Men at Arms (8 page)

Sarum-Smith looked at his brother officers and at their ladies, whose laps were full of prayer-books and gloves, their hands full of cigarettes and sherry; their voices high and happy.

‘I suppose we shall find
these
drinks on the mess bill too. How much d’you suppose the Captain-Commandant charges for lunch?’

‘I say, steady on,’ said Leonard.

‘I wish Jim had joined the R.A.F.,’ said Mrs Leonard. ‘I’m sure it could have been managed. You know where you are with them. You just settle down at an R.A.F. station as though it was business with regular hours and a nice crowd. Of course I shouldn’t let Jim fly, but there’s plenty of jobs like my brother’s got.’

‘Ground staff is all right in war-time,’ said Sarum-Smith: ‘It won’t sound so good afterwards. One’s got to think of peace. It’ll do one more good in business to have been in the Halberdiers than the R.A.F. ground staff.’

At five minutes to one Mrs Green and Miss Green, wife and daughter of the Captain-Commandant, rose from their places and collected the guests.

‘We mustn’t be late,’ said Mrs Green. ‘Ben Ritchie-Hook is coming. He’s a terror if he’s kept waiting for his food.’

‘I find him rather a terror always,’ said Miss Green.

‘You oughtn’t to say that about their future brigadier.’

‘Is it the man you were telling me about?’ asked Mrs Leonard, whose way of showing her disapproval of the expedition was to speak only to her husband, ‘the man who cuts off people’s heads?’

‘Yes. He sounds a regular fizzer.’

‘We’re all very fond of him really,’ said Mrs Green.

‘I’ve heard of him,’ said Sarum-Smith as though to be known to him had some sinister connotation like being known, to the police.

Guy too had heard of him often. He was the great Halberdier enfant terrible of the First World War; the youngest company commander in the history of the Corps; the slowest to be promoted; often wounded, often decorated, recommended for the Victoria Cross, twice court martialled for disobedience to orders in the field, twice acquitted in recognition of the brilliant success of his independent actions; a legendary wielder of the entrenching tool; where lesser men collected helmets Ritchie-Hook once came back from a raid across no-man’s land with the dripping head of a German sentry in either hand The years of peace had been years of unremitting conflict foe him. Wherever there was blood and gun-powder from County 7 Cork to the Matto Grosso, there was Ritchie-Hook. Latterly he had wandered about the Holy Land tossing hand-grenades into the front parlours of dissident Arabs. These were some of the things Guy had heard in the mess.

The Captain-Commandant inhabited a square, solid house at an extremity of the barrack area. As they approached it, Mrs Green said: ‘Do any of you smoke a pipe?’

‘No.’

‘No’

‘No.’

‘That’s a pity. Ben prefers men who smoke pipes. Cigarettes?’

‘Yes.’

‘Yes.’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s a pity, too. He likes you not to smoke at all if you don’t smoke pipes. My husband always smokes a pipe when Ben’s about. Of course he’s senior but that doesn’t count with Ben. My husband is rather afraid of him.’

‘He’s in a blue funk,’ said Miss Green. ‘It’s pitiful to see.’

Leonard laughed heartily.

‘I don’t see it’s funny,’ said Mrs Leonard. ‘I shall smoke if I want to.’

But no one else in the party shared Mrs Leonard’s mood of defiance. The three probationary Halberdiers stood back for the ladies to pass and followed them through the garden-gate with adolescent misgivings and there before them unmistakably, separated from them only by the plate glass of the drawing-room window, stood Lieutenant-Colonel, shortly to be gazetted Brigadier Ritchie-Hook glaring out at them balefully with a single, terrible eye. It was black as the brows above it, this eye, black as the patch which hung on the other side of the lean skew nose. It was set in a steel-rimmed monocle. Colonel Ritchie-Hook bared his teeth at the ladies, glanced at his huge wrist-watch with studied pantomime and said something inaudible but plainly derisive.

‘Oh dear,’ said Mrs Green. ‘We must be late.’

They entered the drawing-room; Colonel Green, hitherto a figure of awe, smirked at them from behind a little silver tray of cocktails. Colonel Ritchie-Hook, not so much usurping the position of host as playing the watch dog, the sentinel perhaps at one of those highly secret headquarters which Guy had visited in his search for employment, strode to meet them. Mrs Green attempted some conventional introductions but was interrupted.

