Human Voices. Penelope Fitzgerald

command of the 5th Armoured Division, which, in the middle of May, had made a last counterattack against the German advance.

      A romantic, then, though limited by earth and sky, but nothing in his military career explained his curious fondness for the English. This could be traced to his shrewd marriage with a very rich woman, addicted, as Pinard was himself, to racehorses. Between the wars he had become a familiar figure at bloodstock sales, and at Epsom and Ascot. Much photographed at every meeting, he was always cheerful, and most important of all, nearly always a loser. That was the foundation of his great popularity over here, something he had never attained in France. On his wife’s money, he became an Anglophile. He learnt to love because he was loved, for the first time in his life.

      

      At half-past eight on the 14th of June the Director General’s office told DPP that General Pinard was going on the air as soon as it could be arranged. ‘He wants to broadcast to the English nation and it seems it’s a matter of great urgency. It’s all been agreed.’

      ‘Well, the evening programmes must shove over a bit,’ said Jeff. ‘I’ll see to it.’

      ‘It’s more than that. We want you down in the studio.’

      ‘What for?’

      ‘Don’t you speak fluent French?’

      ‘Well?’

      ‘He wants you there when Pinard comes.’

      ‘He speaks perfectly good English, with a strong French accent, which is exactly what you want.’

      ‘The point is this – the War Office is sending someone and so is the FO, and the DG and DDG don’t think it will look well if we can’t produce a French speaker from our top level in BH.’

      ‘What do you want me to say?’

      ‘Oh, it might be a few sentences of greeting. Some hospitality may be considered appropriate. I suppose there’d better be some absinthe, isn’t that what they drink?’

      ‘The General prefers cognac,’ Jeff said.

      ‘Have you met him, then? That might be extremely useful.’

      ‘I met him in a dugout, behind a village called Quesnoy en Santerre, twenty-three years ago.’

      ‘I’ve never heard you talk about your war experiences before, Haggard.’

      ‘This wasn’t an experience. We were supposed to be taking over from the French, then it turned out that we were retreating. I was Mess Officer and I stayed to see if the French had left any brandy behind, they did sometimes. Pinard came back with exactly the same idea in mind. He was a captain then. I don’t flatter myself that he’ll remember this incident, by the way.’

      ‘I see, well, that isn’t really … did he seem to be a good speaker?’

      ‘He didn’t say very much on that occasion.’

      ‘In a sense it hardly matters whether he is or not. It’s a morale talk, he’s expected to fly on to Morocco to organize the resistance there, he’ll want to encourage himself as well as us.’

      

      General Pinard arrived brushed and shining, to the relief of the Talks Producer, who believed, in the old way, that appearances were projected through the microphone. His silent young aide wished to accompany him into the studio, but was detained in the rather crowded continuity room. Pinard sat down behind the glass panel, his eyes resting for a moment upon everybody present.

      ‘He won’t wear headphones,’ the Talks Producer told Jeff. ‘It seems he doesn’t like them. He prefers to go ahead on a hand cue.’

      ‘I don’t think we should grudge him anything.’

      The canteen’s brandy, Martell 2 Star, left over from Christmas, was brought out. The General raised his hand in a gesture of mild, but emphatic, refusal. That meant that no-one could have any – a disappointment to everybody except Talks, whose allocation for the month had already run out. The brandy would now do for the Minister of Coastal Defence, due later that evening. But these considerations faded as the General’s presence was felt. He waited in immaculate dignity. Behind him lay France’s broken armies.

      A piece of paper was put in front of him. He looked at it, then moved it to one side.

      In the continuity studio it was hardly possible to move. The War Office’s Major, the Foreign Office’s liaison man, sat awkwardly on high stools. The young French aide stood warily on guard. The Acting Deputy Director General suddenly came in through the soundless door to join them. DPP leant in a corner, looking up at the ceiling.

      ‘Don’t forget it’s your duty to put everyone at their ease,’ he said to the Talks Producer.

      ‘He didn’t look at my notes and suggestions. We need a run-through.’

      ‘You’ve no time. I did what I could for you, but we can’t alter the nine o’clock. You’re on in forty-three seconds.’

      The producer pressed his switch.

      ‘How would you like to be introduced, General?’

      ‘I don’t know,’ Pinard replied. ‘I am in uniform, but I am a soldier without a post, an officer without authority, and a Frenchman without a country.’

      ‘The English people know your name quite well, sir.’

      ‘Use it if you wish. But make it clear that I am speaking to them as an individual. I have something to say from the heart.’

      ‘How long is this going to take?’ asked the programme engineer. No-one knew, it was open-ended. The PE’s face tightened with disapproval.

      ‘My dear friends,’ General Pinard said, ‘many persons who have occupied the stage of history have been forgiven not only their mistakes, but their sins, because of what they did at one moment only. I pray that for me, this will prove to be the moment.’

      It was a quiet, moving, old man’s voice, with a slight metallic edge.

      ‘It gives me a strange feeling to speak to you this evening, and even stranger, after all that has happened in the past few weeks, to think that I should be speaking the truth, and that so many of you should be willing to hear it. Old soldiers like to tell stories, and old generals most of all. That kind of story is called a giberne.’

      The producer passed a note: Should we translate at the end? ADDG wrote: I think a few untranslated French words give the right atmosphere. Jeff wrote: Don’t worry, he’s not going to tell it anyway.

      ‘This evening I am not here to indulge myself with a giberne. I have come to tell you what I saw yesterday, and what you must do tomorrow.

      ‘But perhaps you will say to yourselves, “I am listening to a Frenchman.” He is French, and I am English and I don’t trust him, any more than I would have done these past five hundred years, let them make what alliances they will. And today above all I don’t trust him, this evening I don’t trust him, because his country has been defeated. You know that every road leading to the south is impassable, every road is crowded not only with troops in retreat, but with families on the move, the old, the weak and the very young, the bedding, the cooking-pots, the scenes to which we have become so terribly accustomed since Poland fell.’

      ‘What’s this about cooking-pots?’ said the engineer to his JPE. ‘He may be going to break down. Watch the level.’

      ‘So, to repeat, you will think: I shan’t trust this man.… And we French, do we trust the English? The answer is: not at all. In the past weeks, most of all in the past twenty-four hours, I have heard you called many hard names, I don’t only mean by colleagues in the Conseil de Guerre but every soldier and every little shopkeeper on the road. They say that you led us unprepared into war with Germany and that having done so you have deserted us. And perhaps “in the misfortunes of our friends there is something not displeasing to us”. Well, in that