by David Lodge
‘Took enough bloody time didn’t they?’ Still holding the phone to his ear, he turned towards Norman and Hobson, who, strangely, were still asleep.
‘Wake those lazy sods up.’
As I moved towards them there was a knock on the door.
‘That’s probably the Adjutant. Let him in.’
I opened the door. There was nothing there except my shadow, thrown forward across the veranda. I stepped over the threshold, and an arm hit me in the throat like an iron bar, throttling me and dragging me sideways. A gag was wound round my face, and the voice of the Adjutant whispered in my ear, ‘Relax, Corporal.’
The Adjutant and Fotherby stood together in the middle of the guard-room, wearing sweaters and plimsolls. They were breathing heavily, and their blackened faces were runnelled with sweat, but they radiated cocky triumph. The Adjutant was trying to look stern, but he kept grinning at Fotherby. Chalky and I stood together nursing our throats and mouths. Norman and Hobson were trying to button up their uniforms as unobtrusively as possible. Sergeant Earnshaw was sitting on the end of a bed, looking sick.
‘Feel all right, Sergeant?’ asked the Adjutant.
Earnshaw muttered something about his heart.
‘You put up a good fight, anyway, Sergeant. Not like some of the other so-called soldiers in this unit.’ He swept the rest of us with a contemptuous glance. ‘You, Corporal, for instance,’ he said to me. ‘Do you usually open the guard-room door without finding out who’s outside?’
I could not trust myself to reply.
‘Anyone would think you were playing Postman’s Knock.’ Fotherby sniggered. The Adjutant turned to Chalky. ‘And you, Trooper. We watched you for several minutes, and you didn’t look to your right or your left. As for you two——’ Norman hung his head and Hobson quaked—‘We might have taken over the whole bloody camp without waking you up.’ He began to strut up and down the guard-room. ‘Well, I’m twenty pounds richer now. I bet the C.O. that with one man,—from my own regiment of course’ (he grinned at Fotherby), ‘I could steal a truck from V.P. and capture the Montgomery guardroom; and I have. I shouldn’t think he’ll be in a very good mood when you all see him tomorrow morning.’
There was a vivid flash of lightning, followed by a resounding thunderclap; then the sky burst over our heads like a swollen paper bag. The rain dinned on the roof, and hissed on the concrete outside the guard-room. Almost at once it searched out a leak in the roof, and water began to drip on to the floor. For some moments we were all struck dumb by the deluge. Then, as the intensity of the torrent diminished slightly, Earnshaw said anxiously:
‘You’re not charging us, sir?’
‘I shan’t charge you, Sergeant, since you put up such a good show. But the guards who let us get away with the truck, you Trooper’—he nodded to Chalky, and I froze as he turned to me—‘and you, Corporal: you were all negligent, and you’ll have to answer for it. The security in this unit is disgraceful, and I shouldn’t be surprised if there were a regimental inquiry into this business.’
I struggled to control the questions, expostulations and protests which seethed within me. Exasperation at the humiliation and absurdity of the whole affair struggled with anxiety, rapidly turning to dread, about the effects it might have on my release. My timetable was tight. If I did not get away on Wednesday Pauline and I would miss the charter flight early on Thursday morning, and there was no other flight. My mind wandered off into calculations of possible alternatives, whether the airline would rebate the fares, if so, at what notice. Angrily I recalled my thoughts to the main issue. What would be the result of this stupid prank of the Adjutant’s? Probably I would lose a stripe. That wouldn’t worry me, and shouldn’t delay me unduly. It might be all over tomorrow. But it might not. And there was that ominous reference to a regimental inquiry. Would they keep me back for it? Could they keep me back for it? In any event they might easily keep me back till Thursday, which was the statutory day for release. I could not keep silent any longer. The Adjutant was on the phone, trying to get the operator.
‘Excuse me, sir,’ I said.
‘Well?’
‘I’m due for release on Wednesday, sir. Will this affect it? You see, I’ve booked——’
‘I really couldn’t say, Corporal.’ He turned back to the phone, tapping the receiver-rest impatiently. Fotherby was looking at me with undisguised delight. The Adjutant said:
‘This phone seems to be dead, Sergeant Earnshaw.’
