by David Lodge
‘They couldn’t avoid it,’ commented Mike. ‘After what the Coroner said. The point is, what has he been charged with. It ought to be a court-martial.’
We never found out precisely what Baker was charged with, but he did not appear before a court-martial. He appeared before the C.O. and lost one stripe as a result. To Mike this was disgustingly inadequate, an insult to the dead.
That evening he sat at the table in the middle of the hut, writing a letter, tearing up several drafts in the process. We were having a kit inspection the next morning, and all except Mike were busy mopping floors, polishing windows, and dusting lamp-shades. Sergeant Hamilton had told us that our next forty-eight depended on the appearance of the hut, and this was an incentive we all respected, however grudgingly. Mike’s refusal to do his share was vocally resented, but he appeared oblivious to the taunts and complaints. I thought perhaps he was releasing his feelings in a letter to Pauline, but when he finished I noted he had sealed two envelopes. Then he went out.
He returned about ten minutes later, and threw himself zestfully, if belatedly, into cleaning operations. My hands were chapped and sore from mopping the floor, and I gladly resigned my rag to him. I sat down on a bed and lit a cigarette.
‘I’ve just posted two letters,’ he observed. The platitudinous remark reverberated with a certain elation.
‘What’s the hurry? They won’t be collected till tomorrow morning.’
‘I didn’t want to have time for second thoughts. I’ve written to Percy’s guardian and the Times.’
I gaped at him. ‘What about, for God’s sake?’
‘Percy, of course. And this squalid regimental inquiry.’
I whistled. ‘You’ve done it now. God knows how many regulations you’ve broken. Writing to the Press for a start.’
‘I didn’t sign that one,’ said Mike with rather pathetic slyness.
I felt a certain relief. Almost certainly the Times wouldn’t print it, and with luck Percy’s guardian would ignore the other letter. I managed to laugh.
‘Why the Times anyway? It’s practically run by ex-Guards officers. You’d have had a better chance with the Mirror. It’s right up their street.’
‘D’you think so?’ he said seriously. ‘Perhaps I’ll write another——’
‘For God’s sake don’t,’ I interrupted hastily. ‘You’ll spend the rest of your service in the glasshouse if you go on like this. If I were you I’d be at the post-box when it’s emptied tomorrow morning, and try and get those letters back.’
‘No, I won’t,’ he replied obstinately. ‘Anyway, we’ll be on parade then.’ He wrung the water out of the rag and began wiping the floor furiously.
Our hut passed the inspection, and we got our forty-eight. My hopes of seeing Pauline again were dashed when Mike declared his intention of taking her to stay with his parents at Hastings. I spent a moody week-end devoid of all pleasure except a fleeting sense of escape at the beginning. On the Saturday evening I went to see the sexiest Continental film I could find, but the images of lust, always fading exasperatingly just before the act, only aggravated my frustration. Afterwards I wandered through Soho eyeing the prostitutes, but when one accosted me I fled to the bright lights of Shaftesbury Avenue, which was thronged with Scotsmen, maudlin drunk because their football team had lost. At home that night, I sat up late reading the last chapter of Ulysses for the dirt, which, in my morality, is a kind of mortal sin.
Sunday passed like a stifled scream. I realized with horror that I was almost impatient to get back to Catterick. When parole affords no pleasure there is nothing to distract one’s mind from the misery of returning to prison, and one wants to get the painful business over as quickly as possible.
I was forty-five minutes early at King’s Cross, and decided to secure a carriage for Mike and myself. To my surprise and some annoyance Gordon Kemp walked up to the window from which I was leaning, looking out for Mike. I had to invite him into the compartment. When I returned to the corridor, and leaned out of the window again, I saw Mike coming up the platform, holding Pauline’s hand. I waved vigorously, and Mike acknowledged the signal with a listless gesture. They both looked unhappy. I saw Mike say something to Pauline, and she smiled vaguely in my direction. They threaded their way through heaps of parcels and mail-bags, and came abreast of the window. I surveyed Pauline hungrily. She seemed more desirable than ever, but less composed than when I had seen her before.
