Neither Elderberry nor the dinner conduced to lingering.
“Look,” said Box-Bender briskly, when he and Guy were alone in a corner of the billiard-room. “I haven’t much time. This is what I wanted to show you.” He took a typewritten paper from his pocket-book and handed it to Guy. “What d’you make of that?”
Guy read:
The Spiritual Combat by Francis de Sales.
Christ the Ideal of the Monk by Abbot Marmion.
Spiritual Letters of Don John Chapman.
The Practice of the Presence of God by Lawrence.
“I think it ought to be ‘Dom John’ not ‘Don John,’ ” he said.
“Yes, yes, very likely. My secretary copied them. But what d’you make of it?”
“Most edifying. I can’t say I’ve read them much myself. Are you thinking of becoming a monk, Arthur?”
The effect of the little quip was remarkable.
“Exactly,” said Box-Bender. “That’s exactly what I expected you to say. It’s what other people have said when I showed them.”
“But what is this list?”
“They’re the books Tony has sent for from prison. Now. What d’you say to that?”
Guy hesitated. “It’s not like him,” he said.
“Shall I tell you what I think? Religious mania. It’s as plain as a pikestaff the poor boy’s going off his head.”
“Why ‘mania,’ Arthur? Lots of quite sane people read books like that.”
“Not Tony. At his age. Besides, you know, one’s got to remember Ivo.”
There it was, out in the open for a moment’s airing, the skeleton from Box-Bender’s cupboard. Box-Bender remembered Ivo every day of his busy prosperous life.
Tension quickly resolves in Bellamy’s.
“Mind if I join you again?” said Elderberry, carrying a cup of coffee. “Nowhere else to sit.” And shortly afterwards Guy saw Ian Kilbannock and made his escape.
“What’s all this about Ivor Claire?” he asked.
“I’ve no idea. I’ve been at sea for eight weeks. The last I heard of him, he’d gone to India.”
“Everyone’s saying he ran away in Crete.”
“We all did.”
“They say Ivor ran much the fastest. I thought you might know.”
“I don’t, I’m afraid. How’s H.O.O. H.Q.?”
“Swelling out of all recognition. We’ve moved into new premises. Look at these.”
He showed the rings on his cuff.
“There seem more of them.”
“They keep coming. I’ve got a staff of my own—including Virginia, incidentally. She’ll be delighted to hear you’re back. She’s always talking of you. She’s away with Trimmer at the moment.”
“Trimmer?”
“You remember him. McTavish. He’s officially named Trimmer now. They couldn’t decide for weeks. In the end it went to the Minister. He decided there were too many Scottish heroes. Also, of course, Trimmer’s so tremendously not Scottish. But he’s doing a great job. We’ve had our noses out of joint a bit this last week. There’s a female Soviet sniper going the rounds and getting all the applause. That’s why I sent poor Virginia to put some ginger into our boy. He was pining rather. Now things are humming again—except for Virginia, of course. She was sick as mud at having to go—Scunthorpe, Hull, Huddersfield, Halifax…”
Next day Guy reported at the Halberdier barracks. His old acquaintance was still in the office, promoted major once more.
“Back again,” he said. “Quite an annual event. You come with the fall of the leaf, ha ha.” He was much jollier now he was a major. “Everything in order, too, this time. We’ve been expecting you for weeks. I expect you’d like a spot of leave?”
“Really,” said Guy. “I don’t think I would. I’ve been sitting about in a ship since the end of June. I might as well get to work.”
“The captain-commandant said something about putting you on the square for a fortnight to smarten up.”
“That suits me.”
“Sure? It seemed a bit rough to me. Returned hero and all that. But the captain-commandant says people forget everything on active service. I’d better take you to him this morning. Haven’t you any gloves?”
“No.”
“We can probably find a pair in the Officers’ House.”
They did. They also found Jumbo.
“I’ve read about your escape,” he said. “It got in the papers.”
He spoke with gentle, genial reproof. It was not the business of a Halberdier officer to get his name in the papers, but Guy’s exploit had been wholly creditable.