‘It was all right a few minutes ago, sir.’
‘Must be the storm. Corporal, will you cut along to the Orderly Room and use the phone there, if it’s working. Ring up V.P. guard-room, and explain the situation. Tell Sergeant Mayhew to round up the Armed Picket, and send them back here. I want to see the N.C.O. in charge.’ He turned to Fotherby. ‘How long did they take to get out, Sergeant-Major?’
‘Well, we were down here a good ten minutes before they left, sir. So I should say about twenty minutes altogether.’
‘Disgraceful.’
‘The alarm bell wasn’t working, sir,’ put in Earnshaw. ‘Corporal Browne had to go and wake them up.’
‘It was working earlier this evening. Anyway, that’s no excuse. It could only have made a couple of minutes’ difference. All right, Corporal, that’s all.’
A curtain of water confronted me as I closed the guard-room door. I had no cape, but I stepped heedlessly into the deluge. The rain was as warm as blood. The great blunt drops bruised my face, ran down my neck, soaked into my khaki as if it were blotting-paper, boiled and bubbled at my feet. I splashed my way mechanically towards the Orderly Room, brooding on the sudden blow to my plans. It was not, however, the particular problems which had arisen which chafed me most: it was the general sense that the machinery which had been silkily responsive to my touch for so long had suddenly run amok. I had looked forward with pleasurable expectation to my last days at Badmore: I would leave the Army in a mood of relaxed enjoyment, my finger-tips on the controls until the last moment. It would be a ceremony, a ritual, trivial in its forms perhaps, but highly significant in its import, for its climax would be the transubstantiation of the soldier into the free man. But now I knew that whatever happened, even if I did contrive to get away in time to catch the plane, my last hours at Badmore would not be spent in the serene enjoyment of this ceremony. They would be spent in anxiety, and doubt, and helplessness,—emotions I had thought I had left behind me at Catterick.
I had to knock several times on the Orderly Room door: the duty clerk, incredibly, seemed to have slept through the storm. Eventually he opened the door. Yawning and rubbing his eyes he asked me foolishly:
‘Is it raining?’
I stood in the doorway in my sodden uniform, a puddle spreading rapidly at my feet.
‘No, someone’s pissing off the roof,’ I replied. ‘I want to use your phone. The guard-room one’s packed up.’
I squeezed past the camp-bed which was set up in the middle of the office.
‘’Ere, mind me sheets.’
Ignoring his protests, I sat down on the end of the bed to make the phone-call. V.P. guard-room was still in a state of considerable perturbation, increased by their inability to communicate with the Montgomery guard-room. It took me some time to explain the situation to Sergeant Mayhew, to answer his questions, and to listen to his oaths.
‘The Armed Picket’s out on the moors,’ he said. ‘It’ll take me some time to round them up.’
‘O.K. I’ll tell the Adjutant.’
‘I’m going to get fuggin’ soaked looking for them.’
‘You won’t be the only one.’
‘’Ere, you’ve left a bloody great wet patch on my bed,’ said the duty clerk, as I put down the phone, and rose to my feet. Then, curiosity winning over his sense of grievance, he pestered me about the night’s events. I gave him a few short, surly answers, and left.
As I approached the guard-room my scepticism about supernatural phenomena received a severe jolt. A flash of l
ightning revealed through the sheeting rain a figure in a long, belted coat, that answered disconcertingly to Hobson’s description of the ghost. I halted, my heart pounding as loudly as the thunder. I stood peering through the darkness. Lightning flickered again, but the figure had vanished. A few more steps, however, took me in sight of the guard-room, and I saw through its windows a tableau that taxed my credulity more than any ghost. The Adjutant and Fotherby had their backs to me, and their hands up. Between them I could see a masked man by the door, holding a Sten gun.
I was congratulated for the coolness with which I acted subsequently, but no one knows how much that coolness was due to the simple desire to understand what was happening. The events of that one night had been more bizarre and dramatic than all my nights at Badmore put together. I was too numbed to act impulsively.
