‘Valéry asks why one has been summoned to this carnival,’ Moreland once said, ‘but it’s more like blind man’s buff. One reels through the carnival in question, blundering into persons one can’t see, and, without much success, trying to keep hold of a few of them.’
There could be no doubt that General Conyers had taken on a formidable woman; equally no doubt that he was a formidable man. If he could handle Billson naked, he could probably handle Miss Weedon clothed – or naked, too, if it came to that. I felt admiration for his energy, his determination to cling to life. There was nothing defeatist about him. However, my parents, as I had expected, were not at all pleased by the news. They had, of course, never heard of Miss Weedon. The engagement was, indeed, quite a shock to them. In fact, the whole affair made my father very cross. Now that Uncle Giles was no more, he may have felt himself permitted a greater freedom of expression in openly criticising General Conyers. He did so in just the terms the General had himself envisaged.
‘No fool like an old fool,’ my father said. ‘I shouldn’t have believed it of him, Bertha hardly cold in her grave.’
‘I hope he hasn’t made a silly mistake,’ said my mother. ‘I like old Aylmer, with all his funny ways of behaving.’
‘Very awkward for his daughter too. Why, some of his grandchildren must be almost grown up.’
‘Oh, no,’ said my mother, who loved accuracy in such matters, ‘not grown up.’
‘Where did he meet this woman?’
‘I really don’t know.’
It turned out later that General Conyers had sat next to Miss Weedon at a concert some months before the outbreak of war. They had fallen into conversation. Finding they knew many people in common, they had arranged to meet at another concert the following week. That was how their friendship had begun. In short, General Conyers had ‘picked up’ Miss Weedon. There was no denying it. It was a true romance.
‘Adventures only happen to adventurers,’ Mr Deacon had said one evening when we were sitting drinking in the saloon bar of the Mortimer.
‘That depends on what one calls adventurers,’ said Moreland, who was in a hair-splitting mood. ‘What you mean, Edgar, is that people to whom adventures happen are never wholly unadventurous. That is not the same thing. It’s the latter class who have the real adventures – people like oneself.’
‘Don’t be pedantic, Moreland,’ Mr Deacon had answered.
Certainly General Conyers was not unadventurous. Was he an adventurer? I considered his advice about the army. Then the answer came to me. I must get in touch with Widmerpool. I wondered why I had not thought of that earlier. I telephoned to his office. They put me through to a secretary.
‘Captain Widmerpool is embodied,’ she said in an unfriendly voice.
I could tell from her tone, efficient, charmless, unimaginative, that she had been given special instructions by Widmerpool himself to use the term ’embodied’ in describing his military condition. I asked where he was to be found. It was a secret. At last, not without pressure on my own part, she gave me a telephone number. This turned out to be that of his Territorial battalion’s headquarters. I rang him up.
‘Come and see me by all means, my boy,’ he boomed down the wire in a new, enormously hearty voice, ‘but bring your own beer. There won’t be much I can do for you. I’m up to my arse in bumph and don’t expect I shall be able to spare you more than a minute or two for waffling.’
I was annoyed by the phrase ‘bring your own beer’, also by being addressed as ‘my boy’ by Widmerpool. They were terms he had never, so to speak, earned the right to use, certainly not to me. However, I recognised that a world war was going to produce worse situations than Widmerpool’s getting above himself and using a coarsely military boisterousness of tone to which his civilian personality could make no claim. I accepted his invitation; he named a time. The following day, after finishing my article for the paper and looking at some books I had to review, I set out for the Territorial headquarters, which was situated in a fairly inaccessible district of London. I reached there at last, feeling in the depths of gloom. Entry into the most arcane recesses of the Secret Service could not have been made more difficult. Finally an NCO admitted me to Widmerpool’s presence. He was sitting, surrounded by files, in a small, horribly stuffy office, which was at the same time freezingly cold. I was still unused to the sight of him in uniform. He looked anything but an army officer – a railway official, perhaps, of some obscure country.
‘Been left in charge of details consequent on the unit’s move to a training area,’ he said brusquely, as I entered the room. ‘Suppose I shouldn’t have told you that. Security – security – and then security. Everyone must learn that. Well, my lad, what can I do for you? You need not stand. Take a pew.’
I sat on a kitchen chair with a broken back, and outlined my situation.
‘The fact is,’ said Widmerpool, glaring through his spectacles and puffing out his cheeks, as if rehearsing a tremendous blowing up he was going to give some subordinate in the very near future, ‘you ought to have joined the Territorials before war broke out.’
‘I know.’
‘No good just entering your name on the Reserve.’
‘There were difficulties about age.’
‘Only after you’d left it too late.’
‘It was only a matter of months.’
‘Never mind. Think how long I’ve been a Territorial officer. You should have looked ahead.’
‘You said there wasn’t going to be a war after “Munich”.’
‘You thought there was, so you were even more foolish.’
There was truth in that.
‘I only want to know the best thing to do,’ I said.
‘You misjudged things, didn’t you?’
‘I did.’
‘No vacancies now.’
‘How can I put that right?’
