‘Don’t you think the old man is getting rather rum lately?’
‘I don’t see much of him.’
‘Can’t understand half he says these days.’
‘He had a bad time escaping from Crete. Weeks in an open boat. Enough to make anyone rum.’
‘He was babbling about curates just now.’
‘Religious mania, perhaps,’ said the chief instructor. ‘He doesn’t give me any trouble.’
Upstairs Ludovic opened the envelope, removed the roll of the ‘clients’ arriving next day and scanned it cursorily. An all military batch he noted. He had only one slight cause of uneasiness. So much remained from his early training that he would not have liked to find an officer of the Household Cavalry under his command. This had not occurred yet, nor did it now. But there was a name of more evil omen. The list was alphabetically arranged and at its head stood: ‘Crouchback, G. T/Y Capt. RCH.’
Even in the moment of horror his new vocabulary came pat. There was one fine word which exactly defined his condition: ‘Colaphized’. It carried a subtle echo, unsupported by its etymology, of ‘collapse’.
To be struck twice in a month after two years’ respite; to be struck where he should have been most sheltered, in the ivory tower of avant garde letters, in the keep of his own seemingly impregnable fastness, was a disaster beyond human calculation. He had read enough of psychology to be familiar with the word ‘trauma’; to know that to survive injury without apparent scar gave no certainty of abiding health. Things had happened to Ludovic in the summer of 1941, things had been done by him, which, the ancients believed, provoked a doom. Not only the ancients; most of mankind, independently, cut off from all communications with one another, had discovered and proclaimed this grim alliance between the powers of darkness and justice. Who was Ludovic, Ludovic questioned, to set his narrow, modern scepticism against the accumulated experience of the species?
He opened his dictionary and read: ‘Doom: irrevocable destiny (usually of adverse fate), final fate, destruction, ruin, death.’ He turned to Roget and found ‘Nemesis: Eumenides; keep the wound green; lex talionis; ruthless; unforgiving, inexorable; implacable, remorseless.’ His sacred scriptures offered no comfort that morning.
At the same time as Ludovic was contemplating the arcane operation of Nemesis in the lowlands of Essex, Kerstie was causing dismay in Eaton Terrace by revealing the effects of causality in the natural order.
Ian had returned from his tour of the Highlands. He had dismissed his party of journalists on the platform at Edinburgh and delayed a night to visit his mother at the castellated dwelling on the Ayrshire coast which his grandfather, the first baron, had built as the family seat. The main building had been requisitioned and, though massive, was being eroded by soldiers. The Dowager Lady Kilbannock lived in the factor’s house and there gratefully entertained Ian’s sons in their school holidays. It was his first visit since the beginning of the war. He was still savouring the unaccustomed warmth of his welcome.
He had arrived in London that morning but had no intention of reporting back to his office until afternoon. Virginia was there to help his depleted secretariat deal with the telephone. He had bathed after his night journey, shaved, and breakfasted, lit a cigar from a box given him by his mother, and was prepared for an easy morning, when Kerstie had joined him. The cipher clerks worked irregular hours according to the press of business. She had been on night shift and returned home hoping for a bath. She was not pleased to find that Ian had used all the hot water. In her vexation she sprang the news of Virginia’s predicament.
Ian’s first words were: ‘Good God. At her age. After all her experience;’ and then: ‘Well, she can’t have it here.’
‘She’s in an odd mood,’ said Kerstie. ‘She seems to have lost all her spirit. The country must still be teeming with helpful doctors or for that matter midwives. I believe a lot of them make a bit on the side that way. She happens to have struck it unlucky twice. Now she’s just given up trying. Talks about Fate.’
Ian drew deeply at his cigar, wondered why Scotland was still stocked with commodities that had long disappeared from the south, then turned gentler thoughts towards Virginia. He had momentarily seen himself as a figure of melodrama driving her from his door. Now he said:
‘Has she thought of the Loot?’
‘As a doctor?’
‘No, no. As a husband. She should marry someone. That’s what a lot of girls do, who funk an operation.’
‘I don’t think the Loot likes women.’