At noon, gloved, Guy was marched in to the captain-commandant. Colonel Green had aged. “Mr. Crouchback reporting from Middle East, sir,” said the adjutant.
Colonel Green looked up from his table and blinked.
“I remember you,” he said. “One of the first batch of young temporary officers. I remember you very well. Apthorpe, isn’t it?”
“Crouchback,” said the adjutant more loudly, putting the relevant papers into the hands of the captain-commandant.
“Yes, yes, of course…” He reviewed the papers. He remembered the good things he knew of Guy… “Crouchback. Middle East… Bad luck you couldn’t stay out there and join the Second Battalion. They wanted you, I know. So did your brigadier. Old women, these medicos. Still, one has to go by what they say. I’ve got their report here. They as good as say you’re lucky to be alive… change of climate essential… well, you look fit enough now.”
“Yes, sir, thank you. I’m quite fit now.”
“Good. Excellent. We shall be seeing something of one another, I hope…”
That afternoon Guy paraded on the square with a mixed squad of recruits and officers in training under Halberdier Color-Sergeant Oldenshaw.
“… I’ll just run through the detail. The odd numbers of the front rank will seize the rifles of the even numbers of the rear rank with the left hand crossing the muzzles—all right?—magazines turned outward—all right?—at the same time raising the piling swivels with the fore-finger and thumb of both hands—all right?…”
All right, Halberdier Color-Sergeant Oldenshaw. All right.
II
For two years, a twentieth of his life to date, Guy remained with his regiment. He grew scant of breath so that on field exercises he was prematurely exhausted and impatient. He grew wiser in the affairs of the army so that he rose to be second-in-command of a battalion in training. The First Battalion, his battalion, followed Ritchie-Hook, biffing across the sands of North Africa. A draft of reinforcements were sent out to them. Guy was not posted with them. Hookforce, all save four, had been taken prisoner in Crete. He had no comrades in arms in England except Tommy Blackhouse who returned to raise another Special Service Force. They met in Bellamy’s and he offered him a post on his staff, but the shadow of Ivor Claire lay dark and long over the Commandos and Guy answered that he was content to soldier on with the Halberdiers.
A second brigade was formed, and Guy followed its fortunes in training, with periodic changes of quarters from Penkirk in Scotland to Brook Park in Cornwall. Home Forces no longer experienced the shocks, counter-orders and disorders of the first two years of war. The army in the Far East now suffered as they had done. In Europe the initiative was now with the allies. They were laboriously assembled and equipped and trained.
Then in August 1943 there fell on him the blow that had crushed Jumbo at Mugg: “I’m sorry, uncle, but I’m afraid we shan’t be taking you with us when we go to foreign parts. You’ve been invaluable in training. Don’t know what I should have done without you. But I can’t risk taking a chap of your age into action.”
“Am I much older than you, colonel?”
“Not much, I suppose, but I’ve spent my life in this job. If I get hit, the second-in-command will have to take over. Can’t risk it.”
“I’d gladly come down in rank. Couldn’t I have a company? Or a platoon?”
“Be you
r age, uncle. No can do. This is an order from brigade.”
The new brigadier, lately arrived from the Eighth Army, was the man to whom, briefly, Guy had been attached in West Africa when he encompassed the death of Apthorpe. On that occasion the brigadier had said: “I don’t want to see you again ever.” He had fought long and hard since then and won a D.S.O., but throughout the dust of war he remembered Guy. Apthorpe, that brother-uncle, that ghost, laid, Guy had thought, on the island of Mugg, walked still in his porpoise boots to haunt him; the defeated lord of the thunder-box still worked his jungle magic. When a Halberdier said: “No can do,” it was final.
“We shall need you for the embarkation, of course. When you’ve seen us off, take a spot of leave. After that you’re old enough to find yourself something to do. There’s always ‘barrack duties,’ of course, or you might report to the War House to the pool of unemployed officers. There’s plenty of jobs going begging for chaps in your position.”
