The Fourth Estate (21 page)

Magnette.

But as the weeks
passed, and every Tuesday evening the members of the Labor Club were subjected
to Keith’s views on the monarchy, private schools, the honors system and the
61itism of Oxford and Cambridge, he became known as Comrade Keith. One or two
of them even ended up in his room after the meetings, discussing long into the
night how they would change the world once they were out of this dreadful
place.”

During his first
term Keith was surprised to find that if he failed to turn up for a lecture, or
even missed the odd tutorial at which he was supposed to read his weekly essay
to his tutor, he was not automatically punished or even reprimanded. It took
him several weeks to get used to a system that relied solely on
self-discipline, and by the end of his first term his father was threatening
that unless he buckled down, he would stop his allowance and bring him back
home to do a good day’s work.

During his
second term Keith wrote a long letter to his father every Friday, detailing the
amount of work he was doing, which seemed to stem the flow of invective. He
even made the occasional appearance at lectures, where he concentrated on
trying to perfect a roulette system, and at tutorials, where he tried to stay
awake.

During the
summer term Keith discovered Cheltenham, Newmarket, Ascot, Doncaster and Epsom,
thus ensuring that he never had enough money to purchase a new shirt or even a
pair of socks.

During the
vacation several of his meals had to be taken at the railway station which,
because of its close proximity to Worcester, was looked upon by some
undergraduates as the college canteen. One night after he had drunk a little
too much at the Bricklayers’Arms, Keith daubed on Worcester’s eighteenth
-century wall: “
C’est magnifique, mais ce
n’est pas la gare
.”

At the end of
his first year Keith had little to show for the twelve months he had spent at
the university, other than a small group of friends who, like him, were
determined to change the system to benefit the majority just as soon as they
went down.

His mother, who
wrote regularly, suggested that he should take advantage of his vacation by
traveling extensively through Europe, as he might never get another chance to
do so. He heeded her advice, and started to plan a route-which he would have
kept to if he hadn’t bumped into the features editor of the Oxford Mail over a
drink at the local pub.

Dear Mother I
have just received your letter with ideas about what I should do during the
vac. I had originally thought of following your advice and driving round the
French coast, perhaps ending up at Deauvillebut that was before the features
editor of the Oxford Mail offered me the chance to visit Berlin.

They want me to
write four one-thousand-word articles on life in occupied Germany under the
Allied forces, and then to go on to Dresden to report on the rebuilding of the
city. They are offering me twenty guineas for each article on delivery. Because
of my precarious financial state-my fault, not yours-Berlin has taken
precedence over Deauville.

If they have
such things as postcards in Germany, I will send you one along with copies of
the four articles for Dad to consider. Perhaps the Courier might be interested
in them?

Sorry I won’t be
seeing you this summer.

Love, Keith Once
term had ended, Keith started off in the same direction as many other students.
He drove his MG down to Dover and took the ferry across to Calais. But as the
others disembarked to begin their journeys to the historic cities of the
Continent, he swung his little open tourer northeast, in the direction of
Berlin. The weather was so hot that Keith was able to keep his soft top down
for the first time.

As Keith drove
along the winding roads of France and Belgium, he was constantly reminded of
how little time had passed since Europe had been at war. Mutilated hedges and
fields where tanks had taken the place of tractors, bombed out farmhouses that
had lain between advancing and retreating armies, and rivers littered with
rusting military equipment. As he passed each bombed-out building and drove
through mile after mile of devastated landscape, the thought of Deauville, with
its casino and racecourse, became more and more appealing.

When it was too
dark to avoid holes in the road, Keith turned off the highway and drove for a
few hundred yards down a quiet lane. He parked at the side of the road and
quickly fell into a deep sleep. He was woken while it was still dark by the
sound of lorries heading ponderously toward the German border, and jotted down
a note: ‘The army seems to rise without regard for the motion of the sun.” It
took two or three turns of the key before the engine spluttered into life. He
rubbed his eyes, swung the MG round and returned to the main road, trying to
remember to keep to the right-hand side.

After a couple
of hours he reached the border, and had to wait in a long queue: each person
wishing to enter Germany was meticulously checked.

Eventually he
came to the front, where a customs officer studied his passport. When he
discovered that Keith was an Australian, he simply made a caustic comment about
Donald Bradman and waved him on his way.

Nothing Keith
had heard or read could have prepared him for the experience of a defeated
nation. His progress became slower and slower as the cracks in the road turned
into potholes, and the potholes turned into craters. It was soon impossible to
travel more than a few hundred yards without having to drive as if he was in a
dodgem car at a seaside amusement park. And no sooner had he managed to push the
speedometer over forty than he would be forced to pull over to allow yet
another convoy of trucks the latest with stars on their doors-to drive past him
down the middle of the road.

He decided to
take advantage of one of these unscheduled holdups to eat at an inn he spotted
just off the road. The food was inedible, the beer weak, and the sullen looks
of the innkeeper and his patrons left him in no doubt that he was unwelcome. He
didn’t bother to order a second course, but quickly settled his bill and left.

He drove on
toward the German capital, slow kilometer after slow kilometer, and reached the
outskirts of the city only a few minutes before the gas lights were turned on.
He began to search immediately among the back streets for a small hotel. He
knew that the nearer he got to the center, the less likely it would be that he
could afford the tariff.

