The Magic Army

by Leslie Thomas

  Every day you do not come,

  A little bit of summer dies,

  A rose leaf flutters from a rose,

  With less expectant eyes.

  Every day you do not come,

  A blackbird from some lofty spray,

  Watches another sunset fade

  And sings his heart away.

  At the foot he wrote, ‘I was given this as a present by some children. I hope you like it. It’s called “Waiting” and was written by a lady called Helen Holland.’

  Schorner folded the letter carefully and put it in a US Army envelope. He hoped the censor would not think the poetry was a code. Soldiers devised all sorts of cryptics to send private, often salacious messages home to their wives and girls. The military censor office had a lurid collection pasted on its wall.

  He had a bath and smoked a cigar in the bath. He realized that, like many others, he felt a sense of growing impatience now. When was the game going to stop, the clowning, the pretence of war, the build-up, the tanks, the materials? The dumps at the sides of the roads, the railway engines, the readily-equipped hospitals with their waiting doctors, nurses, blood bottles and morgues. He thought of the mountainous gun being pulled through Exeter that day and blew a cloud of smoke as though it were coming from the barrel of the weapon. He did it again, several times, firing salvoes towards the horizon of the bath water.

  He shaved and dressed unhurriedly, picked up his letter and went down to the lobby. General Georgeton arrived after five minutes and they went into the bar and had a drink. They watched the group of air force officers re-enacting their bombing raid on Germany. ‘Reliving it,’ nodded Schorner, smiling over his gin. The general watched. A plane, represented by a flattened hand, was crashing. ‘Re-dying it,’ corrected Georgeton.

  The general’s driver took them to the house in Kensington. ‘Hickson,’ Georgeton reminded Schorner as they approached. ‘Major-General Henry Hickson. His wife’s name is Ursula. They’re okay though.’

  Schorner looked from the car window. Even in the dimness of the black out he could sense that they were in an elegant area. The houses were old, built with grace and space around a square in tall terraces, and there was a treed garden at the centre. The lesser-dark of the sky filled up a gap in the middle of the terrace along which they were driving, a space left by a bomb. Trees were lined regularly along the pavement and the branches showed like tributaries against the sky. The drive eventually found the house and halted.

  Before they left the car a brief snatch of light showed from the doorway of the house, so shadowy it was almost like the entrance to the unknown. By the time they had reached the step the silhouette of a man was standing to greet them, waving a small torch to illuminate the step. They gained the warmth of the hall and the man, wearing a faded butler’s jacket and trousers, placed the torch on the hatstand and sprang to iron attention. Georgeton and Schorner swiftly glanced at each other in embarrassment and both came to a token stance in acknowledgement.

  ‘Burgess, sir,’ said the man sharply. ‘Ex-Fourteenth Hussars. I was General Hickson’s batman.’

  ‘Wish you were in this war, Burgess?’ asked Georgeton conversationally as the man took his coat.

  ‘Never served in a war, sir,’ Burgess replied sedately. He took Schorner’s greatcoat. ‘Joined up in nineteen-twenty-two, invalided out thirty-six. Never heard a single shot fired in anger, sir.’

  Schorner smiled: ‘That goes for a lot of us,’ he said. ‘Including me.’

  ‘Soon alter that,’ said the man cryptically. Then, with a drop of his voice, ‘I expect sir.’ Changing his conversational voice to a formal tone he said: ‘This way, sir.’ He led them through a heavy blackout curtain hung across the hall and into the pleasant light of a square lobby, marbled floor, with expensive walls and a rank of framed portraits of military men. Schorner moved sideways towards one. It drew him. It was a young, diffidently, smiling officer, in modern field dress. It looked out of place among all the scarlet and gold braid of the other uniforms.

  Burgess saw the glance. ‘Captain Willie Hickson, sir. The general’s son.’ His tone was odd, as if he were making an announcement. As he led the way two people came from a room on the left and welcomed them. Henry Hickson was a thin, grey man, with a deep expression. His wife was a tiny woman with a dark face and sharp eyes. Schorner thought she had been crying.