‘Hallo, Jonathan,’ she said. I liked her refusal to abbreviate names. We exchanged a few meaningless remarks, Mike oddly silent throughout. Then, reluctantly, I retired into the compartment to let them say goodbye.
Gordon was wearing a white flash on his shoulder-tab which indicated that he had passed Wozbee. He was still very thin, but looked less haggard than when I had seen him on that first evening in Catterick. ‘Congratulations,’ I said, dimly recognizing an echo of that same evening.
‘Thanks,’ he said, with a ready grin. He was understandably full of Wozbee, and seemed undiscouraged by my lack of interest in the subject.
‘Mike’ll miss the train if he doesn’t hurry up,’ I said, glancing at my watch, and making this an excuse to peer through the window. They were standing by one of those machines which imprint your name on a strip of metal for the modest sum of one penny. Mike was operating the lever with a kind of wilful violence and concentration, while Pauline looked sadly and silently on. Something is wrong, I thought, with guilty pleasure. Then Mike extracted the metal slip and gave it to Pauline. She read the inscription and smiled. The guard’s whistle bleated. They kissed. Mike boarded the train as it began to move, and turned to lean out of the window. Pauline raised the metal strip to her mouth and kissed it to him. Then the train left her behind. Mike came in the compartment and lit a cigarette.
‘Well, Gordon?’ he said. ‘I see you know how to use your knife and fork.’ He nodded towards the white flash. Gordon grinned, unruffled. We soon gave up teasing him about his prospective commission. He was a decent, harmless sort of chap. He plainly regarded the commission as just another test in the long series he had been presented with since the primary school, and to all of which he had applied himself with the same dogged, unquestioning perseverance. The conversation became desultory. We all said we had enjoyed our leaves, but only Gordon, I suspected, was being truthful. I was eager to probe Mike about the week-end at Hastings, but Gordon’s presence made it impossible. I occupied my mind with trying to analyse the kiss I had just witnessed, trying to distil from it the nature of Mike’s relationship with Pauline. I could best define it by negatives: it had not been passionate, nor cool. It had not been a prolonged kiss, nor a brief one. It had not been awkward—they had kissed before; but it had not been characterized by that conscious display of technique which one observes in lovers of real physical intimacy. It had been, I decided, a tender, gentle kiss, between two people for whom a kiss had not yet been devalued by habit or excess. I wasn’t sure whether this conclusion was consoling or not. But I reminded myself that no amount of cogitation was going to allay my tormented sense of hopeless attraction to Pauline, nothing except perhaps time and distance. I decided that I would try and get posted to the Far East, and fell into an uneasy sleep, dreaming of delicate, charming and unspeakably licentious geisha girls.
The farce of the Clerks’ Course took a new direction that morning: we began the typing classes. These were presided over by a gentle, grey-haired elderly spinster, Miss Hargreaves, in an old house converted into classrooms. Both she and her teaching methods had a charming antique quality, reminiscent of Miss Beale and Miss Buss. Had I given any thought, before being called up, to my possible experiences in the Army, I could never have envisaged that one day I would be sitting in a stuffy classroom, with a motley collection of oafs, morons, and university graduates, clad in the uniform of a soldier, hunched over a typewriter, tapping out a series of letters in time to the wheezing tune from an old gramophone, obedient to Miss Hargreaves’s tirelessly gay ‘C
arriage return’, after every twelve bars. The novelty of the situation, however, soon evaporated, and most of the students were quickly bored, restraining their irritation only out of politeness to Miss Hargreaves. She was wonderfully patient and enthusiastic, but Norman nearly broke her spirit. He wrecked three typewriters in as many days, and on the fourth day managed to inflict a ghastly wound on his hand by thrusting it into the bowels of his machine and pressing the tabulator key. He swore vividly, and then put his bleeding hand to his mouth in clumsy, but somehow touching repentance for having offended Miss Hargreaves’s ears. She looked at the blood, blenched, and hurriedly sat down.
