The Military Philosophers - Anthony Powell [54]
‘She meant so much to me,’ he said.
‘Who did?’ asked Pamela.
‘Someone who was killed in an air-raid.’
He put considerable emotion into his voice when he said that. Perhaps Priscilla had, indeed, ‘meant a lot’ to him. I did not care. I saw no reason to be dragged in as a kind of prop to his self-esteem, or masochistic pleasure in lacking it. Besides, I wanted to get on to the Szymanski story.
‘You’re always telling me I mean more to you than any other girl has,’ said Pamela. ‘At least you do after a couple of drinks. You’ve the weakest head of any man I’ve ever met.’
She spoke in that low almost inaudible mutter employed by her most of the time. There was certainly a touch of Audrey Maclintick about her, at least enough to explain why Stevens and Mrs Maclintick had got on so comparatively well together that night in the Café Royal. On the other hand, this girl was not only much better looking, but also much tougher even than Mrs Maclintick. Pamela Flitton gave the impression of being thoroughly vicious, using the word not so much in the moral sense, but as one might speak of a horse – more specifically, a mare.
‘I don’t claim the capacity for liquor of some of your Slav friends,’ said Stevens laughing.
He sounded fairly well able to stand up to her. This seemed a suitable moment to change the subject.
‘You were in the news locally not so long ago – where I work, I mean – about one Szymanski.’
‘Don’t tell me you’re with the Poles, Nicholas?’
‘I’d left them by the time you got up to your tricks.’
Pamela showed interest at the name Szymanski.
‘I sent you a message,’ she said. ‘Did you get it?’
When she smiled and spoke directly like that, it was possible to guess at some of her powers should she decide to make a victim of a man.
‘I got it.’
‘Then you were in on the party?’ asked Stevens.
‘I saw some of the repercussions.’
‘God,’ he said. ‘That was a lark.’
‘Not for those engaged in normal liaison duties.’
One’s loyalties vary. At that moment I felt wholly on the side of law and order, if only to get some of my own back for his line of talk about the Lovells.
‘Oh, bugger normal liaison duties. Even you must admit the operation was beautifully executed. Look here …’
He took my arm, and, leaving Pamela sitting sullenly by herself on a bench, walked me away to a deserted corner of the hall. When we reached there, he lowered his voice.
‘I’m due for a job in the near future not entirely unconnected with Szymanski himself.’
‘Housebreaking?’
Stevens yelled with laughter.
‘That’ll be the least of our crimes, I’d imagine,’ he said. ‘That is, the least of his – which might easily not stop at manslaughter, I should guess. Actually, we’re doing quite different jobs, but more or less in the same place.’
‘Presumably it’s a secret where you’re conducting these activities.’
‘My present situation is being on twenty-four call to Cairo. I’ll release something to you, as an old pal, in addition to that. The plot’s not unconnected with one of Pam’s conquests. Rather a grand one.’
‘You remind me of the man who used to introduce his wife as ancienne maîtresse de Lord Byron.’’
‘This is classier than a lord – besides Pam and I aren’t married yet.’
‘You don’t have to spell the name out.’
I was not impressed by Stevens’s regard for ‘security,’ always a risk in the hands of the vain. All the same, not much damage would be done by my knowing that at last some sort of assistance was to be given to the Resistance in Prince Theodoric’s country; and that Stevens and Szymanski were involved. That was certainly interesting.
‘I’ll be playing for the village boys,’ he said. ‘Rather than the team the squire is fielding.’
‘A tricky situation, I should imagine.’
‘You bet.’
‘I saw Sunny Farebrother yesterday, who took the rap in the Szymanski business.’
‘Cunning old bugger. They pushed him off to a training centre for a bit, but I bet he’s back on something good.’
‘He thinks so. Was Szymanski a boy-friend of Pamela’s?’
I thought I had a right to ask that question after the way Stevens had talked. For once he seemed a shade put