The position of the King of the Belgians was delicate. Formally accepted as monarch of their country by the Belgian Government in exile, the royal portrait hanging in Kucherman’s office, King Leopold, rightly or wrongly, was not, officially speaking, very well looked on by ourselves. His circumstances had been made no easier by a second marriage disapproved by many of his subjects.
‘Have a look at this Belgian file before you bring it up,’ said Finn. ‘Do a note on it. Then we can discuss it after we’ve settled the Czech medicos. God, this Polish business.’
I went across to the Ministry of Defence right away. Finn had given the name of a lieutenant-colonel from whom the papers were to be acquired. After some search in the Secretariat, this officer was eventually traced in Widmerpool’s room. I arrived there a few minutes before one o’clock, and the morning meeting had begun to adjourn. If they were the same committee as that I had once myself attended, the individual members had all changed, though no doubt they represented the same ministries. The only one known to me was a figure remembered from early London days, Tompsitt, a Foreign Office protégé of Sir Gavin Walpole-Wilson’s. Sir Gavin himself had died the previous year. Obituaries, inevitably short in wartime, had none of them mentioned the South American misjudgment that had led to his retirement. His hopes in Tompsitt, untidy as ever and no less pleased with himself, seemed to have been realized, this job being presumably a respectable one for his age, if not particularly glamorous. Widmerpool, again in a good humour, made a facetious gesture of surprise on seeing me.
‘Nicholas? Good gracious me. What is it you want, do you say? Belgian papers? Do you know anything about this, Simon? You do? Then we must let him have them.’
Someone was sent to find the papers.
‘We finished early this morning,’ said Widmerpool. ‘An unheard of thing for us to do. I’m going to allow myself the luxury of lunching outside this building for once. So you’re looking after the Belgians now, are you, Nicholas? I thought it was the Poles.’
‘I’ve moved over.’
‘You must be glad.’
‘There were interesting sides.’
‘Just at this moment, I mean. You are well out of the Poles. They are rocking the boat in the most deplorable manner. Our own relations with the USSR are never exactly easy – then for the Poles to behave as they have done.’
The attention of the other civilian, who, with Tompsitt, had been attending the meeting, was caught by Widmerpool’s reproachful tone. He looked a rather younger version of our former housemaster, Le Bas, distinctly clerical, a thin severe overworked curate or schoolmaster.
‘One would really have thought someone at the top of the Polish set-up would have grasped this is not the time to make trouble,’ he said. ‘Your people must be pretty fed up, aren’t they, Tomp?’
Tompsitt shook back his unbrushed hair.
‘Fed to the teeth,’ he said. ‘Probably put everything back to scratch.’
‘All the same,’ said the sailor, ‘it looks a bit as if the Russkis did it.’
He was a heavily built man, with that totally anonymous personality achieved by certain naval officers, sometimes concealing unexpected abilities.
‘Not to be ruled out,’ said Tompsitt.
‘More information’s required.’
‘Doesn’t make it any better to fuss at this moment,’ said the curate-schoolmaster.
He stared angrily through his spectacles, his cheeks contorted. The soldier, youngish with a slight stutter, who looked like a Regular, shook his papers together and put them into a briefcase.
‘It’s quite a crowd,’ he said.
‘What are the actual figures?’ asked the sailor.
‘Been put as high as nine or ten thousand,’ said the airman.
He was a solid-looking middle-aged man with a lot of decorations, who had not spoken until then.
‘How would that compare with our own pre-war army establishment?’ asked the sailor. ‘Let me see, about …’
‘Say every third officer,’ said the soldier. ‘Quite a crowd, as I remarked. Say every third officer in our pre-war army.’
‘But it’s not pre-war,’ said Tompsitt. ‘It’s war.’
‘That’s the point,’ said Widmerpool. ‘It’s war. Just because these deaths are very upsetting to the Poles themselves – naturally enough, harrowing, tragic, there isn’t a word for it, I don’t want to underrate that for a moment – but just because of that, it’s no reason to undermine the fabric of our alliances against the Axis. Quarrels among the Allies themselves are not going to defeat the enemy.’
