The Soldier's Art - Anthony Powell [85]
“I chiefly remember your sister-in-law, Priscilla, as making rather good going with some musician for whom my mother once gave an extraordinary party. Weren’t you there, Nick? I associate that night with an odd little woman covered in frills like Little Bo-Peep. I made some sort of dive at her.”
“She was called Mrs. Maclintick. She’s now living with the musician for whom your mother gave the party – Hugh Moreland.”
“Moreland, that was the name. She’s living with him, is she? What lax morals people have these days. The war, I suppose. I do my best to set an example, but no one follows me in my monastic celibacy. That was a strange night. Tuffy arrived to drive me home. It comes back to me fairly clearly, in spite of a great deal too much to drink. That’s a taste of old times, if ever there was one. Makes one ready to fight anybody.”
“Charles, I shall have to get back to Cheesman. You’ve absolutely decided to stick to the Mobile Laundry, come what may?”
“Quis separabit? – that’s the Irish Guards, isn’t it? The Mobile Laundry shares the motto.”
“Are you returning to the billet?”
“I think I’ll go for a stroll. Don’t feel like any more poetry reading at the moment. Poetry always rather disturbs me. I think I shall have to give it up – like drink. A short walk will do me good. I’m off duty till nine o’clock.”
“Good-bye, Charles – if we don’t meet before the Laundry moves.”
“Good-bye, Nick.”
He smiled and nodded, then went off up the street. He gave the impression of having severed his moorings pretty completely with anything that could be called everyday life, army or otherwise. I returned to Cheesman and Sergeant Ablett. They seemed to have got on well together and were still vigorously discussing vehicle maintenance.
“Find that man all right, sir?” asked the Sergeant.
“Had a word with him. Know him in civilian life.”
“Thought you might, sir. He could have been of use in the concert, but now it looks as if we’re moving and there won’t be any concert.”
“I expect you’ll put on a show wherever you go. We shall miss your trouserless tap-dance next time, Sergeant.”
“That’s always a popular item,” said Sergeant Ablett, without false modesty.
I took Cheesman back to G Mess. His mildness did not prevent him from being argumentative about every subject that arose.
“That’s what you think,” he said, more than once, “but there’s another point of view entirely.”
This determination would be useful in running the Laundry, subject, like every small, more or less independent entity, to all sorts of pressures from outside.
“Wait a moment,” he said. “Before I forget, I’d like to make a note of your name, and the Sergeant’s, and the D.A.A.G.’s.”
He loosened the two top buttons of his service-dress tunic to rummage for a notebook. This movement revealed that he wore underneath the tunic a khaki waistcoat cut like that of a civilian suit. I commented on the unexpectedness of this garment, worn with uniform and made of the same material.
“You’re not the first person to mention that,” said Cheesman unsmilingly. “I can’t see why.”
“You just don’t see waistcoats as a rule.”
“I’ve always worn one up to now. Why should I stop because I’m in the army?”
“No reason at all.”
“Even the tailor seemed surprised. He said: ‘We don’t usually supply a vest with service-dress, sir.’ “
“It’s a tailor’s war, anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
‘That’s just a thing people say.”
“Why?”
“God knows.”
Cheesman looked puzzled, but pursued the matter no further.
“See you at Church Parade to-morrow.”
Sunday morning was always concerned with getting the Defence Platoon on parade, together with the Military Police and other miscellaneous troops who make up Divisional Headquarters. This parade was not without its worries, because the Redcaps, most of them ex-guardsmen, marched at a more leisurely pace than the Line troops, some of whom, Light Infantry or Fusiliers, were, on the other hand, unduly brisk. Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson, whose sympathies were naturally with the “Light Bobs” was always grumbling about its lack of progressional uniformity. That day all went well. After these details had been dismissed, I went to the D.A.A.G.