Anthony Powell - The Military Philosophers

She walked quickly through the glass door of the entrance hall, and, making the concession of putting on her helmet once more, disappeared into the street. Stevens, knocked out for a second or two by the strength of the blow, made no effort to follow. He rubbed his face, but did not seem particularly surprised nor put out by this violence of treatment. Probably he was used to assaults from Pamela. Possibly such incidents were even fairly normal in his relationships with women. There was, indeed, some slight parallel to the moment when Priscilla had suddenly left him in the Cafe Royal, though events of that night, in some manner telepathically connecting those concerned, had been enough to upset the nerves of everyone present. We might be in the middle of a raid that never seemed to end, but at least personal contacts were less uncomfortable than on the earlier occasion. Mrs Erdleigh, too, accepted with remarkable composure the scene that had just taken place.

‘Little bitch,’ said Stevens. ‘Not the first time she has done that. Nothing I like less than being socked on the jaw. I thought she’d like to have her fortune told.’

He rubbed his face. Mrs Erdleigh smiled one of her slow, sweet, mysterious smiles.

‘You do not understand enough her type’s love of secrecy, her own unwillingness to give herself.’

‘I understand her unwillingness to give herself,’ said Stevens. ‘I’ve got hold of that one OK. In fact I’m quite an expert on the subject.’

‘To allow me to look longer at her palm would have been to betray too much,’ said Mrs Erdleigh. ‘I offered to make a reading only because you pressed me. I was not surprised by this result. All the same, you are right not to be unduly disturbed by her behaviour. In that way you show your own candour and courage. She will come to no harm. In any case, I do not see the two of you much longer together.’

‘Neither do I, if there are many more of these straight lefts.’

‘Besides, you are going overseas.’

‘Soon?’

‘Very soon.’

‘Shall I see things through?’

‘There will be danger, but you will survive.’

‘What about her. Will she start up with any more Royalties? Perhaps a king this time.’

He said this so seriously that I laughed. Mrs Erdleigh, on the other hand, accepted the question gravely.

‘I saw a crown not far away,’ she said. ‘Her fate lies along a strange road but not a royal one — whatever incident the crown revealed was very brief — but still it is the road of power.’

She picked up her black box again.

‘You’re going back to your room?’

‘As I said before, no danger threatens tonight, but I thoughtlessly allowed myself to run out of a little remedy I have long used against sleeplessness.’

She held out her hand. I took it. Mention of ‘little remedies’ called to mind Dr Trelawney. I asked if she ever saw him. She made a mysterious sign with her hand.

‘He passed over not long after your uncle. Being well instructed in such enlightenments, he knew his own time was appointed — in war conditions some of his innermost needs had become hard to satisfy — so he was ready. Quite ready.’

‘Where did he die?’

‘There is no death in Nature’ — she looked at me with her great misty eyes and I remembered Dr Trelawney himself using much the same words — ‘only transition, blending, synthesis, mutation. He has re-entered the Vortex of Becoming.’

‘I see.’

‘But to answer your question in merely terrestrial terms, he re-embarked on his new journey from the little hotel where we last met.’

‘And Albert — does he still manage the Bellevue?’

‘He too has gone forth in his cerements. His wife, so I bear, married again — a Pole invalided from the army. They keep a boarding-house together in Weston-super-Mare.’

‘Any last words of advice, Mrs Erdleigh?’ asked Stevens.

He treated her as if he were consulting the Oracle at Delphi.

‘Let the palimpsest of your mind absorb the words of Eliphas Levi — to know, to will, to dare, to be silent.’

‘Me, too?’ I asked.

‘Everyone.’

‘The last most of all?’

‘Some think so.’

She glided away towards the lift, which seemed hardly needed, with its earthly and mechanical paraphernalia, to bear her up to the higher levels.

‘I’m going to kip too,’ said Stevens. ‘No good wandering all over London on a night like this looking for Pam. She might be anywhere. She usually comes back all right after a tiff like this. Cheers her up. Well, I may or may not see you again, Nicholas. Never know when one may croak at this game.’

‘Good luck — and to Szymanski too, if you see him.’

The raid went on, but I managed to get some sleep before morning. When I woke up, it still continued, though in a more desultory manner. This was, indeed, the advent of the Secret Weapon, the inauguration of the V.1’s — the so-called ‘flying bombs’. They came over at intervals of about twenty minutes or half an hour, all that day and the following night. This attack continued until Monday, a weekend that happened to be my fortnightly leave; spent, as it turned out, on their direct line of route across the Channel on the way to London.

‘You see, my friend, I was right,’ said Clanwaert.

One of the consequences of the Normandy landings was that the Free French forces became, in due course, merged into their nation’s regular army. The British mission formerly in liaison with them was disbanded, a French military attaché in direct contact with Finn’s Section coming into being. Accordingly, an additional major was allotted to our establishment, a rank to which I was now promoted, sustaining (with a couple of captains to help) French, Belgians, Czechs and Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. As the course of the war improved, work on the whole increased rather than diminished, so much so that I was unwillingly forced to refuse the offer of two Italian officers, sent over to make certain arrangements, whose problems, among others, included one set of regulations that forbade them in Great Britain to wear uniform; another that forbade them to wear civilian clothes. All routine work with the French was transacted with Kernével, first seen laughing with Masham about les votes hiérarchiques , just before my initial interview with Finn.

‘They’re sending a général de brigade from North Africa to take charge,’ said Finn. ‘A cavalryman called Philidor.’

Since time immemorial, Kernével, a Breton, like so many of the Free French, had worked at the military attaché’s office in London as chief clerk. By now he was a captain. At the moment of the fall of France, faced with the alternative of returning to his country or joining the Free French, he had at once decided to remain, his serial number in that organization — if not, like Abou Ben Adhem’s, leading all the rest — being very respectably high in order of acceptance. It was tempting to look for characteristics of my old Regiment in these specimens of Romano-Celtic stock emigrated to Gaul under pressure from Teutons, Scandinavians and non-Roman Celts.

‘I don’t think my mother could speak a word of French,’ said Kernével. ‘My father could — he spoke very good french — but I myself learnt the language as I learnt English.’

Under a severe, even priestly exterior, Kernével concealed a persuasive taste for conviviality — on the rare occasions when anything of the sort was to be enjoyed. From their earliest beginnings, the Free French possessed an advantage over the other Allies — and ourselves — of an issue of Algerian wine retailed at their canteens at a shilling a bottle. Everyone else, if lucky enough to find a bottle of Algerian, or any other wine, in a shop, had to pay nearly ten times that amount. So rare was wine, they were glad to give that, when available. This benefaction to the Free French, most acceptable to those in liaison with them, who sometimes lunched or dined at their messes, was no doubt owed to some figure in the higher echelons of our own army administration — almost certainly learned in an adventure story about the Foreign Legion — that French troops could only function on wine. In point of fact, so far as alcohol went, the Free French did not at all mind functioning on spirits, or drinks like Cap Corse , relatively exotic in England, of which they consumed a good deal. Their Headquarter mess in Pimlico was decorated with an enormous fresco, the subject of which I always forgot to enquire. Perhaps it was a Free French version of Gericault’s Raft of the Medusa , brought up to date and depicting themselves as survivors from the wreck of German invasion.