Men at Arms (13 page)

Later, he said: ‘Funny old Goodall taking such a fancy to you,’ and later still, when they had reached Kut-al-Imara and were sitting in the hall with their gin and vermouth, he broke a long silence with: ‘I never claimed to be anything much at football.’

‘No. You said you didn’t make a fetish of it.’

‘Exactly. To tell, you the truth I never made much mark at Staplehurst. It’s strange, looking back on it now, but in those days I might just have passed for one of the crowd. Some men develop late.’

‘Like Winston Churchill.’

‘
Exactly
. We might go back to the Club after dinner.’

‘D’you think tonight?’

‘Well, I’m going and it’s cheaper sharing a taxi.’

So that evening and most subsequent evenings Guy and Apthorpe went to the Yacht Club. Apthorpe was welcome as a fourth in the card-room and Guy read happily before the fire surrounded by charts, burgees, binnacles, model ships and other nautical decorations.

ALL
that January was intensely cold. In the first week an exodus began from the dormitories of Kut-al-Imara, first of the married men who were given permission to sleep in lodgings; then, since many of the controlling staff were themselves unmarried yet comfortably quartered, the order was stretched to include all who could afford or contrive it. Guy moved to the Grand Hotel, which was conveniently placed between Kut-al-Imara and the Club. It was a large hotel built for summer visitors, almost empty now in war-time winter. He engaged good rooms very cheaply. Apthorpe was taken in by Sir Lionel Gore. By the end of the month less than half the original draft remained in quarters. They spoke of ‘boarders and dayboys’. The local bus service did not fit the times of parade nor did it strictly conform to its timetable. Many ‘dayboys’ had lodgings far from the school and the bus route. The weather showed no sign of breaking. Even the march to and from the bus stop was now laborious on the icebound road. There were many cases of officers late on parade with plausible excuses. The gym was unheated and long hours there became increasingly irksome. For all these reasons working hours were cut. They began at nine and ended at four. There was no bugler at Kut-al-Imara and Sarum-Smith one day facetiously rang the school bell five minutes before parade. Major McKinney thought this a helpful innovation and gave orders to continue it. The curriculum followed the text-books, lesson by lesson, exercise by exercise, and the preparatory school way of life was completely recreated. They were to stay there until Easter – a whole term.

The first week of February filled no dykes that year. Everything was hard and numb. Sometimes about midday there was a bleak glitter of sun; more often the skies were near and drab, darker than the snowbound downland inshore, leaden and lightless on the seaward horizon. The laurels round Kut-al-Imara were sheathed in ice, the drive rutted in crisp snow. On the morning of Ash Wednesday Guy rose early and went to mass. 

With the ash still on his forehead he breakfasted and tramped up the hill to Kut-al-Imara, where he found the place full of boyish excitement. 

‘I say, Uncle, have you heard? The Brigadier’s arrived.’ 

‘He was here last night. I came into the hall and there he was, covered in red, glaring at the notice board.’ 

‘I’d made a resolution to dine in every night till the end of the month, but I slipped out by the side door. So did everyone else.’ 

‘Something tells me he’s up to no good.’ 

The school bell rang. Apthorpe was now restored to general duties and fell in with the squad.

‘The Brigadier has come.’ 

‘So I hear.’ 

‘High time, too, if you ask me. There are quite a number of things here need putting in order, starting with the staff.’ 

They marched to the gymnasium and broke up into the usual four classes. All were being initiated in the same hard way into the mysteries of Fixed Lines. 

‘Stores,’ said the colour sergeant instructor. ‘Gun, spare barrel, dummies, magazines, carrier’s wallet, tripod, aiming peg and night firing lamp. All right?’ 

‘Right, Sergeant.’ 

‘Right, eh? Any gentleman see anything not right? Where’s the peg; where’s the lamp? Not available. So this here piece of chalk will substitute for peg and lamp. All right?’ 

Every half-hour they stood easy for ten minutes. During the second of these periods of glacial rest there was a warning: ‘Pipes out. Officers coming. Party, shun.’ 