Guy took his leave and was at Matchet when Italy surrendered. News of the King’s flight came on the day the brigade landed at Salerno. It brought Guy some momentary exhilaration.
“That looks like the end of the Piedmontese usurpation,” he said to his father. “What a mistake the Lateran Treaty was. It seemed masterly at the time—how long? fifteen years ago? What are fifteen years in the history of Rome? How much better it would have been if the Popes had sat it out and then emerged saying: ‘What was all that? Risorgimento? Garibaldi? Cavour? The House of Savoy? Mussolini? Just some hooligans from out of town causing a disturbance. Come to think of it wasn’t there once a poor little boy whom they called King of Rome?’ That’s what the Pope ought to be saying today.”
Mr. Crouchback regarded his son sadly. “My dear boy,” he said, “you’re really talking the most terrible nonsense, you know. That isn’t at all what the Church is like. It isn’t what she’s for.”
They were walking along the cliffs, returning at dusk to the Marine Hotel with Mr. Crouchback’s retriever, ageing now, not gamboling as he used but loping behind them. Mr. Crouchback had aged too, and for the first time showed concern with his own health. They fell silent, Guy disconcerted by his father’s rebuke, Mr. Crouchback still, it seemed, pondering the question he had raised; for when at length he spoke it was to say: “Of course it’s reasonable for a soldier to rejoice in victory.”
“I don’t think I’m interested in victory now,” said Guy.
“Then you’ve no business to be a soldier.”
“Oh, I want to stay in the war. I should like to do some fighting. But it doesn’t seem to matter now who wins. When we declared war on Finland…”
He left the sentence unfinished, and his father said: “That sort of question isn’t for soldiers.”
As they came into sight of the hotel, he added: “I suppose I’m getting like a schoolmaster. Forgive me. We mustn’t quarrel. I used often to get angry with poor Ivo; and with Angela. She was rather a tiresome girl the year she came out. But I don’t think I’ve ever been angry with you.”
Matchet had changed in the last two years. The army unit for whom Monte Rosa had been cleared, had gone as quickly as they came, leaving the boarding-house empty. Its blank windows and carpetless floors stood as a symbol of the little town’s brief popularity. Refugees from bombing returned to their former homes. Mrs. Tickeridge moved to be near a school for Jenifer. The days when the Cuthberts could “let every room twice over” were ended and they reluctantly found themselves obliged to be agreeable. It was not literally true, as Miss Vavasour claimed, that they “went down on their knees” to keep their residents, but they did offer Mr. Crouchback his former sitting-room at its former price.
“No, thank you very much,” he had said. “You’ll remember I promised to take it again after the war, and unless things change very much for the worse I shall do that. Meanwhile my few sticks are in store and I don’t feel like getting them out again.”
“Oh, we will furnish it for you, Mr. Crouchback.”
“It wouldn’t be quite the same. You make me very comfortable as I am.”
His former rent was now being paid as a weekly allowance to an unfrocked priest.
The Cuthberts were glad enough to accommodate parents visiting their sons at Our Lady of Victory and obscurely supposed that if they antagonized Mr. Crouchback, he would somehow stop their coming.
*
Guy left next day and reported to the Halberdier barracks. He had little appetite for leave now.
Three days later a letter came from his father:
Marine Hotel, Matchet
20 September 1943
My dear Guy,
I haven’t been happy about our conversation on your last evening. I said too much or too little. Now I must say more.
Of course in the 1870s and 80s every decent Roman disliked the Piedmontese, just as the decent French now hate the Germans. They had been invaded. And, of course, most of the Romans we know kept it up, sulking. But that isn’t the Church. The Mystical Body doesn’t strike attitudes and stand on its dignity. It accepts suffering and injustice. It is ready to forgive at the first hint of compunction.
When you spoke of the Lateran Treaty did you consider how many souls may have been reconciled and have died at peace as the result of it? How many children may have been brought in the faith who might have lived in ignorance? But quantitative judgments don’t apply. If only one soul was saved, that is full compensation for any amount of loss of “face.”
