The Soldier's Art (13 page)

“Well…” he
said.

I was silent.

“Won’t do, I’m
afraid.”

“No, sir?”

“Not as your
written French stands.”

He took up a
pencil and tapped it on the desk.

“We’d have
liked to have you…”

“Yes, sir.”

“Masham agrees.”

“Masham” I
took to be the I. Corps captain.

“But this
translation …”

He spoke for a
second as if I might have intended a deliberate insult to himself and his
uniform by the botch I had made of it, but that he was prepared magnanimously
to overlook that. Then, as if regretting what might have appeared momentary
unkindness, in spite of my behaviour, he rose and shook hands again, gazing
into the middle distance of the room. The vision to be seen there was certainly
one of total failure.

“… not sufficiently
accurate.”

“No, sir.”

“You
understand me?”

“Of course,
sir.”

“A pity.”

We stared at
each other.

 “Otherwise
I
think you would have done us well.”

Major Finn
paused. He appeared to consider this hypothesis for a long time. There did not
seem much more to be said. I hoped the interview would end as quickly as
possible.

“Perfectly suitable …” he repeated.

His voice was
far away now. There was another long pause. Then a thought struck him. His face
lighted up.

“Perhaps it’s only
written
French you’re shaky in.”

He wrinkled
his broad, ivory-coloured forehead.

“Now let us
postulate the 9th Regiment of Colonial Infantry are on the
point of mutiny,” he said. “They may be prepared to abandon Vichy and come over
to the
Allies. How would you harangue them?”

“In French,
sir?”

“Yes, in
French.”

He spoke
eagerly, as if he expected something enjoyably dramatic.

“I’m afraid I
should have to fall back on English, sir.”

His face fell
again.

“I feared
that,” he said.

Failure was
certainly total. I had been given a second chance, had equally bogged it. Major
Finn stroked the enormous bumpy contours of his nose.

“Look here,”
he said, “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll make a note of your name.”

“Yes, sir?”

“There may be
certain changes taking place in the near future. Not here, elsewhere. But don’t
count on it. That’s best I can say. I don’t question anything General Liddament
suggests. It’s just the language.”

“Thank you,
sir.”

He smiled.

“You’re on
leave, aren’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Wouldn’t mind
some leave myself/’

“No, sir?”

“And my
respects to General Liddament.”

“I’ll convey
them, sir.”

“A great man.”

I made a
suitable face and left the room, disappointed and furious with myself. The fact
that such an eventuality was in some degree to be expected made things no
better. To have anyone in the army – let alone a general – show interest in
your individual career is a rare enough experience. To fall at the language
hurdle – just the field in which someone like myself, anyway in the eyes of
General Liddament, might be expected to show reasonable proficiency – seemed to
let down the General too. There would be little hope of his soliciting further
candidatures in my interest. Why should he? I wondered why I had never taken
the trouble in the past to learn French properly; as a boy, for instance,
staying with the Leroys at La Grenadière, or in the course of innumerable other
opportunities. At the same time, I was aware that a liaison officer at
battalion level would be required to show considerable fluency. Perhaps it was
just Fate. As for having a note made of my name, that was to be regarded as a
polite formula on the part of Major Finn – an unusually likeable man – an echo
of civilian courtesies from someone who took a pride in possessing good manners
as well as a V.C.; a gesture to be totally disregarded for all practical
purposes.

I returned to
the captain’s room. Pennistone was still there. He was about to leave, standing
up, wearing his cap.

“Well then,”
he was saying. “On the first of next month Szymanski
ceases to serve under the Free French authority, and comes under the command of
the Polish Forces in Great Britain. That’s settled at last.”

Masham,
the I. Corps captain, turned to me.
I explained deal was off. He knew, of course, already.

“Sorry,” he
said. “Thanks for looking in. I
hear you and David
know each
other.”

After taking
leave of him, Pennistone and I went out together into the street. He asked what
had happened. I outlined
the interview with Major Finn. Pennistone listened with
attention.;

“Finn seems to
have been well disposed towards you,” he said.

