The Soldier's Art (15 page)

“After Audrey
bolted with Carolo, they kept company till the beginning of the war – surprising
in a way, knowing them both, it went on so long. Then he left her for a girl in
a repertory company. Audrey remained on her 0wn. She was working in
a canteen when we ran across each other – still is. She’s coming on
from there to-night.”

“I never heard
a word about you and her.”

“We don’t get
on too badly,” said Moreland. “I haven’t been specially
well lately. That bloody lung. Audrey’s been very good
about looking after me.”

He still
seemed to feel further explanation, or excuse, was required; at the same time
he was equally anxious not to appear dissatisfied with the new
alignment.

“Maclintick
doing himself in shook me up horribly,” he said.
“Of course, there can be no doubt Audrey was partly to blame for
that, leaving him flat as she did. All the same, she was fond of
Maclintick in her way. She often talks of him.
You know you get to a stage, especially in wartime, when it’s a relief
to hear familiar things talked about, whatever they are, and
whoever’s saying them. You don’t care what line the conversation takes apart
from that. For instance, Maclintick’s unreadable book on musical theory he was writing.
It was never finished by him, much less published. His last night alive, as a
final gesture against the world, Maclintick tore the manuscript
into small pieces and stopped up the lavatory with it. That
was just before he turned the gas on. You’d be surprised
how much Audrey knows about what Maclintick said in that book – on
the technical side, I mean, which she’s no training in or taste for. In an odd
way, I like knowing about all that.
It’s almost as if Maclintick’s still about – though if he were, of course, I
shouldn’t be living with Audrey. Here she is, anyway.”

Mrs.
Maclintick was moving between the tables, making in our direction. She wore a
three-quarter length coat over  trousers, a rather notably inelegant
form of female dress popular at that moment in circumstances where
no formality was required. I remembered that Gypsy Jones – La Passionaria
of Hendon Central, as Moreland himself had called her – had heralded in her own
person the advent of this mode, when Widmerpool and I had seen her addressing a
Communist anti-war meeting from a soapbox at a street corner. The
clothes increased Mrs. Maclintick’s own air of being a gipsy, one in fact,
rather than just in name. Moreland’s nostalgia for vagrancy was recalled, too,
by her appearance, which immediately suggested telling fortunes if her palm was
crossed with silver, selling clothes-pegs, or engaging in any other traditional
Romany activity. By way of contrast with this physical exterior, she entirely
lacked any of the ingratiating manner commonly associated with the gipsy’s
role. Small, wiry, aggressive, she looked as ready as ever for a row, her
bright black eyes and unsmiling countenance confronting a world from which
perpetual hostility was not merely potential, but presumptive. Attack, she made
clear, would be met with counter-attack. However, in spite of this embattled
appearance, discouraging to anyone who had ever witnessed her having a row with
Maclintick, she seemed disposed at this particular moment to make herself
agreeable; more agreeable, at any rate, than on earlier occasions when we had
run across each other.

“Moreland told
me you would be here,” she said. “We don’t get out to this sort of place much
nowadays – can’t afford it – but when we do we’re glad to meet friends.”

She spoke as
if I had a trifle blatantly imposed myself on
a party of their own, rather than herself converged on a meeting specially
arranged between Moreland and myself. At the same time her tone was not
antagonistic; indeed, by her pre-war standards, in as much as I knew them, it
was positively amiable. It occurred to me she perhaps saw her
association with Moreland as a kind of revenge on Maclintick, who had so
greatly valued him as a friend. Now, Maclintick was
underground and Moreland belonged to her. Moreland himself, whose earlier state
of nerves had certainly been provoked by the prospect
of having to present himself and Mrs, Maclintick as a ménage,
now looked relieved, the immediate impact manoeuvred without disaster. Characteristically,
he began to embark on one of those dissertations about life in which he was
habitually inclined to indulge after some awkwardness had arisen. It had been
just the same when he used to feel with Matilda that the ice was thin for
conversational skating and would deliberately switch from the particular to
the general.

“Since war
prevents any serious work,” he said, “I have been trying to think out a few
things. Make my lymphatic brain function a little. All part of my retreat from
perfectionism. Besides, one really must hold one or two firm opinions on
matters before one’s forty – a doom about to descend before any of us know
where we are. I find war clears the mind in a few respects. At least that can
be said for it.”

