The Soldier's Art (17 page)

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’s a
kind of embarrassment?”

“Absolutely.”

“Depends on
such a lot of different things,” said Stevens. “People you’re with, sleep,
food, drink, and so on. This show I was in —”

He did not
finish the sentence, because Priscilla interrupted. She had gone rather white.
For a second one saw what she would be like when she was old.

“For God’s
sake don’t talk about the war all the time,” she said. “Can’t we sometimes get
away from it for a few seconds?”

This was quite
different from her earlier detached tone. She seemed all at once in complete
despair. Stevens, not best pleased at having his story wrecked, mistook the
reason, whatever it was, for Priscilla’s sudden agitation. He thought she was
afraid, altogether a misjudgment.

“But it isn’t
a blitz, sweetie,” he said. “There’s nothing to get worked up about.”

Although, in
the light of his usual manner of addressing people, he might easily have called
Mrs. Maclintick “sweetie,” this was, in fact, the first time he had spoken to
Priscilla with that mixture of sharpness and affection that can suddenly reveal
an intimate relationship.

“I know it isn’t
a blitz,” she said. “We long ago decided that. I was just finding the
conversation boring.”

“All right.
Let’s talk of something else,” he said.

He spoke
indulgently, but without grasping that something had gone badly wrong.

“I’ve got
rather a headache.”

“Oh, sorry,
darling. I thought you had the wind up.”

“Not in the
least.”

“Why didn’t
you say you had a head?”

“It’s only
just started.”

She was
looking furious now, furious and upset. I knew her well enough to be fairly
used to Priscilla’s quickly changing moods, but her behaviour was now
inexplicable to me, as it obviously was to Stevens. I imagined that, having
decided a mistake had been made in allowing him to join our table, she had now
settled on a display of bad temper as the best means of getting him away.

“Well, what
would you like to do?” he said. “We’ve got nearly an hour still. Shall I take
you somewhere quieter? It is rather airless and noisy in here.”

He seemed
anxious to do anything he could to please  her. Up till now they might have
been any couple having dinner together, no suggestion of a particularly close
bond, Stevens’s
ease of manner concealing rather than emphasising what
was happening. Now, however, his voice showed a mixture of concern and
annoyance that gave more away about the pair of them. This change of tone was
certainly due to incomprehension on his part, rather than any exhibitionistic
desire to advertise that Priscilla was his mistress; although he might well
have been capable of proclaiming that fact in other company.

“Where?” she
said.

This was not a
question. It was a statement to express the truth that no place existed in this
neighbourhood where they could go, and be likely to find peace and quiet.

“We’ll look for
somewhere.”

She fixed her
eyes on him.
There was silence for a moment.

“I think I’ll
make for home.”

‘But aren’t
you coming to see me off – you said you were.”

“I’ve got a
splitting headache,” she said. “I’ve suddenly begun to feel perfectly awful,
too, for some reason. Simply dreadful.”

“Not up to
coming to the station?”

“Sorry.”

She was nearly
in tears. Stevens plainly had no idea what had gone wrong. I could not guess
either, unless the comparative indifference of his mood – after what had no
doubt been a passionate interlude of several days – had upset her. However,
although young, and, until recently, probably not much accustomed to girls of
Priscilla’s type, he was sufficiently experienced with women in general to have
certain settled principles in dealing with situations of this kind. At any
rate, he was now quite decisive.

“I’ll take you
back then.”

Faced with the
prospect of abandoning a party where he had begun to be enjoyably the centre of
attention, Stevens spoke without a great deal of enthusiasm, at the same time
with complete sincerity. The offer was a genuine one, not a polite fiction to
be brushed aside on the grounds he had a train to catch. He intended to go
through with the proposal. Certainly it was the least he could do, but, at the
same time, considering Priscilla’s demeanour and what I knew of his own
character, even this minimum was to display magnanimity of a sort. He accepted
her sudden decision with scarcely any demur. Priscilla seemed to appreciate
that

“No.”

She spoke
quite firmly.

“Of course I
will.”

“You’ve got
all your stuff here. You can’t lug it back to Kensington.”

“I’ll pick it
up here again after I’ve dropped you.”

