champagne in a deep jug. “Blackers?” They had always drunk this sour and invigorating draught.
“Tell us all about the war,” said Sonia.
“Well ?” Basil began.
“No, darling, I didn’t mean that. Not all. Not about who’s going to win or why we are fighting. Tell us what everyone is going to do about it. From what Margot tells me the last war was absolute heaven. Alastair wants to go for a soldier.”
“Conscription has rather taken the gilt off that particular gingerbread,” said Basil. “Besides, this isn’t going to be a soldier’s war.”
“Poor Peter,” said Sonia, as though she were talking to one of the puppies. “It isn’t going to be your war, sweetheart.”
“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?
