“I wish you’d tell me the truth about the tin hat.”
“Well, if you must know, I have been wearing it lately. I suppose it really boils down to home-sickness, old man. The helmet has rather the feel of a solar topee, if you see what I mean. It makes the thunder-box more homely.”
“You don’t start out wearing it?”
“No, under my arm.”
“And when do you put it on, before or after lowering the costume? I must know.”
“On the threshold, as it happens. Very luckily for me this morning. But, you know, really, old man, I don’t quite get you. Why all the interest?”
“I must visualize the scene, Apthorpe. When we are old men, memories of things like this will be our chief comfort.”
“Crouchback, there are times when you talk almost as though you found it funny.”
“Please don’t think that, Apthorpe. I beg you, think anything but that.”
Already after so brief a reconciliation Apthorpe was getting suspicious. He would have liked to be huffy but did not dare. He was pitted against a ruthless and resourceful enemy and must hold fast to Guy or go down.
“Well, what is our next move?” he asked.
That night they crept out to the potting-shed and Apthorpe in silence showed with his torch the broken shards, the scattered mold and the dead geranium of that morning’s great fright. In silence he and Guy lifted the box and bore it as they had planned, back to its original home in the games-hut.
Next day the brigadier appeared at first parade.
“A.T.M. 24, as no doubt you all know, recommends the use of games for training in observation and field-craft. This morning, gentlemen, you will play such a game. Somewhere about these grounds has been concealed an antiquated field latrine, no doubt left here as valueless by the former occupants of the camp. It looks like a plain square box. Work singly. The first officer to find it will report to me. Fall out.”
“His effrontery staggers me,” said Apthorpe. “Crouchback, guard the shed. I will draw off the hunt.”
New strength had come to Apthorpe. He was master of the moment. He strode off purposefully towards the area of coal bunkers and petrol dump and, sure enough, the brigadier was soon seen to follow behind him. Guy made deviously for the games-hut and sauntered near it. Twice other seekers approached and Guy said: “I’ve just looked in there. Nothing to see.”
Presently the bugle recalled them. The brigadier received the “nil report,” mounted his motor-cycle and drove away scowling ominously but without a word; he did not reappear at all that day.
“A bad loser, old man,” said Apthorpe.
But next day the Out of Bounds notice was back on the shed.
As Guy foresaw, those mad March days and nights of hide-and-seek drained into a deep well of refreshment in his mind, but in retrospect the detail of alternate ruse and counter-ruse faded and grew legendary. He never again smelled wet laurel, or trod among pine needles, without reliving those encumbered night prowls with Apthorpe, those mornings of triumph or disappointment. But the precise succession of episodes, indeed their very number, faded and were lost among later, less child-like memories.
The climax came in Holy Week at the very end of the course. The brigadier had been in London for three days on the business of their next move. The thunder-box stood in a corner of the playing field, unhoused but well hidden between an elm tree and a huge roller. There for the three days Apthorpe enjoyed undisputed rights of property.
The brigadier returned in alarmingly high spirits. He had bought some trick glasses at a toyshop which, when raised, spilled their contents down the drinker’s chin, and these he secretly distributed round the table before dinner. After dinner there was a long session of housey-housey. When he had called the last house he said: “Gentlemen, everyone except the B.M. and I goes on leave tomorrow. We meet under canvas in the lowlands of Scotland where you will have ample space to put into practice the lessons you have learned here. Details of the move will be posted as soon as the B.M. has sweated them out. You will particularly notice that officer’s baggage and equipment is defined by a scale laid down at the War House. Those limits will be strictly observed. I think that’s all, isn’t it, B.M.? Oh, no, one other thing. You are all improperly dressed. You’ve been promoted as from this morning. Get those second pips up before leaving camp.”
That night there was singing in the dormitories:
This time tomorrow I shall be
Far from this Academee.
Leonard improvised:
No more T.E.W.T.S. and no more drill,
No night ops to cause a chill.
