“Guy, have you ever wondered why we are here?”
“No, I can’t say I have.”
“I dare say nobody has. This place wasn’t chosen simply for its bloodiness. You’ll all know in good time. If you’d ever studied Admiralty Sailing Directions it might occur to you that there is another island with two hills, steep shingle beaches and cliffs. Somewhere rather warmer than this. The name doesn’t matter now. The point is that these exercises aren’t just a staff college scheme for Northland against Southland. They’re the dress rehearsal for an operation. It won’t do any harm if you pass that on. We’ve been playing about too long. Anything happen while I was away?”
“McTavish is very anxious to see you. He wants to join.”
“The wet Highlander who jammed his gun?”
“Yes, colonel.”
“Right. I’ll see him tomorrow.”
“He’s no good, you know.”
“I can use anyone who’s really keen.”
“He’s keen all right. I don’t quite know why.”
*
Ivor Claire occupied himself during the “flap” in making elaborate arrangements for the safe-conduct of his pekinese, Freda, to his mother’s care.
II
The promised ship did not come next day or the day after or for many days, while the nights lengthened until they seemed continuous. Often the sun never appeared and drab twilight covered the island. The fishermen sat at home over the peat and the streets of the little town were as empty at noon as at midnight. Once or twice the mist lifted, the two hills appeared and a cold glare on the horizon cast long shadows across the snow. No one looked for the ship. Officers and men began to wish themselves back with their regiments.
There should be a drug for soldiers, Guy thought, to put them to sleep until they were needed. They should repose among the briar like the knights of the Sleeping Beauty; they should be laid away in their boxes in the nursery cupboard. This unvarying cycle of excitement and disappointment rubbed them bare of paint and exposed the lead beneath.
Now that Jumbo was installed in the orderly room, Guy’s position became that of an A.D.C. Tommy kept him busy. He acquired a certain status in the unit as someone likely to be in the know about Christmas leave, as a mediator for the troop-leaders in their troubles and squabbles. His age was unremarkable here. Jumbo set a high standard of antiquity. Half a dozen of the troop-leaders were also in their middle thirties. No one called him “Uncle.” Indeed, he was not one of the family at all, merely a passing guest. He knew, now, the name of the Mediterranean island they were planning to take, but he would not be with them on the night. There was here none of the exhilaration of a year ago, of Brigadier Ritchie-Hook’s: “These are the men you will lead in battle.” His work was solely among the officers; notoriously a deleterious form of soldiering. For relaxation he collected the poorest men in the mess and played poker with them for low stakes. He was slightly better off than they and he played a reasonably good game. Whenever one of his party showed too much confidence, Guy advised him to join the big game. After a night with the rich, he invariably returned crestfallen and cautious. Thus Guy made a regular five or six pounds a week.
The assault of the island was rehearsed, first by day, the troops marching to their beaches and from there scrambling inland to objectives which in Mugg were merely map-references, but, in the Mediterranean, were gun-emplacements and signal-posts. Guy acted as intelligence officer and observer and umpire. All went well.
They tried it again on a night of absolute blackness. Tommy and Guy stood by their car on the road near the old castle. The R.S.M. sent up the rocket which announced the start of the exercise. Bertie’s troop stumbled through the glow of the dimmed motor lamps and disappeared noisily into the blackness beyond. A civilian bus passed them. All was silent. Tommy and Guy sat in the car waiting while the headquarters signalers huddled in blankets at the roadside like a group of Bedouin. Wireless silence was being observed until the objectives were gained.
“We might as well be in bed,” said Tommy. “Nothing can happen for two hours or more and then we can’t do anything about it.”
But within twenty minutes of the start there was a twinkle in the sky.
“Verey light, sir,” reported the R.S.M.
“Can’t be.”
Another tiny spark appeared from the same direction. Guy consulted the map.
“Looks like D Troop.”
“Dammit, they’ve got the furthest to go of anyone. I specially gave it to them to make Ivor do some work for a change.”
There was a mutter from the signalers and presently one of them reported.
