The Military Philosophers

FOUR

In due course V.1’s went out of fashion, and V.2’s, a form of rocket, became the mode. They were apt to come over in the middle of the morning. Finn was talking to me one day about the transference of Luxembourg personnel from the Belgian artillery (where they manned a battery) to the newly raised army of the Grand Duchy (envisaged with a ceiling of three battalions), when his voice was completely drowned. The dull roar blotting out his comments had been preceded by an agonized trembling of the surrounding atmosphere, the window seeming about to cave in, but recovering itself. I just managed not to jump. Finn appeared totally unimpressed by the sound, whether from strength of nerve or deafness was uncertain. He repeated what he had to say without the smallest modification of tone, signed the minute and put down his pen.

‘We’ve been ordered to take the Allied military attachés overseas,’ he said. ‘Show ’em a few things. Bound to cause trouble, but there it is. Dempster will be in charge while I’m away. David will probably take the Neutrals when their turn comes, so I shall want you to act as an additional Conducting Officer, Nicholas. Just cast your eye over these papers. It’s going to be rather a scramble at such short notice.’

He talked about arrangements. I picked up the instructions and was about to go. Finn drummed on the table with his pen.

‘By the way,’ he said, ‘I’ve made it up with Farebrother. He’s in Civil Affairs now and he came in yesterday about some matter he thought might concern us. Of course, he’s a fellow of great charm, whatever else one thinks. Told me he was going to get married — a general’s widow in MI5, “Won’t be able to conceal anything from her!” he said.’

Finn laughed, as if he thought retribution would now claim Farebrother for any sins committed against law and order in connexion with the Szymanski affair.

‘Not a Mrs Conyers?’

‘That’s her name. Very capable lady, I understand. Don’t know whether marriage is a good idea at the age Farebrother’s reached, but that’s his business. Get to work right away on the details of the tour.’

When the day came, the military attachés assembled outside the staff entrance. We did not move off precisely on time, because General Lebedev was a minute or two late. While we waited, another of those quaverings of the air round about took place, that series of intensely rapid atmospheric tremors, followed by a dull boom. This one seemed to have landed somewhere in the direction of the Strand. The military attachés exchanged polite smiles. Van der Voort made a popping sound with finger and mouth. At that very moment Lebedev appeared at the end of the short street, giving the impression that he had just been physically ejected from a rocket-base on to a pin-pointed target just round the corner from where we stood, a method of arrival deliberately chosen by his superiors to emphasize Soviet technical achievement. He was, in truth, less than a couple of minutes behind time, most of the rest having arrived much too early. Possibly the high-collared blue uniform, with breeches, black top-boots and spurs, had taken longer to adjust than the battledress adopted for the occasion by most of the others. Major Prasad, representative of an independent state in the Indian sub-continent, also wore boots, brown ones without spurs. They were better cut than Lebedev’s, as were also his breeches, but that was only noticeable later, as Lebedev wore an overcoat. He was greeted with a shower of salutes, the formality of Bobrowski’s courteously ironical.

Finn was suffering that morning from one of his visitations of administrative anxiety. He counted the party three times before we entered the cars. I opened one of the doors for General Philidor.

‘You accompany us to France, Jenkins — pour les vacances?’

‘I do, sir.’

‘You will find a charming country. I lived there some years ago and was very satisfied.’

He was right about les vacances. Undoubtedly the buoyancy of a holiday outing was in the air. Only the V.2 had implied a call to order, a reminder that war was not yet done with. We took the Great West Road, passing the illuminated sign of the diving lady, where I had first kissed Jean Duport years before. I idly wondered what had happened to her, if she were involved in the war; what had happened to Duport, too, whether he had managed to ‘sweat it out’, the words he had used, in South America.

Although there might be a sense of exhilaration in our party, a crowd of officers unconnected by unit, brought together for some exceptional purpose, always tends to evoke a certain tension. The military attachés were no exception, even if on the whole more at ease than the average collection of British officers might prove in similar circumstances. This comparative serenity was, of course, largely due to the nature of the appointment, the fact that they were individuals handpicked for a job that required flexibility of manner. This was no doubt assisted by a tradition of Continental military etiquette in many respects at variance with our own. Officers of most other armies — so one got the impression — though they might be more formal with each other, were taught to be less verbally crisp, less surly, according to how you chose to assess the social bearing of our own officer corps. I had myself been more than once present at inter-Allied military conferences when the manners of our own people left much to be desired — been, in short, abominable by Continental standards — probably more on account of inexperience in dealing with foreign elements than from deliberate rudeness; still less any desire to appear unfriendly — as was apt to be supposed by the foreign officer concerned — for ‘political’ or ‘diplomatic’ reasons. However, if individual British officers could at times show themselves unpolished or ill-at-ease with their Allies, other sides of the picture were to be borne in mind. We put up with quite a lot from the Allies too, though usually in the official rather than the personal field.

By the time we entered the Dakota that was to ferry us across the Channel, heavy banter, some of it capable of giving offence among a lot of mixed nationalities, began to take the place of that earlier formality. This change from normal was probably due to nerves being on edge. There was reason for that. It was, indeed, an occasion to stir the least imaginative among those whose country had been involved in the war since the beginning, while he himself, all or most of the time, had been confined in an island awaiting invasion. Such badinage, in fluent but foreign English, was at that moment chiefly on the subject of the imaginary hazards of the flight, some of the party — especially those like Colonel Hlava, with years of flying experience and rows of decorations for bravery in the air — behaving as if they had never entered a plane before. Possibly a hulk like this was indeed a cause for disquiet, if you were used to piloting yourself through the clouds in an equipage of the first order of excellence and modernity. We went up the gangway. Colonel Ramos, the newly appointed Brazilian, swallowed a handful of pills as soon as he reached the top. This precaution was noticed by Van der Voort, whose round florid clean-shaven face looked more than ever as if it peered out of a Jan Steen canvas. Van der Voort was in his most boisterous form, seeming to belong to some anachronistic genre picture, Boors at an Airport or The Airfield Kermesse, executed by one of the lesser Netherlands masters. He clapped Ramos on the back.

‘Been having a night out, Colonel?’ he asked.

Ramos, in spectacles with a woollen scarf round his neck, looked a mild academic figure in spite of his military cap. He was obviously not at all well. The sudden impact of London wartime food — as well it might — had radically disordered his stomach. He had explained his case to me as soon as he arrived that morning, indicating this by gesture rather than words, his English being limited. I promised the aid of such medicaments as I carried, when we could get to them.

‘I believe you’ve been having a party with the girls, Colonel Ramos,’ said Van der Voort. ‘Staying up too late. Isn’t that true, old man?’

Ramos having, as already stated, no great command of the language, understood only that some enquiry, more or less kind, had been made about his health. He delighted Van der Voort by nodding his head vigorously in affirmation.

‘You’re new to London, but, my God, you haven’t taken long to make your way about,’ Van der Voort went on. ‘How do you find it? Do you like the place?’

‘Very good, very good,’ said Colonel Ramos.

‘Where have you been so far? Burlington Gardens? Have you seen the ladies there? Smeets and I always take a look on the way back from lunch. You ought to recce Burlington Gardens, Colonel.’

‘Yes, yes.’

Colonel Ramos nodded and smiled, laughing almost as much as Van der Voort himself. By this time we were all sitting on the floor of the plane, which was without any sort of interior furnishing. Finn and I had placed ourselves a little way from the rest, because he wanted to run through the programme again. Colonel Chu, who greatly enjoyed all forms of teasing, edged himself across to Ramos and Van der Voort, evidently wanting to join in. He was not in general very popular with his colleagues.

‘Like all his race, he’s dreadfully conceited,’ Kucherman had said. ‘Vaniteux — you never saw anything like them. I have been there more than once and insist they are the vainest people on earth.’

Chu was certainly pleased with himself. He began to finger the scarf Ramos was wearing. The Brazilian, for a man who looked as if he might vomit at any moment, took the broad witticisms of the other two in very good part. He probably understood very little of what was said. Watching the three of them, one saw what Chu had meant by saying he could ‘make himself young’. Probably he would have fitted in very tolerably as a boy at Eton, had he been able to persuade the school authorities to accept him for a while. He left his London appointment before the end of the War and returned to China, where he was promoted major-general. About three years later, so I was told, he was killed commanding one of Chiang Kai-Shek’s Divisions at Mukden. Chu must have been in his early forties then, no doubt still prepared to pass as a schoolboy. We floated out over a brilliant shining sea.

