Ripeness is All

by Eric Linklater

  Wilfrid said, ‘There’s awfully bad news from the vicarage again. Mrs Arbor told Mrs Barrow that poor Lady Caroline had had a very bad night, and they’ve almost given up hope.’

  The shadow of death descended on Arthur and extinguished the mild cheerfulness that company and a little gin had bred in him. Stephen moved restlessly, for he also was frightened of illness and the grave. He took a bottle of bismuth tablets from his waistcoat pocket and shook one into his hand.

  ‘I can’t think why she had that absurd garden-party,’ he said. ‘It was such an unnecessary and humiliating way to catch cold.’

  ‘Life is full of humiliation,’ said Arthur. He was on the fringe of his Christian mood. ‘It’s very salutary to be humbled. I’m often thrown into the very depths of despair, and do you know, I always think that I see things more clearly then, and I feel much better after it’s over.’

  ‘Oh, do let’s be more cheerful,’ cried Wilfrid. ‘No one is sorrier for Lady Caroline than I am, but we shan’t do her any good by getting in the miserables about her. I’m going to put a record on the gramophone, something nice and noisy.’

  In a moment the room was filled with the alarming clamour of Duke Ellington’s band, and Wilfrid, smiling seraphically and snapping his fingers, shouted, ‘Isn’t that lovely? Oh, I do like a good noisy band, and really there’s lots of fun in life, and this is honestly a very nice house, Stephen, however much you want that red-brick thing that was built by Queen Anne or somebody. Stephen! Let’s ask Arthur to stay to dinner with us! It was a great big chicken, and the gooseberry fool is simply enormous; I went to the kitchen and looked at it, and Mrs Barrow gave me a spoonful to try it. And if Arthur stays we’ll open a bottle of Liebfraumilch and have a really nice party. Oh, do stay, Arthur! Make him stay, Stephen!’

  ‘Well, Daisy will be expecting me,’ said Arthur, but Wilfrid interrupted him. ‘We’re expecting you, too,’ he said.

  Stephen, who liked company and was not averse from annoying Daisy, added, ‘Yes, you’d better stay, Arthur. There seems to be a good dinner, and if you’d like to hear it I’ll read you part of the new poem I’m working on. It’s experimental, and very incomplete as yet, but I think you’ll find it fairly interesting.’

  Arthur, after another little show of hesitation, decided to stay, and Wilfrid, having run into the kitchen to warn Mrs Barrow, returned and took him upstairs. Arthur was shown into the Blue Room.

  ‘You’ll want to brush your hair, and have a wash, and make yourself comfortable,’ said Wilfrid. ‘Mrs Barrow’s going to bring you a clean towel, and don’t hurry, because there’s plenty of time. I’m going to brush my hair too.’

  Mrs Barrow appeared with the towel. ‘Good evening, Mr Gander,’ she said. ‘I’m sure it’s very kind of you to come and see Mr Stephen like this. He’s been very poorly for the last two or three weeks, and it cheers him up to have somebody come in and talk to him. What he’d do without Mr Wilfrid heaven only knows. Mr Wilfrid’s a godsend to him. But there, Mr Wilfrid would be a godsend to any house, he’s that nice and cheerful and considering. And Mr Stephen deserves to have somebody like Mr Wilfrid, for he’s a very kind and well-behaved gentleman himself, and I only wish he could be a bit happier. Indeed two nicer young gentlemen I wouldn’t wish to have anything to do with. No bother in the house, and so careful with the furniture, and no trouble over them getting drunk, like so many young gentlemen do, or bringing in undesirable females, which is worse. Why, Mr Wilfrid often helps me with the dusting, and what could be nicer than that? Now if you’ve got everything you want, Mr Gander, I’ll go down and take a look at the fish: I got some fillets of whiting and I want the sauce to be just right. There’s no need to hurry yourself, for dinner won’t be ready for ten minutes yet.’

