Private's Progress

by Alan Hackney

  When they got to the range there was a new corrugated iron hut at the four-hundred-yard firing point. In a hut behind the butts, and under a pile of dismounted targets and signalling discs, was half a drum of tar and two brushes. Stanley and Cox made a sort of palanquin with planks and bore the tar barrel down the range to the new hut. They lit a fire to heat the tar, and sat quietly smoking in the still autumn air.

  There was a good view. Behind the butts ran the long, uneven chalk escarpment of the downs, spotted with hardy shrubs. To their right, across the undulating fields and orchards, square grey church towers jutted up from ancient hamlets. Before them, two hundred yards away, stood the large, solid, brick house of the neighbouring farm.

  After an hour the tar began to heave and bubble. Cox climbed onto the roof of the shed. It was thick with fallen leaves from an overhanging tree. Most of these they shoved off with the brushes, but an intermittent breeze sprang up and each puff showed more leaves down.

  They decided to tar them over. Cox stood on the roof with a brush while Stanley passed up tins of the boiling pitch. When they had done the roof and one wall, the tar ran out and they ate their haversack rations.

  After this Cox relaxed.

  “Drop of kip,” he said. “Call me quarter-to four. Look a bit dodgy going back before that.”

  He closed his eyes.

  Stanley read Cox’s Daily Mirror from cover to cover and then woke him.

  As they began to walk back Cox stopped at the farmhouse.

  “Cup of char,” he said. “’Ere we go.”

  He walked to the back door and knocked.

  “Good afternoon, ma,” he said cheerfully. “Could we ’ave a glass of water, d’you reckon?”

  On the kitchen table stood a bottle of whisky and a teapot. A kettle was simmering on what Stanley took to be a hob.

  The woman brought two glasses of water.

  “People round ’ere wouldn’t give you the time if they had ten gold watches,” said Cox bitterly as they went away.

  Back at the barracks the orderly sergeant said: “Well? You tar that Nissen hut?”

  “Nissen?” said Cox. “No. Square hut at the firing point.”

  “Oh, cor starvin’ Annie!” said the orderly sergeant. “You ’orrible man! That’s the wrong hut. That hut belongs to that farmhouse. Clear off, for Gawd’s sake, before I go out of my mind.”

  “Of all the close buggers,” said Cox, as they went gloomily to the Naafi. “They must’ve seen us doin’ it. Dead mean. They wouldn’t give you three bloody cheers.”

  It had, in fact, been a good day’s work by Depot Company standards, and Stanley lay on his bed in “F” Block the whole evening, exhausted and reading. Fingers of draught poked up through the old, ill-fitting floorboards, making a corner of the coconut matting flap. Occasional nibbling and scratching behind the wainscot punctuated the scurrying of the mice in their ancestral runways.

  Next morning they paraded again.

  “Watch it,” said Cox. “Here comes Charles Laughton the Second.”

  The Company sergeant-major had clumped round the end of the offices.

  “Pay attention,” he called out in his strangled voice. “Returnees from Rootbridge Pre-OCTU will parade outside Company Office immediately for interview with O.C.”

  “Good ’ealth, mate,” said Cox under his breath. “Well, my old Stan, try and get employed. That, or try and get posted on a course.”

  Stanley and his companions fell out and waited for fifty minutes outside the office. Then a window was flung up and a major leaned out.

  “Come into the parlour,” he said.

  They went in. The sergeant-major intercepted them.

  “Where’re you off, then?” he asked menacingly.

  “To see Major Hitchcock, sir,” said Stanley, standing to attention. “He asked us in.”

  “Form up! Form up!” roared the sergeant-major. “Single file. Orders, orders SHAH. By-der-front, QUIMARCH. Eft-ite-eft-ite-eft-ite-eft. Mark-time! ’Alt! Left turn! Pick up your dressing. Stand still! Orders present, sir!”

  “Thank you very much, Sergeant-Major,” said Major Hitchcock, seated elegantly behind his desk. One foot was up on it.

  Charles Laughton went out.