‘They’re not to be shown Pluto,’ said Finn. ‘I bet one and all of them make a bee-line for it. They’re as artful as a cartload of monkeys when it comes to breaking the rules.’

Pluto — Pipe Line Under The Ocean, appropriately recalling the Lord of the Underworld — was the system, an ingenious one, by which troops in a state of mobility were supplied with oil.

‘Not a hope they won’t see Pluto,’ repeated Finn gloomily.

That sort of thing sometimes got on his mind. He was still worrying about Pluto when we landed at the army airfield. Once more the military attachés were packed into cars. I was in the last one with Prasad, Al Sharqui and Gauthier de Graef. Kucherman, in his capacity as great industrial magnate, had been recalled to Brussels to confer with the new Government, so Gauthier had come on the tour in his place. The Belgians were heavily burdened with economic problems. They had had no Quisling figure to be taken seriously during the occupation, but their various Resistance movements were, some of them, inclined to be fractious. Gauthier was for taking a firm line with them. Prasad, next door to him, had only come with us owing to his own personal desire to do so. His creed and status at home made it doubtful whether it were permissible for him to take part in an expedition that would inevitably lead to eating in public. I had special instructions to see his requirements in the way of food and accommodation were strictly observed. Al Sharqui, rather shy in this hurly-burly of nationalities and generals, came from one of the Arab states. Like Prasad, he was a major.

‘This is like arriving on another planet,’ said Gauthier de Graef.

He was right. It was all very strange, incomparably strange. The company one was with certainly did not decrease this sense of fantasy. More personal sensations were harder to define, took time to resolve. I cannot remember whether it was the day we arrived or later that things crystallized. We were bowling along through Normandy and a region of fortified farms. Afterwards, in memory, the apple orchards were all in blossom, like isolated plantations on which snow for some unaccountable reason had fallen, light glinting between the tree trunks. But it was already November. There can have been no blossom. Blossom was a mirage. Autumnal sunshine, thin hard, penetrating, must have created that scenic illusion kindling white and silver sparkles in branches and foliage. What you see conditions feelings, not what is. For me the country was in blossom. At any season the dark ancientness of those massive granges, their stone walls loop-holed with arrow-slits, would have been mesmeric enough. Now, their mysterious aspect was rendered even more enigmatic by a surrounding wrack of armoured vehicles in multiform stages of dissolution. This residue was almost always concentrated within a comparatively small area, in fact where-ever, a month or two before, an engagement had been fought out. Then would come stretches of quite different country, fields, woodland, streams, to all intents untouched by war.

In one of these secluded pastoral tracts, a Corot landscape of tall poplars and water meadows executed in light greys, greens and blues, an overturned staff-car, wheels in the air, lay sunk in long grass. The camouflaged bodywork was already eaten away by rust, giving an impression of abandonment by that brook decades before. High up in the branches of one of the poplars, positioned like a cunningly contrived scarecrow, the tatters of a field-grey tunic, black-and-white collar patches just discernible, fluttered in the faint breeze and hard cold sunlight. The isolation of the two entities, car and uniform, was complete. There seemed no explanation of why either had come to rest where it was.

At that moment, an old and bearded Frenchman appeared plodding along the road. He was wearing a beret, and, like many of the local population, cloaked in the olive green rubber of a British army anti-gas cape. As our convoy passed, he stopped and waved a greeting. He looked absolutely delighted, like a peasant in a fairy story who has found the treasure. For some reason it was all too much. A gigantic release seemed to have taken place. The surroundings had suddenly become overwhelming. I was briefly in tears. The others were sunk in unguessable reflections of their own; Prasad perhaps among Himalayan peaks; Al Sharqui, the sands of the desert; Gauthier, in Clanwaert’s magic realm, the Porte de Louise. We sped on down the empty roads.

‘This car is like travelling in a coffee-grinding machine,’ said Gauthier.

‘Or a cement-mixer.’

The convoy halted at last to allow the military attachés to relieve themselves. Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw the worst had happened. We had blundered on a kind of junction of Plutonic equipment. Finn must have instantaneously seen that too. He rushed towards the installation, as if unable to contain himself — perhaps no simulation — taking up his stand in such a place that it would have been doubtful manners to pass in front of him. On the way back to the cars he caught me up.

‘I don’t think they noticed Pluto,’ he whispered.

It was late that night when, after inspecting a mass of things, we reached billets. A clock struck twelve as the cars entered the seaside town where these had been arranged. By the time we arrived I had forgotten the name of the place, evidently a resort in peacetime, because we drew up before the doors of a largish hotel. It was moonlight. We got out. Finn conferred with the Conducting Officer from Army Group, who was still with us. Then he turned to me.

‘They can’t get us all into the Grand.’

‘No room at the inn, sir?’

‘Not enough mattresses or something, though it looks big enough. So, Nicholas, you’ll attend General Asbjornsen, General Bobrowski, General Philidor and Major Prasad to La Petite Auberge. Everything’s been laid on there for the five of you.’

I never knew, then or later, why that particular quartet was chosen to represent the overflow from the Grand. One would have expected four generals — Lebedev, for example, or Cobb, recently promoted brigadier-general — alternatively, four more junior in rank, Gauthier de Graef, Al Sharqui, a couple of lieutenant-colonels. However, that was how it was. One of the cars took the five of us to La Petite Auberge, which turned out to be a little black-and- white half-timbered building, hotel or pension, in Tudor, or, I suppose, Francois Premier or Henri Quatre style. Only one of the rooms had a bathroom attached, which was captured by General Asbjornsen, possibly by being the most senior in rank, more probably because he climbed the stairs first. Obviously I was not in competition for the bath myself, so I did not greatly care who took it, nor by what methods. Prasad, like Asbjornsen, went straight up to his room, but the other two generals and I had a drink in the bar, presided over by the patronne, who seemed prepared to serve Allies all night. Bobrowski and Philidor were talking about shooting wild duck. Then Asbjornsen came down and had a drink too. He started an argument with Bobrowski about the best sort of skiing boots. Philidor and I left them to it. I had already begun to undress, when there was a knock on the door. It was Prasad.

‘Major Jenkins..

‘Major Prasad?’

He seemed a little embarrassed about something. I hoped it was nothing like damp sheets, a problem that might spread to the rest of us. Prasad was still wearing breeches and boots and his Sam Browne.

‘There’s a room with a bath,’ he said.

‘Yes — General Asbjornsen’s.’

Prasad seemed unhappy. There was a long pause.

‘I want it,’ he said at last.

That blunt statement surprised me.

‘I’m afraid General Asbjornsen got there first.’

I thought it unnecessary to add that baths were not for mere majors like ourselves, especially when there was only one. Majors were lucky enough to be allowed a basin. I saw how easy it might become to describe the hardness of conditions when one had first joined the army. The declaration was also quite unlike Prasad’s apparent appreciation of such things.

‘But I need it.’

‘I agree it would be nice to have one, but he is a general — a lieutenant-general, at that.’

Prasad was again silent for a few seconds. He was certainly embarrassed, though by no means prepared to give up the struggle.

‘Can you ask General Asbjornsen to let me have it, Major Jenkins?’

He spoke rather firmly. This was totally unlike Prasad, so quiet, easy going, outwardly impregnated with British army ‘good form’. I was staggered. Apart from anything else, the request was not a reasonable one. For a major to eject a general from his room in the small hours of the morning was a grotesque conception. It looked as if it might be necessary to embark on an a priori disquisition regarding the Rules and Disciplines of War, which certainly laid down that generals had first option where baths were concerned. It was probably Rule One. I indicated that a major — even a military attaché, in a sense representing his own country — could not have a bathroom to himself, if three generals, themselves equally representative, were all of them at least theoretically, in the running. I now saw how lucky I was that neither Bobrowski nor Philidor had shown any sign of considering himself slighted by being allotted a bathless room. In fact Prasad’s claim did not merit serious discussion. I tried to put that as tactfully as possible. Prasad listened respectfully. He was not satisfied. I could not understand what had come over him. I changed the ground of argument, abandoning seniority of rank as reason, pointing out that General Asbjornsen had won the bath by right of conquest. He had led the way up the stairs, the first man — indeed, the first general — to capture the position. Prasad would not be convinced. There was another long pause. I wondered whether we should stay up all night. Prasad gave the impression of having a secret weapon, battery he preferred not to unmask unless absolutely necessary. However, it had to come into action at last.

