Love and the Loveless (42 page)

Field guns were moved forward at night, to just behind the front line. They lay silent under camouflage. He heard something said about sound-ranging and battery boards, and thought that these must be data of range and direction prepared “off the map”, since none of the guns had registered.

*

Pinnegar continued to scoff, saying that the idea of an attack was a huge bluff. Some of his “odd-looking wallahs” who went round the lines, usually at night, carried apparatus that was obviously nothing else but disguised cinema cameras, he declared. And the letters on their badges, F.S.C., although they said it was Field Survey Company, were more likely to be Field Salvage Company. He wouldn’t put it past Lloyd George to have sent them out to survey the old iron which would be lying about when
the war was over, hundreds of millions of tons of it. There would be a world shortage of steel for years. He was born and bred in Birmingham, he wasn’t bluffed! The war wouldn’t last for ever, and when the Germans cracked, they would crack suddenly, and then—steel! The collection of freaks and long-haired Weary Willies in uniform were only disguised old-iron merchants!

As a fact, they were flash-spotters and sound-rangers. With telephones, directors, telescopes, buzzers, and wiring schemes between two and sometimes three points, flash-spotting of enemy guns was taking the place of orthodox registration. Flash spotting depended upon the simultaneous recording of the flash, as the shell left the muzzle of the gun, at two or three stations at the end of a measured base.

Sound ranging, which was more intricate, depended on the time-record, made on a cinema film from three or more stations, of the spread of the sound-wave of discharge. Adverse conditions for sound-ranging were a contrary wind, and possible confusion of shell-wave with gun-wave; mist and fog prevented flash spotting.

The invention of the Tucker Microphone made it possible to discriminate between the records of several batteries firing at once, while by observing the shell-bursts and noting the time of flight the calibre of a gun could be deduced.

Thus German batteries were being located, so that they could be accurately swamped by counter-battery shells at zero hour; and the British batteries doing the job could remain silent until the moment of assault.

*

The new Brigadier became known as the Boy General. He was said to be twenty-three years old, the youngest General in the British Army. His substantive rank was lieutenant in one of the two regular battalions of a North Country regiment. He had held all temporary ranks to lieutenant-colonel, before getting a Brigade.

Riding into Bapaume one day, Phillip went to the Officers’ Club, and saw the Boy General there. And to his surprise, the General recognised him, saying with a smile, “I hope you won’t steal my horse this time, Maddison!”

“Not while I’ve got Black Prince, sir!”

Then, moving away, he felt awful. The General would think he was familiar. Ought he to apologise? Oh, why had he been such a fool as to answer like that?

Having signed the addressed envelope, as self-censor, and posted it, he sat down to look at the papers. Bonar Law, whoever he was, had asked for and got without discussion a new vote of credit of £400,000,000 for the war. The National Debt,
whatever that was when it was at home, was now £5,000,000,000. It had been £648,000,000 at the outbreak of war. I suppose I’ve got some of it in my bank, he thought, with satisfaction.

What utter tripe, as Teddy would say. He threw down the paper.

While he sat there, two officers began talking a couple of yards away. One spoke about the “sloppy discipline” he had found in the line when his battalion had taken over.

“Huns were apparently allowed to stroll about behind their trenches, in full daylight. I soon altered all that. I organised the battalion snipers, and waited until a score or more of Huns were sunning themselves openly. My men got some juicy targets—forty-two entries in the Game Book the first two days.”

Bloody fool, he muttered. It was what Teddy would call robbing an incubator. He moved away to another chair, and tried not to think about it. “The Game Book”. “The only good Hun is a dead Hun.” But they did not understand. With sinking feelings he recalled what cousin Willie had told him about the German officer after Christmas 1914 sending over a message one night, asking them to keep under cover, as their machine guns were to fire at midnight during a staff inspection.

But it was the same spirit almost everywhere. In the paper was an account of a row in the House of Commons, over a motion in favour of peace by negotiation supported “by a minority of only twenty-one”, among them being names he had heard Aunt Theodora, when a Suffragette, speak of as “lights in darkness”—John Burns, Ramsay Macdonald, Charles Trevelyan, James Thomas, “the railwaymen’s secretary”, and Philip Snowden, who

Bitter jibes were no good, even in the mind; it led to game-booking the game-bookers. One must try to be generous about people and their faults. Often the faults came from matters that were not their own fault. How magnanimous Lily had been about Keechey, who had cold-heartedly seduced her. To forgive was to be forgiven. He sighed; and was about to take up
The
Bystander
when he saw, in one of the armchairs, a familiar red face under unbrushable sticking-up short fair hair. Cox, of all people! The last time he had seen that almost blistered face was just before July the First, at Albert. Cox had told a lie, claiming to be senior to himself, and thereby, as the supposed second-in-command of the company, had dodged the attack, remaining behind with the battalion cadre. Cox was now pretending not to have seen him, judging by the way he held his paper still. So Phillip went over to Cox, and mimicked Cox’s former manner of addressing himself, saying,

“Hullo, you one-piecee bad boy! What are
you
doing here?”

