how long I would hold out. They possessed a radiogram of my body which would be of help to them.

A full-scale German invasion started on June 23, 1965. They were moving into London from the south in a wide sweep. I and a friend, with one heavy gun—a mortar—between us, were operating as guerrillas on the flank. With our mortar we had attacked a German post and several hundred men and an officer had surrendered to us. Now we argued about our next move. Were the Germans aiming at London or did they intend to cut the road between London and the west? We decided to take a train, but we realized too late that it passed through German-held territory and we would be inspected.

A young German officer came up to see us. I stuck a revolver in his back and told him to go to the lavatory. There we intended to take his uniform. (Once before, my companion had escaped in this way.) But there was another German at the door and I could see from his look of triumph that he had pulled the emergency cord. The train stopped in a railway shed under blazing arc lights.

Suddenly I seemed detached from the situation and saw it as an observer. I was outside the shed and watched one man—my friend—dash out carrying our mortar. He found an empty cart with a huge cart-horse which reared up and leapt forward so that the car for a moment took to the air. Then a second man—surely myself—came out and ran after the cart.