‘You said there wasn’t going to be a war after “Munich”.’
‘You thought there was, so you were even more foolish.’
There was truth in that.
‘I only want to know the best thing to do,’ I said.
‘You misjudged things, didn’t you?’
‘I did.’
‘No vacancies now.’
‘How can I put that right?’
‘The eldest of our last intake of commissioned subalterns was twenty-one. The whole lot of them had done at least eighteen months in the ranks – at least.’
‘Even so, the army will have to expand in due course.’
‘Officers will be drawn from the younger fellows coming up.’
‘You think there is nothing for me to do at present?’
‘You could enlist in the ranks.’
‘But the object of joining the Reserve – being accepted for it – was to be dealt with immediately as a potential officer.’
‘Then I can’t help you.’
‘Well, thanks for seeing me.’
‘I will keep an eye out for you,’ said Widmerpool, rather less severely. ‘As a matter of fact, I may be in a position well placed for doing so before many moons have waned.’
‘Why?’
‘I am probably to be sent to the Staff College.’
‘Oh?’
‘Again, for security reasons, that should not be mentioned beyond these four walls.’
He began to gather up his multitudinous papers, stowing some away in a safe, transferring others to a brief-case.
‘I shall be coming back to this office again after dinner,’ he said. ‘Lucky if I get away before midnight. It’s all got to be cleared up somehow, if the war is to be won. I gave my word to the Brigade-Major. He’s a very sharp fellow called Farebrother. City acquaintance of mine.’
‘Sunny Farebrother?’
‘Have you met him?’
‘Years ago.’
Widmerpool gave a semi-circular movement of his arm, as if to convey the crushing responsibility his promise to the Brigade-Major comprehended. He locked the safe. Putting the key in his trouser-pocket after attaching it to a chain hanging from his braces, he spoke again, this time in an entirely changed tone.
‘Nicholas,’ he said, ‘I am going to ask you to do something.’
‘Yes?’
‘Let me explain very briefly. As you know, my mother lives in a cottage not very far from Stourwater. We call it a cottage, it is really a little house. She has made it very exquisite.’
‘I remember your telling me.’
‘Since she lives by herself, there has been pressure – rather severe pressure – applied to her by the authorities to have evacuees there.’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘Now I do not wish my lady mother to be plagued by evacuees.’
That seemed a reasonable enough sentiment. Nobody wanted evacuees, even if they accepted the fact that evacuees must be endured. Why should they? I could not see, however, in Mrs Widmerpool’s case, that I could help in preventing such a situation from arising. I realised at the same time that Widmerpool had suddenly effected in himself one of those drastic changes of policy in which, for example, from acting an all-powerful tyrant, he would suddenly become a humble suppliant. I understood very clearly that something was required of me, but could not guess what I was expected to do. Some persons, knowing that they were later going to ask a favour, would have made themselves more agreeable when a favour was being asked of them. That was not Widmerpool’s way. I almost admired him for making so little effort to conceal his lack of interest in my own affairs, while waiting his time to demand something of myself.
‘The point is this,’ he said, ‘up to date, my mother has had an old friend – Miss Janet Walpole-Wilson, sister of that ineffective diplomatist, Sir Gavin – staying with her, so the question of evacuees, until now, has not arisen. Now Miss Walpole-Wilson’s work with the Women’s Voluntary Service takes her elsewhere. The danger of evacuees is acute.’
I thought how Miss Janet Walpole-Wilson’s ordinary clothes must have merged imperceptibly into the uniform of her service. It was as if she had been preparing all her life for that particular dress.
‘But how can I help?’
‘Some relation of Lady Molly Jeavons – a relative of her husband’s, to be more precise – wants accommodation in the country. A place not too far from London. Miss Walpole-Wilson heard about this herself. She told us.’
‘Why not ring up the Jeavonses?’
‘I have done so. In fact, I am meeting my mother at Lady Molly’s tonight.’
Widmerpool was still oppressed by some unsolved problem, which he found difficulty about putting into words. He cleared his throat, swallowed several times.
‘I wondered whether you would come along to the Jeavonses tonight,’ he said. ‘It might be easier.’