‘The eldest of our last intake of commissioned subalterns was twenty-one. The whole lot of them had done at least eighteen months in the ranks – at least.’
‘Even so, the army will have to expand in due course.’
‘Officers will be drawn from the younger fellows coming up.’
‘You think there is nothing for me to do at present?’
‘You could enlist in the ranks.’
‘But the object of joining the Reserve – being accepted for it – was to be dealt with immediately as a potential officer.’
‘Then I can’t help you.’
‘Well, thanks for seeing me.’
‘I will keep an eye out for you,’ said Widmerpool, rather less severely. ‘As a matter of fact, I may be in a position well placed for doing so before many moons have waned.’
‘Why?’
‘I am probably to be sent to the Staff College.’
‘Oh?’
‘Again, for security reasons, that should not be mentioned beyond these four walls.’
He began to gather up his multitudinous papers, stowing some away in a safe, transferring others to a brief-case.
‘I shall be coming back to this office again after dinner,’ he said. ‘Lucky if I get away before midnight. It’s all got to be cleared up somehow, if the war is to be won. I gave my word to the Brigade-Major. He’s a very sharp fellow called Farebrother. City acquaintance of mine.’
‘Sunny Farebrother?’
‘Have you met him?’
‘Years ago.’
Widmerpool gave a semi-circular movement of his arm, as if to convey the crushing responsibility his promise to the Brigade-Major comprehended. He locked the safe. Putting the key in his trouser-pocket after attaching it to a chain hanging from his braces, he spoke again, this time in an entirely changed tone.
‘Nicholas,’ he said, ‘I am going to ask you to do something.’
‘Yes?’
‘Let me explain very briefly. As you know, my mother lives in a cottage not very far from Stourwater. We call it a cottage, it is really a little house. She has made
it very exquisite.’
‘I remember your telling me.’
‘Since she lives by herself, there has been pressure – rather severe pressure – applied to her by the authorities to have evacuees there.’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘Now I do not wish my lady mother to be plagued by evacuees.’
That seemed a reasonable enough sentiment. Nobody wanted evacuees, even if they accepted the fact that evacuees must be endured. Why should they? I could not see, however, in Mrs Widmerpool’s case, that I could help in preventing such a situation from arising. I realised at the same time that Widmerpool had suddenly effected in himself one of those drastic changes of policy in which, for example, from acting an all-powerful tyrant, he would suddenly become a humble suppliant. I understood very clearly that something was required of me, but could not guess what I was expected to do. Some persons, knowing that they were later going to ask a favour, would have made themselves more agreeable when a favour was being asked of them. That was not Widmerpool’s way. I almost admired him for making so little effort to conceal his lack of interest in my own affairs, while waiting his time to demand something of myself.
‘The point is this,’ he said, ‘up to date, my mother has had an old friend – Miss Janet Walpole-Wilson, sister of that ineffective diplomatist, Sir Gavin – staying with her, so the question of evacuees, until now, has not arisen. Now Miss Walpole-Wilson’s work with the Women’s Voluntary Service takes her elsewhere. The danger of evacuees is acute.’
I thought how Miss Janet Walpole-Wilson’s ordinary clothes must have merged imperceptibly into the uniform of her service. It was as if she had been preparing all her life for that particular dress.
‘But how can I help?’
‘Some relation of Lady Molly Jeavons – a relative of her husband’s, to be more precise – wants accommodation in the country. A place not too far from London. Miss Walpole-Wilson heard about this herself. She told us.’
‘Why not ring up the Jeavonses?’
‘I have done so. In fact, I am meeting my mother at Lady Molly’s tonight.’
Widmerpool was still oppressed by some unsolved problem, which he found difficulty about putting into words. He cleared his throat, swallowed several times.
‘I wondered whether you would come along to the Jeavonses tonight,’ he said. ‘It might be easier.’
‘What might?’
Widmerpool went red below his temples, under the line made by his spectacles. He began to sweat in spite of the low temperature of the room.
‘You remember that rather unfortunate business when I was engaged to Mildred Haycock?’
‘Yes.’
‘I haven’t really seen anything of the Jeavonses since then.’
‘You came to the party Molly gave for Isobel just before we were married.’
‘I know,’ said Widmerpool, ‘but there were quite a lot of people there then. It was an occasion. It’s rather different going there tonight to discuss something like my mother’s cottage. Lady Molly has never seen my mother.’
‘I am sure it will be all right. Molly loves making arrangements.’
‘All the same, I feel certain embarrassments.’
‘No need to with the Jeavonses.’
‘I thought that, since Molly Jeavons is an aunt of your wife’s, things might be easier if you were to accompany me. Will you do that?’
‘All right.’
‘You will come?’
‘Yes, if you wish.’
I had not visited the Jeavonses for some little time – not since Isobel had gone to stay with Frederica – so that I was quite glad to make this, as it were, an excuse for calling on them. Isobel would certainly enjoy news of the Jeavons household.
‘Very well, then,’ said Widmerpool, now returning at once to his former peremptory tone, ‘we’ll move off forthwith. It is five minutes to the bus. Come along. Party, quick march.’
