Keep Up!

It is the moment the atmosphere of a place changes; suddenly all is different, our ways of thinking, acting, even believing are transformed; and this is obvious to everyone except the most obtuse. It is a change of air. Then there is an interlude. Then one a day, almost as an afterthought, for already we are accustomed to this new state of affairs, new citizens of a new independent country, we feel these changes intensely; we think about them and are surprised at their speed, the ease with which they have conquered us. The old soul of this place has vanished, almost overnight, like ghosts brushed out with the cobwebs; that new cleaner brisk and efficient she leaves no corner untouched, her dust will have no history, and we smile to ourselves; irony, the past’s relic and quiet revenge. A new spirit has arrived and taken over. We are feeling it for the first time. Where has it come from? Who brought it? You must identify the plane, train, car that carried… These questions have no answers. But like an incompetent detective crudely interrogating his sophisticated suspects we stumble insensitively on, dodging their scorn, deflecting their derision, accepting our predetermined defeat.

The government is our most likely culprit. Wanting more airtime it is putting pressure on the BBC to increase the number of bulletins from its ministries. A war needs serious news not entertainment! Though it does not stop there; the ministers also want to interfere with programme content: Broadcasting House, they argue, should be feeding the listeners with tasty didactic snacks, the government issue sandwiches of spam, dry lettuce and tomato must be dressed with a piquant sauce… Drama, it is the ideal medium to get our message across. Imagine a terraced house, just off the Hackney Road; a young female clerk home from work is telling her mother how good tea tastes when the leaves are brewed for a second time and…the voice rising in pitch, hear it as the rise of an emotional, even a sexual excitement, “It defeats the Boche too! Yes mum, the money we save on tea we can give to Jack, he needs new underwear; he was writing to me the other day; you know, they don’t….” We want, these ministers say, to trigger thought, not impose it. Let the listener think for herself, within the limits of our careful guidance, unobtrusive and quiet, we must let it drip, drip drip drip, like rainwater into limestone, then we can trust her to believe the right things. And the music, what would you suggest?

Mr Brooks is very upset. The government wants live recordings. This is because truth means real events, real people, real sounds; not pre-recorded tapes, whose authenticity can always be questioned: how do we know you didn’t make it up? The dumbest questions are often the most penetrating. There can be no doubts, no such questions, with live recordings; though it will destroy a tradition of carefully crafted engineering, part of the essence of this place; its history, its culture. They haven’t won yet!  The government, though driven hard by paranoia and populism, cannot so easily storm BH’s studios;1 the BBC’s strange nature its own well defended fortress, the self-absorption and vagueness, and the highly specialised atmosphere, acting as deep moats and heavily fortified battlements to keep the enemy out. Sam Brooks - the Recorded Programmes Director - is both inventor and custodian of the BBC’s sound technology; an enthusiast, obsessed by the technical details, his preference is for the pristine sounds of recorded tape; content far less important than the quality of reproduction, his only real concern. Exactly! RPD is an odd hybrid; a fusion of senior bureaucrat and otherworldly scientist, he is the sort of chap that could only exist in an institution like the BBC - “a cross between a civil service, a powerful moral force, and an amateur theatrical company that wasn’t too sure where next week’s money was coming from” is Penelope Fitzgerald’s well-judged description. Needing RPD’s technical ability the BBC accepts his obsessions, which it patronises and largely ignores, thanks to his old colleague Jeffrey Haggard, the Director of Programme Planning, who protects him from the scrutiny of senior executives. This cannot go on. Jeffrey’s name is a sign of the times: Haggard. The external pressures growing more intense, to become scarcely tolerable when the Blitz begins, they are squeezing out the older, more tolerant culture that nurtured the oddball and enthusiast. Efficiency is imperative! Already RPD is losing influence. He likes young, pretty females to whom he can confide his troubles; but in the latest interview his new assistant is chosen by Mrs Milne and Mrs Staples, whose secretarial criteria are decisive. Yet not too much has changed. DPP continues to protect RPD, who still weeps and sleeps on young women’s shoulders.

Is it the Germans? Will they destroy everything? Certainly they shake up the BBC: a bomb landing in a nearby street causes some damage to BH. It is minor stuff. Their influence is much less obvious and violent; their greatest effect is in the threat they pose - all these characters are worried about an invasion - which creates the conditions for radical change; thus the emergency plans to house staff inside BH’s basement produces a rough egalitarianism, with all grades and sexes sleeping in the same room; although, and this is indicative, this influence quickly fades, senior managers separating themselves from the hoi polloi by erecting their own cubicles inside the common area. A few bombs and an army waiting on the other side of the English Channel do not revolutionise a social system.

What about the Americans? Mac arrives too late.