‘What might?’
Widmerpool went red below his temples, under the line made by his spectacles. He began to sweat in spite of the low temperature of the room.
‘You remember that rather unfortunate business when I was engaged to Mildred Haycock?’
‘Yes.’
‘I haven’t really seen anything of the Jeavonses since then.’
*You came to the party Molly gave for Isobel just before we were married.’
‘I know,’ said Widmerpool, ‘but there were quite a lot of people there then. It was an occasion. It’s rather different going there tonight to discuss something like my mother’s cottage. Lady Molly has never seen my mother.’
‘I am sure it will be all right. Molly loves making arrangements.’
‘All the same, I feel certain embarrassments.’
‘No need to with the Jeavonses.’
‘I thought that, since Molly Jeavons is an aunt of your wife’s, things might be easier if you were to accompany me. Will you do that?’
‘All right.’
‘You will come?’
‘Yes, if you wish.’
I had not visited the Jeavonses for some little time – not since Isobel had gone to stay with Frederica – so that I was quite glad to make this, as it were, an excuse for calling on them. Isobel would certainly enjoy news of the Jeavons household.
‘Very well, then,’ said Widmerpool, now returning at once to his former peremptory tone, ‘we’ll move off forthwith. It is five minutes to the bus. Come along. Party, quick march.’
He gave some final instructions in the adjoining room to a gloomy corporal sitting before a typewriter, surrounded, like Widmerpool himself, with huge stacks of documents. We went out into the street, where the afternoon light was beginning to fade. Widmerpool, his leather-bound stick caught tight beneath his armpit, marched along beside me, tramp-tramp-tramp, eventually falling into step, since I had not taken my pace from his.
‘I don’t know what Jeavons’s relative will be like,’ he said. ‘I don’t feel absolutely confident she will be the sort my mother will like.’
I felt more apprehension for the person who had to share a cottage with Mrs Widmerpool.
‘I saw Bob Duport just before war broke out.’
I said that partly to see what Widmerpool would answer, partly because I thought he had been unhelpful about the army, tiresome about the Jeavonses. I hoped the information would displease him. The surmise was correct. He stiffened, strutting now so fiercely that he could almost be said to have broken into the goosestep.
‘Did you? Where?’
‘He was staying in a hotel where an uncle of mine died. I had to see about the funeral and ran across Duport there.’
‘Oh.’
‘I hadn’t seen him for years.’
‘He is a bad mannered fellow, Duport. Ungrateful, too.’
‘What is he ungrateful about?’
‘I got him a job in Turkey. You may remember we were talking about Duport’s affairs at Stourwater, when I saw you and your wife there about a year or more ago-just after “Munic
h”.’
‘He’d recently come back from Turkey when we met.’
‘He had been working for me there.’
‘So he said.’
‘I had to deal rather summarily with Duport in the end,’ said Widmerpool. ‘He showed no grasp of the international situation. He is insolent, too. So he mentioned my name?’
‘He did.’
‘Not very favourably, I expect.’
‘Not very.’
‘I don’t know what will happen to Duport,’ said Widmerpool. ‘He must be in a difficult position financially, owing to his reckless conduct. However, anybody can earn three pounds a week these days as an air-raid warden. Even Jeavons does. So Duport will not starve.’
He sounded rather sorry that Duport was not threatened with that fate.
‘He thought Sir Magnus Donners might find him something.’
‘Not if I know it.’
‘Do you think Donners will be asked to join the Government, if there is a Cabinet reshuffle?’
‘The papers speak of him as likely for office,’ said Widmerpool, not without condescension. ‘In some ways Magnus would make an excellent minister in time of war. In others, I am not so sure. He has certain undesirable traits for a public man in modern days. As you probably know, people speak of – well, mistresses. I am no prude. Let a man lead his own life, say I – but, if he is a public man, let him be careful. More than these allegedly bad morals, I object in Magnus to something you would never guess if you met him casually. I mean a kind of hidden frivolity. Now, what a lamentable scene that was when I looked in on Stourwater when you were there. Suppose some journalist had got hold of it.’
