Human Voices by Penelope Fitzgerald

Penelope Fitzgerald's illustrious writing career began late; this novel came out in 1980 when she was 64. From the rooftop broadcasts over a burning city to the deeply eccentric broadcasting heroes and underutilized female staff, Fitzgerald portrays what she witnessed, for she was there. Seeking "aural perfection," the radio men "never talk about the BBC’s independence – the first word the BBC normally uses to defend itself against outside pressure – they simply practise it." (Mark Damazer Intro 2013).

Her description of the BBC is striking, considering what now passes for news. "Broadcasting House was...dedicated to the strangest project of the war, or of any war, that is, telling the truth. Without prompting, the BBC had decided that truth was more important than consolation, and, in the long run, would be more effective."*

No doubt this early and salubrious beginning at the BBC set the tone for what came later, and accounts for the continuing excellence of its reputation.

The romantic plot is amusing, and centres around a new employee called Annie. A frank and self-sufficient girl who has "drawn since birth on the inexhaustible fund of tranquil pessimism peculiar to the English Midlands," she used to work at Anstruthers in Birmingham at the hosiery counter, where "they hadn’t asked the customers whether they wanted plain knit or micro-mesh, but ‘Do you want the kind that ladders, or the kind that goes into holes?’" Annie falls for an unsuitable middle-aged flirt during a staff dinner at a French restaurant, and true to her habitual frankness, declares her feelings to him, with unexpected results.

The comings and goings of the occupants of BH are fascinating -- the fanatical sound engineers, motherly secretaries, and "high up in the building, refugee scholars in headphones, quietly clad, disguising their losses, transcribed page after page of Nazi broadcasts in a scholar’s shorthand."

One of many tragicomic incidents involves a French general whose live interview never takes place when fate intervenes -- just as well, perhaps, since he insists that there is absolutely no hope of the Allies winning the war. "'We (France) are ruined, and we blame it on you,'" he tells the interviewer, referring to Churchill as "'that courageous drunkard you have made your Prime Minister.'"

Meanwhile, the super-conscientious mobile unit, while preparing a program on de Gaulle's new headquarters for the Free French in Westminster, have decided the background sounds of "footsteps coming and going on the bare boards, a nice bit of echo there, your wine coming out of the tap" are insufficient, and they must return the following day to "get some more atmosphere." Discussing the "threadbare" Archives, the programme directors complain that they've "no Stukas," and must therefore borrow from Pathe when the need for dive bomber sounds arises.

This writer's vignettes of life in Broadcast House during the blitz are priceless. "Recordings...apt to be mislaid [were] all 78s, aluminium discs coated on one side with acetate whose pungent rankness was the true smell of the BBC’s war." Jeff scarcely needs to show his face. The best-known in the entire BBC, it resembles a comedian’s, "but one who had to be taken seriously." We feel we are beside him when he stands "for a moment among the long shadows on the pavement, between the piles of sandbags which had begun to rot and grow grass, now that spring had come."

Meanwhile, early each evening "men in brown overalls [go] round BH, fixing the framed blackouts in every window, circulating in the opposite direction to the Permanents coming downstairs, while the news readers [move] laterally to check with Pronunciation, pursued by editors bringing later messages on pink cards." The  canteen provides sandwiches made with National Cheese, manufacturers having agreed to amalgamate their brand names in support of the war effort.

Often it's impossible for employees to get home at night. But when metal bunks are dragged into BH and stacked outside the concert hall, senior broadcaster John Haliburton (nicknamed the Halibut) trips over them. He has been chosen to read "in case of enemy landing," since he has a voice "of such hoarse distinction that if the Germans took over BH and attempted to impersonate him the listeners could never be deceived for a moment."

The reader scarcely knows whether to laugh or cry when the Departmental Director is told that, with the news being so bad, he is now "entitled to the use of an armoured car every evening on standby until further notice" but is expected to be public spirited enough to share it as necessary.

Up to now, a cab has been held for him at the ready in a side street. "‘Jack," he says, "you want my taxi for somebody else. Who is it?’" When told its's a "very distinguished American newscaster" arriving from France," he calmly says to give this man his armoured car; he will keep the taxi. But, he is informed, in the wording of a gentle order, that the American wants a taxi, complete with a Cockney driver. And so we laugh.

All quotations from *Fitzgerald, Penelope. Human Voices. HarperCollins Publishers. Kindle Edition.