“I’m the ship’s surgeon. Will you come up and make way for me?”
Guy climbed aboard into the hold. The surgeon descended. He and two orderlies had a special apparatus for such occasions, a kind of cradle which was swung down, fastened to the brigadier and tenderly drawn up again.
“Take him straight along to the sick-bay and prepare him. Anyone else injured?”
“That’s the only one.”
“No one warned me to expect wounded. Luckily we had everything ready this morning. No one told me to expect anything tonight,” the surgeon grumbled, out of sight and out of earshot behind the laden orderlies.
The men came aboard.
“You’ve all done jolly well,” said Guy. “Fall out now. We’ll talk about it tomorrow. Thanks, sailors. Good night.”
He woke Colonel Tickeridge to report.
“Reconnaissance successful, sir. One coconut”—and placed the head beside Colonel Tickeridge’s ashtray on the edge of his bunk.
Colonel Tickeridge came slowly awake.
“For Christ’s sake what’s that thing?”
“French colonial infantry, sir. No identifications.”
“Well, for God’s sake take it away. We’ll talk about it in the morning. Everyone back safe?”
“All my patrol, sir. One supernumerary casualty. Stretcher case. He’s been put in the sick-bay.”
“What the devil do you mean by ‘supernumerary’?”
“The brigadier, sir.”
“What!”
Guy had assumed that Colonel Tickeridge was in the secret; had been party to making him look a fool. Now he dropped something of his stiffness.
“Didn’t you know he was coming, colonel?”
“Of course I didn’t.”
“He must have hidden in the hold and crashed the party in the dark, sir, with his face blacked.”
“The old devil. Is he badly hurt?”
“The leg.”
“That doesn’t sound too bad.” Colonel Tickeridge, fully awake now, began to chuckle, then turned grave. “I say, though, this is going to be the hell of a mess. Well, we’ll talk about it tomorrow. Go to bed now.”
“And this?”
“For Christ’s sake throw it in the drink.”
“Do you think I ought to, colonel, without consulting the brigadier?”
“Well, get it out of here.”
“Very good, sir. Good night.”
Guy took a firm grip of the wool and walked down the breathless corridor. He met a Goanese night steward and showed him the face. The man gave a squeal and fled. Guy was light-headed now. Apthorpe’s cabin? No. He tried the door of the Operations Room. It was unlocked and unguarded. All the maps and confidential papers had been tidied away. He put his burden in the brigadier’s “In” tray and, suddenly weary again, turned to his own cabin, threw down his bloody shirt, washed his bloody chest and hands, and fell deep asleep.
*
“How’s the brigadier, colonel?” Guy asked when he reported to the orderly room.
“Very cheerful. He’s not been round from the chloroform long. He’s asking for his coconut.”
“I left it on his desk.”
“You’d better take it to him. He wants to see you. From his account you seem to have put up rather a good show last night. It’s jolly bad luck.” This was not quite the form Guy had expected congratulations to take. “Sit down, uncle, you aren’t on a harge—yet.”
Guy sat silent while Colonel Tickeridge paced the carpet.
“It’s only once or twice in a chap’s life he gets the chance of a gong. Some chaps never get it. You got yours last night and did all right. By all justice I ought now to be drafting a citation for your M.C. Instead of which we’re in the hell of a fix. I I can’t think what possessed us last night. We can’t even keep the thing quiet. If it was just the battalion involved we might conceivably have tried, but the ship’s full of odds and sods and the thing just isn’t on. If the brigadier hadn’t stopped one we might have made you carry the can. ‘Over-zealous young officer… mild reprimand,’ you know. But there’ll have to be a medical report and an inquiry. You simply can’t do things like that at his age and get away with it. If I’d had any idea what was in his head, I’d have refused cooperation. At least I think I should have done this morning. It won’t look too good for the ship’s captain either. It won’t do you any good. Of course you were acting under orders. You’re in the clear legally. But it’ll be a black mark. For the rest of your life when your name comes up, someone is bound to say: ‘Isn’t he the chap who blotted his copy-book at Dakar in ’40?’ Not, I suppose, that it matters to you. You’ll be out of the corps and your name won’t crop up, will it? Come on, let’s take the head to the brig.”