“I liked him –
what’s his story?”

“Some
fantastic episode in the first war, when he got his V.C. After coming out of
the army, he decided to go into the cosmetics business – scent, face
powder, things like that,
the last trade you’d connect him with. He talks very accurate French with
the most outlandish accent you ever heard.
He’s been a great success with the Free French – liked by de Gaulle, which is
not everyone’s luck.”

“Surprising he’s
not got higher rank.”

“Finn could
have become a colonel half-a-dozen times over since rejoining the army,” said
Pennistone. “He always says he prefers not to have too much responsibility. He
has his V.C., which always entails respect – and which he loves talking about.
However, I think he may be tempted at last to accept higher rank.”

“To what?”

“Very much in
the air at the moment. All I can say is, you may be more likely to hear from
him than you think.”

“Does he make
money at his cosmetics?”

“Enough to
keep a wife and daughter hidden away somewhere.”

“Why are they
hidden away?”

“I don’t know,”
said Pennistone, laughing. “They just are. There are all kinds of things about
Finn that are not explained. Keeping them hidden away is part of the Finn
system. When I knew him in Paris, I soon found he had a secretive side.”

“You knew him
before the war?”

“I came across
him, oddly enough, when I was in textiles, working over there.”

‘Textiles are
your job?”

“I got out in
the end.”

“Into what?”

Pennistone
laughed again, as if that were an absurd question
to ask.

“Oh, nothing
much really,” he said. “I travel about a lot – or used to before the war. I
think I told you, when we last met, that I’m trying to write something about
Descartes.”

All this
suggested – as it turned out rightly – that Pennistone, as well as Finn, had
his secretive side. When I came to know him better, I found what mattered to
Pennistone was what went on in his head. He could rarely tell you what he had
done in the past, or proposed to do in the future, beyond giving a bare statement
of places he had visited or wanted to visit, books he had read or wanted to
read. On the other hand, he was able to describe pretty lucidly what he had
thought – philosophically speaking – at any given period of his life. While
other people lived for money, power, women, the arts, domesticity, Pennistone
liked merely thinking about things, arranging his mind. Nothing else ever
seemed to matter to him. It was the aim Stringham had announced now as his own,
though Pennistone was a very different sort of person from Stringham, and
better equipped for perfecting the process. I
only found out these things about him at a later stage.

“Give me the
essential details regarding yourself,” Pennistone said. “Unit, army number,
that sort of thing – just in case anything should crop up where I myself might
be of use.

I wrote it all
down. We parted company, agreeing that Nietzschean Eternal Recurrences must
bring us together soon again.

Even by the
time I reached the Café Royal that evening, I was still feeling humiliated by
the failure of the Finn interview. The afternoon had been devoted to odd jobs,
on the whole tedious. The tables and banquettes of the large tasteless room
looked unfamiliar occupied by figures in uniform. There was no one there I had
ever seen before. I sat down and waited. Lovell did not arrive until nearly
half-past seven. He wore captain’s pips. It was hard not to labour under a
sense of being left behind in the military race. I offered congratulations.

“You don’t get
into the really big money until you’re a major,” he said, “That should be one’s
aim.”

“Vaulting
ambition.”

“Insatiable.”

“Where do you
function?*

“Headquarters
of Combined Operations,” he said, “that curious toy fort halfway down
Whitehall. It’s a great place for Royal Marines. A bit of luck your being on
leave, Nick. One or two things I want to talk about First of all, will you
agree to be executor of my will?”

“Of course.”

“Perfectly
simple. Whatever there is – which isn’t much, I can assure you – goes to
Priscilla, then to Caroline.”

“That doesn’t
sound too complicated.”

“One never
knows what may happen to one.”

“No, indeed.”

The remark
echoed Sergeant Harmer’s views. There was a pause. I had the sudden sense that
Lovell was going to broach some subject I should not like. This apprehension
turned out to be correct,

“Another small
matter,” he said.

“Yes?”

