Anthony Powell - Soldier's Art

“Well…” he said.

I was silent.

“Won’t do, I’m afraid.”

“No, sir?”

“Not as your written French stands.”

He took up a pencil and tapped it on the desk.

“We’d have liked to have you…”

“Yes, sir.”

“Masham agrees.”

“Masham” I took to be the I. Corps captain.

“But this translation …”

He spoke for a second as if I might have intended a deliberate insult to himself and his uniform by the botch I had made of it, but that he was prepared magnanimously to overlook that. Then, as if regretting what might have appeared momentary unkindness, in spite of my behaviour, he rose and shook hands again, gazing into the middle distance of the room. The vision to be seen there was certainly one of total failure.

“… not sufficiently accurate.”

“No, sir.”

“You understand me?”

“Of course, sir.”

“A pity.”

We stared at each other.

“Otherwise I think you would have done us well.”

Major Finn paused. He appeared to consider this hypothesis for a long time. There did not seem much more to be said. I hoped the interview would end as quickly as possible.

“Perfectly suitable …” he repeated.

His voice was far away now. There was another long pause. Then a thought struck him. His face lighted up.

“Perhaps it’s only written French you’re shaky in.”

He wrinkled his broad, ivory-coloured forehead.

“Now let us postulate the 9th Regiment of Colonial Infantry are on the point of mutiny,” he said. “They may be prepared to abandon Vichy and come over to the Allies. How would you harangue them?”

“In French, sir?”

“Yes, in French.”

He spoke eagerly, as if he expected something enjoyably dramatic.

“I’m afraid I should have to fall back on English, sir.”

His face fell again.

“I feared that,” he said.

Failure was certainly total. I had been given a second chance, had equally bogged it. Major Finn stroked the enormous bumpy contours of his nose.

“Look here,” he said, “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll make a note of your name.”

“Yes, sir?”

“There may be certain changes taking place in the near future. Not here, elsewhere. But don’t count on it. That’s best I can say. I don’t question anything General Liddament suggests. It’s just the language.”

“Thank you, sir.”

He smiled.

“You’re on leave, aren’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Wouldn’t mind some leave myself/’

“No, sir?”

“And my respects to General Liddament.”

“I’ll convey them, sir.”

“A great man.”

I made a suitable face and left the room, disappointed and furious with myself. The fact that such an eventuality was in some degree to be expected made things no better. To have anyone in the army — let alone a general — show interest in your individual career is a rare enough experience. To fall at the language hurdle — just the field in which someone like myself, anyway in the eyes of General Liddament, might be expected to show reasonable proficiency — seemed to let down the General too. There would be little hope of his soliciting further candidatures in my interest. Why should he? I wondered why I had never taken the trouble in the past to learn French properly; as a boy, for instance, staying with the Leroys at La Grenadière, or in the course of innumerable other opportunities. At the same time, I was aware that a liaison officer at battalion level would be required to show considerable fluency. Perhaps it was just Fate. As for having a note made of my name, that was to be regarded as a polite formula on the part of Major Finn — an unusually likeable man — an echo of civilian courtesies from someone who took a pride in possessing good manners as well as a V.C.; a gesture to be totally disregarded for all practical purposes.

I returned to the captain’s room. Pennistone was still there. He was about to leave, standing up, wearing his cap.

“Well then,” he was saying. “On the first of next month Szymanski ceases to serve under the Free French authority, and comes under the command of the Polish Forces in Great Britain. That’s settled at last.”

Masham, the I. Corps captain, turned to me. I explained deal was off. He knew, of course, already.

“Sorry,” he said. “Thanks for looking in. I hear you and David know each other.”

After taking leave of him, Pennistone and I went out together into the street. He asked what had happened. I outlined the interview with Major Finn. Pennistone listened with attention.;

“Finn seems to have been well disposed towards you,” he said.

“I liked him — what’s his story?”

“Some fantastic episode in the first war, when he got his V.C. After coming out of the army, he decided to go into the cosmetics business — scent, face powder, things like that, the last trade you’d connect him with. He talks very accurate French with the most outlandish accent you ever heard. He’s been a great success with the Free French — liked by de Gaulle, which is not everyone’s luck.”

“Surprising he’s not got higher rank.”

“Finn could have become a colonel half-a-dozen times over since rejoining the army,” said Pennistone. “He always says he prefers not to have too much responsibility. He has his V.C., which always entails respect — and which he loves talking about. However, I think he may be tempted at last to accept higher rank.”

“To what?”

“Very much in the air at the moment. All I can say is, you may be more likely to hear from him than you think.”

“Does he make money at his cosmetics?”

“Enough to keep a wife and daughter hidden away somewhere.”

“Why are they hidden away?”

“I don’t know,” said Pennistone, laughing. “They just are. There are all kinds of things about Finn that are not explained. Keeping them hidden away is part of the Finn system. When I knew him in Paris, I soon found he had a secretive side.”

“You knew him before the war?”

“I came across him, oddly enough, when I was in textiles, working over there.”

‘Textiles are your job?”

“I got out in the end.”

“Into what?”

Pennistone laughed again, as if that were an absurd question to ask.

“Oh, nothing much really,” he said. “I travel about a lot — or used to before the war. I think I told you, when we last met, that I’m trying to write something about Descartes.”

All this suggested — as it turned out rightly — that Pennistone, as well as Finn, had his secretive side. When I came to know him better, I found what mattered to Pennistone was what went on in his head. He could rarely tell you what he had done in the past, or proposed to do in the future, beyond giving a bare statement of places he had visited or wanted to visit, books he had read or wanted to read. On the other hand, he was able to describe pretty lucidly what he had thought — philosophically speaking — at any given period of his life. While other people lived for money, power, women, the arts, domesticity, Pennistone liked merely thinking about things, arranging his mind. Nothing else ever seemed to matter to him. It was the aim Stringham had announced now as his own, though Pennistone was a very different sort of person from Stringham, and better equipped for perfecting the process. I only found out these things about him at a later stage.

“Give me the essential details regarding yourself,” Pennistone said. “Unit, army number, that sort of thing — just in case anything should crop up where I myself might be of use.

I wrote it all down. We parted company, agreeing that Nietzschean Eternal Recurrences must bring us together soon again.