No Hero-This

by Warwick Deeping

  Also, sex is stirring in me, perhaps because I have once more set eyes upon women, but is sublimated into a tenderness that makes my craving for Mary more than a mere animal urge. There is something so satisfying in giving to and taking from one who is particularly dear.

  Does my wife desire me as I desire her?

  March. I return to my convalescent rest-house and feel that the journey from Cairo to Alexandria is the first stage of my journey home. Twenty-seven more days. My kit, mysteriously salved from Gallipoli, had rejoined me in hospital. I am vetted and passed as fit, and am ordered to report to the R.A.M.C. depot on the outskirts of Alexandria.

  * * *

  I have an amusing and suggestive experience. I walk into the O.C.’s office and confront a coincidence. The O.C. Depot is Templeman, a doctor who, before the war, spent his winters as a physician on the Riviera, and in the summer rented a little place outside Brackenhurst. He is a tall, dark, dignified person with a supercilious manner, in rank a captain. I stand at the other side of the table and smile upon Templeman. I expect him to say, “Brent! Well, I’m damned!”

  He does nothing of the kind. He stares at me with hauteur.

  “What name?”

  “Brent, sir.”

  I realize that I have not saluted Templeman, though to me the formality had seemed unnecessary. But that is not his view. I had always judged Templeman to be a somewhat elevated person who had doctored eminent people at Cannes or Monte Carlo, and who had regarded country doctors as good bumpkins, but this austere, unsmiling loftiness is a revelation. Is it possible for a man to take himself with such Olympian seriousness? Apparently it is.

  He asks me for the details of my contract, and I give them. I presume that I am to be sent home and say so.

  “Your contract, Mr. Brent, terminates on March 31st.”

  “In London.”

  “That is a matter of official opinion. Seven days would be an adequate period to be allowed for travelling. It is now March 3rd.”

  “I believe so.”

  “Very good. You will billet yourself at the Hotel Cleopatra in Alexandria, and await orders from me.”

  Supercilious devil! But a moment later he is asking me to lunch, though the invitation has the flavour of an order. Am I to understand that he has given me a dignified and graceful snubbing for having walked into his office without honouring him with the respect and courtesy of a salute? It may be so, and no doubt Templeman, the physician to the aristocracy of wealth, regards his temporary post as more than a minor throne, and me as a very provincial person.

  I accept his invitation, and after looking at his wrist-watch he gets out of his chair, puts on his cap, and collects a pair of gloves and a cane. I see that he is wearing a very smart pair of riding-boots, plus spurs.

  “Care to see the depot, Brent?”

  “I should, sir.”

  He may be ten years my senior, and carry one more pip than I do, but has he so much right to feel so very much more important? He pauses at the doorway of his orderly room.

  “I am going to lunch, Sergeant Smith.”

  The sergeant knows his Templeman. He springs to his feet, and clicks.

  “Very good, sir.”

  We got out to a sandy space which is the parade ground for R.A.M.C. details, and crossing it is an R.A.M.C. orderly with a bucket of debris. The bucket is too full, and it is spilling some of its contents on the sand.

  Templeman shouts at the man.

  “You, there, what the hell do you think you are doing?”

  The man looks frightened, while Templeman rates him with sarcastic insolence, and I realize that my fellow physician has caught the authority disease very badly. Also he may be showing off to me, and giving me a demonstration of discipline and how things should be done in an efficiently bullied depot. My slack, civilian method of address has suggested to him that I am no soldier, and Templeman is a super-soldier. It is all rather ridiculous and petty.

  We lunch alone, after a tour of the depot, Templeman having sent an orderly to warn his mess-servant that there will be a visitor to lunch. The man is more engaging than the food, a delicate, fair, frightened-looking fellow who apologizes for the meal being a little primitive owing to the shortness of the notice. Templeman appears to have everyone about him well scared. He snubs the man.

  “We are not at the Ritz, Jackson.”

  “No, sir, of course not, sir.”

  “I don’t believe in wallowing on active service, though I hear that on the Peninsula, Mr. Brent, some of you did yourselves very well.”

