‘I was just going to talk to Colonel Blackhouse.’
‘Talk?’ she said. ‘Talk? It’s plain to see you’ve had a visitor.’
Tommy lay with his leg in plaster, suspended on a line from a pulley. He greeted Guy with delight.
‘They ought to recommend you for an MC or something,’ he said. ‘Trouble is, of course, Crete wasn’t all that successful. They prefer handing out decorations after a victory. Were you ever actually in command of the party?’
‘No. There was a sapper who did everything at first. After we lost him, we more or less drifted, I think.’
‘What became of Hound?’
‘I’ve no idea. Ludovic is the only man who can tell you that.’
‘I gather Ludovic turned out well.’
‘Did he?’
‘First class. It was he who carried you ashore at Sidi Barani, you know.’
‘I didn’t know.’
‘He must be strong as a horse. He was only in hospital two days. I’ve put him in for a commission. I can’t say I ever liked the fellow much, but clearly I was wrong, as usual. The nurses told me you were off your head, Guy. You seem all right to me.’
‘Julia Stitch called this morning.’
‘Yes, she told me on her way out. She’s going to try and get you moved up to her house.’
‘She told me about Ivor.’
‘Yes. So she said.’ The professional wariness which Guy well knew in Tommy now clouded his frank and friendly expression. ‘Ivor was in great form. They wouldn’t let him go and see you. He was full of congratulations on your getting away. Pity he had to go off so soon.’
‘Did he tell you the story of his own escape?’
‘One version of it.’
‘You didn’t believe it?’
‘My dear Guy, what d’you take me for? No one believes it, least of all Julia.’
‘You aren’t going to do anything about it?’
‘I? It’s nothing to do with me, thank God. My position at the moment is Major, waiting re-posting on discharge from hospital. Ivor’s put up a pretty poor show. We know that – you won’t find me applying for him a second time. Julia’s got him out of the way. She had to work hard to do it, I can tell you. Now the best thing is for everyone to keep quiet and forget the whole business. It’s far too big a thing for anyone to do anything about. He might have to stand court-martial for desertion in the face of the enemy. That would be the bloody hell of a thing. They shot people for it in the last war. Of course no one’s going to do anything. Come to think of it, it’s a lucky thing for Ivor we haven’t your Brigadier Ritchie-Hook with us. He’d do something.’
Guy did not mention the notes in his locker. Instead they talked of the future.
‘It looks as if Commandos are off as far as the Middle East is concerned,’ said Tommy. ‘We’re both lucky. We shan’t get pushed about. We’ve got battalions of our own regiments out here. You’ll go back to the Halberdiers, I take it?’
‘I hope so. There’s nothing I ask better.’
That afternoon Guy was transported to Mrs Stitch’s. The hospital sent him there in an ambulance. Indeed, they insisted on carrying him in and out of that vehicle on a stretcher, but before leaving he walked from place to place making his farewells.
‘You’ll be in clover up there,’ said the senior medical officer, signing him off the strength. ‘Nothing like a bit of home comfort to pull you round.’
‘What it is to have influence!’ said the Sister.
‘She tried to kidnap me,’ said Tommy. ‘I love Julia, but you have to be jolly well to stay with her.’
Guy had heard this warning on Ivor’s lips and discounted it. Coming from the sturdier Tommy it made him hesitate, but it was then too late. The stretcher-bearers stood remorsely at his side. Within half an hour he was at Mrs Stitch’s luxurious official residence.
Her grandparents had spent their lives in the service of Queen Victoria and in that court had formed standards of living which projected themselves over another generation and determined Mrs Stitch’s precocious but impressionable childhood. Mrs Stitch grew up with the conviction that comfort was rather common. She enjoyed the sumptuous and, within certain incalculable limits, the profuse – no one at her table could ever be quite sure which course of a seemingly classic dinner might not disconcertingly prove to be the last; she enjoyed change and surprise, crisp lettuce-freshness and hoary antiquity, but she did not like male guests to live soft.