‘Names again, please. Must get them clear. Leonard, Sarum-Smith, Crouchback? – I can only count three. Where’s Crouchback? Oh, I see. And which owns the madam?’

He flashed his huge eye-teeth at Mrs Leonard.

‘
I
own
this
one,’ she said.

It was braver and better than Guy would have expected, and it went down well. Leonard alone seemed put out.

‘Splendid,’ said Ritchie-Hook. ‘Jolly good.’

‘That’s the way to treat him,’ said Mrs Green.

Colonel Green goggled in admiration.

‘Gin for the lady,’ cried Colonel Ritchie-Hook. He stretched out a maimed right hand, two surviving fingers and half a thumb in a black glove, clutched a glass and presented it to Mrs Leonard. But the light mood passed and he immediately refused to take one for himself.

‘Very nice if you don’t have to keep awake after lunch.’

‘Well, I don’t,’ said Mrs Leonard. ‘Sunday’s my day of rest – usually.’

‘There are no Sundays in the firing-line,’ said Colonel Ritchie-Hook. ‘The week-end habit could lose us the war.’

‘You’re spreading alarm and despondency, Ben.’

‘I’m sorry, Geoff. The Colonel here was always the brainy one,’ he added, as though to explain his meek acceptance of criticism. ‘He was brigade major when I only had a platoon. That’s why he’s sitting in this fine mansion while I’m going under canvas. Any camping experience?’ he asked suddenly of Guy.

‘Yes, sir, a little. I lived in Kenya at one time and did several trips in the bush.’

‘Good for you. Gin for the old settler.’ The black claw struck, grappled and released a second cocktail into Guy’s hand. ‘Did you get much shooting?’

‘I bagged an old lion once who wandered into the farm.’

‘Which are you? Crouchback? I knew one of my young officers came from Africa. I thought it was some other name. You’ll find your African experience worth a hundred pounds a minute. There’s one wretched fellow on my list spent half his life in Italy. I didn’t care for the sound of that much.’

Miss Green winked at Guy and he kept silent.

‘I’ve had fun in Africa too,’ said Ritchie-Hook. ‘After one of my periodical disagreements with the powers that be, I got seconded to the African Rifles. Good fellows if you keep at them with a stick but devilish scared of rhinos. One camp we had was by a lake and an old rhino used to come down for a drink every evening across the parade ground. Devilish cheek; I wanted to shoot him but the C.O. talked a lot of rot about having to get a game licence. He was a stuffy fellow, the sort of chap,’ he said as though defining a universally recognized and detestable type, ‘the sort of chap who owns a dozen shirts. So the next day I fixed up a flare-path right across rhino’s drinking place, with a line of fuses, and touched it off right under his nose. I never saw a rhino move faster; smack through the camp lines. Caught a black fellow bang through the middle. You never heard such a yelling. They couldn’t stop me shooting him then, not when he had a sergeant stuck on his nose.’

‘Sounds like Bechuana tummy,’ said Mrs Leonard.

‘Eh? What’s that?’ said Colonel Ritchie-Hook, not so pleased now at her cheeky ways.

‘Where was this, Ben?’ Mrs Green interposed.

‘Somaliland. Ogaden border.’

‘I didn’t know there was any rhino in Somaliland,’ said Colonel Green.

‘There’s one less now.’

‘How about the sergeant?’

‘Oh, he was on parade again in a week.’

‘You mustn’t take all Colonel Ritchie-Hook says quite literally,’ said Mrs Green.

They went into luncheon. Two Halberdiers waited at table.

Mrs Green carved. Ritchie-Hook grasped his fork in his gloved fingers, impaled his meat, cut it rapidly into squares, laid down his knife, changed hands with the fork and ate fast, and silently, plunging the pieces into horse-radish sauce and throwing them back to his molars. Then he began to talk again, Had he followed any less chivalrous calling, had he worn any other uniform than a Halberdier’s, it might have seemed that Colonel Ritchie-Hook, piqued by her interruption, was seeking to discomfort Mrs Leonard, so hard did he fix her with his single, ferocious eye, so directly aimed seemed all his subsequent words at the hopes and susceptibilities of a bride.

‘You’ll be glad to hear that I’ve got the War House to play. They’ve recognized our Special Role. I drafted the minute myself. It went right up the line and came down again approved. We’re HOO.’

‘What does that mean, please?’ asked Mrs Leonard.