  “Not so badly.”

  “With the assistance of medical comforts, I suppose!”

  I presume that it is usual for Templeman to lunch alone in state, and that having me for an audience he is pleased to grasp the opportunity of talking. The meek and frightened Jackson stands at attention behind Templeman’s chair, while he gives me his views on the Gallipoli campaign, and especially so with regard to its moral and psychological aspect. He speaks very scornfully of those in authority, and with almost equal scorn of the rank and file.

  “Too much cowardice, Brent, not enough of that courage which takes the final risks. Yes, cowardice.”

  He looks at me with sallow hauteur as though daring me to contradict him, and I want to contradict him, and do.

  “I don’t think that is quite accurate. The conditions——”

  “O, yes, I know all about the conditions.”

  “You were there?”

  “I volunteered to go, but they told me I should be more useful here. Discipline was needed. But I dare say that I know more of the material facts than you do. We English seem to have lost our old toughness, and our sense of duty. Take Suvla, for instance, apathy, cowardice, lack of discipline, a mob of raw civilians scrambling for water when they should have been fighting.”

  “But what about the 29th Division and the landing?”

  He gives me a little snicker of a smile.

  “Do you know how many Turks there were at Helles?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I had the figures from a Turkish prisoner who was in hospital under me, an officer. He happened to know. About two battalions, Brent.”

  “Two battalions!”

  “Yes, and a couple of pom-poms and some four machine-guns. Those two battalions of Turks scattered about the toe of the Peninsula held up your crack 29th Division.”

  It seems to give him pleasure, and though I hate the whole war business and am no Jingo, his attitude of supercilious scorn annoys me. What right has a man who has never been under shell fire or experienced the reactions of elemental fear to sit and sneer and criticize? Cowardice, indeed!

  I say, “Well, you know, Templeman, things are so different under shell fire. Honestly, I suppose most of us are afraid. Wind-up may be a more or less chronic condition. All the more honour to the men who carry on.”

  “So you were afraid?”

  “Terribly so, at times.”

  But my candour only seems to increase his complacency.

  “Doesn’t that rather prove my point? You see, I have lived abroad a good deal, Brent, and I’m sorry to say that the feeling on the Continent about England and the English wasn’t very flattering.”

  “Oh?”

  “Fat and flabby and too prosperous. Yes, flabby, Brent, flabby in the face of those elemental crises. We haven’t the cold fury of the French.”

  “Perhaps because we haven’t quite the same urge to be furious.”

  “Yes, we’re tame, Brent, too tame. Socialism, and all that sort of defeatism. Wellington’s troops were made of different stuff.”

  “Most of them were blackguards.”

  “But they could use the bayonet, Brent. Our England talks too much Utopian tosh, and is soft.”

  I contradict him flatly.

  “I don’t believe it. We shall win the war.”

  “Not by Gallipoli methods.”

  “We are being blooded. We shall learn.”

  �
�This time we may learn too late. One can’t always be the world’s complacent fool.”

  We part on rather brittle terms, and I take a tram back to Alexandria, realizing that Templeman is in authority over me and that I have failed to flatter him by playing the Agag to his absurd vanity. The vanity of man can be amazing, and when there is combined with it a passion to exert authority, the result, as in Templeman’s case, is fantastic and sinister. I move myself and my kit to the Hotel Cleopatra, a white building in the modern quarter. It is kept by a Levantine, supported by a fat wife and a handsome daughter who sits in the office and stares at one with huge, smoky black eyes. I find the hotel packed with R.A.M.C. officers, and after a day or two at the Cleopatra I am told that there are at least a hundred doctors loafing about Alexandria with nothing to do. One of them assures me that he has not done a day’s work since he joined the army, and he is indignant about it. “First they rushed me to Malta, and I wasn’t wanted; then they rushed me to Cairo, and I was superfluous. Then they pushed me back here, and I’ve been loafing here for a month. What makes me mad is that I left two elderly partners up to their necks at home in a colliery practice. No, I’m not seeing the joke.”

