Men at Arms (25 page)

There was a rattle at the door and a nurse came in with a tray. 

‘Why! Visitors! You’re the first he’s had. I must say you seem to have cheered him up. We have been down in the dumps, haven’t we?’ she said to Apthorpe. 

‘You see, old man, they wear me down. Thanks for coming. Good-bye.’ 

‘I smell something I shouldn’t,’ said the nurse. ‘ 

‘Just a drop of whisky I happened to have in my flask, nurse,’ Guy answered. 

‘Well, don’t let the doctor hear about it. It’s the very worst thing. I ought really to report you to the S.M.O., really I ought.’

‘Is the doctor anywhere about?’ Guy asked. ‘I’d rather like to speak to him.’ 

‘Second door on the left. I shouldn’t go in if I were you. He’s in a horrid temper.’ 

But Guy found a weary foolish man of his own age. ‘Apthorpe? Yes. You’re in the same regiment, I see. The Applejacks, eh?’

‘Is he really pretty bad, doctor?’ 

‘Of course he is. He wouldn’t be here if he wasn’t.’

‘He talked a lot about dying.’ 

‘Yes, he does to me, except when he’s delirious. Then he seems worried about a bomb in the rears. Did he ever have any experience of the kind, do you know?’ 

‘I rather think he did.’ 

‘Well, that accounts for that. Queer bird, the mind. Hides things away and then out they pop. But I mustn’t get too technical. It’s a hobby horse of mine, the mind.’ 

‘I wanted to know, is he on the danger list?’ 

‘Well, I haven’t actually put him there. No need to cause unnecessary alarm and despondency. His sort of trouble hangs on for weeks often and just when you think you’ve pulled them through, out they go, you know. 

‘Apthorpe’s got the disadvantage of having lived in this Godforsaken country. You chaps who come out fresh from England have got stamina. Chaps who live here have got their blood full of every sort of infection. And then, of course, they poison themselves with whisky. They snuff out like babies. Still, we’re doing the best for Apthorpe. Luckily we’re rather empty at the moment so everyone can give him full attention.’ 

‘Thank you, sir.’ 

The R.A.M.C. man was a colonel but he was seldom called ‘sir’ by anyone outside his own staff. ‘Have a glass of whisky?’ he said gratefully. 

‘Thanks awfully, but I must be off.’ 

‘Any time you’re passing.’ 

‘By the way, sir, how is our Brigadier Ritchie-Hook?’

‘He’ll be out of here any day now. Between ourselves he’s rather a difficult patient. He made one of my young officers pickle a Negro’s head for him. Most unusual.’ 

‘Was the pickling a success?’ 

‘Must have been, I suppose. Anyway he keeps the thing by his bed grinning at him.’ 

NEXT
morning at dawn a flying-boat landed at Freetown. 

That’s for you,’ said Colonel Tickeridge. ‘They say the Brig. will be fit to move tomorrow.’ 

But there was other news that morning. Apthorpe was in a coma. 

‘They don’t think he’ll ever come out of it,’ Colonel Tickeridge said. ‘Poor old Uncle. Still there are worse ways of dying and he hasn’t got a madam or children or anything.’ 

‘Only an aunt,’ said Guy. 

‘Two aunts, I think he told me.’ 

Guy did not correct him. Everyone at Brigade Headquarters remembered Apthorpe well. He had been a joke there. Now the mess was cast into gloom, less at the loss of Apthorpe than at the thought of death so near, so unexpected. 

‘We’ll lay on full military honours for the funeral.’

‘He’d have liked that.’ 

‘A good opportunity to show the flag in the town.’

Dunn fussed about his boot.

‘I don’t see how I’ll be able to recover now,’ he said. ‘It seems rather ghoulish somehow, applying to the next of kin.’

‘How much is it?’ 

‘Nine shillings.’

‘I’ll pay.’

‘I say, that’s very sporting of you. It’ll keep my books in order.’ 

The new brigadier went to the hospital that morning to inform Ritchie-Hook of his imminent departure. He returned at lunch-time. 

‘Apthorpe is dead,’ he said briefly. ‘I want to talk to you, Crouchback, after lunch.’ 

