The military philosophers (10 page)

‘Norah’s bringing a girl-friend with her,’ he said. ‘Wonder what she’s got hold of this time. The last one had a snub nose and freckles with biggish feet.’

Norah Tolland was a driver in one of the several classifications of women’s services, a corps which regarded themselves as of rather more consequence than mere ATS, whose officers they were not required to salute. Norah had taken pleasure in explaining that to a very important ATS officer wearing red tabs who had hauled her up for a supposed omission of respect.

‘Sorry your friend Templer’s gone, Nick,’ said Jeavons. ‘We got on pretty well. Used to have long talks at odd moments of the night when we’d both come off duty in the small hours. He told me a thing or two. Stories about the ladies, my hat.’

Jeavons’s thick dark hair, with its ridges of corkscrew curls, had now turned quite white, the Charlie Chaplin moustache remaining black. This combination of tones for some reason gave him an oddly Italian appearance, enhanced by blue overalls, obscurely suggesting a railway porter at a station in Italy. Jeavons continued to wear these overalls, though by now promoted to an administrative post at the local ARP headquarters. He poured out glasses of gin-and-orange, a drink for ever to recall world war.

‘Why did Templer leave?’

‘Been fed up for ages. Wanted a more active job. Quite worried him.’

‘He told me all that nearly a year ago.’

‘There was a woman in the case. Usually is. That’s why he wanted to do something more dangerous. London’s quite dangerous enough for me. Templer didn’t think so.’

‘It sounds unlike him.’

‘He went off to some training place,’ said Jeavons. ‘Never know how people will behave. Look at poor Charles Stringham, missing at Singapore. Remember when he lived on the top floor here with Miss Weedon trying to cure him of the booze. He and I used to have one on the sly once in a way. Mrs Conyers, I should call her, not Miss Weedon. Bad luck her husband dropping dead like that, but in your nineties you must be prepared for accidents.’

General Conyers, also an air-raid warden, had collapsed in the street one night, pursuing looters attempting to steal a refrigerator from a bombed house. He died, as he had lived, in active, dramatic, unusual circumstances; such, one felt, as he himself would have preferred.

‘Tuffy, as Charles used to call her, is in MI5 now,’ said Jeavons. ‘Don’t think she has to get into evening dress and jade ear-rings and vamp German agents. Just supervises the girls there. Always looked as if she knew a lot of secrets. Those black dresses and white collars. I expect they want reliable people, and she’s reliable all right. This girl of Templer’s made him feel he was getting old. He wanted to find out whether that was true or not. Of course, you might argue he oughtn’t to have been playing around at all. You’ve got to remember the circumstances. Wife’s in a mental home, as you probably know. Awful thing to happen. It’s hard to keep straight, if you’re on your own. I remember Smith, that butler of your brother-in-law Erry’s, using those very words. Erry used to lend us Smith from time to time, when he was away from Thrubworth. Of course, Smith’s wife had been dead for years, luckily for her. I warrant there’d been some high jinks on Smith’s part at one time or another. Terrible chap, Smith. Oughtn’t to say it, but I’m really glad he’s dead. No chance of his ever working here again.’

‘Erry said it was a rather ghastly business when Smith pegged out.’

‘Ghastly?’ said Jeavons. ‘Just about. Didn’t you know? He was bitten by Maisky, that monkey Molly used to own. It seems Smith tried to take a biscuit away from that tenacious ape. Probably wanted it himself to mop up some of the gin he’d drunk. God, the way that man used to put back our gin. I marked the bottle, but it wasn’t a damn bit of use. Silly thing to do, to take issue with Maisky. Of course Smith came off second-best. Perhaps they both reached out for the biscuit at the same moment. Anyway, Maisky wouldn’t have any snatching and Smith contracted septicemia with fatal results. Meant the end of Maisky too, which wasn’t really just. But then what is just in this life? Still, I suppose some things are, if you think about them. Smith’ll be the last butler I’ll ever find myself employing –  not that there’s likely to be many butlers to employ, the way things are going. That fact doesn’t break my heart. Taking them all in all, the tall with the short, the fat with the thin, the drunk with the sober, they’re not a profession that greatly appeals to me. Of course, I was brought in contact with butlers late in life. Never set eyes on them in the circles I came from. I may have been unlucky in the butlers I’ve met. There may be the one in a hundred, but it’s a long time to wait. Read about butlers in books – see ’em in plays,’ That’s all right. Have ’em in the house – a very different matter. Look what they do to your clothes, apart from anything else. I started without butlers and I’ll die without butlers, no less a happy man. There’s the bell. No butler, so I’ll answer it myself. Probably some of the pals from my ARP dump.’

