A Man Over Forty (2 page)

‘And in India, where you spent a year or so—'

‘Longer than that.'

‘In India you found time to get married?'

Leaning forward in his chair, Balintore shook a menacing finger at the Interrogator. Anger tautened the contours of his face, and the beating of a pulse in his temple – perhaps by some accident of lighting – became suddenly conspicuous.

‘If you want to make a parade or raree-show of married life – my married life! – just tell me and I'll save you a lot of trouble,' he said. ‘I'll give you the whole story, if that's what you're after.'

His domestic audience of several million viewers now watched and listened with a rising expectancy. Now, they thought, he's going to cut loose! Now there'll be an explosion! —'

‘I didn't want to go home: that was my motive. And the Civil War gave me an excuse for going to Spain.'

‘Did you enjoy it?'

‘No.'

‘But when another war began, in 1939, you joined the army again. A different army—'

‘And don't ask me why I did that.'

‘I wasn't going to. No one has ever doubted your patriotism, Mr Balintore. But in your second war you did find some opportunity for enjoyment?'

‘I didn't join the infantry. I got a commission – as I've told you already – in the Intelligence Corps.'

‘And in India, where you spent a year or so—'

‘Longer than that.'

‘In India you found time to get married?'

Leaning forward in his chair, Balintore shook a menacing finger at the Interrogator. Anger tautened the contours of his face, and the beating of a pulse in his temple – perhaps by some accident of lighting – became suddenly conspicuous.

‘If you want to make a parade or raree-show of married life – my married life! – just tell me and I'll save you a lot of trouble,' he said. ‘I'll give you the whole story, if that's what you're after.'

His domestic audience of several million viewers now watched and listened with a rising expectancy. Now, they thought, he's going to cut loose! Now there'll be an explosion! – For the enormous popularity that Balintore enjoyed, throughout the whole country, was due, in part, to his irascible temper and the freedom with which he gave vent to it. Again and again his audience had seen the eruption of his anger, and heard with delight his intemperate denunciation of egregious folly – or, as often, of some harmless opinion with which he happened to disagree. He had no fear of rank, he was no respecter of persons, and many of the victims of his anger had been men eminent in their profession or elevated above the common mean by wealth or a noble name. It was widely known that he and the Interrogator disliked each other – each, on more than one occasion, had spoken of the other with
memorable acerbity – and many viewers in quiet sitting-rooms had been waiting eagerly, as if for fireworks, for a discharge of squibs and verbal rockets, for the match that would touch to flame a set-piece of splendid fury. And now, they thought, now we're going to have it.

But the Interrogator was skilled in his trade, and expert in controlling a difficult subject. He had no wish to excite or anger Balintore, and mildly – with a note of laughing apology in his voice – he said, ‘I wasn't going to ask embarrassing questions: please believe that. All I had in mind was to ask you about a story that was current after you and your wife had separated. Your defence – according to the story – was that you had never been able to buy her pearls and caviare.'

Balintore refused to be mollified. He paid no attention to the Interrogator's effort to keep debate on civil ground, but with defiance in his mien and provocation in his voice, said harshly, ‘My first marriage went on the rocks, my second landed me in quicksands, and my third blew up in a nuclear explosion! There's no secret about that, and no need to varnish my failures with politeness or equivocation.'

‘Well, that's an example of the frankness for which you're so well known—'

‘All my marriages have ended in divorce, and the reason is that I'm not a domestic animal. Women want a man who'll sit and listen to them talking, and that I can't do. Not for very long. But I've no cause for self-reproach! All my wives have done extremely well for themselves, and the improvement in their condition they owe to me and what I taught them.'

‘You've never been handicapped by modesty, Mr Balintore?'

‘Why should I be? I was well brought up, as a child, and taught to read the Bible. And if you had the same advantage, you'll know that it's a grave mistake, if not actually a sin, to hide your light under a bushel.'

‘You have never done that? You have never concealed anything?'

Balintore was slow to answer. He was sweating again, and again he mopped his face with a large handkerchief. Then
grudgingly he answered, ‘That's too much to ask, and too hard to answer. No one can afford – and no one should be asked – to tell everything.'

‘I'll try to be more specific,' said the Interrogator, ‘and I want to go back to a previous question – to a topic that you galloped away from before I had finished with it. I mean the matter of the Spanish war.'

‘I told you why I went to Spain, and what else is relevant?'

‘You didn't tell me which side you joined.'

‘Did you ask me?'

‘I'm asking you now.'

‘People talked a lot of nonsense about that war. A great deal of nonsense! And a vast amount of nonsense was written about it Many people still think that all the intervention, by foreign powers, was Fascist intervention. That Germans and Italians were the only foreign troops who fought there. But the truth is that the earliest intervention was Russian.'

‘There was confused thinking: no one denies that. We didn't know enough, either about the causes of the war or what was happening, to be realistic or objective. We were misled by clever propaganda: I admit all that, and I still want to know which side you fought on.'

Balintore's ill temper had become a fretful uneasiness. He made an attempt, which the Interrogator ignored, to interrupt; and then, clumsily, felt in his pocket for a cigarette case. He let it fall, and the image on the lighted screen was blurred as he stooped to pick it up.

He lit a cigarette, and a multitude of viewers saw that his fingers trembled. Many grew uneasy on his behalf, for it was known that he had lately been ill – he had left a nursing home only a few days before – and now his strained and anxious look, his shaking fingers, showed clearly enough his remnant weakness.

He blew a puff of smoke that clouded the screen, and through its haze said, ‘On Franco's side.'

‘Was that wise?'

‘No. It's never wise to take an active part in someone else's war.'

‘I want to know—'

‘There were atrocities on both sides, but I did nothing to be ashamed of – if that's what you're suggesting.'

