The military philosophers (17 page)

‘I see.’

‘But to answer your question in merely terrestrial terms, he re-embarked on his new journey from the little hotel where we last met.’

‘And Albert – does he still manage the Bellevue?’

‘He too has gone forth in his cerements. His wife, so I bear, married again – a Pole invalided from the army. They keep a boarding-house together in Weston-super-Mare.’

‘Any last words of advice, Mrs Erdleigh?’ asked Stevens.

He treated her as if he were consulting the Oracle at Delphi.

‘Let the palimpsest of your mind absorb the words of Eliphas Levi – to know, to will, to dare, to be silent.’

‘Me, too?’ I asked.

‘Everyone.’

‘The last most of all?’

‘Some think so.’

She glided away towards the lift, which seemed hardly needed, with its earthly and mechanical paraphernalia, to bear her up to the higher levels.

‘I’m going to kip too,’ said Stevens. ‘No good wandering all over London on a night like this looking for Pam. She might be anywhere. She usually comes back all right after a tiff like this. Cheers her up. Well, I may or may not see you again, Nicholas. Never know when one may croak at this game.’

‘Good luck – and to Szymanski too, if you see him.’

The raid went on, but I managed to get some sleep before morning. When I woke up, it still continued, though in a more desultory manner. This was, indeed, the advent of the Secret Weapon, the inauguration of the V.1’s – the so-called ‘flying bombs’. They came over at intervals of about twenty minutes or half an hour, all that day and the following night. This attack continued until Monday, a weekend that happened to be my fortnightly leave; spent, as it turned out, on their direct line of route across the Channel on the way to London.

‘You see, my friend, I was right,’ said Clanwaert.

One of the consequences of the Normandy landings was that the Free French forces became, in due course, merged into their nation’s regular army. The British mission formerly in liaison with them was disbanded, a French military attaché in direct contact with Finn’s Section coming into being. Accordingly, an additional major was allotted to our establishment, a rank to which I was now promoted, sustaining (with a couple of captains to help) French, Belgians, Czechs and Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. As the course of the war improved, work on the whole increased rather than diminished, so much so that I was unwillingly forced to refuse the offer of two Italian officers, sent over to make certain arrangements, whose problems, among others, included one set of regulations that forbade them in Great Britain to wear uniform; another that forbade them to wear civilian clothes. All routine work with the French was transacted with Kernével, first seen laughing with Masham about
les votes hiérarchiques
, just before my initial interview with Finn.

‘They’re sending a
général de brigade
from North Africa to take charge,’ said Finn. ‘A cavalryman called Philidor.’

Since time immemorial, Kernével, a Breton, like so many of the Free French, had worked at the military attaché’s office in London as chief clerk. By now he was a captain. At the moment of the fall of France, faced with the alternative of returning to his country or joining the Free French, he had at once decided to remain, his serial number in that organization – if not, like Abou Ben Adhem’s, leading all the rest – being very respectably high in order of acceptance. It was tempting to look for characteristics of my old Regiment in these specimens of Romano-Celtic stock emigrated to Gaul under pressure from Teutons, Scandinavians and non-Roman Celts.

‘I don’t think my mother could speak a word of French,’ said Kernével. ‘My father could – he spoke very good french – but I myself learnt the language as I learnt English.’

Under a severe, even priestly exterior, Kernével concealed a persuasive taste for conviviality – on the rare occasions when anything of the sort was to be enjoyed. From their earliest beginnings, the Free French possessed an advantage over the other Allies – and ourselves – of an issue of Algerian wine retailed at their canteens at a shilling a bottle. Everyone else, if lucky enough to find a bottle of Algerian, or any other wine, in a shop, had to pay nearly ten times that amount. So rare was wine, they were glad to give that, when available. This benefaction to the Free French, most acceptable to those in liaison with them, who sometimes lunched or dined at their messes, was no doubt owed to some figure in the higher echelons of our own army administration – almost certainly learned in an adventure story about the Foreign Legion – that French troops could only function on wine. In point of fact, so far as alcohol went, the Free French did not at all mind functioning on spirits, or drinks like
Cap Corse
, relatively exotic in England, of which they consumed a good deal. Their Headquarter mess in Pimlico was decorated with an enormous fresco, the subject of which I always forgot to enquire. Perhaps it was a Free French version of Gericault’s
Raft of the Medusa
, brought up to date and depicting themselves as survivors from the wreck of German invasion.

