The Military Philosophers - Anthony Powell [34]
She laughed.
‘I just wondered,’ she said.
‘What about him?’
‘Oh, nothing.’
‘Was he the character you were talking to outside that Polish hide-out in Bayswater?’
She shook her head, laughing softly again. Then they went away. The ARP people left too.
‘There’s enough for one more drink for the three of us,’ said Jeavons. ‘I hid the last few drops.’
‘What do you think of Pamela Flitton?’
‘That’s the wench that gave Peter Templer such a time,’ said Jeavons. ‘Couldn’t remember the name. It’s come back. He said it all started as a joke. Then he got mad about her. That was the way Templer put it. What he didn’t like – when she wasn’t having any, as I understand it – was the feeling he was no good any more. How I feel all the time. Nothing much you can do about it. Mind you, he was browned off with the job too.’
‘Do men really try to get dangerous jobs because they’ve been disappointed about a woman?’
‘Well, I don’t,’ Jeavons admitted.
The enquiry about Szymanski was odd, even if he were not the Pole outside the Ufford. Neither Pennistone nor I bad ever set eyes on this man, though we had been involved in troubles about him, including a question asked in Parliament There was some uncertainty as to his nationality, even whether the territory where he was stated to have been born was now Polish or Czechoslovak, assuming he had in truth been born there. Most of his life he had lived on his wits as a professional gambler – like Cosmo Flitton – so it appeared, familiar as a dubious character in France, Belgium and the Balkans; in fact all over the place. He had a row of aliases: Kubitsa: Brod: Groza: Dupont: to mention only a few of them. No one – even MI5 was vague – seemed to know when and how he had first appeared in this country, but at an early stage he was known to have volunteered for the Belgian forces. This offer was prudently declined. Szymanski then tried the Free French, who, with the self-confidence of their race, took him on the strength; later ceding him with relief to the Poles, who may have wanted to make use of him in some special capacity. The general opinion was that he had a reasonable claim to Polish citizenship. The Czechs raised no objection. There were those who insisted his origins were really Balkan.
‘It seems fairly clear he’s not Norwegian,’ said Pennistone, ‘but I’ve learnt to take nothing on trust about Szymanski. You may have him on your hands before we’ve finished, Dempster.’
Szymanski was one of those professional scourges of authority that appear sporadically in all armies, a type to which the Allied contingents were peculiarly subject owing to the nature of their composition and recruitment Like Sayce of my former Battalion, Szymanski was always making trouble, but Sayce magnified to a phantasmagoric degree, a kind of super-Sayce of infinitely greater intelligence and disruptive potential. The abiding fear of the Home Office was that individuals of this sort might, after being found stateless, be discharged from the armed forces and have to be coped with as alien civilians.
As it happened, Szymanski’s name cropped up again a day or two later in our room. Masham, who was with the British Mission in liaison with the Free French, was waiting to be summoned by Finn, to whom he was to communicate certain points arising out of Giraud taking over from Darlan in North Africa. Masham asked Pennistone how the Poles were getting on with Szymanski, who had caused a lot of trouble to himself in his Free French days.
‘Szymanski’s gone a bit too far this time,’ Pennistone said. ‘They’ve sent him to detention. It was bound to come.’
There was a barracks, under the control of a British commandant, specially to accommodate delinquent Allied personnel.
I asked how recently that had happened.
‘A week or so ago.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ said Masham. ‘Though one’s got to admit the man was rather a card. It looks as if this North African switch-over will mean a back place for de Gaulle.’
‘Has anyone else hanged himself in his braces in that Free French snuggery behind Selfridge’s?’ asked Borrit.
‘Nobody hanged himself in his braces there or in any other Free French establishment,