I was reminded
how Stringham, too, had remarked that he was thinking things out, though it was
hard to decide whether “perfectionism” played much part in Stringham’s
problems. Perhaps it did. That was one explanation. In Moreland’s case, there
could be no doubt Mrs. Maclintick herself was an element in this retreat. In
her case, indeed, so far as Moreland was concerned, withdrawal from
perfectionism had been so unphased as to constitute an operation reasonably to
be designated a rout. Perhaps Mrs. Maclintick herself, even if the awareness
remained undefined in her mind, felt she must be regarded as implicit in this
advertised new approach – therefore some sort of protest should be made – because,
although she spoke without savagery, her next words were undoubtedly a call to
order.

“The war doesn’t
seem to clear your mind quite enough, Moreland,” she said. “I only wish it
stopped you dreaming a bit. Guess where that lost ration card of yours turned
up, after I’d looked for it up hill and down dale.
In the toilet.
Better than nowhere, I suppose. Saved
me from standing in a queue at the Town Hall for a couple of hours to get you
another one – and when was I going to find time for that, I wonder.”

She might have
been addressing a child. Since she herself had never given birth – had, I
remembered, expressed active objection to being burdened with offspring – Moreland
may to some extent have occupied a child’s role in her eyes; possibly even in
her needs, something she had sought in Maclintick and never found. Moreland, so
far as it went, seemed to accept this status, receiving the complaint with a
laugh, though no denial of its justice.

“I must have
dropped it there before fire-watching,” he said. “How bored one gets on those
nights. It’s almost worse if there isn’t a raid. I began to plan a work, last
time, called
The Fire-watcher’s March
,
drums, you know, perhaps triangle and oboe. I was feeling particularly fed up
that night, not just displeased with the war, or certain social or political
conditions from which one suffers, but tired of the whole thing. That is one of
the conceptions most difficult for stupid people to grasp. They always suppose
some ponderable alteration will make the human condition more bearable. The
only hope of survival is the realisation that no such thing could possibly happen.”

“Never mind
what goes through your head when you’re
fire-watching, Moreland,” said Mrs. Maclintick. “You order some dinner. We don’t
want to starve to death while you hold forth. It won’t be much when it comes,
if I’m any prophet.”

These words
were another reminder of going out with Moreland and Matilda, though Matilda’s
remonstrance would have been less downright. The plea for food was reasonable
enough. We got hold of a waiter. There was the usual business of Moreland being
unable to decide, even from the limited choice available, what he wanted to
eat. In due course dinner arrived. Moreland, now back on his accustomed form,
discoursed about his work and people we knew. Mrs. Maclintick, grumbling about
domestic difficulties, showed herself in general amenable. The evening was
turning out a success. One change, however, was to be noticed in Moreland’s
talk. When he dwelt on the immediate past, it was as if all that had become
very distant, no longer the matter of a year or two before. For him, it was
clear, a veil, a thick curtain, had fallen between “now” and “before the war.”
He would suddenly become quite worked up about people we had known, parties we
had been to, subjects for amusement we had experienced together, laughing at
moments so violently that tears ran down his cheeks. One felt he was fairly
near to other, deeper emotions, that the strength of his feelings was due to
something in addition to a taste for mulling over moments in retrospect
enjoyable or grotesque.

“You must
admit funny things did happen in the old days,” he said. “Maclintick’s story
about Dr. Trelawney and the red-haired succubus that could only talk Hebrew.”

“Oh, don’t go
on about the old days so,” said Mrs. Maclintick. “You make me feel a hundred.
Try and live in the present for a change. For instance, it might interest you
to know that a one-time girl friend of yours is about to sit down at a table
over there.”

We looked in
the direction she had indicated by jerking her head. It was perfectly true.
Priscilla Lovell and an officer in battle-dress were being shown to a table not
far from our own. The officer was Odo Stevens. For a moment they were occupied
with a waiter, so that a brief suspension of time was offered to consider how
best to deal with this encounter, superlatively embarrassing, certainly soon
unavoidable. At first it struck me as a piece of quite undeserved, almost
incredible ill chance that they should turn up like this; but, on
consideration, especially in the light of what Lovell himself had told me,
there was nothing specially odd about it. Probably Stevens was on leave. This
was an obvious enough place to dine, though certainly not one to choose if you
wanted to be discreet.

“Adulterers
are always asking the courts for discretion,” Peter Templer used to say, “when,
as a rule, discretion is the last thing they’ve been generous with themselves.”

If Priscilla
thought her husband still stationed on the East Coast, she would of course not
expect to meet him here. On the face of it, there was no reason why she should
not dine with Stevens, if he happened to be passing through London. A second’s
thought showed that what seemed a piece of preposterous exhibitionism only
presented that appearance on account of special knowledge acquired from Lovell.
All the same, if Priscilla were dining here, that meant she had cut the Bijou
Ardglass party. So unpredictably do human beings behave, she might even plan to
take Stevens on there later.