“D Troop in position, sir.”
“Give me the damn thing,” said Tommy. He took the instrument. “Headquarters to D Troop. Where are you? Over… I can’t hear you. Speak up. Over… Colonel Blackhouse here. Give me Captain Claire. Over… Ivor, where are you?… You can’t be… Damn. Out.” He turned to Guy. “All I can get is a request to return. Go and see them, Guy.”
On the island of Mugg there were two routes to the site of D Troop’s objective. Their orders sent them across four miles of moorland to a spot twelve miles distant by the main coast-road and just off it. In the future operation this road led through a populous and heavily garrisoned village. Guy, in the car, now took this route. He followed the track on foot where it diverged.
He was soon challenged by a sentry.
Claire’s voice came from nearby. “Hullo. Who’s that?”
“Colonel Tommy sent me.”
“You’re very welcome, we’re getting frozen. Position occupied and defense consolidated. That I think was the object of the exercise.”
The troop were established in the comparative comfort of a sheep-pen.
“How the hell did you get here, Ivor?”
“I hired a bus. You might call it ‘captured transport.’ Can I take the troop back and dismiss? They’re getting cold.”
“Not as cold as most.”
“I make their comfort my first concern. Well, can we go?”
“I suppose so. Colonel Tommy will want to talk about this.”
“I am expecting congratulations.”
“Congratulations, Ivor, from myself. I don’t know what anyone else is going to say about it.”
Every other troop lost itself that night. After three hours Tommy ordered rockets to be fired, ending the exercise, and sections appeared out of the darkness until dawn, shuffling, soaked and spiritless as stragglers on the road from Moscow.
“I’ll see Ivor first thing tomorrow,” said Tommy grimly as he and Guy finally separated.
But Claire’s case was unanswerable. The Commandos were expressly raised for irregular action, for seizing tactical advantages on their own initiative. In the operation, Claire explained, there would probably be a bus lying about somewhere.
“In the operation that road leads through a battalion of light infantry.”
“Nothing about that in orders, colonel.”
Tommy sat silent for some time. At last he said: “All right, Ivor, you win.”
“Thank you, colonel.”
The episode greatly endeared Claire to his own troop. The rest of the Commandos were very angry about it indeed. Among the men it led to a feud; among the officers to marked coldness. And thus unexpectedly it drew Claire and Guy closer together. Claire required someone to talk to, and was limited in his choice by his sudden unpopularity. Moreover, he had observed with respect Guy’s conduct of his poker table. As for Guy, he had recognized from the first a certain remote kinship with this most dissimilar man, a common aloofness, differently manifested—a common melancholy sense of humor; each in his way saw life sub specie aeternitatis; thus with numberless reservations they became friends, as had Guy and Apthorpe.
*
One man who remained in nervous expectation of the ship’s arrival was Trimmer. Nemesis, in the shape of “a spot of awkwardness,” seemed very near. Once on the high seas, bound for a secret destination; better sti
ll torpedoed and cast up on a neutral shore, Trimmer would be all right. Meanwhile there was the danger that the second-in-command of his battalion had made inquiries about his rank and posting and that somewhere between the Headquarters of Scottish Command and the Adjutant-General’s Office in London papers were slowly passing from tray to tray which might at any moment bring his doom.
There was also the danger that his detachment might become restive, but this he solved by sending them all on fourteen days’ leave. The men looked doubtful. Trimmer looked confident. He emptied his book of travel-vouchers, giving each man of his plenty. In the case of his sergeant-major he added five one-pound notes.
“Where do we report back after leave, sir?”
Trimmer considered this. Then an inspiring thought came to him.
“India,” he said; “report to the Fourth Battalion.”
“Sir?”
“Climate a great change from Mugg. I leave the detachment in your charge, sergeant-major. Enjoy your leave. Then report to Sea Transport. They’ll find you a ship.”
“What, without a move order, sir?”
“But you see I am no longer in command. I’ve been seconded. I can’t sign a move order in any case.”
“Should we go back to regimental headquarters, sir?”
