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.These historical readings could be varied with Proust.The flat itself was not wholly unsympathetic.The block’s ever-changing population, a mixed bag consisting largely of persons of both sexes working for the ministries, shaded off on the female side from high-grade secretaries, officers of the women’s services, organizers of one thing and another, into a nebulous world of divorcées living on their own and transient types even less definable, probably all but unemployable where ‘war work’ was concerned, yet for one reason or another prepared to stay in London and face the blitz.On warm evenings these un-attached ladies were to be met with straying about on the flat roof of the building, watching the bombers fly out, requesting cigarettes or matches and complaining to each other, or anyone else with whom they made contact, about the shortcomings of Miss Wartstone.On another floor of the block, Hewetson, the Section’s officer with the Belgians and Czechs, also rented a flat.For a time he and I used to set out together every morning; then, deciding to share a larger place with a friend in the Admiralty (who had a hold over a woman who could cook) Hewetson moved elsewhere.He was a solicitor in private life, and, although he did not talk much of such things, gave the impression of being more fortunate than Borrit in chance relationships.He did admit to some sort of an adventure, arisen from sunning himself on the roof during a period of convalescence after a bout of ’flu, with one of these sirens of the chimney pots.Another told him she could only achieve emotional intimacy with her own sex, so Hewetson probably knew the roof better than one might think.All the same, he could not get on with Miss Wartstone.She was manageress of the flats.Her outward appearance at once prepared residents for an unusually contentious temperament.Miss Wartstone had, indeed, passed into a middle-age of pathological quarrelsomeness, possibly in part legacy of nervous tensions built up during the earlier years of the blitz.Latterly, nothing worse than an occasional window broken by blast had disturbed the immediate neighbourhood, but, as the war progressed, few tempers remained as steady as at the beginning.Miss Wartstone used to put up notices, like those at school, and, in the same way, people would draw pictures on them and write comments.‘Disgasting Management,’ somebody scrawled, probably one of the Allied officers, of whom quite a fair number were accommodated at the flats.Hewetson himself would go white if Miss Wartstone’s name was mentioned.‘That woman,’ he would say.When the Eighth Army moved into Tripoli, Hewetson was offered promotion in a new branch of the Judge-Advocate-General’s department proliferated in North Africa.As things turned out, this resulted in a change of my own position in the Section.It could be dated, more or less, by the fact that, when Hewetson came down from speaking with Finn about his own departure, Colonel Cobb, one of the American assistant military attachés, was in our room at that moment, talking of the capture of the German generals at Stalingrad.Although the Americans had a mission of their own for the bulk of their business, Cobb used to visit Finn from time to time about a few routine matters.He usually dropped in afterwards for a minute or two, chiefly, I think, to satisfy a personal preoccupation with the British army and its unexpected ways, an interest by now past the stage of mere desire for professional enlightenment and become fairly obsessive.He would endlessly question people, if opportunity arose, about their corps, Regular or Territorial, its special peculiarities and customs: when raised: where served: what worn.In the banter that sometimes followed these interrogations, Cobb rather enjoyed a touch of grimness, smiling with grave acquiescence when, in the course of one such scrutiny, it was by chance revealed that my own Regiment had borne among the Battle Honours of its Colours the names of Detroit and Miami.‘Ah, Detroit?’ he said, speaking as if it had happened yesterday.‘An unfortunate affair that… Miami… The name reminds me of my great-aunt’s grandfather, a man not to be trifled with, who held a commission from King George in the West Florida Provincials.’To his own anecdotes, of which he possessed an impressive store, Cobb brought a dignified tranquillity of manner that might have earned a high fee in Hollywood, had he ever contemplated acting a military career, rather than living one.He narrated them in a low unemphasized mumble, drawing the words and sentences right back into his mouth, recalling certain old-fashioned types of Paris American [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]