‘Carry on, Sergeants,’ said a voice unfamiliar to most. ‘Never hold up instruction. Don’t look at me, gentlemen. All eyes on the guns.’ Ritchie-Hook was among them, clothed as a brigadier, attended by the officer commanding the course and his second-in-command. He went from class to class. Parts of what was said reached the corner where Guy’s squad worked. Most of it sounded cross. At last he reached Guy’s squad. 

‘First detail; prepare for action.’ 

Two young officers flung themselves on the floorboards and reported: ‘Magazines and spare barrel correct.’ 

‘Action.’ 

The Brigadier watched. Presently he said: ‘Get up, you two. Stand easy, everyone. Now tell me what a fixed line is for.’

Apthorpe said: ‘To deny an area to the enemy by means of interlocking beaten zones.’ 

‘Sounds as though you’d stopped giving him sweets. I’d like to hear less about denying things to the enemy and more about biffing him. Remember that, gentlemen. All fire-plans are just biffing. Now, you, number one at the gun. You’ve just been laying an aim on that chalk mark on the floor, haven’t you? D’you think you’d hit it?’ 

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Look again.’ 

Sarum-Smith lay down and, carefully checked his aim. ‘Yes, sir.’ 

‘With the sights at 1800?’ 

‘That’s the range we were given, sir!’ 

‘But God damn it, man, what’s the use of aiming at a chalk mark ten yards away with the sights at 1800?’ 

‘That’s the fixed line, sir.’ 

‘Fixed on what?’

‘The chalk mark, sir.’

‘Anyone care to help him?’ 

‘There is no aiming peg or night firing lamp available, sir,’ said Apthorpe. 

‘What the hell’s that got to do with it?’

‘That’s why we’re using a chalk mark, sir.’ 

‘You young officers have been doing small arms for six weeks. Can none of you tell me what a fixed line is for?’ 

‘For biffing, sir,’ suggested Trimmer.

‘For biffing what?’ 

‘The aiming peg or night firing lamp if available, sir. Otherwise the chalk mark.’ 

‘I see,’ said the Brigadier, baffled. He strode out of the, gym followed by the staff. 

‘Now you’ve been and let me down,’ said the sergeant-instructor. 

In a few minutes a message arrived that the Brigadier would see all officers in the mess at twelve o’clock. 

‘Rockets all round,’ said Sarum-Smith. ‘I shouldn’t wonder if the staff aren’t having rather a sticky morning, too.’ 

So it seemed from their glum looks as they sat facing their juniors assembled in the school dining-hall. Places were already laid for luncheon and there was a smell of brussels sprouts boiling not far away. They sat silent as in a monastery refectory. The Brigadier rose,
Cesare armato con un occhio grifano
, as though to say Grace. He said: ‘Gentlemen, you may not smoke.’ 

It had not occurred to anyone to do so. 

‘But you need not sit at attention,’ he added, for everyone was instinctively stiff and motionless. They tried to arrange themselves less formally but there was no ease in that audience. Trimmer rested an elbow on the table and rattled the cutlery. 

‘It is not yet time to eat,’ said the Brigadier. 

Guy remembered the anecdote about ‘six of the best’. It would really not have surprised him greatly if the Brigadier had produced a cane and called Trimmer up for correction. No charge had been preferred, no specific rebuke (except to Trimmer) uttered but under that solitary ferocious eye all were held in universal guilt. 

The spirits of countless scared schoolboys still haunted and dominated the hall. How often must the word have been passed under those rafters of painted and grained plaster, in this same stench of brussels sprouts: ‘the Head’s in a frightful wax.’ ‘Who is it this time?’ ‘Why me?’ 

The words of that day’s liturgy echoed dreadfully in Guy’s mind:
Memento, homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris
. 

Then the Brigadier began his speech: ‘Gentlemen, it seems to me that you could all do with a week’s leave,’ and his smile, more alarming than any scowl, convulsed the grey face. ‘In fact some of you needn’t bother to come back at all. They’ll be notified later through what are laughingly called the “correct channels”.’ 