He went off down the stairs. After the bomb damage, the house had been shored up to prevent collapse, but no interior renovation had taken place. A long, jagged crack still zigzagged across one of the walls, which were in many places covered with large brown patches, like maps showing physical features, or the rather daring ornamental designs of a modernistic decorator. All the pictures, even the Moroccan pastels, had been removed, as well as the Oriental bowls and jars that used to clutter the drawing-room. A snapshot of Molly, wearing a Fair Isle jumper and holding Maisky in her arms like a baby, stood on the mantelpiece, curled and yellowing. Maisky, heedless of mortality, looked infinitely self-satisfied. Jeavons returned, bringing with him several ARP colleagues, male and female.

‘Room’s not looking very smart for a party,’ he said.

A minute or two later Norah Tolland arrived. Her companion –  ‘girl-friend’, as Jeavons had termed her – turned out to be Pamela Flitton. Norah was in uniform, which suited her. She was, in general, more settled, more sure of herself than when younger, though on this particular occasion the presence of Pamela seemed to make her both elated and nervous.

‘Ted, I felt sure you wouldn’t mind my bringing Pam,’ she said. ‘She’s having dinner with me tonight. It seemed so much easier than meeting at the restaurant.’

‘Most welcome,’ said Jeavons.

He looked Pamela over. Jeavons examining a woman’s points was always in itself worth observing. If good-looking, he stared at her as if he had never before seen anything of the kind, though at the same time determined not to be carried away by his own astonishment. Pamela justified this attention. She was wearing a neat black frock, an improvement on her battledress blouse. It was clear she had established over Norah an absolute, even if only temporary, domination. Norah’s conciliatory manner showed that

‘Have a drink?’ said Jeavons.

‘What have you got?’

Pamela glanced aggressively round the room, catching my eye, but making no sign of recognition.

‘Gin-and-orange.’

‘No whisky?’

‘Sorry.’

‘I’ll have gin-and-water – no, neat gin.’

I went across to her.

‘Escaped from the ATS?*

‘Got invalided.’

‘A lady of leisure?’

‘My job’s a secret one.’

Jeavons took her lightly by the arm and began to introduce her to the other guests. She shook his hand away with her elbow, but allowed him to tell her the names of two or three persons who worked with him. When introductions were over, she picked up a paper from the table – apparently some not very well printed periodical – and took it, with her glass of gin, to the furthest corner of the room. There she sat on a stool, listlessly turning the pages. Norah, talking to Isobel, gave an anxious glance, but did not take any immediate steps to join Pamela, or try to persuade her to be more sociable. A talkative elderly man with a red face, one of the ARP guests, engaged me in conversation. He said he was a retired indigo planter. Jeavons himself went across the room and spoke to Pamela, but he must have received a rebuff, because he returned a second or two later to the main body of the guests.

‘She’s reading our ARP bulletin,’ he said.

He spoke with more surprise than disapproval; in fact almost with admiration.

‘Read the poem in this number?’ asked the indigo planter. ‘Rather good. It begins “What do you carry, Warden dear?” Gives a schedule of the equipment – you know, helmet, gas-mask, First Aid, all that – but leaves out one item. You have to guess. Quite clever.’

‘Jolly good.’

Norah, evidently not happy about Pamela, separated herself from Isobel soon after this, and went across to where her friend was sitting. They talked for a moment, but, if Norah too hoped to make her circulate with the rest, she was defeated. When she returned I asked her what her own life was like.

‘I was with Gwen McReith’s lot for a time. Quite fun, because Gwen herself is amusing. I first met Pam with her, as a matter of fact.’

‘Pam seems quite a famous figure.’

Norah sighed.

‘I suppose she is now,’ she said.

‘Is she all right over there in the corner?’

‘No good arguing with her.’

‘I mean we both of us might go over and talk to her.’