‘Trooper Norman,’ she said, in a faint voice (when she had first asked Norman his name he had cheekily given her his Christian name, and had not disillusioned her when she took it to be his surname), ‘Trooper Norman, I’m afraid you will have to go.’
So once again Norman was without a trade, and it was a question of some theoretical interest to us how the Army would contrive to employ him.
The Clerks’ Course had at least one virtue,—it was shorter in duration by half than the other trade training courses. The days passed very slowly, but they passed, and sooner than I expected the end of the course, and separation from Mike when we were posted, hove in view. The prospect of parting with Mike (for it was unlikely that we would be posted to the same regiment), aroused ambiguous feelings in me. I could not deceive myself that our friendship had been deep and instinctive : it had been almost artificially forced by our mutual distaste for the Army. On the other hand I viewed with little enthusiasm life in the Army without Mike’s moral support. I mean ‘moral’ literally. Mike’s hostility to the Army seemed to have an essentially moral basis, which somehow sanctioned my more self-centred grievances. But it was becoming increasingly clear to me that Mike’s ‘morality’ was an unreliable guide to conduct, and I did not wish to become involved in some wild, quixotic crusade against the Army. The deciding factor was Pauline: it would surely be better for me if I could disengage myself from both of them. In the last week of the course I went to see the officer responsible for postings, and put in a request for the Far East. He said that there were only two R.A.C. regiments in the Far East, and that he didn’t think there were any vacancies for clerks, but he would see what he could do.
I was coming back from this interview when I saw Mike turning away from the notice board where Squadron Orders were displayed. He came up to me and announced:
‘We’re on guard on Thursday.’
I groaned. We had done one guard, and I had hoped that we would complete the Clerks’ Course without doing another.
‘Well, at least we’re on together,’ I said.
‘Yes, and guess who’s the N.C.O.?’
‘Who?’
‘Lance-Corporal Baker.’
I grimaced. ‘Should be a jolly little party.’
We went over to the cookhouse for tea, and discovered that the meal was Shepherd’s Pie. We had rashly eaten this before. Mike swore it was made from real shepherds. ‘After all, this is Yorkshire,—sheep country,’ he said. I lent Mike some money, and we went to the Y.M.C.A. instead. I had frequent cause for self-congratulation on having saved a useful sum from my State Scholarship, which enabled me to buy myself a certain amount of comfort in the way of food and cigarettes. I often lent money to Mike, but usually got it back promptly. I was certain that Pauline paid for his fares to London, and kept him in pocket money. This thought angered me intensely.
We were due for another forty-eight at the coming weekend, after taking our trade test on the Thursday. The number of forty-eights enjoyed by the clerks was a cause of considerable jealousy among the other trainees, but as Mason and Wilkinson were partial to forty-eights, they had to wangle them for us too. The only soldiers more favoured were the professional footballers, perhaps the most privileged group in the Service. They were pounced on by the training regiment as soon as they were called up, and their lives were only slightly affected by National Service: they played football for the Army all the week, and had a forty-eight every week-end to play for their clubs.
‘Going to Hastings again this week-end?’ I asked Mike, as we bit into our hot dogs.
‘No,’ he replied. ‘It wasn’t exactly a success the other week.’
‘Why was that?’
‘Mother doesn’t approve of Pauline.’
‘I should have thought she was a very presentable girlfriend,’ I said carefully.
‘The term “girl-friend” is meaningless to my mother,’ he said wryly. ‘There are no such things as girl-friends. Only potential wives.’ He changed the subject abruptly by inviting me to go out with himself and Pauline at the week-end on the coming Saturday. I accepted with mixed feelings.
‘What were you thinking of doing?’ I inquired.
‘Oh, I don’t know… a dance or something.’
This didn’t appeal to me for several reasons. I produced the most cogent:
‘I can’t dance.’
‘Oh. Well, what d’you suggest?’
I suggested a play and a meal afterwards, and Mike agreed. I said I would get the tickets on Saturday morning. What plays had they seen? I asked him; and was surprised to learn that they rarely went to the theatre.
