The Soldier''s Art

  “Oh, that?” he said. “Pretty hot stuff to have one of those, isn’t it? I really deserved it – we both did – for putting up with that Aldershot course when we first met. It was far more gruelling than anything expected of me later – those lectures on the German army. Christ, I dream about them. Are you at the War House or somewhere?”

  “On leave – going down to the country tomorrow.”

  “Hope you have as much fun on it as I’ve had on mine,” he said.

  He seemed totally unaware that, among members of Priscilla’s family – myself, for example – conventional reservations might exist regarding the part he was at that moment playing; that at least they might not wish to hear rubbed in what an enjoyable time he had been having as her lover. All the same, shamelessness of any kind, perhaps rightly, always exacts a certain respect. Lovell himself was no poor hand at displaying cheek. As usual, a kind of poetic justice was observable in what was happening.

  “I suppose your destination is secret?”

  “Don’t quote me, but there’s been a tropical issue.”

  “Middle East?”

  “That’s my opinion.”

  “Might be the Far East.”

  “You never know. I think the other myself.”

  Until then Moreland had been sitting in silence, apparently unable, or unwilling, to cope with the changed composition of the party at the table. This awkwardness with new arrivals had always been a trait of his, and probably had little or nothing to do with the comparatively unfamiliar note struck by the personality and conversation of Stevens. A couple of middle-aged music critics he had known all his life might have brought about just the same sort of temporary stoppage in Moreland’s conversation. Later, he would recover; talk them off their feet. Now, this change took place, he spoke with sudden animation.

  “My God, I wish I could be transplanted to the Far East without further delay,” he said. “I’d be prepared to be like Brahms and play the piano in a brothel – even play Brahms’s own compositions in a brothel, part of the Requiem would be very suitable – if I could only be somewhere like Saigon or Bangkok, leave London and the blackout behind.”

  “A naval officer I talked to on a bus the other day, just back from Hong Kong, reported life there as bloody amusing,” said Stevens. “But look, Mr. Moreland, there’s something I must tell you before we go any further. Of course, I wanted to see Nicholas again, that was why I came over, but another pretty considerable item was that I had recognised you. I saw a chance of telling you personally what a fan of yours I am. Hearing your Tone Poem Vieux Port performed at Birmingham was one of the high spots of my early life. I was about sixteen, I suppose. You’ve probably forgotten Birmingham ever had a chance of hearing it, or you yourself ever came there. I haven’t. I’ve always wanted to meet you and say how much it thrilled me.”

  This was an unexpected trump card for Stevens to play. Moreland, always modest about his own works, showed permissible signs of pleasure at this sudden hearty praise from such an unexpected source. Music was an entirely new line from Stevens, so far as I knew him, until this moment. Obviously it constituted a weapon in his armoury, perhaps a formidable one. He had certainly opened up operations on an extended front since our weeks together at Aldershot. Mrs. Maclintick broke in at this point.

  “Vieux Port’s the one Maclintick always liked,” she said. “He used to go on about that piece of music until I told him never to mention the thing to me again.”

  “When it was performed at Birmingham, Maclintick was about the only critic who offered any praise,” said Moreland. “Even that old puss Gossage was barely civil. The rest of the critics buried my music completely and me with it. I feel now like Nero meeting in Hades the unknown mourner who strewed flowers on his grave.”

  “You’re not in your grave yet, Moreland,” said Mrs. Maclintick, “nor even in Hades, though you always talk as if you were. I never knew such a morbid man.”

  “I meant the grave of my works rather than my own,” said Moreland. “That’s what it looked like that year at Birmingham. Anyway, not being dead’s no argument against feeling like Nero. Quite the reverse.”

  “Not much hope of a Roman orgy here,” said Stevens. “Even the food’s hard to wallow in, don’t you agree, Mrs. Maclintick?”

  He turned his attention to her, in the manner of his particular brand of narcissism, determined to make a conquest, separate and individual, of everyone sitting at the table.

