Cobb was making notes in a little book. Marinko gazed out of the window, overcome with Slav melancholy, or, more specifically – being of the party that supported the Resistance groups of Mihailovich – dejection at the course British policy appeared to be taking in that connexion.
‘Just spell out the name of that place we stopped over last night, Major Jenkins,’ said Cobb.
‘C-A-B-O-U-R-G, sir.’
As I uttered the last letter, scales fell from my eyes. Everything was transformed. It all came back – like the tea-soaked madeleine itself – in a torrent of memory … Cabourg … We had just driven out of Cabourg … out of Proust’s Balbec. Only a few minutes before, I had been standing on the esplanade along which, wearing her polo cap and accompanied by the little band of girls he had supposed the mistresses of professional bicyclists, Albertine had strolled into Marcel’s life. Through the high windows of the Grand Hotel’s dining-room – conveying to those without the sensation of staring into an aquarium – was to be seen Saint-Loup, at the same table Bloch, mendaciously claiming acquaintance with the Swanns. A little farther along the promenade was the Casino, its walls still displaying tattered playbills, just like the one Charlus, wearing his black straw hat, had pretended to examine, after an attempt at long range to assess the Narrator’s physical attractions and possibilities. Here Elstir had painted; Prince Odoacer played golf. Where was the little railway line that bad carried them all to the Verdurins’ villa? Perhaps it ran in another direction to that we were taking; more probably it was no more.
‘And the name of the brigadier at the Battle Clearance Group?’ asked Cobb. ‘The tall one who took us round those captured guns?’
He wrote down the name and closed the notebook.
‘You told me, Major Jenkins, that at the beginning of the war you yourself saw a Royal Engineer colonel wearing a double-breasted service-dress tunic. You can assure me of that?’
‘I can, sir – and, on making enquiries, was told that cut was permitted by regulations, provided no objection was taken by regimental or higher authority.’
Proustian musings still hung in the air when we came down to the edge of the water. It had been a notable adventure. True, an actual night passed in one of the bedrooms of the Grand Hotel itself – especially, like Finn’s, an appropriately sleepless one – might have crowned the magic of the happening. At the same time, a faint sense of disappointment superimposed on an otherwise absorbing inner experience was in its way suitably Proustian too: a reminder of the eternal failure of human life to respond a hundred per cent; to rise to the greatest heights without allowing at the same time some suggestion, however slight, to take shape in indication that things could have been even better.
Now, looking north into the light mist that hung over the waves, it was at first difficult to know what we were regarding. In the foreground lay a kind of inland sea, or rather two huge lagoons, the further enclosed by moles and piers that seemed exterior and afloat; the inner and nearer, with fixed breakwaters formed of concrete blocks, from which, here and there, rose tall chimneys, rows of cranes, drawbridges. The faraway floating docks delimited smaller pools and basins. Within the two large and separate surfaces, islands were dotted about supporting similar structures, the outlines of which extended into the misty distances as far as the horizon. What, one wondered, could this great maritime undertaking be? Was it planned to build a new Venice here on the water? Perhaps those were docks constructed on an unusually generous scale to serve some great port – yet no large area of warehouses was at hand to suggest commerce, nor other signs of a big town anywhere along the shore. On the contrary, such houses as were to be seen, near or further inland, were in ruins, their extent in any case not at all resembling the outskirts of a city. The roadstead itself was now all but abandoned, at least the small extent of shipping riding at anchor there altogether disproportionate to the potential accommodation of the harbour – for harbour it must certainly be. There was something unreal, ghostly, even a little horrifying, about these grey marine shapes that seemed to have no present purpose, yet, like battlements of a now ruined castle, implied a violent, bloody history.
‘Tiens,’ said General Philidor. ‘C’est bien le Mulberry.’’
The Mulberry it was, vast floating harbour designed for invasion, soon to be dismantled and forgotten, like the Colossus of Rhodes or Hanging Gardens of Babylon. We tramped its causeways out over the sea.