“You can’t do
that.”

“Of course I
can.”

“No …” she
said. “I’d much rather you didn’t… I don’t quite know … I just feel suddenly
rather odd … I can’t think what it is … I mean I’d rather be alone … Must be
alone…”

The situation
had become definitely very painful. Even Mrs. Maclintick was silenced, awed by
this interchange. Moreland kept on lighting cigarettes and stubbing them out.
It all seemed to take hours of time.

“I’m going to
take you back.”

“No, really
no.”

“But —”

“I can take
you back, Priscilla,” I said. “Nothing easier.”

That settled
things finally.

“I don’t want
anybody to take me back,” she said. “I’ll say good-bye now.”

She waved her
hand in the direction of Stevens.

“I’ll write,”
she said.

He muttered
something about getting a taxi for her, began to try and move out from where he
was sitting, people
leaving or arriving at the next table penned him in. Priscilla turned and made
quickly for the glass doors. Just before she went through them, she turned and
blew a kiss. Then she disappeared from sight. By the time Stevens had extracted
himself, she was gone. All the same, he set off across the room to follow her.

“What a to-do
all of a sudden,” said Mrs. Maclintick. “Did she behave like this when you knew
her, Moreland?”

I thought it
possible, though not very likely, that Priscilla had gone to look for Lovell at
the Madrid. That surmise belonged to a way of life more dramatic than probable,
the sort of development that would have greatly appealed to Lovell himself; in
principle, I mean, even had he been in no way personally concerned. However,
for better or worse, things like that do not often happen. At the same time,
even though sudden desire to make it up
with her husband might run contrary to expectation, I was no nearer
conjecturing why Priscilla had gone off in this manner, leaving Stevens cold.
The fact she might be in love with him was no reason to prevent a sudden
display of capricious temper, brought on, likely as not, by the many stresses
of the situation. Stevens himself was no doubt cynical enough in the way he was
taking the affair, although even that was uncertain, since Lovell had supposed marriage
could be in question. Lovell might be right. Stevens’s false step, so far as
Priscilla was concerned, seemed to be marked by the moment he had suggested her
fear about the supposititious air-raid warning. That had certainly made her
angry. Even allowing for unexpected nervous reactions in wartime, it was much
more likely she heard an air-raid warning – where none existed – because of her
highly strung state, rather than from physical fear. Stevens had shown less
than his usual grasp in suggesting such a thing. Possibly this nervous state
stemmed from some minor row; possibly Priscilla’s poorish form earlier in the
evening suggested that she was beginning to tire of Stevens, or feared he might
be tiring of her. On the other hand, the headache, the thought of her lover’s
departure, could equally have upset her; while the presence of the rest of the
party at the table, the news that her husband was in London, all helped to
discompose her. Reasons for her behaviour were as hard to estimate as that for
giving herself to Stevens in the first instance. If she merely wanted
amusement, while Lovell’s physical presence was removed by forces over which he
had no control, why make all this trouble about it, why not keep things quiet?
Lovell, at worst, appeared a husband preferable to many. Even if less
indefatigably lively than Stevens, he was not without his own brand of energy.
Was “trouble,” in fact, what Priscilla required? Was her need – the need of
certain women – to make men unhappy? There was something of the kind in her
face. Perhaps she was simply tormenting Stevens now for a change; so to speak,
varying the treatment. If so, she might have her work cut out to disturb him in
the way she was disturbing Lovell; had formerly disturbed Moreland. The fact
that he was able to look after himself pretty well in that particular sphere
was implicit in the manner Stevens made his way back across the room. He looked
politely worried, not at all shattered.

“Did she get a
taxi?”

“She must have
done. She’d disappeared into the blackout by the time I got to the door on the
street. There were several cabs driving away at that moment.”

“She did take
on,” said Mrs. Maclintick.

“It’s an awful
business,” said Stevens. “The point is I’m so immobile myself at this moment.
There’s a lot of junk in the cloakroom here, a valise, God knows what else – odds
and ends they wanted me to get for the Mess – all of which I’ve got to hump to
the station before long.”

He looked at
his watch; then sat down again at the table.

“Let’s have
some more to drink,” he said, “that’s if we can get it.”