‘He’s always about with them. But he wouldn’t really do. What she needs is a chap who’s just off to Burma or Italy. Lots of chaps marry on embarkation leave. She needn’t announce the happy event until a suitable time. When he comes home, if he does come home, he won’t be likely to ask to see its birth certificate. He’ll be proud as Punch to find a child to greet him. It happens all the time.’ He smoked in silence before the gas fire, while Kerstie went up to change and wash in cold water. When she returned, wearing one of Virginia’s 1939 suits, he was still thinking of Virginia.
‘How about Guy Crouchback?’ he asked.
‘How about him?’
‘I mean as a husband. He’s off to Italy quite soon, I believe.’
‘What a disgusting idea. I like Guy.’
‘Oh, so do I. Old friends. But he’s been keen on Virginia. She told me he made a pass at her when she first came back to London. They were saying in Bellamy’s that he’s been left a lot of money lately. Come to think of it, he was once married to Virginia in the remote ages. You’d better put the idea into her head. Let it lie there and fructify. She’ll do the rest. But she must look sharp.’
‘Ian, you absolutely nauseate me.’
‘Well perhaps I’d better have a word with her at the office as her boss. Got to see to the welfare of one’s command.’
‘There are times I really detest you.’
‘Yes, so does Virginia. Well, who else do you suggest for her? I dare say one of the Americans would be the best bet. The trouble is that, from the litter of contraceptives they leave everywhere, it looks as though they lacked strong philoprogenitive instincts.’
‘You couldn’t get Trimmer recalled?’
‘And undo the work of months? Not on your life. Besides Virginia hates him more than anyone. She wouldn’t marry him, if he came to her in his kilt escorted by bagpipes. He fell in love with her, remember? That was what sickened her. He used to sing “Night and Day” about her, to me. “Like the beat, beat, beat of the tom-tom, when the jungle shadows fall.” It was excruciating.’
Kerstie sat close to Ian by the fireplace in the cloud of rich smoke. It was not affection that drew her but the warmth of the feeble blue flames.
‘Why don’t you go to Bellamy’s,’ she asked, ‘and talk to your beastly friends there?’
‘Don’t want to run into anyone from HOO HQ. Officially I’m still in Scotland.’
‘Well, I’m going to sleep. I don’t want to talk any more.’
‘Just as you like. Cheer up,’ he added, ‘if she can’t qualify for a ward for officers’ wives, I believe there are special state maternity homes now for unmarried factory-girls. Indeed, I know there are. Trimmer visited one during his Industrial Tour and was a great success there.’
‘Can you imagine Virginia going to one of them?’
‘Better than her staying here. Far better.’
Kerstie did not sleep long but when she came downstairs at noon, she found that the lure of Bellamy’s had proved stronger than Ian’s caution and that the house was empty save for Mrs Bristow who was crowning her morning’s labour with a cup of tea and a performance on the wireless of ‘Music while you Work’.
‘Just off, ducks,’ she said using a form of address that had become prevalent during the blitz. ‘I’ve got a friend says she can give me another doctor as might help your friend.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Bristow.’
‘Only he lives in Canvey Island. S
till you can’t find things where you want them now, can you ducks? Not with the war.’
‘No, alas.’
‘Well, I’ll bring the name tomorrow. So long.’
Kerstie did not think Canvey Island a promising resort and was confirmed in this opinion when, a few minutes later, Virginia telephoned from her office.
‘Canvey Island? Where’s that?’
‘Somewhere near Southend I think.’
‘That’s out.’
‘It’s Mrs Bristow’s last hope.’
‘Canvey Island. Anyway, that’s not what I rang up about. Tell me, does Ian know about me?’
‘I think he does.’
‘You told him?’
‘Well, yes.’
‘Oh, I don’t mind but, listen, he’s just done something very odd. He’s asked me to lunch with him. Can you explain that?’
‘No, indeed not.’
‘It’s not as though he didn’t see all too much of me every day at home and in the office. He says he wants to talk to me privately. Do you think it’s about my trouble?’
‘I suppose it might be.’
‘Well, I’ll tell you all about it when I come back.’
