Anthony Powell - Soldier's Art

Once Lovell’s way of looking at the world was allowed, he could be subtle about ways and means. With the additional advantages of good looks and plenty of push, these methods were bringing fair success in his chosen career by the time war broke out. In marrying Priscilla, he had not, it is true, consummated a formerly voiced design to “find a rich wife”; but then that project had never, in fact, assumed the smallest practical shape. Its verbal expression merely illustrated another facet of Lovell’s romanticism — in this case, romanticism about money. He had, in any case, taken a keen interest in Priscilla even back in the days when he and I had been working on film scripts together (none of which ever appeared on any screen), so there was no surprise when the two of them married. At first he lost jobs and they were hard up. Priscilla, who had some taste for living dangerously, never seemed to mind these lean stretches. Lovell himself used to present an equally unruffled surface to the world where shortage of money was concerned, though underneath he certainly felt guilty regarding lack of it. He looked upon lack of money as a failing in himself; or, for that matter, in anyone else. From time to time, though without any strong force behind it, his romanticism would take moral or intellectual turns too. He would indulge, for instance, in fits of condemning material things and all who pursued them. These moods were sometimes accompanied by reading potted philosophies: the Wisdom of the East in one volume, Marx Without Tears, the Treasury of Great Thought. Like everyone else of his kind he was writing a play, an undertaking that progressed never further than the opening pages of the First Act.

“I never get time to settle down to serious writing,” he used to say, thereby making what almost amounted to a legal declaration in defining his own inclusion within an easily recognisable category of non-starting literary apprenticeship.

These were some of the thoughts about Lovell that passed through my head while I sat on a bench in the hall waiting to see Major Finn. The address in Westminster to which I had been told to report turned out to be a large house converted to the use of military headquarters. After a while a Free French corporal, his arm in a sling, joined me on the bench; then two members of the Free French women’s service. Soon the three of them began an argument together in their own language. I re-read Moreland’s postcard — a portrait of Wagner in a kind of tam-o’-shanter — confirming our dinner that night. Enigmatic in tone, its wording indefinably lacked the liveliness of manner usual in this, Moreland’s habitual mode of communication.

We had not met since the first week of the war, soon after Matilda had left him. Matilda’s subsequent marriage to Sir Magnus Donners had been effected with an avoidance of publicity remarkable even at a time when all sorts of changes, public and private, many of these revolutionary enough, were being quietly brought about. Muting the news of the ceremony was no doubt to some extent attributable to controls Sir Magnus found himself in a position to exercise in certain fields. The wedding of the divorced wife of a musician, well known even if not particularly prosperous, to a member of the Government rated in general more attention, even allowing for the paper shortage, than the few scattered paragraphs that appeared at the time. People said the break-up of Moreland’s marriage had at first so much disturbed him that he seemed likely to go to pieces entirely, giving himself up increasingly to drink, while living as best he could from one day to the next. However, a paradox of that moment in the war was an excess, rather than deficiency, of musical employment; so that, in fact, Moreland found himself immersed in work of one sort or another, which, even if not very inspiring professionally, kept him alive and busy. That, at any rate, was what I had heard. Inevitably we had lost touch with each other since I had been in the army. Friendship, popularly represented as something simple and straightforward — in contrast with love — is perhaps no less complicated, requiring equally mysterious nourishment; like love, too, bearing also within its embryo inherent seeds of dissolution, something more fundamentally destructive, perhaps, than the mere passing of time, the all-obliterating march of events which had, for example, come between Stringham and myself.

These rather sombre speculations were interrupted by a door opening nearby. A Free French officer in a képi appeared. Middle-aged, with spectacles, rather red in the face, he was followed from the room by a youngish, capless captain, wearing Intelligence Corps badges.

“ Et maintenant, une dernière chose, mon Capitaine ,” said the Frenchman, “ maintenant que nous avons terminé avec I’affaire Szymanski. Le Colonel s’est arrangé avec certains membres du Commandement pour que quelques jeunes officiers soient placés dans le Génie. Il espère que vous n’y verrez pas d’inconvenient .”

“ Vous n’avez pas utilisé la procédure habituelle, Lieutenant ?”

“ Mon Capitaine, le Colonel Michelet a pensé que pour une pareille broutille on pouvait se dispenser des voies hierachiques .”

“ Nous aurons des ennuis .”

“ Le Colonel Michelet est convaincu qu’ils seront négligeables .”

“ Ca m’étonnerait .”

“ Vous croyez vraiment ?”

“ J’en suis sûr. II nous jaut immédiatement une liste de ces noms .”

“ Très bien, mon Capitaine, vous les aurez .”

The English officer shook his head to express horror at what had been contemplated. They both laughed a lot.

“ Au revoir, Lieutenant .”

“ Au revoir, mon Capitaine .”

The Frenchman retired. The captain turned to me.

“Jenkins?”

“Yes.”

“Finn told me about you. Come in here, will you.”

I followed into his room, and sat opposite while he turned the pages of a file.

“What have you been doing since you joined the army?”

Reduced to narrative form, my military career up to date did not sound particularly impressive. However, the captain seemed satisfied. He nodded from time to time. His manner was friendly, more like the good-humoured approach of my old Battalion than the unforthcoming demeanour of most of the officers at Div. H.Q. The story came to an end.

“I see — how old are you?”

I revealed my age. He looked surprised that anyone could be so old.

“And what do you do in civilian life?”

I indicated literary activities.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “I believe I read one.”

However, he showed none of General Liddament’s keen merest in the art of the novel, made no effort to explore further this aspect of my life.

“What about French?”

It seemed simplest to furnish the same descriptive phrases offered to the General.

“I can read a book as a rule, but get held up with slang or something like the technical descriptions of Balzac.”

The captain laughed.

“Well,” he said, “suppose we come back to that later. Are you married?”

“Yes.”

“Children?”

“One.”

“Prepared to go abroad?”

“Of course.”

“Sure?”

“Yes.”

He seemed almost surprised at this rather minimal acceptance of military obligation.

“We’re looking for liaison officers with the Free French,” he said. “At battalion level. They’re not entirely easy to find. Speaking another language tolerably well seems so often to go with unsatisfactory habits.”

The captain smiled sadly, a little archly, across the desk at me.

“Whilst our Allies expect nothing less than one hundred per cent service,” he said, “and quite right too.”