The Soldier's Art

by Anthony Powell

  “I’ll ring up when I get to the station,” he said.

  Priscilla’s behaviour had positively stimulated Mrs. Maclintick, greatly cheered her up.

  “Whatever’s wrong with the girl?” she said. “Why does she want to go off like that? I believe she didn’t approve of me wearing these filthy old clothes. Got to, doing the job I do. No good dressing up as if you were going to a wedding. You know her, Moreland. What was it all about?”

  “I haven’t the least idea,” said Moreland sharply.

  He showed no wish to discuss Priscilla’s behaviour further. If, once or twice that evening, he had already brought a reminder of his behaviour when out with Matilda, now, by the tone he used, he recalled Maclintick out with Mrs. Maclintick. She may have recognised that herself, because she pursed her lips.

  “Wonder what’s happened to Max,” she said. “He should have been along by now. That turn must be over. It’s a short one anyway, and he comes on early at the Madrid.”

  “Probably gone to bed,” said Moreland.

  Mrs. Maclintick agreed that must have happened.

  “More sense than sitting about in a place like this,” she added, “especially if you’ve got to get up early in the morning like I have.”

  “That’s not Max Pilgrim you’re talking about?” asked Stevens.

  “He’s our lodger,” said Moreland.

  Stevens showed interest. Moreland explained he had known Pilgrim for years.

  “I’ve always hoped to see him do his stuff,” said Stevens. “There was a chance at this revival of his old songs at the Madrid – I suppose that’s what he was coming on here from. I read about it in the paper and wanted to go, but Priscilla wouldn’t hear of it. I can see now she hasn’t been herself all day. I ought to have guessed she might be boiling up for a scene. You should know how girls are going to behave after you’ve been with them for a bit. I see I was largely to blame. She said she’d seen Pilgrim before and he bored her to hell. I told her I thought his songs marvellous. In fact I used to try and write stuff like that myself.”

  I asked if he had ever sold anything of that sort to magazines.

  “Only produced it for private consumption,” he said, laughing. “The sole verses I ever placed was sentimental stuff in the local press. They wouldn’t have liked my Max Pilgrim line, if it could be called that.”

  “Let’s hear some of it,” said Moreland.

  He had evidently taken a fancy to Stevens, who possessed in his dealings that energetic, uninhibited impact which makes its possessor master of the immediate social situation; though this mastery always requires strong consolidating forces to keep up the initial success. Mr. Deacon used to say nothing spread more ultimate gloom at a party than an exuberant manner which has roused false hopes. Stevens did not do that. He could summon more than adequate powers of consolidation after his preliminary attack. The good impression he had made on Moreland was no doubt helped, as things stood, by Priscilla’s departure. Moreland wanted to forget about her, start off on a new subject. Stevens was just the man for that. Mention of his verse offered the channel. There were immediate indications that Stevens would not need much pressing about giving an example of his own compositions.

  “For instance, I wrote something about my first unit when I was with them,” he said.

  “Recite it to us.”

  Stevens laughed, a merely formal gesture of modesty. He turned to me*

  “Nicholas,” he said, “were you ever junior subaltern in your battalion?”

  “For what seemed a lifetime.”

  “And proposed the King’s health in the Mess on guest nights?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Mr. Vice, the Loyal Toast – then you rose to your feet and said: Gentlemen, the King.”

  “Followed by The Allied Regiments – such-and-such a regiment of Canada and such-and-such a regiment of Australia.”

  “Do you mean to say this actually happened to you yourself, Nick?” asked Moreland. “You stood up and said Gentlemen, the King?”

  He showed total incredulity.

  “I used to love it,” said Stevens. “Put everything I had into the words. It was the only thing I liked about the dump. I only asked all this because I wrote some lines called Guest Night.”

  Stevens cleared his throat, then, without the least self-consciousness, began his recitation in a low, dramatic voice:

  “On Thursday it’s a parade to dine,

  The Allied Regiments and the King

  Are pledged in dregs of tawny wine,

  But now the Colonel’s taken wing.