Kerstie considered the matter. She was a woman with moral standards which her husband did not share. Finally she tried to telephone to Guy but a strange voice answered from the shade of the megalosaurus saying that Captain Crouchback had been posted to another department and was inaccessible.
An aeroplane rising half a mile distant, and thunderously skimming the chimneys of the house, an obsolete bomber such as was adapted for parachute training, roused Ludovic from the near-stupor into which he had fallen. He rose from his deep chair and at his desk entered on the first page of a new notebook a pensée: The penalty of sloth is longevity. Then he went to the window and gazed blankly through the plate glass.
He had chosen these rooms because they were secluded from the scaffolds and platforms where the training exercises took place in front of the house. He faced, across half an acre of lawn, what the previous owners had called their ‘arboretum’. Ludovic thought of it merely as ‘the trees’. Some were deciduous and had now been stripped bare by the east wind that blew from the sea, leaving the holm oaks, yews, and conifers in carefully contrived patterns, glaucous, golden, and of a green so deep as to be almost black at that sunless noon; they afforded no pleasure to Ludovic.
Where, he asked himself, could he hide during the next ten days? It did not occur to him to go on leave. He had had all the leave that was due to him and his early training had left him with a superstitious regard for orders. Jumbo Trotter would have devised a dozen perfectly regular means of absenting himself. He would, if all else failed, have posted himself to a senior officers’ ‘refresher’ course. Ludovic had never sought to master the byways of military movement He stared at the arboretum and remembered the saw: ‘The place to hide a leaf is in a tree.’
He went downstairs and across the hall to the ante-room. Captain Fremantle was still there with the chief instructor.
‘Sit down. Sit down,’ he said, for he had never experienced, and had not sought to introduce under his command, the easy manners of the Officers’ House at Windsor or at the Halberdiers’ Depot. ‘Here is the nominal roll of tomorrow’s batch. He handed it over and then he lingered. ‘Fremantle,’ he said, ‘does my name appear anywhere?’
‘Appear, sir?’
‘I mean are the men under instruction aware of my name?’
‘Well sir, you usually meet them and speak to them the first night, don’t you? You begin: “I am the commandant. My name is Ludovic. I want you all to feel free to come to me with any difficulties.”’
This had indeed been the custom which Ludovic had inherited from his more genial predecessor in office, and very unnerving his baleful stare, as he spoke these formalities of welcome, had proved to more than one apprehensive client. None had ever come to him with any difficulty.
‘Do I? Is that what I say?’
‘Well, something like that usually, sir.’
‘Ah but if I don’t meet them, could they find out who I am? Is there a list of the establishment posted anywhere? Does my name appear on standing orders? Or daily orders?’
‘I think it does, sir. I’ll have to check on that.’
‘I want all orders in future to be signed by you “Staff captain for Commandant”. And have any notices that need it retyped with my name omitted. Is that clear?’
‘Yes sir’
‘And I shan’t be coming into the mess. I shall take all my meals in my office for the next week or so.’
‘Very good, sir.’
Captain Fremantle regarded him with puzzled concern. ‘You may think this rather strange, Fremantle. It’s a question of security. They are tightening it up. As you know, this station is on the secret list. There have been some leaks lately. I received orders this morning that I was to go, as it were, “under-ground”. You may think it all rather extravagant. I do myself. But those are our orders. I shall start the new régime today. Tell the mess corporal to serve my lunch upstairs.’
‘Very good, sir.’
He left them and walked out of the french windows towards the trees.
‘Well,’ said the chief instructor, ‘what d’you make of that?
‘He didn’t get any orders this morning. I went through the mail. There was only one “secret” envelope—the nominal roll we always get.’
‘Persecution mania,’ said the chief instructor. ‘It can’t be anything else.’