‘We’ll soon be in Brussels,’ said Marinko. ‘I hope to get some eau-de-cologne. In London it is unobtainable. Not a drop to be had.’
When we drove into the city’s main boulevards, their sedate nineteenth-century self-satisfaction, British troops everywhere, made our cortège somewhat resemble Ensor’s Entry of Christ into Brussels, with soldiers, bands and workers’ delegation. One looked about for the Colman’s ‘Mustart’ advertisement spelt wrong, but it was nowhere to be seen. Our billet was a VIP one, a requisitioned hotel presided over by a brisk little cock-sparrow of a captain, who evidently knew his job.
‘We had the hell of a party here the other night,’ he said. ‘A crowd of senior officers as drunk as monkeys, brigadiers rooting the palms out of the pots.’
His words conjured up the scene in Antony and Cleopatra, when arm-in-arm the generals dance on Pompey’s galley, a sequence of the play that makes it scarcely possible to disbelieve that Shakespeare himself served for at least a period of his life in the army.
‘With thy grapes our hairs be crowned?’
‘Took some cleaning up after, I can tell you.’
‘Talking of cleanliness, would a cake of soap be any use to yourself?’
‘Most acceptable.’
‘In return, perhaps you could recommend the best place to buy a bottle of brandy?’
‘Leave it to me – a couple, if you feel like spending that amount. I understand your people go to Army Group Main HQ tomorrow.’
‘That’s it – and we’ve been promised a visit to the Field-Marshal himself the following day.’
At Army Group Main the atmosphere was taut, the swagger – there was a good deal of swagger – a trifle forced; the court, as it were, of a military Trimalchio. Trimalchio, after all, had been an unusually successful business man; for all that is known, might have proved an unusually successful general. A force of junior staff officers with the demeanour of aggressive schoolboys had to be penetrated.
‘You can’t park those cars there,’ one of them shouted at Finn. ‘Get ’em out of the way at once and look sharp about it.’
Finn did as he was told. Indoors, the place was even more like a school, one dominated by specialized, possibly rather cranky theories; efficient, all the same, and encouraging the boys to be independently minded, even self-applauding. Perhaps the last epithet was unfair. This, after all, was a staff that had delivered the goods pretty well so far. They had a right to be pleased with themselves. There was an odd incident while the Chief of Staff, a major-general, addressed the assembled military attachés. In the background a telephone rang. It was answered by a curly haired captain, who looked about fifteen. He began to carry on a long conversation at the top of his voice, accompanied by a lot of laughter. It was on the subject of some more or less official matter, though apparently nothing very weighty. I wondered how long this would be allowed to continue. The Chief of Staff looked up once or twice, but stood it for several minutes.
‘Shut down that telephone.’
The captain’s chatter was brought to an end. The general had spoken curtly, but most senior officers would have shown far less forbearance, especially in the presence of a relatively distinguished visiting party of Allied officers. Clearly things were run in their own particular way at Army Group Headquarters. I looked forward to seeing whether the same atmosphere would prevail at the Field-Marshal’s Tactical HQ.
By this time, the Allied advance into Germany had penetrated about a couple of miles across the frontier at its farthest point. Accordingly, we left Belgium and entered th
at narrow strip of the Netherlands that runs between the two other countries, travelling towards the town of Roermond, still held by the enemy, against which our artillery was now in action. The long straight roads, leading through minefields, advertised at intervals as ‘swept to verges’, were lined on either side with wooden crates of ammunition stacked high under the poplars. Armour was moving in a leisurely manner across this dull flat country, designed by
Mature for a battlefield, over which armies had immemorially campaigned. The identification flash of my old Division had appeared more than once on the shoulder of infantrymen passed on the route. When we stopped to inspect the organization of a bridgehead, I asked the local Conducting Officer from Lines of Communication if he knew whether any of my former Regiment were to be found in the neighbourhood.
‘Which brigade?’
I told him.
