Shadows On the Grass

by Simon Raven

  ‘That young man needs a good kick up the arse,’ I heard the cricketing Colonel announce to Isaacs after I had flopped yet again two or three days later.

  ‘He made 47 against the Sappers on Saturday, sir,’ said Isaacs with such loyalty as he could still muster.

  ‘Dropped four times,’ replied the Colonel, ‘hitting across the line like a ploughboy…without a good honest ploughboy’s excuse. He knows what to do as well as anyone but he’s too idle or too feeble to do it. If I were you, I’d get rid of him.’

  In this crisis of my affairs, I was summoned to a WOSB (War Office Selection Board) which would finally determine whether I was fit to be trained for a Commission. Although Westbury, where the thing was to happen, was only a few miles away across the Salisbury Plain, I should be absent a good seven days, for all practical purposes, and for this time at least I was safe from further disgrace. I was also able to recruit my energies a little, there being neither ‘work’ nor hospitable obligations in the alcove to draw on them. I was grateful to WOSB for providing an interlude of most welcome chastity; for it is possible, even at the age of eighteen, to become utterly sick of sex.

  Back with the ITC and much restored in health and morale, determined to repay Isaacs’ trust and give of my best for the rest of the season, I dedicated myself with renewed fervour to the special soirée which had been got up by Mond in honour of my return. (For while it is indeed possible to become utterly sick of sex even at the age of eighteen, in youth as in politics a week red Beret is a very long time.) On this occasion, unprecedentedly, alcoholic drinks were served. Unknown to us at the time, one of the girls was stupendously sick just after leaving us at 2 a.m. Once again the Furies were on my traces.

  For early the next morning, while we were still in bed, there came a huge knock on the office door. Since Reveille had sounded some ten minutes before, whoever wanted admission was in order while we were not. I went to the door in my underpants (pyjamas were not the fashion with Other Ranks in 1946), opened it, and saw Regimental Serjeant-Major Lord on the other side.

  Lord, some say, was in his time the most magnificent soldier in the world: standing there on this occasion, as straight as a Doric column and nearly as high, he wore Service Dress (fastened right up to the throat), Sam Browne, breeches and long puttees, and he carried a dark brown pace-stick the bronze fittings of which flashed like Jubilee beacons. Enough to make anyone under Field Rank tremble in his socks. I trembled away on my bare feet, ludicrously brought my knobbly ankles together, and grabbed at my pants, which were about to sag below the hair line.

  ‘Ah,’ said this colossal creature mildly, ‘a bit of luck to find somebody in. They did say a picquet slept here, but I wasn’t certain. I’m sorry to have interrupted you at your ablutions.’

  The immediate response to this courteous speech was a gurgling snore from Mond in the alcove. The first essential was to get him on his feet. The RSM apparently condoned a considerable degree of undress at ten minutes past Reveille but he would not tolerate a lay-a-bed.

  ‘Douse that tap please, Corporal,’ I called, ‘the RSM’s here.’

  ‘The Regimental Serjeant-Major,’ corrected Lord, gently but very firmly.

  ‘What tap?’ groaned Mond.

  ‘The one that just made the row. I can’t hear what the RS – the Regimental Serjeant-Major is saying.’

  Mond got the message. There were sounds of rational activity from the alcove.

  ‘What can I do for you, sir?’ I said.

  ‘These returns… May I come in?’

  ‘If you please, sir. Would you like this chair?’

  ‘Thank you very much… I am sorry, as I say, to disturb you while you’re at your ablutions,’ said this gentle giant, under whose eye twelve-year men sweated with terror on the parade ground and who had even been known to make a public arrest of another (albeit junior) Regimental Serjeant-Major, ‘but these returns are cast in the most vexatious fashion. Whoever is responsible for them has used abbreviations which I have expressly forbidden (such as CSM for Company Serjeant-Major) and has in every case spelt “Serjeant” with a “g” instead of a “j”.’