‘It’s my religion,’ he said.

He spoke now apologetically. This was an entirely unexpected aspect.

‘Oh, I see.’

I tried to play for time, while I thought up some answer.

‘So I must have it,’ Prasad said.

He spoke with absolute finality.

‘Of course, I appreciate, Major Prasad, that what you have said makes a difference.’

He did not reply. He saw his projectile had landed clean on the target. I was defeated. The case was unanswerable, especially in the light of my instructions. Prasad looked sorry at having been forced to bring matters to this point. He looked more than sorry; terribly upset.

‘So can I have the bathroom?’

I buttoned up my battledress blouse again.

‘I’ll make certain enquiries.’

‘I’m sorry to be so much trouble.’

‘Wait a moment, Major Prasad.’

By a great piece of good fortune, General Asbjornsen was still in the bar. He and Bobrowski had not stopped arguing, though the subject had shifted from skiing boots to tactics. Asbjornsen was perhaps getting the worst of it, because his expression recalled more than ever the craggy features of Monsieur 0rn, the Norwegian at La Grenadière, who had such a row with Monsieur Lundquist, the Swede, for sending ‘sneaks’ over the net at tennis. I hoped no similar display of short temper was in the offing.

‘Sir?’

General Asbj0rnsen gave his attention.

‘Major Prasad has asked me if you would possibly consider surrendering to him the room with the bath?’

General Asbjornsen looked absolutely dumbfounded. He did not show the smallest degree of annoyance, merely stark disbelief that he had rightly grasped the meaning of the question.

‘But — I have the bath.’

‘I know, sir. That was why I was asking.’

‘I am there.’

‘That’s just it, sir. Major Prasad wants it.’

‘He wants it?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘The bathroom?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘But — the bathroom — it is for me.’

‘It’s a very special request, sir.’

General Asbjornsen’s face by now showed at least that he accepted the request as a special one. It was only too easy to understand his surprise, the fact that the idea took some time to penetrate. This was not at all on account of any language difficulty. General Asbjornsen spoke English with the greatest fluency. As the conception began to take shape in his mind that Prasad’s designs on the bath were perfectly serious, the earlier look of wonder had changed to one of displeasure. His face hardened. Bobrowski, who loved action, especially if it offered conflict, grasping that a superbly comic tussle was promised, now joined in.

‘You are trying to take General Asbjornsen’s bath away from him, Major Jenkins?’

‘It’s for Major Prasad, sir, he —’

‘I don’t believe it, Major Jenkins, I believe you want it for yourself.’

Bobrowski had begun to laugh a lot.

‘It is the particular wish of Major Prasad, sir —’

‘Look here,’ said Asbjornsen, ‘I have the bath. I keep it.’

That was the crux of the matter. There was no arguing. I had hoped, without much conviction, to achieve General Asbjornsen’s dislodgment without playing Prasad’s trump card. Now this would have to be thrown on the table. It had become clear that much more discussion of this sort, to the accompaniment of Bobrowski’s determination to treat the matter as a huge joke, would make Asbjornsen more intractable than ever.

‘It’s a question of religion, sir.*

‘What?’

‘Major Prasad requires the room for religious reasons.’

That silenced them both. The statement, at least for the moment, made even more impression than I had hoped.

‘Religion?’ repeated Bobrowski.

I wished he would keep out of it. The bathroom was no business of his. By now I was entirely on Prasad’s side, dedicated to obtaining the bathroom for whatever purpose he needed it.

‘But this is a new idea,’ said Bobrowski. ‘I had not thought that was how baths are allotted on this tour. I am Catholic, what chance have I?’

‘Sir —’

‘Now I see why General Philidor went off to bed without even asking for the bathroom. Like many Frenchmen, he is perhaps free-thinker. He would have no chance for the bath. You would not let him, Major Jenkins. No religion — no bath. That is what you say. It is not fair.’

Bobrowski thought it all the funniest thing he had ever heard in his life. He laughed and laughed. Perhaps, in the long run, the conclusion of the matter owed something to this laughter of Bobrowski’s, because General Asbjornsen may have suspected that, if much more argument were carried on in this frivolous atmosphere, there was danger of his being made to look silly himself. Grasp of that fact after so comparatively short an interlude of Bobrowski’s intervention did Asbjornsen credit.

‘You can really assure me then, Major Jenkins, that this is, as you have reported, a question of religion.’

‘I can assure you of that, sir.’

‘You are in no doubt?’

‘Absolutely none, sir.’

‘In that case, I agree to the proposal.’

General Asbjornsen almost came to attention.

‘Thank you, sir. Thank you very much indeed. Major Prasad will be most grateful. I will inform Colonel Finn when I see him.’

‘Come upstairs and help me with my valise.’

The gruffness of General Asbj0rnsen’s tone was fully justified. I followed him to the disputed room, and was relieved to see the valise on the floor still unpacked. The bathroom door was open. It seemed an apartment designed for the ablutions of a very thin dwarf, one of Mime’s kind. However, spatial content was neither here nor there. The point was, Prasad must have it. I took one end of the valise, Asbj0rnsen the other. Prasad was peeping through the crack of his door. When informed of the way the battle had gone, he came out into the passage. Asbjornsen was not ungracious about his renunciation. Prasad expressed a lot of thanks, but was unaware, I think, that the victory, like Waterloo, had been ‘a damned close run thing’. General Asbjornsen and I carried his valise into Prasad’s former room. I helped Prasad with his valise too, on his taking over of the bathroom. As soon as Prasad and I were out in the passage, General Asbjornsen shut his bedroom door rather loudly. He could not be blamed. My own relations with him, even when we returned to England, never fully recovered from that night. For the rest of the tour I speculated on what arcane rites Prasad conducted in that minute bathroom.

Next morning I rose early to check transport for the day’s journey. The cars were to assemble at the entrance of the Grand Hotel, then pick up baggage of the party at La Petite Auberge on the route out of town. The Grand’s main entrance was on the far side from the sea-front. It faced a fairly large, more or less oval open space, ornamented with plots of grass and flower beds long untended. From here the ground sloped away towards a little redbrick seaside town, flanked by green downs along which villas were spreading. The cars, on parade early, were all ‘correct’. Finn was not due to appear for some minutes. Wondering what the place was like in peacetime at the height of the season, I strolled to the side of the hotel facing the ‘front’. On this façade, a section of the building — evidently the hotel’s dining-room, with half-a-dozen or more high arched windows — had been constructed so that it jutted out on to the esplanade. This promenade, running some feet above the beach, was no doubt closed to wheeled traffic in normal times. Now, it was completely deserted. The hotel, in café-au-lait stucco, with turrets and balconies, was about fifty or sixty years old, built at a time when the seaside was coming seriously into fashion. This small resort had a pleasantly out-of-date air. One pictured the visitors as well-to-do, though not at all smart, only insistent on good food and bourgeois comforts; the whole effect rather smug, though at the same time possessing for some reason or other an indefinable, even haunting attraction. Perhaps that was just because one was abroad again; and, for once, away from people. In the early morning light, the paint on the side walls of the hotel had taken on a pinkish tone, very subtle and delicate, blending gently with that marine aporousness of atmosphere so enthusiastically endorsed by the Impressionists when they painted this luminous northern shore. It was time to find Finn. I returned to the steps of the main entrance. The large hall within was in semi-darkness, because all the windows had been boarded up. Some of the military attachés were already about, polishing their boots in a kind of cloakroom, where the greatcoats had been left the night before. They seemed to be doing no harm, so I went back to the hall. Finn, carrying his valise on his shoulder, was descending the stairs.

‘Good morning, sir.’

‘Good morning, Nicholas. Couldn’t use the lift over there. No lift boys in wartime. Didn’t sleep too well. Kept awake by the noise of the sea. Not used to it’

I reported the matter of the bath. Finn looked grave. ‘Awkward situation, damned awkward. I’ve always tried to keep out of religious controversy. You handled it well, Nicholas. I’ll have a word with Asbjornsen and thank him. Any of them down yet?’

‘Some are cleaning their boots in the lobby through there.’

‘Cleaning their boots? My God, I believe they must have found my polish. Which way? I must stop this at once. It will be all used up.’

