Men at Arms (24 page)

THREE
weeks later the brigade was still standing by for orders. Their transports had steamed out to sea and they were in camp on shore. The doctrine of ‘dispersal’ had not reached West Africa. The tents stood in neat lines on a stretch of sandy plain, five miles from the town, a few yards from the sea. The expert on tropical diseases had flown away and the rigorous, intolerably irksome hygienic precautions he had imposed fell into desuetude. Local leave to up-country stations was given to officers for sporting purposes. Apthorpe was one of the first to go. The town was out of bounds to all ranks. No one wished to go there. Later when he came to read
The Heart of the Matter
Guy reflected, fascinated, that at this very time ‘Scobie’ was close at hand, demolishing partitions in native houses, still conscientiously interfering with neutral shipping. If they had not the services of the new Catholic chaplain, Guy might have gone to Father Rank to confess increasing sloth, one dismal occasion of drunkenness, and the lingering resentment he felt at the injustice he had suffered in the exploit to which he had given the private name of ‘Operation Truslove’. 

Wireless news from England was all of air raids. Some of the men were consumed with anxiety; most were consoled by a rumour, quite baseless, which was travelling the whole world in an untraceable manner, that the invasion had sailed and been defeated, that the whole Channel was full of charred German corpses. The men paraded, marched, bathed, constructed a rifle range and were quite without speculation about their future. Some said they were to spend the rest of the war here keeping fit, keeping up their morale, firing on the new range; others said they were bound for Libya, round the Cape; others that they were to forestall the German occupation of the Azores. 

Then, after three weeks, an aeroplane arrived bringing mail. Most of it had been posted before the expedition even sailed but there was a more recent, official bag. Leonard was still on the strength of the Second Battalion, pending posting. It was now announced that he was dead, killed by a bomb, on leave in South London. There was also a move-order for Guy. His presence was required at an inquiry into the doings on Beach A, which was to be held in England as soon as Brigadier Ritchie-Hook was fit to move. 

There was also a new Brigadier. He sent for Guy on the day of his arrival. He was a youngish, thick, mustachioed, naturally genial man, plainly ill at ease in the present case. Guy had not seen him before, but he would have recognized him as a Halberdier without studying his corps buttons. 

‘You’re Captain Crouchback?’ 

‘Lieutenant, sir.’ 

‘Oh, I’ve got you down here as captain. I must look into it. Perhaps your promotion came through after you left U.K. Anyway it doesn’t matter now. It was only an Acting Rank of course while you had a company. I’m afraid you’ll be losing your company for the time being.’

‘Does that mean I’m under arrest, sir?’ 

‘Good God, no. At least not exactly. I mean to say this is simply an inquiry not a court-martial. The Force Commander made a great fuss about it. I don’t suppose it’ll ever come to a court-martial. The Navy are being rather stiff too, but they do things their own way. I should say myself you’re in the clear – unofficially, mind. As far as I understand the case you were simply acting under orders. You’ll be attached here at my headquarters for general duties. We’ll get you all off as soon as Ben – your Brigadier, I mean – can move. I’m trying to get them to lay on a flying-boat. Meanwhile just hang about until you’re wanted.’ 

Guy hung about. He had had his captaincy without knowing it, and had now lost it. 

‘That means six or seven pounds more pay, anyway,’ said the staff captain. ‘It shouldn’t take long to straighten out. Or I’d take a chance and give it to you now if you’re short.’ 

‘Thanks awfully,’ said Guy. ‘I can manage.’ 

‘Nothing much to spend money on here certainly. You can be sure of getting it somewhere, sometime. Army pay follows you up, like income tax.’ 

The battalion wanted to ‘dine’ him ‘out’, but Tickeridge forbade it. 

‘You’ll be back with us in a day or two,’ he said. 

‘Shall I?’ Guy asked, when they were alone. 

‘I wouldn’t bet on it.’ 

Meanwhile there had been a series of disturbing bulletins from and about Apthorpe. 

Messages from up-country passed by telephone from one semi-literate native telephonist to another. The first message was: ‘
Captain Apthorpe him very sorry off collar requests extension leaves.
’

Two days later there was a long and quite unintelligible message to the Senior Medical Officer demanding a number of drugs. After that was the request that the specialist in tropical diseases (who had left them some time before) should come up-country immediately. Then silence. At last a day or two before the mail arrived, Apthorpe appeared. 