Widmerpool was about to enlarge on the Masque of the Seven Deadly Sins as played in the Stourwater dining-room, when his attention – and my own – was caught by a small crowd of people loitering in the half-light at the corner of a side street. Some sort of a meeting was in progress. From the traditional soapbox, a haggard middle-aged man in spectacles and a cloth cap was addressing fifteen or twenty persons, including several children. The group was apathetic enough, except for the children, who were playing a game that involved swinging their gas-mask cases at each other by the string, then running quickly away. Two women in trousers were hawking a newspaper or pamphlet. Widmerpool and I paused. The orator, his face gnarled and blotched by a lifetime of haranguing crowds out of doors in all weathers, seemed to be coming to the end of his discourse. He used that peculiarly unctuous, coaxing, almost beseeching manner of address adopted by some political speakers, reminding me a little of my brother-in-law, Roddy Cutts, whose voice would sometimes take on that same pleading note when he made a public appeal for a cause in which he was interested.
‘… why didn’t the so-called British Government of the day clinch the Anglo-Soviet alliance when they had the chance … get something done … Comrade Stalin’s invitation to a round-table conference at Bucharest … consistent moral policy … effective forces of socialism … necessary new alignments … USSR prestige first and foremost …’
The speech came to an end, the listeners demonstrating neither approval nor the reverse. The haggard man stepped down from the soapbox, wiped his spectacles, loosened the peak of his cap from his forehead, lit a cigarette. The children’s gas-mask game reached a pitch of frenzied intensity, so that in their scamperings one of the women selling newspapers almost had the packet knocked from her hand. Widmerpool turned to me. He was about to comment, when our attention was engaged by a new speaker. This was the second newspaper-selling woman, who, having now handed over her papers to the man with the cloth cap, herself jumped on to the soapbox. In a harsh clear voice she opened a tremendous tirade, quite different in approach from the quieter, more reasoned appeal of the spectacled man.
‘… blooming bloody hypocrisy … anybody wants this war except a few crackpots … see a chance of seizing world power and grinding the last miserable halfpence from the frozen fingers of stricken mankind … lot of Fascist, terroristic, anti-semitic, war-mongering, exploiting White Guards and traitors to the masses …’
It was Gypsy Jones. I had not set eyes on her since the days when we used to meet in Mr Deacon’s antique shop. She had lost a front tooth, otherwise did not look greatly changed from what she had been in the Mr Deacon period: older, harder, angrier, further than ever from her last bath, but essentially the same. Her hair was still cut short like a boy’s, her fists clenched, her legs set wide apart. Over her trousers she wore a man’s overcoat, far from new, the aggressive inelegance of the ensemble expressing to perfection her own revolutionary, destructive state of mind. In the old days she had worked for Howard Craggs at the Vox Populi Press, was said to be his mistress. Craggs had moved a long way since the Vox Populi Press. Lately, he had been appointed to a high post in the Ministry of Information. I recalled the night when Gypsy Jones had been dressed as Eve in order to accompany Craggs, as Adam, to the Merry Thought fancy-dress party: the encounter we had had at the back of Mr Deacon’s shop. There had been a certain grubby charm about her. I felt no regrets. Love had played no part. There was nothing painful to recall. Then Widmerpool had fallen for her, had pursued her, had paid for her ‘operation’. Such things seemed like another incarnation.
‘… not appealing to a lot of half-baked Bloomsbury intellectuals and Hampstead ideologues … bourgeois scabs and parlour-socialist nancy boys … scum of weak-kneed Trotskyite flunkeys … betraying the workers and anyone else it suits their filthy bloody blackleg book to betray … I’m talking about politics – socialism – reality – adaptability …’
I felt my arm caught tightly. It was Widmerpool. I turned towards him. He had gone quite pale. His thick lips were trembling a little. The sight of Gypsy Jones, rousing vague memories in myself, had caused him to react far more violently. To Widmerpool, she was not the mere handmaid of memory, she was a spectre of horror, the ghastly reminder of failure, misery, degradation. He dragged at my arm.
‘For God’s sake, come away,’ he said.
We continued our course down the street, over which dusk was falling, Widmerpool walking at a much sharper pace, but without any of his former bravura, the stick now gripped in his hand as if to ward off actual physical attack.