Cautiously I skirted the guard-room, and reached the veranda of the Q.M.’s offices, which faced one side of it. Hidden in the shadows, I stared into the guard-room. The rain, drumming on the veranda roof, prevented any sound which might have carried through the windows of the guardroom from reaching me. It was rather like watching a film when the sound-track has broken down: violence enacted and emotions registered in a comical silence. They were all there as I had left them in the guard-room, with one addition, a figure in pyjamas whom I identified as the security man from the armoury. A raid was in progress, in earnest this time; and the raiders had struck a most lucky moment, with the Armed Picket dispersed over the water-logged moors a mile away, and the telephone out of action,—but this last must be their doing, I realized, and the failure of the alarm bell. The ghost too, he must have been one of them.
Another man, also with a scarf round his face, came into the guard-room and seemed to say something to the man with the Sten gun. The latter nodded, and motioned the Adjutant and the rest towards the cells. His companion took the keys, neatly labelled for his convenience, from the rack on the wall, and proceeded to lock the captives in the cells.
I deliberated as to what I should do. (It was only much later that I wondered why I had assumed that I ought to do something.) There were soldiers sleeping within fifty yards of me, but what use would they be, unarmed and fuddled with sleep, even if I managed to wake them in time? There was a phone in the Q.M.’s office, but the door was locked. The nearest accessible phone was the one in the Orderly Room, but by the time I got there they would be gone.
I slipped off my gaiters and boots, and padded along the veranda until I was out of sight of the interior of the guardroom. Then I scuttled quickly across the space between the Q.M.’s offices and the armoury. Between the armoury and the bedding store there was a narrow, noisome passage. I squeezed my way to the end, lowered myself reluctantly into the mud, and peered round. I saw the dim shapes of a Bedford van and, beside it, a Ford Consul. Noises of heavy objects being loaded came from the rear of the van. The light outside the armoury had been turned off, but a flash of lightning illuminated the vehicles. I shrank back into the passage. The Bedford van was grey, the Consul black. I protruded my head again like a tortoise. The thunder rumbled. I waited impatiently for another flash of lightning, and when it came glimpsed the number plate of the Bedford: MUP 5—I had not seen any more. I waited for another flash, but the door of the van was slammed, and I heard voices and hurried footsteps. I withdrew into the passage, and slithered backwards until I judged it safe to stand up and turn round. The engines started, and the vehicles moved off. I ran back to the Q.M.’s veranda from the end of which I could see the camp entrance. The Bedford turned left, the Ford right, and both accelerated out of sight.
I ran back to the Orderly Room in my socks, muttering to myself: ‘MUP 5, MUP 5…’
‘For fuggsake, you again?’ protested the clerk. ‘Where are your boots?’ he added in astonishment, as I squelched past him and seized the phone.
‘Get me the C.O.’s home telephone number,’ I said.
First I phoned the police, then Brigade, then the C.O. The C.O. said he would be round right away.
I padded slowly back to the guard-room. The rain was easing. My mind, which had been suspended through the time of action, began to function reflectively again. The agreeable thought came to me that I might gain some credit for what I had done, sufficient to gloss over the unfortunate incident earlier in the night, and to facilitate my prompt release from the Army. In any case the minor matter would be submerged in the major, and the Adjutant was unlikely to proceed with his threatened charge. He would have quite a lot of explaining to do himself, in fact, when the C.O. arrived and found him locked in a cell with Norman and Hobson, his face blackened, and dressed in civilian clothes.
I went first to the Q.M.’s veranda, where I took off my socks, wrung them out, put them on again, and donned my boots. I heard the C.O.’s car approaching.
‘Well, Corporal Browne, you did a fine job of work for the Army in your last week. The police had no difficulty in tracing those cars with the description you gave them. And you did well to observe the directions they took. In fact you acted with remarkable initiative if I may say so, remarkable initiative.’
I smiled modestly back at the C.O., and murmured something deprecatory. The writers of the schoolboys’ stories I had read in childhood had done their work well; I could think of no other reason why I should experience such pleasure at being the hero of the hour. It satisfied an appetite I had not known I possessed. The morning sun shone brightly into the C.O.’s office, bleaching the carpet and the drawn face of the Adjutant. It had been a trying night for him. The raiders had taken away the keys to the cells and it had been two hours before the duplicates had been found.