‘Even so, you can’t exactly blame them for making enquiries through the International Red Cross,’ the soldier insisted.
He began to move towards the door.
‘But I do blame them,’ said Tompsitt. ‘I blame them a great deal. Their people did not act at all circumspectly. The Russians were bound to behave as they did under the circumstances.’
‘Certainly hard to see what explanation they could give, if they did do it,’ said the airman. ‘ “Look here, old boy, we’ve shot these fellows of yours by accident” … Of course, it may turn out the Germans did it after all. They’re perfectly capable of it.’
Everyone agreed that fact was undeniable.
‘There’s quite a chance the Germans did,’ said the curate-schoolmaster hopefully.
‘In any case,’ said Widmerpool, ‘whatever materializes, even if it does transpire – which I sincerely trust it will not – that the Russians behaved in such a very regrettable manner, how can this country possibly raise official objection, in the interests of a few thousand Polish exiles, who, however worthy their cause, cannot properly handle their diplomatic relations, even with fellow Slavs? It must be confessed also that the Poles themselves are in a position to offer only a very modest contribution, when it comes to the question of manpower. How, as I say, can we approach our second most powerful Ally about something which, if a fact, cannot be put right, and is almost certainly, from what one knows of them, the consequence of administrative inadequacy, rather than wilful indifference to human life and the dictates of compassion? What we have to do is not to waste time and energy in considering the relative injustices war brings in its train, but to make sure we are going to win it.’
By this time the Belgian file had been found and handed over to me. The others, having settled to their own satisfaction the issues of the Russo-Polish difference, were now talking of luncheon. Tompsitt had begun telling the curate-schoolmaster about some scandal in diplomatic circles when he had been en poste in Caracas.
‘Going through the park, Michael?’ Widmerpool asked the sailor. ‘We might set off together if you can be seen walking with a Pongo.’
The sailor had an appointment in the other direction. I wondered whether in the access of self-abasement that seemed to have overcome him, Widmerpool would make a similar suggestion to the airman, referring to himself as a ‘brown job’. However, he required instead my own company. Tompsitt came to the climax of the anecdote which made his colleague suck in his thin lips appreciatively.
‘Of course he’s a Vichy man now,’ said Tompsitt.
‘Do French diplomats have mistresses?’
‘The Italians are worse,’ said Tompsitt pontifically.
‘Now then, you two, keep off the girls,’ said Widmerpool gaily. ‘Come on, Nicholas.’
‘I’ve got to take these papers back.’
‘You can cut through the Horse Guards.’
We ascended to ground level and set off through St James’s Park. The water had been drained from the lake to decrease identification from the air, leaving large dejected basins of clay-like soil. There were no ducks.
‘Rather ridiculous the way those two were talking about women,’ said Widmerpool. ‘You’d hardly believe how unsophisticated some of these Civil Servants are on such subjects, even senior ones, the Foreign Office as much as any, in spite of thinking so much of themselves. They like to behave as if
they are a lot of duke’s nephews who’ve got there by aristocratic influence, whereas they’re simply a collection of perfectly ordinary middle-class examinees with rather less manners than most. “The Italians are worse!” Did you ever hear such a remark? I’ve known Tomp for a very long time, and he’s not a bad fellow, but lives in a very constricted social sphere.’
‘Who was the other?’
‘Some fellow from MEW,’ said Widmerpool. ‘No real experience of the world.’