  Yet subalterns still talk and tease

  (Wide float the clouds of Craven A

  Stubbed out in orange peel and cheese)

  Of girls and Other Ranks and pay.

  If – on last night-scheme – B Coy, broke

  The bipod of the borrowed bren:

  The Sergeants’ Mess is out of coke:

  And Gordon nearly made that Wren.

  Along the tables of the Mess

  The artificial tulips blow,

  Tired as a prostitute’s caress

  Their crimson casts no gladdening glow.

  Why do those phallic petals fret

  The heart, till coils – like Dannert wire –

  Concentrically expand regret

  For lost true love and found desire?

  While Haw-Haw, from the radio,

  Aggrieved, insistent, down the stair,

  With distant bugles, sweet and low,

  Commingles on the winter air.”

  Stevens ceased to declaim. He smiled and sat back in his seat. He was certainly unaware of the entirely new conception of himself his own spoken verses had opened up for me. Their melancholy revealed quite another side of his nature, one concealed as a rule by aggressive cheerfulness. This melancholy was no doubt a logical counterpart, the reverse surface of the coin, one to be expected from high spirits of his own particular sort, bound up as they were with a perpetual discharge of personality. All the same, one never learns to expect the obvious. This contrast of feeling in him might have been an element that attracted Priscilla, something she recognised when they first met at Frederica’s; something more fundamentally melodramatic, even, than Lovell himself could achieve. We all expressed appreciation. Moreland was, I think, almost as surprised as myself.

  “Not much like Max’s stuff though,” he said.

  “All the same, Max Pilgrim was the source.”

  “Nor very cheerful,” said Mrs. Maclintick. “I do believe you’re as morbid as Moreland is himself.”

  Although she spoke in her accustomed spirit of depreciation, Stevens must have achieved his aim in making more or less of a conquest, because she smiled quite kindly at him after saying that. Moved by her complaisance, or, more likely, by the repetition of his own lines, his face registered self-pity.

  “I wasn’t feeling very cheerful at the time,” he said. “That unit I went to as a one-pipper fairly got me down.”

  Then, immediately, one of those instantaneous changes of mood, that were so much a part of him, took place.

  “Would you like to hear one of the bawdy ones?” he asked.

  Before anyone could reply, another officer, a big captain with a red face and cropped hair, like Stevens also wearing battle-dress, passed our table. Catching sight of Stevens, this man began to roar with laughter and point.

  “Odo, my son,” he yelled. “Fancy seeing your ugly mug here.”

  “God, Brian, you old swine.”

  “I suppose you’ve been painting the town red, and, like me, have got to catch the night train back to the bloody grind again. I’ve been having a pretty wet weekend, I can tell you.”

  “Come and have a drink, Brian. There’s lots of time.”

  “Not going to risk being cashiered for W.O.A.S.A.W.L.”

  “What on earth’s that he said?” asked Mrs. Maclintick.

  “While-On-Active-Service-Absent-Without-Leave,” said Stevens, char
acteristically not allowing her even for a second out of his power by disregarding the question. “Oh, come on, Brian, no hurry yet.”

  The red-faced captain was firm.

  “Got to find a taxi, for one thing. Besides, I’ve baggage to pick up.”

  Stevens looked at his watch.

  “I’ve got baggage too,” he said, “a valise and a kit bag and some other junk. Perhaps you’re right, Brian, and I’d do well to accompany you. Anyway it would halve the taxi fare.”

  He rose from the table.

  “Then I’ll be bidding you all good-bye,” he said.

  “Do you really have to go?” said Mrs. Maclintick. “We’re just beginning to get to know you. Are you annoyed about something, like the girl you were with?”

  In the course of her life she could rarely have gone further towards making an effort to show herself agreeable. It was a triumph for Stevens. He laughed, conscious of this, pleased at his success.