He rushed off. The fleet of cars got under way soon after this. That day I found myself with Cobb, Lebedev and Marinko, the Jugoslav. The seating was altered as a matter of principle from time to time. I was beside the driver. Lebedev — the name always reminded one of the character in The Idiot who was good at explaining the Apocalypse, though otherwise unreliable — rarely spoke; nor did he usually attend more than very briefly — so our Mission working with the Russians reported — the occasional parties given by their Soviet opposite numbers, where drinking bouts attained classical proportions, it was alleged. He was, indeed, commonly held to derive his appointment from civil, rather than military, eminence at home, his bearing and methods — despite the top boots and spurs — lacking, the last resort, the essential stigmata of the officier de carrière.

‘I tried to talk to Lebedev the other day about Dostoievski’s Grand Inquisitor,’ Pennistone said. ‘He changed the subject at once to Nekrassov, of whom I’ve never read a line.’

Cobb was making notes in a little book. Marinko gazed out of the window, overcome with Slav melancholy, or, more specifically — being of the party that supported the Resistance groups of Mihailovich — dejection at the course British policy appeared to be taking in that connexion.

‘Just spell out the name of that place we stopped over last night, Major Jenkins,’ said Cobb.

‘C-A-B-O-U-R-G, sir.’

As I uttered the last letter, scales fell from my eyes. Everything was transformed. It all came back — like the tea-soaked madeleine itself — in a torrent of memory … Cabourg … We had just driven out of Cabourg … out of Proust’s Balbec. Only a few minutes before, I had been standing on the esplanade along which, wearing her polo cap and accompanied by the little band of girls he had supposed the mistresses of professional bicyclists, Albertine had strolled into Marcel’s life. Through the high windows of the Grand Hotel’s dining-room — conveying to those without the sensation of staring into an aquarium — was to be seen Saint-Loup, at the same table Bloch, mendaciously claiming acquaintance with the Swanns. A little farther along the promenade was the Casino, its walls still displaying tattered playbills, just like the one Charlus, wearing his black straw hat, had pretended to examine, after an attempt at long range to assess the Narrator’s physical attractions and possibilities. Here Elstir had painted; Prince Odoacer played golf. Where was the little railway line that bad carried them all to the Verdurins’ villa? Perhaps it ran in another direction to that we were taking; more probably it was no more.

‘And the name of the brigadier at the Battle Clearance Group?’ asked Cobb. ‘The tall one who took us round those captured guns?’

He wrote down the name and closed the notebook.

‘You told me, Major Jenkins, that at the beginning of the war you yourself saw a Royal Engineer colonel wearing a double-breasted service-dress tunic. You can assure me of that?’

‘I can, sir — and, on making enquiries, was told that cut was permitted by regulations, provided no objection was taken by regimental or higher authority.’

Proustian musings still hung in the air when we came down to the edge of the water. It had been a notable adventure. True, an actual night passed in one of the bedrooms of the Grand Hotel itself — especially, like Finn’s, an appropriately sleepless one — might have crowned the magic of the happening. At the same time, a faint sense of disappointment superimposed on an otherwise absorbing inner experience was in its way suitably Proustian too: a reminder of the eternal failure of human life to respond a hundred per cent; to rise to the greatest heights without allowing at the same time some suggestion, however slight, to take shape in indication that things could have been even better.

Now, looking north into the light mist that hung over the waves, it was at first difficult to know what we were regarding. In the foreground lay a kind of inland sea, or rather two huge lagoons, the further enclosed by moles and piers that seemed exterior and afloat; the inner and nearer, with fixed breakwaters formed of concrete blocks, from which, here and there, rose tall chimneys, rows of cranes, drawbridges. The faraway floating docks delimited smaller pools and basins. Within the two large and separate surfaces, islands were dotted about supporting similar structures, the outlines of which extended into the misty distances as far as the horizon. What, one wondered, could this great maritime undertaking be? Was it planned to build a new Venice here on the water? Perhaps those were docks constructed on an unusually generous scale to serve some great port — yet no large area of warehouses was at hand to suggest commerce, nor other signs of a big town anywhere along the shore. On the contrary, such houses as were to be seen, near or further inland, were in ruins, their extent in any case not at all resembling the outskirts of a city. The roadstead itself was now all but abandoned, at least the small extent of shipping riding at anchor there altogether disproportionate to the potential accommodation of the harbour — for harbour it must certainly be. There was something unreal, ghostly, even a little horrifying, about these grey marine shapes that seemed to have no present purpose, yet, like battlements of a now ruined castle, implied a violent, bloody history.

‘Tiens,’ said General Philidor. ‘C’est bien le Mulberry.’’

The Mulberry it was, vast floating harbour designed for invasion, soon to be dismantled and forgotten, like the Colossus of Rhodes or Hanging Gardens of Babylon. We tramped its causeways out over the sea.

‘We’ll soon be in Brussels,’ said Marinko. ‘I hope to get some eau-de-cologne. In London it is unobtainable. Not a drop to be had.’

When we drove into the city’s main boulevards, their sedate nineteenth-century self-satisfaction, British troops everywhere, made our cortège somewhat resemble Ensor’s Entry of Christ into Brussels, with soldiers, bands and workers’ delegation. One looked about for the Colman’s ‘Mustart’ advertisement spelt wrong, but it was nowhere to be seen. Our billet was a VIP one, a requisitioned hotel presided over by a brisk little cock-sparrow of a captain, who evidently knew his job.

‘We had the hell of a party here the other night,’ he said. ‘A crowd of senior officers as drunk as monkeys, brigadiers rooting the palms out of the pots.’

His words conjured up the scene in Antony and Cleopatra, when arm-in-arm the generals dance on Pompey’s galley, a sequence of the play that makes it scarcely possible to disbelieve that Shakespeare himself served for at least a period of his life in the army.

‘With thy grapes our hairs be crowned?’

‘Took some cleaning up after, I can tell you.’

‘Talking of cleanliness, would a cake of soap be any use to yourself?’

‘Most acceptable.’

‘In return, perhaps you could recommend the best place to buy a bottle of brandy?’

‘Leave it to me — a couple, if you feel like spending that amount. I understand your people go to Army Group Main HQ tomorrow.’

‘That’s it — and we’ve been promised a visit to the Field-Marshal himself the following day.’

At Army Group Main the atmosphere was taut, the swagger — there was a good deal of swagger — a trifle forced; the court, as it were, of a military Trimalchio. Trimalchio, after all, had been an unusually successful business man; for all that is known, might have proved an unusually successful general. A force of junior staff officers with the demeanour of aggressive schoolboys had to be penetrated.

‘You can’t park those cars there,’ one of them shouted at Finn. ‘Get ’em out of the way at once and look sharp about it.’

Finn did as he was told. Indoors, the place was even more like a school, one dominated by specialized, possibly rather cranky theories; efficient, all the same, and encouraging the boys to be independently minded, even self-applauding. Perhaps the last epithet was unfair. This, after all, was a staff that had delivered the goods pretty well so far. They had a right to be pleased with themselves. There was an odd incident while the Chief of Staff, a major-general, addressed the assembled military attachés. In the background a telephone rang. It was answered by a curly haired captain, who looked about fifteen. He began to carry on a long conversation at the top of his voice, accompanied by a lot of laughter. It was on the subject of some more or less official matter, though apparently nothing very weighty. I wondered how long this would be allowed to continue. The Chief of Staff looked up once or twice, but stood it for several minutes.

‘Shut down that telephone.’

The captain’s chatter was brought to an end. The general had spoken curtly, but most senior officers would have shown far less forbearance, especially in the presence of a relatively distinguished visiting party of Allied officers. Clearly things were run in their own particular way at Army Group Headquarters. I looked forward to seeing whether the same atmosphere would prevail at the Field-Marshal’s Tactical HQ.

By this time, the Allied advance into Germany had penetrated about a couple of miles across the frontier at its farthest point. Accordingly, we left Belgium and entered that narrow strip of the Netherlands that runs between the two other countries, travelling towards the town of Roermond, still held by the enemy, against which our artillery was now in action. The long straight roads, leading through minefields, advertised at intervals as ‘swept to verges’, were lined on either side with wooden crates of ammunition stacked high under the poplars. Armour was moving in a leisurely manner across this dull flat country, designed by

Mature for a battlefield, over which armies had immemorially campaigned. The identification flash of my old Division had appeared more than once on the shoulder of infantrymen passed on the route. When we stopped to inspect the organization of a bridgehead, I asked the local Conducting Officer from Lines of Communication if he knew whether any of my former Regiment were to be found in the neighbourhood.

