The military philosophers (13 page)

‘More than ever, sir.’

‘I try not to waste his time with our small problems, but I may have to ask for an interview next week.’

I gave a reassuring reply. Theodoric left the Hlava group, crossing the floor for a word with Van Strydonck de Burkel. Huge, with a white curled moustache, the Belgian general, though now rather old to take an active part in the direction of policy, looked everything he should from his picturesque reputation. In the earlier war, at the head of two squadrons of cavalry, he had led an operationally successful charge against a German machine-gun emplacement; a kind of apotheosis of those last relics of horsed warfare represented by Horaczko and Clanwaert. Having spoken a word or two to Van Strydonck, the Prince was on his way to another sector of the foyer, when Pamela Flitton suddenly detached herself from Lady McReith, and moved swiftly through the crowd. On reaching Theodoric, she slipped her arm through his.

‘Don’t miss Lola Montez,’ said Isobel.

Considering the familiarity of the behaviour, its contrast with Pamela’s usually icy demeanour, Theodoric accepted the gesture with composure. If he felt whatever intimacy might exist between them were better left unadvertised in a theatre packed with official personages, he did not encourage gossip by showing any sign of that. On the contrary, he took her hand, pressed it earnestly, as if they scarcely knew each other but he wished to show himself specially grateful for some thoughtful action that had gratified his sense of what was right. Then, having spoken a few words to her, he gave a smile of dismissal, and turned towards General Asbjornsen who was standing nearby. Pamela was at first not prepared to accept this disengaging movement on the part of the Prince, or at any rate preferred to demonstrate that it was for her rather than Theodoric himself to decide when and how the conversation should be terminated. Accordingly, she constituted herself part of the Theodoric-Asbjornsen axis for a minute or two; then, giving in her turn a nod to Theodoric, at the same time patting his arm, she coolly returned to Lady McReith, who now made no effort to look anything but cross. The bell sounded. We sat down to the Third Act and the man disguised as a bear.

‘British gave Smetana musical degree,’ said Hlava.

The Bartered Bride
was the only occasion, a unique one, go far as I know, that added any colour to the rumour going round that Pamela Flitton was ‘having an affair’ with prince Theodoric. Whether that were true, or whether she merely hoped to create an impression it was true, was never to my knowledge finally cleared up. All that can be said is that later circumstances supplied an odd twist to the possibility. When, subsequently, Jeavons heard the story, he showed interest.

‘Sad Molly’s gone,’ he said. ‘She always liked hearing about Theodoric, on account of his having been mixed up years ago with her ex-sister-in-law, Bijou. Looks as if Theodoric falls for an English girl every dozen years or so. Well, his wife’s in America and I told you what Smith said. Can’t be too cheerful having your country occupied by the Germans either. By all accounts, he’s doing what he can to help us get them out. Needs some relaxation. We all do.’

About this time, Jumbo Wilson, in the light-hearted manner of generals, made nonsense of the polite letters Clanwaert and I used to send each other on the subject of the Congo army, by delivering a speech in honour of a visiting Belgian ex-Prime Minister to the effect that the services of La Force Publique would come in very useful in the Middle East. The words were scarcely out of his mouth when they set off with all their vehicles to the field of operation, arriving there very reasonably intact, and, I suppose, justifying Jumbo Wilson’s oratory. However, if Clanwaert and I were thereby given something to laugh about, plenty of horrible matters were abroad too.

An announcement was made on the German radio, stating that at a place called Katyn, near the Russian town of Smolensk, an accumulation of communal graves had been found by advancing German troops. These graves were filled with corpses wearing Polish uniform. There were several thousands of bodies. The source of this information was naturally suspect, but, if in any degree to be believed, offered one solution to the mysterious disappearance of the untraced ten or fifteen thousand Polish officers, made prisoners of war by the Soviet army in 1939. ‘Rather a large deficiency’, as Q (Ops.) Colonel had remarked. The broadcast stated that individual bodies could be identified by papers carried on them, in some cases a tunic still bearing the actual insignia of a decoration, a practice of the Polish army in the case of operation awards. The hands had been tied together and a shot placed in the base of the skull. As a consequence of this radio announcement, the Polish Government in London approached the International Red Cross with a view to instituting an investigation. Exception was at once taken to this step by the USSR, relations with the Polish Government being immediately severed.