‘Hazardous Offensive Operations. We’ve been given our own heavy machine-guns and heavy mortars; no divisional organization; we come direct under the Chiefs of Staff. There was some opposition from an idiot gunner in Military Training but I soon scotched him. We’ve got a whizz of an area in the Highlands.’

‘Scotland? Is that where we’ve got to settle?’

‘That is where we shall form.’

‘But is that where we shall be in the summer? I’ve got my arrangements to make.’

‘Summer arrangements will depend on our friend the Boche. By summer I hope to report the brigade as efficient and then immediate action. No good hanging about. There’s a limit to the amount of training men can take. After a point they get stale and go back. You must use them when they’re on their toes … Use them,’ he repeated dreamily, ‘spend them. It’s like slowly collecting a pile of chips and then plonking them all down on the roulette board. It’s the most fascinating thing in life, training men and staking them against the odds. You get a perfect force. Everyone knows everyone else. Everyone knows his commander so well they can guess his intention before they’re told. They can work without orders, like sheepdogs. Then you throw them into action and in a week, perhaps in a few hours, the whole thing is expended. Even if you win your battle, you’re never the same again. There are reinforcements and promotions. You have to “start all over again from your beginnings, and never breathe a word about your loss”. Isn’t that how the poem goes? So you see, Mrs Leonard, it’s no good asking where or when we shall settle. Do you all play footer?’

‘No, sir.’

‘No, sir.’

‘Yes,’ from Leonard.

‘Soccer?’

‘No, sir. Rosslyn Park.’

‘Pity. The men don’t understand rugger, except Welshmen and we don’t get many of those. It’s a great thing to play with them. The men go for you and you go for them and there’s no hard feelings when bones get broken. In my company at one time we had more casualties from soccer than from the enemy and I can assure you we gave more than we took. Permanent injuries some of them. There was a plucky little fellow played right half for C Company lamed for life in the rest camp. You ought to follow footer even if you don’t play. I remember once a sergeant of mine got his leg blown off. There was nothing to be done for the poor beggar. It had taken half his body with it. He was a goner all right but quite sensible and there was the padre one side of him trying to make him pray and me the other side and all he’d think about was football. Luckily I knew the latest League results and those I didn’t know, I made up. I told him his home team was doing fine and he died smiling. If ever I see a padre getting above himself, I pull his leg about that. Of course it’s different with Catholics. Their priests hold on to them to the last. It’s a horrible sight to see them whispering at a dying man. They kill hundreds just with fright.’

‘Mr Crouchback is a Catholic,’ said Mrs Green.

‘Oh, sorry. Am I talking out of turn as usual? Never had any tact. Of course it’s because you live in Africa,’ said Colonel Ritchie-Hook, turning to. Guy. ‘You get as very decent type of missionary out there. I’ve seen ’em myself. They don’t stand any nonsense from the natives. None of that “me velly Clistian boy got soul all same as white boss”. But mind you, Crouchback, you’ve only seen the best. If you lived in Italy like this other young officer of mine, you’d see them as they are at home. Or in Ireland; the priests there were quite openly on the side of the gunmen.’

‘Eat your pudding, Ben,’ said Mrs Green.

Colonel Ritchie-Hook turned his eye down to his apple-pie and for the rest of luncheon spoke mainly against air-raid precautions, an uncontroversial subject.

In the drawing-room with the coffee Colonel Ritchie-Hook showed the softer side of his character. There was a calendar on the chimney piece, rather shabby now in November and coming to the end of its usefulness. Its design was fanciful, gnomes, toadstools, hare-bells, pink bare babies and dragonflies.

‘I say,’ he said. ‘That’s a lovely thing. My word it
is
lovely. Isn’t it lovely?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Well, we mustn’t stand here getting sentimental. I’ve a long ride ahead of me on my motor-bike. I need a stretch. Who’s coming with me?’

‘Not Jim,’ said Mrs Leonard, ‘I’m taking him home.’

‘All right. Coming you two?’

‘Yes, sir.’

The town where the Halberdiers lived was ill suited to walking for pleasure. It was a decent old place at the heart revealing concentric layers of later ugliness. Pleasant country had to be sought three miles out or more, but Colonel Ritchie-Hook’s aesthetic appetites had been sated by the calendar.

‘There’s a round I always go when I’m here,’ he said. ‘It takes fifty minutes.’

He set off at a fast irregular lope, with which it was impossible to keep in step. He led them to the railway beside which, separated from it by a fence of black, corrugated iron, ran a cinder path.