The Magic Army

by Leslie Thomas

  ‘From my unit, sir,’ Bryant said. ‘They’re helping people to move.’

  ‘Hold it here,’ said the general to the driver. The staff car pulled up behind the military vehicles under the naked elms. Gilman and Catermole were sitting on the tailboard of the truck, drinking tea. Gilman saw the Americans first. ‘Christ, Pussy,’ he muttered, ‘it’s the top brass.’

  They almost tumbled to the ground, Catermole spilling the tea on his tunic. ‘Give them a good one,’ muttered Gilman. With a single movement Catermole swept the tea from his front and brought his arm up into a steely salute.

  ‘Okay, easy,’ the general said casually, advancing at the head of his small party.

  The British privates remained solid. Gilman rolled his eyes towards Bryant. ‘Stand at ease,’ said Bryant. They stood at ease.

  ‘How is it all going?’ asked the British officer. ‘Taking a breather are you? Been pretty hectic, I expect.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ replied Gilman, grateful to the lieutenant for the excuse. ‘We’ve not stopped all day.’

  The Americans were looking into the back of the truck, half-loaded with tea chests and boxes, threadbare armchairs and rolls of linoleum pointing out like the barrels of large guns.

  ‘Any trouble, son?’ asked Georgeton. ‘How are these people taking it?’

  Gilman swallowed. Catermole was eyeing the American uniforms and medals. How did they get medals, he wondered, when they had not done any fighting yet? Gilman said: ‘We had one old man wouldn’t move, sir. Said he wasn’t interested in joining.’

  Georgeton smiled and the others joined in. ‘But you persuaded him,’ he said.

  ‘With difficulty, sir. But we talked him round in the end. He didn’t seem to be aware of the war.’

  Bryant looked at Gilman with interest. He had often thought of him as a man apart from the others in the anti-aircraft unit; the soldier who wrote short stories. ‘How are the others taking it?’ asked Schorner.

  ‘Some are upset, sir,’ said Gilman. ‘Naturally. They’ve never moved away from this part of the world before. They don’t even have any suitcases. Some big cardboard boxes have arrived, but they’re being charged sixpence each for them and they don’t take too kindly to that.’

  ‘They know they’ll be coming back … some time?’ added Schorner.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Gilman awkwardly. ‘I expect they do, sir.’

  The soldier’s eyes went past the American officer. Schorner turned and saw the funeral crawling along the village street. General Georgeton and Scarlett followed their gaze. People in the cottages across the green moved with undisguised eagerness to the low fences at the fore of their gardens. Bryant glanced at Gilman. Somebody had to give the order for the soldiers to come to attention.

  The general was well aware and equal to the moment. ‘Men,’ he ordered gruffly. ‘At … attention.’ The US officers and the British soldiers responded and round Georgeton himself threw up a fat American salute. They stood woodenly while the single funeral car, squeaking with every slow wheel-turn, went by with its elderly crew in threadbare black, looking scarcely healthier than a quartet of corpses, the coffin seeming small and incidental between them. Gilman thought it would never take four to carry that. It was strange how much smaller people became in death. The hearse was followed by an eccentric parade of vehicles; Howard Evans, the doctor, in his little car with Beatrice next to him, a bakery van hung with funeral drapes fashioned from blackout curtains, another boxy little car and then three horse-drawn traps including that driven by Tom Barrington. An old man followed on a staggering bicycle.

  Only Evans and his wife, and Jean Barrington, glanced towards the attentive soldiers as the short dumb procession went past. Georgeton remained at the salute. Bryant felt the cold drips from the trees hitting him sharply on the cheek. He moved fractionally away. A curled-up old man in the cottage opposite, one of the ragged line of people who had moved to the fence to watch the funeral, called across the road while the procession was still going by: ‘That be Charlie Pendry, sirs. Seventy-three. From Mortown.’

  Georgeton dropped his salute and called the others to stand at ease. ‘We seem to be getting a good insight into the area,’ the general mentioned enigmatically. ‘Okay, where next?’

  ‘There’s a large house, sir,’ said Schorner. ‘Telcoombe Manor. It would be the logical place for the officers’ mess and administration.’

  ‘Okay, let’s take a look at it.’

  Schorner half-smiled. ‘The lady of the house is er … well, formidable, sir.’ He turned the matter on Bryant. ‘Mrs Mahon-Feavor,’ he said. ‘You know her.’