  Burgess, the butler, snapped to attention and marched stiffly away. Georgeton and Schorner were again uncertain of what they should do.

  ‘He always does that, I’m afraid,’ said General Hickson. ‘Can’t break him of it. When he’s wearing a hat the bloody fool keeps saluting. Never seen a day’s fighting, either.’

  They laughed and said that Burgess had told them that. They followed the general and his wife into the room. There was a modest fire in the grate. Two glasses of sherry were already on a tray by the fire-place. The Americans agreed they would have the same.

  ‘I hope you didn’t mind me telephoning, sir,’ said Georgeton. ‘I remembered your kind invitation and … well, we don’t get too many chances of being in a house, somebody’s home, these days.’

  ‘You are both very welcome,’ said Mrs Hickson. She was like a small, dark bird, thought Schorner. She moved with brief movements. Her dress was old but cared for. Her hands were delicate and she had a slim wedding-ring and a small diamond ring next to it. A string of pearls looped from her neck where the skin folded. A younger woman came into the room, her face a striking likeness to the old man’s.

  ‘This is my daughter, Celia,’ said Hickson. He introduced Schorner and Georgeton.

  The girl was tense. She took a drink and said briskly: ‘Up for the big war conference?’

  Georgeton looked embarrassed. Hickson said, ‘Celia,’ reprovingly.

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ sighed the girl. ‘I thought everybody knew.’ She smiled but only shortly. ‘You can always tell by all the top brass in London. In the restaurants and theatres and suchlike.’ She looked challengingly at Georgeton: ‘When’s it going to be, general?’

  ‘Celia,’ said her father again. Her mother laughed and said: ‘Celia would never make a spy, would she? She’s too blunt.’

  ‘My guess,’ said the girl confidently, ‘is the last week in April. And the war over by Christmas.’

  ‘You’d better tell General Eisenhower,’ suggested Schorner mildly. ‘Because nobody’s told him yet.’

  After dinner, at eleven o’clock, they were seated again in the room, drinking coffee and port which Burgess, the manservant, had brought in a decanter on a tray. Schorner had sensed an unease throughout the evening. He would have been happier had there been more light in the room. Major-General Hickson said, leaning forward as though about to divulge some tight secret, ‘Montgomery’s father was a bishop, you know. A famous jumper in his day.’

  Georgeton glanced at Schorner. ‘He had mentioned it. The jumping,’ said the American general. ‘He mentioned it only today.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Hickson with understanding. ‘He must have been reminded by a letter in The Times today.’ He stood and went to a library table in the corner, returning with a half-folded copy of the newspaper. He opened it in a careful, elderly manner. His wife was staring into the low fire.

  Celia said quite suddenly to Schorner, ‘I decided to be the one who did not join up.’ She looked at him directly, as though challenging. ‘Everybody else, women I mean, couldn’t wait to get into uniform to have a good time. Or into munitions and earn massive amounts of money. There are women going home with six or seven pounds a week in their pockets and they feel the war’s the most wonderful thing that’s ever happened.’

  ‘I don’t think that what you have said is entirely correct, dear,’ put in her mother. She did not look up from the fire. Schorner remained puzzled. ‘The girls of this country are doing a wonderful task.’

  ‘If you say so, mother,’ acknowledged Celia quietly. She was still tense. Turning to Schorner she went on, ‘I felt that by k
eeping on with my job, more or less running a large office with most of the men away, I was doing just as much for the war effort, as they call it, as putting on fancy clothes and sitting, smoking twenty a day, in some ATS orderly room. That’s all many of them do, you know. There is nothing else for them to do.’

  Schorner nodded: ‘Most of the armed services are doing nothing very much right now,’ he observed. ‘It’s just waiting.’ He thought briefly of the poem he had sent that day in his letter.

  ‘There is fighting in Burma,’ said the girl firmly. ‘Remember that.’

  ‘Sure, sure, and all over the Pacific. And Italy but I don’t feel that I, personally, am contributing very much right now.’ Schorner was being kind. He thought her expression eased. Her father had opened The Times and read the letter through to himself. ‘Here it is,’ he said with an old smile. ‘All about Montgomery’s father jumping up the steps to King’s College, Cambridge.’ He slowly read the letter to them.