  It was an admirable meal they sat down to, and the hock was so good that Wilfrid brought a second bottle, which tasted even better. Arthur, his fingers holding the stem of a green-tinted glass, felt his soul expand. ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘the flavour of this wine reminds me of a bottle of champagne that I found – well, that I acquired by the fortune of war in March 1918. It was during the great retreat, and we were coming back through one of those little Somme towns: Morlancourt, I think, or was it Bray? The strain of that week was so dreadful that one’s memory is a little vague. But I think it was Morlancourt. Yes, I’m almost sure it was. The place was deserted, of course, and some of our men forced their way into an estaminet. One could hardly blame them, poor devils, they’d had a fearfully tough time, but one had to clear them out, of course. So I went in and said, “Now, you fellows, this isn’t the way to win the war,” and got them out. A little jocularity isn’t a bad thing on occasions like that, so long as it doesn’t interfere with discipline. Now just as I was following them I caught sight of a very old bottle of champagne, quite grey with dust, standing all by itself on one of the shelves, and I thought to myself, “If you don’t take it, the Boche will, and that won’t help the Allied Cause, will it?” So I reached up and took it off the shelf and put it in my haversack. Well, we had a pretty hard time for the rest of the day. We were doing a rearguard action, with a bit of counter-attacking now and then, and the Boche was coming on fast and working round to the north. But about five o’clock in the afternoon we had a little respite. We had a decent position on the edge of a small wood, and the Boche seemed to be coming to a stop. So I saw that the men were making themselves as comfortable as they could, and I established contact with the people on my right – Rutlands they were, I think. Yes, Rutlands – and then it seemed time to sample the champagne. So I got the bottle out of my haversack, and do you know, it was a bottle of Krug’s Private Cuvée, 1892. 1892 ! It had gone still, naturally, but the flavour, though somewhat unusual for champagne, was simply delicious. I drank it all, and no sooner had I finished it than the Boche started shelling again, and we were forced to retire. Well, everybody was absolutely worn out, of course, nerves shot to pieces, and that sort of thing, but the champagne had made a new man of me, and I carried one fellow into safety – a mere youngster, who’d been rather badly hit – and came back for another – a corporal with the d.g.m., I remember – and I carried on like that without feeling a trace of fatigue, or fear, or even discomfort. It was simply due to the champagne, of course; I’m not pretending to be a hero, or any-think like that; one merely did one’s duty, like everybody else. But I must confess that I got a nasty shock when I found the Boches had come round to the north of our position, and a couple of their machine-guns were playing down a sunk road that we had to cross. However, there was only one thing to do, and luckily I had the presence of mind to do it. I got hold of a Lewis gun and a couple of drums of ammunition, and jumped down into the road, and began blazing at ‘em like hell. Not wildly or indiscriminately, of course, but quite coolly – I remember their bullets kicking up the white mud all round me, like little fountains, and thinking it was rather pretty, if one had the time to watch it – and actually I was shooting rather well, because in no time I’d laid out the crews of both their guns. Well, all except one fellow, that is, and he left his gun and came belting down the road with a rifle and bayonet, straight for me. Now he was a brave fellow. What I’d been doing was nothing at all, really, but that Boche was really a gallant fellow. However, I couldn’t let him get away with it, and I had my sights on him in a split second. And then I got another shock. The drum was empty! I’d fired my last shot! Well, I hadn’t much time to lose, for the Boche was only eight or ten yards away now, a big fellow he was, too, and suddenly I remembered that in a fit of absent-mindedness I’d put the empty champagne bottle in my haversack. That was a bit of sheer luck. I had it out in no time, got to my feet, and chucked it at the Boche as hard as ever I could. It was a very pretty throw-in, though I say it myself, and took him right on the point of the chin. It bowled him over, of course; a great big fellow, well over six feet, I should say, and he went down hard; and by that time my company, or what was left of them, were all across the road and compar
atively safe. Rather a joke, don’t you think: bowling an outsize Prussian with an empty bottle? Krug versus Krupp, eh? And this hock of yours, though actually it’s quite different, somehow recalled to me the flavour of that champagne, which really was the most delicious wine I’ve ever drunk.’

  Wilfrid had listened to this long recital with flattering interest and little cries of appreciation, and when it was finished he exclaimed a dozen times his wonderment at Arthur’s bravery. ‘Oh, I’d never have been able to do all that,’ he said. ‘And then to aim so well with the bottle! I think it was simply marvellous. Do have some brandy now, Arthur.’