He was slung in a sheeted hammock between two bearers, looking like a Victorian woodcut from a book of exploration. They deposited him on the hospital steps and at once began an argument about their ‘dash’, they talking very loudly in Mende, Apthorpe feebly in Swahili. He was carried indoors protesting : ‘They understand perfectly. They’re only pretending. It’s their lingua franca.’ 

The boys remained like vultures day after day, disputing over their ‘dash’ and admiring the passing pageant of metropolitan life. 

Everyone in the brigade mess was particularly pleasant to Guy, even Dunn who was genuinely delighted to have the company of someone of more ignominious position than himself. ‘Tell me all about it, old chap. Is it true you went off and started a battle on your own?’ 

‘I’m not allowed to talk. The matter is
sub judice
.’ 

‘Like that matter of the boot. You’ve heard the latest? That lunatic Apthorpe has taken refuge in the hospital. I bet he’s shamming.’ 

‘I don’t think so. He looked pretty sick when he came back from his leave up-country.’ 

‘But he’s used to this climate. Anyway, we’ll catch him when he comes out. If you ask me I’d say he was in worse trouble than you are.’ 

This talk of Apthorpe brought back tender memories of Guy’s early days in barracks. He asked permission of the brigade major to visit him. 

‘Take a car, Uncle.’ Everyone was anxious to be agreeable. ‘Take a bottle of whisky. I’ll make it all right with the mess president.’ (They were rationed to one bottle a month in this town.)

‘Will that be all right with the hospital?’ 

“Very much all wrong, Uncle. That’s your risk. But it’s always done. Not worth while calling on a chap in hospital unless you bring a bottle. But don’t say I told you. It’s your responsibility if you’re caught.’ 

Guy drove up the laterite road, past the Syrian stores and the vultures, noticing nothing except the dawdling natives who obstructed his way; later a few printed pages would create, not recall, the scene for him and make it forever memorable. People would say to him in eight years time: ‘You were there during the war. Was it like that?’ and he would answer: ‘Yes. It
must
have been.’

Then out of the town by a steep road to the spacious, whitish hospital, where there was no wireless to aggravate the suffering, no bustle; fans swung to and fro, windows were shut and curtained against the heat of the sun. 

He found Apthorpe alone in his room, in a bed near the window. When Guy entered he was lying doing nothing, staring at the sun-blind with his hands empty on the counterpane. He immediately began to fill and light a pipe. 

‘I came to see how you were.’ 

‘Rotten, old man, rotten’ 

‘They don’t seem to have given you much to do.’ 

‘They don’t realize how ill I am. They keep bringing me jigsaws and Ian Hay. A damn fool woman, wife of a box-wallah here, offered to teach me crochet. I ask you, old man, I just ask you.’ 

Guy produced the bottle he had been concealing in the pocket of his bush-shirt. 

‘I wondered if you’d like some whisky.’ 

‘That’s very thoughtful. In fact I would. Very much. They bring us one medicine-glassful at sundown. It’s not enough. Often one wants more. I told them so, pretty strongly, and they just laughed. They’ve treated my case all wrong from the very first. I know more about medicine than any of those young idiots. It’s a wonder I’ve stayed alive as long as I have. Toughness. It takes some time to kill an old bush hand. But they’ll do it. They wear one down. They exhaust the will to live and then – phut. You’re a goner. I’ve seen it happen a dozens times.’ 

‘Where shall I put the whisky?’ 

‘Somewhere I can reach it. It’ll get damned hot in the bed, but I think it’s the best place.’

‘How about the locker?’ 

‘They’re always prying in there. But they’re slack about bed making. They just pull the covers smooth before the doctor’s round. Tuck it in at the bottom, there’s a good chap.’ 

There was only a thin sheet and a thin cotton counterpane Guy saw Apthorpe’s large feet, bereft of their ‘porpoises’, peeling with fever. He tried to interest Apthorpe in the new brigadier and in his own obscure position, but Apthorpe said fretfully: ‘Yes, yes, yes, yes. It’s all another world to me, old man.’ 

He puffed at his pipe, let it go out, tried with a feeble hat to put it on the table beside him, dropped it, noisily in that quiet place, on the bare floor. Guy stooped to retrieve it but Apthorpe said: ‘Leave it there; old man. I don’t want it. I only tried to be companionable.’ 

When Guy looked up he saw tears on Apthorpe’s colourless cheeks. 

