by David Lodge
‘You know where he is?’
‘No, I don’t.’
After some more questions I was put on to Pauline.
‘Hallo, Pauline. It seems you know all about Mike already.’
‘Yes. I thought it was him when you phoned.… It’s terrible … what …’
‘Sorry, I didn’t catch that.’
‘What will happen to him?’
‘I don’t know. I should think they’ll pick him up pretty soon. The sooner the better. He’s only making things worse for himself.’
‘What will happen to him?’ she repeated, as if she had not heard me. I caught sight of my face in the mirror of the call-box, contorted with the effort to hear and communicate.
‘I thought it was him,’ she went on. ‘They made me promise to try and find out where he was.’
‘The swine. Why don’t you chuck them out?’
‘Pardon?’
‘It doesn’t matter. Look, we can’t talk properly over the telephone. Shall I come and see you this week-end?’
‘Yes please, Jonathan.’
‘Saturday? I’ll give you lunch this time.’
‘Yes, that would be nice.’
‘Well, good-bye till Saturday then.’
‘Yes, good-bye, Jonathan.’
I waited for her to put the receiver down, but she didn’t. So I said ‘Good-bye, and don’t worry,’ and put down my receiver. The next morning I went to see Sergeant Hamilton to get a leave pass for a forty-eight. As I was filling it in he said:
‘So your mate has scarpered.’
‘Yes.’
‘Silly man. Assaulting an N.C.O. Desertion while under arrest. He’s up to his eyes in trouble. They’ll pick him up of course.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Where d’you think he’ll make for?’
‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’
‘He made a neat getaway, I’ll say that for him. Taking the roof of the guard-room to pieces. Nobody thought of that before.’
‘Perhaps they won’t find him so easy to catch then.’
‘Oh they’ll catch him. Some time.’
I completed the leave form and handed it to him.
‘You’ll have to get it initialled by the Chief Clerk first.’
‘O.K., Sarge, I’ll do that now.’ As I was moving towards the door he said:
‘How do you like it in the Orderly Room?’
‘Oh, it’s all right.’ I added, with an effort: ‘It’s quite interesting really.’
‘Your posting hasn’t come through yet, has it?’
‘No.’
‘Any preferences?’
‘I’ve put in for the Far East.’
He sighed. ‘Why is it all you blokes want to go to the Far East? Bet you think it’s all beer and brothels, don’t you. Well, it is—for about two weeks of the year, on your annual leave. The rest of the time it’s flies and heat and patrols and dysentery.’
‘Well, I don’t suppose I’ll get there anyway. Some Godforsaken hole in Germany most likely.’
Hamilton searched amongst the papers on his desk. ‘I’ve just had a letter from an old friend of mine,’ he said. ‘The Chief Clerk at Badmore,—the R.A.C. Special Training Establishment. He needs a new clerk, and he’s asked me to send him a good one. Would you be interested in going there?’
‘Where is this place?’
‘Hampshire, Dorset,—somewhere round there.’ He paused before adding slyly: ‘About a hundred miles from London.’
About a hundred miles from London. That was a comfortable distance for forty-eights, and not too bad for thirty-sixes, if the travel was reasonable.
‘You’d probably be put in the R.T.R., unattached to any particular battalion. Well, anyway, think it over.’
‘There’s no need, Sergeant. I’d like to go, if you can fix it.’
‘I can fix it,’ he replied. ‘Let’s go round to the Postings office now. You won’t regret this.’
Walking to the Posting office we passed Baker. His eyes met mine for a second, glittering with hate. I was sure that all along he had hated me more than Percy or Mike, and yet it was them, and not me, that he had driven out into the wilderness.
FIVE
BY THE END of the afternoon the sky had clouded, curving like a dull, metallic lid over the camp. It became hotter rather than cooler, prophesying a storm. Reluctantly I exchanged my working trousers, worn smooth and threadbare, for my best trousers, thick and itchy with their pristine nap intact. When I rolled down my shirt-sleeves and buttoned up the battle-dress blouse I began to sweat. I transferred Henry’s parting gift from the map-pocket of the discarded trousers to my wallet.
