The military philosophers by Anthony Powell

the rest of us, like Jacob and the Angel, had to wrestle with Blackhead until the coming of day, or nearly that. Such was the biblical comparison that sprang to mind as I climbed the stairs leading to Blackhead’s room, the moral exile to which his own kind had banished him emphasized not only by its smallness, but also by the fact that he lived there alone, isolation rare for one of his putatively low degree – if, indeed, his degree was low. I opened the door a crack, but further enlargement of entry was blocked by sheer stowage of paper, the files thickly banked about the floor like wholesale goods awaiting allotment to retailers, or, more credibly, the residue of a totally unsaleable commodity stored up here out of everyone’s way. Blackhead himself was writing. He jumped up for a second and fiercely kicked a great cliff of files aside so that I could squeeze into the room. Then he returned to whatever he was at, his right hand moving feverishly across the paper, while his left thumb and forefinger, both stained with ink, rested on the handle of a saucerless cup.
    ‘I’ll attend to you in a minute, Jenkins.’
    Not only was Blackhead, so to speak, beyond rank, he was also beyond age; beyond or outside Time. He might have been a worn – terribly worn – thirty-five; on the other hand (had not superannuation regulations, no doubt as sacred to Blackhead as any other official ordinances, precluded any such thing), he could easily have achieved threescore years and ten, with a safe prospect for his century. Emaciated, though obviously immensely strong, he was probably in truth approaching fifty. His hair, which formed an irregular wiry fringe over a furrowed leathery brow, was of a metallic shade that could have been natural to him all his life.
    ‘Glad you’ve come, Jenkins,’ he said, putting his face still closer to the paper on which he was writing. ‘Pennistone minuted me … Polish Women’s Corps … terms I haven’t been able fully to interpret… In short don’t at all comprehend …’
    His hand continued to move at immense speed, with a nervous shaky intensity, backwards and forwards across the page of the file, ending at last in a signature. He blotted the minute, read through what he had written, closed the covers. Then he placed the file on an already overhanging tower of similar dockets, a vast rickety skyscraper of official comment, based on the flimsy foundation of a wire tray. At this final burden, the pyramid began to tremble, at first seemed likely to topple over. Blackhead showed absolute command of the situation. He steadied the pile with scarcely a touch of his practised hand. Then, eyes glinting behind his spectacles, he rose jerkily and began rummaging about among similar foothills of files ranged on a side table.
    ‘Belgian Women’s Corps, bicycle for … Norwegian military attaché, office furniture … Royal Netherlands Artillery, second echelon lorries … Czechoslovak Field Security, appointment of cook … Distribution of Polish Global Sum in relation to other Allied commitments – now we’re getting warm … Case of Corporal Altmann, legal costs in alleged rape – that’s moving away … Luxembourg shoulder flashes  – right out… Here we are … Polish Women’s Corps, soap issue for – that’s the one I wanted a word about.’
    ‘I really came about the question of restrictions on straw for stuffing hospital palliasses in Scotland.’
    Blackhead paused, on the defensive at once.
    ‘You can’t be expecting an answer on straw already?*
    ‘We were hoping —’
    ‘But look here …’
    ‘It must be a week or ten days.’
    ‘Week or ten days? Cast your eyes over these, Jenkins.’
    Blackhead made a gesture with his pen in the direction of the files stacked on the table amongst which he had been excavating.
    ‘Barely had time to glance at the straw,’ he said. ‘Certainly not think it out properly. It’s a tricky subject, straw.’
    ‘Liaison HQ in Scotland hoped