  ‘A bottle of Krug, 1892,’ said Arthur slowly. ‘That’s what makes the story worth telling.’

  Stephen had not enjoyed the tale. He hated all thought of the War. He had been eleven years old when the War Office reported his father as wounded and missing and probably killed; and after the first desolation of grief he had comforted himself by pretending that his father was not really dead, but on secret service behind the enemy lines. The report of his death was a device intended to disarm suspicion, for the work he was engaged on was of the utmost importance. But sooner or later – perhaps not till the War was over – he would come home with medals on his breast and glorious fame. Year by year this hope grew sick, but desperately survived, and died at last with bitter reluctance. Stephen, in violent revulsion and jealousy of those whose fathers and friends had miraculously survived the War, turned his back upon it. But the War, like the sound of footsteps on a lonely road, made him look behind, and when he was twenty-one he had faced it squarely enough for a little while. He had tried, with genuine passion, to write a poem called War Memorial. It was to have been a poem in the grand manner, classical in form, restrained in language, but showing beneath restraint such enormities of anger and grief as would make everyone cling like frightened lovers to the sweet shape of peace. But from the beginning it lacked strength and fluency, and soon its manner became a blurred staccato that hobbled into exhaustion. It limped from mild epigram to milder until it could go no farther. There was an early distich that declared:

  We use the earth like a furnished and sunlit room: They in their bravery took the earth for their tomb.

  That was the best of the completed couplets, and the conceit was old. The War had again defeated Stephen’s hopes, and making a more determined effort to shut it out of his mind, he had succeeded fairly well with the kind help of time.

  He was irritated, therefore, by the necessity of listening to Arthur, but as Arthur’s host he endured the tedious narrative without complaint. Decency kept him prisoner, and the never-ending words fell upon his ear as loudly and tire-somely as rain on a tin roof. He remembered a quotation from Baudelaire – he had come across it that morning in a commonplace-book, side by side with a note on Virginia ham – peanut-fed pork smoked slowly over hickory chips and cooked with brown sugar, black pepper, and molasses – but the lines from Baudelaire were more relevant. He repeated them under his breath:

  Je suis comme le roi d’un pays pluvieux,

  Riche mais impuissant, jeune et pourtant tres vieux.’

  It was very satisfying to quote Baudelaire, and Stephen felt a little better.

  After a glass or two of brandy Arthur got into full swing with his fictitious reminiscences, and Wilfrid sat spellbound to hear how he used to throw bombs into German dugouts, and lie all night in No Man’s Land, and narrowly escape drowning in shell-holes at Passchendaele, and tear off his puttees to tie tourniquets on shattered limbs. Nor could Stephen remain wholly remote from the horrid influence of Arthur’s stories. He lay back in his chair, his long pale hands folded over his plum-coloured velvet coat, his eyes half-closed, and listened despite his aversion.

  Arthur’s adventures became bloodier and more circumstantial and more significant as the night grew older. He let Wilfrid pour, for the fifth time, a little more liqueur brandy into the balloon-shaped glass he held so comfortably in his cupped hands, and staring at the amber transparency as though it were a magic mirror, he said dreamily, ‘It’s interesting to think that two thousand years ago some Roman soldier was sitting in his villa talking to young men about Caesar’s campaign in Gaul, and telling them stories that seemed as strange to them as mine do to you. And a thousand years ago Crusaders came home with stories very like mine, about the Saracens; and English archers …’

  ‘Remembered with advantages what feats they did that day,’ said Stephen yawning.

  ‘What I mean’, said Arthur, ‘is that this is the proper way to learn history. History ought to be a warm and vital tradition, learnt from the lips of survivors of great events. Those cold official narratives are worthless, absolutely worthless. There’s not one of them will tell you the things that I’ve been telling you. You can only hear stories like mine from old soldiers; old sweats, as they used to be called. And such stories are really valuable. There are two episodes in my own experience, for example, that make a real contribution to the history of the War, though they’ve never been published, and perhaps never will be published. The first is rather too long a story to tell you now, and I’d need a map of Cambrai to make it clear; perhaps it’s enough to say that if my advice had been taken the War would have been over by Christmas 1917. But there was a lot of jealousy between Regular officers and people with Territorial and New Army commissions, and my advice was disregarded, with what results you know. But the second episode can be told in a few minutes, and it’s more amusing than the other.’