It was a masterly opening. The Brigadier was no scold and he was barely one part bully. What he liked was to surprise people. In gratifying this simple taste he had often to resort to violence, sometimes to heavy injury, but there was no pleasure for him in these concomitants. Surprise was everything. He must have known, glaring at his audience, that morning, that he had scored a triumph. He continued: 

‘I can only say that I am sorry I have not been to visit you before. There is more work than you can possibly know in forming a new brigade. I have been looking after that side of your affairs. I heard reports that when you arrived the accommodation was not perfect but Halberdier officers must learn to look after themselves. I came here last night on a friendly visit expecting to find you all happily settled in. I arrived at seven o’clock. There was not one officer in camp. Of course there is no military rule that you must dine in on any particular night. I supposed you were all out on some celebration. I asked the civilian caterer and learned that yesterday was not an exceptional occasion. He did not know the name of a single member of the mess committee. This does not strike me as being what the blue-jobs call a “happy ship”.

‘I looked at your work this morning. It was pretty moderate – and in case any young officer doesn’t know what that means, it means damned awful. I do not say that it is entirely your fault. No military offence that I know of has been committed. But an officer’s worth does not consist in avoiding military offences.

‘What’s more, gentlemen, you aren’t officers. There are advantages in your present equivocal position. Advantages for you and for me. You none of you hold His Majesty’s Commission. You are on probation. I can send the lot of you packing tomorrow without giving any explanation. As you know, the normal channel to a commission nowadays in the rest of the army is through the ranks and then to an OCTU. Halberdiers have been specially privileged to collect and train our new officers by direct entry. It won’t occur again. We were given this single opportunity to train one batch of young officers because the War Office have faith in the traditions of the Corps. They know we wouldn’t take a dud. Your replacements, when you’re “expended”’ – a cyclopean, flash – ‘will have gone through the modern mill of the ranks and an OCTU. You are the last men to be accepted and trained in the old way. And I’d sooner report total failure than let in one man I can’t trust. 

‘Don’t think you’ve done something clever in getting a commission easily by the backstairs. You’ll go down those stairs arse over tip with my foot behind you, if you don’t pull yourselves together. 

‘The rule of attack is “Never reinforce failure”. In plain English that means: if you see some silly asses getting into a mess, don’t get mixed up with ’em. The best help you can give is to go straight on biffing the enemy where it hurts him most. 

‘This course has been a failure. I’m not going to reinforce it. We’ll start again this time next week. I shall be in charge.’ 

The Brigadier did not stay for luncheon. He mounted his motor-cycle and drove away noisily among the icy ruts. Major McKinney and the directing staff packed into their cosy private cars. The probationary officers remained. Strangely enough the atmosphere was one of exhilaration, not at the prospect of leave (that created many problems), but because all, or nearly all, had been unhappy during the past weeks. They were all, or nearly all, brave, unromantic, conscientious young men who joined the army expecting to work rather harder than they had done in peace time. Regimental pride had taken them unawares and quite afflated them. At Kut the Bitter they had been betrayed; deserted among dance halls and slot machines. 

‘Rather strong worded, I thought,’ said Apthorpe. ‘He might have made it clearer that there were certain exceptions.’ 

‘You don’t think he meant you when he said some of us need not come back?’ 

‘Hardly, old man,’ Apthorpe said, and added: ‘I think in the circumstances I shall dine in mess tonight.’ 

Guy went alone to the Garibaldi where he found it difficult to explain to Mr Pelecci, a deeply superstitious Catholic but in the manner of his townsmen – not given to ascetic practices, that he did not want meat that evening. Ash Wednesday was for Mrs Pelecci. Mr Pelecci feasted for St Joseph and fasted for no one. 

But that evening Guy felt full of meat, gorged like a lion on Ritchie-Hook’s kill. 

PERHAPS
the Brigadier believed that besides clearing space for his own work, he was softening the force of his reprimand by sending the course on leave. The ‘boarders’ left cheerfully but the ‘dayboys’ were committed to various arrangements in the town. Many had overspent themselves in establishing their wives. For them there was the prospect of five days loafing in lodgings. Guy was not rich. He was spending rather more than usual. There was no great attraction in changing an hotel bedroom in Southsand for a more expensive one in London. He decided to remain.

On the second evening Mr Goodall was due to dine with him at the Garibaldi. Afterwards they went to the Yacht Club, and sat alone, among the trophies in the shuttered morning-room. Both were elated by that evening’s news, the boarding of the Altmark; but soon Mr Goodall was back on his favourite topic. He was very slightly flown with wine and looser than usual in his conversation. 

