He sauntered out twirling his eye-glass.
“What are you and that old geezer up to?” asked Sam.
“Party meeting,” said Susie.
“I know better things to do in the black-out than meetings.”
“So does the old geezer, it seems,” said the third sergeant.
“He’s a bit of a bourgeois at heart for all his fine talk,” Susie admitted. All the time he spoke he was concentrating on his small lathe, turning tiny spiral columns with exquisite precision.
“You’ll soon have that finished,” said Guy to the senior sergeant.
“Yes, barring interruptions. You can never tell when they’ll come asking for more beaches. There isn’t the same satisfaction in beaches.”
“They ought to have landed on them this summer,” said Susie. That’s what was promised.”
“I didn’t give no promises,” said Sam, busy with the fretsaw cutting little mahogany flagstones.
Guy left these happy, industrious men and paused in his progress at the room of Mr. Oates, the civilian efficiency expert.
No one could be reasonably described as “out of place” in H.O.O. H.Q. but Mr. Oates, despite his unobtrusive appearance (or by reason of it), seemed bizarre to Guy. He was a plump, taciturn little man and he alone among all his heterogeneous colleagues proclaimed confidence. Of the others some toiled mindlessly, passing files from tray to tray, some took their ease, some were plotting, some hiding, some grousing; all quite baffled. But Mr. Oates believed he was in his own way helping to win the war. He was a profoundly peaceful man and his way seemed clear before him.
“Any result of my application for the return of my typist?”
“Negative,” said Mr. Oates.
“Kilbannock has three typists.”
“Not now. I have just withdrawn two of them. There is another, Mrs. Troy, who is officially attached to him but her work seems mainly extramural. In fact her position is somewhat anomalous in this headquarters. I shall raise it at the next man-power conference.”
There had been a showy addition to Mr. Oates’s furniture since Guy’s last visit; an elaborate machine of more modern construction than any permanent exhibit in the museum.
“What have you got there?”
Mr. Oates made a little grimace of gratification.
“Ah! You have found my tender spot. You might call it my pet. Absolutely new. It’s just been flown in from America. It took 560 man-hours to install. The mechanics came from America, too. There isn’t another like it in the country.”
“But what is it?”
“An Electronic Personnel Selector.”
“Have we any electronic personnel?”
“It covers every contingency. For example, suppose I want to find a lieutenant-colonel who is a long-distance swimmer, qualified as a barrister, with experience in catering in tropical countries, instead of going through all the records I just press these buttons, one, two, three, four, and…” there was a whirring noise from the depths of the engine, a series of clicks as though from a slot-machine telling fortunes on a pier, a card shot up. “You see—totally blank—that means negative.”
“I think I could have guessed that.”
“Yes, I was illustrating an extreme example. Now here—” he picked up a chit from his tray—“is a genuine inquiry. I’ve been asked to find an officer for special employment; under forty, with a university degree, who has lived in Italy, and had Commando training—one, two, three, four, five—” whirr, click, click, click, click, click. “Here we are. Now that is a remarkable coincidence.”
The card he held bore the name of A/Ty. Captain Crouchback, G., R.C.H. att. H.O.O. H.Q.
Guy did not attempt to correct the machine on the point of his age, or of the extent of his Commando training.
“I seem the only one.”
“Yes. I don’t know what it’s for, of course, but I will send your name in at once.”
IV
Thirty-seven years old, six foot two in height, upright, powerful, heavier than he had been in the Middle East and paler, with a hint of flabbiness in the cheeks, wearing service dress, a well-kept Sam Browne belt, the ribbon of the M.M. and the badges of a major in the Intelligence Corps; noticeable, if at all, for the pink-gray irises of his eyes; the man whom Hookforce had known as Corporal-Major Ludovic paused reminiscently by the railings of St. Margaret’s, Westminster.