‘We should be in the middle of them here. Of course we may not be near your particular battalion. Like to see if we can find some of them? Your funny-wunnies will be happy for a few minutes, won’t they?’
The military attachés would be occupied for half an hour or more with what they were inspecting. In any case, Finn as usual well ahead with time schedule, it would be undesirable to arrive unduly early for the Field-Marshal.
‘I’d like to see if any of them are about.’
‘Come along then.’
The L. of C. captain led the way down a road lined with small houses. Before we had gone far, sure enough, three or four soldiers wearing the Regimental flash were found engaged on some fatigue, piling stuff on to a truck. They were all very young.
‘These look like your chaps – right regiment anyway, if not your actual battalion. You’d better have a word with them.’
I made some enquiries. Opportunity to knock off work was, as usual, welcome. They turned out to be my own Battalion, rather than the other one of the same Regiment within the brigade.
‘Is an officer named Kedward still with you?’
‘Captain Kedward, sir?’
‘That’s the one.’
‘Oh yes, the Company Commander, sir?’
‘He actually commands your Company?’
‘Why, yes, he does, sir. That’s him.’
‘You’re all in Captain Kedward’s Company?’
‘We are, sir.’
It seemed astonishing to them that I did not know that already. I could not understand this surprise at first, then remembered that I too was wearing the regimental crest and flash, so that they certainly thought that I belonged to the same brigade as themselves, possibly even newly posted to their own unit. Soldiers often do not know all the officers of their battalion by sight. Indeed, it is not uncommon for the Adjutant to be thought of as the Commanding Officer, because he is the one most often heard giving orders.
‘Is Captain Kedward likely to be about?’
‘He’s in the Company Office just now, sir.’
‘Near here?’
‘Over there, sir, where the swill tubs are.’
‘You stay here, sir,’ said one of them. ‘I’ll get Captain Kedward for you.’
Work was now more or less at a standstill. Cigarettes were handed out. It seemed they had arrived fairly recently in this sector. Earlier, the Battalion had been in action in the Caen area, where casualties had been fairly heavy. I asked about some of the individuals I had known, but they were too young to remember any of them. The L. of C. captain became understandably bored listening to all this.
‘Now you’re back with your long lost unit, I’ll leave you to have a natter,’ he said. ‘Want to check up on some of my own business round the corner. Be with you again in five minutes.’
He went off. At the same moment Kedward, with the young soldier who had offered to fetch him, appeared from the door of a small farmhouse. It was more than four years since I had set eyes on him. He looked a shade older, though not much; that is to say he had lost that earlier appearance of being merely a schoolboy who had dressed up in uniform for fun, burnt-corking his upper lip to simulate a moustache. The moustache now had a perfectly genuine existence. He saluted, seeming to be rather flustered.
‘Idwal.’
‘Sir?’
He had not recognized me.
‘Don’t you remember? I’m Nick Jenkins. We were together in Rowland Gwatkin’s Company.’
Even that information did not appear to make any immediate impression on Kedward.
‘We last saw each other at Castlemallock.’
‘The Casdemallock school of Chemical Warfare, sir?’
On the whole, where duty took one, few captains called a major ‘sir’, unless they were being very regimental. Everyone below the rank of lieutenant-colonel within the official world in which one moved was regarded as doing much the same sort of job, officers below the rank of captain being in any case rare. Responsibilities might vary, sometimes the lower rank carrying the higher responsibility; for example, the CIGS’s ADC, a captain no longer young, being in his way a considerable figure. All the same, this unwonted reminder of having a crown on one’s shoulder did not surprise me so much as Kedward’s total failure to recall me as a human being. The fragile condition of separate identity, perpetually brought home to one, at the same time remains perpetually incredible.
‘Don’t you remember the moment when you took over the Company from Rowland – how upset he was at getting the push.’
Kedward’s face lighted up at that.