  On the second night I allow myself a half-bottle of the Levantine’s red wine, and regret it. If his daughter is of that vintage some fool-man will be disillusioned. The wine is like so much acid. I lie awake on my protesting tummy whose peristaltic spasms suggest two ferrets fighting in a sack. I get up and drink water. About one in the morning my next-door neighbour comes home furiously drunk. I hear, through the communicating door, his silly cursings and his belchings and blunderings, and the rage in my tummy becomes a fury. I cannot sleep, but that is not thanks to him. I get up and hammer on the communicating door.

  “Shut up, damn you.”

  By way of retort a boot is thrown at the door.

  “Sh’t up, y’self, you swine.”

  I feel like breaking down the door and getting at this gentleman.

  “You drunken beast, other people want to sleep.”

  “Sleep. Don’t b’silly.”

  Later, I hear him being sick, and later still I hear him snoring, and I wonder in the morning whether there will be a catastrophic row between us, but nothing of the sort happens. In spite of his orgy he gets up bright and whistling. He is a fat and stocky fellow with a thick neck to whom life is a dish of eggs and bacon.

  But I am like a homesick schoolboy at the end of his first term, counting the days until the school breaks up. Life has bored and bullied me not a little, and some of it has disgusted me, like the atmosphere of this Levantine hotel. Glancing back through the pages of my record, I accuse myself of being a pessimist, and something of a prude, a Simple Simon who expects the world’s pie to be so much better than it is. But what right have I to feel self-righteous? Deep down in me, and somehow associated with that yearning for home, lies the consciousness of failure. I have no reason to be proud of my year in the army, and, like the coward that I am, I am in a hurry to escape from a part which has been so indifferently played.

  I have finished breakfast and am smoking a pipe when an orderly arrives with a chit from the depot. I am to report immediately, and I rush off in a state of excitement. This must mean that a boat is sailing and that Templeman has arranged for my passage home.

  I find him in his office, and this time I salute. I would salute the Devil himself on this happy occasion. Templeman keeps me waiting for half a minute.

  “O, Mr. Brent, you will embark on the Taranto at 11.30 and report to the O.C. ship for duty.”

  I smile at him.

  “Yes, sir. As far as Marseilles?”

  He looks at me in a peculiar way, and pushes across the table a little bit of paper.

  “The Taranto is bound, I believe, for Salonica.”

  Salonica! I pick up the little bit of paper and read scribbled on it in pencil, “You will complete duty, and return and report to O.C. Depot, Alexandria.”

  Something seems to drop in my tummy. I look at Templeman and understand that he is demonstrating to me the power of authority, and that he has not forgotten my failure to salute him.

  “I thought I was going home, sir.”

  “I will embark you for England, Brent, when you have completed this tour of duty. You had better hurry up. The Taranto sails at 11.30.”

  I go out with my little bit of paper, feeling sick and shocked. How I am beginning to fear and to loathe these little bits of paper, leaves from the tree of authority that drift down into your lap just when you are beginning to feel a little secure and happy. I bitterly resent the fact that a man like Templeman can mess me about, and perhaps indulge in a supercilious chuckle. Another pleasure trip across the sea with the chance of being submarined! But if I am to catch the Taranto I shall have to hurry. I race back to the Hotel Cleopatra, pay my bill, collect my kit, hire a carriage and drive down to the docks. How different is this embarkation to be from what I had expected. Egyptian porters howl and run beside my carriage, and compete with each other noisily for my patronage, but I am too depressed to curse them, or to remember the magic word “Imshi.”

  My driver finds the quay where the Taranto is tied up. She is a shabby, black, obsolete-looking boat, and her appearance adds to my depression. I notice a gun mounted on her stern deck. I pay my cabman, and two porters bundle me and my baggage up the gangway. Three or four officers are leaning over the rail; one of them is a Colonel, and I salute him.

  “Excuse me, sir, I am to report to the O.C. ship.”