“It would
interest me to hear more of this fellow Stevens. You seem to be mainly
responsible for bringing him into our lives, Nick.”

“If you mean
someone called Odo Stevens, he and I were on a course together at Aldershot
about a year ago. I didn’t know he was in our lives. He isn’t in mine. I haven’t
set eyes on him since then.”

I had scarcely
thought of Stevens since he had been expelled from the course. Now the picture
of him came back forcibly. Lovell’s tone was not reassuring. It was possible to
guess something of what might be happening.

“You
introduced him into the family,” said Lovell.

He spoke
calmly, not at all accusingly, but I recognised in his eye the intention to
stage a dramatic announcement.

“One weekend
leave from Aldershot Stevens gave me a lift in his very brokendown car as far
as Frederica’s. Then he took me back on Sunday night. Isobel was staying there.
It was just before she had her baby. In fact, the birth started that night.
Stevens got R.T.U.-ed soon after we got back on the course. I haven’t seen or
heard of him since.”

“You haven’t?”

“Not a word.”

“Priscilla was
at Frederica’s then.”

“I remember.”

“She met
Stevens.”

“She must have
done.”

“She’s been
with him lately up in a hotel in Scotland,” said Lovell, “living more or less
openly, so there’s no point in not mentioning it.”

There was
nothing to be said to that. Stevens had certainly struck up some sort of an
acquaintance with Priscilla on that occasion at Frederica’s. I could recall
more. Some question of getting a piece of jewellery mended for her had arisen.
Such additional consequences as Lovell outlined were scarcely to be foreseen
when I took Stevens to the house. Nevertheless, it was an unfortunate introduction.
However, this merely confirmed stories going round. No doubt Stevens, by now,
was a figure with some sort of war career behind him. That could happen in the
matter of a few weeks. That Stevens might be the “commando,” or whatever shape
Priscilla’s alleged fancy-man took, had never suggested itself to me. Lovell
lit a cigarette. He puffed out a cloud of smoke. His evident inclination to
adopt a stylised approach – telling the story as we might have tried to work it
out together in a film script years before – was some alleviation of immediate
embarrassments caused by the disclosure. The dramatic manner he had assumed
accorded with his own conception of how life should be lived. I was grateful
for it. By this means things were made easier.

“When did all
this start?”

“Pretty soon
after they first met.”

“I see.”

“I was down at
that godforsaken place on the East Coast. There was nowhere near for her to
live. It wasn’t my fault we weren’t together.”

“Is Stevens
stationed in Scotland?”

“So far as I
know. He did rather well somewhere – was if the Lofoten raid? That sort of
thing. He’s a hero on top of everything else. I suppose if I were to do
something where I could get killed, instead of composing lists of signal
equipment and suchlike, I might make a more interesting husband.”

“I don’t think
so for a moment.”

In giving this
answer, I spoke a decided opinion. To assume such a thing was a typical
instance of Lovell’s taste, mentioned earlier, for the obvious. It was a
supposition bound to lead to a whole host of erroneous conclusions – that was
how the conjecture struck me – regarding his own, or anyone else’s, married
life.

“You may be
right,” he said.

He spoke as if
rather relieved.

“Look at it
the other way. Think of all the heroes who had trouble with their wives.”

“Who?”

“Agamemnon,
for instance.”

“Well, that
caused enough dislocation,” said Lovell. “What’s Stevens like, apart from his
heroism?.”

“In
appearance?”

“Everything
about him.”

“Youngish,
comes from Birmingham, traveller in costume jewellery, spot of journalism, good
at languages, short, thickset, very fair hair, easy to get on with, keen on the
girls.”

“Sounds not
unlike me,” said Lovell, “except that up to date I’ve never travelled in
costume jewellery – and I still rather pride myself on my figure.”

“There is a
touch of you about him, Chips. I thought so at Aldershot.”

“You flatter
me. Anyway, he seems more of a success than I am with my own wife. If he is
keen on the girls, I suppose making for Priscilla would be a matter of routine?”