Anthony Powell: The Military Philosophers

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

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

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

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

‘Good morning, Curtis.’

‘Good morning, sir.’

‘How are things?’

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

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

‘Oh, Lord.’

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

‘Impossible.’

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

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

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

‘What were the Colonel’s?’

‘He’s in one of his flaps.’

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

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

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

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

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

‘Borrit…’

‘Yes, Pennistone?’

‘You’re not making for the car?’

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

‘Wait a moment…’ said Pennistone.

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

Pennistone turned to me again.

‘Where was I?’

‘Q (Ops.).’

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

‘That’s the key name?’

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

‘What am I to say to Q (Ops.)?’

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

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

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