“I might ask you the same question!”

“Oh, I’m just mucking about. And you?”

“Hush-hush, old boy. Mustn’t say.”

“As a matter of fact, Cox, I was wondering if I’ll take a job at the new Tank and Infantry Liaison School at Albert.”

Cox pretended to splutter. “What, another instructor? My dear One-piecee, almost everyone I know has been asked to instruct at that bogus school!”

“Well, as it happens, I
have,
Cox.”

“Shall I tell you how? You were specially sent for by your Brigade-major. Your Brigade-major specifically asked you to talk over your prospects with your friends. My dear One-piecee, I do assure you that it is the main subject of conversation at the bar over there this very moment!”

“Then what’s the idea?”

“Softly softly catchee monkey! ‘Les oreilles ennemies vous ecoutent’. Comprennez? I see you do! But hush! Play the game, One-piecee! Don’t let the side down. Wait here. Drink perpends!”

Cox returned, carrying a bottle and glasses.

“Now, my dear One-piecee, I’ll let you into something
not
planted out by Intelligence, Third Army. If you repeat it, I shall deny it. I am relying on you to be more discreet than I am, In any case, you can draw your own conclusions.”

“I don’t quite follow you——”

“You will. First of all, I owe you an apology, One-piecee, for claiming seniority to you in the company under Bason.”

“Oh, I’ve forgotten all about that, Cox.”

“No you haven’t! But I’d like you to know that the reason why I held back was because my missus was going to have a baby. Anyway, my transfer was due any moment.”

“Yes, you told me at the time.”

“And you thought I showed the white feather, didn’t you?”

“Not until you accused me of showing it! Then I knew
you
were windy, to be quite frank!”

“How d’you mean?” The old sun-scorched irritable face, part eclipsed by eyeglass, looked at him sourly.

He knows I know he’s a funk, thought Phillip. Putting on an ingenuous expression he said, “Well, if a chap thinks too much of his mother’s feelings for him, or his wife’s, as the case may be, he’s bound to feel pretty awful inside. Death literally stares him in the face. His bowels turn to water. The thing to do then is to take more rum with it, to dilute the water. I knew that when you taunted me, it was because you’d been taunting yourself, until it was unbearable. So you passed it on. At least, that’s how I see it.”

“Have you heard of Confucius, One-piecee?”

“Vaguely.”

“Well, read Confucius, when you get the chance. Chin chin!”

They drank. “What’s your hush-hush about, Cox?”

“Chains.”

“How d’you mean?”

Cox lowered his voice. “It may interest you to know that the whole of Great Britain has been scoured during the past two months for a certain weight of chain. Two thousand fathom, to be exact. But we got ’em!” Cox with his boiled red face and sandy eyelashes had a Mongolian stuffed-pheasant glass-eye look. Was he bottled?

“It means nothing to you, One-piecee?”

“Frankly no,
mein
prächtig
kerl!”

“Thank God! I nearly let it out!”

After the third bottle, he did let it out.

“Swear on your honour to God you’ll keep it dark? You know the Tank Central Workshops at Teneur? You don’t? Then you’re more damned ignorant than I thought, One-piecee. Teneur is where I’ve been working with my company of Chinese coolies. We’ve been on the go, day and night, for the best part of
a month. What for, you wonder. I’ll tell you. Making enormous faggots! Or fascines, as they call ’em. Each containing seven dozen faggots of straight brushwood, held together by chains hauled tight by two tanks, each pulling against the other. At one time we had eighteen tanks on the job. Result, three hundred and fifty fascines—each a solid roll ten feet long, and four and a half feet in diameter.”

“What are they for?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“How much does a ‘fascine’ weigh?”

“Well, it takes twenty of my coolies to push one along the ground!”

“I think you’re sprucing!”

“You’ll find out, all in good time, you one-piecee bad boy!”