PASSING CLOUD
The captain became aware of the tremble through the paper he held. He wondered if he had noticed that before, and what put it there or if his dried-up eyes now quivered some new complication to cover up before cats got out of proverbial bags and set about the pecking pigeons. He dragged this eyes back to at the sergeant as far as the brass buckle on that web-belt which Brasso-gleamed like a Webley target and remembered not only did not like the man, he distrusted him. Always had, as he recalled. Something about the prosaic face more off-putting than goofy Chalky White's phizzog and all the more disagreeable now the Ulsterman stood planted, jammed-upright in front of him, locked and bolted in the facts immutable that needed some leeway - for sake of all that's ... He thought. 'Stand at ease, sergeant.' He ordered affably enough.
Little changed in the NCO's stance, other than that last-time look he'd previously noted in France when they parted - something between a tight-lip and a sneer. He had not liked it then. He did not appreciate it now set as it was in truth and probity set to challenge.
'Stand easy, man.' The captain snapped then watched the sergeant's right hand slowly float round like a wave upon the waters to join the left and claim the space above his buttocks. 'So, sergeant, your travels, where did they take you?' And with the question asked, the captain, accounted his flush to the warmth of the June weather and let all this pass out the window to a trace with his eye a cloud beyond the NCO's shoulder hanging in a peaceful sky.
Neither of them, the captain mused, had joined the Royal Engineers to be caught up in a war where the front line and the sapper were no strangers but administration upheld the line of fire and neither of them had expected the barbed entanglement that was June in France. In some ways, the French debacle should have been straightforward - now a cock-up best left to Gerry to sort out - but here, beside the Medway, who could tell what flotsam of blunders the tide might wash up along with the reams paper of work cluttered up his desk? It irked the captain to need the sergeant's help. A man, he knew, of few observations but those he had were voluble in their silence. The English officer toned his face sphinx-like to hear the reply to his question - so, sergeant, where did your travels take you?
'Bermuda and Palestine, sir.' The sergeant answered then added - 'Sure, it's all in my record.'
It had been an insubordinate answer, the sergeant knew, but a lambeg pulsing at the edge of his brow drumming since Abbeville caused it. That, the picture of the king on the wall he fixed with his eye and the pugnacity held for the man seated with his back to all that portrait held for him. The sergeant saw the captain as a hedger whose intent he stiffly put down as self-interested avarice verified in Picardy. Even so, this judgement brought a run of sweat trickling down the sergeant's side to childe him. Staring King George directly, he tried to see behind the man in front of him and both stammered prevarications. Behind his back his hands fused together in a moist heat as his mind bluntly tried to figure out why the captain had asked to see him. Pliancy, no strong point in him, he noted the fluttering paper in the officer's hand and considering all the loses and gains of the past month, wondered how easily feet slipped into dead men's boots. He felt he had the humour for such shoes.
'Florencecourt to Enniskillen first, then one weekend in Belfast and sure the way of it brought my travels here, sir. It's quite a story.' The sergeant added.
Outside, the solitude of Gillingham suddenly shuddered to the stamp of parade ground boots. The NCO's brogue troubled the captain more than the oblique nature of his comments, however, petty morality paraded not over Captain Marcham. The sergeant's piquancy, not meant unpleasantly, told that he need tread careful in such matters requiring a delicate approach. His audibly sighing covered his thought that, yet again, the Wehrmacht had the right tactics - broken in rank, barefoot boot-breaking or shot, they would have solved the problem of this sergeant turning up at Portsmouth as quick as tick a box.
'Look, I say, there's a chap sergeant, take a pew.' The NCO did and weighing the dichotomy of the request in his mind churned the informal ceremony of the officer's the casual flopped hand towards an upright chair. He decided to sit with sweet reasonableness to the plea - 'Listen, Bob isn't it, shall we keep this informal?'
'If you wish, Captain, sir.'
'Leonard.'
'Leonard, sir.'
'There's a good fellow.' Never easy for the Captain with his men, he trawled his brain for a sideline in. 'So, Belfast, what sent you there, may I ask?'
'My younger brother, George, was home for the weekend. I had the railway station's takings for the bank in Enniskillen. George offered to take me in on his motorbike only, the devil that he is, once on and he's off to Belfast for a lark.'