This was apparent when she led the stretcher-party down to the room prepared for Guy; down it was, well below ground-level. Mrs Stitch danced lightly from cockroach to cockroach across the concrete floor, squashing six on her way to the window. This she threw open on the kitchen yard. At eye level the bare feet of Berber servants passed to and fro. One squatted near, plucking a goose whose feathers caught by the north-west breeze floated in among them.
‘There,’ she said. ‘Lovely. What more could anyone ask? – I know, flowers.’ She was gone. She was back, laden with tuberoses. ‘Here,’ she said, putting them in the basin. ‘If you want to wash, use Algie’s loo.’ She surveyed the room with unaffected pleasure. ‘All yours,’ she said. ‘Join us when you feel like it.’ She was gone. She was back. ‘Fond of cats? Here’s some. They’ll keep down the beetles.’ She threw in two tiger-like animals and shut the door. They stretched and scornfully left by the window.
Guy sat on the bed feeling that things had been too much for him that day. He still wore the pyjamas and dressing-gown which seemed to be the correct rig for this move. The stretcher-bearers now returned with his luggage.
‘Can we help with your gear, sir? There doesn’t seem anywhere to put anything much, does there, really?’
No cupboard, no drawer; a peg. One of the men hung up his equipment; they saluted and left.
Guy’s kit had followed him – much pilfered, it transpired – from camp to hospital. There was also the bundle containing the laundered rags he had worn in Crete and the neat packet of possessions taken from his pockets and haversack; with the red identity disc lay his manumission from Chatty Corner and the pocket-book in which he had kept the notes for his War Diary. The elastic band had gone. The covers were blistered and limp and creased and tattered, some of the pages stuck together. Guy carefully separated them with a razor-blade. It was all there. On the blotched maths-paper he could follow in the deterioration of his writing the successive phases of exhaustion. As he grew feebler he had written larger and more heavily. The last entry was a deep scrawl, covering a sheet, recording the appearance of an aeroplane over the boat. This was his contribution to History; this perhaps the evidence in a notorious trial.
Guy lay on his bed, too much shaken by the physical events of the day to concentrate on the moral issues. For Julia Stitch there was no problem. An old friend was in trouble. Rally round. Tommy had his constant guide in the precept: never cause trouble except for positive preponderant advantage. In the field, if Ivor or anyone else were endangering a position, Tommy would have had no compunction in shooting him out of hand. This was another matter. Nothing was in danger save one man’s reputation. Ivor had behaved abominably but he had hurt no one but himself. He was now out of the way. Tommy would see to it that he was never again in a position to behave as he had done in Crete. His troop was out of the way too, until the end of the war. It did not much matter, as far as winning the war went, what they said in their prison camp. Perhaps in later years when Tommy met Ivor in Bellamy’s he might be a shade less cordial than of old. But to instigate a court-martial on a capital charge was inconceivable; in the narrowest view it would cause endless professional annoyance and delay; in the widest it would lend comfort to the enemy.
Guy lacked these simple rules of conduct. He had no old love for Ivor, no liking at all, for the man who had been his friend had proved to be an illusion. He had a sense, too, that all war consisted in causing trouble without much hope of advantage. Why was he here in Mrs Stitch’s basement, why were Eddie and B
ertie in prison, why was the young soldier lying still unburied in the deserted village of Crete, if it was not for Justice?
So he lay pondering until Mrs Stitch called him up to cocktails.
Days passed while Guy lay in the chaise-longue beside the strutting and preening peacocks. Guests came and went singly and in large parties, pashas, courtiers, diplomats, politicians, generals, admirals, subalterns, Greek and Egyptian and Jewish and French, but Mrs Stitch never neglected Guy. Three or four times a day she was at his side with the hypodermic needle of her charm.
‘Isn’t there anybody you’d like me to ask?’ she said one day, planning dinner.
‘Well, there is one. Colonel Tickeridge. I hear he’s in camp at Mariout. You won’t know him but you couldn’t help liking him.’
‘I’ll find him for you.’
That was early in the morning of 22 June – a day of apocalypse for all the world for numberless generations, and for Guy among them, one immortal soul, a convalescent Lieutenant of Halberdiers.
Algernon Stitch brought the news of the invasion of Russia when he returned for luncheon. Only Mrs Stitch and Guy and two secretaries were there.