  “From the way you talk,” he said, “you don’t sound as great a Moreland fan as you should be. Fancy saying you got tired of hearing Vieux Port praised. I’m surprised at you.”

  “I’m a fan all right,” said Mrs. Maclintick. “Not half, I am. You should see him in bed in the morning before he’s shaved. You couldn’t help being a fan then.”

  There was some laughter at that, in which Moreland himself joined loudly, though he would probably have preferred his relationship with Mrs. Maclintick to have been expressed less explicitly in the presence of Priscilla. At the same time, Mrs. Maclintick’s tone had been not without affection of a kind. The reply she had made, whether or not with that intention, hindered Stevens from continuing to discuss Moreland’s music more or less seriously, an object he seemed to have in view. However, this did not prevent him from increasing, if only in a routine manner, his own air of finding Mrs. Maclintick attractive, a policy that was beginning to make a good impression on her. This behaviour, however light-hearted, was perhaps displeasing to Priscilla, no doubt unwilling to admit to herself that, for Stevens, one woman was, at least up to a point, as good as another; anyway when sitting in a restaurant. She may reasonably have felt that no competition should be required of her to keep him to herself. There was, of course, no question of Stevens showing any real interest in Mrs. Maclintick, but, in circumstances prevailing, Priscilla probably regarded all his attention as belonging to herself alone. Whether or not this was the reason, she had become quite silent. Now she interrupted the conversation.

  “Listen …”

  “What?”

  “I believe there’s a blitz on.”

  We all stopped talking for a moment. A faint suggestion of distant gunfire merged into the noise of traffic from the street, the revving up of a lorry’s engine somewhere just outside the back of the building. No one else at the other tables round about showed any sign of noticing indications of a raid.

  “I don’t think so,” said Moreland. “Living in London all the time, one gets rather a good ear for the real thing.”

  “Raids when I’m on leave make me bloody jumpy,” said Stevens. “Going into action you’ve got a whole lot of minor responsibilities to keep your mind off the danger. A gun, too. In an air-raid I feel they’re after me, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  I asked how much hand-to-hand fighting he had been engaged in.

  “The merest trifle.”

  “What was it like?”

  “Not too bad.”

  “Hard on the nerves?”

  “Difficult to describe,” he said. “You feel worked up just before, of course, rather like going to school for the first time or the morning of your first job. Those prickly sensations, but exciting too.”

  “Going back to school?” said Moreland. “You make warfare sound most disturbing. I shouldn’t like that at all. In London, it’s the sheer lack of sleep gets one down. However, there’s been quite a let-up the last day or two. Do you have raids where you are, Nick?”

  “We do.”

  “I thought it was all very peaceful there.”

  “Not always.”

  “I have an impression of acute embarrassment when bombed,” said Moreland. “That rather than gross physical fear – at present anyway. It’s like an appalling display of bad manners one has been forced to witness. The utter failure of a party you are giving – a friend’s total insensitiveness about some delicate matter – suddenly realising you’ve lost your note-case, your passport, your job, your girl. All those
things combined and greatly multiplied.”

  “You didn’t like it the other night when the glass shattered in the bathroom window,” said Mrs. Maclintick. “You were trembling like a leaf, Moreland.”

  “I don’t pretend to be specially brave,” said Moreland, put out by this comment. “Anyway, I’d just run up three flights of stairs and nearly caught it in the face. I was just trying to define the sensation one feels – don’t you agree, Nick, it’s a kind of embarrassment?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Depends on such a lot of different things,” said Stevens. “People you’re with, sleep, food, drink, and so on. This show I was in —”

  He did not finish the sentence, because Priscilla interrupted. She had gone rather white. For a second one saw what she would be like when she was old.

  “For God’s sake don’t talk about the war all the time,” she said. “Can’t we sometimes get away from it for a few seconds?”

