The military philosophers (4 page)

Pennistone, still wearing a blue side-cap, was sitting in his chair, preparing for action by opening the small gold hunter that always lay on the desk in front of him during working hours, a watch that was wound with a key.

‘Good morning, Nick.’

‘You came down from Scotland last night?’

‘Got a sleeper by a bit of luck. I shared it with an air-commodore who snored. How did the Cabinet Office meeting go?’

‘All right – look, I’m just off night duty. What do you think? A message has come through that a few Poles are trickling over the Persian frontier.’

‘No?’

‘The Russians have released a driblet.’

‘This could mean a Second Polish Corps.’

Pennistone had fair hair with a high-bridged nose over which he could look exceeding severe at people who annoyed him, of whom there were likely to be quite a few in the course of a day’s business. Without possessing a conventionally military appearance, a kind of personal authority and physical ease of movement carried off in him the incisive demands of uniform. More basically, he could claim an almost uncanny instinctive grasp of what was required from a staff officer. Indeed, after months of dealing with him from day to day, General Bobrowski, when informed Pennistone was not a Regular, had exploded into a Polish ejaculation of utter astonishment, at the same time bursting into loud laughter, while executing in mid-air one of those snatching, clutching gestures of the fingers, so expressive of his own impatience with life. A major-general, Bobrowski, who was military attaché, had been with the Polish contingent in France at the beginning of the war, where, in contravention of the French Chief of Army Staff’s order that no Polish troops were to be evacuated to England, he had mounted brens on locomotives and brought the best part of two brigades to a port of embarkation.

‘Bobrowski began his military career in a Russian rifle regiment.’ Pennistone had told me. ‘He was
praporschik –  
ensign, as usually translated – at the same time that Kielkiewicz was an aspirant – always a favourite rank of mine –  in the Austro-Hungarian cavalry.’

Hanging his cap on one of the hooks by the door, Pennistone went upstairs at once to get orders from Finn about the news from Iran. Polish GHQ must have received the information simultaneously from their own sources – reports almost always comprehensive, if at times highly coloured –  because Michalski, one of General Kielkiewicz’s ADCs, came through on the telephone just after Pennistone had left the room, seeking to arrange an interview with everyone from the Chief of the Imperial General Staff downwards. He was followed almost immediately on the line by Horaczko, one of Bobrowski’s assistants, with the same end in view for his master. We were on easy terms with both Michalski and Horaczko, so temporizing was not too difficult, though clearly fresh and more urgent solicitations would soon be on the way.

Michalski, now in his late thirties, had served like Bobrowski with the Polish contingent in France. Of large size, sceptical about most matters, he belonged to the world of industrial design – statuettes for radiator caps and such decorative items – working latterly in Berlin, which had left some mark on him of its bitter individual humour. In fact Pennistone always said talking to Michalski made him feel he was sitting in the Romanisches Café. His father had been a successful portrait painter, and his grandfather before him, stretching back to a long line of itinerant artists wandering over Poland and Saxony.

‘Painting pictures that are now being destroyed as quickly as possible,’ Michalski said.

He was accomplished at providing thumbnail sketches of the personalities at the Titian, the former hotel, subdued, Edwardian in tone, where headquarters of the Polish army in exile was established. Uncle Giles had once stayed there in days gone by, a moment when neither the Ufford nor the De Tabley had been able to accommodate him at short notice. ‘I’ll be bankrupt if I ever do it again,’ he had declared afterwards, a financial state all his relations in those days supposed him to be in anyway.

Horaczko had reached England in a different manner from Michalski, and only after a lot of adventures. As an officer of the Reserve, he had begun the Eastern campaign on horseback, cantering about at the head of a troop of lancers, pennons flying, like one of the sequences of
War and Peace,
to intercept the advancing German armour. Executive in a Galician petroleum plant, he was younger than Michalski, having – as Pennistone and I agreed – some of the air of the junior lead in a drawing-room comedy, the young lover perhaps. When Poland was overrun on two fronts, Horaczko had avoided capture and internment, probably death, by escaping through Hungary. Both he and Michalski held the rank of second-lieutenant. While I was still speaking to Horaczko on the telephone, our clerk, Corporal Curtis, brought in a lot more stuff to be dealt with, additional, that is, to the formidable pile lying on the desk when I came in from breakfast

‘Good morning, Curtis.’