‘You realised who it was?’ he said, as we hurried along.
‘Of course.’
‘How soon did you see her?’
‘Only after she had begun to speak.’
‘Me, too. What an escape. It was a near thing.’
‘What was?’
‘She might have noticed me.’
‘Would that have mattered?’
Widmerpool stopped dead.
‘What do you mean?’ he asked abruptly.
‘Supposing she had seen us, even said something to us?’
‘I didn’t say us, I said me.’
‘You then?’
‘Of course it would have mattered. It would have been disastrous.’
‘Why?’
‘How can you ask such a question? There are all kind of reasons why it should matter. You know something of my past with that woman. Can’t you understand how painful the sight of her is to me? Besides, you heard what she was shouting. She is a Communist. Did you not understand what the words meant? Your denseness is unbelievable. She is attacking the prosecution of the war. Haven’t you grasped that Russia is now Hitler’s ally? Suppose that woman had suddenly addressed herself to me. That would have been a fine thing. You don’t realise what it means to be in an official position. Let me explain. I am not only an army officer, I am a man with heavy responsibilities. I have been left in charge of a headquarters. I have access to all kind of secret documents. You would not guess the nature of some of them. What if she had been seen speaking to me? Have you ever heard of M.I.5? What if its agents had seen us conversing? There may well have been one of them among the crowd. Such meetings are quite rightly kept under supervision by the contra-espionage department.’
I could think of no answer. Although
Widmerpool’s view of himself as a man handling weighty state secrets was beyond belief in its absurdity, I felt at the same time that I had myself shown lack of feeling in treating so lightly his former love for Gypsy Jones. Love is at once always absurd and never absurd; the more grotesque its form, the more love itself confers a certain dignity on the circumstances of those it torments. No doubt Widmerpool had been through a searing experience with Gypsy Jones, an experience even now by no means forgotten. That could be the only explanation of such an outburst. I had rarely seen him so full of indignation. He had paused for breath. Now, his reproaches began again.
‘You come and ask me for advice about getting into the army, Nicholas,’ he said, ‘and because I spare the time to talk of such things – make time, when my duty lies by rights elsewhere – you think I have nothing more serious to occupy me than your own trivial problems. That is not the case. The General Staff of the Wehrmacht would be only too happy to possess even a tithe of the information I locked away before we quitted the Orderly Room.’
‘I don’t doubt it. I realise you are busy. It was kind of you to see me.’
Widmerpool was a little placated. Perhaps he also feared that, if he went too far in his reproofs, I might excuse myself from accompanying him to the Jeavonses’. He tapped me with his stick.
‘Don’t worry further about your remarks,’ he said. ‘The sight of that woman upset me, especially behaving as she was. Did you hear her language? Besides, I have been overworking as usual. You feel the strain at unexpected moments.’
He made no further comment. We found a bus, which transported us in due course to the neighbourhood of the Jeavons house in South Kensington. The bell was not answered for a long time. We waited outside the faintly Dutch edifice with its over ornamented dark red brick facade.
‘I expect Mother has preceded us,’ said Widmerpool.
He was better now, though still not wholly recovered from the sight of Gypsy Jones. The door was opened at last by Jeavons himself. His appearance took me by surprise. Instead of the usual ancient grey suit, he was wearing a blue one-piece overall and a beret. Some people – as General Conyers had remarked – considered Jeavons a bore. Such critics had a case, undeniably, when he was sunk in one of his impenetrable silences, or, worse still, was trying, in a momentary burst of energy, to make some money by selling one of those commodities generically described by Chips Lovell as ‘an automatic boot-jack or infallible cure for the common cold’. To find Jeavons in the latter state was rare, the former, fairly frequent. Even apart from his war wound, Jeavons was not at all fitted for commercial employments. He had hardly done a stroke of work since marrying Molly. His wife did not mind that. Indeed, she may have preferred Jeavons to be dependent on her. Whatever some of her relations may have thought at the time of her marriage, it had turned out a success – allowing for the occasional ‘night out’ on Jeavons’s part, like the one when he had taken me to Dicky Umfraville’s night-club.