The Military Philosophers

by Anthony Powell

  Farebrother made no attempt to conceal his own interest in any change that might take place in employment or status of those known to him, in case these might in some manner, even if unforeseen, react advantageously to himself.

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘The Belgians and Czechs. I should like to have a talk with you one of these days about those two Allies, but not now. You don’t know how sorry I am that poor old Finn was inconvenienced in that way. I hate it when friends think you’ve let them down. I remember Frenchman in the last war whom I’d promised to put in for a British decoration that never came through. No use regretting these things, I suppose, but I’m made that way. We all have to do our duty as we see it, Nicholas. Each one of us has to learn that and it’s sometimes a hard lesson. In the case of Szymanski, I was made to suffer for being too keen. Disciplined, demoted in rank, shunted off to a bloody awful job. Tell Finn that. Perhaps he will forgive me when he hears I was made to pay for my actions. You know who went out of his way to bring this trouble about – our old friend Kenneth Widmerpool.’

  ‘But you’ve left that job now?’

  ‘In Civil Affairs, with my old rank and a good chance of promotion.’

  The Civil Affairs branch, formed to deal with administration of areas occupied by our enemies, had sprung into being about a year before. In it were already collected together a rich variety of specimens of army life. Farebrother would ornament the collection. Pennistone compared Civil Affairs with ‘the head to which all the ends of the world are come, and the eyelids are a little weary.’

  ‘That just describes it,’ Pennistone said. ‘“No crude symbolism disturbs the effect of Civil Affairs’ subdued and graceful mystery”.’

  Among others to find his way into this branch was Dicky Umfraville, who had thereby managed to disengage himself from the transit camp he had been commanding. I asked if Farebrother had any deals with Umfraville, whom I had not seen for some little time. Farebrother nodded. He looked over his shoulder, as if he feared agents were tracking us at that very moment and might overhear his words.

  ‘You know Kenneth pretty well?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Umfraville was talking to one of our people who’d been in Cairo when Kenneth flew out there for a day or two, as member of a high-level conference secretariat. Do you know what happened? Something you’d never guess. He managed to make a fool of himself about some girl employed in a secret outfit there.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Took her out or something. She was absolutely notorious, it seems.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Don’t let’s talk about it,’ said Farebrother. ‘If there’s one thing I hate, it’s a woman who lowers herself in that sort of way. I’m afraid there are quite a few of them about in wartime.’

  We had by now turned into Whitehall. Farebrother suddenly raised his arm in a stiff salute. I did the same, taking my time from him, though not immediately conscious of whom we were both saluting. Then I quickly apprehended that Farebrother was paying tribute to the Cenotaph, which we were at that moment passing. The preoccupations of wartime often resulted in this formality – always rather an uncomfortable and precarious one – being allowed to pass unobserved. It was a typical mark of Farebrother’s innate regard for ceremoniousness in all its aspects that he brought out his salute as if on a parade ground march-past. However, at that moment, another – and certainly discordant – circumstance clouded the scene. Just as Farebrother had been the first to see and pay homage to the Cenotaph, he was undoubtedly the first of us also to appreciate the necessity of taking another decision, a quick one, in a similar field. This resolve also had important implications, though of a very different sort. The situation was posed by a couple walking briskly towards us from the direction of Trafalgar Square: a middle-aged civilian – almost certainly a Civil Servant of high standing – wearing a very old hat on the back of his head, beside him an officer in a full colonel’s red capband and tabs. Even at this distance the tabs could be seen to be imposed on one of the new ‘utility’ uniforms, service-dress tunics skimped at the pockets and elsewhere to save cloth. These innovations always gave the wearer, even if a thin man, the air of being too large for his clothes, and this officer, stoutish with spectacles, was bursting from them. I noticed the uniform before appreciating that here was Widmerpool ‘gone red’.