'And,' Leonard toyed for contact, 'how far's that to go for a ... lark?'
'Eighty miles.' With the captain leaning forward across the desk, Bob pressed the chair upright into his back knowing what was expected of him. 'There was a girl he wanted me to meet.' The NCO detected an indelicate tremor on the edge of over-familiarity between ranks. 'A nice girl, sir.'
'And how nice is a nice girl, Bob, that your brother needed you there?'
'I'm not sure what your driving, sir, but George wanted me to meet Molly and ... well you know.' The captain's eyebrows appeared not to know. 'Look, sir, Molly was what some call Black Irish. You know, Spanish-Jewish descent like de Valera, and George, he's ten years younger than me, wanted my approval.'
'Hmm, and did she meet with your approval?'
'As I said, a nice girl, so yes, I approved. We had a bite to eat with Molly, a couple of drinks and I drove the motorbike back with George snuggling into my back as if I was Molly. Only, before Dungannon, there was an accident, meaning I woke up in hospital minus my front teeth and a railway position at Florencecourt Station and that brought me to the RE.'
'That's not on the record, sergeant,' noted the officer. He saw the man bristle and smiled easy at him. 'Relax, Bob. Travel, it's there to broaden the mind, widen horizons, open up opportunities,' he crooned disarmingly, 'don't you find?'
'Sir?'
Leonard recorded the confusion shown as a way into his desired focus and casually leaned into the arms of his chair, reached into his pocket. Over the table, Bob rekindled his suspicion of the suave officer and stubbed the need for open pleasantries.
'A cigarette, Bob?' The sergeant looked at the packet of Passing Clouds and informed the Captain he did not smoke. 'No? Mind if I do?' It was not a question as the match burnt a glowing ember to the tip. The smooth smoke trail entered acrid taints into the NCO's nose. 'None of this is for your record, Bob.'
'None of what?'
'Your travels,' the captain exhaled lengthily. 'There will be no charges concerning how you got here.' Marcham drew deeply, narrowing his eye to the sting of smoke shaving his face in the still heat of the room. 'As far as I'm concerned - unless you see it otherwise?' He exhaled both words and smoke - rapid exhaust taking them back to France ...
Events in France quickly followed by the news of the German's break through and the lightening speed of all this had, at the time, sent the Captain's Passing Cloud beneath his toe and crushed. Into the company's two Bedford trucks the officers piled, drove north towards the Channel coast, leaving the NCO with orders to follow on the best they could. After burning all records, Sergeant Johnston abandoned the office equipment and marched the company into Arras. Chalky White dug up three civilian transports and they drove towards Normandy...
'It turned out Chalky White had travelled around that part of France before the war and what with the general flow, we ended up in St Nazaire.'
'Only you didn't, did you, sergeant? Just like you did not abandon ten valuable typewriters and five hundred reams of paper outside Arras. St Nazaire, like Abbeville, never happened. We wouldn't want any of what happened over there getting out now do we?'
Leaving a pause to let the past month's evens sink in the dour and dogged face over the desk only served to rise a bilious
disdain for a man that should either be dead, a POW or holed up in the Languedoc. However, the mystery he was, the sergeant was there in Kent and the captain could see it how, in the Ulsterman's attempt to not make large admissions, he would raise more questions, With the NCO's unwillingness to give ground, suspicion would cast its warily reservation - a position Leonard needed avoiding. He extinguished the cigarette.
'Lucky for you weren't on the Lancastria, not that anything happened to the Lancastria, did it Bob? As neither, it or you were not at St Nazaire. And it's not like Lieutenant Pettigrew was killed ten miles before Dunkirk by a jumpy Royal Berkshire berk with a rifle, now was it?'
'Couldn't say, sir, I wasn't there.'
Bob watched the captain light up again, hiss smoke through his teeth, and slowly let it out. For whatever the officer's use of that action, it seemed to work. A fury left Marcham and he placed the Passing Cloud balancing on the ashtray lip.
'So, Bob, how did you manage across the Channel?'
'We couldn't get on the Lancastria, it seemed RE didn't pull rank over infantry. The place was chaotic but I got the men onto a small coastal steamer loading up with French Colonials.'
'And by Colonials you mean coloureds? Rather an irregular course of action, sergeant, what?'