Guy supposed the summons was connected with his move order and went to the brigadier’s office without alarm. He found both the brigadier and the brigade major there, one looking angrily at him, the other looking at the table. 

‘You heard that Apthorpe was dead?’

‘Yes, Sir.’ 

‘There was an empty whisky bottle in his bed. Does that mean anything to you?’ 

Guy stood silent, aghast rather than ashamed.

‘I asked: “Does that mean anything to you?’

‘Yes, Sir. I took him a bottle yesterday afternoon.’

‘You knew it was against orders?’

‘Yes Sir.’ 

‘Any excuse?’ 

‘No, sir, except that I knew he liked it and I didn’t realize it would do him any harm. Or that he’d finish it all at once.’

‘He was half delirious, poor fellow. How old are you, Crouchback?’ 

‘Thirty-six, Sir.’ 

‘Exactly. That’s what makes everything so hopeless. If you were a young idiot of twenty-one I could understand it. Damn it, man, you’re only a year or two younger than I am.’ 

Guy stood still saying nothing. He was curious how the brigadier would deal with the question. 

‘The S.M.O. of the hospital knows all about it. So do most of his staff, I expect. You can imagine how he feels. I was with him half the morning before I could get him to see sense. Yes, I’ve begged you off, but please, understand that what I’ve done was purely for the Corps. You’ve committed too serious a crime for me to deal with summarily. The choice was between hushing it up and sending you before a court martial. There’s nothing would give me more personal satisfaction than to see you booted out of the army altogether. But we’ve one sticky business on our hands already – in which incidentally you are implicated. I persuaded the medico that we had no evidence. You were poor Apthorpe’s only visitor but there are orderlies and native porters in and out of the hospital who
might
have sold him the stuff’ (he spoke as though whisky, which he regularly and moderately drank, were some noxious distillation of Guy’s own). ‘Nothing’s worse than a court martial that goes off half-cock. I also told him what a slur it would be on poor Apthorpe’s name. It would all have had to come out. I gather he was practically a dipsomaniac and had two aunts who think the world of him. Pretty gloomy for them to hear the truth. So I got him to agree in the end. But, don’t thank me, and, remember, I don’t want to see you again ever. I shall apply for your immediate posting out of the brigade as soon as they’ve finished with you in England. The only hope I have for you is that you’re thoroughly ashamed of yourself. You can fall out now.’ 

Guy left the office unashamed. He felt shaken, as though he had seen a road accident in which he was not concerned. His fingers shook but it was nerves not conscience which troubled him; he was familiar with shame; this trembling, hopeless sense of disaster was something of quite another order; something that would pass and leave no mark. 

He stood in the ante-room sweating and motionless and was presently aware of someone at his elbow. 

‘I see you aren’t busy.’ 

He turned and saw Dunn. ‘No.’ 

‘Perhaps you wouldn’t mind my mentioning it then? This morning you very kindly offered to settle that matter of the boot.’ 

‘Yes, of course. How much was it? I forget. Nine pounds, wasn’t it?’ 

‘Good Lord, no. Nine shillings.’ 

‘Of course. Nine shillings.’ Guy did not want to show Dunn his trembling hands. ‘I’ve no change now. Remind me tomorrow.’ 

‘But you’re off tomorrow, aren’t you?’

‘So I am. I forgot.’ 

His hands when he took them out of his pockets trembled less than he had feared. He counted out nine shillings. 

‘I’ll make out the receipt in Apthorpe’s name if it’s all the same to you.’ 

‘I don’t want a receipt.’ 

‘Must keep my books straight.’ 

Dunn left to put his books straight. Guy remained standing. 

Presently the brigade major came out of the office. 

‘I say, I’m awfully sorry about this business,’ he said. ‘It was a damned silly thing to do. I see that now.’

‘I did say it was your responsibility.’

‘Of course. Of course.’ 

‘There was nothing I could possibly have said.’

‘Of course not. Nothing.’ 

They took Ritchie-Hook out of the hospital before Apthorpe. Guy had half an hour to wait on the quay. The flying-boat lay out. All round the bum-boats floated selling fruit and nuts. 

