Temporary Kings - Anthony Powell [86]
While I waited for a suitable moment to move across to Farebrother’s table, a man with woolly grey hair and wire spectacles (the latter not yet a fashionable adjunct) came to speak with Lintot. Macgivering had already left, to make contact elsewhere in the room. I changed into his former seat, to allow the wire-spectacled man to talk in more comfort sitting next to Lintot. They appeared to know each other through civilian rather than army connexions. Lintot was astonished at the wire-spectacled man’s presence at this dinner. His wonderment greatly pleased the other.
‘Didn’t expect to find your accountant here, did you, Mr Lintot? We can both of us forget the Inland Revenue for once, can’t we? To tell the truth, I’m attending this dinner under rather false pretences. The fact is a friend of mine told me he was coming to London for this reunion. We wanted to talk together about certain matters, one thing and another, so as I’d gained a technical right to be deemed Intelligence personnel, I applied to the organizers of this ‘I’ dinner. They said I could come. I always enjoy these get-togethers. My old mob have one. There’s a POW one too. Why not roll up, I said to myself.’
‘Never knew you were in the army. Of course we’ve always had a lot of other things to talk about, so that wasn’t surprising.’
Lintot appeared rather at a loss what to say next. He drew me into the conversation, mentioning we had been in the same Section, though not in the War Office at the same period.
‘This is – well, I’ve got to be formal, and call you Mr Cheesman, because I only know your initials – this is Mr Cheesman, whose accountancy firm acts for mine. For me personally too. We do our best against the taxman between us, don’t we? I didn’t expect to find him here. Never thought of Mr Cheesman as a military man somehow, though I never think of myself as one either, if it comes to that.’
‘Yes, but you see my point. If I’m eligible, no reason why I shouldn’t come to the dinner, is there?’
Cheesman was insistent. He was not in the least put out by Lintot’s emphasis on the unmilitary impression he gave. What he was keen on, pedantically keen, consisted in establishing his, so to speak, legal right to be at the party. He spoke in a precise, measured tone, as if attendance at the dinner were a matter of logic, as much as free choice.
‘Of course, of course. Glad to see you here. You’re about the only man in the room I’ve met before.’
Lintot was quite uninterested in Cheesman’s bona fides as ‘I’ personnel. Cheesman accepted that his point had been understood, even if unenthusiastically. Now, I remembered that manner, at once mild and aggressive. It brought back early days in the army – Bithel, Stringham, Widmerpool.
‘Didn’t you command the Mobile Laundry?’
I appended the number of General Liddament’s Division to that question.
‘You were there just for a short time, the Laundry only attached. Then it was posted to the Far East.’
Cheesman drew himself up slightly.
‘Certainly I commanded that sub-unit. May I ask your name?’
I told him. It conveyed nothing. That was immaterial. Cheesman’s own identity was the important factor.
‘Surely you fetched up in Singapore?’
Cheesman nodded.
‘In fact, you were a Jap POW?’
‘Yes.’
Cheesman gave that answer perfectly composedly, but for a brief second, something much shorter than that, something scarcely measurable in time, there shot, like forked lightning, across his serious unornamental features that awful look, common to those who speak of that experience. I had seen it before. Cheesman’s face reverted – the word suggests too extended a duration of instantaneous, petrifying exposure of hidden feeling – to an habitual sedateness. I remembered his arrival at Div. HQ; showing him the Mobile Laundry quarters; making this new officer known to Sergeant-Major Ablett Bithel had just been slung out. I had left Cheesman talking to the Sergeant-Major (who had the sub-unit well in hand), while I myself went off for a word with Stringham. One of Cheesman’s peculiarities had been to wear a waistcoat under his service-dress tunic. He had been surprised at that garment provoking amused comment in mess.