  “Well, well,” said Major Hitchcock in a cheery tone. “Do sit down, all of you, will you? I feel sorry for you blokes. If they’d had these WOSB’s in my day, d’you know I hardly think I’d have got through. I’m damned sure of it. My brigadier used to say to me: ‘Hitchcock,’ he’d say, ‘you’ll never make an officer while you’ve got a hole in your bottom.’”

  He stubbed out his cigarette and offered the case all round.

  “So don’t be too disappointed,” he went on, “and watch out for my sergeant-major or he’ll have you by the short hairs. Now, I’ve been looking up the A.C.I.s and it seems you all have to do corps training with George’s company up at the camp.”

  A pigeon-hatch in the wall shot open and part of the sergeant-major’s face appeared.

  “Lady to see you about Private Horrocks.”

  The hatch shut.

  “It’s about some child,” explained the major. “I really can’t be responsible for what my company gets up to off parade. Arthur!” he shrieked suddenly.

  A hatch in another wall opened and the head and one shoulder of a lieutenant came into view.

  “Arthur,” said the major, “see to that young lady, there’s a good chap. About Horrocks. It’s more in your line.”

  “A’right,” said the lieutenant without enthusiasm. He grimaced and shut the hatch.

  “I’m rather busy, I’m afraid,” said the major. “We must have a chat some other time. Actually, you’re all supposed to go before the Personnel Selection Officer and do peculiar tests so that the Army doesn’t get any square pegs in round holes. Curiously enough,” he went on ruminatively, “the tests you do are just that sort of thing: putting pegs in holes. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to keep you all here and raise the tone of the place—that’s if you care for it here. You should meet my runner. Cambridge man. He translates Chinese lyric poetry into English lyric poetry. But I’m afraid I haven’t many like him here. They’re an odd lot. Keep pinching the nominal roll, too. Well, cheer up and off you go.”

  As the jobs for the day had been allocated they skulked cautiously in the Naafi till lunchtime.

  After lunch Stanley went carefully round the back way to “F” block and began to change into civilian shoes.

  A corporal came in.

  “Ah!” he said. “We want big tough people. Do you live in Dover?”

  “No,” said Stanley.

  “Right, you’ll do,” said the corporal. “Boots on. We’re going to Woolwich, collect a deserter. Meet me at the Guard-Room, fifteen minutes’ time. I got to get the documents.”

  Stanley hung about outside the Guard-Room. From inside came raucous noises of the energetic regimental police at play. A loud voice, echoing round the girders, sang “The First Noël.”

  A prolonged series of “Oi’s” attracted Stanley’s attention. Three large grinning faces of R.P.s packed one of the barred windows.

  “Yes?” said Stanley.

  “’Ere,” called one of them. “’Ere a minute. Which one of us is the ’andsmest?” The three ugly gorilla faces became immobilised in their grins for the choosing.

  Stanley pointed to the middle gorilla.

  “He is,” he said.

  They greeted this decision wildly, the two losers falling on the winner and sitting heavily on him.

  Then one got up.

  “’Ere,” he said in a whisper. “Guess what that mark is on the wall.”

  “It looks like dried blood,” said Stanley.

  “You’re dead right there, tosh,” said the R.P. eagerly. “We ’ad some drunk Canadian come in, few nights back; tried to get funny with one of the boys. So what ’appened? So someone bashed ’im up. I dunno who, mind. Eh, Alf? No. Eh, Cyril? Know who bashed up that Canadian?”


  “No, mate,” said Cyril solemnly. “Musta bin someone come in and done ’im.”

  They burst into shouts of laughter, and one swung on the girders to work off energy.

  After a while he dropped off and came to the window.

  “’Ere,” he said, “you sound like a bloke we got in the cells. OCTU wallah. Very dodgy. Awaiting transfer, ’e is; got ’undred an’ twelve days in the glasshouse. Used to be a lawyer. Cor, honest, you’d die laughing, ’ear ’im talk! Fetch ’im out, Fred.”

  “Well,” said Stanley, “d’you think you ought to?”

