The Military Philosophers - Anthony Powell [30]
Miss Wartstone used to put up notices, like those at school, and, in the same way, people would draw pictures on them and write comments. ‘Disgasting Management,’ somebody scrawled, probably one of the Allied officers, of whom quite a fair number were accommodated at the flats. Hewetson himself would go white if Miss Wartstone’s name was mentioned.
‘That woman,’ he would say.
When the Eighth Army moved into Tripoli, Hewetson was offered promotion in a new branch of the Judge-Advocate-General’s department proliferated in North Africa. As things turned out, this resulted in a change of my own position in the Section. It could be dated, more or less, by the fact that, when Hewetson came down from speaking with Finn about his own departure, Colonel Cobb, one of the American assistant military attachés, was in our room at that moment, talking of the capture of the German generals at Stalingrad. Although the Americans had a mission of their own for the bulk of their business, Cobb used to visit Finn from time to time about a few routine matters. He usually dropped in afterwards for a minute or two, chiefly, I think, to satisfy a personal preoccupation with the British army and its unexpected ways, an interest by now past the stage of mere desire for professional enlightenment and become fairly obsessive. He would endlessly question people, if opportunity arose, about their corps, Regular or Territorial, its special peculiarities and customs: when raised: where served: what worn. In the banter that sometimes followed these interrogations, Cobb rather enjoyed a touch of grimness, smiling with grave acquiescence when, in the course of one such scrutiny, it was by chance revealed that my own Regiment had borne among the Battle Honours of its Colours the names of Detroit and Miami.
‘Ah, Detroit?’ he said, speaking as if it had happened yesterday. ‘An unfortunate affair that… Miami… The name reminds me of my great-aunt’s grandfather, a man not to be trifled with, who held a commission from King George in the West Florida Provincials.’
To his own anecdotes, of which he possessed an impressive store, Cobb brought a dignified tranquillity of manner that might have earned a high fee in Hollywood, had he ever contemplated acting a military career, rather than living one. He narrated them in a low unemphasized mumble, drawing the words and sentences right back into his mouth, recalling certain old-fashioned types of Paris American. Like Finn, though in a totally different genre, Cobb indulged these dramatic aptitudes in himself, which, one suspected, could even motivate a deliberate visit – for example, the day after Pearl Harbour – should he feel an affirmation required to be made in public.
‘What’s America’s next step, Colonel?’ someone had asked on that occasion.
Cobb did not answer at once. Instead, he threw himself into a relatively theatrical pose, one of those attitudes, stylized yet unforced, in which he excelled; this time in the character of a man giving deep attention to a problem of desperate complexity. Then he spoke a considered judgment.
‘The US Navy are prohibited alcohol,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to call in their golf-clubs, I guess.