This was the place where he and others of his regiment had paraded twelve years and a few months ago, in King’s Guard order, for the wedding of one of their officers. Ludovic was a corporal then. The crowds had been enormous, less orderly and lighter of heart than those who now shuffled forward towards the Abbey, for the bride was a fashionable beauty and the bridegroom’s name was familiar on advertisement hoardings and the labels of beer bottles.
They had lined the aisle; then while the register was being signed, had formed up along this path which led from the door to the motor-car. Their finery had excited cries of admiration. As the organ sounded the first notes of the Wedding March they had drawn their swords and held them in a posture for which no drill-book has a name, forming an arch over the wedded couple. The bride had smiled right and left looking up at each of them in the eyes, thanking them. The bridegroom held his top hat in his hand and greeted by name those of his squadron he recognized. Two manikins carried the train clothed at enormous cost in replicas of Ludovic’s own uniform; then the bridesmaids, plumper and plainer than the bride but flowery in full June. Then they had lowered their swords to the “carry”; a royal party had passed between them smiling also; then parents, and after them a long stream of guests; scarcely visible under the peak of the helmet behind and all round them were reporters and photographers and a cheering, laughing London crowd.
It was after that wedding, in the tented yard behind a house in St. James’s Square (now demolished by a bomb), that Sir Ralph Brompton had first accosted Ludovic. The royal party sat in the ballroom on the first floor, where the young couple received their guests. A temporary wooden stair had been built from the ballroom balcony to the tent (for it was a rule that no member of the royal family should be in a room without an alternative egress) and the guests, after they had made their salutations, went below, leaving that still little pool of humble duty for the noisier celebrations under the canvas. Later, when they discussed the question, as they often did, neither Sir Ralph nor Ludovic was able to explain what distinguished the young corporal from his fellows, except that he stood a little apart from them. He did not like beer, and great jugs of special brew, made by the bridegroom’s father for the occasion, were being pressed on the guard of honor, the tenants, and foremen and old servants who segregated themselves in their own corner of the marquee. Sir Ralph, as tall as any trooper and almost as splendid in gray tail suit and full cravat, had joined the convivial, plebeian group and said: “You’re much better off with the ale. The champagne is poison,” and so had begun an association which developed richly.
Sir Ralph was then doing a spell at the Foreign Office. When the time came for him to go abroad on post, he arranged for Ludovic’s release from the regiment, who were sorry to lose him; he had lately been promoted corporal of horse at an early age. Then had begun five years’ life abroad in Sir Ralph’s company, as “valet” at the embassy, as “secretary” when they traveled on leave. Sir Ralph discreetly attended to his protégé’s education, lending him books on psychology which he relished and on Marxist economics which he found tedious; giving him tickets for concerts and the opera, leading him, when they were on holiday, through galleries and cathedrals.
The marriage, at which they met, did not last long. There was an unusually early divorce. Ludovic, as he now was, constituted the sole progeny of that union.
*
It was 5 o’clock. At 5.30 the Abbey had to be shut for the night. Already the police were turning away the extremity of the queue saying: “You won’t get in today. Come back tomorrow morning—early,” and the people obediently
drifted into the dusk to join other queues elsewhere.
Major Ludovic went straight to the Abbey entrance, laid his blank oyster gaze on the policeman and raised his gloved hand to acknowledge a salute that had not been given.
“ ’Ere, just a moment, sir, where are you going?”
“The—er—King’s present to the—er—Russians—they tell me it’s on show here.”
“Got to wait your turn. There’s others before you, sir.”
Ludovic had his two voices. He had tried as an officer; now he reverted to the tones of the barrack-room. “That’s all right, cock. I’m here on duty same as yourself,” and the puzzled man stood back to let him pass.
