The Soldier's Art - Anthony Powell [53]
He turned his attention to her, in the manner of his particular brand of narcissism, determined to make a conquest, separate and individual, of everyone sitting at the table.
“From the way you talk,” he said, “you don’t sound as great a Moreland fan as you should be. Fancy saying you got tired of hearing Vieux Port praised. I’m surprised at you.”
“I’m a fan all right,” said Mrs. Maclintick. “Not half, I am. You should see him in bed in the morning before he’s shaved. You couldn’t help being a fan then.”
There was some laughter at that, in which Moreland himself joined loudly, though he would probably have preferred his relationship with Mrs. Maclintick to have been expressed less explicitly in the presence of Priscilla. At the same time, Mrs. Maclintick’s tone had been not without affection of a kind. The reply she had made, whether or not with that intention, hindered Stevens from continuing to discuss Moreland’s music more or less seriously, an object he seemed to have in view. However, this did not prevent him from increasing, if only in a routine manner, his own air of finding Mrs. Maclintick attractive, a policy that was beginning to make a good impression on her. This behaviour, however light-hearted, was perhaps displeasing to Priscilla, no doubt unwilling to admit to herself that, for Stevens, one woman was, at least up to a point, as good as another; anyway when sitting in a restaurant. She may reasonably have felt that no competition should be required of her to keep him to herself. There was, of course, no question of Stevens showing any real interest in Mrs. Maclintick, but, in circumstances prevailing, Priscilla probably regarded all his attention as belonging to herself alone. Whether or not this was the reason, she had become quite silent. Now she interrupted the conversation.
“Listen …”
“What?”
“I believe there’s a blitz on.”
We all stopped talking for a moment. A faint suggestion of distant gunfire merged into the noise of traffic from the street, the revving up of a lorry’s engine somewhere just outside the back of the building. No one else at the other tables round about showed any sign of noticing indications of a raid.
“I don’t think so,” said Moreland. “Living in London all the time, one gets rather a good ear for the real thing.”
“Raids when I’m on leave make me bloody jumpy,” said Stevens. “Going into action you’ve got a whole lot of minor responsibilities to keep your mind off the danger. A gun, too. In an air-raid I feel they’re after me, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”
I asked how much hand-to-hand fighting he had been engaged in.
“The merest trifle.”
“What was it like?”
“Not too bad.”
“Hard on the nerves?”
“Difficult to describe,” he said. “You feel worked up just before, of course, rather like going to school for the first time or the morning of your first job. Those prickly sensations, but exciting too.”
“Going back to school?” said Moreland. “You make warfare sound most disturbing. I shouldn’t like that at all. In London, it’s the sheer lack of sleep gets one down. However, there’s been quite a let-up the last day or two. Do you have raids where you are, Nick?”
“We do.”
“I thought it was all very peaceful there.”
“Not always.”
“I have an impression of acute embarrassment when bombed,” said Moreland. “That rather than gross physical fear – at present anyway. It’s like an appalling display of bad manners one has been forced to witness. The utter failure of a party you are giving – a friend’s total insensitiveness about some delicate matter – suddenly realising you’ve lost your note-case, your passport, your job, your girl. All those things combined and greatly multiplied.”
“You didn’t like it the other night when the glass shattered in the bathroom window,” said Mrs. Maclintick. “You were trembling like a leaf, Moreland.”
“I don’t pretend to be specially brave,” said Moreland, put out by this comment. “Anyway, I’d just run up three flights of stairs and nearly caught it in the face. I was just trying to define the sensation one feels – don’t you agree, Nick, it