“I say,” said Guy to Apthorpe. “That scale of equipment won’t allow for your gear.”
“I know, old man. It’s very worrying.”
“And the thunder-box.”
“I shall find a place for it. Somewhere quite safe, a crypt, a vault, somewhere like that where I shall know it’s waiting for me until the end of the war.”
No more swamps through which to creep,
No more lectures to make me sleep.
The cheerful voices reached the room marked “Bde. H.Q.” where the brigadier was at work with his brigade major.
“That reminds me,” he said, “I’ve some unfinished business to attend to outside.”
*
Next morning as soon as the sun touched the unshaded window of Passchendaele, Apthorpe was up, jabbing his shoulder straps with a pair of nail scissors. Then he tricked himself out as a lieutenant. He nothing common did or mean on their morning of departure. His last act before leaving the dormitory was a friendly one; he offered to lend Guy a pair of stars from a neat leather stud-box which he now revealed to be full of such adornments and of crowns also. Then before Guy had finished shaving, Apthorpe, correctly dressed and bearing his steel helmet under his arm, set out for his corner of the playing field.
The spot was not a furlong away. In less than five minutes an explosion rattled the windows of the schoolmaster. Various jolly end-of-term voices rose from the dormitories: “Air raid”; “Take cover”; “Gas.”
Guy buckled his belt and hurried out to what he knew must be the scene of the disaster. Wisps of smoke were visible. He crossed the playing field. At first there was no sign of Apthorpe. Then he came upon him, standing, leaning against the elm, wearing his steel helmet, fumbling with his trouser buttons and gazing with dazed horror on the wreckage which lay all round the roller.
“I say, are you hurt?”
“Who is that? Crouchback? I don’t know. I simply don’t know, old man.”
Of the thunder-box there remained only a heap of smoking wood, brass valves, pinkish chemical powder scattered many yards, and great jags of patterned china.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know, old man. I just sat down. There was a frightful bang and the next thing I knew I was on all fours on the grass, right over there.”
“Are you hurt?” Guy asked again.
“Shock,” said Apthorpe. “I don’t feel at all the thing.”
Guy looked more closely at the wreckage. It was plain enough from his memories of the last lecture what had happened.
Apthorpe removed his steel helmet, recovered his cap, straightened his uniform, put up a hand to assure himself that his new stars were still in place. He looked once more on all that remained of his thunder-box; the mot juste, thought Guy.
He seemed too dazed for grief.
Guy was at a loss for words of condolence.
“Better come back to breakfast.”
They turned silently towards the house.
Apthorpe walked unsteadily across the wet, patchy field with his eyes fixed before him.
On the steps he paused once and looked back.
There was more of high tragedy than of bitterness in the epitaph he spoke.
“Biffed.”
IV
Guy had considered going to Downside for Holy Week but decided instead on Matchet. The Marine Hotel was still crowded but the
re was now no sense of bustle. Management and servants had settled down to the simple policy of doing less than they had done before, for rather more money. A notice board hung in the hall. Except that they began: “Guests are respectfully reminded…,” “Guests are respectfully requested…,” “Guests are regretfully informed…,” the announcements were curiously like military orders and each proclaimed some small curtailment of amenity.
“Seems to me this place is going off rather,” said Tickeridge, who now wore the badges of lieutenant-colonel.
I’m sure they’re doing their best,” said Mr. Crouchback.
“I notice they’ve put up the prices too.”
“I believe they’re finding everything rather difficult.”
All his life Mr. Crouchback abstained from wine and tobacco during Lent, but his table still bore its decanter of port and the Tickeridges joined them every evening.
As they stood at the windy front door that Maundy Thursday night, while Felix gamboled off into the darkness, Mr. Crouchback said:
“I’m so glad you’re in Tickeridge’s battalion. He’s such a pleasant fellow. His wife and little girl miss him dreadfully…
“He tells me you’re probably being given a company.”