  ‘In life —’

  Farebrother had just begun to speak. He broke off suddenly. The way in which he did this, obviously abandoning giving expression to some basic rule of human conduct, made me sure, reflecting on the incident afterwards, that he had seen Widmerpool first. There can also be no doubt that he was as ignorant as myself of his old enemy’s promotion. That must have been gazetted subsequent to the Cairo tour of duty. For a split second I had time to wonder whether Farebrother would accord Widmerpool as smart an acknowledgment or rank – after all, it was ‘the uniform’, even if only a ‘utility’ one – as he had rendered the Cenotaph. It should be explained perhaps that, although in theory majors and upwards had some claim to a salute from those of junior rank, in practice the only officers saluted by other officers in the street were those who wore red. I was therefore once more preparing to take my time from Farebrother, when he suddenly seized my arm. We were just passing ‘the Fortress’, Combined Operations Headquarters, then more or less underground, after the war covered by a building of many storeys. At first I thought he wanted to draw my attention to something happening on the other side of the road.

  ‘Nicholas?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘A moment ago I was telling you I don’t like to see a woman making herself cheap. Women’s lives should be beautiful, an inspiration. I thought of that the other night. I was taken to a film called The Song of Bernadette. Have you seen it?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  He looked at me fixedly. He had put on his holy face, as was to be expected from the subject of the movie, and spoke the words in an equally appropriate tone.

  ‘It’s about Lourdes.’

  I repeated that I had not seen the film.

  ‘You should, Nicholas. I don’t often get out in the evenings, much too much to do, but I think that night did me good. Made me a better man.’

  I could not imagine what all this was leading up to.

  ‘You really think I ought to make an effort to go, sir?’

  Farebrother did not answer. Instead, he gave another of his quick glances over the shoulder. For a moment I remained at a loss to know why The Song of Bernadette had so much impressed him that he felt a sudden need to speak of the film so dramatically. Then all at once I grasped that the menace of saluting Widmerpool no longer hung over us. Farebrother, with all his self-control in such matters, all the years he had schooled himself to accept the ways of those set in authority over him, had for one reason or another been unable to face that bitterness in my presence. Inner disciplines, respect for tradition, taste for formality, had none of them been sufficient. The incident showed Farebrother, too, had human weaknesses. Now, he seemed totally to have forgotten about Bernadette. We walked along in silence. Perhaps he was pondering the saintly life. We reached the gates of the Horse Guards. Farebrother paused. His gay blue eyes became a little sad. ‘Do your best to make your Colonel forgive me, Nicholas. You can tell him – without serious breach of security – that Szymanski’s already done a first-rate job in one quarter and likely to do as good a one in another. Do you ever see Prince Theodoric in these days? In my present job I no longer have grand contacts like that.’

  I told him I had not seen Theodoric since The Bartered Bride. We went our separate ways.

  That night in bed, reading Remembrance of Things Past, I thought again of Theodoric, on account of a passage describing the Princesse de Guermantes’ party:

  ‘The Ottoman Ambassadress, now bent on demonstrating to me not only her familiarity with the Royalties present, some of whom I knew our hostess had invited out of sheer kindness of heart and would never have been at hom
e to them if the Prince of Wales or the Queen of Spain were in her drawing-room the afternoon they called, but also her mastery of current appointments under consideration at the Quai d’Orsay or Rue St. Dominique, disregarding my wish to cut short our conversation – additionally so because I saw Professor E— once more bearing down on us and feared the Ambassadress, whose complexion conveyed unmistakable signs of a recent bout of varicella, might be one of his patients – drew my attention to a young man wearing a cypripeden (the flower Bloch liked to call “sandal of foam-borne Aphrodite”) in the buttonhole of his dress coat, whose swarthy appearance required only an astrakhan cap and silver-hilted yataghan to complete evident affinities with the Balkan peninsula. This Apollo of the hospodars was talking vigorously to the Grand Duke Vladimir, who had moved away from the propinquity of the fountain and whose features now showed traces of uneasiness because he thought this distant relative, Prince Odoacer, for that was who I knew the young man of the orchid to be, sought his backing in connexion with a certain secret alliance predicted in Eastern Europe, material to the interests of Prince Odoacer’s country no less than the Muscovite Empire; support which the Grand Duke might be unwilling to afford, either on account of his kinsmen having compromised himself financially, through a childish ignorance of the Bourse, in connexion with a speculation involving Panama Canal shares (making things no better by offering to dispose “on the quiet” of a hunting scene by Wouwerman destined as a birthday present for his mistress), from which he had to be extracted by the good offices of that same Baron Manasch with whom Swann had once fought a duel; or, even more unjustly, because the Grand Duke had heard a rumour of the unfortunate reputation the young Prince had incurred for himself by the innocent employment as valet of a notorious youth whom I had more than once seen visiting Jupien’s shop, and, as I learnt much later, was known among his fellow inverts as La Gioconda. “I’m told Gogo – Prince Odoacer – has Dreyfusard leanings!” said the Ambassadress, assuming my ignorance of the Prince’s nickname as well as his openly expressed political sympathies, the momentary cruelty of her smile hinting at Janissary blood flowing in her veins. “Albeit a matter that does not concern a foreigner like myself,” she went on, “yet, if true that the name of Colonel de Froberville, whom I see standing over there, has been put forward as military attaché designate to the French Legation of Prince Odoacer’s country, the fact of such inclinations in one of its Royal House should be made known as soon as possible to any French officer likely to fill the post.” ’

  This description of Prince Odoacer was of special interest because he was a relation – possibly great-uncle – of Theodoric’s. I thought about the party for a time, whether there had really been a Turkish Ambassadress, whom Proust found a great bore; then, like the Narrator himself in his childhood days, fell asleep early. This state, left undisturbed by the Warning, was brought to an end by rising hubbub outside. A very noisy attack had started up. Some residents especially those inhabiting the upper storeys, preferred to descend to the ground floor or basement on these occasions. Rather from lethargy than an indifference to danger, I used in general to remain in my flat during raids, feeling that one’s nerve, certainly less steady than at an earlier stage of the war, was unlikely to be improved by exchanging conversational banalities with neighbours equally on edge.

  From first beginnings, this particular raid made an unusually obnoxious din and continued to do so. While bombs and flak exploded at the present rate there was little hope of dropping off to sleep again. I lay in the dark, trying to will them to go home, one way, not often an effective one, of passing the time during raids. My interior counter-attack was not successful. An hour went by; then another; and another. So far from decreasing, the noise grew greater in volume. There was a suggestion of more or less regular bursts of detonation launched from the skies, orchestrated against the familiar rise and fall of gunfire. It must have been about two or three in the morning, when, rather illogically, I decided to go downstairs. A move in that direction at least offered something to do. Besides, I could feel myself growing increasingly jumpy. The ground floor at this hour was at worst likely to provide, if nothing else, a certain anthropological interest. The occasion was one for the merest essentials of uniform, pockets filled with stuff from which one did not want to be separated, should damage occur in the room while away. I took a helmet as a matter of principle.

  On one of the walls of the lift, incised with a sharp instrument (similar to that used years before to outline the caricature of Widmerpool in the cabinet at La Grenadière), someone quite recently – perhaps that very night – had etched at eye-level, in lower case letters suggesting an E. E. Cummings poem, a brief cogent observation about the manageress, one likely to prove ineradicable as long as the life itself remained in existence, for no paint could have obscured it:

  old bitch wartstone

  Quite a few people were below, strolling about talking, or sitting on the benches of the hall. No doubt others were in the basement, a region into which I had never penetrated, where there was said to be some sort of ‘shelter’. This crowd was in a perpetual state of change: some, like myself, deciding they needed a spell out of bed; others, too tired or bored to stay longer chatting in the hall, retiring to the basement or simply returning to their own flats. Clanwaert, smoking a cigarette, his hands in the pockets of a rather smart green silk dressing-gown, was present. Living on the ground floor anyway, he had not bothered to dress.

  ‘This raid seems to be going on a long time.’