Inside the Abbey it seemed already night. The windows gave no light. The two candles led the people forward, who, as they were admitted in twenties, broke their column of fours, advanced in a group and then fell into single file as they reached the sword. They knew no formal act of veneration. They paused, gazed, breathed, and passed on. Ludovic was the tallest of them. He could see the bright streak from above their heads. He held his cap and his cane behind his back and peered intently. He had a special interest there, but when he came to the sword and tried to linger he was pressed silently on, not jostled resentfully, but silently conscribed into that unseeing, inarticulate procession who were asserting their right to the fair share of everything which they believed the weapon symbolized. He had no time to study the detail. He glimpsed the keen edge, the sober ornament, the more luxurious scabbard, and then was borne on and out. It was not five minutes before he found himself once more alone, in the deepening fog.
Ludovic had an appointment with Sir Ralph for 5.30. He had to meet by appointment in these days. They were no longer on the old easy terms, but Ludovic did not lose touch. In his altered and exalted status he did not look for money, but there were other uses to which their old association could be put. Whenever he came to London he let Sir Ralph know and they had tea together. Sir Ralph had other companions for dinner.
They met at their old place of assignation. Once Sir Ralph had a house in Hanover Terrace, and his retreat in Ebury Street—rooms over a shop, which had something of the air of expensive undergraduate digs—had been a secret known to barely fifty men. Now these rooms were his home; he had moved the smaller pieces of his furniture there; but not many more people—fewer perhaps—knew the way there than in the old days.
Ludovic walked down Victoria Street, crossed the shapeless expanse at the bottom and reached the familiar doorstep at the same moment as his host. Sir Ralph opened the door and stood back for Ludovic to enter. He had never lacked devoted servants. “Mrs. Embury,” he called, “Mrs. Embury,” and his housekeeper appeared above them on the half landing. She had known Ludovic in other days.
“Tea,” he said, handing her a little parcel. “Lapsang Suchong—half a pound of it. Bartered in what strange eastern markets, I know not. But the genuine article. I have a friend at our headquarters who gets me some from time to time. We must go easy with it, Mrs. Embury, but I think we might ‘brew up’ for ‘the Major.’ ”
They went upstairs and sat in the drawing-room.
“No doubt you want to hear my opinion of your ‘Pensées.’ ”
“I want to hear Everard Spruce’s.”
“Yes, of course, I deserved that little snub. Well, prepare yourself for good news—Everard is delighted with them and wants to publish them in Survival. He is quite content to leave them anonymous. The only thing he doesn’t quite like is the title.”
“Pensées,” said Ludovic. “D’you know what they call our badge?” He tapped the floral device on the lapel of his tunic. “ ‘A pansy sitting on its laurels.’ ”
“Yes, yes. Very good. I have heard the witticism before. No; Everard thinks it dated. He suggests ‘Notes in Transit’ or something of the sort.”
“I don’t see it matters.”
“No. But he’s definitely interested in you. Wants to meet you. In fact I tentatively accepted an invitation for you this evening. I shan’t, alas, be able to introduce you. But you’re expected. I’ll give you the address. I am expecting another visitor here.”
“Curly?”
“They call him ‘Susie’ at the headquarters. No, not Susie. He’s a dear boy and a stalwart party member but a little earnest for the long black-out. I am packing him off to a meeting. No I expect a very intelligent young American named Padfield—an officer, like you.”
Mrs. Embury brought in the tea, and the little, over-furnished room was full of its fragrance.
“I can’t offer you anything to eat I’m afraid.”
“I know better than come to London for food,” said Ludovic. “We do all right at my billet.” He had learned his officer’s voice from Sir Ralph but seldom used it when they were alone. “Mrs. Embury isn’t very matey these days?”
“It’s your high rank. She doesn’t know how to take it. And you, what have you been up to?”
“I went to the Abbey before I came here—to see the sword.”
“Yes, I suppose like everyone else you are coming to appreciate the Soviet achievement. You usen’t to have much share in my ‘red’ sympathies. We nearly had a tiff once, remember? about Spain.”
“There were Spaniards in the Middle East—proper bastards.” Ludovic stopped short remembering what he resolutely strove to forget. “It wasn’t anything to do with politics. That sword is the subject of this week’s literary competition in Time and Tide—a sonnet. I thought if I went to see it, I might get some ideas.”