'It seemed to me they were men like us just hoping that reccy-plane hadn't spotted us. But then now how would it, what with that old liner there sitting like a mother duck and, sure now, next thing is, we see Ju 88's plopping bombs around us like a game of stones and water and you wouldn't think a ship that size would roll over that quick or that burning bodies could raise saliva or the sight of drowning women and children dry it.'
Silence entered baking the heat of the room acutely. Between the two men a steady blue, twisting smoke rose from the ashtray and covered the ceiling in a haze. After a while, the captain lent forward and snubbed it out. Then bringing the forefinger to scratch the corner of his pencil moustache, he next caressed his fingers tips around an aquiline nose, which seemed to scent the traces of aromas left there. Finally, the captain sat back smiling.
'You'll be wondering why I asked you here, Bob, so rightio, I'll chase to the point as that's what this is all about, indirectly.' For this, Leonard needed to stand. Bob felt he should do the same but the officer now filled the room, flapped him down into the seat with an easy-going hand. 'How's the young wife Bob?'
'Fine, I expect.' Bob, thrown, respected the officer's right to ask and felt flattered that he knew. 'She didn't like Halifax and when I was posted to Orkney, she went back home to Perth.'
'How we get around in this man's army, eh Bob? Do you get around?'
'We,' continued Bob, 'have a child now. A boy called Michael.'
'Managed to slip that in somewhere on your travels did you, Bob?' Obscurity being a game Leonard also played. 'But Michael? How does that name sit with your sensitivities?'
'Kate liked it, so it pleased me.'
'And how much younger than you is Kate?'
'Ten years, Sir.'
'Hmm?' Leonard cleared his throat out the window at the square-bashers down below. 'Then you'll needing to please her to hold on to one so young, what?'
'I have yet to hold my son.' Bob evaded the question.
'Now, if you could listen, Bob.' It seemed Leonard wished another course of direction. 'The thing is, you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. I'm due some leave - got an aunt with a flat in Pimlico I can use - and I'd like to sort things out before that, it wasn't only Pettigrew we lost at Dunkirk, everything needs careful handling - if you understand.' The Captain, glancing at the man to ensure the spun line had hooked, met a toneless visage. 'Look, Bob, I know this may seem incongruous to you, an Ulsterman that's served in Palestine, but all wars end, as will this one and the world at the other end will be nothing like we expect. It all makes for strange bedfellows. I can see g-g-Georgie there waking up with Adolf and sharing a croissant so, in the meantime, best make use of the confusion like you did in St Nazaire.' Leonard returned to his seat. 'Mrs Pettigrew, Jane, a lovely young girl, vulnerable times, have you meet her?'
'No.'
'Yes, well, she's due to visit tomorrow, to meet the company then after I thought, hope, to take her up to London for a spot of dinner.'
'Does that that come under regulations, sir?'
'Dinner? It comes under something.'
The NOC stitched his lip.
'We wouldn't want any of that affair with Jossette to be mentioned - fortunate Gerry broke through when he did or that might have turned into a sticky wicket.'
'Why would I mention that, Sir?'
'Quite so, why would you? Nasty business all round, one needs to judge how far a push becomes a shove. So, we understand where things stand? We would not wish to upset the lieutenant's young widow. You know how young things are, Bob. Nothing like a war to rile up a cycle of hopeful passions in those that long for bluebirds, white cliffs and one-over Dover - what?' Amused at his own astuteness, Leonard sat down. 'Straight to the chase - I need a WO1, Bob. Perhaps you were hoping for pips but now I know of your travels to Belfast and St Nazaire, well, it blots your record somewhat - what? Besides, do you really think your face would fit?' The captain grinned at the tight lip and sneer trying itself out as a Warrant Officer. 'Think of the silver lining. Gerry will hear officer in your rank and bang you up in the Officers' Stalag. And on that note, run along, there's a chappie, we'll sort out the promotion thingy when I get back from Pimlico.'
Acting WO1 Johnston stood to attention and saluted stiffly. Given that Operation Pimlico went according to plan - no reason why it would not - that would be as far as Mrs Pettigrew and he would be travelling in this man's army - soon as trample a Passing Cloud.
READING COUPLETS OF IAMBIC PENTAMETER