‘Which brigade?’

I told him.

‘We should be in the middle of them here. Of course we may not be near your particular battalion. Like to see if we can find some of them? Your funny-wunnies will be happy for a few minutes, won’t they?’

The military attachés would be occupied for half an hour or more with what they were inspecting. In any case, Finn as usual well ahead with time schedule, it would be undesirable to arrive unduly early for the Field-Marshal.

‘I’d like to see if any of them are about.’

‘Come along then.’

The L. of C. captain led the way down a road lined with small houses. Before we had gone far, sure enough, three or four soldiers wearing the Regimental flash were found engaged on some fatigue, piling stuff on to a truck. They were all very young.

‘These look like your chaps — right regiment anyway, if not your actual battalion. You’d better have a word with them.’

I made some enquiries. Opportunity to knock off work was, as usual, welcome. They turned out to be my own Battalion, rather than the other one of the same Regiment within the brigade.

‘Is an officer named Kedward still with you?’

‘Captain Kedward, sir?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘Oh yes, the Company Commander, sir?’

‘He actually commands your Company?’

‘Why, yes, he does, sir. That’s him.’

‘You’re all in Captain Kedward’s Company?’

‘We are, sir.’

It seemed astonishing to them that I did not know that already. I could not understand this surprise at first, then remembered that I too was wearing the regimental crest and flash, so that they certainly thought that I belonged to the same brigade as themselves, possibly even newly posted to their own unit. Soldiers often do not know all the officers of their battalion by sight. Indeed, it is not uncommon for the Adjutant to be thought of as the Commanding Officer, because he is the one most often heard giving orders.

‘Is Captain Kedward likely to be about?’

‘He’s in the Company Office just now, sir.’

‘Near here?’

‘Over there, sir, where the swill tubs are.’

‘You stay here, sir,’ said one of them. ‘I’ll get Captain Kedward for you.’

Work was now more or less at a standstill. Cigarettes were handed out. It seemed they had arrived fairly recently in this sector. Earlier, the Battalion had been in action in the Caen area, where casualties had been fairly heavy. I asked about some of the individuals I had known, but they were too young to remember any of them. The L. of C. captain became understandably bored listening to all this.

‘Now you’re back with your long lost unit, I’ll leave you to have a natter,’ he said. ‘Want to check up on some of my own business round the corner. Be with you again in five minutes.’

He went off. At the same moment Kedward, with the young soldier who had offered to fetch him, appeared from the door of a small farmhouse. It was more than four years since I had set eyes on him. He looked a shade older, though not much; that is to say he had lost that earlier appearance of being merely a schoolboy who had dressed up in uniform for fun, burnt-corking his upper lip to simulate a moustache. The moustache now had a perfectly genuine existence. He saluted, seeming to be rather flustered.

‘Idwal.’

‘Sir?’

He had not recognized me.

‘Don’t you remember? I’m Nick Jenkins. We were together in Rowland Gwatkin’s Company.’

Even that information did not appear to make any immediate impression on Kedward.

‘We last saw each other at Castlemallock.’

‘The Casdemallock school of Chemical Warfare, sir?’

On the whole, where duty took one, few captains called a major ‘sir’, unless they were being very regimental. Everyone below the rank of lieutenant-colonel within the official world in which one moved was regarded as doing much the same sort of job, officers below the rank of captain being in any case rare. Responsibilities might vary, sometimes the lower rank carrying the higher responsibility; for example, the CIGS’s ADC, a captain no longer young, being in his way a considerable figure. All the same, this unwonted reminder of having a crown on one’s shoulder did not surprise me so much as Kedward’s total failure to recall me as a human being. The fragile condition of separate identity, perpetually brought home to one, at the same time remains perpetually incredible.

‘Don’t you remember the moment when you took over the Company from Rowland — how upset he was at getting the push.’

Kedward’s face lighted up at that.

‘Why, yes,’ he said. ‘You were with us then, weren’t you, sir? I’m beginning to remember now. Didn’t you come from London? … Was it Lyn Craddock took over the platoon from you? … or Phillpots?’

‘Are they still with you?’

‘Lyn got it at Caen commanding B Company.’

‘Killed?’

‘Yes, Lyn caught it. Phillpots? What happened to Phillpots? I believe he went to one of the Regular battalions and was wounded in Crete.’

‘What became of Rowland Gwatkin?’

‘Fancy you knowing Rowland.’

‘But I tell you, we were all in the same Company.’

‘So we were, but what a long time ago all that was. Rowland living in my home town makes it seem funny you know him.’

‘Is he out here?’

‘Rowland?’

Kedward laughed aloud at such an idea. It was apparently unthinkable.

‘When I last saw him it looked as if he were due for the Infantry Training Centre.’

‘Rowland’s been out of the army for years,’

‘Out of the army?’

‘You never heard?’

Having once established the fact that I knew Gwatkin at all, in itself extraordinary enough, Kedward obviously found it equally extraordinary that I had not kept myself up-to-date about Gwatkin’s life history.

‘Rowland got invalided,’ he said. ‘That can’t have been long after Castlemallock. I know it was all about the time I married.’

‘You got married all right?’

‘Father of two kids.’

‘What sex?’

‘Girls — that’s what I wanted. Wouldn’t mind a boy next.’

‘So Rowland never reached the ITC?’

‘I believe he got there, now you mention it, sir, then he went sick.’

‘Do, for God’s sake, stop calling me “sir”, Idwal.’

‘Sorry — anyway Rowland was ill about that time. Kidneys, was it? Or something to do with his back? Flat feet, it might have been. Whatever it was, they downgraded his medical category, and then he didn’t get any better, and got boarded, and had to leave the army altogether.’

‘Rowland must have taken that pretty hard.’

‘Oh, he did,’ said Kedward cheerfully.

‘So what’s he doing?’

‘Back at the Bank. They’re terribly shorthanded. Glad to have him there, you may be sure. I believe somebody here said they had a letter that mentioned Rowland was acting manager at one of the smaller branches. That’s quite something for Rowland, who wasn’t a great banking brain, I can tell you. Just what a lot of trouble he’ll be making for everybody, you bet.’

‘And his mother-in-law? Is she still living with them? He told me that was going to happen when we said goodbye to each other. Then, on top of his mother-in-law coming to live with them, having to leave the army himself. Rowland’s had the hell of a pasting.’

The thought of Gwatkin and his mother-in-law had sometimes haunted me; the memory of his combined horror and resignation in face of this threatened affliction. To have his dreams of military glory totally shattered as well seemed, as so often in what happens to human beings, out of all proportion to what he had deserved, even if these dreams had, in truth, been impracticable for one of his capacity.

‘My God, bloody marvellous what you know about Rowland and his troubles,’ said Kedward. ‘Mother-in-law and all. Have you come to live in the neighbourhood? I thought you worked in London. Did you hear that Elystan- Edwards got a VC here the other day? That was great, wasn’t it?’

‘I read about it. He came to the Battalion after I left’

‘It was great for the Regiment, wasn’t it?’ Kedward repeated.

‘Great’

There was a pause.

‘Look here, sir — Nick — I’m afraid I won’t be able to talk any more now. Got a lot to do. I thought first when they said a major wanted me, I was going to get a rocket from Brigade. I must make those buggers get a move on with their loading too. They been staging a go-slow since we’ve been here. Look at them.’

We said goodbye. Kedward saluted and crossed to the truck, where the loading operation had certainly become fairly leisurely. The L. of C. captain reappeared. I waved to Kedward. He saluted again.

‘Jaw over?’

‘Yes.’

Perhaps as a result of Kedward’s exhortations, the fatigue party began to sing. The L. of C. captain and I walked up the road in the direction of the cars, leaving them to move eastward towards the urnfields of their Bronze Age home.

‘Open now the crystal fountain,

Whence the healing stream doth flow:

Let the fire and cloudy pillar

Lead me all my journey through:

Strong Deliverer, Strong Deliverer

Be thou still my strength and shield.’

‘What a mournful row,’ said the L. of C. captain, ‘I’ve heard them chant that one before. It’s a hymn.’

Finn was already rounding up the military attachés when we reached the place where the convoy was parked. In preparation for the visit to the Field-Marshal’s Tactical Headquarters, some of our party were already wearing their pullovers in a manner popularized by the Field-Marshal himself — though not generally accepted as correct army turn-out — that is to say showing several inches below the battledress blouse. Among those thus seeking to be in the height of military fashion were Bobrowski and Van der Voort.

