Kif: An Unvarnished History

by Josephine Tey

  Barclay was inclined to look with kindly toleration on what he mentally called 'Kif's little affair,' but Jimmy, it seemed, was worried. Barclay ran into him one day in the little bar in the side street that leads down to the water. His blue eyes scanned his friend without any sign of recognition and his mouth had a more than habitually mournful droop. No one looking at him would have believed that inside Jimmy's bright head lay anything more than an addled sleepiness.

  'Good evening, corporal,' said Barclay in mock humility.

  Jimmy's eye travelled mechanically over his friend's buttons and came back to his face. 'What's this girl that Kif's got hold of?' he asked.

  Barclay understood that he was being taken to task.

  'Haven't the remotest idea.

  'Then you ought to,' snapped Jimmy.

  'Am I my brother's keeper? And I always thought that Kif had an excellent taste in females.'

  'You know quite well that the boy wants looking after. Because he's gone quiet all this time is not to say that he's not going to bolt at all. A country kid like him. Never seen anything more than lumps of girls at home.' Thus Jimmy the cosmopolitan! 'And now he's parlayvooing every night with God knows what, and you haven't as much as cast an eye over her.'

  'Well, supposing my eye, having been cast, found nothing to approve of? What then? Kif may be an infant, but he has a pretty mind of his own. You couldn't make him give her up just because she was given to baby-snatching, or whatever you suspect her of. What would you do?'

  'What would I do? I'd have him in the guard-room or hospital, or Britain, or something, instead of mooning round writing silly rhymes on the backs of envelopes and not caring a dam' what anyone was doing.'

  'Touchée!' Barclay smiled. 'Very good, sergeant. I'll do my best to meet the lady, though how it is to be worked I don't quite see. As far as I know the damsel is most respectably hardworking, and her evenings as you know are rather occupied.'

  'Who said anything about meeting her? It shouldn't be difficult to find out all about her if you wanted to. I thought every female in this town was ticketed like a cattle show until I…She must be very "also ran", 'cause no one seems to have heard of her.'

  'Have you been making investigations then?'

  'Course I wanted to know who the girl was! So ought you. That's what I'm telling you.'

  Barclay broke into laughter. 'Heavens, Jimmy,' he said, 'if you can't find out what you want to know, a fat lot of good it is my going Sherlocking.'

  'I haven't the time for Sherlocking, as you call it,' said Jimmy testily, 'but you're a gentleman of a private with nothing to do but amuse yourself.'

  Barclay laughed again at this perversion, which was yet half a truth. He knew that it was the failure on the part of the watchful mothering Jimmy to keep track of Kif's doings himself that had brought his wrath down on the next responsible.

  'Well, Jimmy,' he said, 'if no one knows anything about her it's a dam' good sign. In fact, it's so amazing that I have a sneaking feeling that we should be rescuing her from Kif.'

  'That's right,' said Jimmy scornfully, 'get out of it somehow!'

  And the argument dissolved into the friendly consumption of vin rouge.

  And yet it was Marcelle who was the means of bringing Kif into his first trouble in the army. He had come back one evening in the cool dusk finding the world with its first pale stars a place of wonder. He had kissed Marcelle. And Marcelle had lifted her mouth gravely and sweetly to him as a child might. When they had come to the end of the path and she had given him her hand as always in good night greeting he had blurted 'Give me a kiss', and had known a moment of surprised horror at himself, for he had not meant to say it. The words had bubbled up of themselves. And then with her steady eyes on him she had lifted her chin without the smallest suspicion of coquetry, and Kif had kissed her blindly, almost blunderingly, in surprise. But he had gone back to his billet treading the powdery white dust as if it were air. That embraceless kiss was at once a benediction and an intoxication. He was blessed beyond the common lot of man, a being apart, and the world was a beautiful place and his very own. He was unconscious of the tall purple trees patterned against the last washy primrose of the daylight sky, of the smell of the dust and the roses in the dew, of the way footsteps and voices melted into music on the magic evening air. But all of it helped to bring him to the fey-ness of his present mood.

