The Soldier's Art - Anthony Powell [42]
“Surprising he’s not got higher rank.”
“Finn could have become a colonel half-a-dozen times over since rejoining the army,” said Pennistone. “He always says he prefers not to have too much responsibility. He has his V.C., which always entails respect – and which he loves talking about. However, I think he may be tempted at last to accept higher rank.”
“To what?”
“Very much in the air at the moment. All I can say is, you may be more likely to hear from him than you think.”
“Does he make money at his cosmetics?”
“Enough to keep a wife and daughter hidden away somewhere.”
“Why are they hidden away?”
“I don’t know,” said Pennistone, laughing. “They just are. There are all kinds of things about Finn that are not explained. Keeping them hidden away is part of the Finn system. When I knew him in Paris, I soon found he had a secretive side.”
“You knew him before the war?”
“I came across him, oddly enough, when I was in textiles, working over there.”
‘Textiles are your job?”
“I got out in the end.”
“Into what?”
Pennistone laughed again, as if that were an absurd question to ask.
“Oh, nothing much really,” he said. “I travel about a lot – or used to before the war. I think I told you, when we last met, that I’m trying to write something about Descartes.”
All this suggested – as it turned out rightly – that Pennistone, as well as Finn, had his secretive side. When I came to know him better, I found what mattered to Pennistone was what went on in his head. He could rarely tell you what he had done in the past, or proposed to do in the future, beyond giving a bare statement of places he had visited or wanted to visit, books he had read or wanted to read. On the other hand, he was able to describe pretty lucidly what he had thought – philosophically speaking – at any given period of his life. While other people lived for money, power, women, the arts, domesticity, Pennistone liked merely thinking about things, arranging his mind. Nothing else ever seemed to matter to him. It was the aim Stringham had announced now as his own, though Pennistone was a very different sort of person from Stringham, and better equipped for perfecting the process. I only found out these things about him at a later stage.
“Give me the essential details regarding yourself,” Pennistone said. “Unit, army number, that sort of thing – just in case anything should crop up where I myself might be of use.
I wrote it all down. We parted company, agreeing that Nietzschean Eternal Recurrences must bring us together soon again.
Even by the time I reached the Café Royal that evening, I was still feeling humiliated by the failure of the Finn interview. The afternoon had been devoted to odd jobs, on the whole tedious. The tables and banquettes of the large tasteless room looked unfamiliar occupied by figures in uniform. There was no one there I had ever seen before. I sat down and waited. Lovell did not arrive until nearly half-past seven. He wore captain’s pips. It was hard not to labour under a sense of being left behind in the military race. I offered congratulations.
“You don’t get into the really big money until you’re a major,” he said, “That should be one’s aim.”
“Vaulting ambition.”
“Insatiable.”
“Where do you function?*
“Headquarters of Combined Operations,” he said, “that curious toy fort halfway down Whitehall. It’s a great place for Royal Marines. A bit of luck your being on leave, Nick. One or two things I want to talk about First of all, will you agree to be executor of my will?”
“Of course.”
“Perfectly simple. Whatever there is – which isn’t much, I can assure you – goes to Priscilla, then to Caroline.”
“That doesn’t sound too complicated.”
“One never knows what may happen to one.”
“No, indeed.”
The remark echoed Sergeant Harmer’s views. There was a pause. I had the sudden sense that Lovell was going to broach some subject I should not like. This apprehension turned out to be correct,
“Another small matter,” he said.
“Yes?