Ludovic walked alone among the trees. What had been paths were ankle deep in dead leaves and cones and pine needles. His glossy boots grew dull. Presently he turned back and, avoiding the french windows, entered by a side door and the back stairs. On his table lay a great plate of roast meat – a week’s ration for a civilian – a heap of potatoes and cold thick gravy, and beside it a pudding of sorts. He gazed at these things, wondering what to do. The bell did not work nor, had it done so, were the mess orderlies trained to answer it. He could not bear to sit beside this distasteful plethora waiting to see what would become of it. He took to the woods once more. Now and then an aeroplane came in to land or climbed roaring above him. Dusk began to fall. He was conscious of damp. When at last he returned to his room, the food was gone. He sat in his deep chair while the gathering dusk turned to darkness.
There was a knock at the door. He did not answer. Captain Fremantle looked in and the light from the passage revealed Ludovic sitting there, empty-handed, staring.
‘Oh,’ said Captain Fremantle, ‘I’m sorry, sir. I was told you had gone out. Are you all right, sir?’
‘Quite all right, thank you. Why should you fear otherwise? I like sometimes to sit and think. Perhaps if I smoked a pipe, it would seem more normal. Do you think I should buy a pipe?’
‘Well that’s rather a matter of taste, isn’t it, sir?’
‘Yes and to me it would be highly disagreeable. But I will buy a pipe, if it would make you easier in your mind about me.’
Captain Fremantle withdrew. As he shut the door he heard Ludovic switch on the light. He returned to the ante-room. ‘The old man’s stark crazy,’ he reported.
It was part of the very light veil of secrecy which enveloped Ludovic’s villa that its location was not divulged to the ‘clients’. It was known officially as No. 4 Special Training Centre. Those committed to it were ordered to report at five in the afternoon to the Movement Control office in a London terminus, where they were mustered by a wingless Air Force officer and thence conveyed into Essex by motor bus. They did not see this airman again until the day of departure. His contribution to the war effort was to travel with them in the dark and see that none deserted or fell into conversation with subversive agents.
Foreign refugees who composed many of the training courses were obfuscated by this stratagem and when caught and tortured by the Gestapo could only give the unsatisfactory answer that they were taken in the dark to an unknown destinatio
n, but Englishmen had little difficulty in identifying their route.
When Guy arrived at the rendezvous he found a group of officers which grew to twelve in number. None was higher than captain in rank; all were older than the lean young athletes of the Parachute Regiment. Guy was the oldest of them by some five or six years. They came from many different regiments and like him had been chosen ostensibly for their knowledge of foreign languages and their appetite, if not for adventure, at least for diversity in the military routine. The last to report was a Halberdier, and Guy recognized his one-time subaltern, Frank de Souza.
‘Uncle! What on earth are you doing here? Are you on the staff of this Dotheboys Hall they’re taking us to?’
‘Certainly not. I’m coming on the course with you.’
‘Well, that’s the most cheering thing I’ve heard about it yet. It can’t be as arduous as they make out if they take old sweats like you.’
They sat together at the back of the bus and throughout the hour’s drive talked of the recent history of the Halberdiers. Colonel Tickeridge was now brigadier; Ritchie-Hook a major-general. ‘He can’t bear it and he’s not much use at it either. He’s never to be found at his own headquarters. Always biffing about in front.’ Erskine now commanded the 2nd Battalion; de Souza had had D Company until a few weeks ago; then he had put in for a posting, claiming a hitherto unrevealed proficiency in Serbo-Croat. ‘I suppose they might call it “battle weariness”,’ he said. ‘Anyway, I wanted a change. Four years is too long in the same outfit for a man who’s naturally a civilian. Besides it wasn’t the same. There aren’t many of the original battalion left. Not many casualties really. We had a suicide in the company. I never knew what about. A militiaman – perfectly cheerful all day and shot himself in his tent one evening. He left a letter to the CSM saying he hoped he would not cause any trouble. A few men got badly hit and sent home. Only one officer, Sarum-Smith, killed, but chaps got shunted about, first one, then another of the temporary officers were sent off on courses and never came back; half the senior NCO’s were superannuated; the new young gentlemen were a dreary lot; until one suddenly realized the whole thing had changed. And then in Italy there were Americans all over the place clamouring for dough-nuts and Coca-Cola and ice-cream. So I decided to put my knowledge of Jugo-Slavia to use.’