“Hardly that. I think I may get made second-in-command.”
“He said you’d get your own company. He thinks the world of you. I’m so glad. You’re wearing that medal?”
“Yes, indeed.”
“I really am delighted you’re doing so well. Not that I’m at all surprised. By the way I shall be taking my turn at the Altar of Repose. I don’t suppose you care to come too?”
“What time?”
“Well, they seem to find it hardest to get people for the early morning watches. It’s all the same for me so I said I’d be there from five to seven.”
“That’s a bit long for me. I might look in for half an hour.”
“Do. They’ve got it looking very pretty this year.”
Dawn was breaking that Good Friday when Guy arrived at the little church, but inside it was as still as night. The air was heavy with the smell of flowers and candles. His father was alone, kneeling stiff and upright at a prie-dieu before the improvised altar, gazing straight before him into the golden lights of the altar. He turned to smile at Guy and then resumed his prayer.
Guy knelt not far from him and prayed too.
Presently a sacristan came in and drew the black curtains from the east windows; brilliant sunlight blinded their eyes, momentarily, to candles and ciborium.
*
At that moment in London—for in this most secret headquarters it was thought more secret to work at unconventional hours—Guy was being talked about.
“There’s some more stuff come in about the Southsand affair, sir.”
“Is that the Welsh professor who’s taken against the R.A.F.?”
“No, sir. You remember the short-wave message from L 18 we intercepted. It’s here. Two Halberdier officers state that important politician Box visited Southsand in secret and conferred with high military commander.”
“I’ve never thought there was much in that. We’ve no suspect called Box as far as I know and there’s no high military commander anywhere near Southsand. Might be a code name, of course.”
“Well, sir, we got to work on it as you told us and we’ve learned that there’s a Member of Parliament named Box-Bender who has a brother-in-law named Crouchback in the Halberdiers. Now Box-Bender was born plain Box. His father added to the name in 1897.”
“Well, that seems to dispose of it, eh? No reason why this fellow shouldn’t visit his own brother-in-law.”
“In secret, sir?”
“Have we anything on this Box? Nothing very suspicious about a hyphenated name, I hope?”
“We’ve nothing very significant, sir,” said the junior officer whose name was Grace-Groundling-Marchpole, each junction of which represented a provident marriage in the age of landed property. “He went to Salzburg twice, ostensibly for some kind of musical festival. But Crouchback’s quite another fish. Until September of last year he lived in Italy and is known to have been on good terms with the fascist authorities. Don’t you think I’d better open a file for him?”
“Yes, perhaps it would be as well.”
“For both, sir?”
“Yes. Pop ’em all in.”
They, too, took down the black-out screens and admitted the dawn.
Thus two new items were added to the Most Secret index, which later was micro-filmed and multiplied and dispersed into a dozen indexes in all the Counter-Espionage Headquarters of the Free World and became a permanent part of the Most Secret archives of the Second World War.
“I have a brother in the Halberdiers,” said Grace-Groundling-Marchpole irrelevantly. “They don’t think much of him.”
V
The great promised event, “When the brigade forms,” had glowed in Guy’s mind, as in the minds of nearly all his companions, for more than five months; a numinous idea. None knew what to expect.
They reassembled from Easter leave at Penkirk, a lowland valley some twenty miles from Edinburgh, covered in farm land and small homesteads. At its head stood a solid little mid-Victorian castle. It was there they met and there they messed and slept for the first two days. Their numbers were swollen by many unfamiliar regulars of all ranks, a medical officer, an undenominational chaplain and a cantankerous, much beribboned veteran who commanded the Pioneers. Still there were only officers. The drafts of men had been postponed until there was accommodation for them.
