Temporary Kings - Anthony Powell [91]
‘Do you remember a man in your sub-unit called Stringham?’
Cheesman looked surprised at the question.
‘Of course I do. How did you know Stringham?’
‘We were friends in civilian life.’
‘You were?’
Cheesman found that statement hard to credit. He thought about it for a second or two. Stringham and I – that was the impression – seemed miles apart. He wrestled with the question inwardly. When at last he answered, it was as if prepared to accept my word, even then the claim scarcely believable.
‘I see. I do recall now Stringham wasn’t just the ordinary bloke you find in the ranks. I was taken aback at first when you said you’d known him. Of course, you get all sorts in a war. He was a superior type, an educated man. You could see that. All the same I never thought about it much. He never made any difficulties. I’d forgotten altogether. Just remember him in the jobs he used to do. I could never place him myself. What was his work in civilian life?’
That was a hard question to answer. What did Stringham do? Cheesman must be told something. What about the time when (with Bill Truscott as dominant colleague) he had been a sort of personal secretary to Sir Magnus Donners? I fell back on that. To be a secretary implied at least a measure of professional identity. That would serve the purposes of the moment.
‘Stringham was private secretary to a business tycoon.’
‘Oh, was he?’
Cheesman seemed at first more surprised than ever. He did not pursue the matter. His own job could well have brought him face to face with eccentric business tycoons. Either that struck him, or he decided to leave the question vague in solution.
‘He was very fond of making jokes, but I always found him an excellent worker in my sub-unit.’
Cheesman said that without the least disapproval. He spoke as one merely registering an unusual characteristic. So far as jokes were concerned, his own features proclaimed a state of intact virginity as to any experience or sense of them, immaculately so. Cheesman had never made a joke, never seen a joke, could live – and die – without jokes, even if he knew they existed. It did him credit to have so far rationalized Stringham’s behaviour as to be capable of thus defining it Stringham might have been worse typified.
‘Stringham made jokes in the camp,’ he added.
‘He wasn’t taken from Singapore too?’
‘No.’
Again the ghastly forked lightning flashed, a flicker of Death’s vision, reflected for a dreadful instant behind the wire spectacles’ plates of glass. The flesh of Cheesman’s face, softly wrinkled, made one think of those old servants of the past, who had worked unquestioningly for a lifetime in a single household. In Cheesman’s case this unchanging interior had been, no doubt, his own austere, limited – one might reasonably say heroic – personality. There was the same self-assurance as Dan Tokenhouse, the same impression of having dispensed with sex. There was something else too.
‘Stringham died in the camp. He behaved very well there.’
Cheesman thought for a moment after saying that.
‘Very well. Yes. A good man. He wasn’t too strong, you know. Fancy your having met him. They’re odd these things. Sergeant-Major Ablett, you may remember him. He was rescued. He’s quite prosperous now.’
The matter was better pressed no further. More information could easily become too much, too much anyway for one’s peace of mind. Cheesman gave no sign that might be so. He also made no attempt to enlarge.