The Soldier's Art - Anthony Powell [33]
“My dear Nick, you know everybody. Not a social item escapes you. I myself can no longer keep up with births, marriages and deaths – well, deaths now and then perhaps, but not births and marriages. That’s why being in the ranks suits me. No strain in that particular respect. Nobody asks you if you read in this morning’s Times that so-and-so’s engaged or somebody else is getting a divorce. All that had begun to get me down for some reason. Make me tired. Anyway, to hark back to the long and wearisome story of my own life, the point was that Tuffy, like everyone else, had had enough of me. She wanted another sphere in which to exercise her tireless remedial activities. That was why I took the shilling:
I ’listed at home for a lancer,
Oh who would not sleep with the brave?
I am not, as your familiarity with military insignia will already have proclaimed, strictly speaking a lancer – just as well, for these days I couldn’t possibly take part in those musical rides lancers are always performing at the Military Tournament and places like that … haven’t sat on a horse for years …”
Stringham paused a moment, beginning now to hum a bar or two of a jerky tune, the sort to which riders at a Horse Show might canter round the paddock.
“So-let-each-cavalier-who-loves-honour-and-me
Come-follow-the-bonnets-of-Bonny-Dundee …”
He curled his wrists slightly, lifting them in the air as if holding reins. He seemed far away, to have forgotten completely that we were talking. I wondered how sane he remained. Then he came suddenly back to himself.
“… What was I saying? Oh, yes, A. E. Housman, of course … not my favourite poet, as a matter of fact, but that was just what happened … though I hasten to add I sleep with the brave only in the sense of dormitory accommodation. To tell the truth, Nick, I had the greatest difficulty in extracting the metaphorical shilling from an equally metaphorical Recruiting Sergeant. No magnificent figure with a bunch of ribbons in his cap, but several rather seedy characters in a stuffy office drinking cups of tea. Even so, they wouldn’t look at me when I first breezed in. Then the war took a turn for the worse, in Norway and elsewhere, and they saw they’d need Stringham after all. One of the reasons I left the R.A.O.C. is that they have a peculiarly trying warrant rank called Conductor – just as if you were on a bus – so I made the exchange I spoke of. What a fascinating place the army is. Before I joined, I thought all you had to do when you fired a rifle was to get your eye and the sights and the target all in one line and then blaze away. The army has produced a whole book about it, a fat little volume. But my egotism is insufferable, Nick. Tell me about yourself. What have you been doing? How are you reacting to it all? You look a trifle harassed, if I may say so. Not surprising, working with Widmerpool.”
Stringham himself looked ill, though not in the least harassed.
“On top of everything else,” he said, “one’s getting frightfully old. Do you think I shall qualify as a Chelsea pensioner after the war? I’d like one of those red frockcoats, though I’ve never cared for Chelsea as a neighbourhood. No leanings whatever towards bohemian life. However, one may come to both before one’s finished – residence in Chelsea and a bohemian to boot. You know I’ve been thinking a lot about myself lately, when scrubbing the floors and that sort of thing – an activity for some reason I often find myself quite enjoying – and I’ve come to the conclusion I’m narcissistic, mad about myself. That’s why my marriage went wrong. I really was awfully glad when it was over.”
“Do you do anything about girls now?”
“Seem to have lost all interest. Isn’t that strange? You know how it is. My great amusement now is trying to get things straight in my own mind. That takes me all my time, as you can imagine. The more I think, the less I know. Funny, isn’t it? Talking of girls, what happened to our old pal, Peter Templer? Do