Trouble with Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson might never have arisen, as it did at that particular moment, had not Colonel Pedlar been, quite by chance, out of the way. When it came, sudden and violent, the cause was a far more humdrum matter than the clandestine guiding of appointments. Indeed, the incident itself was such a minor one, so much part of the day’s work, that, had I not myself witnessed it – owing to the exceptional occurrence of Advance Headquarters and Rear Headquarters being brought together in one element at the close of the three-day exercise – I should always have believed some essential detail to have been omitted from the subsequent story; guessed that nothing so trivial in itself could have so much discomposed Widmerpool. That incredulity was due, I suppose, to underestimation, even after the years I had known him, of Widmerpool’s inordinate, almost morbid, self-esteem.
During “schemes,” the Defence Platoon was responsible for guarding the Divisional Commander’s Advance Headquarters. This meant, on these occasions, accommodation for myself in the General’s Mess; accordingly, temporary disengagement from Widmerpool, whose duties as DAA.G. focused on Rear Headquarters. On the last evening of this particular exercise, the Command three-day one, Advance H.Q. had been established, as usual, in a small farmhouse, one of the scattered homesteads lying in the forbidding countryside of the Command’s north-western area, right up in the corner of the map. The first fifty-six hours had been pretty active – as foreseen by me the night before we set out – giving little chance of sleep. However, by the time the General and his operational staff sat down to a late meal at the end of the third day, there was a feeling abroad that the main exertions of the exercise might reasonably be regarded as at an end. Everyone could take things easy for a short time. The General himself was in an excellent temper, the battle against the Blue Force to all intents won.
A single oil lamp threw a circle of dim light round the dining table of the farm parlour where we ate, leaving the rest of the room in heavy shadow, dramatising by its glow the central figures of the company present. Were they a group of conspirators – something like the Gunpowder Plot – depicted in the cross-hatchings of an old engraved illustration? It was not exactly that. At the same time the hard lights and shades gave the circle of heads an odd, mysterious unity. The faces of the two colonels, bird and beast, added a note deliberately grotesque, surrealist, possibly indicating a satirical meaning on the part of the artist, a political cartoonist perhaps. The colonels were placed on either side of General Liddament, who sat at the head of the table, deep in thought. His thin, cleanshaven, ascetic features, those of a schoolmaster or priest – also a touch of Sir Magnus Donners – were yellowish in complexion. Perhaps that tawny colour clarified the imagery, for now it became plain.
Here was Pharaoh, carved in the niche of a shrine between two tutelary deities, who shielded him from human approach. All was manifest. Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson and Colonel Pedlar were animal-headed gods of Ancient Egypt. Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson was, of course, Horus, one of those sculptured representations in which the Lord of the Morning Sun resembles an owl rather than a falcon; a bad-tempered owl at that. Colonel Pedlar’s dog’s muzzle, on the other hand, was a milder than normal version of the jackal-faced Anubis, whose dominion over Tombs and the Dead did indeed fall within A. & Q.’s province. Some of the others round about were less easy to place in the Egyptian pantheon. In fact, one came finally to the conclusion, none of them were gods at all, mere bondsmen of the temple. For example, Cocksidge, officer responsible for Intelligence duties, with his pale eager elderly-little-boy expression – although on the edge of thirty – was certainly the lowest of slaves, dusting only exterior, less sacred precincts of the shrine, cleaning out with his hands the priest’s latrine, if such existed on the temple premises. Next to Cocksidge sat Greening, the General’s A.D.C., pink cheeked, fair haired, good-natured, about twenty years old, probably an alien captive awaiting sacrifice on the altar of this anthropomorphic trinity. Before anyone else could be satisfactorily identified, Colonel Pedlar spoke.
“How went the battle, Derrick?” he asked.
There had been silence until then. Everyone was tired. Besides, although Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson and Colonel Pedlar were not on notably good terms with each other, they felt rank to inhibit casual conversation with subordinates. Both habitually showed anxiety to avoid a junior officer’s eye at meals in case speech might seem required. To make sure nothing so inadvertent should happen, each would uninterruptedly gaze into the other’s face across the table, with all the fixedness of a newly engaged couple, eternally enchanted by the charming appearance of the other. The colonels were, indeed, thus occupied when Colonel Pedlar suddenly put his question. This was undoubtedly intended as a form of expressing polite interest in his colleague’s day, rather than to show any very keen desire for further tactical information about the exercise, a subject with which Colonel Pedlar, and everyone else present, must by now be replete. However Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson chose to take the enquiry in the latter sense.
“Pretty bloody, Eric,” he said. “Pretty bloody. If you want to know about it, read the sit-rep.”
“I’ve read it, Derrick.”
The assonance of the two colonels’ forenames always imparted a certain whimsicality to their duologues.
“Read it again, Eric, read it again. I’d like you to. There are several points I want to bring up later.”
“Where is it, Derrick?”
Colonel Pedlar seemed to possess no intellectual equipment for explaining that he had absolutely no need, even less desire, to re-read the situation report. Perhaps, having embarked on the subject, he felt a duty to follow it up.
“Cocksidge will find it for you, Eric, writ in his own fair hand. Seek out the sit-rep, Jack.”
