The Kindly Ones - Anthony Powell [94]
‘… 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,