The Soldier's Art (18 page)

For a short
time he continued to show some appearance of being worried about Priscilla,
expressing anxiety, asserting she had seemed perfectly all right earlier that
evening. He reproached himself for not being able to do more to help her get
home, wanting our agreement that there was anyway little or nothing he could
have done. After repeating these things several times, he showed himself
finally prepared to accept the fact that what had happened was all in the day’s
work where women were concerned.

“I’ll ring up
when I get to the station,” he said.

Priscilla’s
behaviour had positively stimulated Mrs. Maclintick, greatly cheered her up.

“Whatever’s
wrong with the girl?” she said. “Why does she want to go off like that? I
believe she didn’t approve of me wearing these filthy old clothes. Got to,
doing the job I do. No good dressing up as if you were going to a wedding. You
know her, Moreland. What was it all about?”

“I haven’t the
least idea,” said Moreland sharply.

He showed no
wish to discuss Priscilla’s behaviour further. If, once or twice that evening,
he had already brought a reminder of his behaviour when out with Matilda, now,
by the tone he used, he recalled Maclintick out with Mrs. Maclintick. She may have
recognised that herself, because she pursed her lips.

“Wonder what’s
happened to Max,” she said. “He should have been along by now. That turn must
be over. It’s a short one anyway, and he comes on early at the Madrid.”

“Probably gone to bed,” said Moreland.

Mrs. Maclintick agreed that must have happened.

“More sense than sitting about in a place like this,” she added, “especially
if you’ve got to get up early in the morning like I have.”

“That’s not Max Pilgrim you’re talking about?” asked Stevens.

“He’s our lodger,” said Moreland.

Stevens showed interest. Moreland explained he had known Pilgrim for
years.

“I’ve always hoped to see him do his stuff,” said Stevens. “There was a
chance at this revival of his old songs at the Madrid – I suppose that’s what he
was coming on here from. I read about it in the paper and wanted to go, but
Priscilla wouldn’t hear of it. I can see now she hasn’t been herself all day. I
ought to have guessed she might be boiling up for a scene. You should know how
girls are going to behave after you’ve been with them for a bit. I see I was
largely to blame. She said she’d seen Pilgrim before and he bored her to hell.
I told her I thought his songs marvellous. In fact I used to try and write
stuff like that myself.”

I asked if he had ever sold anything of that sort to magazines.

“Only produced it for private consumption,” he said, laughing. “The
sole verses I ever placed was sentimental stuff in the local press. They wouldn’t
have liked my Max Pilgrim line, if it could be called that.”

“Let’s hear some of it,” said Moreland.

He had evidently taken a fancy to Stevens, who possessed in his
dealings that energetic, uninhibited impact which makes its possessor master of
the immediate social situation; though this mastery always requires strong
consolidating forces to keep up the initial success. Mr. Deacon used to say
nothing spread more ultimate gloom at a party than an exuberant manner which
has roused false hopes. Stevens did not do that. He could summon more than adequate powers of consolidation after his preliminary attack. The good impression he had made on Moreland was no doubt helped, as
things stood, by Priscilla’s departure. Moreland
wanted to forget about her, start off on a new subject.
Stevens was just the man for that. Mention of his verse offered the channel.
There were immediate indications that Stevens would not need much pressing
about giving an example of his own compositions.

“For instance, I wrote something about my first unit when I was with
them,” he said.

“Recite it to us.”

Stevens laughed, a merely formal gesture of modesty. He turned to me*

“Nicholas,” he said, “were you ever junior subaltern in your battalion?”

“For what seemed a lifetime.”

“And proposed the King’s health in the Mess on guest nights?”

“Certainly.”

“
Mr. Vice, the
Loyal Toast
– then you rose to your feet and said:
Gentlemen, the
King
.”

“Followed by
The Allied Regiments
– such-and-such a regiment of Canada and such-and-such a regiment of
Australia.”

“Do you mean to say this actually happened to you yourself, Nick?”
asked Moreland. “You stood up and said
Gentlemen, the King
?”

He showed total incredulity.

“I used to love it,” said Stevens. “Put everything I had into the
words. It was the only thing I liked about the dump. I only asked all this
because I wrote some lines called
Guest Night
.”