‘Why couldn’t the silly fellow have done it to start with?’ Algernon Stitch asked, ‘instead of landing the lot of us in the soup first.’
‘Is it a Good Thing?’ Mrs Stitch asked the simple question of the schoolroom.
‘Can’t tell. The experts don’t believe the Russians have a chance. And they’ve got a lot of things the Germans will find useful.’
‘What’s Winston going to say?’
‘Welcome our new allies, of course. What else can he?’
‘It’s nice to have one ally,’ said Mrs Stitch.
Nothing else was spoken of at luncheon – the Molotov pact, the partition of Poland, the annexation of the Baltic republics, the resources of the Ukraine, the numbers of aeroplanes, of divisions, transport and oil, Tilsit and Tolstoi, American popular opinion, Japan and the Anti-Comintern Pact – all the topics that were buzzing everywhere in the world at that moment. But Guy remained silent.
Mrs Stitch briefly held his hand on the tablecloth. ‘Feeling low today?’
‘Awfully.’
‘Cheer up. Your chum is coming to dinner.’
But Guy needed more than Colonel Tickeridge.
It was just such a sunny, breezy Mediterranean day two years before when he read of the Russo-German alliance, when a decade of shame seemed to be ending in light and reason, when the Enemy was plain in view, huge and hateful, all disguise cast off; the modern age in arms.
Now that hallucination was dissolved, like the whales and turtles on the voyage from Crete, and he was back after less than two years’ pilgrimage in a Holy Land of illusion in the old ambiguous world, where priests were spies and gallant friends proved traitors and his country was led blundering into dishonour.
That afternoon he took his pocket-book to the incinerator which stood in the yard outside the window, and thrust it in. It was a symbolic act; he stood like the man at Sphakia who dismembered his Bren and threw its parts one by one out into the harbour, splash, splash, splash, into the scum.
Colonel Tickeridge was cheerful that evening, unworried by issues of right and wrong. The more fellows shooting Germans the better, obviously. Rotten sort of government the Russian. So it had been last time. And the Russians changed it. Probably they would again. He explained these points to Guy before dinner. Colonel Tickeridge was content and only slightly bemused. He supposed so large a party must be celebrating something; what, he never learned. He was a little awed by the eminence of some of his fellow guests, the generals in particular. He was not attracted by the lady on either side. He couldn’t understand it when they broke into French. But he tucked in. It was decent of Uncle Crouchback to get him brought here. And later in the evening as he and Guy sat together under the palm trees Mrs Stitch joined them.
‘Have you your pistols?’ she quoted. ‘Have you your sharp-edged axes? Halberdiers! O Halberdiers!’
‘Eh?’ said Colonel Tickeridge.’ Sorry, I’m not quite there.’
‘What have you been talking about?’
‘I’ve been arranging my future,’ said Guy. ‘Very satisfactorily. The Colonel is taking me back.’
‘We lost a lot of good fellows over there, you know. We’re busy reforming at the moment. Don’t want to take replacements out of the pool, if we can help it. Glad to have one of the old lot back again. Only hope the Brigadier won’t snap him up.’
‘The Brigadier?’ asked Mrs Stitch, politely, vaguely. ‘Who is he?’
‘Ben Ritchie-Hook. You must have heard of him.’ Mrs Stitch was suddenly alert. ‘I think I have. Isn’t he dead? I thought that was how Tommy Blackhouse came to command whatever it was.’
‘He was lost. Not dead. Far from it. He turned up in western Abyssinia leading a group of wogs. Wanted to go on with them, of course, but the powers that be wouldn’t stand for that. They winkled him out and got him to Khartoum. He’s due in Cairo this week. We only just heard. It’s been a day of all-round good news, hasn’t it?’
‘Isn’t he something of a martinet?’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that exactly. I’d say more of a fizzer, really.’
‘Tommy mentioned him the other day, talking about – about something. Hasn’t he rather the reputation of a trouble-maker?’
‘Only for those who need it,’ said Colonel Tickeridge.
‘I think I know what you mean,’ said Guy.
