The Fourth Estate (22 page)

Keith scowled
when he heard one of them say, “Scratch them, and underneath they’re all bloody
Nazis.” But after lunch, as he continued his exploration of the British sector,
he thought that on the surface at least the soldiers were well disciplined, and
that most of the occupiers seemed to be treating the occupied with restraint
and courtesy.

As the
shopkeepers began to put up their blinds and shut their doors, Keith returned
to his little MG. He found it surrounded by admirers whose looks of envy
quickly turned to anger when they saw he was wearing civilian clothes. He drove
slowly back to his hotel. After a plate of potatoes and cabbage eaten in the
kitchen, he returned to his room and spent the next two hours writing down all
he could remember of the day. Later he climbed into bed, and readAnimalFar?n
until the candle finally flickered out.

That night Keith
slept well. After another wash in nearfreezing water, he made a half-hearted
effort to shave before making his way down to the kitchen. Several slabs of
bread already covered in dripping awaited him.

After breakfast
he gathered up his papers and set off for his rearranged meeting. If he had
been concentrating more on his driving and less on the questions he wanted to
ask Captain Armstrong, he might not have turned left at the roundabout. The
tank heading straight for him was incapable of stopping without far more
warning, and although Keith threw on his brakes and only clipped the corner of
its heavy mudguard, the MG spun in a complete circle, . mounted the pavement
and crashed into a concrete lamp post. He sat behind the wheel, trembling.

The traffic
around him came to a halt, and a young lieutenant jumped out of the tank and
ran across to check that Keith wasn’t injured. Keith climbed gingerly out of
the car, a little shaken, but, after he had jumped up and down and swung his
arms, he found that he had nothing more than a slight cut on his right hand and
a sore ankle.

When they
inspected the tank, it had little to show for the encounter other than the
removal of a layer of paint from its mudguard. But the MG looked as if it had
been involved in a full-scale battle. It was then that Keith remembered he
could get only third-party insurance while he was abroad.

However, he
assured the cavalry officer that he was in no way to blame, and after the
lieutenant had told Keith how to find his way to the nearest garage, they
parted.

Keith abandoned
his MG and began to jog in the direction of the garage. He arrived at the
forecourt about twenty minutes later, painfully aware of how unfit he was. He
eventually found the one mechanic who spoke English, and was promised that
eventually someone would go and retrieve the vehicle.

“What does
‘eventually’ mean?” asked Keith.

“It depends,”
said the mechanic, rubbing his thumb across the top of his fingers. “You see,
it’s all a matter of... priorities.”

Keith took out
his wallet and produced a ten-shilling note.

“You have
dollars, yes?” asked the mechanic.

“No,” said Keith
firmly.

After describing
where the car was, he continued on his journey to Siemensstrasse. He was
already ten minutes late for his appointment in a city that boasted few trains
and even fewer taxis. By the time he arrived at PRISC headquarters, it was his
turn to have kept someone waiting forty minutes.

The corporal
behind the counter recognized him immediately, but she was not the bearer of
encouraging news. “Captain Armstrong left for an appointment in the American
sector a few minutes ago,” she said. “He waited for over an hour.”

“Damn,” said
Keith. “I had an accident on my way, and got here as quickly as I could. Can I
see him later today?”

“I’m afraid
not,” she replied. “He has appointments in the American sector all afternoon.”

Keith shrugged
his shoulders. “Can you tell me how to get to the French sector?”

As he walked
around the streets of another sector of Berlin, he added little to his
experience of the previous day, except to be reminded that there were at least
two languages in this city he couldn’t converse in.

This caused him
to order a meal he didn’t want and a bottle of wine he couldn’t afford.

After lunch he
returned to the garage to check on the progress they were making with his car.
By the time he arrived, the gas lights were back on and the one person who
spoke English had already gone home. Keith saw his MG standing in the corner of
the forecourt in the same brokendown state he had left it in that morning. All
the attendant could do was point at the figure eight on his watch.

Keith was back
at the garage by a quarter to eight the following morning, but the man who
spoke English didn’t appear until 8.13. He walked round the MG several times
before offering an opinion. “One week before I can get it back on the road,” he
said sadly. This time Keith passed over a pound.

“But perhaps I
could manage it in a couple of days... It’s all a matter of priorities,” he
repeated. Keith decided he couldn’t afford to be a top priority.

As he stood on a
crowded tram he began to consider his funds, or lack of them. If he was to
survive for another ten days, pay his hotel bills and for the repairs to his
car, he would have to spend the rest of the trip forgoing the luxury of his
hotel and sleep in the MG.

Keithjumpedoff
the tram at the now familiarstop, ran up the steps and was standing in front of
the counter a few minutes before nine. This time he was kept waiting for twenty
minutes, with the same newspapers to read, before the directoes secretary
reappeared, an embarrassed look on her face.

1 am so sorry,
Mr. Townsend,” she said, “but Captain Armstrong has had to fly to England
unexpectedly. His second in command, Lieutenant Wakeham, would be only too
happy to see you.”

Keith spent
nearly an hour with Lieutenant Wakeham, who kept calling him “old chap,”
explained why he couldn’t get into Spandau and made more jokes about Don
Bradman. By the time he left, Keith felt he had learned more about the state of
English cricket than about what was going on in Berlin. He passed the rest of
the day in the American sector, and regularly stopped to talk to GIs on street
corners. They told him with pride that they never left their sector until it
was time to return to the States.

When he called
back at the garage later that afternoon, the English-speaking mechanic promised
him the car would be ready to pick up the following evening.