  “Duty calls,” he said. “I only wish I could stay till four in the morning, but they’re beginning to shut down here as it is, even if I hadn’t a train to catch.”

  We said good-bye to him.

  “Wonderful to have met you, Mr. Moreland,” said Stevens. “Here’s to the next performance of Vieux Port on the same programme as your newest work – and may I be there to hear. Good-bye, Nicholas.”

  He held out his hand. From being very sure of himself, he had now reverted a little to that less absolute confidence of the days when I had first known him. He was probably undecided as to the most effective note to strike in taking leave of us. It may at last have dawned on him that all the business of Priscilla could include embarrassments of a kind to which he had hitherto given little or no thought. The hesitation he showed possibly indicated indecision as to whether or not he should make further reference to her sudden withdrawal from the party. If, for a second, he had contemplated speaking of that, he must have changed his mind.

  “We’ll be meeting again,” he said.

  “Good-bye.”

  “And Happy Landings.”

  “Come on, Odo, you oaf,” said the red-faced captain, “cut out the fond farewells, or there won’t be a cab left on the street. We’ve got to get cracking. Don’t forget there’ll be all that waffle with the R.T.O.”

  They went off together, slapping each other on the back.

  “He’s a funny boy,” said Mrs. Maclintick.

  Stevens had made an impression on her. There could be no doubt of that. The way she spoke showed it. Although his presence that night had been unwelcome to myself – and the other two at first had also displayed no great wish to have him at the table – a distinct sense of flatness was discernible now Stevens was gone. Even Moreland, who had fidgeted when Mrs. Maclintick had expressed regrets at this departure, seemed aware that the conviviality of the party was reduced by his removal. I said I should have to be making for bed.

  “Oh, God, don’t let’s break it all up at once,” Moreland said. “We’ve only just met. Those others prevented our talking of any of the things we really want to discuss – like the meaning of art, or how to get biscuits on the black market.”

  “They won’t serve any more drink here.”

  “Come back to our place for a minute or two. There might be some beer left. We’ll get old Max out of bed. He loves a gossip.”

  “All right – but not for long.”

  We paid the bill, went out into Regent Street. In the utter blackness, the tarts, strange luminous form of nocturnal animal life, flickered the bulbs of their electric torches. From time to time one of them would play the light against her own face in self-advertisement, giving the effect of candles illuminating a holy picture in the shadows of a church.

  “Ingenious,” said Moreland.

  “Don’t doubt Maclintick would have found it so,” said Mrs. Maclintick, not without bitterness.

  A taxi set down its passengers nearby. We secured it. Moreland gave the address of the flat where he used to live with Matilda.

  “I’ve come to the conclusion the characteristic women most detest in a man is unselfishness,” he said.

  This remark had not particular bearing on anything that had gone before, evidently giving expression only to one of his long interior trains of thought.

  “They don’t have to put up with much of it,” said Mrs. Maclintick. “It’s passed me by these forty years, but perhaps I’m lucky.”

  “How their wives must have hated those saintly kings in the Middle Ages,” Moreland said. “Still, as you truly remark, Audrey, one’s speaking rather academically.”

  The taxi had already driven off, and Moreland was putting the key in the lock of the front-door of the house, when the Air-raid Warnings began to sound.

  “Just timed it nicely,” Moreland said. “That’s the genuine article, not like the faint row when we were at dinner. No doubt at all allowed to remain in the mind. Are the flat’s curtains drawn? I was the last to leave and it’s the sort of thing I always forget to do.”

  “Max will have fixed them,” said Mrs. Maclintick.

  We climbed the stairs, of which there were a great number, as they occupied the top floor flat.

  “I hope Max is all right,” she said. “I never like the idea of him being out in a raid. There’s bound to be trouble if he spends the night in a shelter. He’s always talking about giving the Underground a try-out, but I tell him I won’t have him doing any such thing.”