There was something to be said for Widmerpool’s views, though there had been a time when he had argued the other way. This contempt for those uninstructed in moral licence was new too. It was the sort of subject he was inclined to avoid. His own sex life had always been rather a mystery. There was nothing so very unusual about that. Most people’s sex life is a mystery, especially that of individuals who seem to make most parade of it. Such is the conclusion one finally arrives at. All the same, Widmerpool had more than once shown himself an exceptional mixture of vehemence and ineptitude; the business of Gypsy Jones, for example, in his early days; then the disastrous engagement to Mrs Haycock or his romantic love for Barbara Goring. Few subjects are more fascinating than other people’s sexual habits from the outside; the tangled strands of appetite, tenderness, convenience or some hope of gain. In the light of what he had been saying, a direct question could sound not unreasonably inquisitive.
‘How do you organize that side of your own life these days?’
I did not feel absolutely at ease making this unconcealed attempt to satisfy curiosity, but, in supposing Widmerpool might be embarrassed, evasive or annoyed, I was wholly wrong. The enquiry delighted him. He clapped me on the back.
‘Plenty of pretty little bits in the black-out.’
‘Tarts?’
‘Of course.’
The solution was the same as Borrit’s. I remembered now that Widmerpool had commented favourably, years before, when I told him my own rooms in Shepherd Market were flanked by a large block of flats housing prostitutes. At the time, I had supposed that remark bombast on his part. Now, such a diagnosis seemed less positive. Perhaps, anyway in the course of the years, his remark, ‘How convenient’, had acquired a certain authenticity. One wondered what cumbersome burden of desire, satisfied or unsatisfied, possibly charged in its fulfilment with some elaborate order of ritual, Widmerpool carried round with him.
‘I suppose you have to be rather careful.’
It was a lame comment, which Widmerpool treated with the contempt it deserved.
‘I am careful,’ he said. ‘Is there anything about my life that would lead you to suppose I should not be careful? I believe in thinking things out. Arranging my life, but arranging it in such a way that I do not fall into a groove. By the way, there is a probability I shall go red in the near future.’
‘Go red?’
I had not the least idea what he meant. It seemed possible he might have returned to the subject of sexual habits, planning something in that line embarrassing even to himself.
‘Become a full colonel.’
He snapped the words out. Failure to recognize a colloquialism had irritated him. The phrase was peculiar to himself. Usually people spoke of a ‘red hat’ or ‘taking flannel’.
‘Only a tanner a day more in pay,’ he said, recovering his good humour, ‘but it’s the real jump in rank.’
It was no doubt specifically to inform me of this imminent promotion that he must have come out of the way across the Horse Guards Parade, I thought. By now we had nearly reached the arch leading into Whitehall. He suddenly lost his high spirits, sinking all at once to the depths of gloom, as I had known him do before, one of those changes of mood that would overcome him without warning.
‘You never know about promotion till it’s in the bag,’ he said. ‘There are occupational risks where I work. There are anywhere where you may find yourself in the CIGS’s entourage.’
‘Why him specially?’
‘He’s quite ruthless, if he doesn’t like the look of you. The other day he said, “I don’t want to see that officer again. I don’t like his face”. Perfectly good man, but they had to get rid of him.’
Widmerpool spoke with infinite dejection. I saw what he meant. Given the CIGS was easily irritated by the faces of staff-officers, Widmerpool’s, where survival was in question, was a bad bet, rather than a good one.
‘No use worrying,’ he said. ‘After all, I was not affected by all the trouble Liddament made.’
‘His Corps seem to have done well in the desert.’
‘No doubt Liddament has his points as a commander in the field. Unfortunately, I was blind to them when serving on the staff of his Division. Tell me – talking of those days made me think of Farebrother – had you left the Poles at the time of the Szymanski scandal?’
‘Yes.’
‘You heard Farebrother was largely responsible?’
‘That was being said.’
‘He’s been unstuck in consequence. Not without some action on my part.’
‘I didn’t know you were involved.’
‘I made it my business to be involved. Strictly between ourselves, the whole disgraceful affair was not unconnected with Prince Theodoric whom we saw at that musical performance the other night.’
‘Where does Theodoric come in?’
‘That is naturally secret, but I don’t mind telling you that the Prince is bringing a lot of pressure to bear one way and another.’