They found him in the sick-bay, alone in the officers’ ward, his machete, freshly scoured, beside him.
“It wasn’t a clean stroke,” he said. “The silly fellow saw me first so I had to bung a grenade at him, then look for the head and trim it up tidy. Well, Crouchback, how d’you like having a brigadier under your command?”
“I found him most insubordinate, sir.”
“It was a potty little show, but you didn’t do too badly for a first attempt. Did I hear you threaten me with a court martial at one stage of the proceedings?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Never do that, Crouchback, particularly in the field, unless you’ve got a prisoner’s escort handy. I’ve known a promising young officer shot with a Lee-Enfield for threatening things in the field. Where’s my coconut?” Guy handed him the swaddled head. “My word he’s a beauty, isn’t he? Look at his great teeth. Never saw a better. I’m damned if I give him to the Force Commander. I’ll shrink and pickle him; it’ll give me an interest while I’m laid up.”
When they left, Guy asked: “Does he know what you told me, colonel? I mean about his being in for a row?”
“Of course he does. He’s got out of more rows than anyone in the service.”
“So you think he’ll be all right this time?”
Colonel Tickeridge answered sadly and solemnly:
“He’s the wrong age. You can be an enfant terrible or you can be a national figure no one dares touch. But the brig’s neither of those things. It’s the end for him—at least he thinks it is and he ought to know.”
*
The convoy sailed down the coast and then began to break up, first one ship turning aside, then another. The men-o’-war steamed away to another rendezvous—all save the damaged ships who limped down to dry docks at Simonstown. The Free French pursued their mission of liberation elsewhere, the faithful little Belgravia with them. The two ships containing the Halberdier Brigade berthed at a British port. Since the night at Dakar a rare delicacy had kept everyone from questioning Guy. They knew something had happened, that all was not right. They pretended not to be curious. It was the same in the sergeants’ mess and on the troop deck, Guy’s sergeant told him. The brigadier was carried ashore to hospital. The brigade resumed its old duty of standing by for orders.
*
Three weeks later they were still standing by. Their transports had steamed out to sea and they were in camp on shore. The doctrine of “dispersal” had not reached West Africa. The tents stood in neat lines on a stretch of sandy plain, five miles from the town, a few yards from the sea. The expert on tropical diseases had flown away and the rigorous, intolerably irksome hygienic precautions he had imposed fell into desuetude. Local leave to up-country stations was given to officers for sporting purposes. Apthorpe was one of the first to go. The town was out of bounds to all ranks. No one wished to go there.
Wireless news from England was all of air raids. Some of the men were consumed with anxiety; most were consoled by a rumor, quite baseless, which was traveling the whole world in an untraceable manner, that the invasion had sailed and been defeated, that the whole Channel was full of charred German corpses. The men paraded, marched, bathed, constructed a rifle range and were quite without s
peculation about their future. Some said they were to spend the rest of the war here keeping fit, keeping up their morale, firing on the new range; others said they were bound for Libya, round the Cape; others that they were to forestall the German occupation of the Azores.
Then, after three weeks, an aeroplane arrived bringing mail. Most of it had been posted before the expedition even sailed but there was a more recent, official bag. Leonard was still on the strength of the Second Battalion, pending posting. It was now announced that he was dead, killed by a bomb, on leave in South London. There was also a move order for Guy. His presence was required at an inquiry into the doings on Beach A, which was to be held in England as soon as Brigadier Ritchie-Hook was fit to move.
There was also a new brigadier. He sent for Guy on the day of his arrival. He was a youngish, thick, mustachioed, naturally genial man, plainly ill at ease in the present case. Guy had not seen him before, but he would have recognized him as a Halberdier without studying his corps buttons.
“You’re Captain Crouchback?”
“Lieutenant, sir.”