‘I would never suggest such a thing. I was going to ask if you saw much fighting.'

Balintore muffled a fit of coughing in his handkerchief, and threw his cigarette into a glass ashtray. ‘As much as most people, I suppose. I was in several battles. There was a long one, a sort of suburban battle, for Madrid. I was wounded there.'

‘Are you a brave man? I mean naturally brave?'

‘Far from it.'

‘Well, if that's so, I'm more in the dark than ever about why you went to Spain, and enlisted on Franco's side. Unless you saw Franco as the symbol of authority – the authority of church and state – and so identified him with your father: your father to whom, as you said, you were devoted.'

‘That's far-fetched. I think – oh, it doesn't matter. But it's too far-fetched.'

‘Are you feeling ill? There's water on the table beside you. Would you like a drink?'

‘I'm all right.'

‘Are you sure?'

‘Quite sure.'

‘Well, then, if this doesn't embarrass you – did your mother know what you were doing? Did you write and tell her?'

‘My mother,' said Balintore harshly, ‘was dead.'

‘I'm sorry! I apologize for a stupid question. I didn't know—'

The Interrogator waited while Balintore drank a glass of water. Then, in a light and conversational tone of voice – a tone to put Balintore at his ease – he said, ‘You have told us that you're not a naturally brave man, and though I find that hard to believe, I'll accept what you say – or pretend to accept it – and turn to the other side of the picture. If you're not brave, tell me what you're afraid of: what sort of things. Tell me what you're most afraid of.'

‘Afraid?'

‘Of what? What are you most afraid of?'

There was a long pause before Balintore replied, ‘I suppose – I suppose – of being found out.'

Then, with consternation in their hearts and minds, several million viewers saw him grasp the arms of his chair and try to rise. He stood for a moment, a bowed figure, and in sudden collapse fell heavily to the floor. A voice was heard – the voice of someone unseen in the studio – that said loudly, ‘He's fainted!' And a million screens were darkened.

Half a minute passed before they were lighted again to show a young woman who, with a smile that exposed her teeth in an expression of untimely gaiety – but it was meant to be reassuring – said, ‘We are very sorry that the interview with Mr Balintore had to be curtailed because of his sudden illness. You will be glad to hear that he is already feeling a little better, and a doctor who was fortunately in the studio has assured us that there's no need for anxiety. You will be given a further report of Mr Balintore's progress in the late news, and now, to fill the gap before the next programme, we are going to show you a film taken on the Dalmatian coast. Some of you may have seen it before, but it's a very beautiful film, and I think you'll be glad of the chance to see it again.'

On The following day the newspapers made much of the story, and showed a general sympathy with Edward Balintore in his misfortune. He had, in the past, often given them good copy, and his mysterious collapse, in all the publicity afforded by television, was a windfall that compelled respect.

The
Daily Mail
, in a leading article, said: ‘Broadcasting and television are among the most notable innovations of our century, and like all innovations they claim their victims. Subject to strains that few of us could endure, Edward Balintore is paying the price of fabulous success in a new profession.…'

The
Daily Express
opened comment more dramatically: ‘£30,000 a year! A lot of money, but not enough to buy happiness, as Edward Balintore had discovered. Three times
he has been married, and three times come to grief in the divorce courts. Now he himself has succumbed to the pressure of a life as artificial as that of a goldfish in its bowl.…'

There was a third leader in
The Times
which began: ‘Nowadays we ask too much of our entertainers. In an earlier age the clowns and comedians of Drury Lane or a suburban Empire were not expected to maintain their popularity with timely philosophy or learned opinion. In recent years, however, a certain form of entertainment, borrowing heavily from the lecture room, seems to have usurped an authority which, in the Victorian era, was enjoyed only by leading politicians, outstanding clerics, and a few popular scientists.

‘But the authority of the television studio is founded on no institution, neither on church nor parliament. It rests only on the suspect strength of personality. In the last few years the outstanding example of this new form of leadership has been that remarkable and gifted man, Mr Edward Balintore. To many of his innumerable admirers he is hardly less than a contemporary Socrates, impelled to question the truth of many accepted ideas. But Socrates, though he lived in the open, was not subjected to the intolerable stare of modern publicity.…'

The
Guardian
hoped ‘that his malaise may be of short duration, and that he will soon return to stir our minds with outrageous conjecture and disturb our thoughts with the simple question, ”But is it true?” ' At the weekend the
Observer's
diarist wrote: ‘He has a large and excellent vocabulary, and that has been enough to set him apart from many of those who nowadays claim our attention. Even more impressive is his ability to keep his command of language intact when he loses his temper: he has made anger seem an enviable gift, and turned its expression into a fine art.'

Comment in the
Sunday Times
was brusque and salutary: ‘No one believes that Edward Balintore has any guilty secrets, or that there is any truth in his hysterical confession that he is a fraud. The fact is that he has been living for several years under heavy pressure, and when he succumbed to it, the nature of his trade made it almost inevitable that he should succumb in circumstances of the utmost publicity. Many of us who can
remember serious illness have reason to be thankful that television cameras never came to our bedside.'

The
Sunday Telegraph
drew attention again to his large earnings. On its third page its diarist wrote: ‘How much has Edward Balintore been earning? Some people say as much as£30,000. That, I think, is an exaggeration. But £20,000 a year is a reasonable estimate, and when tax is subtracted from that, the residue is not an excessive reward for all he did. And he probably needed every penny of it. He lives extravagantly, and there are three wives in the offing whom he has to support.'

The newspapers were generous, as English papers usually are to those in trouble, and none made scandalous copy of his collapse. But Balintore needed more help than columnists or reporters could give, and he who carried him through disaster was a young man of whom the vast majority of newspaper readers had never heard, and whose name remained generally unknown till some two years later.