My Work for the Russian Secret Service .sx By BERNARD HOLLOWOOD , in an interview with Barry Normanton .sx I HAD been working at the Council of Industrial Design , in Petty France , for about three months when it happened .sx One day my secretary announced that " a foreign-looking gentleman " wished to see me about a new plastic fabric he had invented .sx " Plastics , schmastics !sx " I said .sx " Tell him I'm not .sx . " And at that moment Mr. Rudi Smith announced himself and strode into the office .sx " Please , see , " he said , holding up a square of shiny material , " it don't creasing , it don't shrinking , it don't ripping .sx I show .sx " He tugged at the plastic which immediately and noiselessly split down the middle .sx Mr. Smith laughed .sx " Ah , " he said , " I notice you having sense of humour .sx " Over lunch I got to know him better .sx We arranged to meet again in Toni's Cafe@2 off Bread Street .sx For recognition purposes I was to carry a small hammer in one hand , a tiny sickle in the other , and the password was to be " Herbert Read .sx " Fifteen years ago I was pretty innocent .sx You will have to believe me when I tell you that my suspicions were not yet aroused .sx Over coffee and pretzels we talked .sx I complimented him on the improvement in his English .sx " It is nothing , " he said .sx " I perfected my speech in order to know you better .sx " And then he launched into a long , exciting history of the birth of Communism , giving credit punctiliously to the work in England of Marx and Engels , and touching briefly on such matters as dialectical materialism , the marginal utility of land , and Ernest Bevin .sx " You too are for freedom , comrade , " he said .sx I nodded my agreement .sx " It is a new technique , evolved in the Kiev University Faculty of Psychological Warfare .sx It is called brain-washing .sx " What Mr. Smith wanted me to do- and he was of course prepared to pay handsomely , in pounds , dollars , ration books , anything- was to deal him the details , plans and prototypes of the goods being collected together for the great " Britain Can Make It " exhibition .sx He seemed particularly interested in Wedgwood beakers , a Decca record-player and Cooper's Oxford Marmalade .sx " But if you think British industrial design is so hot , " I said , " why don't you go ahead and copy it , like the Japanese ?sx " " That would be unethical , " he said , shaking his head .sx " Besides we haven't the manpower available for such work .sx " Every month for two years we met , never of course at the same place twice .sx Usually it was in the stand at a football match , in some billiards saloon or strip show .sx Then we would repair , separately and by different routes , to his rooms on the eighth floor of the Sudbury Hotel in Chiswick , where he kept a small radio transmitter and all the other paraphernalia of his nefarious craft .sx " To think , " I said to him one day , " that in a few moments these microfilmed working drawings of Mappin's improved percolator will be in Moscow !sx " " Alas , " he said , " the radius of transmission is small .sx The information will be picked up by our receiver in Reigate and from there smuggled out of the country by pigeon- first to Dinard , then to " ln , and from there by fast car to Moscow .sx " The first break in our arrangement occurred after about eighteen months .sx He had been complaining about the slow rate at which I was feeding him the designs of British consumer goods .sx " Moscow , " he said , " is furious .sx The second five-year plan is nearly up and all we have so far are the drawings for a new cut-glass decanter , an improved aluminium percolator , a trouser-press and a pen that writes wet with dry ink .sx The economy of the USSR is becoming lop-sided .sx Beyond the Urals 350,000 men and women sit idle at the giant refrigerator plant waiting for plans .sx Our department store is overflowing with pens .sx Stalin is livid .sx " And then he told me about Russia's long-term struggle to wage economic war on the West .sx " The bomb means military stalemate , " he said .sx " From now on we fight for economic supremacy in the world's markets , in the uncommitted nations .sx We Russians have no experience of consumer goods .sx You British are renowned as the world's shopkeepers , so- " " Some people , " I interrupted , " would say that the Americans now have the lead in industrial design .sx " " American design is vulgar .sx No character .sx The British have dignity and taste and quality .sx Please , comrade , will you not co-operate in the interests of world Communism ?sx " After this I visited Mr. Smith very seldom , and if my memory serves me correctly , the only additional secrets I handed over were plans for a new-style cardigan , a patent cycle hub-cap , a beer-engine and some air-line cutlery .sx Our me@2salliance slowly collapsed and until last week I had almost succeeded in forgetting all about it .sx What brought it back were the recorded impressions made by BBC reporters of their May Day visit to Moscow .sx Several of them visited the great department store , Gum , and were surprised to find that many of the goods on sale bore a striking resemblance to their counterparts in British shops- particularly the ball-point pens , cardigans and cut-glass decanters .sx Needless to say , I was not surprised .sx GWYN THOMAS .sx Growing up in Meadow Prospect .sx Reluctant Trouper .sx MOST of us come through the years flanked by actors manque@2s who placate the virus by getting hold of us from time to time , plastering paint on our faces and pushing us into any strong light that happens to be handy .sx My own Svengali was a teacher called Howie .sx Over the whole period of my youth he kept after me .sx I