‘Good morning, sir.’

‘How are things?’

Curtis, a studious-looking young man, whose military career had been handicapped by weak eyesight, was a henchman of notable efficiency and wide interests. He had once confessed to Pennistone that he had read through the whole of Grote’s
History of Greece.

‘A rather disturbing letter from the Adjutant-General’s branch, sir.’

‘Oh, Lord.’

‘But not so bad as my first premonition on reading it. In fact, sir, I all but perpetrated a schoolboy howler in that connexion.’

‘Impossible.’

‘On the subject of redundant Polish officers taking commissions in West African units of our own forces –
Accra,
sir – the AG. 10 clerk spoke indistinctly, as well as using what I understand to be an incorrect pronunciation, so that, to cut a long story short, sir, the place was first transcribed by me as
Agra.
The error did not take long to be righted, but it was a disturbing misconstruction.’

By the time I had run through the new lot of papers Pennistone had returned. He reported that Finn – after a word with the more sagacious of the two brigadiers – had been told to consult the Major-General in charge of our Directorate. I reported that Michalski and Horaczko had telephoned.

‘Ring Horaczko back, otherwise Bobrowski will make him persecute us all day. Tell him we’ll let him know the very moment anything comes through that his general should have. Don’t worry about Michalski. I’ll be seeing him. I’m off to the Titian at once to get Kielkicwicz’s reactions.’

‘What were the Colonel’s?’

‘He’s in one of his flaps.’

Sudden pressures of this kind always upset Finn, whose temperament unpredictably fused agitation with calm; violent inner antagonism of these warring characteristics having presumably motivated whatever he had done – killed goodness knows how many enemy machine-gunners with a bayonet? – to be awarded his VC. No doubt the comparative lack of precedent for the situation now arisen in Persia, its eccentric deficiency of warning at the diplomatic level, general departure from normal routine – even from official good manners so far as the Soviet was concerned – discomposed Finn, a man both systematic and courteous. Although not a professional soldier, he had, one way and another, seen a good deal of military service, having, like Dempster, stayed on for a while in the army after the Armistice in 1918; then been re-employed in the rank of major as early as 1938. In short, he had enjoyed plenty of opportunity to observe military problems, which on the whole he seemed to prefer to semi-political ones, like the evacuation of the Poles.

‘He’ll be all right when he’s used to the idea,’ said Pennistone. ‘At first he could consider nothing short of flying out there at once and arranging it all himself.’

He reached for his cap again, unhooking it from the wall with the crook of a walking stick. Then he returned the watch to the breast pocket of his tunic.

‘Have a talk with Q (Ops.) Colonel,’ he said.

Borrit, who looked after the Netherlands, passed on his way towards the door.

‘Borrit…’

‘Yes, Pennistone?’

‘You’re not making for the car?’

Borrit’s small fair moustache was set in a serious melancholy face, deeply tanned, as if he had spent much of his life under a blazing sun. Perhaps he had. He had come to the Section from employment as one of the Intelligence Officers at Headquarters on the Gold Coast, owing his knowledge of Spanish – at first naturally steering him to duties with the Neutrals – to many years spent on the wholesale side of the fruit trade. Language as usual proving of less consequence than facility for handling an ‘opposite number’ with tact, he had in due course gravitated to the more responsible job with an Ally. Stebbings, who took Borrit’s place with the Spaniards and Latin-Americans, was also, oddly enough, in the fruit business, though on the retail side, where he had a nervous breakdown when his firm went into bankruptcy at the outbreak of war. If addressed sharply, Stebbings’s left eyelid twitched, probably in consequence of that collapse. He remained always rather afraid of Finn. All the same, he tackled his duties with judgment. Stebbings was recently married to a Portuguese, a fact that continually worried the Security people. Borrit, on the other hand, was a widower. He must have been forty, perhaps a shade more, because he had seen action in the first war, though only as a result of having falsified his age to the recruiting authorities. During the occasional lulls of work Borrit and Stebbings would talk earnestly of fruit. Pennistone and Borrit had a standing rivalry over the Section’s car – a vehicle of inconceivably cramped seating accommodation – for the first use in the morning.