They did not reject, as we sometimes did ourselves, Marshal Lyautey’s doctrine, quoted by Dicky Umfraville, that gaiety was the first essential in an officer, that some sort of light relief was required to get an army through a war. Perhaps, indeed, they too liberally interpreted that doctrine. If so, the red-tape they had to endure must have driven them to it; those terrible
bordereaux
– the very name recalling the Dreyfus case whenever they arrived – labyrinthine and ambiguous enough to extort admiration from a Diplock or even a Blackhead.

‘All is fixed for General Philidor’s interview?’ asked Kernével.

‘I shall be on duty myself.’

General Philidor, soon after his arrival in London, had to see a personage of very considerable importance, only a degree or so below the CIGS himself. It had taken a lot of arranging. Philidor was a lively little man with a permanently extinguished cigarette-end attached to his lower lip, which, under the peak of his general’s khaki kepi, gave his face the fierce intensity of a Paris taxi-driver. His rank was that, in practice, held by the commander of a Division. As a former Giraud officer, he was not necessarily an enthusiastic ‘Gaullist’. At our first meeting he had asked me how I liked being in liaison with the French, and, after speaking of the purely military aspects of the work, I had mentioned Algerian wine.

‘Believe me, mon commandant, before the ’14-’18 war many Frenchmen had never tasted wine.’

‘You surprise me, sir.’

‘It was conscription, serving in the army, that gave them the habit.’

‘It is a good one, sir.’

‘My father was a
vigneron
.’

‘Burgundy or Bordeaux, sir?’

‘At Chinon. You have heard of Rabelais, mon commandant?’

‘And drunk Chinon, sir – a faint taste of raspberries and to be served cold.’

‘The vineyard was not far from our cavalry school at Saumur, convenient when I was on, as you say, a course there.’

I told him about staying at La Grenadière, how the Leroys had a son instructing at Saumur in those days, but General Philidor did not remember him. It would have been a long shot had he done so. All the same, contacts had been satisfactory, so that by the time he turned up for his interview with the important officer already mentioned, there was no sense of undue formality.

Philidor started in Finn’s room, from where I conducted him to a general of highish status – to be regarded, for example, as distinctly pre-eminent to the one in charge of our own Directorate – who was to act as it were as mediator between Philidor and the all but supreme figure. This mediating general was a brusque officer, quickly mounting the rungs of a successful military career and rather given to snapping at his subordinates. After he and Philidor had exchanged conventional army courtesies, all three of us set off down the passage to the great man’s room. In the antechamber, the Personal Assistant indicated that his master was momentarily engaged. The British general, lacking small talk, drummed his heels awaiting the summons. I myself should remain in the ante-chamber during the interview. There was a few seconds delay. Then a most unfortunate thing happened. The general acting as midwife to the birth of the parley, misinterpreting a too welcoming gesture or change of facial expression on the part of the PA, guardian of the door, who had up to now been holding us in check, motioned General Philidor to follow him, and advanced boldly into the sanctuary. This reckless incursion produced a really alarming result. Somebody – if it were, indeed, a human being – let out a frightful roar. Whoever it was seemed to have lost all control of himself.

‘I thought I told you to wait outside – get out…’

From where our little group stood, it was not possible to peep within, but the volume of sound almost made one doubt human agency. Even the CIGS saying good-morning was nothing to it. This was the howl of an angry animal, consumed with rage or pain, probably a mixture of both. Considered merely as a rebuke, it would have struck an exceptionally peremptory note addressed to a lance-corporal.