‘I’m too lazy to organize it,’ he explained. ‘So we usually end up at a dance, or a cinema.’
On the way back from the canteen Mike dropped in at the unit Reading Room, run by the Education Corps, to check the correspondence colums of the Times; but his letter had not appeared of course. Nor had he heard from Percy’s guardian.
Since it was a training regiment, guard duty at Amiens Camp was attended with considerable pomp and circumstance, deliberately designed to impress the raw recruit with a sense of awe and terror. The inspection was lengthy and meticulous, and the guard was called out for a second inspection at midnight. The possibility of being charged for an ill-polished button was never remote, and was particularly near on that Thursday evening when Mike and I presented ourselves at the guardroom. For the Orderly Officer was our old friend Second Lieutenant Booth-Henderson. Rumour had it that he had been caught entertaining a Darlington tart in his quarters; at any rate he had committed some delinquency, and the C.O. had punished him by making him Orderly Officer for ten consecutive nights. This was his seventh, and already he had acquired a considerable reputation for irascibility and the liberal preferment of charges.
I tugged nervously at my uniform and webbing, fearing that our forty-eight was in jeopardy. I glanced over my shoulder and looked straight into the eyes of Baker, who was watching my efforts to improve my appearance with a sardonic leer. I plunged my hands into the pockets of my greatcoat, tingling with humiliation and rage.
‘Baker’s over there,’ I muttered to Mike, who was flicking his boots with a handkerchief. He straightened up and looked across to Baker. The latter had quite recovered his poise. He stood effortlessly erect, spick as a recruiting poster. His single stripe, neatly painted with white blanco, stood out on his arm like a fresh scar. For a few moments it seemed that he and Mike were trying to stare each other out. Then the Orderly Sergeant summoned us to fall in. Baker spat with deliberation, and turned on his heel.
It was the first time I had seen him since the inquest, except for occasional glimpses. He was a very different man from the yellow-faced, swollen-jawed Baker shaking with fear and shock over Percy’s corpse. His malevolence seemed to have returned: there had been something unmistakably hostile in the way he had looked at us. It occurred to me for the first time that perhaps he considered the loss of his stripe, which seemed to us a mere token punishment, to have been unduly severe, and that we, as chief witnesses, had been the cause of it. I did not look forward to the night’s guard.
Booth-Henderson’s inspection went according to expectation : it was full of malicious tricks. He made one soldier take off his belt, and charged him because the brass on the inside of his belt was not highly polished. Another soldier was charged beca
use the back of his cap-badge was dirty. He nagged everyone petulantly,—everyone except Baker, that is.
Booth-Henderson drew level with me. I came to attention and gabbled off my name and number, hoping that he had forgotten me and our absurd interview during the Basic Training. He regarded me with a frown; drew back two paces and squinted at me with his head on one side; prowled round behind me; and suddenly tugged at the shoulders of my great-coat. I jumped.
‘’Shun!’ yelped the Orderly Sergeant, to whom Booth-Henderson had communicated a nervous irascibility.
‘Your great-coat doesn’t fit,’ said Booth-Henderson.
‘No, sir.’
‘Get it changed tomorrow.’
‘I’ve tried to before, sir. Stores say they won’t change it.’
‘Sergeant!’
‘Sir!’
‘See this man gets a new great-coat tomorrow.’
‘Sir.’
The Orderly Sergeant entered my name and number in his note-book, while I cursed inwardly. A new great-coat meant tarnished buttons to polish, and pleats to be pressed. Booth-Henderson passed on to Mike, who escaped with a lecture on the buckles of his gaiter straps.
Baker’s job was to post the sentries, and ensure that they were performing their duty. He read the orders, issued us with bicycle lamps, whistles and pick-axe handles, and allocated the ‘stags’. Guard duty was from 6.30 p.m. to 6.30 a.m.—two hours on, four hours off for each man. Mike and I were put on second stag, generally regarded as the least pleasant. Our duty was from 8.30–10.30 p.m., and from 2.30–4.30 a.m.