He spoke of the extinction (in the male line), some fifty years back, of an historic Catholic family. 

‘…They were a connexion of yours through the Wrottmans of Garesby. It was a most curious case. The last heir took his wife from a family (which shall be nameless) which has an unfortunate record of instability in recent generations. They had two daughters and then the wretched girl eloped with a neighbour. It made a terrible ado at the time. It was before divorce was common. Anyway they
were
divorced and this woman married this man. If you’ll forgive me I won’t tell you his name. Then ten years later your kinsman met this woman alone, abroad. A kind of rapprochment occurred but she went back to her so-called husband and in due time bore a son. It was in fact your kinsman’s. It was by law the so-called husband’s, who recognized it as his. That boy is alive today and in the eyes of God the rightful heir to all his father’s quarterings.’ 

Guy was less interested in the quarterings than in the morality. 

‘You mean to say that theologically the original husband committed no sin in resuming sexual relations with his former wife?’ 

‘Certainly not. The wretched girl of course was guilty in every other way and is no doubt paying for it now. But the husband was entirely blameless. And so under another and quite uninteresting name a great family has been preserved. What is more the son married a Catholic so that his son is being brought up in the Church. Explain it how you will, I see the workings of Providence there.’

‘Mr Goodall,’ Guy could not resist asking, ‘do you seriously believe that God’s Providence concerns itself with the perpetuation of the English Catholic aristocracy?’ 

‘But, of course. And with sparrows too, we are taught. But I am afraid that genealogy is a hobby-horse I ride too hard when I get the chance. So much of my life is spent with people who aren’t interested and might even think it snobbish or something – one evening a week for the Vincent de Paul Society, one evening at the boys’ club; then I go to the Canon one evening to help him with his correspondence. And I have to keep some time for my sister who lives with me. She’s not really interested in genealogy. Not that it matters. We are both unmarried and the last of our family, such as it was. Oh dear, I think your hospitality has made my tongue run away with me.’ 

‘Not at all, dear Mr Goodall. Not at all. Some port?’ 

‘No more, thank, you.’ Mr Goodall looked crestfallen. ‘I must be on my way.’ 

‘You’re quite sure about that point you raised. About the husband committing no sin with his former wife?’ 

‘Quite sure, of course,. Think it out, for yourself. What possible sin could he have committed?’ 

Guy did think long and late about that blameless and auspicious pseudo-adultery. The thought was still with him when he woke next day. He went to London by a morning train. 

The name of Crouchback, so lustrous to Mr Goodall, cut no ice at Claridge’s: Guy was politely informed that there was no room available for him. He asked for Mrs Troy and learned that she had left instructions not to be disturbed. He went crossly to Bellamy’s and explained his predicament at the bar, which, at half past eleven, was beginning to fill. 

Tommy Blackhouse said: ‘Who did you ask?’ 

‘Just the chap at the desk.’ 

‘That’s no good. When in difficulties always take the matter to a higher level. It never fails. I’m staying there myself at the moment. In fact I’m going round there now. Would you like me to fix it for you?’ 

Half an hour later the hotel telephoned to say that there was a room awaiting him. He returned and was welcomed at the desk. ‘We are so grateful to Major Blackhouse for telling us where to find you. There was a cancellation just as you left the hotel and we had no address for you.’ The receptionist took a key from his rack and led Guy to the lift. ‘We are fortunate in being able to offer you a very nice little suite.’

‘I was thinking of a bedroom only.’ 

‘This has a very nice little sitting-room that goes with it. I’m sure you will find it more quiet.’ 

They reached the floor; doors were thrown open on rooms which in all points proclaimed costliness. Guy remembered why he had come and the laws of propriety which govern hotels; a sitting-room constituted a chaperon. 

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I think these will do very nicely.’ 

When he was left alone, he asked on the telephone for Mrs Troy. 

‘Guy?
Guy
. Where are you?’ 

‘Here in the hotel.’ 

‘Darling, how beastly of you not to let me know.’ 

‘But I am letting you know now. I’ve only this minute arrived.’ 

‘I mean let me know in advance. Are you here for a lovely long time?’ 