  And it was at this moment that he encountered Blyth as one slips up on a worm in the path. Blyth was a lance-corporal in Kif's company; efficient in his work, unattractive in his personality, and more immoral in speech if not in mind than most. As Kif came to the door of his billet he met Blyth, who, bursting with the officiousness engendered in him by the blue-and-crimson brassard, had just been shepherding stray lambs to their pen.

  'You're late, Vicar,' he said. 'Get a move on.'

  Kif took the rebuke mildly. He hardly heard it. He was moving on with the little group of last-comers at the billet door when Blyth was moved to further speech. He cocked a leering eye at Kif as he passed and half seriously made a proposition.

  'When you don't want that girl…'

  The blatancy of the suggestion was not the least infamous part of it.

  Now since this history of Kif is a truthful one, with nothing mitigated and nothing touched up, it must be confessed that his attitude to Marcelle had in the beginning differed not one whit from his to Simone, which was by no means reverential. It was Marcelle who had made a difference, not Kif. If it had been a day previously even, any time before Marcelle had kissed him and made things wonderful, he might have passed into the house with a more or less careless 'Shut your mouth!' As it was the sentence caught him on the quick. His steps stopped with a queer jerk, the abrupt movement of one who had seen a step only just in time. His crystal world melted on the instant into such a wave of anger as he had never known. In the middle of a strange haze was the ruddy face of the corporal, solid, actual, mocking. Kif stepped forward and hit it with all his might and with indescribable satisfaction. Words were struggling within him, but rage barred their exit. All his pent eloquence was in that right fist.

  There was no lack of words on the part of Corporal Blyth when he regained his feet: they poured from him in a turbid flood. Into the frothing spate of his obscenities cut the cool voice of Sergeant Layton, late of the Middle Temple.

  'If you're wise, Blyth, you'll shut your rank mouth about the business. You deserved it.'

  'Shut my mouth about it? Not —— likely! Do you think I'm going to be hit by a —— of a private and say nothing about it! Think turning the other cheek a suitable business for N.C.O.'s, do you? Well, I don't—see? He's for it, the ——, and I'll see that he gets his.'

  'Don't be an idiot, man. You can't provoke a man and then get him into trouble when the inevitable happens. You apologise for the remark, and I've no doubt Vicar will apologise for his action.' He glanced to where Kif was standing, exhausted by his access of emotion, white and quick-breathing.

  'Apologise! Apologise! You do make me laugh. Apologise to a —— private for remarking about a bit of skirt that—'

  Barclay grabbed Kif's arm from behind just in time, while Layton moved forward till he stood in front of Blyth.

  'Will you shut up,' he said slowly between his teeth.

  'Yes, I'll shut up for now. But that complaint's going in. He's for it, I tell you. I'll talk at the proper time.'

  'Well, I give you fair warning,' said Kif, finding words at last, 'that if you talk to that effect again I'll kill you.'

  'Oh, threats is it, now?' said the corporal. 'You wait, my little man. You're for it, all right!' and he walked quickly away with his aide and disappeared round the corner of the house.

  Barclay led Kif inside, and the audience—less than a dozen—stirred from their immobility, half regretful as one is at the fall of the curtain, half thankful as at a sermon's end. They regarded each other furtively, each eager to see how his neighbour was taking the incident. Then someone sa
id, 'Well, Blyth asked for it,' and someone seconded with, 'There don't seem to be any call to make such a song about it, somehow', and discussion was deemed open. The sympathy of the meeting, it soon became evident, was very strongly in favour of Kif; not because he had stood up for his girl so vigorously—there was not one among the group who in his secret heart did not think the boy a fool in his rating of the maiden—but because he was liked universally and the corporal was merely tolerated.

  When the iniquity and unfairness of Blyth had been canvassed to a refrain of 'Exactly!' and 'Just my point!' and the luxury of discussion was gradually promoting Kif to the martyr's pinnacle, it occurred to a large heavy youth that the other side should have a hearing.

