The Fourth Estate

That night Keith slept well. After another wash in near-freezing 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 broken-down 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 … I

t’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.

Keith jumped off the tram at the now familiar stop, 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 director’s secretary reappeared, an embarrassed look on her face.

“I 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.