The military philosophers (3 page)

‘Though by no means immune to French flattery,’ said Widmerpool.

‘Let’s hear something about General Anders,’ said the sailor.

‘He’s GOC Polish troops in Russia, I understand. How’s he doing at that job?’ said Widmerpool.

‘Efficiently, it’s thought – insomuch as he’s allowed to function with a free hand.’

‘Where will Anders fit in, if he comes over here? Will there be friction with the present chap?’

‘Up to now, Anders has not been a figure of anything like comparable political stature to Sikorski. There seems no reason to suppose he wishes to compete with him at that level. Unlike Sikorski – although he actively opposed Pilsudski in ‘twenty-six – Anders never suffered in his career. In fact he was the first colonel to be promoted general after the change of regime.’

‘Anders is a totally different type from Sikorski,’ said Widmerpool. ‘Rather a swashbuckler. A man to be careful of in certain respects. Ran a racing stable. Still, I’m no enemy to a bit of dash. I like it.’

Widmerpool removed his spectacles to emphasize this taste for ardour in living.

‘The Russians kept him in close confinement for two years.’

‘So we are aware.’

‘Sometimes in atrocious conditions.’

‘Yes, yes. Now, let’s get on to lesser people like their Chief of Staff, Kielkiewicz, and the military attaché, Bobrowski …’

Clarification of the personalities of Polish generals continued for about an hour. The various pairs of hands lying on the table formed a pattern of contrasted colours and shapes. Widmerpool’s, small, gnarled, with cracked nails, I remembered from school. Farebrother’s, clasped together, as if devotionally, to match his expression, were long fingered, the joints immensely knobbly, rather notably clean and well looked after, but not manicured like Templer’s. Those of the Foreign Office representative were huge, with great bulbous fingers, almost purple in colour, like lumps of meat that had been chopped in that shape to make into sandwiches or hot-dogs. The soldier and sailor both possessed good useful hands of medium size, very reasonably clean; the airman’s, small again, rather in the manner of Widmerpool’s, nails pared very close, probably with a knife.

‘That seems to be about all we want to know,’ said Widmerpool. ‘Is that agreed? Let us get on to more urgent matters. The extraneous personnel can go back to their own work.’

Farebrother, apparently anxious to get away quickly, rose, said some goodbyes and left. Templer also wanted to be on his way.

‘I was told you wouldn’t need me either after the first session, Kenneth,’ he said. ‘None of the stuff you’re moving on to will concern my people directly and we’ll get copies of the paper. There’s a particular matter back at the office I’d like to liquidate, if I could be excused – and Broadbent will be back tomorrow.’

‘It isn’t usual,’ said Widmerpool.

‘Couldn’t an exception be made?’

After a minute or two of sparring, Widmerpool assented ungraciously. I suggested to Templer we should walk a short way up the street together.

‘All right,’ said Templer indifferently.

This exchange between Templer and myself had the effect of making Widmerpool restive, even irritable. He looked up from the table, round which a further set of papers was being doled out by the chief clerk.

‘Do go away, Nicholas. I have some highly secret matters to deal with on the next agenda. I can’t begin on them with people like you hanging about the room.’

Templer and I retired. On the first landing of the stairs, the sneezing marine was drying his handkerchief on the air-conditioning plant. We reached the street before Templer spoke. He seemed deeply occupied with his own thoughts.

‘What’s working at MEW like?’

‘Just what you’d imagine.’

His manner was so unforthcoming, so far from recognizing we were old friends who had not met for a long time, that I began to regret suggesting we should have a word together after the meeting.

‘Are you often in contact with Sunny Farebrother?’

‘Naturally his people are in touch with the Ministry from time to time, though not as a rule with me personally.’

‘When I saw him at my former Div HQ he rather indicated his new job might have some bearing on your own career.’

‘That was poor security on Sunny’s part. Well, you never know. Perhaps it will. I admit I’ve been looking about for something different. These things take time. The trouble is one’s so frightfully old. Kenneth’s sitting pretty, isn’t he?’

‘He thought he’d never get that job. He was in fairly hot water when last seen.’

‘Kenneth can winkle his way out of anything,’ said Templer. ‘God save me from such a grind myself, but, if you like that sort of thing, it’s quite a powerful one, properly handled. You can bet Kenneth gets the last ounce out of it.’

‘You grade it pretty high?’