In certain moods, especially when he teased Widmerpool, the General was inclined to frame his sentences in a kind of Old English vernacular. Either because the style appealed equally to himself, or, more probably, because use of it implied compliment to the Divisional Commander, Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson also favoured this mode of speech. At his words, Cocksidge was on his feet in an instant, his features registering, as ever, deference felt for those of higher rank than himself. Cocksidge’s demeanour to his superiors always recalled a phrase used by Odo Stevens when we had been on a course together at Aldershot:
“Good morning, Sergeant-Major, here’s a sparrow for your cat.”
Cocksidge was, so to speak, in a chronic state of providing, at a higher level of rank, sparrows for sergeant-majors’ cats. His own habitual incivility to subordinates was humdrum enough, but the imaginative lengths to which he would carry obsequiousness to superiors displayed something of genius. He took a keen delight in running errands for anyone a couple of ranks above himself, his subservience even to majors showing the essence of humility. He had made a close, almost scientific study of the likes and dislikes of Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson and Colonel Pedlar, while the General he treated with reverence in which there was even a touch of worship, of deification. In contact with General Liddament, so extreme was his respect that Cocksidge even abated a little professional boyishness of manner, otherwise such a prominent feature of his all-embracing servility, seeming by its appealing tone to ask forbearance for his own youth and immaturity. Widmerpool, to do him justice, despised Cocksidge, an attitude Cocksidge seemed positively to enjoy. The two colonels, on the other hand, undoubtedly approved his fervent attentions, appeared even appreciative of his exaggeratedly juvenile mannerisms. In addition, it had to be admitted Cocksidge did his job competently, apart from such elaborations of his own personality. Now he came hurriedly forward with the situation report.
“Thanks, Jack,” said Colonel Pedlar.
He studied the paper, gazing at it with that earnest, apparently uncomprehending stare, of which Widmerpool had more than once complained.
“I’ve seen this,” he said. “Seems all right, Derrick. Take it back where it belongs, Jack.”
“Glad it seems
all right to you, Eric,” said Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson, “because I rather flatter myself the operational staff, under my guidance, did a neat job.”
The bite in his tone should have conveyed warning. He terminated this comment, as was his habit, by giving a smirk, somehow audibly extruded from the left-hand side of his mouth, a kind of hiss, intended to underline the aptness or wit of his words. Unless in a bad humour he would always give vent to this muted sound after speaking. The fact was Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson did not attempt to conceal his own sense of superiority over a brother officer, inferior not only in appointment, regiment and mental equipment, but also in a field where Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson felt himself particularly to shine, that is to say in the arena where men of the world sparklingly perform. The play of his wit was often directed against the more leisurely intellect of Colonel Pedlar, whose efforts to keep up with all this parade of brilliance occasionally landed him in disaster. It was so on that night. After giving a glance at the situation report, he handed it back to Cocksidge, who received the document with bent head, as if at Communion or in the act of being entrusted with a relic of supreme holiness. There could be no doubt that the sit-rep had at least confirmed Colonel Pedlar in the belief that nothing remained to worry about where the exercise was concerned. At such moments as this one he was inclined to overreach himself.
“Going to finish up with a glass of port to-night, Derrick,” he asked, “now that our exertions are almost at an end?”
“Port, Eric?”
A wealth of meaning attached to the tone given by Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson to the name of the wine. Widmerpool’s mother, years before, had pronounced “port” with a similar interrogative inflexion in her voice, though probably to imply her guests were lucky to get any port at all, rather than for the reasons impelling Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson so precisely to enunciate the word.
“Yes, Derrick?”
“Not to-night, Eric. Port don’t do the liver any good. Not the sort of port we have in this Mess anyway. I shall steer clear of port myself, Eric, and I should advise you to do the same.”
“You do?”
“I do, Eric.”
“Well, I think I’ll have a small glass nevertheless, Derrick. I’m sorry you won’t be accompanying me.”
Colonel Pedlar gave the necessary order. Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson shook his head in disapproval. He was known to favour economy; it was said, even to the extent of parsimony. A glass of port was brought to the table. Colonel Pedlar, looking like an advertisement for some well-known brand of the wine in question, held the glass to the lamp-light, turning the rim in his hand.
“Fellow in my regiment was telling me just before the war that his grandfather laid down a pipe of port for him to inherit on his twenty-first birthday,” he remarked.
Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson grunted. He did this in a manner to imply observation of that particular custom, even the social necessity of such a provision, was too well accepted in decent society for any casual commendation of the act to be required; though the tradition might be comparatively unfamiliar in what he was accustomed to describe as “Heavy” infantry; and, it might be added, not much of a regiment at that.
“Twelve dozen bottles,” said Colonel Pedlar dreamily. “Pretty good cellar for a lad when he comes of age.”
Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson suddenly showed attention. He began to bare a row of teeth under the biscuit-coloured bristles and small hooked nose.
“Twelve dozen, Eric?”
“That’s it, isn’t it, Derrick?”
Colonel Pedlar sounded nervous now, already aware no doubt that he had ventured too far in claiming knowledge of the world; had made, not for the first time, an elementary blunder.
