Anthony Powell - The Soldiers Art (Dance to the Music of Time 08)

ANTHONY POWELL

THE SOLDIERS ART

A NOVEL

Book 8

A Dance to the Music of Time

HEINEMANN : LONDON

When, at the start of the wholebusiness, I bought an army greatcoat, it was at one of those places in theneighbourhood of Shaftesbury Avenue, where, as well as officers kit andoutfits for sport, they hire or sell theatrical costume. The atmosphere within,heavy with menace like an oriental bazaar, hinted at clandestine bargains,furtive even if not unlawful commerce, heightening the tension of an alreadynovel undertaking. The deal was negotiated in an upper room, dark andmysterious, draped with skiing gear and riding-breeches, in the background ofwhich, behind the glass windows of a high display case, two headless trunksstood rigidly at attention. One of these effigies wore Harlequins diagonallyspangled tights; the other, scarlet full-dress uniform of some infantryregiment, allegorical figures, so it seemed, symbolising dualisms of theantithetical stock-in trade surrounding them Civil and Military Work andPlay Detachment and Involvement Tragedy and Comedy War and Peace Lifeand Death

An assistant, bent, elderly, bearded,with the congruous demeanour of a Levantine trader, bore the greatcoat out of asecret recess in the shadows and reverently invested me within itsdouble-breasted, brass-buttoned, stiffly pleated khaki folds. He fastened thefront with rapid bony fingers, doing up the laps to the throat; then steppedback a couple of paces to judge the effect. In a three-sided full-lengthlooking-glass nearby I, too, critically examined the back view of the coatsshot-at-dawn cut, aware at the same time that soon, like Alice, I was to pass,as it were by virtue of these habiliments, through its panes into a world noless enigmatic.

Hows that, sir?

All right, Ithink.

Might be made foryou.

Not a bad fit.

Loosening now quiteslowly the buttons, one by one, he paused as if considering some matter, andgazed intently.

I believe I know your face, he said.

You do?

Was it The MiddleWatch?

Was what the middle watch?

The show I saw you in.

I have absolutely no histrionictalent, none at all, a constitutional handicap in almost all the undertakingsof life; but then, after all, plenty of actors possess little enough. There wasno reason why he should not suppose the Stage to be my profession as well asany other. Identification with something a shade more profound than a farce ofyesteryear treating boisterously of gun-room life in the Royal Navy might havebeen more gratifying to self-esteem, but too much personal definition at such apoint would have been ponderous, out of place. Accepting the classification,however sobering, I did no more than deny having played in that particularknockabout. He helped me out of the sleeves, gravely shaking straight theircreases.

Whats this one for? he asked.

Which one?

The overcoat if I might make boldto enquire?

Just the war.

Ah, he said attentively. TheWar

It was clear he had remainedunflustered by recent public events, at the age he had reached perhapsdisillusioned with the commonplaces of life; too keen a theatre-goer to sparetime for any but the columns of dramatic criticism, however indifferentlywritten, permitting no international crises from the news pages to cloud thekeenness of aesthetic consideration. That was an understandable outlook.

Ill bear the show in mind, he said.

Do, please.

And the address?

Ill take it with me.

Time was short. Now that the curtainhad gone up once more on this old favourite The War inwhich, so it appeared, I had been cast for a walk on part, what days were leftbefore joining my unit would be required for dress rehearsal. Cues must not bemissed. The more one thought of it, the more apt seemed the metaphor. Besides,clothes, if not the whole man, are a large part of him, especially when itcomes to uniform. In a minute or two the parcel, rather a bulky one, was in myhands.

Tried to make a neat job of it, hesaid, though I expect the theatres only round the corner from here.

The theatre of war?

He looked puzzled for a second, then,recognising a mummers obscure quip, nodded several times in appreciation.

And Ill wish you a good run, hesaid, clasping together his old lean hands, as if in applause.

Thanks.

Good day, sir, and thankyou.

I left the shop, allowing a finalglance to fall on the pair of flamboyantly liveried dummies presiding fromtheir glass prison over the sombre vistas of coat-hangers suspending tweed andwhipcord. On second thoughts, the headless figures were perhaps notantithetical at all, on the contrary, represented Honour and Wit, fore-damnedthey sit, to whom the Devil had referred in the poem. Here, it was true, theystood rather than sat, but precise posture was a minor matter. The point wasthat their clothes were just right; while headlessness like depicting Love orJustice blindfold might well signify the inexorable preordination of twindestinies that even war could not alter. Indeed, war, likely to offer bothattributes unlimited range of expression, would also intensify, rather thanabate, their ultimate fatality. Musing on this surmise in the pale, grudgingsunshine of London in December, a light wan yet intimate, I recognised theoff-licence ever memorable for the bottle of port could the fluid be sodesignated that Moreland and I, centuries before, had bought with such highhopes that Sunday afternoon, later so dismally failed to drink.

Looking back from a disturbed, thoughat the same time monotonous present, those Moreland days seemed positivelyArcadian. Even the threatening arbitrament of war (the Prime Ministers ratherornate phrase in his broadcast) had lent a certain macabre excitement to theweeks leading up to the purchase of the greatcoat. Now, some fourteen monthslater, that day seemed scarcely less remote than the immolation of the portbottle. The last heard of Moreland from one of Isobels letters was that amusical job had taken him to Edinburgh. Even that information had been sentlong ago, soon after my own arrival at Division. Since then I had served amillion years at these Headquarters, come to possess no life but the army, nomaster but Widmerpool, no table companions but Biggs and Soper.

Meanwhile, the war itself had passedthrough various phases, some of them uncomfortable enough: France in defeat:Europe overrun: invasion imminent: the blitz opened over London. In this lastaspect more specifically Isobel reported, too, a direct hit on Barnbysfrescoes in the Donners-Brebner Building, a pictorial memory dim as Barnbyhimself, now Camouflage Officer on some distant R.A.F. station. Latterly,things had looked up a trifle, in the Western Desert, for example, but ingeneral the situation remained capable of considerable improvement before beingregarded as in the least satisfactory. F Mess defined by Widmerpool as low,though not the final dregs of the Divisional Staff did not at all alter asense that much was wrong with the world.

After our first local blitz whenthey killed a thousand people, at that stage of the war regarded as quite alarge number for a provincial city in a single night Major-General Liddament,the Divisional Commander, ordered the Defence Platoon (of which I had temporarycharge) to mount brens within the billeting area between the sounding ofAir-raid Warning and All Clear. This was just a drill, in practice no shootingenvisaged, unless exceptional circumstances dive-bombing, for example wereto arise; Command, of course, operating normal anti-aircraft batteries.Announced by the melancholy dirge of sirens, like ritual wailings at barbarousobsequies, the German planes used to arrive shortly before midnight it was along way to come turning up in principle about half an hour after sleep haddescended. They would fly across the town at comparatively high altitude, then,wheeling lower, hum fussily back on their tracks, sometimes dropping anincendiary or two, for luck, in the immediate neighbourhood of the Mess, beforepassing on to the more serious business of lodging high explosive on docks andshipyards. These circlings over the harbour lasted until it was time to return.On such nights, after weapons were back in the armoury, sections dismissed tothe barrack-room, not much residue of sleep was to be recaptured.