  Arthur sipped his brandy. ‘You remember Haig’s famous message in April 1918, when he warned us that we were fighting with our backs to the wall. Well, there aren’t many people who know how he came to use that very striking phrase, but I’m one of them, and for a very good reason; it was I who suggested it to him, and the Crown Prince of Germany suggested it to me. Oh, I don’t mean that he did it deliberately – we weren’t on visiting terms, you know – but by a curious coincidence I happened to overhear a very significant conversation between him and Ludendorff. We weren’t far from St Éloi at the time – between St Éloi and Zillebeke, as a matter of fact – and we were having rather a rough time. Well, that’s an understatement, because it was absolute dog-fighting, here, there, and everywhere. And one night, when it was fairly quiet, I took my sergeant and went over to the Boche line to see if I could pick up any information. We came to a forward sap, and before the sentry in it could utter a sound my sergeant had him by the throat and quietened him for ever. – He was a very fine fellow, Sergeant Allsop: killed at Bapaume, poor devil. – Well, we crept down the sap, and though I get quite excited to think about it now, I remember feeling as cool as a cucumber at the time. Simply as cool as a cucumber ! We went down the sap till we came to a bit of a bend, and just beyond that was the trench, and in the trench, not more than two or three yards from us, there were several people talking. Now I don’t know much German, but I listened carefully, and I heard someone saying that the evenings were getting longer, and someone else replying it was very cold for the time of year, and that sort of thing. But presently, to my surprise, I heard them talking English. Now that was extraordinarily interesting, and I determined to have a look at them. With infinite caution, moving only an inch at a time, I crept towards the trench and looked round the corner. Fortunately the sap was very dark, and still more fortunately there was enough light in the sky for me to see their faces. There were four or five people standing there, and you can imagine my amazement when I recognized two of them as the Crown Prince and Ludendorff! I was completely taken aback, and for a little while I couldn’t make out what they were talking about. – I suppose they were speaking English so that the other Germans wouldn’t understand them. – But then I heard Ludendorff say, “They have no reserves at all,” and I realized they were discussing the strength of our position.

  ‘“No reserves whatever,” said the Crown Prince.

  ‘“Unless they bring up the Waacs,” said Ludendorff.

  ‘“Perhaps they wi
ll bring up the Waacs,” said the Grown Prince.

  ‘“How would you like that?” asked Ludendorff.

  ‘“That would be very nice,” said the Crown Prince. “When we get to Paris I shall invite all the Waacs to a ball.”

  ‘Then Ludendorff said it was time for them to return to their headquarters, and I heard no more. But what I had heard was of the utmost importance, and when we got back to our own line I reported to the CO. and suggested I should make a further report to Sir Douglas Haig in person. He readily agreed, and I went down the line at once. The C.-in-C.’s headquarters were at St Omer then. There was some delay before I was taken in to see Haig, and I got the impression that everybody there was more than a little worried and apprehensive. Everybody except Haig, that is. He was like iron, like a rock, though he looked very tired and worn. Well, I told him my story as clearly as I could, and he recognized the significance of it immediately: if Ludendorff and the Crown Prince had come up to the front line, it meant there was going to be another big push, and from what they had said about our lack of reserves I had gathered they were feeling very confident. Then Sir Douglas asked me, “Is that all you heard?” Well, I rather disliked the idea of repeating their joke about the Waacs, because Haig wasn’t the sort of man to whom you would care to tell that sort of thing. I mean, there was a kind of nobility about him. So for a moment or two I stammered and hesitated a little.

  ‘“What else did they say?’ he asked, and frowned a little, and I felt more nervous than ever, and stammered again.

  ‘“Captain Gander,” he said, “I order you to tell me what the Crown Prince said next.”

  ‘So in absolute desperation I told him. But because I was so nervous I made a spoonerism, or rather two spoonerisms, and instead of saying, “He would like to invite the Waacs to a ball,” I said, “He would fight when he liked with our backs to a wall.”