“Twelve dozen?” repeated Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson.
He added additional emphasis to the question, carrying the implication that he himself must have misheard.”
“Yes.”
“You’re wide of the mark, Eric. Completely out of the picture.”
“I am, Derrick?”
“You certainly are, Eric.”
“What is a pipe then, Derrick? I’m not in the wine trade.”
“Don’t have to be in the wine trade to know what a pipe of port is, old boy. Everyone ought to know that. Nothing to do with being a shopman. More than fifty dozen. That’s a pipe. You’re absolutely out in your calculations. Couldn’t be more so. Mismanaged your slide-rule. Landed in an altogether incorrect map-square. Committed a real bloomer. Got off on the wrong foot, as well as making a false start.”
“Is that a pipe, by Jove?”
“That’s a pipe, Eric.”
“I got it wrong, Derrick.”
“You certainly did, Eric. You certainly got it wrong. You did, by Jove.”
“You’ve shaken me, Derrick. I’ll have to do better next time.
“You will, Eric, you will – or we won’t know what to think of you.”
General Liddament seemed not to hear them. It was as if he had fallen into a cataleptic sleep or was under the influence of some potent drug. After this exchange between the two colonels, another long silence fell, one of those protracted abstinences from all conversation so characteristic of army Messes – British ones, at least – during which, as every moment passes, you feel someone is on the point of giving voice to a startling utterance, yet, for no particular reason, that utterance is always left pending, for ever choked back, incapable, from inner necessity, of being finally brought to birth. An old tin alarm-clock ticked away noisily on the dresser, emphasising the speedy passing of mortal life. Colonel Pedlar sipped away at his port, relish departed after his blunder. Cocksidge, with the side of his palm, very quietly scraped together several crumbs from the surface of the table cloth, depositing them humbly, though at the same time rather coyly, on his own empty plate, as if to give active expression, even in the sphere of food, to his perpetual dedication in keeping spick and span the surroundings of those set in authority over him, doing his poor best in making them as comfortable as possible. Only that morning, in the dim light at an early hour in the farmhouse kitchen, I had tripped over him, nearly fallen headlong, as he crouched on his knees before the fire, warming the butter ration so that its consistency might be appropriately emulsified for the General to slice with ease when he appeared at the breakfast table. No doubt, during all such silences as the one that now had fallen on the Mess, the mind of Cocksidge was perpetually afire with fresh projects for self-abasement before the powerful. By now there was no more to hope for, so far as food was concerned. It seemed time to withdraw from the board, in other respects unrewarding.
“May I go and see how the Defence Platoon is getting on, sir?”
General Liddament appeared not to have heard. Then, with an effort, he jerked himself from out of his deep contemplation. It was like asking permission from one of the supine bodies in an opium den. He took a few seconds more to come to, consider the question. When he spoke it was with almost biblical solemnity.
“Go, Jenkins, go. No officer of mine shall ever be hindered from attending to the needs of his men.”
A sergeant entered the room at that moment and approached the General.
“Just come through on the W/T, sir, enemy planes over the town again.”
“Right – take routine action.”
The sergeant retired. I followed him out into a narrow passage where my equipment hung from a hook. Then, buckling on belt and pouches, I made for the outbuildings. Most of the platoon were pretty comfortable in a loft piled high with straw, some of them snoring away. Sergeant Harmer was about to turn in himself, leaving things in the hands of Corporal Mantle. I ran through the matter of sentry duties. All was correct.
“Just come through they’re over the town again, Sergeant.”
“Are they again, the buggers.”
Harmer, a middle-aged man with bushy eyebrows, largely built, rather slow, given to moralising, was in civilian life foreman in a steel works.
“We haven�
��t got to wake up for them to-night.”
“It’s good that, sir, besides you never know they won’t get you.”
“True enough.”
“Ah, you don’t, life’s uncertain, no mistake. Here to-day, gone to-morrow. After my wife went to hospital last year the nurse met me, I asked how did the operation go, she didn’t answer, said the doctor wanted a word, so I knew what he was going to say. Only the night before when I’d been with her she said ‘I think I’ll get some new teeth.’ We can’t none of us tell.”
“No, we can’t.”
Even the first time I had been told the teeth story, I could think of no answer than that.
“I’ll be getting some sleep. All’s correct and Corporal Mantle will take over.”
“Good night, Sergeant.”
Corporal Mantle remained. He wanted to seize this opportunity for speaking a word in private about the snag arisen about his candidature for a commission. Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson had decided to make things as difficult as possible. Mantle was a good N.C.O. Nobody wanted to lose him. Indeed, Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson had plans to promote him sergeant, eventually perhaps sergeant-major, when opportunity arose to get rid of Harmer, not young enough or capable of exceptional energy, even if he did the job adequately. Widmerpool, through whom such matters to some extent circulated, was not interested either way in what happened to Mantle. He abetted Hogbourne-Johnson’s obstructive tactics in that field, partly as line of least resistance, partly because he was himself never tired of repeating the undeniable truth that the army is an institution directed not towards the convenience of the individual, but to the production of the most effective organisation for an instrument designed to win wars.
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