It is the women, surely? BH is full of them. Surely they must be responsible! even though none are in positions of authority and all submit to RPD’s whims. But this is to look at the question solely from a man’s point of view. It is not administrative influence - though Mrs Milne’s and Mrs Staples’ domination at the interview suggests this may be ever so slightly changing - but their physical presence that is altering things; mixing the sexes together is making the BBC a little looser and more emotionally febrile; RPD wouldn’t cry on a man’s shoulder; no male employee would be a wreckage of tears like Lise; while Teddy… well, he is only interested in one sex, it is not his own. Like a strong perfume femininity is pervading the corridors and floating into the offices, softening BH, making it less forbiddingly public, so that the staff, freed just a little from their roles, are becoming more human, more like private individuals who are willing to express their feelings. The women are also changing. Existing en masse their confidence increases, and they become more critical of this place and its people. These changes are important. They do affect the spirit of the BBC.    

The French are a shambles.

By now the FLs on the bridge had finished their cigarettes and put the stubs away inside their caps. Sighting the others on the opposite slope only two hundred yards away, they warily advanced through Peter Pan’s dingle. Then some of them began to run in ragged formation, like boys anxious  to get into a football game, the small, neat and elegant ones in front, as though trained, others in the rear beating up clouds of dust with their boots from the dry earth. Lise and Frédé disappeared from sight as the hostile forces engaged, the front runners gesturing, with one fist clenched and one stiffened arm pointing behind the horizon of the park. They shouted something, as hoarse as rooks, then their voices pitched higher into uproar…

There was a sound of something flat hitting something flat - say a wet cloth on a kitchen table. It was a slap on the face. Just for a moment the girls could see Frédé staggering and holding his jaw in his hand like toothache, with thick blood running through the fingers, but it wasn’t Lise who’d hit him, she was still half up and half down, but nowhere near him any more. It was one of the the FLs, and now they were all going down in twos and threes, rolling on the grown in squalor, with banging heads and seams splitting, showing a flash of whitish-grey pants. 

They are easily dealt with. When a French general goes on air, DPP cuts the wires, so that his defeatism isn't broadcast to the nation. Such cleverness is resented by the bureaucrats, but the PM thinks it was a jolly good show. What a relief to have a maverick for a leader, it saves the likes of DPP from the timid conformity of a bureaucracy always seeking to remove those outside its influence.

What about the strain? This, now, surely, is the reason. The old regime must be falling apart under the war pressure; the long hours, the overwork, this constant threat of invasion; those bombs, night after night… Can you remain human and survive such stress? The answer appears to be a tentative no: DPP feels it is time for him to leave; he wants a change, America, perhaps, is calling. However, by the novel’s end Haggard realises that he likes this place too much; he wants to stay, nothing can attract him away. The BBC’s defences, that unique culture, its odd characters, with that powerful all encompassing atmosphere, are strong enough to resist every assault.

When we think of change we conceive it as an enormous, radical all at once transformation; this is because we are witnesses of the climatic moment, the final melodrama; watching the end of the play not its beginning we are ignorant spectators blind to the back stage antics, the lost days of hard work. For no, we did not follow those numerous little steps that have lead up to this front entrance door - that battered casting couch, the actresses turned away, the rehearsals with their plethora of false starts - we ignored the gymnasium years training muscle, were oblivious to those radical exercises in cheap cafés - the endless repetition of lines, the massaging of an alien character into an actor’s being were all overlooked - none of this did we see; no thought did we give to the heavy breathing, that cold breath on sweating hands before a locked and heavy door - the pray before the curtain drops - now yanked open by a revolutionary wind - boys and girls we are ready! Begin! We noticed nothing. Not an iota. Therefore none of these things exist. The play starts. The governor is killed. This is the revolution! Oh my dear, you have missed so much. Your understanding is… Yes, I know, it is zero, it is zilch. Most change is invisible to the commonplace eye. It is too small, too slow, though sometimes it can be too extraordinarily fast, then there is the obscurity, those bizarre characters down the side alleys of life, for all but the few to notice. Nevertheless, on they go, heedless and necessary like the blood circulating in our veins. Ideas are changing. Everyday thoughts are changing, affecting behaviours, actions, and the atmosphere, which has changed most of all, subtly shifting until it is wholly qualitatively radically new, though even then… Thank god for our habits! how they protect us; safe within our comfortable homes we close the familiar curtains, walk on the same old carpet, sit on a sofa that hasn’t changed in decades; lying down we fall asleep watching the television, the news a distant dream. Then on one day… Suddenly, we are looking up, looking intently at Eric Gill’s masterpiece above the main entrance door. Seeing it strange we are discombobulated by the metamorphosis, its meaning changing like mercury.