‘Two days.’ 

‘How
beastly
.’ 

‘When am I going to see you?’ 

‘Well, it’s rather difficult. You should have let me know. I’ve got to go out almost at once. Come now. Number 650.’ 

It was on his floor, not a dozen rooms away, round two corners. The doors all stood ajar. 

‘Come in, I’m just finishing my face.’ 

He passed through the sitting-room – also a chaperon? he wondered. The bedroom door was open; the bed unmade; clothes and towels and newspapers all over the place. Virginia sat at a dressing-table covered with powder and wads of cotton wool and crumpled paper napkins. She was staring intently in the glass doing something to her eye. Tommy Blackhouse came unconcernedly from the bathroom. 

‘Hullo, Guy,’ he said. ‘Didn’t know you were in London.’ 

‘Make a drink for us all,’ Virginia told him. ‘I’ll be with you in a second.’ 

Guy and Tommy went into the sitting-room where Tommy began cutting up a lemon and shovelling ice into a cocktail shaker. 

‘They fixed you up all right?’ 

‘Yes. I’m most grateful to you.’ 

‘No trouble at all. By the way, better not say anything to Virginia’ – Guy noticed that he had shut the bedroom door behind him – ‘about our having met at Bellamy’s. I told her I came straight from a conference, but as you know I stopped on the way. She’s never jealous of other women, but she does hate Bellamy’s. Once, while we were married, she said: “Bellamy’s. I’d like to burn the place down.” Meant it, too, bless her. Here for long?’ 

‘Two nights.’ 

‘I go back to Aldershot tomorrow. I ran into a brigadier of yours the other day at the War Office; they’re scared stiff of him there. Call him “the one-eyed monster”. Is he a bit cracked?’ 

‘No.’ 

‘I didn’t think so either. They all say he’s stark crazy at the War Office.’

Soon from the disorderly slum of her bedroom Virginia emerged spruce as a Halberdier. 

‘I hope you haven’t made them too strong, Tommy. You know how I hate strong cocktails. Guy,
your moustache
.’

‘Don’t you like it?’ 

‘It’s perfectly awful.’ 

‘I must say,’ said Tommy, ‘it took me aback rather.’ 

‘It’s greatly admired by the Halberdiers. Is this any better?’ 

He inserted the monocle. 

‘I think it is,’ said Virginia. ‘It was just plain common before. Now it’s comic.’ 

‘I thought that, taken together, they achieved a military effect!’ 

‘There you’re wrong,’ said Tommy. ‘You must accept my opinion on a point of that kind.’ 

‘Not attractive to women?’ 

‘No,’ said Virginia. ‘Not to nice women.’

‘Damn.’ 

‘We ought to be going,’ said Tommy. ‘Drink up.’ 

‘Oh dear,’ said Virginia. ‘What a short meeting. Am I going to see you again? I shall be free of this burden tomorrow. Couldn’t we do something in the evening?’ 

‘Not before?’

‘How can I, darling, with this lout around? Tomorrow evening.’ 

They were gone. 

Guy returned to Bellamy’s as though to the Southsand Yacht Club. He washed and gazed in the glass over the basin as steadfastly as Virginia had done in hers. The moustache was fair, inclined to ginger, much lighter than the hair of his head. It was strictly symmetrical, sweeping up from a neat central parting, curled from the lip, cut sharp and slightly oblique from the corners of his mouth, ending in firm points. He put up his monocle. How, he asked himself, would he regard another man so decorated? He had seen such moustaches before and such monocles on the faces of clandestine homosexuals, on touts with accents to hide, on Americans trying to look European, on business-men disguised as sportsmen., True, he had also seen them in the Halberdier mess, but on faces innocent of all guile, quite beyond suspicion. After all, he reflected, his whole uniform was a disguise, his whole new calling a masquerade. 

Ian Kilbannock, an arch-imposter in his Air Force dress, came up behind him and said: ‘I say, are you doing anything this evening? I’m trying to get some people in for cocktails. Do come.’ 

‘I might. Why?’ 

‘Sucking up to my air marshal. He likes to meet people.’ 

‘Well, I’m not much of a catch.’ 