“Is that her
husband with her?” asked Mrs. Maclintick. “I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting
him. I suppose you look on him as the man who cut you out, Moreland?”

I was
surprised she knew about Moreland’s former entanglement with Priscilla. No
doubt Maclintick had spoken of it in the past. As Moreland himself had
remarked, she and Maclintick must, at least some of the time, have enjoyed a
closer, more amicable existence together than
their acquaintances inclined to suppose. The Maclinticks could even
have met Moreland and Priscilla at some musical event. Anyway, Mrs. Maclintick
had turned out to know Priscilla by sight, had evidently gathered scraps of her
story, at least so far as Moreland was
concerned. That was all. She could not also be aware of other implications
disturbing to myself. So far as Mrs. Maclintick’s knowledge went, therefore,
Priscilla’s presence might
be regarded as merely personally displeasing, in her capacity as a former love
of Moreland’s. However, so developed was Mrs. Maclintick’s taste for malice,
like everyone of her kind, that she seemed to know instinctively something
inimical to myself, too, was in the air. Moreland, on the other hand, having
talked with Lovell only a short time before, could not fail to suspect trouble
of one sort or another was on foot. Never very good at concealing his feelings,
he went red again. This change of colour was no doubt chiefly caused by Mrs.
Maclintick’s not too delicate reference to himself, but probably he guessed
something of my own sentiments as well.

“The girl’s
Nick’s sister-in-law,” he said. “You seem to have forgotten that. I don’t know
who the army type is.”

“Oh, yes, she’s
your sister-in-law, isn’t she,” said Mrs. Maclintick. “Now I remember. Not bad
looking. Got herself up for the occasion too, hasn’t she?”

Mrs.
Maclintick did not elaborate why she thought Priscilla’s clothes deserved this
comment, though they were
certainly less informal than her own outfit. Priscilla’s appearance, at its
most striking, made her not far short of a
“beauty.” She looked striking enough now, though not in the best of humours.
Her fair hair was longer than at Frederica’s, her face thinner. There was about
her that taut, at the same time supple air, the yielding movement of body women
sometimes display when conducting a love affair,
like the physical pose of
an athlete observed between contests. She had a high colour. Stevens,
apparently in the best of spirits, was talking noisily. No escape was offered,
even though they were the last people I wanted to run into at that moment. It
seemed wise to prepare the ground with some explanation of why these two might
reasonably be out together. This was perhaps instinctive, rather than logical,
because Lovell himself had spoken as if the whole world knew about the affair.

“The man’s
called Odo Stevens. I was on a course with him.”

“Oh, you know
him, do you?” said Mrs. Maclintick. “He looks a bit…”

She did not
finish the sentence. Although her comment was never revealed, one had the
impression she grasped pretty well the essential aspects of Odo Stevens, even
if only the superficial ones. No great psychological powers were required to
make a reasonably accurate guess at these, anyway for immediate practical
purposes, whatever might be found deeper down. At that moment Stevens caught
sight of us. He waved. Then, at once, he spoke to Priscilla, who herself looked
in our direction. She too waved, at the same time began to say something to
Stevens. Whatever that was, he disregarded it. Jumping up, he came towards our
table. The only hope now was that Mrs. Maclintick’s uncompromising manner might
save the situation by causing Stevens to feel himself unwelcome; if not drive
him off entirely, at least discourage a long conversation. She could easily
make matters more bizarre than embarrassing. I felt suddenly grateful for her
presence. However, as things fell out, Mrs. Maclintick was not placed in the
position of exercising an active role. This was on account of Stevens himself.
I had completely underestimated the change that had taken place in him. Never
lacking in self-confidence, at Aldershot he had at the same time been undecided
how best to present himself; how, so to speak, to maximum value
from his own personality. He held various cards in his hand – as I had tried to
explain to
Lovell – most of them good ones. At different times he would vary the line
he took: rough diamond: ambitious young provincial salesman : journalist on
the make: soldier of fortune: professional womaniser. Those were just a few of
them, all played with a reasonable lightness of touch. Stevens was certainly
aware, too, of possibility to charm by sheer lack of any too exact a definition
of personality or background.
Some of this vagueness of outline may have had a fascination for Priscilla.
Now, however, he had
enormously added to the effectiveness of his own social attack, immediately
giving the impression, as he approached our table, that he was prepared to take
on this, or any other
party of people, off his own bat. He himself was going to do the entertaining.
No particular co-operation from anyone else was required. He had put up an
additional pip since we last met, but, although still only a lieutenant,
he
wore the mauve and white ribbon of an M.C.,
something of
a rarity in acquisition at this comparatively early stage of the war.