‘I think I keep mine inside,’ said Chu.

There was remarkably little fuss about the approach — no hint of Trimalchio here — security merely kept at its essential minimum. The accommodation for the Headquarters was a medium-sized house, built within the last ten or twelve years, one would guess, dark red brick, set amongst a few trees. The place had little or no character of its own. It might have been a farm, but had none of the farm’s picturesque aspects. The fact was, it seemed prophetically built to house a Tactical Headquarters. By an inner wall stood the Field-Marshal’s two long motor-caravans, sleeping apartment and office respectively. Here everything seemed quieter, far less exhibitionistic than at Main.

‘Will you line up, please, gentlemen,’ said Finn, ‘in order of seniority of your appointment.’

The prelude to almost all happenings in the army, small and great, is an inspection. This visit was to be no exception. The military attachés were drawn up in a single row facing the caravans. Colonel Hlava, their doyen, was at one end: Gauthier de Graef, the most junior, at the other; with myself rounding off the party. There was a moment’s pause, while we stood at ease. Then the Field-Marshal appeared from one of the caravans. He had his hands in his pockets, but removed them as he approached. It was instantaneously clear that he no longer chose to wear his pullover showing under his battledress blouse. Indeed, he had by now, it was revealed, invented a form of battledress peculiar to himself, neatly tailored and of service-dress cloth. There was a moment when we were at attention; then at ease again. The last movement was followed by some rapid fidgeting and tucking up of clothes on the part of Bobrowski, Van der Voort and others with too keen a wish to be in the mode. Finn, out in front, was beaming with excitement. This was the sort of occasion he loved. There was a moment’s conference. Then the Field-Marshal proceeded down the line, Finn at his side, presenting the military attachés, one by one. The Field-Marshal said a few words to each. It was quite a long time before he reached Gauthier.

‘Captain Gauthier de Graef,’ said Finn. ‘The Belgian assistant military attaché. Major Kucherman himself was prevented from taking part in the tour. He had to attend a meeting of the new Belgian Government, which he may be joining.’

At the word ‘Belgian’ the Field-Marshal had begun to look very stern.

‘You’re the Belgians’ man, are you?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Some of your people are showing signs of giving trouble in Brussels.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Gauthier.

He and Kucherman had often talked of difficulties with the Resistance elements. Gauthier knew the problem all right.

‘If they do give trouble,’ said the Field-Marshal. ‘I’ll shoot ’em up. Is that clear? Shoot ’em up.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Gauthier.

‘It is?’

‘Quite clear, sir.’

Gauthier de Graef replied with the deep agreement he certainly felt in taking firm measures. He had already complained of his own irritation with those of his countrymen whom he judged inadequately to appreciate their luck in having got rid of the Germans. The Field-Marshal moved on. He fixed his eyes on my cap badge.

‘Prince of Wales’s Volunteers?’

The slip was a very permissible one. The two crests possessed a distinct similarity in design. I named the Regiment. He showed no animus, as some generals might, at such a disavowal, however unavoidable.

‘Any of ’em here?’

‘Yes, sir — one of them got a VC a few weeks ago.*

The Field-Marshal considered the point, but made no move to develop it. Finn smiled very briefly to himself, almost invisibly to those who did not know him, either contemplating the eternal satisfaction his own bronze Maltese cross gave him; more probably, in the same connexion, appreciating this opportunity of recalling a rumour that the Field-Marshal was said to be not in the least impressed by the mystique of that particular award; indeed, alleged to declare its possession hinted at an undesirable foolhardiness on the part of the wearer. Finn, from his personal viewpoint, may even have seen my statement as a disciplined, if deserved, call to order, should that rumour have any basis in truth.

‘Speak all these languages?*

‘Only a little French, sir.’

‘Don’t speak any of ’em.’

‘No, sir.’

He laughed, seeming pleased by that

‘Now I thought we’d all be photographed,’ he said. ‘Good thing on an occasion like this. I’ll sign ’em for you.’

Smiling like the Cheshire Cat, a sergeant holding a small camera suddenly came into being. There had been no sign of him a moment before. He seemed risen from the ground or dropped from a tree. We broke ranks and formed up again, this time on either side of the Field-Marshal, who took up a convenient position for this in front of one of the caravans. There was rather a scramble to get next to him, in which Chu and Bobrowski achieved flanking places. Van der Voort, elbowed out of the way by Chu, caught my eye and winked. Photography at an end, we were taken over the caravans, a visit personally conducted by the Field- Marshal, whose manner perfectly fused the feelings of a tenant justly proud of a perfectly equipped luxury flat with those of the lord of an ancient though still inhabited historical monument. Two dogs, not unlike General Liddament’s, were making themselves very free of the place, charging about and disregarding the Field-Marshal’s shouts. When this was over, the military attachés were led to a spot where a large map hung on a kind of easel.

‘You’ll want me to put you in the picture.’

With unexpectedly delicate movements of the hands, the Field-Marshal began to explain what had been happening. We were in an area, as I have said, immemorially campaigned over. In fact the map was no less than a great slice of history. As the eye travelled northward, it fell on Zutphen, where Sir Philip Sidney had stopped a bullet in that charge against the Albanian cavalry. One wondered why Albanians should be involved in this part of the world at such a time. Presumably they were some auxiliary unit of the Spanish Command, similar to those exotic corps of which one heard rumours in the current war, anti-Soviet Caucasians enrolled in a German formation, American-Japanese fighting with the Allies. The thought of Sidney, a sympathetic figure, distracted attention from the Field-Marshal’s talk. One felt him essentially the kind of soldier Vigny had in mind when writing of the man who, like a monk, submitted himself to the military way of life, because he thought it right, rather than because it appealed to him. Available evidence, where Sidney was concerned, pointed to quite other than military preoccupations:

‘Within those woods of Arcadie

He chief delight and pleasure took,

And on the mountain Parthenie,

Upon the crystal liquid brook

The Muses met him every day

That taught him sing, to write and say.’

The Field-Marshal pursued his exposition with the greatest clarity, but the place-names of the map continued to stimulate daydreams of forgotten conflicts. Maastricht, for example. It took a moment or two to recall the connexion. Then, oddly enough, another beau monde poet was in question, though one of a very different sort to Sidney. Was it Rochester? Certainly a Restoration figure. Something about the moulding of a drinking-cup — boy’s limbs entwined, a pederast, and making rather a point of it — with deliberations as to what scenes were to be represented on the vessel? The poet, certainly Rochester, expressed in the strongest terms his disapprobation of army life even in art:

‘Engrave not battle on his cheek:

With war I’ve naught to do.

I’m none of those that took Maestrich,

Nor Yarmouth leaguer knew.’

This feeling that war was something to be avoided at all costs for personal reasons was very understandable; more acceptable, indeed, than many of the sometimes rather suspect moral objections put forward. The references, the engagement at Maastricht and ‘Yarmouth leaguer’ were obscure to me. The latter was presumably a sort of transit camp, the kind of establishment Dicky Umfraville had formerly been in charge of. Then some memory swam to the surface that d’Artagnan’s historical prototype had fallen at Maastricht, though details of the particular campaign remained latent. D’Artagnan was, on the whole, rather a non-Vigny figure, anyway on the surface, insomuch as there seemed little or no reason to suppose he was particularly to the fore when it came to disagreeable and unglamorous army jobs. Musing of this sort had reached Marlborough, his taste for being kept by women, remarks made on that subject to Odo Stevens by Pamela Flitton, the connexion between sex and war in this particular aspect, when the Field-Marshal’s discourse terminated. By that time the photographs had been developed. They were signed and handed round. Colonel Hlava, as doyen, made a little speech of thanks on behalf of all the military attachés. The Field-Marshal listened gravely. Then he gave a nod of dismissal. Finn and I packed them once more into the cars.

On the way to Brussels we passed a small cart pulled by a muscular-looking dog.

‘Once you would have seen that in my country,’ said Hlava. ‘Now our standards have risen. Dogs no longer work.’

‘That one seems positively to like it’

This particular dog was making a great parade of how well he was accomplishing his task.

‘Dogs are so ambitious,’ agreed Hlava.

‘The Field-Marshal’s dogs seemed so. Do you suppose they were pressing for promotion?’

‘A great man, I think,’ said Hlava.