  These were Lord’s two major abominations. He could not bear abbreviations, whether in speech or in writing; and he was determined that a man with three stripes on his sleeve was a ‘SERJEANT’, presumably because he thought the ‘J’ raised the rank from a Music Hall joke to a dignity comparable with that of a Mounted Serjeant of the Middle Ages, who was tactically rated if not socially esteemed as almost the equal of a knight.

  ‘These returns will have to be retyped before they can be shown to the Commanding Officer,’ Lord said now. ‘I realise, of course, that you are only the picquet here and are not responsible: but will you kindly find the Clerk or the Non-Commissioned Officer who is responsible, and tell him to present himself, in my office, with these returns correctly typed, no later than 0830 hours.’

  ‘Of course, sir.’

  I hitched up my knickers again. Lord rose to go. He passed an eye over the alcove, in which Mond was making hysterical domestic motions as of one preparing for the new day.

  ‘I do not see a tap.’

  ‘Tap…sir?’

  ‘You referred, just now, to a tap.’

  ‘The nearest is a hundred yards away, sir. I was requesting my friend here to douse his “yap”, i.e. – I mean, id est – his conversation, so that I could attend to you.’

  ‘Then if the tap is a hundred yards away, you were not yet engaged in your ablutions?’

  ‘We have to go one at a time, sir. Security. I was just going when you arrived.’

  He accepted this. He was a kind man who realised that if you call on people at 6.10 a.m., however legitimately, you must expect to find them somewhat disordered.

  ‘Then please do not let me detain you further.’

  I went to the alcove, put on my gym shoes, grabbed my washing kit, and ran. As I ran, I noticed that Lord, who had already left the Office by about the length of a cricket pitch, was thoughtfully inspecting an enormous heap of what (I realised a few minutes later) could only be NAAFI girls’ sick.

  ‘Well, who did make out those returns?’ I asked as soon as I was back from my ‘ablutions’.

  ‘I did.’

  ‘What in the devil’s name were you thinking of? Abbreviations. Serjeants red Beret with “g”s. You’ve gone potty.’

  ‘I’d had too much beer at lunch, and I thought the return was for the Quartermaster. Married Quarters, that’s what it’s all about, bloody fucking thing – Quartermaster’s business. He doesn’t mind abbreviations, and he thinks Serjeant with a “j” is affected. I once heard him say so.’

  ‘Anyhow, it seems that his Lordship shoved his nose in.’

  ‘Can you help me retype it? You could do half of it on the second typewriter.’

  ‘Sorry, sweetheart,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to parade in the MT – sorry, Motor Transport – Lines at 0715. We’ve got an all day match at Aldershot.’

  And a very long day it was. By the time I had been slammed for 37 runs in two overs, got myself out hit-wicket for 3, missed their last man off a dolly catch which, if held, would have taken us through into the Semi-Final of the South West District Trophy – by the time I had endured all this and the drive back from Aldershot (during which no one at all would even look at me) I was ready to slit my windpipe.

  ‘Well at least,’ said Mond grimly after I had recited these horrors, ‘at least you weren’t sick on the pitch.’

  ‘Why should I have been?’

  ‘For the same reason you were sick just out there last night.’

  ‘That wasn’t me. It must have been one of the bints.’

  ‘It makes no odds. We’re blown. When I formed up with that retyped return, “Leave to fall in, sir?” says I. “It’s you, is it?” says he. “I thought you was only the picquet in there, not the Corporal Clerk.” “Corporal Clerk and permanent picquet, if you please, sir.” “I see. Permanent picquet, and too i
dle to know when someone has thrown his entrails up right outside your door.” No answer to this, so, “Leave to dismiss, sir, please?” “Yes please, Corporal. I’m going to make a few enquiries about you and your permanent picquet. Pray ask Company Serjeant-Major Lewis to step this way.”’

  ‘Couldn’t Lou have squared it?’

  ‘He might have. Only last Thursday was a crashing fiasco with his Missus. She spotted that rubber contrivance and saw me hanging as limp as a daffodil. She’s given me the bum’s rush and she’s given Lou sheer perishing Hades, and the long and the short is, the deal’s off. We’re out of here tomorrow, Sonny Jim.’