‘For God’s sake not’

Nothing of any note took place during the rest of the party, until Norah and Pamela were leaving. Throughout that time, Pamela had continued to sit in the corner. She accepted another drink from Jeavons, but ceased to read the ARP bulletin, simply looking straight in front of her. However, before she and Norah went off together, an unexpected thing happened. She came across the room and spoke in her accustomed low, almost inaudible tone.

‘Are you still working with the Poles?’

‘No – I’ve switched to the Belgians and Czechs.’

‘When you were with the Poles, did you ever hear the name Szymanski?’

‘It’s a very common Polish name, but i£ you mean the man who used to be with the Free French, and caused endless trouble, then transferred to the Poles, and caused endless trouble there, I know quite a lot about him.’

She laughed.

‘I just wondered,’ she said.

‘What about him?’

‘Oh, nothing.’

‘Was he the character you were talking to outside that Polish hide-out in Bayswater?’

She shook her head, laughing softly again. Then they went away. The ARP people left too.

‘There’s enough for one more drink for the three of us,’ said Jeavons. ‘I hid the last few drops.’

‘What do you think of Pamela Flitton?’

‘That’s the wench that gave Peter Templer such a time,’ said Jeavons. ‘Couldn’t remember the name. It’s come back. He said it all started as a joke. Then he got mad about her. That was the way Templer put it. What he didn’t like – when she wasn’t having any, as I understand it – was the feeling he was no good any more. How I feel all the time. Nothing much you can do about it. Mind you, he was browned off with the job too.’

‘Do men really try to get dangerous jobs because they’ve been disappointed about a woman?’

‘Well, I don’t,’ Jeavons admitted.

The enquiry about Szymanski was odd, even if he were not the Pole outside the Ufford. Neither Pennistone nor I bad ever set eyes on this man, though we had been involved in troubles about him, including a question asked in Parliament There was some uncertainty as to his nationality, even whether the territory where he was stated to have been born was now Polish or Czechoslovak, assuming he had in truth been born there. Most of his life he had lived on his wits as a professional gambler – like Cosmo Flitton  – so it appeared, familiar as a dubious character in France, Belgium and the Balkans; in fact all over the place. He had a row of aliases: Kubitsa: Brod: Groza: Dupont: to mention only a few of them. No one – even MI5 was vague – seemed to know when and how he had first appeared in this country, but at an early stage he was known to have volunteered for the Belgian forces. This offer was prudently declined. Szymanski then tried the Free French, who, with the self-confidence of their race, took him on the strength; later ceding him with relief to the Poles, who may have wanted to make use of him in some special capacity. The general opinion was that he had a reasonable claim to Polish citizenship. The Czechs raised no objection. There were those who insisted his origins were really Balkan.

‘It seems fairly clear he’s not Norwegian,’ said Pennistone, ‘but I’ve learnt to take nothing on trust about Szymanski. You may have him on your hands before we’ve finished, Dempster.’

Szymanski was one of those professional scourges of authority that appear sporadically in all armies, a type to which the Allied contingents were peculiarly subject owing to the nature of their composition and recruitment Like Sayce of my former Battalion, Szymanski was always making trouble, but Sayce magnified to a phantasmagoric degree, a kind of super-Sayce of infinitely greater intelligence and disruptive potential. The abiding fear of the Home Office was that individuals of this sort might, after being found stateless, be discharged from the armed forces and have to be coped with as alien civilians.

As it happened, Szymanski’s name cropped up again a day or two later in our room. Masham, who was with the British Mission in liaison with the Free French, was waiting to be summoned by Finn, to whom he was to communicate certain points arising out of Giraud taking over from Darlan in North Africa. Masham asked Pennistone how the Poles were getting on with Szymanski, who had caused a lot of trouble to himself in his Free French days.

‘Szymanski’s gone a bit too far this time,’ Pennistone said. ‘They’ve sent him to detention. It was bound to come.’

There was a barracks, under the control of a British commandant, specially to accommodate delinquent Allied personnel.

I asked how recently that had happened.

‘A week or so ago.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ said Masham. ‘Though one’s got to admit the man was rather a card. It looks as if this North African switch-over will mean a back place for de Gaulle.’

‘Has anyone else hanged himself in his braces in that Free French snuggery behind Selfridge’s?’ asked Borrit.