‘Sorry, sir …’

Diminished greatness is always a painful spectacle. The humility expressed in those muttered words, uttered by so relatively exalted an officer, was disturbing to me. General Philidor, on the other hand, seemed to feel more detachment. Appreciative, like most Frenchmen, of situations to be associated with light comedy – not to say farce – he fixed me with his sharp little eyes, allowing them to glint slightly, though neither of us prejudiced the frontiers of discipline and rank by the smallest modification of expression. Nevertheless, entirely to avoid all danger of doing any such thing, I was forced to look away.

This incident provoked reflections later on the whole question of senior officers, their relations with each other and with those of subordinate rank. There could be no doubt, so I was finally forced to decide, that the longer one dealt with them, the more one developed the habit of treating generals like members of the opposite sex; specifically, like ladies no longer young, who therefore deserve extra courtesy and attention; indeed, whose every whim must be given thought. This was particularly applicable if one were out in the open with a general.

‘Come on, sir,
you
have the last sandwich,’ one would say, or ‘Sit on my mackintosh, sir, the grass is quite wet.’

Perhaps the cumulative effect of such treatment helped to account for the highly strung temperament so many generals developed. They needed constant looking after. I remembered despising Cocksidge, a horrible little captain at the Division Headquarters on which I had served, for behaving so obsequiously to his superiors in rank. In the end, it had to be admitted one was almost equally deferential, though one hoped less slavish.

‘They’re like a lot of ballerinas,’ agreed Pennistone. ‘Ballerinas in Borneo, because their behaviour, even as ballerinas, is quite remote from everyday life.’

Meanwhile the V.1’s continued to arrive sporadically, their launchers making a habit of sending three of them across Chelsea between seven and eight in the morning, usually a few minutes before one had decided to get up. They would roar towards the flats – so it always sounded – then switch off a second or two before you expected them to pass the window. One would roll over in bed and face the wall, in case the window came in at the explosion. In point of fact it never did. This would happen perhaps two or three times a week. Kucherman described himself as taking cover in just the same way.

‘Nevertheless,’ he said, ‘I must insist that things are taking a very interesting turn from the news in this morning’s papers.’

‘Insist’ was a favourite word of Kucherman’s. He used it without the absolute imperative the verb usually implied in English. He was referring to what afterwards became known as the Officers’ Plot, the action of the group of German generals and others who had unsuccessfully attempted to assassinate Hitler. They had failed, but even the fact that they had tried was encouraging.

‘Colonel von Stauffenberg sounds a brave man.’

‘I have met him several times,’ said Kucherman.

‘The right ideas?’

‘I should insist, certainly. We last talked at a shooting party in the Pripet marshes. Prince Theodoric was also staying in the house, as it happened. Our Polish host is now buried in a communal grave not so many miles north of our sport. The Prince is an exile whose chance of getting back to his own country looks very remote. I sit in Eaton Square wondering what is happening to my business affairs.’

‘You think Prince Theodoric’s situation is hopeless?’

‘Your people will have to make a decision soon between his Resistance elements and the Partisans.’

‘And we’ll come down on the side of the Partisans?’

‘That’s what it looks increasingly like.’

‘Not too pleasant an affair.’

‘There’s going to be a lot of unpleasantness before we’ve finished,’ said Kucherman. ‘Perhaps in my own country too.’

When we had done our business Kucherman came to the top of the stairs. The news had made him restless. Although quiet in manner, he gave the impression at the same time of having bottled up inside him immense reserves of nervous energy. It was, in any case, impossible not to feel excitement about the way events were moving.

‘This caving in of the German military caste – that is the significant thing. An attempt to assassinate the Head of the State on the part of a military group is a serious matter in any country – but in Germany how unthinkable. After all, the German army, its officer corps, is almost a family affair.’

Kucherman listened to this conventional enough summary of the situation, then suddenly became very serious.

‘That’s something you always exaggerate over here,’ he said.

‘What, Germans and the army? Surely there must be four or five hundred families, the members of which, whatever their individual potentialities, can only adopt the army as a career? Anyway that was true before the Treaty of Versailles. Where they might be successful, say at the Law or in business, they became soldiers. There was no question of the German army not getting the pick. At least that is what one was always told.’