The Military Philosophers - Anthony Powell [102]
‘In the face of heavy enemy fire … total disregard for danger … although already twice wounded … managed to reach the objective … got through with the message … brought up the relief in spite of … silenced the machine-gun nest…’
Kernével came last.
‘Captain Kernével,’ announced the MS officer.
He paused for a second, then slightly changed his tone of voice.
‘Citation withheld for security reasons.’
For a moment I was taken by surprise, almost immediately grasping that a technicality of procedure was involved. Liaison duties came under ‘Intelligence’, which included all sorts of secret activities; accordingly, ‘I’ awards were automatically conferred without citation. It was one of those characteristic regulations to which the routine of official life accustoms one. However, the CIGS heard the words with quite other reactions to these. Hitherto, as I have said, although perfectly correct and dignified in his demeanour, his cordiality had been essentially formal, erring if anything on emphasis of the doctrine that nothing short of unconditional courage is to be expected of a soldier. These chronicles of the brave had not galvanized him into being in the least garrulous. Now, at last, his face changed and softened. He was deeply moved. He took a step forward. A giant of a man, towering above Kernével, he put his hand round his shoulder.
‘You people were the real heroes of that war,’ he said.
Afterwards, when we walked back across the Horse Guards, Kernével insisted I had arranged the whole incident on purpose to rag him.
‘It was a good leg-pull,’ he said. ‘How did you manage it?’
‘I promise you.’
‘That’s just what you pretend.’
‘I suppose it would be true to say that there were moments when the Vichy people might have taken disagreeable measures if they had been able to lay their hands on you.’
‘You never know,’ said Kernével.
The final rites were performed the day after I took wine with the Frenchmen in Upper Grosvenor Street. Forms were signed, equipment handed in, the arcane processes of entering the army enacted, like one of Dr Trelawney’s Black Masses, in reverse continuity with an unbelievable symmetry of rhythm. I almost expected the greatcoat, six years before seeming to symbolize induction into this world through the Looking Glass, would be ceremonially lifted from my shoulders. That did not take place. Nevertheless, observances similarly sartorial in character were to close the chapter. This time the mise-en-scène was Olympia, rather than the theatrical costumier’s, a shop once more, yet at the same time not a shop.
Olympia, London’s equivalent of colosseum or bull-ring, had been metamorphosed into a vast emporium for men’s wear. Here, how often as a child had one watched the Royal Tournament, horse and rider deftly clearing the posts-and-rails, sweating ratings dragging screw-guns over dummy fortifications, marines and airmen executing inconceivably elaborate configurations of drill. Here, in the tan, these shows had ended in a grand finale of historical conflict, Ancient Britons and Romans, Saxons and Normans, the Spanish Armada, Malplaquet, Minden, Waterloo, the Light Brigade. Now all memory of such stirring moments had been swept away. Rank on rank, as far as the eye could scan, hung flannel trousers and tweed coats, drab macintoshes and grey suits with a white line running through the material. If this were not a shop, what was it? Perhaps the last scene of the play in which one had been performing, set in an outfitter’s, where you ‘acted’ buying the clothes, put them on, then left the theatre to give up the Stage and find something else to do. Or were those weird unnerving shapes on the coat-hangers anonymous cohorts of that ‘exceeding