‘There was some fellow in the last war let him down,’ said Colonel Tickeridge. ‘Not one of ours, of course. Ben was only a company commander then and this fellow was on the staff. Ben got hit immediately after and was in hospital for months. By the time he came out the fellow had got posted into an entirely different show. But Ben never let up on him. He hounded him down and got him broken. It’s the big-game hunter in him.’
‘I see. I see,’ said Mrs Stitch. ‘And he’s really been in command of Tommy’s force all the time?’
‘On paper.’
‘And he’s due when?’
‘Before the end of the week, I gather.’
‘I see. Well now, I must go and help Algie.’
Two days later Guy and Mrs Stitch sat in the sunlight with orange-juice and melon and coffee and crescent rolls when the peace of the early morning was broken by a motor-bicycle and the odorous garden was affronted with a cloud of greasy smoke. A military dispatch-rider presented a letter. It was a move order, posting Guy to a transit camp at Suez for immediate return to the United Kingdom. It emanated from Movement Control, District Headquarters. He passed it over the table to Mrs Stitch.
‘Oh, dear,’ she said. ‘We shall miss you.’
‘But I don’t understand. I was due for a medical at the end of the week. They would have passed me fit to join the battalion.’
‘Don’t you want to go home?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Everybody else seems to.’
‘There’s been some mistake. D’you think I could have the car for half an hour and straighten it out?’
‘Do. If you really think it’s worth while.’
Guy drove to headquarters and found the Major who had signed the letter. Guy explained. ‘… Medical on Saturday… CO 2nd Halberdiers has applied for posting … Ritchie-Hook on the way…’
‘Yes,’ said the Major. ‘It looks as though something’s gone wrong. Most of my day is spent arguing with chaps who want to go back. Homes bombed, wives unfaithful, parents insane – they’ll throw any line. It ought to be easy enough to keep someone here. I don’t quite see,’ he said, turning the file, ‘where this order originated. Officially you’re simply on sick leave. This seems to have come from GHQ Cairo. What’s it got to do with them? It isn’t as though they were in any hurry to have you at home. You’re booked for the slowest possible route. Canary Castle. She’s unloading at Suez now. Awful old hulk. She’s going into dry dock in Durban on the way back. You’ll
be weeks. Have you been blotting your copybook by any chance?’
‘Not that I know of.’
‘Got TB or anything?’
‘No.’
‘Well, it can’t be anything we can’t straighten out. Ring me back this afternoon.’ He gave Guy the number of his extension.
Julia was still at home when he returned.
‘Everything fixed?’
‘I think so.’
‘Good. No one’s in to luncheon. Like to be dropped at the Union Bar?’
Later that afternoon Guy succeeded in speaking to the Major whose number had until then been engaged.
‘I asked about you, Crouchback. Nothing I can do, I’m afraid. That order came from right up at the top.’
‘But why?’
‘That’s a thing you probably know more about than I do.’
‘Anyway, I can wait until my Brigadier arrives, can’t I? He’ll be able to do something.’
‘Sorry, old boy. Your orders are to embus for Suez 0700 hours tomorrow. Report here at 0615. I shan’t be here myself but there’ll be someone about. Hope you have a good trip. The old Canary’s quite steady. You’ll find her full of wop prisoners.’
That night there was a large party. Most of the Greek royal family were there. Guy found it unusually difficult to get a word alone with Mrs Stitch. When he did, he said: ‘Julia, you can do anything. Fix this thing for me.’
‘Oh, no, Guy, I never interfere with the military. Algie wouldn’t like it at all.’
Later that night, as Guy packed, he found the red identity disc he had carried out of Crete. He did not know the correct procedure, where he should send it, how addressed. Finally he wrote on a sheet of Mrs Stitch’s thick paper: ‘Taken from the body of a British soldier killed in Crete. Exact position of grave unknown,’ folded it unsigned and addressed the envelope simply GHQME. Eventually, he supposed, it would reach the right department.
But next morning when he found Mrs Stitch up and dressed and waiting to see him off, he thought of a more satisfactory way of paying his debt.
‘Julia,’ he said, ‘do you think Algie could possibly get one of his staff to deal with this for me?’