“Oh, I’ve got you down here as captain. I must look into it. Perhaps your promotion came through after you left the U.K. Anyway it doesn’t matter now. It was only an acting rank of course while you had a company. I’m afraid you’ll be losing your company for the time being.”
“Does that mean I’m under arrest, sir?”
“Good God, no. At least not exactly. I mean to say this is simply an inquiry not a court martial. The force commander made a great fuss about it. I don’t suppose it’ll ever come to a court martial. The Navy are being rather stiff too, but they do things their own way. I should say myself you’re in the clear—unofficially, mind. As far as I understand the case you were simply acting under orders. You’ll be attached here at my headquarters for general duties. We’ll get you all off as soon as Ben—your brigadier, I mean—can move. I’m trying to get them to lay on a flying-boat. Meanwhile just hang about until you’re wanted.”
Guy hung about. He had had his captaincy without knowing it, and had now lost it.
“That means six or seven pounds more pay, anyway,” said the staff-captain. “It shouldn’t take long to straighten out. Or I’d take a chance and give it to you now if you’re short.”
“Thanks awfully,” said Guy. “I can manage.”
“Nothing much to spend money on here certainly. You can be sure of getting it somewhere, sometime. Army pay follows you up, like income tax.”
The battalion wanted to “dine” him “out,” but Tickeridge forbade it.
“You’ll be back with us in a day or two,” he said.
“Shall I?” Guy asked, when they were alone.
“I wouldn’t bet on it.”
Meanwhile there had been a series of disturbing bulletins from and about Apthorpe.
Messages from up-country passed by telephone from one semi-literate native telephonist to another. The first message was: “Captain Apthorpe him very sorry off collar requests extension leaves.”
Two days later there was a long and quite unintelligible message to the Senior Medical Officer demanding a number of drugs. After that was the request that the specialist in tropical diseases (who had left them some time before) should come up-country immediately. Then silence. At last a day or two before the mail arrived, Apthorpe appeared.
He was slung in a sheeted hammock between two bearers, looking like a Victorian woodcut from a book of exploration. They deposited him on the hospital steps and at once began an argument about their “dash,” they talking very loudly in Mende, Apthorpe feebly in Swahili. He was carried indoors protesting: “They understand perfectly. They’re only pretending. It’s their lingua franca.”
The boys remained like vultures day after day, disputing over their “dash” and admiring the passing pageant of metropolitan life.
Everyone in the brigade mess was particularly pleasant to Guy, even Dunn who was genuinely delighted to have the company of someone of more ignominious position than himself.
“Tell me all about it, old chap. Is it true you went off and started a battle on your own?”
“I’m not allowed to talk about it. The matter is sub judice.”
“Like that matter of the boot. You’ve heard the latest? That lunatic Apthorpe has taken refuge in the hospital. I bet he’s shamming.”
“I don’t think so. He looked pretty sick when he came back from his leave up-country.”
“But he’s used to this climate. Anyway, we’ll catch him when he comes out. If you ask me I’d say he was in worse trouble than you are.”
This talk of Apthorpe brought back tender memories of Guy’s early days in barracks. He asked permission of the brigade major to visit him.
“Take a care, uncle.” Everyone was anxious to be agreeable. “Take a bottle of whisky. I’ll make it all right with the mess-president.” (They were rationed to one bottle a month in this town.)
“Will that be all right with the hospital?”
“Very much all wrong, uncle. That’s your risk. But it’s always done. Not worth while calling on a chap in hospital unless you bring a bottle. But don’t say I told you. It’s your responsibility if you’re caught.”
Guy drove up the laterite road, past the Syrian stores and the vultures, noticing nothing except the dawdling natives who obstructed his way; later a few printed pages would create, not recall, the scene for him and make it forever memorable. People would say to him in eight years’ time: “You were there during the war. Was it like that?” and he would answer: “Yes. It must have been.”
Then out of the town by a steep road to the spacious, whitish hospital, where there was no wireless to aggravate the suffering, no bustle; fans swung to and fro, windows were shut and curtained against the heat of the sun.