  They could see he did. He said: ‘Yes, I’d say that was a fair description.’

  Georgeton shrugged. ‘Okay, so she’s tough. We’ve got to face the Third Reich so I don’t see how we can back off because of some old lady.’

  They turned and made towards the staff car. Bryant called Gilman and Catermole to attention and Georgeton acknowledged them with another salute. ‘Yanks,’ he heard a woman across in the cottage garden shouting coarsely to a muster of staring children standing in the road. ‘They be Yanks. They be coming to live in our ‘ouses.’

  The four officers sat mutely while the car pulled away. To reach Telcoombe Manor they had to travel along the coastal road once more. The rain had diminished, but the sky still scudded across the untidy waves. Scarlett abruptly reacted to something in the sea. ‘Now I’ve seen everything,’ he breathed.

  They all saw it now. Close inshore an open fishing boat, crewed by a single man in the stern, voyaged choppily westward towards Wilcoombe, its decks piled high with household furniture. The general instructed the driver to pull up. He turned his field glasses on the boat. ‘Chairs, tables, every goddamn thing,’ he breathed. ‘Even a couple of rabbits in a cage.’

  ‘Maybe he’ll just keep going until he gets to New York,’ suggested Scarlett.

  ‘He’s a friendly guy,’ said Georgeton still looking through the glasses. ‘He’s seen us looking at him. He’s just given us the Victory-V sign. That’s real encouraging.’ He put the glasses down.

  Telcoombe Manor was among lean winter trees, its windows as bleak as old eyes. Not the most elegant of manor houses, it was in need of renovations that should have been carried out the summer the war began. There were signs and remnants of Georgian origins, but there had been a fire in early Victorian times and the building had afterwards been largely reconstructed, with a lack of felicity. Now the brickwork needed repointing and the paint on the door hung like an aged skin.

  Bryant went ahead of the party towards the iron bell-pull, but as he did so a gritty howl came from the flank of the house; wild words from a woman and a loud bickering of ducks. Bryant moved slowly around the side, old rose brambles catching his uniform. The Americans followed cautiously.

  Before the grid of bare trees was a grey pond upon which a flotilla of ducks was scuttling just out of reach of an irate woman waving a net on the end of a pole, describing arcs and circles like a flag-waving champion.

  ‘Bastards!’ Mrs Mahon-Feavor bellowed. ‘Bastard ducks! Come here you bastards.’ She was wearing a lifeboatman’s oilskin, sou’wester and Wellington boots.

  Her askance eye caught the khaki group as they hesitated among the climbers at the corner of the house. ‘Ah!’ she shouted. ‘You’ve turned up have you? You’ve bloody-well turned up.’ She advanced on them fiercely and flung the great net down like a challenge on the sodden lawn at their feet. ‘You catch the bastard ducks!’ she cried. ‘You want us out, so you catch the bastards.’

  The Americans had difficulty in confining their smiles. Bryant regarded the lady anxiously and then turned to Georgeton and said nervously, ‘General, this is Mrs Mahon-Feavor.’ His eyes returned to the lady. ‘Mrs Mahon-Feavor, this is General Georgeton.’ She shook herself, an action not unlike that of a duck, and water flew from the clefts and recesses of her oilskins.

  ‘We certainly seem to be causing a few problems,
’ admitted the American general. ‘I hadn’t thought about situations involving ducks.’

  ‘Well I had,’ said Mrs Mahon-Feavor still truculently. ‘I’m certainly not leaving them here so that you and your riff-raff can blow them to pieces or they end up stuffed with whatever Americans stuff their ducks with.’

  ‘Gooseberries,’ put in Schorner softly. He kept a straight face. ‘We stuff them with gooseberries, ma’am.’

  ‘I thought you might,’ she replied unsurely and less tartly. She turned to see the ducks now congregated with diminished agitation on the pond but muttering among themselves and collectively regarding her with suspicion. ‘Bastards,’ she swore again. She emitted a damp snort and took off the sou’wester. ‘You’d better come in,’ she said. ‘Take a look at what you’re getting.’ She moved resolutely towards the front door. ‘The bloody dump is falling to bloody pieces anyway,’ she added. She pulled a strip of paint from a panel on the door. ‘Look at that. If you blow it to kingdom come at least it will finish the job.’ She waited, then said: ‘As long as the compensation is generous.’