‘The show-down has come,’ said Pennistone.

The day this news was released, I went upstairs to see Finn about a rather complicated minute (to be signed by one of the Brigadiers) on the subject of redundant Czech army doctors being made available for seconding to the Royal Army Medical Corps. There had been difficulty about drafting satisfactory guarantees to make sure the Czechs, should they so require, would be able to recover the services of their MOs. Finn was in one of his unapproachable moods. The Russo-Polish situation had thoroughly upset him.

‘It’s a bad business,’ he kept repeating. ‘A bad business. I’ve got Bobrowski coming to see me this afternoon. What the hell am I to say?’

I tried to get the subject round to Czech medical matters and the views of the RAMC brasshats, but he told me to bring the matter up again that afternoon.

‘You’ve got to go over to the Cabinet Offices now,’ he said. ‘They’ve just rung through. Some Belgian papers they want us to see. Something about the King. Nothing of any great importance, I think, but graded “hand of officer”, and to be read by those in direct contact with the Belgians.’

The position of the King of the Belgians was delicate. Formally accepted as monarch of their country by the Belgian Government in exile, the royal portrait hanging in Kucherman’s office, King Leopold, rightly or wrongly, was not, officially speaking, very well looked on by ourselves. His circumstances had been made no easier by a second marriage disapproved by many of his subjects.

‘Have a look at this Belgian file before you bring it up,’ said Finn. ‘Do a note on it. Then we can discuss it after we’ve settled the Czech medicos. God, this Polish business.’

I went across to the Ministry of Defence right away. Finn had given the name of a lieutenant-colonel from whom the papers were to be acquired. After some search in the Secretariat, this officer was eventually traced in Widmerpool’s room. I arrived there a few minutes before one o’clock, and the morning meeting had begun to adjourn. If they were the same committee as that I had once myself attended, the individual members had all changed, though no doubt they represented the same ministries. The only one known to me was a figure remembered from early London days, Tompsitt, a Foreign Office protégé of Sir Gavin Walpole-Wilson’s. Sir Gavin himself had died the previous year. Obituaries, inevitably short in wartime, had none of them mentioned the South American misjudgment that had led to his retirement. His hopes in Tompsitt, untidy as ever and no less pleased with himself, seemed to have been realized, this job being presumably a respectable one for his age, if not particularly glamorous. Widmerpool, again in a good humour, made a facetious gesture of surprise on seeing me.

‘Nicholas? Good gracious me. What is it you want, do you say? Belgian papers? Do you know anything about this, Simon? You do? Then we must let him have them.’

Someone was sent to find the papers.

‘We finished early this morning,’ said Widmerpool. ‘An unheard of thing for us to do. I’m going to allow myself the luxury of lunching outside this building for once. So you’re looking after the Belgians now, are you, Nicholas? I thought it was the Poles.’

‘I’ve moved over.’

‘You must be glad.’

‘There were interesting sides.’

‘Just at this moment, I mean. You are well out of the Poles. They are rocking the boat in the most deplorable manner. Our own relations with the USSR are never exactly easy – then for the Poles to behave as they have done.’

The attention of the other civilian, who, with Tompsitt, had been attending the meeting, was caught by Widmerpool’s reproachful tone. He looked a rather younger version of our former housemaster, Le Bas, distinctly clerical, a thin severe overworked curate or schoolmaster.

‘One would really have thought someone at the top of the Polish set-up would have grasped this is not the time to make trouble,’ he said. ‘Your people must be pretty fed up, aren’t they, Tomp?’

Tompsitt shook back his unbrushed hair.

‘Fed to the teeth,’ he said. ‘Probably put everything back to scratch.’

‘All the same,’ said the sailor, ‘it looks a bit as if the Russkis did it.’

He was a heavily built man, with that totally anonymous personality achieved by certain naval officers, sometimes concealing unexpected abilities.

‘Not to be ruled out,’ said Tompsitt.

‘More information’s required.’

‘Doesn’t make it any better to fuss at this moment,’ said the curate-schoolmaster.

He stared angrily through his spectacles, his cheeks contorted. The soldier, youngish with a slight stutter, who looked like a Regular, shook his papers together and put them into a briefcase.