‘Of course, it’s nothing to find yourself working fourteen hours a day at a stretch, even longer than that, night after night into the small hours, and then back again at 9 a.m. If you can stand up to it physically – get the rest of the committee to agree with what you’ve written down of their discussion over a period of six or seven hours – you, as their secretary, word the papers that may go right up to the Chiefs of Staff – possibly to the PM himself. You’ve only seen the merest chicken feed, Nick. A Military Assistant Secretary, like Kenneth, can have quite an influence on policy – in a sense on the whole course of the war – if he plays his hand well.’

Templer had dropped his distant manner. The thought of Widmerpool’s potential powers evidently excited him.

‘It’s only a lieutenant-colonel’s appointment.’

‘They range from majors to brigadiers – there might even be a major-general. I’m not sure. You see there are quite a lot of them. In theory, they rank equal in their own particular work, but of course rank always carries its own prestige. I say, this possibility has just occurred to me. Do you ever come across Prince Theodoric in your racket?’

‘I believe my Colonel has seen him once or twice. I’ve never run across him myself – except for a brief moment years ago before the war.’

‘I just wondered,’ said Templer. ‘I used to have business dealings with his country. Theodoric’s position is a trifle delicate here, politically speaking, his brother, the King, not only in such bad health, but more or less in baulk.’

‘Musing upon the King his brother’s wreck?’

‘And the heir to the throne too young to do anything, and anyway in America. Theodoric himself has always been a hundred per cent anti-Nazi. I’m trying to get Kenneth to put up a paper on the subject. That’s all by the way. How’s your family?’

The abruptness of transition was clearly to mark a deliberate change of subject. I told him Isobel and our child were living near enough to London to be visited once a fortnight; in return enquiring about Betty Templer. Although curious to hear what had happened to her, I had not asked at first because any question about Templer’s women, even wives, risked the answer that they had been discarded or had left. His manner at that moment conveyed that revelation forced on him – if anything of the sort were indeed to be revealed – would be answered in a manner calculated to embarrass. There had been times when he liked to unload personal matters; this did not look like one of them. In any case, I hardly knew Betty, at least no more of her than her state of extreme nervous discomfort at Stourwater. However, enquiry was not to be avoided. Templer did not answer at once. Instead, he looked at me with an odd sardonic expression, preparation for news hardly likely to be good.

‘You hadn’t heard?’

‘Heard what?’

‘About Betty?’

‘Not ill, I hope.’

It occurred to me she might have been killed in a raid. That could happen to acquaintances and remain unknown to one for months.

‘She went off her rocker,’ he said.

‘You mean …’

‘Just what I say. She’s in the bin.’

He spoke roughly. The deliberate brutality of the statement was so complete, so designed to let no one, least of all myself, off any of its implications, that it could only be accepted as concealing an abyss of painful feeling. At least, correctly or not, such downright language had to be given the benefit of the doubt in that respect.

‘Rather a peach, isn’t she?’

That was what he had said of her, when I had first seen them together at Umfraville’s night-club, a stage in their relationship when Templer could not remember whether his future wife’s surname was Taylor or Porter. Now, he made no effort to help out the situation. There was nothing whatever to be said in return. I produced a few conventional phrases, none in the least adequate, at the same time feeling rather aggrieved that Templer himself should choose, first, to carry curtness of manner to the point of seeming positively unfriendly; then change to a tone that only long intimacy in the past could justify. Perhaps – thinking over Betty’s demeanour staying with Sir Magnus Dormers – this ultimate disaster was not altogether surprising. Having such cares on his mind could to some extent explain Templer’s earlier unaccommodating manner.

‘Just one of those things,’ he said.

He spoke this time as if a little to excuse himself for what might look like an earlier show of heartlessness.

‘To tell the truth, I’m feeling a shade fed up about marriage, women, my job, in fact the whole bag of tricks,’ he said. ‘Then this awful business of one’s age. You keep on getting back to that. If it isn’t one objection, it’s another. “You’re not young enough, old boy.” I’m always being told that nowadays. On top of it all, a bomb hit my flat the other night. I was on Fire Duty at the Ministry. Everybody said what a marvellous piece of luck. Not sure.’

‘Did it wreck the place completely?’

Templer shook his head, indicating not so much lack of damage at the flat, as that he could not bring himself to recapitulate further a subject so utterly tedious and unrewarding.

