The Soldier's Art - Anthony Powell [45]
“Nothing. I’ve got it all off my chest now. That was what I needed. You understand?”
“Of course.”
“The point is, you agree it’s worth taking trouble to get on an even keel again?”
“Can’t say it too strongly.”
Lovell nodded several times.
“And you’ll be my executor?”
“Honoured.”
“I’ll write to the solicitors then. Marvellous to have got that fixed. Hallo, Hugh, how are you? Ages since we met.”
Dressed in his familiar old blue suit, looking more than ever as if he made a practice of sleeping in it, dark grey shirt and crimson tie, Moreland, hatless, seemed an improbable survival from pre-war life. He was flushed and breathing rather hard. This gave the impression of poorish health. His face, his whole person, was thinner. The flush increased when he recognised Lovell, who must at once have recalled thoughts of Priscilla. Even after this redness had died down, a certain discoloration of the skin remained, increasing the suggestion that Moreland was not well. There was a moment of awkwardness, in spite of Lovell’s immediate display of satisfaction that they should have met again. This was chiefly because Moreland seemed unwilling to commit himself by sitting at our table; an old habit of his, one of those characteristic postponements of action for which he was always laughing at himself, like his constitutional inability in all circumstances to decide from a menu what he wanted to eat.
“I shall be taken for a spy if I sit with you both,” he said. “Somehow I never expected you’d really be wearing uniform, Nick, even though I knew you were in the army. I must tell you of rather a menacing thing that happened the other day. Norman Chandler appeared on my doorstep to hear the latest musical gossip. He’s also become an officer, and we went off to get some lunch at Foppa’s, where neither of us had been since the beginning of the war. The downstairs room was shut, because the window had been broken by a bomb, so we went upstairs, where the club used to be. There we found a couple of seedy-looking characters who said the restaurant was closed. We asked where Foppa was to be found. They said they didn’t know. They weren’t at all friendly. Positively disagreeable. Then I suddenly grasped they thought we were after Foppa for being an Italian – wanted to intern him or something. An army type and a member of the Special Branch. It was obvious as soon as one thought of it.”
“The Special Branch must have changed a lot if they now dress like you, Hugh.”
“Not more than army officers, if they now look like Norman.”
“Anyway, take a seat,” said Lovell. “What are you going to drink? How’s your war been going, Hugh? Not drearier than mine, I feel sure, if you’ll excuse the self-pity.”
Moreland laughed, now more at ease after telling the story about Chandler and himself; Foppa’s restaurant, even if closed, providing a kind of frame to unite the three of us.
“I seem to have neutralised the death-wish for the moment,” he said. “Raids are a great help in that. I was also momentarily cheered just now by finding the man with the peg-leg and patch over one eye still going. He was behind the London Pavilion this evening, playing ‘Softly Awakes My Heart’. Rather an individual version. One of the worst features of the war is the dearth of itinerant musicians, indeed of vagrants generally. For example, I haven’t seen the cantatrice on crutches for years. As I seem equally unfitted for warlike duties, I’d thought of filling the gap and becoming a street musician myself. Unfortunately, I’m such a poor executant.”
“There’s a former music critic in our Public Relations branch,” said Lovell. “He says the great thing for musicians now is the R.A.F. band.”
“Doubt if they’d take me,” said Moreland, “though the idea of massed orchestras of drum and fife soaring across the sky is attractive. Which is your P.R. man’s paper?”
Lovell mentioned the name of the critic, who turned out to be an admirer of Moreland’s work. The two of them began to