I write like this because I am worried about you and I gather I may not live very much longer. I saw the doctor yesterday and he seemed to think I have something pretty bad the matter.
As I say, I’m worried about you. You seemed so much enlivened when you first joined the army. I know you are cut up at being left behind in England. But you mustn’t sulk.
It was not a good thing living alone and abroad. Have you thought at all about what you will do after the war? There’s the house at Broome the village calls “Little Hall”—quite incorrectly. All the records refer to it simply as the “Lesser House.” You’ll have to live somewhere and I doubt if you’ll want to go back to the Castello even if it survives, which doesn’t seem likely the way they are bombing everything in Italy.
You see I am thinking a lot about death at the moment. Well that’s quite suitable at my age and condition.
Ever your affec. father,
G. Crouchback
III
When Hookforce sailed without him, Jumbo Trotter abandoned all hope of active service. He became commandant of No. 6 Transit Camp, London District, a post which required good nature, sobriety, and little else except friends of influence—in all of which qualities Jumbo was rich. He no longer bore resentment against Ben Ritchie-Hook. He accepted the fact that he was on the shelf. The threat of just such a surrender of his own condition overcast Guy.
Jumbo often took a drive to the Halberdier barracks to see what was on. There in late September he found Guy disconsolately installed as P.A.D. officer and assistant adjutant.
“Put in to see the captain-commandant,” he advised. “Say there is something coming through for you any day but you have to be in London. Get posted to the ‘unemployed pool’ and come and stay at my little place. I can make you quite comfortable.”
So Guy moved to Jumbo’s little place—Little Hall? Lesser House?—No. 6 Transit Camp, London District, and for a few days looked into the depths of the military underworld. There was a waiting-room in an outlying dependency of the War Office where daily congregated officers of all ages whose regiments and corps had no use for them.
There had been a “Man-power Directive” from the highest source which enjoined that everyone in the country should be immediately employed in the “war effort.” Guy was interviewed by a legless major who said: “You seem to have done all right. I don’t know why they’ve sent you to this outfit. First Halberdier I’ve had through my hands. What have you been up to?”
He studied the file
in which was recorded all Guy’s official biography of the last four years.
“Age,” said Guy.
“Thirty-nine, just rising forty. Yes, that’s old for your rank. You’re back to captain now of course. Well all I can offer at the moment is a security job at Aden and almoner at a civilian hospital. I don’t suppose either particularly appeals to you?”
“No.”
“Well, stick around. I may find something better. But they don’t look for good fellows in my office. Look about outside and see what you can find.”
And, sure enough, one evening early in October, after his third attendance on the legless major (who offered him, with undisguised irony, an administrative post in Wales at a school of air photography interpretation) he met Tommy Blackhouse once more in Bellamy’s. Tommy now had a brigade of Commandos. He was under orders to sail shortly for Italy to rehearse the Anzio landings and was keeping dead quiet about his movements. He only said, “Wish you’d decided to come to me, Guy.”
“Too late now?”
“Far too late.”
Guy explained his predicament.
“That’s the hell of a mess.”
“The fellow at the War Office has been very civil.”
“Yes, but you’ll find he’ll get impatient soon. There’s a flap about man-power. They’ll suddenly pitch you into something awful. Wish I could help.”
Later that evening he said: “I’ve thought of something that might do as a stop-gap. I keep a liaison officer at H.O.O. H.Q. God knows what he does. Anyway I’m taking him away somewhere else. There are a few odd bodies that have got attached to me. They came under H.O.O. You could liaise with them for a bit if you liked.”
When Jumbo heard of it, he said: “Strictly speaking I suppose you aren’t ‘in transit’ anymore.”
“I hope I am.”
“Well, anyway, stay on here as long as you like. We’ll find a way of covering you in the returns. London District is never much trouble. All stockbrokers and wine merchants from the Foot Guards. Awfully easy fellows to deal with.”