“Oh dear, don’t tell Everard Spruce about that. I’m afraid he would look down his nose at literary competitions in Time and Tide.”
“I just like writing,” said Ludovic. “In different ways about different things. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose?”
“No indeed. The literary instinct. But don’t tell Everard. Did you get any ideas?”
“Not what I could use in a sonnet. But it set me thinking—about swords.”
“That wasn’t quite their idea; not, as they say now, the object of the exercise. You were meant to think about tanks and bombers and the People’s Army driving out the Nazis.”
“I thought of my sword,” said Ludovic stubbornly. “Technically, I suppose, it was a saber. We called them ‘swords’—‘state swords.’ Never saw it again after I left the regiment. They weren’t reissued when we were recalled. Took a lot of looking after, a sword. Every now and then the armorer had them in and buffed them; ordinary days it was Bluebell and the chain-burnisher. Mustn’t leave a spot on it. You could always tell a good officer. On a wet day he didn’t give the order ‘Return swords’ but ‘With drawn swords, prepare to dismount.’ You took it half-way up the blade in your left hand and transferred to the near side of the withers. That way you didn’t get water into the scabbard. Some officers didn’t think of that; the good ones did.”
“Yes, yes, most picturesque,” said Sir Ralph. “Not much bearing on the conditions at Stalingrad.”
Then Ludovic suddenly assumed his officer’s voice and said, “After all, it was the uniform first attracted you, don’t you remember?”
Only a preternaturally astute reader of Ludovic’s aphorisms could discern that their author had once been at heart—or rather in some vestigial repository of his mind—a romantic. Most of those who volunteered for Commandos in the spring of 1940 had other motives besides the desire to serve their country. A few merely sought release from regimental routine; more wished to cut a gallant figure before women; others had led lives of particular softness and were moved to re-establish their honor in the eyes of the heroes of their youth—legendary, historical, fictitious—that still haunted their manhood. Nothing in Ludovic’s shortly to be published work made clear how he had seen himself. His early schooling had furnished few models of chivalry. His original enlistment in the Blues, so near the body of the king, so flamboyantly accoutered, had certainly not been prompted by any familiarity or affection for the horse. Ludovic was a townsman. The sm
ell of stables brought no memories of farm or hunt. In his years with Sir Ralph Brompton he had lived soft; any instinct for expiation of which he was conscious, was unexpressed. Yet he had volunteered for special service at the first opportunity. His fellow volunteers now had ample leisure in their various prison camps to examine their motives and strip themselves of illusion. As also had Ludovic, at liberty; but his disillusionment (if he ever suffered from illusion) had preceded the debacle at Crete. There was a week in the mountains, two days in a cave, a particular night in an open boat during the exploit that had earned him his M.M. and his commission, of which he never spoke. When questioned, as he had been on his return to Africa, he confessed that his memory of those events was almost blank; a very common condition, sympathetic doctors assured him, after a feat of extreme endurance.
His last two years had been as uneventful as Guy’s.
After his rapid discharge from hospital he had been posted to the United Kingdom to be trained as an officer. At the board who interviewed him, he had expressed no preference for any arm of the service. He had no mechanical bent. They had posted him to the Intelligence Corps, then in process of formation and expansion. He had attended courses, learned to interpret air-photographs, to recognize enemy uniform, and compute an order of battle, to mark maps, to collate and summarize progress-reports from the field; all the rudimentary skills. At the end his early peacetime training as a trooper impressed the selection-board that he was a “quartermaster type” and an appointment was found for him far from the battle, far from the arcane departments whose existence was barely hinted at in the lecture room; in a secret place, indeed, but one where no secrets were disclosed to Ludovic. He was made commandant of a little establishment where men, and sometimes women, of all ages and nations, military and civilian, many with obviously assumed names, were trained at a neighboring aerodrome to jump in parachutes.