“Perhaps that might be more strictly correct. But I should mess about at the docks first a bit. We must try and cut red-tape where we can.”
“Which docks, sir?”
That was easy. “Portsmouth,” said Trimmer with decision.
“Must have something in writing, sir.”
“I’ve just explained to you, I’m not in a position to give any orders. All I know is that the Fourth Battalion want you in India. I saw our battalion second-in-command in Glasgow and he gave me the order verbally.” He looked in his notecase and reluctantly produced another two pounds. “That’s all I have,” he said.
“Very good, sir,” said the sergeant-major.
He was not the best of soldiers nor the brightest but there was a look in his eyes which made Trimmer fear that seven pounds had been wasted. That man would make for the depot like a homing pigeon, the day his leave expired.
It fell to Guy to find employment for Trimmer himself. It was easy for Tommy in the exhilarating prospect of immediate embarkation to take Trimmer on; it was a different matter to impose him on a disillusioned troop-leader.
The trouble was that three of the four troops who were short of officers, were volunteers from the Household Brigade. Their commanders protested that it was impossible for guardsmen to serve under an officer from a line regiment, and Tommy, a Coldstreamer, agreed. There was a Scottish troop to which Trimmer should properly go, but that was up to strength. The composite troop of Rifle Brigade and 60th needed an officer, but here the huge hostility that had subsisted underground between them and the Foot Guards came at once to the surface. Why should a rifleman accept Trimmer, when a guardsman would not? It had not occurred to Tommy that he could be suspected of personal bias in the matter; he had merely followed what seemed to him the natural order of things. His own brief service in a line regiment he regarded as a period of detention, seldom remembered. For the first and last time in his career he had made a minute military gaffe.
“If they don’t want McTavish, I can give them Duncan. He’s H.L.I. Dammit, all light infantry drill is much the same, isn’t it?”
But Duncan would not do, nor would the leader of the Scottish troop surrender him. Generations of military history, the smoke of a hundred battlefields darkened the issue.
Guy and Jumbo, Halberdiers, serenely superior to such squabbles, solved the problem.
There existed in a somewhat shadowy form a sixth troop, named “Specialists.” It comprised a section of Marines skilled with boats and ropes and beaches, two interpreters, a field-security policeman, heavy machine-gunners, and a demolition squad. The commander was an Indian cavalryman chosen for his experience in mountain warfare. This officer, Major Graves, had been playing Achilles from days before Guy landed on Mugg. He had taken Chatty Corner’s arrival as a deliberate slight on his own hardly-acquired skills. He made no protest but he brooded. The dark mood was only lighted by the tale of Chatty’s casualties, one of the first of whom was his sapper subaltern who commanded the demolition squad.
Guy had warmed to this disgruntled, sandy little man whose heart was in the North-West Frontier and he had more than once cajoled him to the poker table. He found him, now, at the time of crisis, playing patience in his troop office.
“I wonder if you’ve met McTavish, who’s just joined us?”
“No.”
“You’re short of an officer, aren’t you?”
“I’m short of a bloody lot of things.”
“Colonel Tommy wants to send McTavish to you.”
“What’s his particular line?”
“Well, nothing particular, I think.”
“A specialist in damn-all?”
“He seems a fairly adaptable chap. He might make himself generally helpful, Colonel Tommy thought.”
“He can have the sappers if he wants them.”
“Do you think that’s a good thing?”
“I think it’s a bloody silly thing. I had a perfectly good chap. Then the C.O. sent a sort of human ape with orders to break his neck. Since then I’ve barely seen the sappers. I don’t know what they do. I’m sick of them. McTavish can have them.”
Thus, Trimmer first set foot upon the path to glory, little knowing his destination.
That afternoon Tommy left the island once more on a summons from London.
*
A few days later Jumbo said to Guy: “Busy?”
“No.”
“It wouldn’t be a bad thing if you went up to the castle. Colonel Campbell has been writing again. Always keep in with the civilian population if you can.”
