The Military Philosophers - Anthony Powell [12]
By the time I had run through the new lot of papers Pennistone had returned. He reported that Finn – after a word with the more sagacious of the two brigadiers – had been told to consult the Major-General in charge of our Directorate. I reported that Michalski and Horaczko had telephoned.
‘Ring Horaczko back, otherwise Bobrowski will make him persecute us all day. Tell him we’ll let him know the very moment anything comes through that his general should have. Don’t worry about Michalski. I’ll be seeing him. I’m off to the Titian at once to get Kielkicwicz’s reactions.’
‘What were the Colonel’s?’
‘He’s in one of his flaps.’
Sudden pressures of this kind always upset Finn, whose temperament unpredictably fused agitation with calm; violent inner antagonism of these warring characteristics having presumably motivated whatever he had done – killed goodness knows how many enemy machine-gunners with a bayonet? – to be awarded his VC. No doubt the comparative lack of precedent for the situation now arisen in Persia, its eccentric deficiency of warning at the diplomatic level, general departure from normal routine – even from official good manners so far as the Soviet was concerned – discomposed Finn, a man both systematic and courteous. Although not a professional soldier, he had, one way and another, seen a good deal of military service, having, like Dempster, stayed on for a while in the army after the Armistice in 1918; then been re-employed in the rank of major as early as 1938. In short, he had enjoyed plenty of opportunity to observe military problems, which on the whole he seemed to prefer to semi-political ones, like the evacuation of the Poles.
‘He’ll be all right when he’s used to the idea,’ said Pennistone. ‘At first he could consider nothing short of flying out there at once and arranging it all himself.’
He reached for his cap again, unhooking it from the wall with the crook of a walking stick. Then he returned the watch to the breast pocket of his tunic.
‘Have a talk with Q (Ops.) Colonel,’ he said.
Borrit, who looked after the Netherlands, passed on his way towards the door.
‘Borrit…’
‘Yes, Pennistone?’
‘You’re not making for the car?’
Borrit’s small fair moustache was set in a serious melancholy face, deeply tanned, as if he had spent much of his life under a blazing sun. Perhaps he had. He had come to the Section from employment as one of the Intelligence Officers at Headquarters on the Gold Coast, owing his knowledge of Spanish – at first naturally steering him to duties with the Neutrals – to many years spent on the wholesale side of the fruit trade. Language as usual proving of less consequence than facility for handling an ‘opposite number’ with tact, he had in due course gravitated to the more responsible job with an Ally. Stebbings, who took Borrit’s place with the Spaniards and Latin-Americans, was also, oddly enough, in the fruit business, though on the retail side, where he had a nervous breakdown when his firm went into bankruptcy at the outbreak of war. If addressed sharply, Stebbings’s left eyelid twitched, probably in consequence of that collapse. He remained always rather afraid of Finn. All the same, he tackled his duties with judgment. Stebbings was recently married to a Portuguese, a fact that continually worried the Security people. Borrit, on the other hand, was a widower. He must have been forty, perhaps a shade more, because he had seen action in the first war, though only as a result of having falsified his age to the recruiting authorities. During the occasional lulls of work Borrit and Stebbings would talk earnestly of fruit. Pennistone and Borrit had a standing rivalry over the Section’s car – a vehicle of inconceivably cramped seating accommodation – for the first use in the morning.