Prospero was shown preparing to launch his messenger onto the sound waves of the universe. But who, after all, was Ariel? All he ever asked was to be released from his duties. And when this favoured spirit had flown off, to suck where the bee sucks, and Prospero had returned with all his followers to Italy, the island must have reverted to Caliban. It had been his, after all, in the first place. When all was said and done, oughtn’t he to preside over the BBC? Ariel, it was true, had produced music, but it was Caliban who listened to it, even in his dreams. And Caliban, who wished Prospero might be stricken with the red plague for teaching him to speak correct English, never told anything but the truth, presumably not knowing how to. Ariel, on the other hand, was a liar, pretending that someone’s father was drowned full fathom five, when in point fact he was safe and well. All this was so that virtue should prevail. The old excuse.

This is one of at least three triads in the novel: the author’s “moral force, civil service, theatre company” and Brooks’ “quality, balance, singer” are the two others that come to mind. All three capture the atmosphere of this strange place at a time of change; those months when the Phoney War turned into the Blitz. As we look up at Eric Gill’s statue we immediately sense that BH is Prospero’s Island under attack from hostile forces; the ever present bureaucracy, backed by an aggressive wartime government, is about to get its organisation back, throwing out the magic and the art. It doesn't happen! Instead, the invading forces are turned into friendly foes, whose influence is subtle and benign; the one tinge of sadness our feeling that this fairy tale must end - we remember Prospero’s lament at leaving his island, his master’s land of fiction. The BBC’s odd culture survives because the creative spirit is just too strong, and too badly needed to be kicked out by the politicians and the insensitive executives. The changes are good! The voices, threatened by mechanical strangulation - DPP’s engineering mania - have become human; there is beauty now in BH as well as technical brilliance. Though it would too easy, and so boringly production-line, to turn this novel into allegory; Prospero RPD, Barnett Caliban and Ariel…he is the human voices of the radio waves. Rather, we should conceive of The Tempest as a mythic underpinning - a hardly visible metaphysical foundation - giving a rich texture to a novel seeking to convey the spirits, those transforming frequencies, that produced such a special atmosphere at the top of Regent’s Street circa 1940.

Damn you man! So what, tell me, is causing this transformation? 

Annie Asra, the daughter of a Birmingham piano tuner; after his death she comes to London for a change of scene. Competent, reserved and with poor looks Annie seems just another ordinary girl. This is an illusion. Behind Annie’s exterior lies an immense talent - she has perfect pitch. Such an ability, trained and perfected during the years following her father around the pianos of the Black Country, has made her self-contained, independent and confident. She is a formidable force. No one knows it. Here is just one more girl, less pretty than the rest, who is employed to give the mad scientist his emotional succour; and this must be so, it is the woman’s role, her role in life. Invited into RPD’s office, Annie listens to him praise his latest tape recording.

‘I wanted you to know once and for all what’s meant by the term “quality” and the term “balance”, and on top of that, there was the singer.’

‘I’m very glad to learn about quality and balance,’ said Annie quietly, ‘but the singer was flat.’

‘I don’t understand you.’

‘His first phrase he started out with was CE flat B flat D. He was in tune till the D, then he was twelfth of a tone flat and didn’t get back till his last bar but one.’

What! This is new! It is outrageous! RPD explodes! How devastating. Contradicted with his expertise questioned there is even the suggestion that he is tone deaf; Dr Vogel, too much the diplomat to mention it before, now confirms the suspicion - this is true, my dear fellow. This is a wrecking blow; for though Sam Brooks is a brilliant sound engineer he knows little about sound, and almost nothing about music; a reality kept from him by the ignorance of his staff and the tact of the experts, like this German doctor. Brooks is a technician, much like Annie’s father, who had almost no musical interest; but then Mr Asra was a typical, narrow, insular specialist; he was also a provincial; content with this own great but limited abilities he had no need or wish to perform, to dazzle his clientele.2 The first few days following his explosion RPD avoids Annie - fragments of alienating dislike lie embedded in his consciousness - but then he starts to question himself, to doubt the range of his expertise; it is the beginning of a radical change; RPD to become sensitive to the abilities of others; listening to them, inviting their suggestions, implementing their ideas; yes, the old forms of his life are falling away to be replaced by…we imagine a tall building pulled down, the contractors to… It is a bungalow! with a wide open verandas, and french windows… Alert! Alert! Step back! This is a warning. Alert! Alert! This is a metaphor getting out of hand. Thank you. Two passersby have helped us out of a ditch. Deeply concerned they ask if we’re ok. No no, we are fine, we are, really we are… We just went off… My mind, you know… tired, it drifted… It was foolish really… You can come back to our house, it’s just up the hill… No no, we are all right; but thank you, you are most kind. My wife will drive… We ask for directions, and are shown to the main road: just follow the signs and they will take you there; it is more or less a straight run. After Annie’s revelation Brooks undergoes a revolution; his character becoming more open and inclusive he acquires a democratic feel for other people’s talents; which massively affects his staff, who encouraged to participate now recognise both his genius and his huge workload.