‘It’s quite a crowd,’ he said.

‘What are the actual figures?’ asked the sailor.

‘Been put as high as nine or ten thousand,’ said the airman.

He was a solid-looking middle-aged man with a lot of decorations, who had not spoken until then.

‘How would that compare with our own pre-war army establishment?’ asked the sailor. ‘Let me see, about …’

‘Say every third officer,’ said the soldier. ‘Quite a crowd, as I remarked. Say every third officer in our pre-war army.’

‘But it’s not pre-war,’ said Tompsitt. ‘It’s war.’

‘That’s the point,’ said Widmerpool. ‘It’s war. Just because these deaths are very upsetting to the Poles themselves  – naturally enough, harrowing, tragic, there isn’t a word for it, I don’t want to underrate that for a moment – but just because of that, it’s no reason to undermine the fabric of our alliances against the Axis. Quarrels among the Allies themselves are not going to defeat the enemy.’

‘Even so, you can’t exactly blame them for making enquiries through the International Red Cross,’ the soldier insisted.

He began to move towards the door.

‘But I do blame them,’ said Tompsitt. ‘I blame them a great deal. Their people did not act at all circumspectly. The Russians were bound to behave as they did under the circumstances.’

‘Certainly hard to see what explanation they could give, if they did do it,’ said the airman. ‘ “Look here, old boy, we’ve shot these fellows of yours by accident” … Of course, it may turn out the Germans did it after all. They’re perfectly capable of it.’

Everyone agreed that fact was undeniable.

‘There’s quite a chance the Germans did,’ said the curate-schoolmaster hopefully.

‘In any case,’ said Widmerpool, ‘whatever materializes, even if it does transpire – which I sincerely trust it will not – that the Russians behaved in such a very regrettable manner, how can this country possibly raise official objection, in the interests of a few thousand Polish exiles, who, however worthy their cause, cannot properly handle their diplomatic relations, even with fellow Slavs? It must be confessed also that the Poles themselves are in a position to offer only a very modest contribution, when it comes to the question of manpower. How, as I say, can we approach our second most powerful Ally about something which, if a fact, cannot be put right, and is almost certainly, from what one knows of them, the consequence of administrative inadequacy, rather than wilful indifference to human life and the dictates of compassion? What we have to do is not to waste time and energy in considering the relative injustices war brings in its train, but to make sure we are going to win it.’

By this time the Belgian file had been found and handed over to me. The others, having settled to their own satisfaction the issues of the Russo-Polish difference, were now talking of luncheon. Tompsitt had begun telling the curate-schoolmaster about some scandal in diplomatic circles when he had been
en poste
in Caracas.

‘Going through the park, Michael?’ Widmerpool asked the sailor. ‘We might set off together if you can be seen walking with a Pongo.’

The sailor had an appointment in the other direction. I wondered whether in the access of self-abasement that seemed to have overcome him, Widmerpool would make a similar suggestion to the airman, referring to himself as a ‘brown job’. However, he required instead my own company. Tompsitt came to the climax of the anecdote which made his colleague suck in his thin lips appreciatively.

‘Of course he’s a Vichy man now,’ said Tompsitt.

‘Do French diplomats have mistresses?’

‘The Italians are worse,’ said Tompsitt pontifically.

‘Now then, you two, keep off the girls,’ said Widmerpool gaily. ‘Come on, Nicholas.’

‘I’ve got to take these papers back.’

‘You can cut through the Horse Guards.’

We ascended to ground level and set off through St James’s Park. The water had been drained from the lake to decrease identification from the air, leaving large dejected basins of clay-like soil. There were no ducks.

‘Rather ridiculous the way those two were talking about women,’ said Widmerpool. ‘You’d hardly believe how unsophisticated some of these Civil Servants are on such subjects, even senior ones, the Foreign Office as much as any, in spite of thinking so much of themselves. They like to behave as if they are a lot of duke’s nephews who’ve got there by aristocratic influence, whereas they’re simply a collection of perfectly ordinary middle-class examinees with rather less manners than most. “The Italians are worse!” Did you ever hear such a remark? I’ve known Tomp for a very long time, and he’s not a bad fellow, but lives in a very constricted social sphere.’