Men at Arms (17 page)

GUY
had considered going to Downside for Holy Week but decided instead on Matchet, The Marine Hotel was still crowded but there was now no sense of bustle. Management and servants had settled down to the simple policy of doing less than they had done before, for rather more money. A notice board hung in the hall. Except that they began: ‘
Guests are respectfully reminded …’, ‘Guests are respectfully requested …’ , ‘Guests are regretfully informed …’
, the announcements were curiously like military orders and each proclaimed some small curtailment of amenity. 

‘Seems to me this place is going off rather,’ said Tickeridge, who now wore the badges of lieutenant-colonel. 

‘I’m sure they’re doing their best,’ said Mr Crouchback. 

‘I notice they’ve put up the prices too.’ 

‘I believe they’re finding everything rather difficult.’

All his life Mr Crouchback abstained from wine and tobacco during Lent, but his table still bore its decanter of port and the Tickeridges joined them every evening. 

As they stood at the windy front door that Maundy Thursday night, while Felix gambolled off into the darkness, Mr Crouchback said: 

‘I’m so glad you’re in Tickeridge’s battalion. He’s such a pleasant fellow. His wife and little girl miss him dreadfully….

‘He tells me you’re probably being given a company.’

‘Hardly that. I think I may get made second-in-command.’

‘He said you’d get your own company. He thinks the world of you. I’m so glad. You’re wearing that medal?’

‘Yes, indeed.’ 

‘I really am delighted you’re doing so well. Not that I’m at all surprised. By the way I shall be taking my turn at the Altar of Repose. I don’t suppose you care to come too?’ 

‘What time?’ 

‘Well, they seem to find it hardest to get people for the early morning watches. It’s all the same for me so I said I’d be there from five to seven.’ 

‘That’s a bit long for me. I might look in for half an hour.’ 

‘Do. They’ve got it looking very pretty this year.’ 

Dawn was breaking that Good Friday when Guy arrived at the little church, but inside it was as still as night. The air was heavy with the smell of flowers and candles. His father was alone, kneeling stiff and upright at a prie-dieu before the improvised altar, gazing straight before him into the golden lights of the altar. He turned to smile at Guy and then resumed his prayer. 

Guy knelt not far from him and prayed too. 

Presently a sacristan came in and drew the black curtains from the east windows; brilliant sunlight blinded their eyes, momentarily, to candles and chalice. 

At that moment in London – for in this most secret headquarters it was thought more secret to work at unconventional hours – Guy was being talked about. 

‘There’s some more stuff come in about the Southsand affair, sir.’ 

‘Is that the Welsh professor who’s taken against the RAF?’ 

‘No, sir. You remember the short-wave message from L18 we intercepted. It’s here.
Two Halberdier officers state that important politician Box visited Southsand in secret and conferred with high military commander.
’ 

‘I’ve never thought there was much in that. We’ve no suspect called Box as far as I know and there’s no high military commander anywhere near Southsand. Might be a code name, of course.’ 

‘Well, sir, we got to work on it as you told us and we’ve learned that there’s a Member of Parliament named Box-Bender who has a brother-in-law named Crouchback in the Halberdiers. Now Box-Bender was born plain Box. His father added to the name in 1897.’ 

‘Well, that seems to dispose of it, eh? No reason why this fellow shouldn’t visit his own brother-in-law.’ 

‘In secret, sir?’ 

‘Have we anything on this Box? Nothing very suspicious about a hyphenated name, I hope?’ 

‘We’ve nothing very significant, sir,’ said the junior officer whose name was Grace-Groundling-Marchpole, each junction of which represented a provident marriage in the age of landed property. ‘He went to Salzburg, twice, ostensibly for some kind of musical festival. But Crouchback’s quite another fish. Until September of last year he lived in Italy and is known to have been on good terms with the Fascist authorities. Don’t you think I’d better open a file for him?’ 

‘Yes, perhaps it would be as well.’ 

‘For both, sir?’ 

‘Yes. Pop ‘em all in.’ 

They too, took down the black-out screens and admitted the dawn. 

Thus two new items were added to the Most Secret index, which later was micro-filmed and multiplied and dispersed into a dozen indexes in all the Counter-Espionage Headquarters of the Free World and became a permanent part of the Most Secret archives of the Second World War. 