Eventually he
found a little guesthouse on the comer of a bombed-out street. It stood on its
own, as if somehow unaware of what had taken place all around it. This illusion
was dispelled as soon as he pushed open the front door. The dingy hall was lit
by a single candle, and a porter in baggy trousers and a gray shirt stood
sulkily behind a counter. He made little attempt to respond to Keith’s efforts
to book a room. Keith knew only a few words of German, so he finally held his
hand in the air with his palm open, hoping the porter would understand that he
wished to stay for five nights.

The man nodded
reluctantly, took a key from a hook behind him and led his guest up an
uncarpeted staircase to a corner room on the second floor.

Keith put his
holdall on the floor and stared at the little bed, the one chair, the chest of
drawers with three handles out of eight and the battered table. He walked
across the room and looked out of the window onto piles of rubble, and thought
about the serene duck pond he could see from his college rooms. He turned to
say “Thank you,” but the porter had already left.

After he had
unpacked his suitcase, Keith pulled the chair up to the table by the window,
and for a couple of hours-feeling guilty by association-wrote down his first
impressions of the defeated nation.

Keith woke the
next morning as soon as the sun shone through the curtainless window. It took
him some time to wash in a basin that had no plug and could only manage a
trickle of cold water He decided against shaving. He dressed, went downstairs
and opened several doors, looking for the kitchen. A woman standing at a stove
turned round, and managed a smile. She waved him toward the table.

Everything
except flour, she explained in pidgin English, was in short supply. She set in
front of him two large slices of bread covered with a thin suggestion of
dripping. He thanked her, and was rewarded with a smile. After a second glass
of what she assured him was milk, he returned to his room and sat on the end of
the bed, checking the address at which the meeting would take place and then
trying to fix it on an out-of-date road map of the city which he had picked up
at Blackwell’s in Oxford.

When he left the
hotel it was only a few minutes after eight, but this was not an appointment he
wanted to be late for.

Keith had
already decided to organize his time so that he could spend at least a day in
each sector of the divided city; he planned to visit the Russian sector last,
so he could compare it with the three controlled by the Allies. After what he
had seen so far, he assumed it could only be an improvement, which he knew
would please his fellow members of the Oxford Labor Club, who believed that
“Uncle Joe” was doing a far better job than Attlee, Auriol and Truman put
together-despite the fact that the farthest east most of them had ever traveled
was Cambridge.

Keith pulled up
several times on his way into the city to ask directions to Siemensstrasse. He
finally found the headquarters of the British Public Relations and Information
Services Control a few minutes before nine. He parked his car, and joined a
stream of servicemen and women in different-colored uniforms as they made their
way up the wide stone steps and through the swing doors. A sign warned him that
the lift was Out of order, so he climbed the five floors to the PRISC office.
Although he was early for his appointment, he still reported to the front desk.

“How can I help
you, sir?” asked a young corporal standing behind the desk.

Keith had never
been called “sie’by a woman before, and he didn’t like it.

He took a letter
out of an inside pocket and handed it across to her. “I have an appointment
with the director at nine o’clock.”

“I don’t think
he’s in yet, sir, but I’ll just check.”

She picked tip a
telephone and spoke to a colleague, “Someone will come and see you in a few
minutes,” she said once she had put the phone down.

“Please have a
seat.”

A few minutes
turned out to be nearly an hour, by which time Keith had read both the papers
on the coffee table from cover to cover, but hadn’t been offered any coffee.
Der Berliner wasn’t a lot better than Cberwell, the student paper he so scorned
at Oxford, and
Der Telegraf
was even
worse. But as the director of PRISC seemed to be mentioned on nearly every page
of
Der Telegraf
, Keith hoped he
wouldn’t be asked for his opinion.

Eventually
another woman appeared and asked for Mr. Townsend. Keith jumped up and walked
over to the desk.

“My name is
Sally Carr,” said the woman in a breezy cockney accent. “I’m the director’s
secretary. How can I help you?”

“I wrote to you
from Oxford,” Keith replied, hoping that he sounded older than his years. “I’m
a journalist with the Oxford Mail, and I’ve been commissioned to write a series
of articles on conditions in Berlin. I have an appointment to see...” he turned
her letter round “
...
Captain
Arm-trong.”

“Oh, yes, I
remember,” Miss Carr said. “But I’m afraid Captain Armstrong is visiting the
Russian sector this morning, and I’m not expecting him in the office today. If
you can come back tomorrow morning, I’m sure he’ll be happy to see you.” Keith
tried not to let his disappointment show, and assured her that he would return
at nine the following morning. He might have abandoned his plan to see
Armstrong altogether had he not been told that this particular captain knew
more about what was really going on in Berlin than all the other staff officers
put together.

He spent the rest
of the day exploring the British sector, stopping frequently to make notes on
anything he considered newsworthy. The way the British behaved toward the
defeated Germansi empty shops trying to serve too many Customers; queues for
food on every street corner; bowed heads whenever you tried to look a German in
the eye. As a clock in the distance chimed twelve, he stepped into a noisy bar
full of soldiers in uniform and took a seat at the end of the counter. When a
waiter finally asked him what he wanted, lie ordered a large tankard of beer
and a cheese sandwich-at least he thought he ordered cheese, but his German
wasn’t fluent enough to be certain. Sitting at the bar, he began to scribble
down some more notes.

As he watched
the waiters going about their work, he became aware that if you were in
civilian clothes you were served after anyone in uniform.

Anyone.

The different
accents around the room reminded him that the class system was perpetuated even
when the British were Occupying someone else’s city.

Some of the
soldiers were complaining-in tones that Wouldn’t have pleased Miss
Steadman-about how long it was taking for their papers to be processed before
they could return home. Others seemed resigned to a life in uniform, and only
talked of the next war and where it might be.