‘When are you due for release, Corporal?’
‘Tomorrow, sir.’
‘Hmm. Trouble is you’ll probably be required by the police in connection with this business.’
I started worrying again.
‘I hope not, sir. I’ve arranged to go on holiday to Majorca on Thursday. My plane leaves early on Thursday morning.’
‘Oh. Well, we can’t let this interfere with your holiday, can we. How long will you be away?’
‘A fortnight, sir.’
‘Hmm. Just a minute.’
He picked up the phone and asked the operator to get him the Chief Constable of the county, whom he addressed as ‘Fred’. I began to relax as the conversation proceeded, and the C.O. put down the receiver with a triumphant smile.
‘Well that’s fixed, Corporal. You won’t be needed in person until after you come back. In the meantime I’ve arranged for you to make a statement to the police this afternoon in the town. My driver will run you down there this afternoon. You’ll be able to get off in good time tomorrow morning.’
‘Thank you, sir. I’m most grateful.’
‘It’s a pleasure, Corporal. Badmore would have been the laughing stock of the Army if those I.R.A. blighters had got away. Isn’t that right, Geoffrey?’
The Adjutant nodded sourly. I saluted, and turned. As I crossed the room to the door the C.O. said:
‘I think this is your line of country, Geoffrey. One of the blighters was a deserter apparently. The police want to know what——’
I turned slowly back to face them.
‘Excuse me, sir.’
‘Yes, Corporal?’
‘The deserter you mentioned.… Do you know his name by any chance?’
‘Er, Brady I think. Yes, that’s right, Brady.’
‘Not Michael Brady?’
‘Yes that’s right, Michael Brady. Why what’s the matter man? You’re white as a sheet!’
‘I’m all right, sir. It’s just that I knew him once.’
‘Who, Brady? I hope he’s no friend of yours. He’s in a lot of trouble.’
‘No, not what you might call a friend, sir. I’m sorry, sir. Excuse me.’
I saluted weakly and left the room under their curious gaze. As I negotiated the corridors leading to the ‘A’ Squadron offices, a hand touched me on the shoulder. I jumped.
>
‘Take it easy! Got a guilty conscience or somethink?’ The Post Corporal was grinning at me. ‘Letter for you. Blimey, you do look queer.’
‘I’m all right.’
He held the long mauve envelope under his nose before passing it to me.
‘Smells nice. Some people ’ave all the luck.’
Instead of returning to my office I went to the lavatory, and sat in a cool, smelly closet to think. Already my mind had instinctively connected certain facts to form a picture of Mike’s progress since he had deserted. Somehow he had got to Ireland, no doubt with the aid of that mysterious Italian to whom I had posted Mike’s letter. At this moment it flashed upon me that ‘Gordiano Bruno’ was a pseudonym for Peter Nolan, the Irishman at O’Connell’s. Bruno of Nola! It was a favourite pun of Joyce’s. And Nolan was just the type to be associated with the I.R.A., probably a member of it. Mike had been smuggled across to Ireland, and there had become involved with the I.R.A. Why? There was his family background of militant nationalism. But surely anyone of Mike’s intelligence could see that nowadays the I.R.A. was nothing but a bad joke,—and a criminally dangerous one at that? Was he still, then, bent on revenging Percy’s death, accepting the I.R.A. as a convenient tool, as the Jacobean revenger employed the trivial squabbles of the rest of society to encompass his own obsessive ends?
These queries were forced to the perimeter of my mind by the increasing pressure of another thought. I stared with horrified fascination at the fact that I, of all people, had unwittingly betrayed Mike, in the one act of my military career that had exceeded the minimal performance of duty. Some malicious providence had thrust me, with a powerful hand in the small of the back, into a double treachery: to Mike himself, and to that code of contempt for the Army which we had once shared. Or was it merely the working-out of a treachery I had practised ever since Mike had deserted, in my subtle conquest of Pauline, and my easy self-adjustment to Badmore?
I still held Pauline’s letter in my hand. I opened the envelope, and read the neat, round handwriting.
My Dearest Jonathan,