‘You mean from the Resistance point of view.’
‘I hold my own views on that subject,’ said Widmerpool. ‘I hear that young woman in red, whose name I asked, is said to be Theodoric’s mistress.’
‘That’s the gossip.’
‘I have little or no time for social life, but one keeps an eye on these things.’
A full colonel, wearing the red tabs with which Widmerpool himself hoped soon to be equipped, came out of a door under the arch and turned into Whitehall. Widmerpool pointed after him and laughed.
‘Did you see who that was?’ he asked. ‘I really strolled with you across here, out of my way, in case we might catch sight of him.’
‘Was it Hogbourne-Johnson?’
‘Relegated to the Training branch, where, if he’s not kicked out from there too, he will remain until the end of the war. The man who thought he was going to get a Division. Do you remember when he was so abominably rude to me?’
‘That balls-up about traffic circuits?’
‘It won’t be long now before I’m his equal in rank. I may find an opportunity to tell him some home truths, should our paths cross, though that’s unlikely enough. It’s only on the rarest occasions like today that I’m out of my office – and, after all, Hogbourne-Johnson’s a very unimportant cog in the machine.’
He nodded and began to move off. I saluted – the uniform, as one was always told, rather than the man – and took the Belgian documents back to our room.
THREE
One day, several weeks after the Allied Forces had landed in Normandy, I was returning over Westminster Bridge on foot from transacting some minor item of Czechoslovak army business with a ministry housed on the south bank of the river in the former Donners-Brebner Building. It was lovely weather. Even the most pessimistic had begun to concede that the war, on the whole, had taken a turn for the better. Some supposed this might mean the end of raids. Others believed the Germans had a trick or two up their sleeve. Although it was London Bridge to which the poem referred, rather than Westminster, the place from which I had just come, the dark waters of the Thames below, the beauty of the day, brought to mind the lines about Stetson and the ships at Mylae, how death had undone so many. Donners-Brebner – where Howard Craggs, recently knighted, now reigned over one of the branches – had been badly knocked about in the early days of the blitz. The full extent of the damage was not visible, because the main entrance, where Barnby’s frescoes had once been, was heaped with sandbags, access by a side door. Barnby was no longer a
vailable to repaint his frescoes. Death had undone him. It looked as if death might have undone Stringham too. At Donners-Brebner he had put me off for dinner because he was going to Peggy Stepney’s parents. Peggy’s second husband was another who had been undone. She was married to Jimmy Klein now, said to have always loved her. These musings were interrupted by a tall officer falling into step with me. It was Sunny Farebrother.
‘Hullo, Nicholas. I hope my dear old Finn is not still cross with me about Szymanski?’
‘There may still be some disgruntlement, sir.’ ‘Disgruntlement’, one was told, was a word that could be used of all ranks without loss of discipline. As I heard myself utter it, I became immediately aware of the manner in which Farebrother, by some effort of the will, made those with whom he dealt as devious as himself. It was not the first time I had noticed that characteristic in him. The ply, the term, was in truth hopelessly inadequate to express Finn’s rage about the whole Szymanski affair.
‘Finn’s a hard man,’ said Farebrother. ‘Nobody I admire more. There is not an officer in the entire British army I admire more than Lieutenant-Colonel Lysander Finn, VC.’
‘Lysander?’
‘Certainly.’
‘We never knew.’
‘He keeps it quiet.’
Farebrother smiled, not displeased at finding this piece of information so unexpected.
‘Who shall blame him?’ he said. ‘It’s modesty, not shame. He thinks the name might sound pretentious in the winner of a VC. Finn’s as brave as a lion, as straight as a die, but as hard as nails – especially where he thinks his own honour is concerned.’
Farebrother said the last words in what Pennistone called his religious voice.
‘You weren’t yourself affected by the Szymanski matter, Nicholas?’
‘I’d left the Poles by then.’
‘You’re no longer in Finn’s Section?’