  This was quite different from her earlier detached tone. She seemed all at once in complete despair. Stevens, not best pleased at having his story wrecked, mistook the reason, whatever it was, for Priscilla’s sudden agitation. He thought she was afraid, altogether a misjudgment.

  “But it isn’t a blitz, sweetie,” he said. “There’s nothing to get worked up about.”

  Although, in the light of his usual manner of addressing people, he might easily have called Mrs. Maclintick “sweetie,” this was, in fact, the first time he had spoken to Priscilla with that mixture of sharpness and affection that can suddenly reveal an intimate relationship.

  “I know it isn’t a blitz,” she said. “We long ago decided that. I was just finding the conversation boring.”

  “All right. Let’s talk of something else,” he said.

  He spoke indulgently, but without grasping that something had gone badly wrong.

  “I’ve got rather a headache.”

  “Oh, sorry, darling. I thought you had the wind up.”

  “Not in the least.”

  “Why didn’t you say you had a head?”

  “It’s only just started.”

  She was looking furious now, furious and upset. I knew her well enough to be fairly used to Priscilla’s quickly changing moods, but her behaviour was now inexplicable to me, as it obviously was to Stevens. I imagined that, having decided a mistake had been made in allowing him to join our table, she had now settled on a display of bad temper as the best means of getting him away.

  “Well, what would you like to do?” he said. “We’ve got nearly an hour still. Shall I take you somewhere quieter? It is rather airless and noisy in here.”

  He seemed anxious to do anything he could to please her. Up till now they might have been any couple having dinner together, no suggestion of a particularly close bond, Stevens’s ease of manner concealing rather than emphasising what was happening. Now, however, his voice showed a mixture of concern and annoyance that gave more away about the pair of them. This change of tone was certainly due to incomprehension on his part, rather than any exhibitionistic desire to advertise that Priscilla was his mistress; although he might well have been capable of proclaiming that fact in other company.

  “Where?” she said.

  This was not a question. It was a statement to express the truth that no place existed in this neighbourhood where they could go, and be likely to find peace and quiet.

  “We’ll look for somewhere.”

  She fixed her eyes on him. There was silence for a moment.

  “I think I’ll make for home.”

  ‘But aren’t you coming to see me off – you said you were.”

  “I’ve got a splitting headache,” she said. “I’ve suddenly begun to feel perfectly awful, too, for some reason. Simply dreadful.”

  “Not up to coming to the station?”

  “Sorry.”

  She was nearly in tears. Stevens plainly had no idea what had gone wrong. I could not guess either, unless the comparative indifference of his mood – after what had no doubt been a passionate interlude of several days – had upset her. However, although young, and, until recently, probably not much accustomed to girls of Priscilla’s type, he was sufficiently experienced with women in general to have certain settled principles in dealing with situations of this kind. At any rate, he was now quite decisive.

  “I’ll take you back then.”

  Faced with the prospect of abandoning a party where he had begun to be enjoyably the centre of attention, Stevens spoke without a great deal of enthusiasm, at the same time with complete sincerity. The offer was a genuine one, not a polite fiction to be brushed aside on the grounds he had a train to catch. He intended to go through with the proposal. Certainly it was the least he could do, but, at the same time, considering Priscilla’s demeanour and what I knew of his own character, even this minimum was to display magnanimity of a sort. He accepted her sudden decision with scarcely any demur. Priscilla seemed to appreciate that

  “No.”

  She spoke quite firmly.

  “Of course I will.”

  “You’ve got all your stuff here. You can’t lug it back to Kensington.”

  “I’ll pick it up here again after I’ve dropped you.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  “Of course I can.”

  “No …” she said. “I’d much rather you didn’t… I don’t quite know … I just feel suddenly rather odd … I can’t think what it is … I mean I’d rather be alone … Must be alone…”

  The situation had become definitely very painful. Even Mrs. Maclintick was silenced, awed by this interchange. Moreland kept on lighting cigarettes and stubbing them out. It all seemed to take hours of time.

  “I’m going to take you back.”

  “No, really no.”