  They trooped into the high hallway, wiping their shoes on the worn, wet rug at the door. ‘Don’t bother about that,’ she said. ‘If you’re going to make holes in the place there’s not much sense in wiping your bloody feet on the bloody mat is there.’

  Georgeton was conciliatory. ‘Well, ma’am,’ he said, ‘we have an idea we maybe will use this house as our officers’ mess and may be an administration centre, so it should be in good condition when you get back here.’

  ‘Officers’ mess?’ she said, sounding a little interested. ‘then how about buying the ducks? Then you can catch the bastards. And you can stuff them with bloody gooseberries to your heart’s content.’

  ‘Let’s make a note of that,’ said Georgeton towards Scarlett. Scarlett promised he would remember. Mrs Mahon-Feavor, water still drizzling from her oilskins, led them into another room. It had a vaulted ceiling, its bosses carved like roses. ‘Imitation,’ she said pointing up. ‘Of course. Bloody copied.’ The furniture spread about the room was hardly antique, simply old. The chairs and sofas stood about like a herd of faded elephants. She instructed them to sit down. Georgeton, rolling involuntarily into the deep of an armchair, heard a spring echo beneath his bottom. Huge uncared-for portraits of men with warriors’ expressions and hands on the hilts of ceremonial swords littered the walls. The afternoon light was dimming.

  ‘You are of a military family, Mrs Mahon-Feavor,’ said Georgeton, politely nodding at the paintings.

  The Englishwoman sniffed. ‘Bloody cowards the lot of them. Cowards or fools,’ she informed him. ‘We’ve had more men taken prisoner than any family in England.’ She faced Georgeton. ‘How many of your chaps are coming here?’ she asked bluntly.

  ‘In this house?’ inquired the general, a little perplexed.

  ‘No, in the surrounding area,’ she corrected impatiently. ‘Where all this hoo-ha is going to take place?’

  Scarlett interpolated. ‘I’m afraid that sort of information is classified – secret, you understand, ma’am.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ she snorted fiercely directly at him. ‘Bloody rubbish.’ She pointed dramatically at the carved ceiling. ‘Sub rosa,’ she said. ‘Under the rose. Anything that is said under the rose is a secret that is kept honourably.’

  ‘We think about a hundred thousand,’ put in Georgeton quickly. ‘But not all at once. We’ll be moving troops in and out all the time during the special training.’

  The staunch lady became suddenly sad. ‘The place is going to be very crowded,’ was all she said. Then: ‘Would you like some tea?’ They watched fascinated while she pulled a long embroidered bell-rope. The result appeared to be only silence. ‘We are evacuating about three thousand souls,’ she went on. ‘Seven hundred and ninety-four families, three hundred and ninety-seven old folk. Actually three hundred and ninety-six now because old Pendry died last week. They buried him today. He’ll be one who is staying.’

  The trio of Americans now grinned at her openly, their first experience of upper-class English eccentricity. She kicked at two starved logs smouldering grudgingly in the huge grate, giving off an almost religious skein of smoke, so thin it had vanished by the time it reached the base of the yawning chimney. Scarlett wondered if wood was also rationed. The chairs were so collapsed and soft that the general felt he was being devoured by his. He looked with comic uncertainty towards the others and saw that they were experiencing similar discomfiture. Mrs Mahon-Feavor sat firmly on an embroidered upright chair and regarded their predicament with some satisfaction. ‘Comfortable?’ she inquired, and without awaiting their reply: ‘Good.’

  A woman of incredible age and considerable infirmity brought the tea in. The tray rattled in her knobbly hands, her mouth trembled, her steps were staggered, two short ones followed by a little rush of half a dozen, a stop and then two short steps again. Schorner, getting out of the maw of the chair with difficulty, made to help her, but Mrs Mahon-Feavor waved him aside. ‘She’s absolutely capable,’ she told him briskly. ‘Aren’t you, Bridget?’

  So capable was the crone that she did not trust herself to reply until the tray was tremulously placed on a low table by the fire. Then she straightened slowly and, with a smile like a cobweb, answering a trembling ‘Yes.’ With some deliberation she then reversed from the area and eventually turned and went out into the darkness of the house.

  ‘Never spoil them,’ warned Mrs Mahon-Feavor. ‘Remember that while you’re here, general. Never spoil the English lower classes. They are quick to take a mean advantage.’

  She poured the tea from a beautiful blue and white teapot into cups as delicate as eggshells. The men watched with the fascination of explorers entranced by a native ritual. The Englishwoman handed a cup to each and Bryant was taken aback when he was treated to a smile, a favour revealing a fossil tooth set in the middle of Mrs Mahon-Feavor’s upper gum. He realized why he had never seen her smile before.