The Pioneers, it was supposed, had prepared a camp, but on the appointed day nothing was visible above ground. They had been there all the winter cozily established in the castle stables. Some of them had grown fond of the place, particularly the reservists who made friends in the neighborhood, sheltered at their hearths during working hours and paid for their hospitality with tools and provisions from the company stores. These veterans were designed to be the stiffening of a force otherwise composed of anti-fascist ’cellists and dealers in abstract painting from the Danubian Basin.
“If they’d given me one section of fascists,” said their commander, “I’d have had the place finished in a week.”
But he did not repine. He had billeted himself in very fair comfort at the Station Hotel three miles distant. He was versed in all the arcana of the Pay Office and drew a multitude of peculiar special allowances. If he liked the new commander he was quite ready to prolong his task until the end of the summer.
Five minutes with Brigadier Ritchie-Hook decided him to make an end and be gone. The veterans were caught and put to bully the anti-fascists. Construction began in earnest but not earnestly enough for Ritchie-Hook. A second Ruskin, on the first morning at Penkirk, he ordered his young officers to dig and carry. Unfortunately he had had them all inoculated the evening before with every virus in the medical store. Noting a lack of enthusiasm he tried to stir up competition between Halberdiers and Pioneers. The musicians responded with temperamental fire; the art-dealers less zealously, but seriously and well; the Halberdiers not at all, for they could barely move.
They dug drains and carried tent-boards (the most awkward burden ever devised by man for man); they unloaded lorry-loads of Soyer stoves and zinc water pipes; they ached and staggered and in a few cases fainted. Not until the work was nearly done, did the poisons lose their strength.
For the first two nights they spread their blankets and messed higgledy-piggledy in the castle. It was Major McKinney’s Kut-al-Imara all over again. Then on the third day officers’ lines were complete in each battalion area, with a mess-tent, a water tap and a field kitchen. They moved out and in. The adjutant procured a case of spirits. The quartermaster improvised a dinner. Colonel Tickeridge stood round after round of drinks and later gave his obscene performance of “The One-Armed Flautist.” The Second Battalion had found a home and established its identity.
Guy groped his way among the ropes and tent peg
s that first evening under canvas, fuddled with gin, fatigue and germs, to the tent he was sharing with Apthorpe.
Apthorpe, the old campaigner, had defied orders (as, it soon appeared, had done all the regulars) and brought with him a substantial part of his “gear.” He had left the mess before Guy. He lay now, on a high collapsible bed, under a canopy of white muslin illuminated from inside by a patent, incandescent oil lamp, like a great baby in a bassinet, smoking his pipe and reading his Manual of Military Law. A table, a chair, a bath, a wash-hand-stand, all collapsible, chests and trunks, very solid, surrounded his roost; also a curious structure like a gallows from which hung his uniforms. Guy gazed, fascinated, by this smoky, luminous cocoon.
“I trust I’ve left you enough room,” said Apthorpe.
“Yes, rather.”
Guy had only a rubber mattress, a storm lantern and a three-legged canvas wash-basin.
“You may think it odd that I prefer to sleep under a net.”
“I expect it’s wise to take every precaution.”
“No, no, no. This isn’t a precaution. It’s just that I sleep better.”
Guy undressed, throwing his clothes on his suitcase, and lay down on the floor, between blankets, on his strip of rubber. It was intensely cold. He felt in his bag for a pair of woolen socks and the balaclava helmet knitted for him by one of the ladies at the Marine Hotel, Matchet. He added his great-coat to his mattress.
“Of course this is only a temporary arrangement,” said Apthorpe, “until the lists are out. Company commanders have tents to themselves. I’d double in with Leonard if I were you. He’s about the best of the subalterns. His wife had a baby last week. I should have thought it the kind of thing that would rather spoil one’s leave, but he seems quite cheerful about it.”
“Yes. He told me.”
“What you want to avoid in a room-mate is someone who’s always trying to borrow one’s gear.”
“Yes.”
“Well, I’m turning in now. If you get up in the night you’ll take care where you walk, won’t you? I’ve got some pretty valuable stuff lying around I haven’t found a place for yet.”