THE
great promised event, ‘When the brigade forms’, had glowed in Guy’s mind, as in the minds of nearly all his companions, for more than five months; a numinous idea. None knew what to expect. 

Once Guy saw a film of the Rising of 45. Prince Charles and his intimates stood on a mound of heather, making a sad little group, dressed as though for the Caledonian Ball, looking, indeed, precisely as though they were a party of despairing revellers mustered in the outer suburbs to meet a friend with a motor-car who had not turned up.

An awful moment came when the sun touched the horizon behind them. The Prince bowed his head, sheathed his claymore and said in rich Milwaukee accents: ‘I guess it’s all off, Mackingtosh.’ (Mackingtosh from the first had counselled immediate withdrawal.) 

At that moment, suddenly, a faint skirl of pipes rose and swelled to an unendurable volume, while from all the converging glens files of kilted extras came winding into view. ‘Tis Invercauld comes younder.’ ‘Aye and Lochiel’, ‘And stout Montrose’, ‘The Laird of Cockpen’, ‘The bonnets of bonnie Dundee’, ‘The Campbells are coming. Hurrah, Hurrah…’ until across the crimson panorama the little bands swept together into one mighty army. Unconquerable they seemed to anyone ignorant of history, as they marched into the setting sun straight, as anyone knowledgeable in Highland geography could have told them, into the chilly waters of Loch Moidart. 

Guy had come to expect something almost like that; something at any rate totally different from what did happen. 

They reassembled from Easter leave at Penkirk, a lowland valley some twenty miles from Edinburgh, covered in farm land and small homesteads. At its head stood a solid little mid-Victorian Castle. It was there they met and there they messed and slept for the first two days. Their numbers were swollen by many unfamiliar regulars of all ranks, a Medical Officer, an Undenominational Chaplain and a cantankerous, much beribboned veteran who commanded the Pioneers. Still there were only officers. The drafts of men had been postponed until there was accommodation for them. 

The pioneers, it was supposed, had prepared a camp, but on the appointed day nothing was visible above ground. They had been there all the winter cosily established in the Castle stables. Some of them had grown fond of the place, particularly the reservists who made friends in the neighbourhood, sheltered at their hearths during working hours and paid for their hospitality with tools and provisions from the company stores. These veterans were designed to be the stiffening of a force otherwise composed of anti-fascist cellists and dealers in abstract painting from the Danubian Basin. 

‘If they’d given me one section of
fascists
,’ said their commander, ‘I’d have had the place finished in a week.’ 

But he did not repine. He had billeted himself in very fair comfort at the Station Hotel three miles distant. He was versed in all the arcana of the Pay Office and drew a multitude of peculiar special allowances. If he liked the new commander he was quite ready to prolong his task until the end of the summer. 

Five minutes with Brigadier Ritchie-Hook decided him to make an end and be gone. The veterans were caught and put to bully the anti-fascists. Construction began in earnest but not earnestly enough for Ritchie-Hook. A second Ruskin, on the first morning at Penkirk, he ordered his young officers to dig and carry. Unfortunately he had had them all inoculated the evening before with every virus in the medical store. Noting a lack of enthusiasm he tried to stir up competition between Halberdiers and Pioneers. The musicians responded with temperamental fire; the art-dealers less zealously, but seriously and well; the Halberdiers not at all, for they could barely move. 

They dug drains and carried tent-boards (the most awkward burden ever devised by man for man); they unloaded lorryloads of Soyer stoves and zinc water pipes; they ached and staggered and in a few cases fainted. Not until the work was nearly done, did the poisons lose their strength. 

For the first two nights they spread their blankets and messed higgledy-piggledy in the Castle. It was Major McKinney’s Kut-al-Imara all over again. Then on the third day officers’ lines were complete in each battalion area, with a mess tent, a water tap and a field kitchen. They moved out and in. The adjutant procured a case of spirits. The quartermaster improvised a dinner. Colonel Tickeridge stood round after round of drinks and later gave his obscene performance of ‘The One-Armed Flautist’. The Second Battalion had found a home and established its identity. 

Guy groped his way among the ropes and tent pegs that first evening under canvas, fuddled with gin, fatigue, and germs, to the tent he was sharing with Apthorpe.