  'Well, it do seem to me that he didn't ought to have hit his superior nohow,' he said.

  Wigs, the little cockney, took his stub of cigarette from between his lips and spat accurately between a broken tile and a fragment of china.

  'Your intelligence dazzles me,' he said.

  And it seemed that the case for the prosecution was complete.

  But in spite of the goodwill and the best efforts of Layton, who searched hastily but unsuccessfully for Blyth in the hope of persuading him as he cooled down to reconsider things, Kif spent that night in the guard-room under arrest for striking his superior in the execution of his duty.

  While Jimmy swore and Barclay sorrowed and both slept, Kif watched the calm white square of moonlight travel round the white-washed walls. There were no bars to the window since the guard-room of the hour was merely a converted room in a former dwelling-house which was now used as army offices, and the light from it lay in an unbroken square so vivid that it seemed to Kif incredible that it was not a concrete thing that could be handled and lifted. He counted the hours as they were tolled out by the clock in the distant square. The chimes floated out into the silence with a sweet reasonableness that maddened him. The irrelevant calm of the night was a goad to the turmoil within him. The footsteps of the sentry, muffled in the dust, padded in time to the throb in his brain. Blyth, Blyth, Blyth. Blyth had done this to him and he was helpless. Blyth had insulted his girl, had hurled him from his pinnacle of happiness, and had caused him to spoil his army record.

  It would be difficult to say which hurt him most acutely. The last was, of course, the gravest, the most permanent injury. In those campaigning days a man's army record was to him what business integrity or the cleanliness of his sports reputation had been to his civilian predecessor. But the murdering of his moment was probably a more heinous crime in Kif's eyes that night than the finger-mark on his record. His thoughts went back to Marcelle, sleeping somewhere almost within hail; so near that if he shouted with all his might into the still white night his voice would come to her as a far-away sound. The thought was vaguely comforting.

  His rage, having exhausted both body and mind, died down for lack of fuel as a moor fire burns itself out at the edge of the heather, having nothing left in the black waste to feed on, and leaving behind the long-lasting unsuspected glow in the depths of the peaty turf that fools so often the feet of the alien and the too optimistic. Before four he fell asleep and was still asleep when breakfast was brought him by a facetious fellow-private of his own platoon.

  'Cheer up, old top,' said that worthy, as his gay eyes met Kif's, sleep-sodden and lightless, in the midst of his badinage. 'It's Chicken on the bench. He'll just bleat "What'll I do now, sergeant?" and the sergeant will say. "Give the —— the Iron Cross", and Chicken will say, "Amen. Put it down to the wine bill", and that'll be all.'

  It was, in a measure, as the cheerful one had foretold. The company commander was on leave in Britain, and his place on the seat of judgment was taken by the second in command, a gentleman with a genius for the intricacies of indents and returns but without the normal capacities in other directions. With the unobtrusive help of his sergeant he disposed successfully of two routine cases, but boggled at Kif's, and referred the case to the commanding officer. Since the colonel was, in his turn, on leave, it fell to Murray Heaton to deal with the case.

  Heaton's face looked more than ever like something carved out of teak as Kif and his escort appeared before him. His long eyes, masked by the folds of the upper lid and habitually veiled in expression, his salient nose, his expressionless mouth gave to his face an impassivity strange in so young a man. It had been said of his mouth by a subordinate that it looked as if it had not been opened for years and then only with difficulty.

  He listened to the charge and to the case for the prosecution without 'batting an eye' as the orderly officer remarked afterwards. He watched Blyth unblinkingly as he gave his evidence until the corporal said, 'I said something in fun about his young lady, sir,' when he glanced at Kif for a fleeting second. When Blyth had finished his admirably concise account of the incident he asked:

  'What did you say about his young lady, corporal?'

  Blyth hesitated for the first time. 'I said he might pass her on to me when he was tired of her,' he said with an uneasy smile.

