“Suits me,” said Peter,
“I expect Basil will have the most tremendous adventures. He always did in peace-time. Goodness knows what he’ll do in war.”
“There are too many people in on the racket,” said Basil.
“Poor sweet, I don’t believe any of you are nearly as excited about it as I am.”
The name of the poet Parsnip, casually mentioned, reopened the great Parsnip-Pimpernell controversy which was torturing Poppet Green and her friends. It was a problem which, not unlike the Schleswig-Holstein question of the preceding century, seemed to admit of no logical solution, for, in simple terms, the postulates were self-contradictory. Parsnip and Pimpernell, as friends and collaborators, were inseparable; on that all agreed. But Parsnip’s art flourished best in England, even an embattled England, while Pimpernell’s needed the peaceful and fecund soil of the United States. The complementary qualities which, many believed, made them together equal to one poet, now threatened the dissolution of partnership.
“I don’t say that Pimpernell is the better poet,” said Ambrose. “All I say is that I personally find him the more nutritious; so I personally think they are right to go.”
“But I’ve always felt that Parsnip is so much more dependent on environment.”
“I know what you mean, Poppet, but I don’t agree…Aren’t you thinking only of Guernica Revisited and forgetting the Christopher Sequence…”
Thus the aesthetic wrangle might have run its familiar course, but there was in the studio that morning a cross, redheaded girl in spectacles from the London School of Economics; she believed in a People’s Total War; an uncompromising girl whom none of them liked; a suspect of Trotskyism.
“What I don’t see,” she said (and what this girl did not see was usually a very conspicuous embarrassment to Poppet’s friends), “what I don’t see is how these two can claim to be contemporary if they run away from the biggest event in contemporary history. They were contemporary enough about Spain when no one threatened to come and bomb them.”
It was an awkward question; one that in military parlance was called “a swift one.” At any moment, it was felt in the studio, this indecent girl would use the word “escapism”; and, in the silence which followed her outburst, while everyone in turn meditated and rejected a possible retort, she did, in fact, produce the unforgivable charge. “It’s just sheer escapism,” she said.
The word startled the studio, like the cry of “Cheat” in a card-room.
“That’s a foul thing to say, Julia.”
“Well, what’s the answer?”…
The answer, thought Ambrose; he knew an answer or two. There was plenty that he had learned from his new friends, that he could quote to them. He could say that the war in Spain was “contemporary” because it was a class war; the present conflict, since Russia had declared herself neutral, was merely a phase in capitalist disintegration; that would have satisfied, or at least silenced, the redheaded girl. But that was not really the answer. He sought for comforting historical analogies but every example which occurred to him was on the side of the redhead. She knew them too, he thought, and would quote them with all her post-graduate glibness Socrates marching to the sea with Xenophon, Virgil sanctifying Roman military rule, Horace singing the sweetness of dying for one’s country, the troubadours riding to war, Cervantes in the galleys at Lepanto, Milton working himself blind in the public service, even George IV, for whom Ambrose had a reverence which others devoted to Charles I, believed he had fought at Waterloo. All these, and a host of other courageous contemporary figures, rose in Ambrose’s mind. Cezanne had deserted in 1870, but Cezanne in the practical affairs of life was a singularly unattractive figure; moreover, he was a painter whom Ambrose found insufferably boring. There was no answer to be found on those lines.
“You’re just sentimental,” said Poppet, “like a spinster getting tearful at the sound of a military band.”
“Well, they have military bands in Russia, don’t they? I expect plenty of spinsters get tearful in the Red Square when they march past Lenin’s tomb.”
You can always stump them with Russia, thought Ambrose; they can always stump each other. It’s the dead end of all discussion.
“The question is: Would they write any better for being in danger?” said one.
“Would they help the People’s Cause?” said another.
It was the old argument, gathering speed again after the rude girl’s interruption. Ambrose gazed sadly at the jaundiced, mustachioed Aphrodite. What was he doing, he asked himself, in this galley?
Sonia was trying to telephone to Margot, to invite themselves all to luncheon.
“An odious man says that only official calls are being taken this morning.”
“Say you’re M.I.9,” said Basil.
“I’m M.I.9
What can that mean? Darling, I believe it’s going to work…It has worked…Margot, this is Sonia…I’m dying to see you, too….”
Aphrodite gazed back at him, blind, as though sculptured in butter; Parsnip and Pimpernell, Red Square and Brown House, thus the discussion raged. What had all this to do with him?
Art and Love had led him to this inhospitable room.
Love for a long succession of loutsrugger blues, all-in wrestlers, naval ratings; tender, hopeless love that had been rewarded at the best by an occasional episode of rough sensuality, followed, in sober light, with contempt, abuse and rapacity.
A pansy. An old queen. A habit of dress, a tone of voice, an elegant, humorous deportment that had been admired and imitated, a swift, epicene felicity of wit, the art of dazzling and confusing those he despised these had been his; and now they were the current exchange of comedians; there were only a few restaurants, now, which he could frequent without fear of ridicule, and there he was surrounded, as though by distorting mirrors, with gross reflections and caricatures of himself. Was it thus that the rich passions of Greece and Arabia and the Renaissance had worn themselves out? Did they simper when Leonardo passed and imitate with mincing grace the warriors of Sparta? Was there a snigger across the sand outside the tents of Saladin? They burned the Knights Templars at the stake; their loves, at least, were monstrous and formidable, a thing to call down destruction from heaven if man neglected his duty of cruelty and repression. Beddoes had died in solitude, by his own hand; Wilde had been driven into the shadows, tipsy and garrulous, but, to the end, a figure of tragedy looming big in his own twilight. But Ambrose, thought Ambrose, what of him? Born after his time, in an age which made a type of him, a figure of farce; like mothers-in-law and kippers, the century’s contribution to the national store of comic objects; akin with the chorus boys who tittered under the lamps of Shaftesbury Avenue…And Hans, who at last, after so long a pilgrimage, had seemed to promise rest, Hans so simple and affectionate, like a sturdy young terrier, Hans lay in the unknown horrors of a Nazi concentration camp.
The huge, yellow face with scrawled moustaches offered Ambrose no comfort.
There was a young man of military age in the studio; he was due to be called up in the near future. “I don’t know what to do about it,” he said. “Of course I could always plead conscientious objections, but I haven’t got a conscience. It would be a denial of everything we’ve stood for if I said I had a conscience.”
“No, Tom,” they said to comfort him. “We know you haven’t a conscience.”
“But then,” said the perplexed young man, “if I haven’t got a conscience, why in God’s name should I mind so much saying that I have?”
“…Peter’s here and Basil. We’re all feeling very gay and warlike. May we come to luncheon? Basil says there’s bound to be an enormous air raid tonight so it may be the last time we shall ever see each other…what’s that? Yes, I told you I’m (What am I, Basil?) I’m M.I.9. (There’s a ridiculous woman on the line saying, ‘Is this a private call?’)…Well, Margot, then we’ll all come round to you. That’ll be heaven…Hello, hello…I do believe that damned woman has cut us off.”