I stepped out of my cubicle to inspect my appearance in the long mirror, and glanced enviously at a group playing cards round someone’s bed: they were coolly dressed in jeans and light cotton shirts. A little shower of chaff was tossed casually in my direction.
‘All bulled up, Corp?’
‘Don’t wake us too early tomorrow.’
‘That’s a shit-hot pair of boots you’ve got there.’
‘Jock Gordonstone does ’em for ’im. Never bulls ’is own boots, the lazy sod.’
‘Watch your language, Trooper,’ I said, stamping my feet to get my trousers to fall neatly over the gaiters.
‘Want some weights, Corp?’ It was a common, though illegal practice, to put lead weights, or lengths of bicycle chain in one’s trouser legs, which pulled the latter over the gaiters and kept the creases taut.
‘No thanks.’
‘’Ere, Corporal. What size are them boots?’
‘Eights.’
‘That’s my size. What about swapping them before you go?’
‘Not likely. Stores wouldn’t accept your boots. They look as if a Centurion ran over them.’
‘No, me best boots, Corporal.’
‘I mean your best boots.’ The rest of the group cackled.
I had become accustomed to the image that confronted me in the mirror, but it still bothered me with a sense of the ridiculous. I never wore the uniform—it seemed to wear me, with a sheepish sense of failure. The khaki imparted a sallow, unhealthy hue to my skin, and the over-large beret sat uneasily on my forehead, making the face beneath look pinched and wizened. Pauline said that when she first saw me I looked like a refugee who had been hastily clothed by a liberating army in whatever came to hand. I never presented myself to her in uniform if I could possibly help it. I was turning away from the mirror when I realized that I had forgotten to transfer my shoulder flashes from my second-best battle-dress. I got them from the cubicle, and slipped them on to my shoulder-tabs. Brown, red and green stripes. ‘Through mud and blood to green fields beyond,’ as the regimental motto had it. Through boredom and discontent to blessed civvy street beyond. The thought of release was reviving.
‘Well, this is the last guard I shall push,’ I observed to the card-players, as I picked up my grip containing blanket, thermos flask, book, and cigarettes.
Chalky White was waiting outside the Montgomery guardroom when I arrived.
‘What are you doing here, Chalky?’
‘Same as you. I’m doing a guard for Nobby Clarke, and he’s doing mine on Friday. I want a forty-eight next week-end,’ he explained. ‘The group’s got a job on Saturday, starts early.’ He added: ‘Put me on first stag tonight, Jon, will you?’
‘O.K., Chalky.’
Other soldiers began to appear, moving slowly and unwilllingly toward the guard-room.
‘There’s a bullshitting bastard,’ muttered Chalky, as an immaculately turned-out R.E.M.E. craftsman approached us. ‘Bet he gets stick.’
Chalky was referring to the quaint ritual of the ‘Commanding Officer’s Stick’, a non-existent object which was symbolically awarded to the best-turned out trooper at the inspection of the guard. The recipient was then excused the guard duty.
‘I wouldn’t mind getting stick myself tonight,’ Chalky added, yawning. ‘I always feel shagged on Mondays, after the we
ek-end.’
I yawned also, and murmured my agreement. The short sleep of the previous night would soon begin to tell, and the next day I would feel dead. Fortunately a corporal’s lot on guard was easier than a trooper’s. And by 6 a.m. I should be a happy man, my last irksome duty completed, only one full day between me and liberty.
Suddenly I saw Sergeant-Major Fotherby approaching us from the direction of the Sergeants’ Mess, wearing a sash.
‘Good God! Don’t tell me Fotherby’s Orderly N.C.O. tonight?’
‘Don’t you ever read orders?’ Chalky inquired.
‘I didn’t bother. Everybody else was so bloody eager to tell me what was on them.’
I made an effort to retain my self-possession as Fotherby drew nearer; in retrospect, my appeal to him that morning must have seemed to him more impertinent than ever.
Fotherby was accompanied by Sergeant Earnshaw and Sergeant Mayhew, the N.C.O.s in charge of Montgomery and Vehicle Park guard-rooms respectively. Earnshaw was a stupid, lazy, but not ill-willed man who could be relied on to steer us through the duty with the minimum of effort by all concerned. Fotherby glanced at his wrist-watch and told us to fall in. We spread out across the square, and formed up facing the guard-room. The Vehicle Park guard was the largest, since three men were required on each stag to patrol the hangars and tank parks. Montgomery Guard only required one man at a time to patrol the camp entrance. Therefore, besides myself, there were only three troopers in Earnshaw’s file: Chalky, the resplendent R.E.M.E. craftsman, and an unhappy-looking little trooper from ‘B’ Squadron, whose name I did not know.
