The Military Philosophers - Anthony Powell [3]
‘The MO made a balls of it. The tooth was the wrong one.’
Had Finn, in fact, chosen the stage as career, rather than war and commerce, his personal appearance would have restricted him to ‘character’ parts. Superficial good looks were entirely absent. Short, square, cleanshaven, his head seemed carved out of an elephant’s tusk, the whole massive cone of ivory left more or less complete in its original shape, eyes hollowed out deep in the roots, the rest of the protuberance accommodating his other features, terminating in a perfectly colossal nose that stretched directly forward from the totally bald cranium. The nose was preposterous, grotesque, slapstick, a mask from a Goldoni comedy. He had summoned me a day or two before the teleprinter news of the Polish evacuation.
‘As David’s still in Scotland,’ he said. ‘I want you to attend a Cabinet Office meeting. Explain to them how one Polish general can be a very different cup of tea to another.’
The Poles were by far the largest of the Allied contingents in the United Kingdom, running to a Corps of some twenty thousand men, stationed in Scotland, where Pennistone was doing a week’s tour of duty to see the army on the ground and make contact with the British Liaison Headquarters attached to it. The other Allies in this country mustered only two or three thousand bodies apiece, though some of them held cards just as useful as soldiers, if not more so: the Belgians, for example, still controlling the Congo, the Norwegians a large and serviceable merchant fleet. However, the size of the Polish Corps, and the fact that the Poles who had reached this country showed a high proportion of officers to that of ‘other ranks’, inclined to emphasize complexities of Polish political opinion. Some of our own official elements were not too well versed in appreciating the importance of this tricky aspect of all Allied relationships. At misunderstanding’s worst, most disastrous, the Poles were thought of as a race not unlike the Russians; indeed, by some, scarcely to be distinguished apart. Even branches more at home in this respect than the Censorship – to whom it always came as a complete and chaotic surprise that Poles wrote letters to each other expressing feelings towards the USSR that were less than friendly – were sometimes puzzled by internal Allied conflicts alien to our own, in many respects unusual, ideas about running an army.
‘The Poles themselves have a joke about their generals being either social or socialist,’ said Finn. ‘Only wish it was as easy as that. I expect you’ve got the necessary stuff, Nicholas. If you feel you want to strengthen it, apply to the Country Section or our ambassador to them. This is one of Widmerpool’s committees. Have you heard of Widmerpool?’
‘Yes, sir, I —’
‘Had dealings with him?’
‘Quite often, I —’
‘Some people find him …’
Finn paused and looked grave. He must have decided to remain imprecise, because he did not finish the sentence.
‘Very active is Widmerpool,’ he went on. ‘Not everyone likes him – I mean where he is. If you’ve come across him already, you’ll know how to handle things. Have all the information at your finger tips. Plenty of notes to fall back on. We want to deliver the goods. Possibly Farebrother will be there. He has certain dealings with the Poles in these secret games that take place. Farebrother’s got great charm, I know, but you must resist it, Nicholas. Don’t let him entangle us in any of his people’s goings-on.’
‘No, sir. Of course not. Is it Colonel Widmerpool?’
‘He’s a half-colonel – Good God, I’ve been keeping Hlava waiting all this time. He must come up at once. You’d better ring David in Scotland and tell