  “I’m your man, doctor. You are coming with us for duty?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  We have a battery of artillery on board, odd details, and Territorials who are time expired. Colonel Praed is going home on leave. He is a charming person, one of those easy, kindly people who put one at ease. I find a cabin and dump my belongings, and join the gunner officers on deck. They too put me at ease, for they have developed the camaraderie of active service. I stand next to the O.C. of the battery, a tall, blond, regular soldier with a clean and confident face.

  “I hear we are for Salonica.”

  He gives me a whimsical look.

  “Someone been making the usual mystery, doc.?”

  “Well, I was told so.”

  He laughs quietly.

  “Colonel Praed is going on leave, and we are supposed to be for France. I know we do funny things in the army, but Salonica would be a little out of the way.”

  I have Templeman’s piece of paper in my pocket, and I keep it there. Has he been amusing himself at my expense, letting me go as far as Marseilles in order to drag me back?

  “What’s your goal, doc.?”

  I feel apologetic.

  “Going home at the end of my year. I left an elderly partner with all the work.”

  “Lucky man, doc.”

  “I may join up again, later.”

  “Where were you?”

  “Helles.”

  “That ought to last you for a while.”

  The Taranto steams out of harbour, and we go to lunch in the saloon with the ship’s officers. The captain, a turgid, swarthy little man, sits at the head of the table. I notice that all these sailors have strained eyes, and I am soon to discover the reason of it. Our old tub has no wireless, and cannot steam more than twelve knots, and on her last journey to Marseilles she was attacked and shelled by a submarine. She escaped, due to Captain Cox’s handling of her, and to the fact that a lucky shot from her own gun burst so near the submarine that she became cautious, and submerged. These sailor men have been bucketing to and fro between Alex. and Marseilles for the last nine months, without respite or leave, and I do not wonder that they are feeling the strain of watching eternally for the death that may rise out of the sea.

  * * *

  I like these gunners, especially Henderson, a tall, lean, sandy man who left the Canadian Mounted Police to join the battery. There is a simple, laconic humanity about him that gets me. Our voyage is uneventful, the
sea calm. I spend quite a lot of time in the medical office pulling teeth. The news of one successful extraction spreads all over the ship, and my dental practice booms. We carry our cork jackets about with us, and sleep with them close to hand, and at night I wonder whether I shall wake to hear the Taranto’s syren squealing the alarm.

  It fascinates me to watch a red-headed sailor in the ship’s crow’s nest, continually turning his head this way and that like some mechanical figure. Sometimes he eats up there, but his head continues to move and his eyes to scan the treacherous sea. Always he seems to be the man on duty there. Perhaps he has unusual sight. I feel confidence in him, and a kind of gratitude for his vigilance.

  Templeman’s chit remains in my pocket. I have shown it to no one, and every time I finger the wretched little thing I feel rebellious.

  It is quite certain now that we are bound for Marseilles, for we have passed Malta in the night and are steaming north-west. It is blue weather with more wind, and my little surgery over the ship’s screw sways up and down so vigorously that I have to discontinue the pulling of teeth. I am no better sailor than I am soldier, and having got into a deck-chair I stay there for the good of my stomach, but I am rather pleased to find that that tough nut Henderson is a worse sailor than I am.

  Our gunner reports sick. I find he has a temperature; it is probably ’flu, and I tell him he ought to keep in his bunk.

  “Not me, doctor, not ruddy likely. I’m the only man who can lay our gun.”

  Stout fellow! I give him aspirin and tell him to lie down and keep warm until the alarm sounds!

  Please God it won’t, for we are within a day’s steaming of Marseilles.

  I hear that we shall make port early in the morning, and I have still not decided what to do with Templeman’s ruddy little chit. I am up early, and watching the French coast rise out of an ultramarine sea. We are going to pass the famous Château d’If. I can see a gold-domed church high on a hill, and the terraced whiteness that is Marseilles. I find Colonel Praed beside me.

  “What are you going to do, doctor?”

  “I suppose, sir, I shall have to report to the R.A.M.C. authorities at Marseilles.”