‘He won’t know that. He just likes meeting people. I’d be awfully grateful if you could bear it.’ 

‘I’ve certainly nothing else to do.’ 

‘Well, come then. Some of the other people won’t be quite as awful as the marshal.’ 

Later, upstairs in the coffee-room, Guy watched Kilbannock going round the tables, collecting his party. 

‘What’s the point of all this, Ian?’ 

‘Well, I told you. I’ve put the marshal up for this club.’

‘But they aren’t letting him in?’

‘I hope not.’ 

‘But I thought it was all fixed.’ 

‘It’s not quite as easy as that, Guy. The marshal is rather fly in his way. He’s not giving anything away except for value received. He insists on meeting some members and getting their support. If he only knew, his best chance of getting in is to meet no one. So it’s all in a good cause really.’ 

That afternoon Guy had his moustache shaven. The barber expressed professional admiration for the growth and did his work with reluctance, like the gardeners who all over the country had that autumn ploughed up their finest turf and transformed herbaceous borders into vegetable plots. When it was done, Guy studied himself once more in the glass and recognized an old acquaintance he could never cut, to whom he could never hope to give the slip for long, the uncongenial fellow traveller who would accompany him through life. But his naked lip felt strangely exposed. 

Later he went to Ian Kilbannock’s party. Virginia was there with Tommy. Neither noticed the change until he called attention to it. 

‘I knew it wasn’t real,’ said Virginia. 

The air marshal was the centre of the party, in the sense that everyone was introduced to him and almost immediately withdrew. He stood like the entrance to a bee-hive, a point of vacuity with a constant buzzing movement to and from it. He was a stout man, just too short to pass for a Metropolitan policeman, with a cheerful manner and shifty little eyes. 

There was a polar-bear rug before the fire. 

‘That reminds me of a clever rhyme I once heard,’ he said. 

‘Would you like to sin
With Eleanor Glyn
On a tiger skin?
Or would you prefer
With her 
To err 
On some other fur?’

All in his immediate ambience looked at the rug in sad embarrassment. 

‘Who’s Eleanor Glyn?’ asked Virginia.

‘Oh, just a name, you know. Put in to make it rhyme, I expect. Neat, isn’t it?’ 

When he came to go, Guy found himself at the door with Ian and the marshal. 

‘My car’s here. Can I give you a lift?’ 

It was snowing again and dark as the grave. 

‘That’s very good of you, sir. I was going to St James’s Street.’ 

‘Hop in.’ 

‘I’ll come too, sir, if I may,’ said Ian, surprisingly for there were still guests lingering upstairs. 

When they reached Bellamy’s, Ian said: ‘Won’t you come in for a final one, sir?’ 

‘A sound idea.’ 

The three of them went to the bar. 

‘By the way, Guy,’ said Ian, ‘Air Marshal Beech is thinking of joining us here. Parsons, got the Candidates Book with you?’ 

The book was brought and the marshal’s virgin page presented to view. Ian Kilbannock’s fountain pen was gently put into Guy’s hand, He signed. 

‘I’m sure you’ll find it amusing here, sir,’ said Ian. 

‘I’ve no doubt I shall,’ said the air marshal. ‘I often thought of joining in the piping days of peace, but I wasn’t in London often enough for it to be worth while. Now. I need a little place like this where I can slip away and relax.’ 

It was St Valentine’s Day. 

Februato Juno, dispossessed, has taken a shrewish revenge on that steadfast clergyman, bludgeoned and beheaded seventeen centuries back, and set him in the ignominious role of patron to killers and facetious lovers. Guy honoured him for the mischance and whenever possible went to mass on his feast-day. He walked from Claridge’s to Farm Street, from Farm Street to Bellamy’s and settled down to a bleak day of waiting. 

The newspapers were still full of the
Altmark
, now dubbed ‘the Hell Ship’. There were long accounts of the indignities and discomforts of the prisoners, officially designed to rouse indignation among a public quite indifferent to those trains of locked vans still rolling East and West from Poland and the Baltic, that were to roll on year after year boating their innocent loads to ghastly unknown destinations, And Guy, oblivious also, thought all that winter’s day of his coming meeting with his wife. In the late afternoon when all was black, he telephoned to her room.