‘Why, yes,’ he said. ‘You were with us then, weren’t you, sir? I’m beginning to remember now. Didn’t you come from London? … Was it Lyn Craddock took over the platoon from you? … or Phillpots?’
‘Are they still with you?’
‘Lyn got it at Caen commanding B Company.’
‘Killed?’
‘Yes, Lyn caught it. Phillpots? What happened to Phillpots? I believe he went to one of the Regular battalions and was wounded in Crete.’
‘What became of Rowland Gwatkin?’
‘Fancy you knowing Rowland.’
‘But I tell you, we were all in the same Company.’
‘So we were, but what a long time ago all that was. Rowland living in my home town makes it seem funny you know him.’
‘Is he out here?’
‘Rowland?’
Kedward laughed aloud at such an idea. It was apparently unthinkable.
‘When I last saw him it looked as if he were due for the Infantry Training Centre.’
‘Rowland’s been out of the army for years,’
‘Out of the army?’
‘You never heard?’
Having once established the fact that I knew Gwatkin at all, in itself extraordinary enough, Kedward obviously found it equally extraordinary that I had not kept myself up-to-date about Gwatkin’s life history.
‘Rowland got invalided,’ he said. ‘That can’t have been long after Castlemallock. I know it was all about the time I married.’
‘You got married all right?’
‘Father of two kids.’
‘What sex?’
‘Girls – that’s what I wanted. Wouldn’t mind a boy next.’
‘So Rowland never reached the ITC?’
‘I believe he got there, now you mention it, sir, then he went sick.’
‘Do, for God’s sake, stop calling me “sir”, Idwal.’
‘Sorry – anyway Rowland was ill about that time. Kidneys, was it? Or something to do with his back? Flat feet, it might have been. Whatever it was, they downgraded his medical category, and then he didn’t get any better, and got boarded, and had to leave the army altogether.’
‘Rowland must have taken that pretty hard.’
‘Oh, he did,’ said Kedward cheerfully.
‘So what’s he doing?’
‘Back at the Bank. They’re terribly shorthanded. Glad to have him there, you may be sure. I believe somebody here said they had a letter that mentioned Rowland was acting manager at one of the smaller branches. That’s quite som
ething for Rowland, who wasn’t a great banking brain, I can tell you. Just what a lot of trouble he’ll be making for everybody, you bet.’
‘And his mother-in-law? Is she still living with them? He told me that was going to happen when we said goodbye to each other. Then, on top of his mother-in-law coming to live with them, having to leave the army himself. Rowland’s had the hell of a pasting.’
The thought of Gwatkin and his mother-in-law had sometimes haunted me; the memory of his combined horror and resignation in face of this threatened affliction. To have his dreams of military glory totally shattered as well seemed, as so often in what happens to human beings, out of all proportion to what he had deserved, even if these dreams had, in truth, been impracticable for one of his capacity.
‘My God, bloody marvellous what you know about Rowland and his troubles,’ said Kedward. ‘Mother-in-law and all. Have you come to live in the neighbourhood? I thought you worked in London. Did you hear that Elystan- Edwards got a VC here the other day? That was great, wasn’t it?’
‘I read about it. He came to the Battalion after I left’
‘It was great for the Regiment, wasn’t it?’ Kedward repeated.
‘Great’
There was a pause.
‘Look here, sir – Nick – I’m afraid I won’t be able to talk any more now. Got a lot to do. I thought first when they said a major wanted me, I was going to get a rocket from Brigade. I must make those buggers get a move on with their loading too. They been staging a go-slow since we’ve been here. Look at them.’
We said goodbye. Kedward saluted and crossed to the truck, where the loading operation had certainly become fairly leisurely. The L. of C. captain reappeared. I waved to Kedward. He saluted again.
‘Jaw over?’
‘Yes.’
Perhaps as a result of Kedward’s exhortations, the fatigue party began to sing. The L. of C. captain and I walked up the road in the direction of the cars, leaving them to move eastward towards the urnfields of their Bronze Age home.
The Military Philosophers Page 17