‘Have you got my nut packed up safely, Glass?’ 

‘Yes, Sir.’ 

Halberdier Glass was in a black mood. Ritchie-Hook’s servant was travelling home with his master. Glass had to stay behind. 

Colonel Tickeridge had come down to the quay. 

He said: ‘I don’t seem to bring luck to the officers I pick for promotion. First Leonard, then Apthorpe.’

‘And now me, sir.’ 

‘And now you.’ 

‘Here comes the party.’ 

An ambulance drove up followed by the Brigadier’s car. Ritchie-Hook, one leg huge, as though from elephantiasis, in plaster. The brigade major took his arm and led him to the edge of the quay. 

‘No prisoners’ escort?’ said Ritchie-Hook. ‘Morning, Tickeridge. Morning, Crouchback. What’s all this I hear about you poisoning one of my officers? The damn nurses couldn’t stop talking about it all yesterday. Now jump to it. Junior officers into the boat first, out of it last.’ 

Guy jumped to it and sat as far as he could out of everyone’s way. Presently they hoisted Ritchie-Hook down. Before the boat had reached the aircraft, the brigade car was honking its way through the listless, black crowds; they had run things pretty close for the funeral parade. 

The flying-boat was a mail carrier. The after half of the cabin was piled high with bags among which the Halberdier servant luxuriously disposed himself for sleep. Guy remembered the immense boredom of censoring those letters home. Here and there one came across a man who through some oddity of upbringing had escaped the state schools. These wrote with wild phonetic mis-spellings straight from the heart. The rest strung together clichés which he supposed somehow communicated some exchange of affection and need. The old soldiers wrote SWALK on the envelope, meaning ‘sealed with a loving kiss’. All these missives served as a couch for Ritchie-Hook’s batman. 

The flying-boat climbed in a great circle over the green land, then turned over the town. Already it was much cooler. 

It had been the heat, Guy thought, all the false emotions of the past twenty-four hours. In England where winter would be giving its first hints of sharpness, where the leaves would be falling among the falling bombs, fire-gutted, shattered, where the bodies were nightly dragged half-clothed, clutching pets, from the rubble and glass splinters, – things would look very different in England. 

The flying-boat made another turn over White Man’s Grave and set its course across the ocean, bearing away the two men who had destroyed Apthorpe. 

White Man’s Grave. The European cemetery was conveniently near the hospital. Six months of changing stations and standing by for orders had not corroded the faultless balance of the Halberdier slow march. The Second Battalion had called a parade the moment the news of Apthorpe’s death arrived and the regimental sergeant major had roared under the fiery sun and the boots had moved up and down the blistering road. This morning it was perfect. The coffin bearers were exactly sized. The bugles sounded Last Post in perfect unison. The rifles fired as one. 

As a means of ‘showing the flag’ it was not greatly appreciated. The civil population were
aficionados
of funerals. They liked more spontaneity, more evident grief. But as a drill parade it was something that the Colony had never seen before. The flag-covered coffin descended without a hitch. The vital earth settled down. Two Halberdiers fainted, falling flat and rigid, and were left supine. 

When it was all over Sarum-Smith, genuinely moved, said: ‘It was like the burial of Sir John Moore at Corunna.’ 

‘Sure you don’t mean the Duke of Wellington at St Paul’s?’ said de Souza., 

‘Perhaps I do.’ 

Colonel Tickeridge asked the adjutant ‘Ought we to pass the cap round to put up a stone or something?’ 

‘I imagine his relations in England will want to fix that.’ 

‘They’re well off?’ 

‘Extremely, I believe. And High Church. They’d probably want something fancy.’ 

‘Both Uncles gone the same day.’ 

‘Funny, I was thinking the same. I rather preferred Crouchback on the whole.’ 

‘He seemed a nice enough fellow. I could never quite make him out. Pity he made an ass of himself.’ 

Already the Second Battalion of the Halberdiers spoke of Guy in the past tense. He had momentarily been of them; now he was an alien; someone in their long and varied past, but forgotten.

* ‘Jesus Christ be praised.’

‘Today, always.’