‘Wait a moment…’ said Pennistone.

‘I’ll drop you,’ said Borrit. ‘If you’re on the way to the Titian.’

Pennistone turned to me again.

‘Where was I?’

‘Q (Ops.).’

‘Ah, yes – the point is there’s only the traditional one man and a boy at Meshed.’

‘That’s the key name?’

‘We shall be hearing a lot about Meshed – and resorts like Yangi-yul and Alma Ata. Some sort of a reception centre will have to be rigged up. There may be quite a party to deal with once they start.’

‘What am I to say to Q (Ops.)?’

‘Just ventilate the question. They may have other ideas to ours.’

‘They’re presumably prepared for this. They were on the distribution.’

‘But will want to be brought up to date from our end – and we’ll need their background stuff to tell the London Poles.’

‘Do you mind if we go, Pennistone?’ said Borrit. ‘Otherwise I’ll be late for my appointment with Van der Voort.’

Pennistone, never to be hurried, stood in deep thought. He was as likely to be reflecting on Cartesianism as on the best way to approach Q (Ops.). Borrit made another move towards the door.

‘What was it? I know – trouble again about Szymanski. You wouldn’t think it possible one man could be such a nuisance. There’s now doubt whether it’s his real name, because a lot of people are called that. MI5 want a word about him. Try and clear it up. Another good deed would be to extract an answer from Blackhead about the supply of straw for stuffing medical establishment palliasses. They’re frantic about it in Scotland.’

‘Blackhead’s not raised objection to that?’

‘He says straw comes under a special restrictive order. He should be alerted about the evacuation too, so that he can think of difficulties.’

Borrit opened the door, allowing a sharp current of air to drive in from the passages. This was done as a challenge. He leant on the handle, looking rather aggrieved. There were some shouts from the others requiring that the door be shut at once. Borrit pointed to Pennistone and myself. He would not venture to leave without Pennistone, but, to humour him, we both made a move towards the corridor.

‘Come as far as the staff entrance,’ said Pennistone. ‘In case I think of other urgent problems.’

We followed Borrit down the back staircase. On the first floor, Intelligence, in its profuse forms, mingled with Staff Duties, a grumpy crowd, most of them, especially the Regulars (‘If they were any good, they wouldn’t be here,’ Pennistone said) and a few Operational sections, on the whole less immediately active ones, the more vital tending to have rooms on the floor above, close to the generals and higher-grade brigadiers. A few civilian
hauts fonctionnaires,
as Pennistone called them, were also located here, provided with a strip of carpet as they rose in rank; at the highest level – so it was rumoured – even a cupboard containing a chamber pot. The Army Council Room was on this floor, where three or four colonels, Finn among them, had also managed to find accommodation. The great double staircase leading from the marble hall of the main entrance (over which the porter, Vavassor, presided in a blue frock coat with scarlet facings and top hat with gold band) led directly to these, as it were, state apartments. On the ground floor, technical branches and those concerned with supply rubbed shoulders with all sorts and conditions, internal security contacts of a more or less secret sort, Public Relations, typing pools, dispatch-riders, Home Guard.

‘Kielkiewicz has heard of Kafka,’ said Pennistone, as we reached the foot of the stairs.

‘You put them all through their literary paces as a matter of routine?’

‘He laughed yesterday when I used the term Kafka-esque.’

‘Wasn’t that rather esoteric?’

‘It just slipped out.’

Pennistone laughed at the thought. Though absolutely dedicated to his duties with the Poles, he also liked getting as much amusement out of the job as possible.

‘In the course of discussing English sporting prints with Bobrowski,’ he said, ‘a subject he’s rather keen on. It turned out the Empire style in Poland is known as “Duchy of Warsaw”. That’s nice, isn’t it?’

‘I don’t look forward to this tussle with Blackhead about palliasse straw – by the way, what happened in the war about the Air Cooperation Squadron and which command it came under?’

‘One of my notable achievements up there was to settle that. But go and see Q (Ops.). That’s the big stuff now. Then have a talk with Finn. Where’s the driver?’