I tried to reduce to viable terms impressions of this slight, very exterior contact. On the one hand, there had been hardly a trace of the almost overpowering physical impact of the CIGS, that curious electric awareness felt down to the tips of one’s fingers of a given presence imparting a sense of stimulation, also the consoling thought that someone of the sort was at the top. On the other hand, the Field-Marshal’s outward personality offered what was perhaps even less usual, will-power, not so much natural, as developed to altogether exceptional lengths. No doubt there had been a generous basic endowment, but of not the essentially magnetic quality. In short, the will here might even be more effective from being less dramatic. It was an immense, wiry, calculated, insistent hardness, rather than a force like champagne bursting from the bottle. Observed in tranquillity, the former combination of qualities was not, within the terms of reference, particularly uplifting or agreeable, except again in the manner their synthesis seemed to offer dependability in utter self-reliance and resilience. One felt that a great deal of time and trouble, even intellectual effort of its own sort, had gone into producing this final result.

The eyes were deepset and icy cold. You thought at once of an animal, though a creature not at all in the stylized manner of the two colonels at my Divisional Headquarters, reminiscent respectively of the dog-faced and bird-faced Egyptian deities. No such artificial formality shaped these features, and to say, for example, they resembled those of a fox or ferret would be to imply a disparagement not at all sought. Did the features, in fact, suggest some mythical beast, say one of those encountered in Alice in Wonderland, full of awkward questions and downright statements? This sense, that here was perhaps a personage from an imaginary world, was oddly sustained by the voice. It was essentially an army voice, but precise, controlled, almost mincing, when not uttering some awful warning, as to Gauthier de Graef. There was a faint and faraway reminder of the clergy, too; parsonic, yet not in the least numinous, the tone of the incumbent ruthlessly dedicated to his parish, rather than the hierophant celebrating divine mysteries. At the same time, one guessed this parish priest regarded himself as in a high class of hierophancy too, whatever others might think.

From the very beginnings of his fame, the Field-Marshal had never ignored Chips Lovell’s often repeated reminder that it was a tailor’s war. The new spruceness that had now taken the place of the conscious informality of ready-to- hand garments appropriate to desert warfare — to the confusion of those military attachés obliged hurriedly to tuck up their pullovers — was clearly conceived at the same time to avoid any resemblance to the buttoned-up army officer of caricature. It lacked too, probably also deliberately, the lounging smartness of which, for example, Dicky Umfraville, or even in his own fashion, Sunny Farebrother, knew the secret. The Field-Marshal’s turn-out had to be admitted to fall short of any such elegance. Correct: neat: practical: unpompous: all that to perfection. Elegant, he was not. Why should he be? It was wholly unnecessary, probably a positive handicap in terms of personal propaganda. Besides, will-power exercised unrelentingly over a lifetime — as opposed to its display in brilliant flashes — is apt on the whole to be the enemy of elegance. One only had to think of the Dictators to see that. Few of the Great Captains of history, with the possible exception of Wellington, had shown themselves particularly elegant in victory; though there, of course, one moved into the world of moral elegance, and, in any case, victory was not yet finally attained.

The cock-sparrow captain, major-domo to VTPs, handed over the brandy bottles in a neat parcel when we arrived back at billets.

‘A chap from Civil Affairs was asking for you. I told him when your party was expected back. He said he’d look in again.’

‘What name?’

‘Duport — a captain. He talked about getting you out for a drink.’

I was off duty that night. Although I had never much liked Duport, an evening together, if he were free, would be better than one spent alone. If he were in Civil Affairs, it was possible that his branch had received an official notification of our being in Brussels and he wanted to discuss some Belgian matter. It could hardly be mere friendliness, as we scarcely knew each other. I asked where was a good place to go.

‘The big brasserie on the corner’s not too bad. You’ll find all ranks there, but not many senior officers. If you’re like me, and see a lot of them, that’s a bit of a holiday. What’s the food like in England now? Custard on everything when I was last on leave.’

Duport turned up later. I had not seen him since the Bellevue. His reddish hair receded from the forehead, getting grey by the ears. He looked tired, perceptibly older. Like Pennistone, he carried a General Service lion-and- unicorn in his cap, and had changed into service-dress. Uniform did not suit him. Instead of building him up, it diminished the aggressive energy his civilian appearance had always indicated. This lessening of aggression was also signified by a more subdued manner. The war had undoubtedly quieted Duport down.

‘I saw your name as Belgian Liaison Officer in London on some document passed to us,’ he said. ‘Then found you were personally conducting this flight of swans. We run here parallel in a curious way with Army Group, and there are one or two things that could be straightened out if we had a talk. The usual stuff, Leopold’s marriage, the Resistance lads. When do you go back?’

‘Tomorrow.’

‘Then if we had a talk tonight we could straighten out some points about policy. We’re very full of work at the moment, as I expect you are too.’

This was a rather different tone from the Duport of former days. We went to the recommended brasserie, as he had no better suggestion. He seemed to have lost some of his old interest in material things. For a time we talked Belgian affairs. Dupont knew all about Kucherman, but had not met him.

‘He’s one of the ablest blokes they’ve got,’ he said. ‘However let’s give the subject a rest now. You were cremating your uncle when we last met.’

‘How did you come to join the army? At the Bellevue you were talking of sweating it out in South America, if war came.’

‘South America wasn’t on. As you know I was on my uppers at that moment. Then I got a chance of going to Egypt for a firm that wanted to wind up one of their branches there. Donners had an interest and managed to get me out. Getting back was another matter. The chance of a commission turned up. I took it. Wanted to get into one of the secret shows, but didn’t bring it off. I was in the Censorship for a time. Not much to be recommended. Then I had a bad go of Gyppy tummy — with complications. That was what ultimately brought me back to Europe and the mob I now belong to.’

‘You haven’t seen anything of Peter Templer, have you? Donners was helping to fix him up too — something in the cloak-and-dagger line — but I haven’t heard what came of it.’

Duport finished his glass.

‘Peter’s had it,’ he said.

‘Do you mean he’s been killed?’

‘Gone for a Burton.’

‘On a secret operation?’

‘Yes.’

‘I suppose nobody knows more than that?’

Duport hesitated.

‘It never struck me you wouldn’t have heard about Peter,’ he said. ‘There was a lot of talk about it all in Cairo — not the best security imaginable, but then Cairo is not a place for the best security. There was certainly a lot of talk.’

‘What happened?’

‘I daresay Peter’s still officially described as missing, but everyone in the know is aware he’s dead, even though the details vary. One story was he was murdered by his wireless operator for the money he had on him, but I happen to know that isn’t true. We’ll go to another place for the next round.’

We left the brasserie and found a café. It was less crowded.

‘Does Prince Theodoric mean anything to you?’ asked Duport.

‘He’s done business with our Section once or twice, but not recently — and of course not on the secret operations level.’

‘You knew Peter was involved in that quarter?’

‘More or less.’

‘I always have a fellow feeling for the Prince, though we’ve never met,’ said Duport. ‘He and I always seem to be screwing the same ladies. Bijou Ardglas, for example, now, poor girl, in the arms of Jesus. Have you heard of a young woman called Pamela Flitton?’

‘Volumes.’

‘You know she was the main cause of Peter’s trouble?’

‘I was told that — but people don’t go and get killed because a piece like that won’t sleep with them.’

‘Well, not exactly, I agree,’ said Duport. ‘It was more Peter felt he was slowing up, as I see it. The point is that it all builds up round Theodoric. As you know the good Prince’s realm is internally divided as to how best repel the invader. One lot wants one thing, the other, another. Peter went in with the Prince’s gang.’

‘Was someone called Odo Stevens mixed up in all this?’

‘I thought you said you didn’t deal with the cloak-and-dagger boys?’

‘Something Stevens said off the record.’

‘You know him? Young Stevens was a bit too fond of making statements off the record.’

‘I was on a course with him earlier in the war. Then he was mixed up with a girl I knew, now deceased.’

‘Odo the Stoat we used to call him. These boys make me feel my age. That’s what got Peter down.’

‘Is Stevens missing too?’

‘Not he. I met him in Cairo after they’d got him out.’

‘Why didn’t they get Peter out too?’

Duport gave one of his hard unfriendly laughs.

‘There are those in Cairo who allege proper arrangements were never made to get Peter out. At least they were planned, but never put into operation. That’s what’s said. These things happen sometimes, you know. Little interdepartmental differences. Change of policy at the top. There was a man with an unpronouncable name mixed up with it all too. I don’t know which side he was on.’