‘I say, would you like me to go?’ 

‘No, no. I’ll feel better in a minute. Did you bring a cork-screw? Good man. I think I could do with a nip.’ 

Guy opened the bottle, poured out a tot, recorked and replaced the spirit under the sheet. 

‘Wash out the glass, old man, do you mind? I’ve been hoping you’d come – you especially. There’s something worrying me.’ 

‘Not the signalman’s boot?’ 

‘No, no, no, no. Do you suppose I’d let a little tick like Dunn worry me? No, it’s something on my conscience.’ 

There was a pause during which the whisky seemed to perform its beneficient magic. Apthorpe shut his eyes and smiled. At last he looked up, and said: ‘Hullo, Crouchback, you here? That’s lucky. There’s something I wanted to say to you. Do you remember years ago, when we first joined, I mentioned my aunt?’ 

‘You mentioned two.’ 

‘
Exactly
. That’s what I wanted to tell you. There’s only one.’ 

‘I am sorry.’ All the talk lately had been about people killed by bombs. ‘Was it an air-raid? Leonard caught one …’ 

‘No, no, no: I mean, there never was more than one. The other was an invention. I suppose you might call it a little joke. Anyway, I’ve told you.’ 

After a pause Guy could not resist asking : ‘Which did you invent, the one at Peterborough or the one at Tunbridge Wells?’ 

‘The one at Peterborough, of course!’

‘Then where did you hurt your knee?’ 

‘At Tunbridge Wells.’ Apthorpe giggled slightly at his cleverness like Mr Toad in
The Wind in the Willows
. 

‘You certainly took me in thoroughly.’ 

‘Yes. It was a good joke, wasn’t it? I say, I think I’d like a drop more whisky.’ 

‘Sure it’s good for you?’ 

‘My dear fellow, I’ve been just as ill as this before and pulled through – simply by treating it with whisky.’ 

He sighed happily after this second glass. He really did seem altogether better and stronger. 

‘There’s another point I want to talk about. My will.’ 

‘You needn’t start thinking about that for years yet.’ 

‘I think about it now. A great deal. I haven’t much. Just a few thousand in gilt-edged my father left me. I’ve left it all back to my aunt of course. It’s family money, after all, and ought to go back. The one at Tunbridge Wells not’ – roguishly – ‘the good lady at Peterborough. But there’s someone else.’ 

Guy thought: could this inscrutable man, have a secret, irregular ménage? Little dusky Apthorpes, perhaps? 

‘Look here, Apthorpe, please don’t go telling me anything about your private affairs. You’ll be awfully embarrassed about it later, if you do. You’re going to be perfectly fit again in a week or two.’ 

Apthorpe considered this. 

‘I’m tough,’ he admitted. ‘I’ll take some killing. But it’s all a question of the will to live. I must set everything in order just in case they wear me down. That’s what keeps worrying me so.’ 

‘All right. What is it?’

‘It’s my gear,’ said Apthorpe. ‘I don’t want my aunt to get hold of it. Some of it’s at the Commodore’s at Southsand. The rest is at that place in Cornwall, where we last camped. I left it in Leonard’s charge. He was a trustworthy sort of chap, I always thought.’ 

Guy wondered: should he make it plain about Leonard? Better leave it till later. He had probably left Apthorpe’s treasure at the inn when they went to London. It might be traced eventually. This was no time to add to Apthorpe’s anxieties. 

‘If my aunt’s got it, I know exactly what she’d do. She’d hand the whole thing over to some High Church boy-scouts she’s interested in. I don’t want High Church boy-scouts playing the devil with my gear.’ 

‘No. It would be most unsuitable.’

‘Exactly. You remember Chatty Corner?’

‘Vividly.’

‘I want him to have it all. I haven’t mentioned it in my will. I thought it might hurt my aunt’s feelings. I don’t suppose she really knows it exists. Now I want you to collect it and hand it over to Chatty on the quiet. I don’t suppose it’s strictly legal but it’s quite safe. Even if she did get wind of it, my aunt is the last person to go to law. You’ll do that for me, won’t you, old man?’ 

‘Very well. I’ll try.’ 

‘Then I can die happy – at least if anyone ever does die happy. Do you think they do?’ 

‘We used to pray for it a lot at school. But for goodness sake don’t start thinking of dying now.’ 

‘I’m a great deal nearer death now,’ said Apthorpe, suddenly huffy, ‘than you ever were at school.’