He gave some final instructions in the adjoining room to a gloomy corporal sitting before a typewriter, surrounded, like Widmerpool himself, with huge stacks of documents. We went out into the street, where the afternoon light was beginning to fade. Widmerpool, his leather-bound stick caught tight beneath his armpit, marched along beside me, tramp-tramp-tramp, eventually falling into step, since I had not taken my pace from his.
‘I don’t know what Jeavons’s relative will be like,’ he said. ‘I don’t feel absolutely confident she will be the sort my mother will like.’
I felt more apprehension for the person who had to share a cottage with Mrs Widmerpool.
‘I saw Bob Duport just before war broke out.’
I said that partly to see what Widmerpool would answer, partly because I thought he had been unhelpful about the army, tiresome about the Jeavonses. I hoped the information would displease him. The surmise was correct. He stiffened, strutting now so fiercely that he could almost be said to have broken into the goosestep.
‘Did you? Where?’
‘He was staying in a hotel where an uncle of mine died. I had to see about the funeral and ran across Duport there.’
‘Oh.’
‘I hadn’t seen him for years.’
‘He is a bad mannered fellow, Duport. Ungrateful, too.’
‘What is he ungrateful about?’
‘I got him a job in Turkey. You may remember we were talking about Duport’s affairs at Stourwater, when I saw you and your wife there about a year or more ago – just after “Munich”.’
‘He’d recently come back from Turkey when we met.’
‘He had been working for me there.’
‘So he said.’
‘I had to deal rather summarily with Duport in the end,’ said Widmerpool. ‘He showed no grasp of the international situation. He is insolent, too. So he mentioned my name?’
‘He did.’
‘Not very favourably, I expect.’
‘Not very.’
‘I don’t know what will happen to Duport,’ said Widmerpool. ‘He must be in a difficult position financially, owing to his reckless conduct. However, anybody can earn three pounds a week these days as an air-raid warden. Even Jeavons does. So Duport will not starve.’
He sounded rather sorry that Duport was not threatened with that fate.
‘He thought Sir Magnus Donners might find him something.’
‘Not if I know it.’
‘Do you think Donners will be asked to join the Government, if there is a Cabinet reshuffle?’
‘The papers speak of him as likely for office,’ said Widmerpool, not without condescension. ‘In some ways Magnus would make an excellent minister in time of war. In others, I am not so sure. He has certain undesirable traits for a public man in modern days. As you probably know, people speak of – well, mistresses. I am no prude. Let a man lead his own life, say I – but, if he is a public man, let him be careful. More than these allegedly bad morals, I object in Magnus to something you would never guess if you met him casually. I mean a kind of hidden frivolity. Now, what a lamentable scene that was when I looked in on Stourwater when you were there. Suppose some journalist had got hold of it.’
Widmerpool was about to enlarge on the Masque of the Seven Deadly Sins as played in the Stourwater dining-room, when his attention – and my own – was caught by a small crowd of people loitering in the half-light at the corner of a side street. Some sort of a meeting was in progress. From the traditional soapbox, a haggard middle-aged man in spectacles and a cloth cap was addressing fifteen or twenty persons, including several children. The group was apathetic enough, except for the children, who were playing a game that involved swinging their gas-mask cases at each other by the string, then running quickly away. Two women in trousers were hawking a newspaper or pamphlet. Widmerpool and I paused. The orator, his face gnarled and blotched by a lifetime of haranguing crowds out of doors in all weathers, seemed to be coming to the end of his discourse. He used that peculiarly unctuous, coaxing, almost beseeching manner of address adopted by
some political speakers, reminding me a little of my brother-in-law, Roddy Cutts, whose voice would sometimes take on that same pleading note when he made a public appeal for a cause in which he was interested.
‘. . . why didn’t the so-called British Government of the day clinch the Anglo-Soviet alliance when they had the chance . . . get something done . . . Comrade Stalin’s invitation to a round-table conference at Bucharest . . . consistent moral policy . . . effective forces of socialism . . . necessary new alignments . . . USSR prestige first and foremost . . .’
The speech came to an end, the listeners demonstrating neither approval nor the reverse. The haggard man stepped down from the soapbox, wiped his spectacles, loosened the peak of his cap from his forehead, lit a cigarette. The children’s gas-mask game reached a pitch of frenzied intensity, so that in their scamperings one of the women selling newspapers almost had the packet knocked from her hand. Widmerpool turned to me. He was about to comment, when our attention was engaged by a new speaker. This was the second newspaper-selling woman, who, having now handed over her papers to the man with the cloth cap, herself jumped on to the soapbox. In a harsh clear voice she opened a tremendous tirade, quite different in approach from the quieter, more reasoned appeal of the spectacled man.
‘. . . blooming bloody hypocrisy . . . anybody wants this war except a few crackpots . . . see a chance of seizing world power and grinding the last miserable halfpence from the frozen fingers of stricken mankind . . . lot of Fascist, terroristic, anti-semitic, war-mongering, exploiting White Guards and traitors to the masses . . .’
Dance to the Music of Time, Volume 2 Page 66