The Fourth Estate Read online

  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 Deauville—but 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 corner 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 duckpond 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 reporte