don't know exactly what kind of a dog Francis Thompson's Hound of Heaven was but if it was surer-footed than Howie I would be surprised .sx I am not sure what the Hound wanted of Thompson but what Howie required of me was very simple .sx He wanted me to act .sx The relationship began in the Primary School .sx I was about ten .sx Howie was a graduate who had failed to get a Grammar School post .sx He was disgruntled , idle and apparently mad .sx He had a dark , dissolute face and his main tactic was to lean against a window ledge , looking at us from between his fingers , as if , for sanity's sake , he was rationing the sight of us .sx The school's curriculum was narrow and Howie , by the use of a silent inertia , brought it to the point of vanishing .sx He was convinced that we were all perfectly able to write , spell and figure , but that we were making a show of being misinformed to bring Howie a daily inch nearer his last seizure .sx At any show of idiocy he would shout :sx " Nature bleeds , but I didn't go to University to be a first-aid man .sx Wound it some more .sx " Howie was a Welsh nationalist .sx He swam like a duck around the tank of tears that is fixed firmly in any Celtic past .sx He wrote patriotic playlets .sx Howie had stared at me for a long time and he said I had the true truculent face of an embattled Celt , the sort of features that had looked down at the Saxons through the fogs of Snowdon , thickening them .sx I tried to explain to Howie that my scowl had nothing to do with my being Welsh or a bristling insurgent .sx I looked the way I did because I was in the first stage of nicotine poisoning , genuinely foxed in my attempts to find any hint of promise or logic in my environment , and subject to some terrible ventral upsets brought on by an unwise excess of lentils in the Meadow Prospect diet .sx But I played along with Howie .sx The play cycle he had written had two wheels :sx anguish and insurrection , and I was the boy who did the major pedalling .sx My first appearance in each case was as a captive and in this Howie left nothing to the fancy .sx I would walk on to the stage bowed down by chains .sx These were very real chains and they slowed me down considerably .sx Most of the first act was taken up with me moving from the wings to the middle of the stage , clanking and enraged , to be told by some king or chieftain to get used to these trimmings because they were to be on me for life .sx I hated those chains .sx They had been left in the Memorial Hall by some escapologist with a leaking memory who forgot not only the essential details of trickery that would have him sailing out of boxes and sacks , but also left his equipment behind him .sx In the Memorial Hall he had had himself chained up and enclosed in a sealed barrel from which he proposed to make his escape in four minutes .sx The darkness must have put him off his stroke , or the chains were of too honest a brand .sx It took two coopers or hoopers to get him out .sx The play on which Howie expended the most labour was one which showed St. David founding his cathedral on the cliffs of Pembrokeshire where a couple of his shin bones can still be seen .sx There was some talk of my taking the part of the saint and I worked my face into a whole new set of patterns to be able to present a picture of gentle innocence .sx I thought that this might possibly mark the opening of a new phase of more tractable and nourishing relationships with my fellows , and I could shed that iron top-coat .sx But Howie was dubious .sx The sight of me fettered and revolted had become one of his drawing cards , and it seemed to pull a satisfying bristle of excitement over the dry skin of his psyche .sx He enquired of a few local hagiologists as to whether St. David had ever gone around in chains .sx They said no , all agreeing that David had been a fairly limber intriguer with a way of keeping on the right side of the gyves .sx Then Howie had the idea of casting me as the sullen landlord , a pagan bully , who takes pleasure in saying that he would much prefer to put David over the cliff than let him have the land required for building the cathedral .sx But Howie could see no way of having this landlord appear in chains .sx The whole point of the play was that from the beginning to the end where he is struck down by a miracle this landlord is a puissant and overbearing man .sx But Howie worked me in after a lot of hard thinking .sx In the last scene the landowner is raising a club to St. David and the saint just stands there smiling , not even lifting his pastoral crook .sx In the original version the landlord gets his quittance by some bit of intercession from on high .sx Howie had favoured a bolt but this would have been hard to stage , so he fell back on a stroke .sx Then he got an even sharper idea .sx As the argument between the landowner and the saint is warming up a very fierce-looking felon , chained , is brought on by an escort of gaolers on his way to the gibbet .sx That was me , back to base .sx I ask my captors for a few minutes' pause .sx The gibbet is a fair way from the gaol and the chains are heavy .sx I stare at the saint .sx I am trying to remember something .sx The memory gets through .sx Years before , in the middle of some bit of delinquency I had been caught and led before the saint .sx He had fed me and advised me to go straight .sx He had even given me an address to which I could go and apply for some sort of honest work .sx But I had been making too much of a noise with my eating to catch the last part of the address , and in any case I was stupid with youth and flushed with confidence .sx The food had merely given me fresh strength to move more briskly towards some new bit of crookedness .sx