  ‘And I’m out of Isaacs’ XI. God knows what will become of us.’

  ‘Poor little orphans. The last night in the old home – so let’s make the best of it.’

  But on the morrow the Furies found other more interesting business and my Good Daimon flew in to clear up the mess…my mess, that is, as he seemed indisposed to do anything much for Mond, who was last seen by me with a kit bag over his shoulder trudging up the hill to Hut 3 (ADM) in HQ Company Lines. I turned away with a sigh (after all, it had been a memorable summer) and carefully cleaned and labelled my rifle before delivering it into the Armourer’s keeping.

  For I had passed my WOSB and was to be posted out instanter. I was to hand in my weapon (oh God, the relief of getting rid of that horrible, hurting rifle), report myself to the Transit Centre at the Great Northern Hotel in London, dump my kit there while I went on embarkation leave, and then sail away in HM Troopship Georgic to India (still British if only just) where I should train as an Officer Cadet at the Officers’ Training School in Bangalore (Mysore State).

  But there was one big black blowfly buzzing in this delicious ointment. If anyone ever found out what had gone on in the alcove, if Lord or another should ever learn that though a comatose picquet we had been lively hosts, then the matter would be grave enough to bring about my recall to the ITC for appropriate disciplinary action, or, had I already reached India, my almost certain dismissal from the OTS and degradation as a Private to some British Unit in the Far East. No Good Daimon could exorcise this threat, which was to cast a shadow over even the bluest and blithest days for many weeks to come.

  However, nothing happened. There was no summons to the Office of the Commandant at Bangalore. After the requisite number of days and parades had passed, I was duly commissioned, early in May 1947, as a Second Lieutenant in the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, and by that time there could really be nothing to fear. What happened to Mond in the meantime, or thereafter, I never heard. But this much I do know: if there was any subsequent trouble about the orgies in the alcove, he must have covered up for me and taken full blame on himself. I can see Mond doing that…pretty, dimpled, loving, loyal Mond, with his ghastly book about the Blitz and his desperate need to prove himself heterosexual.

  VI

  MUMMY’S BOY

  But back to the autumn of 1946. My embarkation leave was rather distressful. Here was I, a grown man and now an Officer Cadet, deserving and desirous of a fortnight of independent and sophisticated pleasure; and here was my leave pay, all £14 of it – and not even as much as that because in theory I was to give some of it to my mother for my ‘maintenance’. As for her, she was no help at all in sustaining me in my chosen role of aspirant Officer about town: she still regarded me as a schoolboy, who should and must come straight home now the term was ended and stay there with no nonsense until it began again.

  Neither of my parents was impressed by my posting to India. My mother regarded it as all rather ‘silly’ and as liable to give me ‘silly, independent ideas’. My father thought it was ‘bad and silly and bad’ that the nation should be paying good money to send ‘someone like you’ all that way to be trained for a Commission. It wasn’t, he said, as if I were going into the Indian Army – not that there would have been much point in that either. When I remarked that Subalterns were still badly needed in the Far East, and that most of us would probably be posted to British Battalions in India itself or in South-East Asia, my father expressed peevish scepticism about the function of such Battalions and the function of anyone as ‘floppy’ as myself within them, while my mother became exceedingly resentful at the further opportunities I should have, at points East of Mandalay, to incubate ‘silly independent ideas’ – to say nothing of the fact that when I got leave I could neither be expected nor compelled to come home for it.

  That was the sort of parents I had. My sister was too young to understand or comment. Only my brother Myles took interest or pleasure in my situation, partly because he realised it was just the sort of trip I should enjoy, and partly because he could now tell the boys at Charterhouse that I had smashed to pieces the supposedly unbreachable sanctions imposed by my expulsion: for beyond any question I had now become an Officer Cadet and would shortly become an Officer, appointments of honour which tradition declared to be for ever beyond the reach of a man who had been ‘sacked’, especially if it had been ‘for the usual thing’.

