Anthony Powell - The Military Philosophers

‘You know she’s Charles Stringham’s niece?’

‘Naturally I am aware of that.’

The question had not pleased him.

‘No news of Stringham, I suppose?* ‘There has been, as a matter of fact.’ Widmerpool seemed half angry, half desirous of making some statement about this.

‘He was captured,’ he said. ‘He didn’t survive.’

Scarcely anything was known still about individual prisoners in Japanese POW camps, except that the lives of many of them had certainly been saved by the Bomb. News came through slowly from the Far East. I asked how Widmerpool could speak so definitely.

‘At the end of last year the Americans sank a Jap transport on the way from Singapore. They rescued some British prisoners on board. They had been in the same camp. One of them got in touch with Stringham’s mother when repatriated. It was only just in time, because Mrs Foxe herself died soon after that, as you probably saw.’

‘I hadn’t.’

He seemed to want to make some further confession.

‘As I expect you know, Mrs Foxe was a very extravagant woman. At the end, she found it not only impossible to live in anything like the way she used, but was even quite short of money.’

‘Stringham himself said something about that when I last saw him.’

‘The irony of the situation is that his mother’s South African money was tied up on Stringham,’ said Widmerpool. ‘Owing to bad management, she never got much out of those securities herself, but a lot of South African stock has recently made a very good recovery.’

‘I suppose Flavia will benefit.’

‘No, she doesn’t, as it turns out,’ said Widmerpool. ‘Rather an odd thing happened. Stringham left a will bequeathing all he had to Pam. He’d always been fond of her as a child. He obviously thought it would be just a few personal odds and ends. As it turns out, there could be a good deal more than that. With the right attention, Stringham’s estate in due course might be nursed into something quite respectable.’

He looked rather guilty, not without reason. We abandoned the subject of Stringham.

‘I don’t pretend Pamela’s an easy girl,’ he said. ‘We fairly often have rows — in fact are not on speaking terms for twenty-four hours or more. Never mind. Rows often clear the air. We shall see it through, whatever my position when I leave the army.’

‘You’ll go back to the City, I suppose?’

‘I’m not so sure.’

‘Other plans?’

‘I have come to the conclusion that I enjoy power,’ said Widmerpool. ‘That is something the war has taught me. In this connexion, it has more than once occurred to me that I might like governing…’

He brought his lips together, then parted them. This contortion formed a phrase, but, the words inaudible, its sense escaped me.

‘Governing whom?’

Leaning forward and smiling, Widmerpool repeated the movement of his lips. This time, although he spoke only in a whisper, the two words were intelligible.

‘Black men …’

‘Abroad?’

‘Naturally.’

‘That’s feasible?’

‘My reputation among those who matter could scarcely be higher.’

‘You mean you could easily get an appointment of that sort?’

‘Nothing in life is ever easy, my boy. Not in the sense you use the term. It is one of the mistakes you always make. The point is, we are going to see great changes. As you know, my leanings have always been leftwards. From what I see round me, I have no reason to suppose such sympathies were mistaken. Men like myself will be needed.’

‘If they are to be found.’

He clapped me on the back.

‘No flattery,’ he said. ‘No flattery, but I sometimes wonder whether you’re not right.’

He looked at his watch and sighed.

‘Being engaged accustoms one to unpunctuality,’ he went on in rather another tone, a less exuberant one. ‘I think I’ll have a word with that old stalwart, Lord Perkins, whom I see over there.’

‘I didn’t know till a moment ago that Perkins was married to Peter Templer’s sister.’

‘Oh, yes. So I believe. I don’t see them as having much in common as brothers-in-law, but one never knows. Unfortunate Templer getting killed like that. He was too old for that sort of business, of course. Stringham, too. I fear the war has taken a sad toll of our friends. I notice Donners over there talking to the Portuguese Ambassador. I must say a word to him too.’

In the seven years or so that had passed since I had last seen him, Sir Magnus Donners had grown not so much older in appearance, as less like a human being. He now resembled an animated tailor’s dummy, one designed to recommend second-hand, though immensely discreet, clothes (if the suit he was wearing could be regarded as a sample) adapted to the taste of distinguished men no longer young. Jerky movements, like those of a marionette — perhaps indicating all was not absolutely well with his physical system — added to the impression of an outsize puppet that had somehow escaped from its box and begun to mix with real people, who were momentarily taken in by the extraordinary conviction of its mechanism. The set of Sir Magnus’s mouth, always a trifle uncomfortable to contemplate, had become very slightly less under control, increasing the vaguely warning note the rest of his appearance implied. On the whole he had lost that former air of desperately seeking to seem more ordinary than everyone else round him; or, if he still hoped for that, its consolations had certainly escaped him. A lifetime of weighty negotiation in the worlds of politics and business had left their mark. One would now guess at once he was an unusual person, who, even within his own terms of reference, had lived an unusual life. He looked less parsonic than in the days when he had suggested a clerical headmaster. Perhaps that was because he had not, so to speak, inwardly progressed to the archiepiscopal level in that calling; at least his face had not developed the fleshy, theatrical accentuations so often attendant on the features of the higher grades of the clergy. At some moment, conscious or not, he had probably branched off from this interior priestly strain in his make-up. That would be the logical explanation. Matilda, looking decidedly smart in a dress of blue and black stripes, was standing beside her husband, talking with the Portuguese Ambassador. I had not seen her since their marriage. She caught sight of me and waved, then separated herself from the others and made her way through the ever thickening crowd.

‘Nick.’

‘How are you, Matty?’

‘Don’t you admire my frock? An unsolicited gift from New York.’

‘Too smart for words. I couldn’t imagine where it had come from.’

To be rather older suited her; that or being married to a member of the Cabinet. She had dyed her hair a reddish tint that suited her, too, set off the large green eyes, which were always her most striking feature.

‘Do you ever see anything of Hugh the Drover?’

She used sometimes to call Moreland that while they had been married, usually when not best pleased with him. I told her we had not met since the night of the bomb on the Café de Madrid: that, so far as I knew, Moreland was still touring the country, putting on musical performances of one sort or another, under more or less official control; whatever happened in the war to make mounting such entertainments possible.

‘What’s his health been like?’

‘I don’t know at all.’

‘Extraordinary about Audrey Maclintick. Are they married?’

‘I don’t know that either.’

‘Does she look after him all right?’

‘I think she does.’

Obviously Matilda still took quite a keen interest in Moreland and his condition. That was natural enough. All the same, one felt instinctively that she had entirely given up Moreland’s world, everything to do with it. She had taken on Sir Magnus, lock, stock and barrel. The metaphor made one think of his alleged sexual oddities. Presumably she had taken them on too, though as a former mistress they would be relatively familiar. Perhaps she guessed the train of thought, because she smiled.