‘You haven’t any good idea where I might go temporarily? I’m living from hand to mouth at the moment with anyone who will put me up.’

I suggested the Jeavons house in South Kensington. Ted Jeavons, having somehow managed to find a builder to patch up the roof and back wall – an achievement no one but himself would have brought off at that moment – was still in residence. Only the rear part of the structure had been damaged by the bomb, the front remaining almost untouched. Jeavons ran the house more or less as it had been run when Molly was alive, with a shifting population of visitors, some of whom lived there more or less permanently, paying rent. Lots of households of much that kind existed in wartime London, a matter of luck if, homeless like Templer, you knew where to apply. He wrote down the address, at the same time showing characteristic lack of interest in information about Jeavons.

‘I might propose myself,’ he said. ‘If a bomb’s already hit the place, with any luck it won’t happen again, though I don’t know that there’s any real reason to suppose that.’

He paused, then suddenly began to talk about himself in a manner that was oddly apologetic, quite unlike his accustomed style as remembered, or the tone he had been using up till now. Until then, I had felt all contact lost between us, that the picture I retained of him when we had been friends years before had become largely imaginary. Now a closer proximity seemed renewed.

‘I’ve given up girls,’ he said. ‘I thought you’d be interested to know.’

‘Charles Stringham said the same when I ran across him in the ranks. Is this for the war?’

Templer laughed.

‘I used to think I was rather a success with the ladies,’ he said. ‘Now one wife’s run away and the other is where I indicated, I’m not so sure. At least I can’t be regarded as a great hand at marriage. It’s lately been made clear to me I’m not so hot extra-matrimonially either. That’s why I was beefing about age.’

He made a dismissive gesture.

‘I’ll ring your friend Jeavons,’ he said.

He strolled away. There was always the slight impression of which Stringham used to complain – persisting even into the universal shabbiness of wartime – that Templer was too well dressed. I had never before known him so dejected.

While eating breakfast after Night Duty, I reflected that it would be as well to warn Jeavons that Templer might be getting in touch with him. Without some such notification, knowing them both, nothing was more likely than that they would get at cross purposes with each other. Then I put personal matters from my mind and began to think about the day’s work that lay ahead.

‘You’ll be surprised at the decisions one has to take on one’s own here,’ Pennistone had said when I first joined the Section. ‘You might think that applied to the Operational people more than ourselves, but in fact captains and majors in “I” have to get used to giving snap answers about all sorts of relatively important policy matters.’

When I returned to the building, this time to our own room, Dempster, who looked after the Norwegians and had a passion for fresh air, was trying vainly to open one of the windows, laughing a lot while he did so. He was in the timber business and knew Scandinavia well, spending skiing holidays in Norway when a boy with an aunt who was a remote kinswoman of Ibsen’s. Dempster was always full of Ibsen stories. He had won a couple of MCs in ’14-’18, the second up at Murmansk during the War of Intervention, an interlude the less inhibited of the Russians would, once in a way, enjoy laughing about, if the subject came up after a lot of drinks at one of their own parties. That did not apply to the Soviet military attaché himself, General Lebedev, who was at all times a stranger to laughter. Dempster was a rather notably accomplished pianist, who had been known to play a duet with Colonel Hlava, the Czech, also a competent performer, though not quite in Dempster’s class.

‘No good,’ said Dempster.

Holding a long pole with a hook on the end with which he had been trying to open the windows, he looked like an immensely genial troll come south from the fjords to have a good time. Still laughing, he replaced the pole in its corner. This endlessly repeated game of trying to force open the window was always unsuccessful. The sun’s rays, when there was any sun, penetrated through small rectangles in otherwise bricked up glass. The room itself, irregular of shape, was on the first floor, situated in an angle of the building, under one of the domed cupolas that ornamented the four corners of the roof. In winter – it was now early spring – life here was not unlike that lived at the earth’s extremities, morning and evening only an hour or two apart, the sparse feeble light of day tailing away in early afternoon, until finally swallowed up into impenetrable outer blackness. Within, lamplight glowed dimly through the shadows and nimbus of cigarette smoke, the drone of dictating voices measuring a kind of plain-song against more brief emphatic exchanges made from time to time on one or more of the seven or eight telephones. This telephonic talk was, as often as not, in some language other than English; just as the badges and insignia of visitors tended, as often as not, to diverge from the common run of uniform.