  Having touched this topic, I should add that people’s attitudes in this regard were very revealing. The Army itself simply did not want to know whether one had been sacked or what for, but it did issue every candidate for a Commission with a formal certificate of moral character which must be signed by a priest, schoolmaster or JP of his acquaintance before he presented himself at WOSB. Since, in the circumstances, I could hardly apply to the Headmaster for a signature, and did not want to embarrass Bob Arrowsmith or the Uncle (both of whom would have taken such a formality rather seriously), I simply forged Sniffy Russell’s autograph on my certificate, knowing that while he too would have been reluctant to sign it in the cold light of day, so to speak, he was yet far too good-natured and loyal to denounce one should reference ever be made to him by the authorities. He would probably, I thought, laugh the same high, dry laugh as he had when Hodgsonite Yearlings were cheated by William, and disappear fast in another direction. In the event, of course, my speculations were never put to the test; the certificate was simply filed and forgotten as the irrelevance which it was – though it still gives me pleasure to reflect that my Emergency Commission, and much later on my Regular Commission, were both made possible, in the original instance, by my own crudely forged moral testimony in my favour.

  The Headmaster, when he eventually heard of my Indian prospect, was, I think, rather puzzled. He knew that a moral certificate had to be signed in such circumstances, as he had signed hundreds himself. He had not, he knew, signed mine, so presumably somebody else had. Who and why? These questions, though never uttered, were somewhere at the back of his voice when I rang him up to say goodbye, in itself an entirely natural proceeding, as we had remained friends and corresponded as such despite the dismal sentence he had been bound to pass upon me. His sentiments were probably very much those which he entertained towards King’s College after the College Council had pronounced my offence trivial and my admission certain: he was glad, as my friend, that things were going as I would wish, but also rather indignant that my wickedness, though punished by him with the gravest penalty in his power, was made so light of elsewhere.

  The simple fact was that the immense popularity, over many years before mummy’s Boy the war, of the ludicrous Billy Bunter and his friends at Greyfriars had made the whole punitive apparatus of the Public Schools, flogging and expulsion, the lot, a universal joke. Even Public School men themselves, though grateful and dedicated alumni in other areas, could not be got to regard corporal punishment or condign dismissal as anything other than an hilarious ‘jape’ – which would in any case be forgotten by the next issue of The Magnet (as it were), in which Coker the school rotter, publicly whipped and cast forth at the end of the last number, would be back again after some shadowy process of reinstatement lurking among the studies as slimy and villainous as ever. And of course if expulsion was such a light matter, so was what you were expelled for. Never, after my expulsion from Charterhouse,
did anybody so much as raise an eyebrow when the thing was mentioned. Most people merely giggled.

  But enough of this digression.

  When my leave still had four days to run, I received two letters in the same post: the first, accompanied by a cheque for £10, was from my grandfather (maternal) who himself had been a soldier and took vicarious pleasure from my exotic posting; the second was from Hedley Le Bas, suggesting that I should join him for a day or two at Lord’s, or even for all three days, during some Festival Match which was to be played early that September. Since these were the last three days of my leave, I wired Hedley that I would meet him by the Tavern the following afternoon and announced to my family my intention of leaving for London early the following morning.

  My father, who had seen about enough of me, took this in good part. My brother, although a little sad, quite understood, he said, that I needed a change of scene. We then spent the whole of my last afternoon at home playing a game of small cricket, which we had first devised as children, on an enclosed terrace in the garden, and after Myles had made 402 while impersonating J D Robertson he was resigned to the indefinite suspension of play (which was, in fact, never resumed, for when I came home again as an Officer I found small cricket beneath my dignity). Thus all was well – except with my mother. At first she had heard of my intention with apparent good grace: ‘It’ll be so nice for you to meet your old friend at Lord’s,’ she had conceded. But as the afternoon went on she had been busily distilling discontent inside herself, and when Myles and I came in from small cricket she fizzed and steamed like a witches’ cauldron.