The next day,
Keith made his way by tram to the Russian sector. He soon discovered how wrong
he had been to assume that there would be nothing new to learn from the
experience. The Oxford University Labor Club would not be pleased to be told
that the East Berliners’ shoulders were more hunched, their heads more bowed
and their pace slower than those of their fellow-citizens in the Allied
sectors, and that they didn’t appear to speak even to each other, let alone to
Keith. In the main square a statue of Hitler had been replaced by an even
bigger one of Lenin, and a massive effigy of Stalin dominated every street
corner. After several hours of walking up and down drab streets with shops
devoid of people and goods, and being unable to find a single bar or
restaurant, Keith returned to the British sector.

He decided that
if he drove to Dresden the following morning he might be able to complete his
assignment early, and then perhaps he could spend a couple of days in Deauville
replenishing his dwindling finances. He began to whistle as he jumped on a tram
that would drop him outside the garage.

The MG was
waiting on the forecourt, and he had to admit that it looked quite magnificent.
Someone had even cleaned it, so its red bonnet gleamed in the evening light.

The mechanic
passed him the key. Keith jumped behind the wheel and switched on the engine.
It started immediately. “Great,” he said.

The mechanic
nodded his agreement. When Keith stepped out of the car, another garage worker
leaned over and removed the key from the ignition.

“So, how much
will that be?” asked Keith, opening his wallet.

“Twenty pounds,”
said the mechanic.

Keith swung
round and stared at him. ‘Twenty pounds?” he spluttered. “But I don’t have
twenty pounds. You’ve already pocketed thirty bob, and the damn car only cost
me thirty pounds in the first place.”

This piece of
infon-nation didn’t seem to impress the mechanic. “We had to replace the
crankshaft and rebuild the carburetor,” he explained. “And the spare parts weren’t
easy to get hold of. Not to mention the bodywork.

There’s not much
call for such luxuries in Berlin. Twenty pounds,” he repeated.

Keith opened his
wallet and began to count his notes. “What’s that in Deutschemarks?”

“We don’t take
Deutschemarks,” said the mechanic.

“Why not?”

“The British
have warned us to beware of forgeries.”

Keith decided
that the time had come to try some different tactics. ‘This is nothing less
than extortion!” he bellowed. “I’ll damn well have you closed down!”

The German was
unmoved. “You may have won the war, sir,” he said drily, “but that doesn’t mean
you don’t have to pay your bills.”

“Do you think
you can get away with this?” shouted Keith. “I’m going to report you to my
friend Captain Armstrong of the PRISC. Then you’ll find who’s in charge.”

“Perhaps it
would be better if we called in the police, and we can let them decide who’s in
charge.”

This silenced
Keith, who paced Lip and down the forecourt for some time before admitting, “I
don’t have twenty pounds.”

‘Then perhaps you’ll
have to sell the car.”

“Never,” said
Keith.

“in which case
we’ll just have to garage it for you-at the usual daily rate-until you’re able
to pay the bill.”

Keith turned
redder and redder while the two men stood hovering over his MG. They looked remarkably
unperturbed. “How much would you offer me for it?” he asked eventually.

“Well, there’s
not much call for secondhand right-hand drive sports cars in Berlin,” he said.
“But I suppose I could manage 100,000 Deutschemarks.”

“But you told me
earlier that you didn’t deal in Deutschemarks.”

“That’s only
when we’re selling. It’s different when we’re buying.”

“is that 100,000
over and above my bill?”

“No,” said the
mechanic. He paused, smiled and added, “but we’ll see that you get a good
exchange rate.”

“Bloody Nazis,”
muttered Keith.

When Keith began
his second year at Oxford, he was pressed by his friends in the Labor Club to
stand for the committee. He had quickly worked out that although the club had
over six hundred members, it was the committee who met Cabinet ministers
whenever they visited the university, and who held the power to pass
resolutions. They even selected those who attended the party conference and so
had a chance to influence party policy.

When the result
of the ballot for the committee was announced, Keith was surprised by how large
a margin he had been elected. The following Monday he attended his first
committee meeting at the Bricklayers’ Arms. He sat at the back in silence,
scarcely believing what was taking place in front of his eyes. All the things
he despised most about Britain were being re-enacted by that committee. They
were reactionary, prejudiced and, whenever it came to making any real
decisions, u I tra -conservative. If anyone came up with an original idea, it
was discussed at great length and then quickly forgotten once the meeting had
adjourned to the bar downstairs. Keith concluded that becoming a committee
member wasn’t going to be enough if he wanted to see some of his more radical
ideas become reality. In his final year he would have to become chairman of the
Labor Club. When he mentioned this ambition in a letter to his father, Sir
Graham wrote back that he was more interested in Keith’s prospects of getting a
degree, as becoming chairman of the Labor Club was not of paramount importance
for someone who hoped to succeed him as proprietor of a newspaper group.

Keith’s only
rival for the post appeared to be the vice chairman, Gareth Williams, who as a
miner’s son with a scholarship from Neath Grammar School certainly had all the
right qualifications.

The election of
officers was scheduled for the second week of Michaelmas term. Keith realized
that every hour of the first week would be crucial if he hoped to become
chairman. As Gareth Williams was more popular with the committee than with the
rank and file members, Keith knew exactly where he had to concentrate his
energies. During the first ten days of term he invited several paid-up members
of the club, including freshmen, back to his room for a drink. Night after
night they consumed crates of college beer and tart, non-vintage wine, all at
Keith’s expense.

With twenty-four
hours to go, Keith thought he had it sewn up. He checked over the list of club
members, putting a tick next to those he had already approached, and who he was
confident would vote for him, and a cross by those he knew were supporters of
Williams.