  When he had finished, Georgeton and Schorner laughed politely. The Englishman regarded them and then the newspaper wryly. ‘I suppose it must be a mystery to you gentlemen how people in the midst of a war can take up time and space in The Times writing of such trivial things. I suppose it comes under the general heading of light relief. I remember in the Great War, as we called it, a professor writing to The Time, in nineteen-fifteen or sixteen, when the boys of this country were being slaughtered in mud; he wrote an amusing letter complaining about the shortage of leeches in London. Yes, leeches. Those that were obtainable were, he said, usually second-hand.’ He rolled his head and laughed silently. ‘Leeches,’ he repeated to himself.

  The two Americans again responded politely and Georgeton said: ‘That seems very British, sir.’

  Hickson seemed to have descended into a private reverie. ‘We are fortunate in this war to have senior officers who were just subalterns in the first show,’ he said, looking up sharply. ‘They saw the terrible way that war was conducted; the mud, the blind indifference to the killing of troops. They would not be likely to make the same mistake themselves. Thank God for that, I say.’

  It was almost midnight. Burgess brought their coats and they went to the door. The car was in the empty street. The elderly couple said good-bye in the hall but their daughter came through the heavy blackout drape and walked with them down the stone steps. She took a coat from the hatstand and held it around her shoulders.

  ‘Please don’t come out, young lady,’ said Georgeton. ‘I guess we’re used to the darkness now.’

  She said: ‘It’s perfectly all right. It’s not cold.’

  Schorner guessed she was doing it for a reason. As they reached the pavement and were saying good-bye she said suddenly, ‘I’m sorry it was a little sombre tonight.’ She stood awkwardly and pulled the coat around her neck. ‘After you telephoned today,’ she said deliberately, ‘my father had another telephone call from a friend at the War Office. My brother was wounded two months ago in Burma. He was in hospital at Chittagong.’ She smiled wryly. ‘Sounds like some sort of musical instrument, doesn’t it,’ she said. ‘Or a game.’ She lifted her face, full of grief, and said, ‘He died there yesterday. I came home and found the pair of them weeping in the arms of Burgess.’

  The inquest on Fat Meg Pender was to take place in the village hall where Meg herself had been fighting at the St Valentine’s Ball only an hour before she drowned in Wilcoombe harbour. On the day the seating was arranged as it was for concerts and winter talks, with extra seats brought from the vestry of the church and from the school.

  An hour before the coroner was due to arrive, and before the caretaker had pulled the bolts on the door, the South Devon people were waiting to be let in. Some, who had been among those evacuated, had returned from other parts of the country. Once the door was opened every available public seat was claimed. The coroner’s officer, Constable Burridge, a cheerful balloon of a man from Totnes, had to clear half a dozen prospective spectators from the two benches reserved for the jury.

  ‘’Ee’ll be wanting the county coroner’s place next,’ he said amiably as he ushered them out. The fortunate ones who had gained seats sat doggedly hushed, their eyes fixed ahead, their backsides tentatively occupying the chairs, their manner indicating that they feared that the slightest misdemeanour might result in their being ejected. Mrs Bewler, who had the crazy son, sat with him, both impassive as wood, until, on the thought she bent close to his ear and whispered: ‘Us don’t want any of youm mad fits this morning. ’Tis goin’ to be worthwhile seein’, this is.’

  An American Army legal officer stayed overnight at the camp at Telcoombe Magna and travelled in Schorner’s car to the court. He was a slight, unimpressive man, with cloudy fair hair that sprouted in patches on his domed head. His pink face, his demeanour and his conversation were without humour. Schorner did not like him.

  ‘I still can’t figure why we had to give the advantage to them and let the inquest take place here,’ he protested, not for the first time, to the colonel as they drove along the beach road. It was a mild, blowy day. Clouds puffed over the sea.

  Schorner said: ‘I guess it was just politics. If the court had been some place else the folks here wouldn’t feel they’d be getting a fair deal. They figure that this woman Meg was one of theirs so they should be there when the verdict was given.’