  “Yer,” said Fred, rubbing his hands briskly, like a market vendor. “Anything to oblige,” he intoned. “We can do everythink for you here. We can even put you in the family way, but we can’t make you love the child.”

  “That’s right,” said Cyril, joining in. “The old firm. The more you put down, the more we pick up. They used to call me Robin Redbreast; now they call me Robbin’ Bastard. ’Ullo, ’ere we are.”

  The barrister was led to the window and Stanley chatted to him. The three regimental policemen stood close by in enraptured silence, bursting occasionally into exultant cackles of mirth.

  “Hew! Stewn the crews!” minced the policeman Fred. “Gibback in there, Mary Ann.”

  “’Ere,” called the policeman Cyril. “’Ullo.”

  They all three crowded to the window and then hurriedly withdrew. A well-dressed young woman was walking over from the gate.

  “It’s ’is sister,” whispered the policeman Alf. “Stand by yer beds.”

  They let her in and stood by respectfully, faces red with their recent merry-making, till she and the barrister went off to the privacy of his cell. Then they burst again to the window.

  “Smasher, eh?” they said. “Nice bitta stuff. ’Ere, now, gissa fag. Go on. Giss one.”

  They cadged one apiece and then rushed away to telephone for their tea to be brought from the cook-house.

  Stanley’s corporal came up with his documents, sent Stanley back for his belt and bayonet, and the two of them moved off to Gravestone East station. On the way the corporal explained the strategy of escorts.

  “Best way,” he explained, “is drag it out much as you can, and get subsistence allowance. You’re not allowed to travel at night so, stands to reason; the further you have to go—say Liverpool, that’s quite nice—the longer you can make it last. You got to use yer loaf, of course, and you want to make sure you get in all the time you can before you collect the prisoner. Why, what with just missing trains and that, one escort I was on to a bit north of Glasgow lasted nigh on a week. Just right,” he added with some satisfaction as they came down the station approach to see the up-train disappearing beyond the platform, “that’s an hour forty minutes. We’ll just ’ang about till the Green Dog opens up. You got your shaving and tooth kit, ’ave you?”

  “Well, no,” said Stanley.

  “Never mind, lad,” said the corporal. “Now about these escorts. Once we get the geezer we mustn’t leave him both at once. That’s what I say: pick him up at the last possible moment. And you mustn’t draw your bayonet, only if he gets dangerous, and I ’ear this one isn’t. Now if only it was Scotland,” he sighed. “Ah well, mussengrumble.”

  They hung about for the Green Dog, and the corporal went into details about his recent leave.

  He was still enlarging on it after their two pints apiece, pausing only to change the railway warrants for tickets at the booking-office.

  “Yes,” said Stanley, “I should imagine she would be looking forward to your next leave.”

  In the train the corporal brought out some primitive handcuffs.

  “We don’t use these,” he said, “being he’s not dangerous. Anyhow, watch.” He clicked them on himself and then banged them on the window ledge, denting the woodwork and causing the bracelets to snap open.

  By the time they had changed at an obscure South London junction and reached Woolwich the stars were coming out.

  “’Ere we are,” said the corporal cheerfully. “Now we phone up the barracks here and they say: ‘Leave it till the morning.’ Best thing—we go along and book in there and fix things up for nippin’ orf out and back at reveille. Then we collect this bloke from the Guard-Room after breakfast.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  “A DISCOVERY!” CRIED Desmond, holding up half a whole-wheat loaf. “In the recesses of this cupboard this fine green mould has been blushing unseen ever since the nasty Nita left.”

  He was a pale young man, temporarily associated with a group of indecisive anarchists in the Charlotte Street area. He had a thin, weakly aquiline face and wavy blond hair. Since Nita’s passionate departure from their flat back to somebody else’s husband Catherine had adopted both Desmond and a Wykehamist-turned-tramp, introduced as a friend of a friend by a man she knew at the Parapluie. Both of them irritated Philip even more than Nita had done.

  “Could that frightful Philip of yours use it for a still-life, I wonder?” said Desmond, putting it gingerly down.

  “Don’t be tiresome, Desmond,” said Catherine. “Philip’s a sweet, even if he doesn’t understand you like I do. I shall be Hoovering this place in a minute—aren’t you going to your bookshop? It’s nine.”