Behind us were the Armed Picket, supposed to be able to defend the camp from attack by the I.R.A., who had brought the Army into derision about a year before by a series of successful raids on regimental armouries in the North. This scare had long since passed, but the Armed Picket continued in existence, following a familiar military law by which measures designed to meet emergencies are never revoked, but absorbed into the ritual of the unit, more and more rules accumulating about them as their original significance fades into the past. The Armed Picket slept, fully clothed and with its boots on, in a hut near the Montgomery guard-room, from which it could be alerted by means of an electric bell. After the guard had been inspected the picket loaded its rifles, which were then locked into a wall-rack. On hearing the bell the N.C.O. in charge unlocked the rack, distributed the rifles, and led his men out to combat. That, at least, was the theory. In fact, the picket was a more real menace to itself and to the rest of us, than to any potential aggressor. The soldiers of Badmore were not used to handling fire-arms, and were easily flustered when they were alerted for practice purposes. Such occasions rarely passed without a rifle going off by accident, and one man had already been shot in the foot and invalided out of the Army, to his great delight.
As we stood at ease, waiting for Fotherby to make his preliminary inspection, Sergeant Earnshaw said to me:
‘Aren’t we one short, Corporal? There are usually four on this guard for inspection.’
He was correct. The fourth man would replace whoever got stick, unless he got it himself.
‘You’re right, Sergeant. But I don’t know who’s missing.’
‘Sounds like him now.’
There was a sound of heavy footfalls, and round the corner of the bedding store lumbered a familiar uncouth shape: Norman.
‘Get your finger out, Trooper,’ cried Fotherby. He looked regretfully at his watch. ‘Another ten seconds and you’d have been on a charge.’
Norman panted up, winked at me, and took his place at the end of the file. Fotherby began his inspection.
Since Badmore was the R.A.C.’s waste-paper basket, where troublesome or defective personnel could be conveniently disposed of, it had been no surprise to me when Norman had turned up there about a year before. At Badmore he realized himself at last. ‘There’s a place for you in the Regular Army,’ the recruiting posters had told him when he enlisted; and at last, at Badmore, he had found that place. He was in charge of the unit piggery. Tanks and typewriters were things that went suddenly, disastrously wrong in Norman’s hands; but pigs,—not even Norman could damage pigs. Indeed there was a certain rapport between them. There was a real gleam of affection in Norman’s eyes as he heaved a bucket of swill into a trough and watched his charges guzzling an obscene cold stew of cabbage, potatoes, mince, suet pudding, gravy and custard, the left-overs from the troops’ dinner. Norman, the product of an industrial slum, had become quite agricultural. He was to be seen occasionally with a straw in his mouth, and talked of ‘going into pigs’ when his three years were up.
Fotherby took longer than was customary over his inspection. In his own regiment he had probably been used to the Orderly Officer’s duty, but there was a plethora of officers at Badmore, and most of the Warrant Officers had to be content with being Orderly N.C.O. He returned to the guard-room veranda, and we stood at ease under the dull, stifling sky, waiting for the Adjutant. A trooper in a red singlet and jeans, with a towel round his neck, emerged from a hut and made his way to the wash-house, whistling shrilly. His whistling faltered and died away as his glance met the silent, expressionless ranks facing him. A faint odour of pigs was wafted from my left where Norman stood, still breathing heavily.
The muffled growl of a powerful engine announced the approach of the Adjutant’s Jaguar, changing down as it entered the camp. A touch on the throttle brought the low, green car to the steps of the guard-room in a single pounce. The driver stopped the car, and ostentatiously revved the engine before switching off the ignition. Captain Gresley emerged from his car, and stood erect in all the bizarre glory of his dress uniform: dark green hat, with a gold band and a glossy peak, deep maroon jacket, dark green trousers narrower than any Teddy-boy ever dreamt of in the wildest excesses of his sartorial imagination, with a broad gold stripe down the sides. Silver chain-mail had settled like snow on his shoulders, and silver spurs were screwed to the heels of his boots. He jingled faintly as he walked towards Fotherby, whom he greeted with a smile, for they were both in the same cavalry regiment.