Apthorpe, the old campaigner, had defied orders (as, it soon appeared, had done all the regulars) and brought with him a substantial part of his ‘gear’. He had left the mess before Guy. He lay now, on a high collapsible bed, in a nest of white muslin illuminated from inside by a patent, incandescent oil lamp, like a great baby in a bassinette, smoking his pipe and reading his Manual of Military Law. A table, a chair, a bath, a wash-handstand all collapsible; chests and, trunks, very solid, surrounded his roost; also a curious structure like a gallows from which hung his uniforms. Guy gazed, fascinated by this smoky, luminous cocoon. 

‘I trust I’ve left you enough room,’ said Apthorpe. 

‘Yes, rather.’ 

Guy had only a rubber mattress, a storm lantern and a three-legged canvas wash-basin. 

‘You may think it odd that I prefer to sleep under a net.’ 

‘I expect it’s wise to take every precaution.’ 

‘No, no, no. This isn’t a
precaution
. It’s just that I sleep better.’ 

Guy undressed, throwing his clothes on his suitcase, and lay down on the floor, between blankets, on his strip of rubber. It was intensely cold. He felt in his bag for a pair of woollen socks and the balaclava helmet knitted for him by one of the ladies at the Marine Hotel, Matchet. He added his great-coat to his mattress. 

‘Chilly?’ asked Apthorpe. 

‘Yes.’

‘It’s not really a cold night,’ said Apthorpe. ‘Far from it. Of course we’re some way north of Southsand.’

‘Yes.’ 

‘If you’d care to have a rub down with liniment, I can lend you some.’ 

‘Thanks, awfully. I shall be all right.’ 

‘You ought to, you know. It makes a lot of difference.’ 

Guy did not answer. 

‘Of course this is only a temporary arrangement,’ said Apthorpe, ‘until the lists are out. Company commanders have tents to themselves. I’d double in with Leonard if I were you. He’s about the best of the subalterns. His wife had a baby last week. I should have thought it the kind of thing that would rather spoil one’s leave, but he seems quite cheerful about it.’ 

‘Yes. He told me.’ 

‘What you want to avoid in a room-mate is someone who’s always trying to borrow one’s gear.’

‘Yes.’ 

‘Well, I’m turning in now. If you get up in the night you’ll take care where you walk, won’t you? I’ve got some pretty valuable stuff lying around I haven’t found a place for yet.’ 

He laid his pipe on his table and extinguished his light. Soon, invisible in his netting, embraced in cloud, soothed and wooed and gently overborne like Hera in the arms of Zeus, he was asleep. 

Guy turned down his lantern and lay long awake, cold and aching but not discontented. 

He was thinking of this strange faculty of the army of putting itself into order. Shake up a colony of ants and for some minutes all seems chaos. The creatures scramble aimlessly, frantically about; then instinct reasserts itself. They find their proper places and proper functions. As ants, so soldiers. 

In the years to come he was to see the process at work again and again, sometimes in grim circumstances, sometimes in pleasant domesticity. Men unnaturally removed from wives and family began at once to build substitute homes, to paint and furnish, to make flower-beds and edge them with whitewashed pebbles, to stitch cushion-covers on lonely gun-sites. 

He thought, too, about Apthorpe. 

Apthorpe had been in his proper element during the building operations. 

When his turn had come to be inoculated that first evening he had insisted on waiting until last and had then given the Medical Officer such an impressive account of the diseases from which he had, from time to time, suffered, of the various innoculations he had undergone and their precise effects, of the warnings he had been given by eminent specialists about the dangers of future innoculations, of idiosyncratic allergies and the like, that the Medical Officer readily agreed to perform a purely ceremonial injection of quite non-injurious matter.

He was thus in full vigour of mind and was usually to be found in consultation with the Pioneer officer giving sage advice about the siting of camp kitchens in relation to the prevailing wind, or pointing out defects in the guy-ropes. 

He had taken advantage of the two days mucking-in with the brigade staff to make himself well known to them all. He had discovered an old-friendship with a cousin of the brigade major’s. He had done very well indeed. 

And yet, Guy thought, and yet there was something rum about him; not ‘off colour’; far from it; gloriously over-Technicolored like Bonnie Prince Charlie in the film. It was not anything that could be defined. Just a look in the eye; not even that – an aura. But it was distinctly rum. 

So fitfully sleeping and thinking he passed the hours until reveille.