‘Szymanski?’

‘Why do you ask about things when you know the whole story already? Are you from MI5? An agent provocateur, just trying to see what you can get out of me, then shop me for bad security? That’s what it sounds like.’

‘Was Szymanski with Templer or Stevens?’

‘So far as I know, on his own. Not sure it was even ourselves who sent him in. Might have been his own people, whoever they were. He went there in the first instance to knock off someone — the head of the Gestapo or a local traitor. I don’t know. It was all lined up, then a signal came down from the top — from the Old Man himself, they say — that war wasn’t waged in that manner in his opinion. All that trouble for nothing — but I understand they got Szymanski out. A chap in the Cairo racket told me all this. He was fed up with the way that particular party was run. It came out I’d been Peter’s brother-in-law in days gone by, so I suppose he thought, as a former relation, I’d a right to know why he’d kicked the bucket.’

‘And you really think Pamela Flitton caused this?’

‘I only stuffed her once,’ said Duport. ‘Against a shed in the back parts of Cairo airport, but even then I could see she might drive you round the bend, if she really decided to. I’ll tell you something amusing. You remember that bugger Widmerpool, who’d got me into such a jam about chromite when we last met?’

‘He’s a full colonel now.’

‘He was in Cairo at one moment and took Miss Pamela to a nightclub.’

‘Rumours of that even reached England.’

‘That girl gets a hold on people,’ said Duport. ‘Sad about Peter, but there it is. The great thing is he didn’t fall into the hands of the Gestapo, as another friend of mine did. Pity you’re going back tomorrow. We might have gone to the Opera together.’

‘Didn’t know music was one of your things.’

‘Always liked it. One of the reasons my former wife and I never really hit it off was because Jean only knew God Save the King because everyone stood up. I was always sneaking off to concerts. They put on La Muette de Portici here to celebrate the liberation. Not very polite to the Dutch, as when it was first performed, the Belgians were so excited by it, they kicked the Hollanders out. I’m not all that keen on Auber myself, as it happens, but I’ve met a lot of dumb girls, so I’ve been to hear it several times to remind myself of them.’

This revelation of Duport’s musical leanings showed how, as ever, people can always produce something unexpected about themselves. In the opposite direction, Kernével was equally unforeseen, on my return, in the lack of interest he showed in Cabourg and its associations with Proust. He knew the name of the novelist, but it aroused no curiosity whatever.

‘Doesn’t he always write about society people?’ was Kernével’s chilly comment.

I told Pennistone about Prasad, Asbjornsen and the bath.

‘Prasad merely turned the taps on at the hour of prayer. It was perfectly right that he should have the bathroom. Finn should have arranged that through you in the first instance.’

‘I see.’

‘Thank God Finn’s back, and I shall no longer have to deal directly with that spotty Brigadier who always wants to alter what is brought to him to sign. I have had to point out on three occasions that his emendations contradict himself in a higher unity.’

A day or two after our return, Kucherman telephoned early. It was a Friday.

‘Can you come round here at once?’

‘Of course. I thought you were still in Brussels.’

‘I flew in last night.’

When I reached Eaton Square, Kucherman, unusual for him, was looking a little worried.

‘This question I am going to put is rather important,’ he said.

‘Yes?’

‘My Government has come to a decision about the army of the Resistance. As you know, the problem has posed itself since the expulsion of the Germans.’

‘So I understand.’

‘Were you told what the Field-Marshal threatened to Gauthier de Graef?’

‘I was standing beside him when the words were said.’

‘They are good young men, but they require something to do.’

‘Naturally.’

‘The proposal is that they should be brought to this country.’

That was an unexpected proposition.

‘You mean to train?’

‘Otherwise we shall have trouble. It is certain. These excellent young men have most of them grown up under German occupation, with no means of expressing their hatred for it — the feeling that for years they have not been able to breathe. They must have an outlet of some sort. They want action. A change of scene will to some extent accomplish that.’

‘What sort of numbers?’

‘Say thirty thousand.’

‘A couple of Divisions?’

‘But without the equivalent in weapons and services.’

‘When do you want them to come?’

‘At once.’

‘So we’ve got to move quickly.’

‘That is the point.’

I thought about the interminable procedures required to get a project of this sort under way. Blackhead, like a huge bat, seemed already flapping his wings about Eaton Square, bumping blindly against the windows of the room.

‘Arrangements for two Divisions will take some time. Are they already cadred?’

‘Sufficiently to bring them across.’

‘I’ll go straight back to Colonel Finn. We’ll get a minute out to be signed by the General and go at once to the highest level. There will be all sorts of problems in addition to the actual physical accommodation of two extra Divisions in this country. The Finance people, for one thing. It will take a week or two to get that side fixed.’

‘You think so?’

‘I know them.’

‘Speed is essential.’

‘It’s no good pretending we’re going to get an answer by Monday.’

‘You mean it may take quite a long time?’

‘You are familiar with ministerial machinery.’

Kucherman got up from his chair.

‘What are we going to do?’

‘I thought I’d better say all this.’

‘I know it already.’

‘It’s a fact, I’m afraid.’

‘But we must do something. What you say is true, I know. How are we going to get round it? I want to speak frankly. This could be a question of avoiding civil war.’

There was a pause. I knew there was only one way out — to cut the Gordian Knot — but could not immediately see how to attain that. Then, perhaps hypnotized by Kucherman’s intense need for an answer, I thought of something.

‘You said you knew Sir Magnus Donners.’

‘Of course.’

‘But you have not seen much of him since you’ve been over here?’

‘I have spoken to him a couple of times at official parties. He was very friendly.’

‘Ring him up and say you want to see him at once — this very morning.’

‘You think so?’

‘Tell him what you’ve just told me.’

‘And then —’

‘Sir Magnus can tell the Head Man.’

Kucherman thought for a moment.

‘I insist you are right,’ he said.

‘It’s worth trying.’

‘This is between ourselves.’

‘Of course.’

‘Not even Colonel Finn.’

‘Least of all.’

‘Meanwhile you will start things off in the normal manner through les voies hiérarchiques.’

‘As soon as I get back.’

‘So I will get to work,’ said Kucherman. ‘I am grateful for the suggestion. The next time we meet, I hope I shall have had a word with Sir Magnus.’

I returned to Finn. He listened to the proposal to bring the Belgian Resistance Army to this country.

‘It’s pretty urgent?’

‘Vital, sir.’

‘We’ll try and move quickly, but I foresee difficulties. Good notion to train those boys over here. Get out a draft right away. Meanwhile I’ll consult the Brigadier about the best way of handling the matter. You’d better have a word with Staff Duties. It’s not going to be as easy to settle as Kucherman hopes.’

I got out the draft. Finally a tremendous minute was launched on its way that very afternoon. Bureaucratically speaking, grass had not grown under our feet; but this was only a beginning. That weekend was my free one. I told Isobel what I had suggested to Kucherman.

‘If the worst comes to the worst we can invoke Matilda.’

Neither of us had seen Matilda since she had married Sir Magnus Donners.

‘It’s just a long shot.’

On Monday morning a summons came from Finn as soon as he arrived in his room. I went up there.

‘This Belgian affair.’

‘Yes, sir?’

Finn passed his hands over the smooth ivory surfaces of his skull.

‘The most extraordinary thing has happened.’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘An order has come down from the Highest Level of All to say it is to be treated as top priority. The chaps are to come over the moment their accommodation is decided upon. Things like financial details can be worked out later. All other minor matters too. Tell Blackhead he can talk to the PM about it, if he isn’t satisfied.’

‘This is splendid, sir.’

Finn put on the face he usually assumed when about to go deaf, but did not do so.

‘Providential,’ he said. ‘Can’t understand it. It just shows how the Old Man’s got his finger on every pulse. I don’t know whether Kucherman did — well, a bit of intriguing. He’s a very able fellow, and in the circumstances it would have been almost justified. You will attend a conference on the subject under the DSD at eleven o’clock this morning, all branches concerned being represented.’

The Director of Staff Duties was the general responsible for planning matters. When I next saw Kucherman, we agreed things had gone through with remarkable smoothness. The name of Sir Magnus Donners was not mentioned when we discussed certain administrative details. Thinking over the incident after, it was easy to see how a taste for intrigue, as Finn called it, could develop in people.