  The legal officer’s name was Parker, Captain Alvin R. Parker. ‘Sure, I’m aware of that, colonel. But we don’t have to do everything the natives want. There’s a proper and correct coroner’s court in Exeter and inquests are traditionally held there. An official inquiry into somebody’s death should not be concerned with giving a bunch of hicks their pint of blood. In any case, what about our boys? I’d say they were at a disadvantage down here. They’re going to be objects of hostility.’

  Schorner smiled privately but said only: ‘I’m sure the matter has been talked about plenty between the US Army and the British. And right here is where they’ve fixed it’s going to be.’ He glanced out of the window. They were running along the last section of the road before the harbour. ‘This is Wilcoombe,’ said Schorner. ‘You wanted to take a look at the place where it happened.’

  Parker nodded. ‘Sure thing. It’s going to be more than useful.’ He glanced with something like worry at Schorner. ‘Not that there’s going to be any difficulty, colonel,’ he said firmly. ‘Your boys are in the clear. It’s an open and shut case. She got drunk, she fell in, she drowned.’

  Albie pulled the car into the side and Parker got busily out. He could have been only five foot two inches in height. Albie smiled to himself because he always did when he saw anyone smaller. The army certainly did not reward tallness with rank.

  Schorner followed the legal officer and together, against the stiff breeze coming in salt gusts across the harbour, they walked to the old stone wall and looked down at the seaweeded slipway. Parker squeezed up his small eyes as if trying to visualize the deposition of evidence. With it apparently recalled and arranged he gazed down the slipway. ‘Right, I’ve got it,’ he said to Schorner confidently. He glanced up. ‘What’s that?’ he asked, looking towards the anti-aircraft gun.

  ‘A British AA gun,’ answered Schorner, slightly surprised that an army officer should not know.

  ‘You don’t say,’ breathed Parker. ‘That’s a real relic, colonel. What junk.’

  Schorner, to his own slight surprise, felt a puff of annoyance. ‘It’s a good gun,’ he said stoutly. ‘Brought down several Nazi planes. They’re dead shots those gunners.’

  ‘It’s still old,’ muttered Parker. ‘Very old.’

  The colonel spotted a movement at the front of the cottage by the harbour and paused until he confirmed that it was Howard and Beatrice Evans leaving their gate. ‘We’ll give these folks a ride,’ he mentioned to Parker, taking in Albie Primrose with the remark. He said to Parker: ‘This is the doctor, a nice guy, Evans.’

  A sharp worry split Parker’s small face. ‘Wait a minute, thou
gh, sir,’ he said. It was the first time since his arrival on the previous evening that he had called his superior officer ‘sir’. Schorner put it down to his being in the legal branch and not a genuine soldier. ‘Why?’ he asked.

  ‘This guy is a witness, right?’ Parker said. ‘He may be a hostile witness. I don’t think it’s a good idea we should be seen with him. You understand, it could lead to difficulties.’

  Schorner sighed and privately confirmed his dislike of his countryman. ‘Is it okay to wave to him?’ he asked with no change in his voice.

  ‘I’m sorry, colonel, in these things you can’t take too much care.’

  ‘Okay,’ nodded Schorner, just concealing his impatience. But Howard and Beatrice had seen them and were approaching smiling. Schorner introduced them to Parker. Parker said bluntly, ‘I have just been advising Colonel Schorner that it would not look good if we had a long conversation just now. It’s a matter of procedure, if you understand.’

  Howard Evans blinked and Beatrice smiled straight at the man’s face. Howard said: ‘You are quite right, of course, sir. That wouldn’t do at all.’ He waved his hand gallantly: ‘Would you like to proceed first? We’ll stay here, count to a hundred and then follow.’

  Parker became sullen. ‘There won’t be any need for that. We have the car here.’ A dead smile crossed his face. ‘We won’t detain you.’

  Schorner pedantically shook hands with Howard and Beatrice while Parker scowled. He gave a stiff little salute and turned towards the car. The colonel followed, making a face. He called over his shoulder as he reached the car, ‘How are the daffodils, Howard?’

  ‘Fine,’ replied Evans, laughing. ‘Blooming.’