Stevens cleared his throat, then, without the least self-consciousness,
began his recitation in a low, dramatic voice:

“On Thursday it’s a parade to dine,
The Allied Regiments and the King
Are pledged in dregs of tawny wine,
But now the Colonel’s
taken wing.

Yet subalterns still talk and tease
(Wide float the clouds of Craven A
Stubbed out in orange peel and cheese)
Of girls and Other Ranks and pay.

If – on last night-scheme – B Coy, broke
The bipod of the borrowed bren:
The Sergeants’ Mess is out of coke:
And Gordon nearly made that Wren.

Along the tables of the Mess
The artificial tulips blow,
Tired as a prostitute’s caress
Their crimson casts no gladdening glow.

Why do those phallic petals fret
The heart, till coils – like Dannert wire –
Concentrically expand regret
For lost true love and found desire?

While Haw-Haw, from the radio,
Aggrieved, insistent, down the stair,
With distant bugles, sweet and low,
Commingles on the winter air.”

Stevens ceased to declaim. He smiled and sat back in his seat. He was
certainly unaware of the entirely new conception of himself his own spoken
verses had opened up for me. Their melancholy revealed quite another side of
his nature, one concealed as a rule by aggressive cheerfulness. This
melancholy was no doubt a logical counterpart, the reverse surface of the coin, one to be expected from high spirits of his own
particular sort, bound up as they were with a perpetual discharge of
personality. All the same, one never learns to expect the obvious. This
contrast of feeling in him might have been an element that attracted Priscilla,
something she recognised when they first met at Frederica’s; something more fundamentally melodramatic, even, than
Lovell himself could achieve. We all expressed appreciation. Moreland was, I
think, almost as surprised as myself.

“Not much like Max’s stuff though,” he said.

“All the same, Max Pilgrim was the source.”

“Nor very cheerful,” said Mrs. Maclintick. “I do believe you’re as
morbid as Moreland is himself.”

Although she spoke in her accustomed spirit of depreciation, Stevens
must have achieved his aim in making more or less of a conquest, because she
smiled quite kindly at him after saying that. Moved by her complaisance, or,
more likely, by the repetition of his own lines, his face registered self-pity.

“I wasn’t feeling very cheerful at the time,” he said. “That unit I
went to as a one-pipper fairly got me down.”

Then, immediately, one of those instantaneous changes of mood, that
were so much a part of him, took place.

“Would you like to hear one of the bawdy ones?” he asked.

Before anyone could reply, another officer, a big captain with a red
face and cropped hair, like Stevens also wearing battle-dress, passed our
table. Catching sight of Stevens, this man began to roar with laughter and
point.

“Odo, my son,” he yelled. “Fancy seeing your ugly mug here.”

“God, Brian, you old swine.”

“I suppose you’ve been painting the town red, and, like me, have got to
catch the night train back to the bloody grind again. I’ve been having a pretty
wet weekend, I can tell you.”

“Come and have a drink, Brian. There’s lots of time.”

“Not going to risk being cashiered for W.O.A.S.A.W.L.”

“What on earth’s that he said?” asked Mrs. Maclintick.

“While-On-Active-Service-Absent-Without-Leave,” said Stevens,
characteristically not allowing her even for a second out of his power by
disregarding the question. “Oh, come on, Brian, no hurry yet.”

The red-faced captain was firm.

“Got to find a taxi, for one thing. Besides, I’ve baggage to pick up.”

Stevens looked at his watch.

“I’ve got baggage too,” he said, “a valise and a kit bag and some other
junk. Perhaps you’re right, Brian, and I’d do well to accompany you. Anyway it
would halve the taxi fare.”

He rose from the table.

“Then I’ll be bidding you all good-bye,” he said.

“Do you really have to go?” said Mrs. Maclintick. “We’re just beginning
to get to know you. Are you annoyed about something, like the girl you were
with?”

In the course of her life she could rarely have gone further towards
making an effort to show herself agreeable. It was a triumph for Stevens. He
laughed, conscious of this, pleased at his success.