  “But —”

  “I can take you back, Priscilla,” I said. “Nothing easier.”

  That settled things finally.

  “I don’t want anybody to take me back,” she said. “I’ll say good-bye now.”

  She waved her hand in the direction of Stevens.

  “I’ll write,” she said.

  He muttered something about getting a taxi for her, began to try and move out from where he was sitting, people leaving or arriving at the next table penned him in. Priscilla turned and made quickly for the glass doors. Just before she went through them, she turned and blew a kiss. Then she disappeared from sight. By the time Stevens had extracted himself, she was gone. All the same, he set off across the room to follow her.

  “What a to-do all of a sudden,” said Mrs. Maclintick. “Did she behave like this when you knew her, Moreland?”

  I thought it possible, though not very likely, that Priscilla had gone to look for Lovell at the Madrid. That surmise belonged to a way of life more dramatic than probable, the sort of development that would have greatly appealed to Lovell himself; in principle, I mean, even had he been in no way personally concerned. However, for better or worse, things like that do not often happen. At the same time, even though sudden desire to make it up with her husband might run contrary to expectation, I was no nearer conjecturing why Priscilla had gone off in this manner, leaving Stevens cold. The fact she might be in love with him was no reason to prevent a sudden display of capricious temper, brought on, likely as not, by the many stresses of the situation. Stevens himself was no doubt cynical enough in the way he was taking the affair, although even that was uncertain, since Lovell had supposed marriage could be in question. Lovell might be right. Stevens’s false step, so far as Priscilla was concerned, seemed to be marked by the moment he had suggested her fear about the supposititious air-raid warning. That had certainly made her angry. Even allowing for unexpected nervous reactions in wartime, it was much more likely she heard an air-raid warning – where none existed – because of her highly strung state, rather than from physical fear. Stevens had shown less than his usual grasp in suggesting such a thing. Possibly this nervous state stemmed from some minor row; possibly
Priscilla’s poorish form earlier in the evening suggested that she was beginning to tire of Stevens, or feared he might be tiring of her. On the other hand, the headache, the thought of her lover’s departure, could equally have upset her; while the presence of the rest of the party at the table, the news that her husband was in London, all helped to discompose her. Reasons for her behaviour were as hard to estimate as that for giving herself to Stevens in the first instance. If she merely wanted amusement, while Lovell’s physical presence was removed by forces over which he had no control, why make all this trouble about it, why not keep things quiet? Lovell, at worst, appeared a husband preferable to many. Even if less indefatigably lively than Stevens, he was not without his own brand of energy. Was “trouble,” in fact, what Priscilla required? Was her need – the need of certain women – to make men unhappy? There was something of the kind in her face. Perhaps she was simply tormenting Stevens now for a change; so to speak, varying the treatment. If so, she might have her work cut out to disturb him in the way she was disturbing Lovell; had formerly disturbed Moreland. The fact that he was able to look after himself pretty well in that particular sphere was implicit in the manner Stevens made his way back across the room. He looked politely worried, not at all shattered.

  “Did she get a taxi?”

  “She must have done. She’d disappeared into the blackout by the time I got to the door on the street. There were several cabs driving away at that moment.”

  “She did take on,” said Mrs. Maclintick.

  “It’s an awful business,” said Stevens. “The point is I’m so immobile myself at this moment. There’s a lot of junk in the cloakroom here, a valise, God knows what else – odds and ends they wanted me to get for the Mess – all of which I’ve got to hump to the station before long.”

  He looked at his watch; then sat down again at the table.

  “Let’s have some more to drink,” he said, “that’s if we can get it.”

  For a short time he continued to show some appearance of being worried about Priscilla, expressing anxiety, asserting she had seemed perfectly all right earlier that evening. He reproached himself for not being able to do more to help her get home, wanting our agreement that there was anyway little or nothing he could have done. After repeating these things several times, he showed himself finally prepared to accept the fact that what had happened was all in the day’s work where women were concerned.