  If Moreland was one of Mrs. Maclintick’s children, clearly Max Pilgrim was another. We entered the flat behind her. Moreland did not turn on the switch until it was confirmed all windows were obscured. In the light, the apartment was revealed as untidier than in Matilda’s day, otherwise much the same in outward appearance and decoration.

  “Max …” shouted Mrs. Maclintick.

  She uttered this call from the bedroom. A faint answering cry came from another room further up the short passage. Its message was indeterminate, the tone, high and tremulous, bringing back echoes of a voice that had twittered through myriad forgotten night-clubs in the small hours.

  “We’ve got a visitor, Max,” shouted Mrs. Maclintick again.

  “I hope there’ll turn out to be some beer left,” said Moreland. “I don’t feel all that sure.”

  He went into the kitchen. I remained in the passage. A door slowly opened at the far end. Max Pilgrim appeared, a tall willowy figure in horn-rimmed spectacles and a green brocade dressing gown. It was years since I had last seen him, where, I could not even remember, whether in the distance at a party, or, less likely, watching his act at some cabaret show. For a time he had shared a flat with Isobel’s brother, Hugo, but we had not been in close touch with Hugo at that period, and had, as it happened, never visited the place. There had been talk of Pilgrim giving up his performances in those days and joining Hugo in the decorating business. Even at that time, Pilgrim’s songs had begun to “date”, professionally speaking. However, that project had never come off, and, whatever people might say about being old-fashioned, Pilgrim continued to find himself in demand right up to the outbreak of war. Now, of course, he expressed to audiences all that was most nostalgic. Although his hair was dishevelled – perhaps because of that – he looked at this very moment as if about to break into one of his songs. He moved a little way up the passage, then paused.

  “Here you are at last, my dears,” he said. “You don’t know how glad I am to see you. You must forgive what I’m looking like, which must be a perfect sight. I took off my slap before going to bed and am presenting you with a countenance natural and unadorned, something I’m always most unwilling to do.”

  He certainly appeared pale as death. I had thought at first he was merely looking much older than I remembered. Now I accepted as explanation what he had said about lack of make-up. I noticed, too, that his right hand was bandaged. The voice was fainter than usual. He looked uncertainly at me, disguised in uniform. I explained I was Hugo’s brother-in-law; that we had met once or t
wice the past. Pilgrim took my right hand in his left.

  “My dear …”

  “How are you?”

  “I’ve been having a most unenjoyable evening,” he said.

  He did not at once release my hand. For some reason I felt a sudden lack of ease, an odd embarrassment, even apprehension, although absolutely accustomed to the rather unduly fervent social manner he was employing. I tried to withdraw from his grasp, but he held on tenaciously, almost as if he were himself requiring actual physical support.

  “We hoped you were coming on from the Madrid to join us at dinner,” I said. “Hugh tells me you were doing some of the real old favourites there.”

  “I was.”

  “Did you leave the Madrid too late?”

  Then Max Pilgrim let go my hand. He folded his arms. His eyes were fixed on me. Although no longer linked to him by his own grasp, I continued to feel indefinably uncomfortable.

  “You knew the Madrid?” he asked.

  “I’ve been there – not often.”

  “But enjoyed yourself there?”

  “Always.”

  “You’ll never do that again.”

  “Why not?”

  ‘The Madrid is no more,” he said.

  “Finished?”

  “Finished.”

  The season or just your act?”

  The place – the building – the tables and chairs – the dance-floor – the walls – the ceiling – all those gold pillars. A bomb hit the Madrid full pitch this evening.”

  “Max …”

  Mrs. Maclintick let out a cry. It was a reasonable moment to give expression to a sense of horror. Moreland had come into the passage from the kitchen, carrying a bottle of beer and three glasses. He stood for a moment, saying nothing; then we all went into the sitting-room. Pilgrim at once took the arm-chair. He nursed his bound hand, rocking himself slowly forward and back.

  “In the middle of my act,” he said. “It was getting the bird in a big way. Never experienced the like before, even on tour.”