  “And he’s still asleep,” said Desmond furiously. He sat down and gazed bitterly at the gas fire.

  “He never speaks to me,” went on Desmond. “Every day he just says: ‘You still here?’ Beast.”

  “Does he call you a beast?” asked Catherine with some interest, locking the sugar away in the corner cupboard. “Poor Desmond! Never mind, pet. I don’t, do I?”

  “No, no,” said Desmond. “I call him a beast. Not to him. I wouldn’t let him know it. But you understand, don’t you?”

  “It’s all a bit dramatised for this time of the morning,” said Catherine mildly. “Look at all these squash rackets mixed up with the vacuum flex. Whose are they?”

  “Now you’re getting maternal,” cried Desmond in anguish, leaping up from the sofa and kicking it pettishly. “It’s hateful of you. I’m going.”

  “Cheerio, then,” said Catherine, plugging in the cleaner.

  A little while later the Wykehamist appeared, bleared and unshaven. He was a well-built, amiable fellow of thirty-two, who from the age of nineteen had taken to an eccentric and wandering life. Throughout the ’thirties he had travelled the world, contriving, wherever possible, to avoid working his passage. On four of his many steamers, after having been reluctantly signed on by dubious skippers, he had finished the trip locked in a hold on a restricted diet, in vain attempts to cure a persistent idleness. One irate Greek captain had had him towed astern in a boat halfway across the Pacific. When the war broke out he had made a short incursion into the Army and had secured a commission in the Railways branch of the Royal Engineers on the strength of experience in Bolivia; but finding it insufficiently profitable, he had taken to the roads in the confusion after Dunkirk. For some time now he had been in the second-hand furniture business. In all this time he had not lost a refined and insouciant accent and manner, which had disconcerted countless lorry-drivers in his tramping days.

  “Hullo, old girl,” he observed now. “How charming you look as a hausfrau.”

  “Herbert,” said Catherine, “are those your squash rackets? There are eight there. It’s a lot, and they’re a bit in the way.”

  “I’m looking after them till Sid comes out,” said Herbert, stretching at the window. “College Sid, his acquaintances call him. I was with him at prep school.”

  “Can’t he keep them at college?” asked Catherine. “Where is he?”

  “Oh, in the Scrubbs,” said Herbert, examining all the empty packets for cigarettes. “He burgles, you see. This time he got half a stretch—six months, for Being On Premises. It’d have been more if he’d had housebreaking tools on him, but then, he never has. Anyway, I saw him on Wednesday and he wanted these from a chap in Putney to flog when he comes out. He’s due out t
oday.”

  “How wonderful,” said Catherine. “But don’t bring him here because of Philip.”

  “Oh, he’s fixed up,” said Herbert, wandering off. “Be not affrighted. He’s terribly nice, anyway.”

  Philip did not appear till the afternoon. The lack of air-raids was beginning to tell. For some time now there had been no sleepers to paint in the Underground, and he had begun an entirely new canvas called “Sewer”. This involved a clandestine arrangement with a man living in Bermondsey who did nights, and who for a small consideration supplied overalls and two powerful lamps to illuminate the great sewer junction, where Philip painted the fat circles of the pipes and the graceful curves of the effluent spilling into the main channels below. He came in at five-thirty in the morning and slept till lunchtime.

  *

  Philip went out after lunch for his war effort. This took the form of voluntary infection by anopheles mosquitoes as part of a test group for malaria research. So far he had successfully resisted infection, even though his left arm was bitten avidly every time, and he was beginning to be regarded as unnaturally immune.

  “Don’t let too many of them bite you, darling,” said Catherine as she kissed him goodbye. “I’m sure none of these new things will be any good. I’ll be packing Balaclavas this afternoon at the Lady Ongar Club and putting enigmatic loving messages in. Luckily they’re going to Iceland, so there won’t be any come-backs.”

  “That chap Desmond,” said Philip irritably. “He was peering in and declaiming at me at half-past eight this morning. I told him to push off.”