  ‘Cowards,’ she repeated, nodding once more at the portraits adorning the wall. ‘This family changed sides three times in the Civil War, you know. Even then the fools ended up with the bloody King. That idiot overhead …’ She nodded behind her towards the wall, curiously like a footballer back-heading a ball. ‘That cretin … Major Brindley Mahon-Feavor. He walked out to parley with the Zulu. Fancy trying to talk to the Zulu. Never seen again. And hardly surprising.’

  They dutifully looked up to the sad-faced soldier above the fireplace. He seemed, even then, to have some inkling of his African fate. ‘Then Charlie over there, see, Captain Charles. A sentimental dolt, he was so carried away by the carol-singing contest between the Hun and the British at Christmas 1914, in the trenches you know, that he stood up to conduct. A sniper got him. The Germans apologized, I understand.’

  Bryant saw that when she drank her tea she hooked her solitary tooth over the edge of the cup like a jemmy. He was surprised that the utensil remained undamaged. ‘Now I’ve got two in the blessed Guards, believe it or not, and a daughter made of jelly in the WRAF, scanning the skies or something for the Jerries. The younger dimwit seems to spend his army life playing rugger and the other one … well, God knows how he manages. He got to France the week before Dunkirk, in fact I wouldn’t be surprised if he wasn’t the cause of it.’

  Her sharp eyes scanned the walls as if eager to single out another ancestor for abuse. ‘My late husband’s family, of course,’ she explained. ‘Mine were clergy. All batty.’ She regarded the general challengingly. ‘Can your men march correctly?’ she inquired to his astonishment. ‘I mean swinging their arms and in step and all that baloney?’

  ‘I believe they could try,’ replied General Georgeton genially. ‘Why do you ask, ma’am?’

  ‘We’ve got a parade, Sunday after next,’ she told him briskly. ‘War Weapons Week, National Savings, you know. Parades, displays, all that rubbish, anything to make people part with their money. The war’s given them more money th
an they’ve ever seen, so they’re persuaded to give it back to keep the war going. We’re having a parade in Wilcoombe – Home Guard band, the soldiers from that silly gun, the Sea Cadets and the Boy Scouts – they’re very smart the Boy Scouts – WVS, Air Raid Wardens, everybody who’s got a tin hat in fact. Anyway, if your Yanks are reasonably upright I’d like some of them to join in, perhaps a couple of platoons. But no chewing gum. And no Jews. We’re going to church afterwards.’

  Georgeton glanced at the others. ‘How about negroes?’ inquired Scarlett with assumed innocence. ‘Are they okay?’

  Mrs Mahon-Feavor remained unruffled. ‘As long as they’re Christian,’ she said firmly, ‘the hue is immaterial.’

  Again the general looked sideways at Schorner. The colonel nodded. ‘I guess we could raise enough men to look okay alongside the Boy Scouts,’ he said. ‘We might even raise a band.’

  At once the old lady became interested. ‘Oh, that’s more like it,’ she enthused. ‘The Home Guard band is deplorable. They can only play “Blaze Away” and even that doesn’t sound like “Blaze Away”. And that rude tune, “Colonel Bogey”. Then all the children sing to that. It’s quite disgusting. They say they can do others, but I’ve never heard them make anything but a ghastly row. Oh, yes, we could do with a good band.’

  They had finished their tea. They looked slightly awkwardly at each other. Bryant rose first. ‘I think the general and these other gentlemen have to be on their way, Mrs Mahon-Feavor,’ he said politely. ‘They still have a lot to do.’

  ‘That’s correct,’ said Georgeton. ‘But first, if it doesn’t inconvenience you too much, ma’am, perhaps we could see what accommodation there is in this house. The facilities.’

  Immediately Mrs Mahon-Feavor assumed her businesslike expression. ‘Are you going to buy my ducks?’ she demanded.

  Georgeton grinned grimly. ‘You win,’ he said. ‘I guess we buy the ducks.’

  In the narrowing dusk of that same January afternoon, Captain Hulton, the United States Army conducting officer, was leading another convoy of American vehicles carrying five hundred new troops south from Avonmouth Docks. They had reached the boundary of the Devon evacuation area and had gone into the incised lanes when they were confronted by a parade of farm vehicles on their way out.