‘Ain’t he gorgeous?’ whispered Chalky.
‘What must they all look like on mess-nights?’ I replied. ‘A commissionaires’ conference.’
As Chalky had prophesied, the R.E.M.E. craftsman got stick. The unhappy-looking little trooper from ‘B’ Squadron, whose name proved to be Hobson, received a thorough grilling from Gresley and Fotherby, from which he emerged looking unhappier than ever. It was his misfortune to belong to the same regiment as them. He had never been with the regiment, knew nothing about it, and I imagine he fervently hoped that he would never have the opportunity to extend his knowledge. The inspection passed without further incident; we marched off the square; the duty truck bore the V.P. guard away to the other guard-room. I took the soiled mill-board on which the guard’s orders were pasted, and intoned them to my oddly-assorted trio. I gave Chalky the first stag, Hobson the second, and Norman the third.
The guard-room was hot and stuffy. Gresley stalked about the room, elaborately checking that everything was in order. There were no prisoners in the cells. He pressed the alarm bell button, and we heard the bell ringing shrilly in the Armed Picket hut. Then he and Fotherby left. We began to settle down for the night.
Sergeant Earnshaw seated himself at the high desk, and began laboriously to fill in the guard report. Norman produced a tattered paper-backed novel entitled Hell Beach. A snarling Marine leapt from the cover, with a sub-machine-gun blazing from his hip. It was a not insignificant irony, I reflected, that the favourite form of escape literature among soldiers of the modern Army was not pornography, not Westerns, but war-books. I took out of my grip Empson’s Seven Types of Ambiguity. Hobson sat on his bunk staring vacantly before him. He had not provided himself with reading matter. Or perhaps he couldn’t read. Suddenly he said to me:
‘Eh, Corporal: will it be dark on second stag?’
‘Dark? I suppose so. It�
�s pretty dark already. I should think there’ll be a storm. Why?’
After a brooding silence he said:
‘I don’t like this bloody guard.’
‘Neither do I as a matter of fact. But it’s the last one I’ll be pushing.’
‘Getting released soon?’ asked Norman.
‘Wednesday.’
‘Chuffed eh?’
‘What do you think?’
We resumed reading.
‘It’s that bloody tank,’ said Hobson suddenly.
‘Eh?’
‘That tank. That German tank. I don’t like being near that tank when it’s dark.’
‘Oh I get you. The ghost. Norman, this lad’s frightened of the ghost. Will you hold his hand on second stag?’
‘I’m not so bloody keen on that tank myself,’ he muttered darkly.
‘What’s all this about a tank?’ inquired Earnshaw from his desk.
‘Haven’t you heard about it, Sarge? It’s supposed to be haunted by the ghost of a German soldier.’
‘All burned, his face is,’ said Hobson, in a half-frightened, half-gloating voice.
‘Ghost!’ spat out Earnshaw scornfully. ‘Never heard such a load of crap. Nervous as a lot of virgins, you nigs are.’
Silence returned, disturbed only by the ticking of the clock, and the tread of Chalky’s boots as he paced his beat round the guard-room, the bedding stores, the armoury, the Armed Picket hut, the garage for the C.O.’s car. Round and round he went, like a satellite circling a dying planet. I read on into Empson, admiring the way he delicately dismantled a metaphysical lyric, laying out the components for inspection; then deftly reassembled them, shaking the mechanism into motion, holding it up triumphantly to your ear. The intellectual exercise of following him was flattering, and brought with it a comfortable premonition of the life that awaited me: the warm library at nightfall, the feel of new books, the smell of old ones, the pleasantries and vanities of footnotes and acknowledgments. I sniggered as Empson flicked the last remnants of his bard’s robe off another eminent nineteenth-century poet.
‘What yer reading?’ said Earnshaw, who had left his desk. To avoid the labour of an explanation, I passed him the book. He glanced at the title on the spine, and began to read where I had left the book open, his brows knitted.