  'I see. What have you to say, Vicar?'

  Kif had had much to say in the long hours of the night, but in the official atmosphere of his commanding officer's presence his tongue deserted him. What had all this—documents, and people standing to attention, and all that—to do with the quarrel between him and Blyth, with what Blyth had said about Marcelle? What was there to say to Heaton—Heaton—about it all?

  'He shouldn't have said what he did,' he said sullenly.

  'You admit hitting Corporal Blyth?'

  'Yes, sir.'

  'You knew the seriousness of hitting your superior?'

  'Yes, sir.'

  'Then what induced you to forget yourself to that extent?'

  'What he said, sir.'

  'What did he say?' Kif told him.

  'Was that what you said?' Heaton asked the corporal.

  Not exactly, sir.' But witnesses when called were unanimous in asserting that that was exactly what he had said. Heaton accepted the evidence without remark. 'Anything else to say, Vicar?'

  Kif was silent. Through Heaton's brain as the sulky dark eyes met his went the memory of a night of sleet and mud, cold and black and void as the beginning of time, when he and this body had tumbled into a shell hole together, and the boy in the baleful light of a star-shell had removed his boots from Heaton's chest with a polite 'Sorry, sir, my fault.'

  'You know that provocation is no defence whatever for what you have done?'

  Kif was still silent. Then he blurted out: 'Can a corporal say anything he likes then?'

  'No, he can't. But it is not for you to correct him. That is where your mistake lay. Do you understand that?'

  'Yes, sir.'

  'Anything else to say?…I want you to say it now if you have Get it off your chest.'

  'No, sir.'

  'May I have his record again, sergeant?'

  There was a little silence. A fly buzzed on the window-pane. Leather creaked as the lieutenant on duty stirred a boot which his batman had wrought to a chestnut brilliance with an artist's pride, another man's polish, and still another man's brushes.

  'In consideration of your good record, Private Vicar, and because of that alone, I am going to deal as leniently with your offence as army regulations will allow me. I believe that you hit Corporal Blyth without malice aforethought, and I expect that you will behave decently in the future. You will have three days in the guard-room in which to contemplate your future good-conduct.'

  There was a general stir of relief when the sentence ended. Heaton wondered why the prisoner did not look more relieved.

  'Do you want to say something?'

  'Can I speak to Private Barclay before I go back, sir?'

  That being granted, Heaton said: 'That is all, then, sergeant. I want to speak to Corporal Blyth for a moment.'

  Kif, whose thoughts had gone ahead, was the only man in the room whose heart did not leap with an unholy joy at the last sentence. As the escort filed o
ut each of them cast an almost loving glance at the carefully unconcerned face of the corporal.

  'Strewth,' said one, as the door closed behind them, 'I wouldn't be in his shoes with little Heaton all polite like that, not for a fortune I wouldn't.'

  'He'll wish he were safe in a ruddy guard-room,' prophesied another.

  And the sentiments of Corporal Blyth were not materially different. He braced himself for the 'telling-off' that was coming. Heaton had a reputation for few but scorching words; and his eyes were particularly nasty at the moment. Would it be better to take everything in silence or to defend himself?

  'You box, I hear, corporal?'

  Blyth stared and tried to pull his scattered ideas together.

  'Yes, sir. Yes, I do a bit.' What the devil was he getting at? Was he going to suggest that he should have defended himself?

  'What is your weight?'

  'Just about eleven stone, sir.'

  'Yes. I should like very much to meet you in the ring one of these days. I am not much over ten and a half, but I think I could give you quite a sporting bout. Will you meet me at the divisional tournament next month?'

  'Can it be arranged, sir?' Blyth was trying to reconcile the conversational tones with something unpleasant in his officer's eyes.

  'I shall see to that if you care to have the bout. It may not be much fun for you, of course.' (Wouldn't it! thought Blyth. An uppercut to that chin would be his idea of earthly bliss.) 'You need not accept unless you like.'