An obsessive technician and great inventor Sam Brooks is impervious to other people; they are mere events, just objects, a useful instrument, alive only when in his presence, ceasing to exist once out of it. Annie’s intervention changes this utterly. She remains fixed in his mind even when not in his room. Thinking about her stimulates an awareness of people that opens up his being to the emotions… Anger. Dislike. Uncertainty. Failure. At first he experiences only negative feelings; but feeling is complex and fluid and can quickly change polarity; soon it is inviting other, kindlier, happier spirits to come in; friends and a lover arrive and kick out those early gatecrashers. Life: what a wonderful party!

It was a game.

‘I shall give you a ring.’

They had all of them been with him in the studio and knew how dexterous he was, but none of them would have believed that he could take the inch of gold wire still dangling from the champagne bottle, pierce the end through one of the red currents and give it three twist or flicks so that the currant was transfixed, a jewel on which the blood light shone. His broad fingers held the wire as neatly as a pair of pliers. 

‘Well, Annie.’

Annie had been keeping her hands under the table, but now she spread them out on the stiff-feeling tablecloth. They were pinkish and freckled, but delicate, not piano-player’s hands, not indeed as practical as one would have expected, thin and tender. After some hesitation, as though making a difficult selection, Sam Brooks picked up the left hand and most ingeniously put the current ring to the third finger, compressing it to make it fit exactly.

Sam is not without feeling. But like the technician he is his feelings are intensely personal and exclusively for himself or for the objects of his affection - his inventions, his tapes, his recording equipment. In order for him to love somebody such feelings, they are both vast and vague, have to crystallise around a single person, who somehow must penetrate the hermetic seal of his otherworldly absorption. Previously these free-floating feelings could be satisfied by emotional masturbation, released on the shoulders of a series of essentially anonymous young women; revealingly he calls them “girls”, it is the innocence of the man. The party piece, played out above, is the moment around which this attachment to a single person does crystallise: Annie falls in love with Sam; and when she tells him he recognises the truth of his own emotions (though his body already knew, thus the game above).

A revolution! The old order is broken. Haggard mistakes a bomb for a taxi and dies.

Eddie Waterlow does not prosper at BH. A believer in underlying patterns that embody certain and perfect ideas he cannot adapt to the realities of his time. Despising the real - an organisation and a society undergoing high pressure change - he also misunderstands it, for here it is contingency that is the determining force and absolute and permanent truths a myth and a mirage. If Mrs Simmons hadn’t ironed Annie’s white dress; if the waiter hadn’t assumed she was Sam’s companion, so sitting them together; if white dresses didn't suggest brides and bridegrooms; if… Eddie Waterlow kicks the f and the i falls over and knocks him on the head. A series of accidents were needed for Annie to fall in love with her engineering virtuoso. Here is the unpredictability of this life. Its flux and ceaseless flow.

Annie too is changing. Exposed to colourful personalities and the BBC’s enormous range of music she is discovering her own musical tastes and talents. A supremely competent administrator she is taken over by her love, which she transmits throughout the building; causing BH to vibrate with a warm fuzziness, to which everyone responds.

It is love that has changed the zeitgeist. Are you satisfied now? But but… Love is not a simple emotion. It can include hate as much as affection; it can arise from the oddest, most austere of sources. But but… Read Shelley! How he adored Democracy! Freedom! Knowledge! those strangest of materials for lyric poetry.

Annie has created a new spirit in this place. Though like the pre-Blitz BBC this spirit is complex: mixed in with the prevailing atmosphere it adds a softer, more empathetic, younger, more open character to the older spirits of bureaucracy, moral order and technical insularity which had tended to dominate the creative and aesthetic sides. It hasn’t been easy, or, given the architecture of the place, plain sailing. The first few months were chaos - there was the woeful Lise. That time has past. BH has recovered its professionalism, but the relations between people are kinder, gentler, more understanding; we go all sentimental over Mrs Staples, who has taken in Lise and her baby. Yes, even the French are now treated with sympathy.

(Review: Human Voices)

__________________________________

1. To capture the institutional feel of the organisation the author abbreviates many titles and names.

2.  Could this be an oblique reference to that great work on the hidden culture of The North, with its exposure of metropolitan cultural conceit, Arnold Bennett’s The Death of Simon Fuge, in his The Grim Smile of the Five Towns?