In the Line of Fire (A Donald Cameron Naval Thriller)
Page 17
Apps’s pace-stick trembled beneath a hammy arm. He stepped backward and to his left, away from Ogilvie. His voice rose to a hoot, a scream that tore across the parade ground and echoed off the walls behind. “I said—right marker! Sir!”
Ogilvie, already at attention, moved into action as commanded. He took six short, sharp paces forward and halted, drawing his extended right foot down with a guardsman’s crash. He then waited for Apps’s order that would form the remainder of A Company up on his left. The order didn’t come. Instead, he was left standing like a flushing statue while the C.S.M. addressed the young gentlemen in thunderstruck tones. “Gentlemen! Did you see the way Mr. Ogilvie halted! No—do not answer me back! I realize you saw! But perhaps you do not know what you saw. I shall tell you. Gentlemen, you have seen the way not to bloody-well halt!” He marched quivering up to Ogilvie. “Tomorrow you will pass out, Mr. Ogilvie, and I shall become a sane man again with God’s help. Tomorrow, at the passing-out parade, you will march past the Duke of Cambridge. His Royal Highness is an old gentleman, Mr. Ogilvie. You are very likely going to give him an apoplectic fit.”
Ogilvie swallowed. “Yes, Staff.”
“It will be a case of murder. You must buck your ideas up, Mr. Ogilvie. His Royal Highness is a stickler for smartness. His Royal Highness is a first cousin of Her Majesty the Queen, Mr. Ogilvie. His Royal Highness led a division of Guards and Highlanders at the battle of the Alma, Mr. Ogilvie. His Royal Highness had his horse shot from under him at Inkerman. His Royal Highness has faced shot and shell and has survived, Mr. Ogilvie. But as God’s me judge, ’e hain’t going to survive you! I am astonished that you ’ave been accepted for the 114th. The 114th is a crack regiment with a reputation for spit and polish. As you should know. Sir!”
“Yes, Staff.”
“Besides the which, long gentlemen look funny in a kilt. Now let us try again, Mr. Ogilvie, for the sake of the 114th. About…turn! Quick…march. Left-right-left…’alt. About…turn. Right marker.”
*
James Ogilvie knew very well that it was inexcusable that he should put up such a showing the day before the passing-out parade. There had been so many times when he had felt the army was not, after all, for him. He was perhaps too dreamy ever to become a man of action, to lead men confidently in battle. At his prep school he had never liked games for one thing—to his father’s dismay—and in today’s army there was beginning to be quite an insistence on games. The army was changing rapidly and the old type of blood and guts officer—like Ogilvie’s own father and grandfather, like His Royal Highness and his horse at Inkerman—was on the way out, though they still lingered in high places. Ogilvie wished he could sort out his own mind. His ideal concept of a military officer was frankly someone with a dash of that blood and guts outlook, though he was pretty sure he personally could never have stomached all that had gone with it—the floggings, the squalors of barrack-room life, the injustices of arrogance. His concept, however, was decidedly not that of a cricketing, footballing officer. But there had been that emphasis on games at Sandhurst and he had been the odd man out once again, the loner among the muddied oafs. And drill movements failed to fascinate him as much as C.S.M. Apps and the Colour-Serjeants expected them to. Yet all the same he had the army in his blood—to some extent he was a romantic on this point—and there were the aspects of it that appealed to him very strongly indeed. Among these were its traditions, the stories of the regiments and corps that made up the most far-flung and victorious army of modern times. It was an army now comfortably astride a magnificent Empire, ruling the heathen in the name of the Queen-Empress—that little old lady in black, with the bun and the arrogant bearing who, when his father had been commanding the depot in Invermore, had once bidden him to tea in the castle at Balmoral. James had been scared stiff and hadn’t been able to open his mouth when Her Majesty had barked a condescending word at him, and his father and mother had been scarlet with embarrassment, though normally it took a good deal to embarrass his irascible father. James Ogilvie loved martial music—even enjoyed marching when behind the crash and thunder of the brass. There was something that stirred his very soul as he thought of the days that had gone, of the men who had marched away into history behind the regimental colours, carrying the flag of England to a glory that, unlike them, was immortal. He thrilled to the valour and sacrifice that had built the Empire, forged it by fire into what it was today—solid, prosperous, utterly and finally unassailable. The pride of it, the pride of being one of a gallant company of men, weighed very heavily in the balance and he knew inside himself that, despite his doubts, he could never have been anything other in life than an officer of the 114th Highlanders, lately commanded by both his father and his grandfather before him.
Next day, as the passing-out company led the parade past the elderly charger-mounted figure of the Duke of Cambridge—the old man who was soon to hand over as Commander-in-Chief to Lord Wolseley—James Ogilvie’s heart beat fast with an increased sense of that inherited pride of soldiery. It seemed to him, as the band crashed out The British Grenadiers so that the music beat through a heat haze and echoed off the yellow-white walls of the college, that here on the parade at Sandhurst the heart of the Empire beat, that here were gathered, somewhere in the mists, the ghosts of men from a splendid past to encourage those who, once gazetted to their regiments, would carry the honour and the glory on into the future, those who held in fresh hands the sacred traditions so dearly bought, those who would widen the scope of British might till all the map were red. Stiffly Ogilvie marched past the old Commander-in-Chief, eyes front behind the Senior Under-Officer of A Company, a young man bound for the Coldstream Guards and a life of ceremonial and palace duties, debutantes and London seasons, hunting, grouse-shooting, tea-parties in duchesses’ town houses. Such a life made no appeal to James Ogilvie; he knew that much at least, though he had not yet arrived at the happy state of knowing just what it was he did want of his chosen career. But there would be no London seasons for James Ogilvie for many a year, for the 114th were presently under orders for India. Among other things this would mean he would see his parents again for the first time in three years. His father, now a major-general, was on the staff of Southern Army H.Q. at Ootacamund. The prospect of seeing his mother was delightful, of seeing his father both welcome and unwelcome. Ogilvie’s father set high standards and expected his son to contribute more honour to the family’s name. And he was much inclined to outspokenness, especially when in a tantrum. This tended to make James even more unsure of himself, of his ability to make a success of his profession of arms.
But meanwhile he could savour the moment, the present. There was the band and the pageantry and the dream. And that afternoon, when the passing-out ceremony was over for another year, Company Serjeant-Major Apps addressed him.
“He’s still alive an’ breathing, Mr. Ogilvie! Couldn’t never ’ave clapped eyes on you, he couldn’t! I thank you from the bottom of me ’eart for not letting me down, Mr. Ogilvie. Maybe you’ll make an officer yet. And here’s me very best wishes that you do. Sir!” His right arm cut a swathe through the air in front of Ogilvie’s nose and the hand quivered in front of his forehead. “You’ve got the makings in you, spite of all I’ve ever said. You’re not such a block’ead as some.”
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