He found Apthorpe alone in his room, in a bed near the window. When Guy entered he was lying doing nothing, staring at the sun-blind with his hands empty on the counterpane. He immediately began to fill and light a pipe.
“I came to see how you were.”
“Rotten, old man, rotten.”
“They don’t seem to have given you much to do.”
“They don’t realize how ill I am. They keep bringing me jigsaws and Ian Hay. A damn fool woman, wife of a box-wallah here, offered to teach me crochet. I ask you, old man. I just ask you.”
Guy produced the bottle he had been concealing in the pocket of his bush-shirt.
“I wondered if you’d like some whisky.”
“That’s very thoughtful. In fact I would. Very much. They bring us one medicine-glassful at sundown. It’s not enough. Often one wants more. I told them so, pretty strongly, and they just laughed. They’ve treated my case all wrong from the very first. I know more about medicine than any of those young idiots. It’s a wonder I’ve stayed alive as long as I have. Toughness. It takes some time to kill an old bush hand. But they’ll do it. They wear one down. They exhaust the will to live and then—phut. You’re a goner. I’ve seen it happen dozens of times.”
“Where shall I put the whisky?”
“Somewhere I can reach it. It’ll get damned hot in the bed, but I think it’s the best place.”
“How about the locker?”
“They’re always prying in there. But they’re slack about bed-making. They just pull the covers smooth before the doctor’s round. Tuck it in at the bottom, there’s a good chap.”
There was only a thin sheet and a thin cotton counterpane. Guy saw Apthorpe’s large feet, bereft of their “porpoises,” peeling with fever. He tried to interest Apthorpe in the new brigadier and in his own obscure position but Apthorpe said fretfully: “Yes, yes, yes, yes. It’s all another world to me, old man.”
He puffed at his pipe, let it go out, tried with a feeble hand to put it on the table beside him, dropped it, nosily in that quiet place, on the bare floor. Guy stopped to retrieve it but Apthorpe said: “Leave it there, old man. I don’t want it. I only tried to be companionable.”
/>
When Guy looked up he saw tears on Apthorpe’s colorless cheeks.
“I say, would you like me to go?”
“No, no. I’ll feel better in a minute. Did you bring a corkscrew? Good man. I think I could do with a nip.”
Guy opened the bottle, poured out a tot, recorked, and replaced the spirit under the sheet.
“Wash out the glass, old man, do you mind? I’ve been hoping you’d come—you especially. There’s something worrying me.”
“Not the signalman’s boot?”
“No, no, no, no. Do you suppose I’d let a little tick like Dunn worry me? No, it’s something on my conscience.”
There was a pause during which the whisky seemed to perform its beneficent magic. Apthorpe shut his eyes, and smiled. At last he looked up and said: “Hullo, Crouchback, you here? That’s lucky. There’s something I wanted to say to you. Do you remember years ago, when we first joined, I mentioned my aunt?”
“You mentioned two.”
“Exactly. That’s what I wanted to tell you. There’s only one.”
“I am sorry.” All the talk lately had been about people killed by bombs. “Was it an air raid? Leonard caught one…”
“No, no, no; I mean, there never was more than one. The other was an invention. I suppose you might call it a little joke. Anyway, I’ve told you.”
After a pause Guy could not resist asking: “Which did you invent, the one at Peterborough or the one at Tunbridge Wells?”
“The one at Peterborough, of course.”
“Then where did you hurt your knee?”
“At Tunbridge Wells.” Apthorpe giggled slightly at his cleverness like Mr. Toad in The Wind in the Willows.
“You certainly took me in thoroughly.”
“Yes. It was a good joke, wasn’t it? I say, I think I’d like a drop more whisky.”
“Sure it’s good for you?”
“My dear fellow, I’ve been just as ill as this before and pulled through—simply by treating it with whisky.”
He sighed happily after this second glass. He really did seem altogether better and stronger.
“There’s another point I want to talk about. My will.”