  ‘Of course it is, my friend. We are getting the famous Secret Weapon we have heard so much about.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Not a doubt of it. We knew it was coming in Eaton Square. Had you not been informed in Whitehall? The interesting thing will be to see how this fine Secret Weapon really turns out.’

  It looked as if Clanwaert were right. He began to talk of the Congo army and the difficulties they had encountered in the Sudanese desert. After a while the subject exhausted itself.

  ‘Is there any point in not going back to bed?’

  ‘Hard to say. It may quiet down. I am in any case a bad sleeper. One becomes accustomed to doing without sleep, if one lives a long time in the tropics.’

  He put out his cigarette and went to the front door to see how things were looking in the street. A girl with a helmet set sideways on her head, this headdress assumed for decorative effect rather than as a safety measure, came past. She wore an overcoat over trousers in the manner of Gypsy Jones and Audrey Maclintick. It was Pamela Flitton.

  ‘Hullo.’

  She looked angry, as if suspecting an attempted pickup, then recognized me.

  ‘Hullo.’

  She did not smile.

  ‘What a row.’

  ‘Isn’t it.’

  ‘Seen anything of Norah?’

  ‘Norah and I haven’t been speaking for ages. She’s too touchy. That’s one of the things wrong with Norah.’

  ‘Still doing your secret job?’

  ‘I’ve just come back from Cairo.’

  ‘By boat?’

  ‘I got flown back.’

  ‘You were lucky to get an air passage.*

  ‘I travelled on a general’s luggage.’

  A youngish officer, in uniform but with unbuttoned tunic, came into the hall from the passage leading to the ground floor flats. He was small, powerfully built, with hair growing in regular waves of curls, like Jeavons’s, though fair in colour.

  ‘We seem to be out of fags,’ he said to Pamela.

  ‘Oh, Christ.’

  He turned to me. I registered a crown on his shoulder, MC and bar above the pocket.

  ‘Haven’t got a cigarette by any chance, pal?’ he said. ‘We’ve smoked our last – why, Nicholas? I’ll be buggered. Caught you trying to pick up Pam. What cheek. How are you, old boy. Marvellous to meet again.’

  ‘Pamela and I know each other already. She used to drive me in her ATS days, not to mention my practically a
ttending her christening.'

  'So you live in this dump, too, and suffer from old Wartstone? If I wasn't leaving the place at any moment, I'd carve up that woman with a Commando knife in a way that would make Jack the Ripper look like the vicar cutting sandwiches for a school treat.'

  I was not specially pleased to see Odo Stevens, whose conduct, personal and official, could not be approved for a variety of reasons, whatever distinction he might have earned in the field. At the same time, there was small point in attempting to take a high moral line, either about his affair with Priscilla or the part he had played over Szymanski. Priscilla and Chips Lovell were dead: Szymanski too, for all one knew by this time. Besides, to be pompous about such matters was even in a sense to play into the hands of Stevens, to give opportunity for him to justify himself in one of those emotional displays that are always part of the stock-in-trade of persons of his particular sort. With characteristic perspicuity, he guessed at once what was going through my mind. His look changed. It was immediately clear he was going to bring up the subject of Priscilla.

  'It was simply awful,' he said. 'What happened after we last met. That bomb on the Madrid killing her husband- then the other where she was staying. I even thought of writing to you. Then I got mixed up with a lot of special duties.'

  He had quite changed his tone of voice from the moment before, at the same time assuming an expression reminiscent of Farebrother's 'religious face', the same serious pained contraction of the features. I was determined to endure for as short a time as possible only what was absolutely unavoidable in the exhibition of self-confessed remorse Stevens was obviously proposing to mount for my benefit. He had been, I recalled, unnecessarily public in his carryings-on with Priscilla, had corroded what turned out to be Chips’ last year alive. That might be no very particular business of mine, but I had liked Chips, therefore preferred the circumstances should remain unresurrected. That was the long and the short of it.

  ‘Don’t let’s talk about it. What’s the good?’