The Soldier's Art - Anthony Powell [13]
“How do you know?”
“Because I too have my candidate.”
“To command the Recce Corps?”
“Going into the matter, I discovered Hogbourne-Johnson’s tracks. However, I can circumvent him.”
Widmerpool smiled and nodded in a manner to indicate extreme slyness.
“Who?”
“No one you would have met. An excellent officer of my acquaintance called Victor Upjohn. Knew him as a Territorial. First-rate man.”
“Won’t they appoint a cavalryman, in spite of Hogbourne-Johnson and yourself?”
“They’ll appoint my infantryman – and be glad of him.”
“If the General is likely to be annoyed about Hogbourne-Johnson messing about behind his back as to appointments to command in his Division, he’ll be even less pleased to find you at the same game.”
“He won’t find out. Neither will Hogbourne-Johnson. Upjohn will simply be gazetted. In the meantime, so far as it goes, I am prepared to play ball with Hogbourne-Johnson up to a point. After all, if I know the right man to command the Recce Corps, it’s surely my duty to get him there.”
There was something to be said for this view. If you want your own way in the army, or elsewhere, it is no good following the rules too meticulously, a canon all great military careers – and most civil ones – abundantly illustrate. What Widmerpool had not allowed for, as things turned out, was a sudden deterioration of his own relations with Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson. No doubt one reason for his assurance about that, in spite of the Colonel’s uncertain temper, was that most of Widmerpool’s dealings were with his own immediate superior, Colonel Pedlar, so less likelihood of friction existed in the other more explosive quarter. Naturally he was in touch with Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson from time to time, but there was no day-to-day routine, during which Hogbourne-Johnson was likely, sooner or later, to make himself disagreeable as a matter of principle.
Colonel Pedlar, as “A. & Q.”, set no problem at all. Also a regular full colonel with an M.C., he had little desire to be unaccommodating for its own sake. A certain stiffness of manner in official transactions was possibly due to apprehension that more might be required of him than he had to offer, rather than an innate instinct, like Hogbourne-Johnson’s, to be unreasonable in all his dealings. Colonel Pedlar seemed almost surprised to have reached the rank he had attained; appeared to possess little or no ambition to rise above it, or at least small hope that he would in due course be promoted to a brigade. The slowness of his processes of thought sometimes irked his subordinate, Widmerpool, even though these processes were on the whole reliable. If Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson looked like an owl, Colonel Pedlar resembled a retriever, a faithful hound, sound in wind and limb, prepared to tackle a dog twice his size, or swim through a river in spate to collect his master’s game, but at the same time not in the top class for picking up a difficult scent.
Trouble with Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson might never have arisen, as it did at that particular moment, had not Colonel Pedlar been, quite by chance, out of the way. When it came, sudden and violent, the cause was a far more humdrum matter than the clandestine guiding of appointments. Indeed, the incident itself was such a minor one, so much part of the day’s work, that, had I not myself witnessed it – owing to the exceptional occurrence of Advance Headquarters and Rear Headquarters being brought together in one element at the close of the three-day exercise – I should always have believed some essential detail to have been omitted from the subsequent story; guessed that nothing so trivial in itself could have so much discomposed Widmerpool. That incredulity was due, I suppose, to underestimation, even after the years I had known him, of Widmerpool’s inordinate, almost morbid, self-esteem.
During “schemes,” the Defence Platoon was responsible for guarding the Divisional Commander’s Advance Headquarters. This meant, on these occasions, accommodation