“Duty calls,” he said. “I only wish I could stay till four in the
morning, but they’re beginning to shut down here as it is, even if I hadn’t a
train to catch.”

We said good-bye to him.

“Wonderful to have met you, Mr. Moreland,” said Stevens. “Here’s to the next performance of
Vieux Port
on the same programme as your newest work –
and may I be there to hear. Good-bye, Nicholas.”

He held out his hand. From being very sure of himself, he had now
reverted a little to that less absolute confidence of the days when I had first
known him. He was probably undecided as to the most effective note to strike in
taking leave of us. It may at last have dawned on him that all the business of
Priscilla could include embarrassments of a kind to which he had hitherto given
little or no thought. The hesitation he showed possibly indicated indecision as
to whether or not he should make further reference to her sudden withdrawal
from the party. If, for a second, he had contemplated speaking of that, he must
have changed his mind.

“We’ll be meeting again,” he said.

“Good-bye.”

“And Happy Landings.”

“Come on, Odo, you oaf,” said the red-faced captain, “cut out the fond
farewells, or there won’t be a cab left on the street. We’ve got to get cracking. Don’t forget there’ll be all that waffle with the R.T.O.”

They went off together, slapping each other on the back.

“He’s a funny boy,” said Mrs. Maclintick.

Stevens had made an impression on her. There could be no doubt of that. The way she spoke showed it. Although his presence
that night had been unwelcome to myself – and the other two at first had also
displayed no great wish to have him at the table – a distinct sense of flatness
was discernible now Stevens was gone. Even Moreland, who had fidgeted when Mrs.
Maclintick had expressed regrets at this departure, seemed aware that the
conviviality of the party was reduced by his removal. I said I should have to be making for bed.

“Oh, God, don’t let’s break it all up at once,” Moreland said. “We’ve
only just met. Those others prevented our talking of any of the things we
really want to discuss – like the meaning of art, or how to get biscuits on the
black market.”

“They won’t serve any more drink here.”

“Come back to our place for a minute or two. There might be some beer
left. We’ll get old Max out of bed. He loves a gossip.”

“All right – but not for long.”

We paid the bill, went out into Regent Street. In the utter blackness,
the tarts, strange luminous form of nocturnal animal life, flickered the bulbs
of their electric torches. From time to time one of them would play the light
against her own face in self-advertisement, giving the effect of candles
illuminating a holy picture in the shadows of a church.

“Ingenious,” said Moreland.

“Don’t doubt Maclintick would have found it so,” said Mrs. Maclintick,
not without bitterness.

A taxi set down its passengers nearby. We secured it. Moreland gave the
address of the flat where he used to live with Matilda.

“I’ve come to the conclusion the characteristic women most detest in a
man is unselfishness,” he said.

This remark had not particular bearing on anything that had gone
before, evidently giving expression only to one of his long interior trains of
thought.

“They don’t have to put up with much of it,” said Mrs. Maclintick. “It’s
passed me by these forty years, but perhaps I’m lucky.”

“How their wives must have hated those saintly kings in the Middle Ages,”
Moreland said. “Still, as you truly remark, Audrey, one’s speaking rather
academically.”

The taxi had already driven off, and Moreland was putting the key in the lock of the front-door of the house,
when the Air-raid Warnings began to sound.

“Just timed it nicely,” Moreland said. “That’s the genuine article, not
like the faint row when we were at dinner. No doubt at all allowed to remain in
the mind. Are the flat’s curtains drawn? I was the last to leave and it’s the
sort of thing I always forget to do.”

“Max will have fixed them,” said Mrs. Maclintick.

We climbed the stairs, of which there were a great number, as they
occupied the top floor flat.

“I hope Max is all right,” she said. “I never like the idea of him
being out in a raid. There’s bound to be trouble if he spends the night in a
shelter. He’s always talking about giving the Underground a try-out, but I tell
him I won’t have him doing any such thing.”

If Moreland was one of Mrs. Maclintick’s children, clearly Max Pilgrim
was another. We entered the flat behind her. Moreland did not turn on the
switch until it was confirmed all windows were obscured. In the light, the
apartment was revealed as untidier than in Matilda’s day, otherwise much the
same in outward appearance and decoration.