Guy found the laird at home, indeed in carpet slippers, and in a genial mood. They sat in a circular turret room full of maps and the weapons of sport. He maundered pleasantly for some minutes about “a ranker fellow!… Not a Scot at all… Nothing against rankers except they will stick by the book… Nothing against English regiments. A bit slow to get moving, that was all… Have to give commissions to all sorts now of course… Same in the last war… Met him when he first came to the island… Didn’t think much of him… Didn’t know he was one of yours. Not a bad fellow when you got to know him…” Until gradually Guy realized that the laird was talking of Trimmer.
“Had him up after lunch yesterday.”
To bring matters to the point Guy said: “McTavish now commands the demolition squad.”
“Exactly.”
Mugg rose and began fumbling under his writing-table. At length he produced a pair of boots.
“You know what we were talking about the other evening. I’d like you to come and see.”
He donned his boots and an inverness cape and selected a tall stick from the clutter of rods, gaffs and other tall sticks. Together he and Guy walked into the wind until they stood on the cliff half a mile from the house, overlooking a rough shore of rocks and breakers.
“There,” Mugg said. “The bathing beach. McTavish says it may be a long job.”
“I’m not expert but I should rather think he is right.”
“We have a proverb here, ‘What’s gone down has to come up.’ ”
“In England we have one like that only the other way round.”
“Not quite the same thing,” said Mugg severely.
They looked down on the immense heap of granite.
“It came down all right,” said Mugg.
“Evidently.”
An odd look, a Mona Lisa smirk under the mustache, came into the laird’s weather-beaten face.
“I blew it down,” said the laird at length.
“You, sir?”
“I used to do a lot of blowing,” said the laird, “up and down. Come over here.”
They walked back a quarter of a mile along t
he headland in the direction of the castle and looked inland.
“Over there,” said the laird. “It’s hard to see in the snow. Where there’s that hollow. You can see thistle tops round the edge. You’d not think there had been a stable there, would you?”
“No, sir.”
“Stabling for ten, a coach-house, harness-rooms?”
“No.”
“There was. Place wasn’t safe, woodwork all rotten, half the tiles gone. Couldn’t afford to repair it and no reason to. I hadn’t any horses. So up it went. They heard the bang at Muck. It was a wonderful sight. Great lumps of granite pitching into the sea and all the cattle and sheep on the island stampeding in every direction. That was on 15 June 1923. I don’t suppose anyone on the island has forgotten that day. I certainly haven’t.” The laird sighed. “And now I haven’t a stick of gelignite on the place. I’ll show you what I have got.”
He led Guy into the crater to a little hut, hitherto invisible. It was massively built of granite.
“We made that from part of the stable which didn’t go up for some reason or other. The rest of the stone went on the roads. I sold it to the government. It’s my only explosion so far that has shown a profit. Something very near eighteen pounds after everything was paid, including the labor on the magazine. This is the magazine.”
The snow, which had drifted high round the hut, had been dug clear to make a narrow passage to the door.
“You never know when you’ll need a bit of gun-cotton, do you? But I don’t bring many people here. There was a sort of inspector from the mainland came last summer. Said there had been a report that I was storing explosives. I showed him a few boxes of cartridges. My factor has grudges with almost everyone on the island, so they try and take it out of him by making reports. Let me lead the way.”
The laird took a key from his pocket and opened the door on a single, lightless chamber. He lit an end of candle and held it high with the air of an oenophilist revealing his most recondite treasure. There was in fact a strong resemblance to a wine-cellar in the series of stone bins which lined the walls—a cellar sadly depleted.
“My gelignite once,” said the laird, “from here to here… Now this is gun-cotton. I’m still fairly well-off for that, as you can see. That’s all that’s left of the nitro-glycerin. I haven’t used any for fifteen years. It may have deteriorated. I’ll get some up soon and try it out… This is all empty, you see. In fact, you might say there’s nothing much worth having now. You have to keep filling up, you know, or you soon find yourself with nothing. My main shortages are fuses and detonators… Hullo, here’s a bit of luck.” He put his candle down so that huge shadows filled the magazine. “Catch.”