Men at Arms (5 page)
‘My son, in spite of his advanced years, is making frantic efforts to join the army himself.’
‘I say, not really; I call that jolly sporting.’
‘I’m not seeing much sport,’ said Guy, and wryly described the disappointments and rebuffs of the last fortnight.
Major Tickeridge was slightly puzzled by the ironic note of the recitation.
‘I say,’ he said. ‘Are you serious about this?’
‘I try not to be,’ said Guy. ‘But I’m afraid I am.’
‘Because if you are serious, why don’t you join us?’
‘I’ve pretty well given up,’ said Guy. ‘In fact I’ve as good as signed on in the Foreign Office.’
Major Tickeridge showed deep concern.
‘I say, that is a pretty desperate thing to do. You know, if you’re really serious, I think the thing can be managed. The old corps never quite does things in the ordinary army style. I mean none of that Hore-Belisha stuff of starting in the ranks. We’re forming a brigade of our own, half regulars. half temporaries, half National Service men, half long-service. It’s all on bumf at present but we’re starting cadre training any day now. It’s going to be something rather special. We all know one another in the corps, you know, so if you’d like me to put in a word with the Captain-Commandant, just say so. I heard him saying the other day he could do with a few older chaps among the temporary officers.’
By ten o’clock that night, when Guy and his father let Felix go bounding into the blackness, Major Tickeridge had made notes of Guy’s particulars and promised immediate action.
‘It’s remarkable,’ said Guy, ‘I spent weeks badgering generals and Cabinet Ministers and getting nowhere. Then I come here and in an hour everything is fixed up for me by a strange major.’
‘That’s often the way. I told you Tickeridge was a capital fellow,’ said Mr Crouchback, ‘and the Halberdiers are a magnificent regiment. I’ve seen them on parade. They’re every bit as good as the Foot Guards.’
At eleven lights went out downstairs in the Marine Hotel and the servants disappeared. Guy and his father went up to bed. Mr Crouchback’s sitting-room smelled of tobacco and dog.
‘Doesn’t look much of a bed, I’m afraid.’
‘Last night at Angela’s I slept in the library.’
‘Well, I hope you’ll be all right.’
Guy undressed and lay down on the sofa by the open window. The sea beat below and the sea-air filled the room. Since that morning his affairs had greatly changed.
Presently his father’s door opened: ‘I say, are you asleep?’
‘Not quite.’
‘There’s this thing you said you’d like. Gervase ‘s medal. I might forget it in the morning.’
‘Thanks most awfully. I’ll always-wear it from now on.’
‘I’ll put it here on the table. Good night.
Guy stretched out in the darkness and felt the light disc of metal. It was strung on a piece of cord, He tied it round his neck and heard his father moving about in his room. The door opened again. ‘I say, I’m afraid I get up rather early and I’ll have to come through. I’ll be as quiet as I can.’
‘I’ll come to mass with you.’
‘Will you? Do. Good night again’
Soon he heard his father lightly snoring. His last thought before falling asleep was the uneasy question: ‘Why couldn’t I say “Here’s how” to Major Tickeridge? My father did. Gervase would have. Why couldn’t I?’
Apthorpe Gloriosus
1
'HERE’S
how,’ said Guy.
‘Cheers,’ said Apthorpe.
‘Look here, you two, you’d better have those drinks on me,’ said Major Tickeridge, ‘junior officers aren’t supposed to drink in the ante-room before lunch.’
‘Oh Lord. I am sorry, sir.’
‘My dear chap, you couldn’t possibly know. I ought to have warned you. It’s a rule we have for the youngsters. It’s all rot applying it to you chaps, of course, but there it is. If you want a drink tell the corporal-of-servants to send it to the billiards-room. No one will mind that.’
‘Thanks for telling us, sir,’ said Apthorpe.
‘I expect you work up quite a thirst pounding the square. The C.O. and I had a look at you this morning. You’re coming along.’
‘Yes, I think we are.’
‘I heard from my madam today. All’s well on the Matchet front. Pity it’s too far for week-end leave. I expect they’ll give you a week at the end of the course:
It was early November. Winter had set in early and cold that year. A huge fire blazed in the ante-room. Junior officers, unless invited, did not sit by it; but its warmth reached the humble panelled corners.
The officers of the Royal Corps of Halberdiers, from the very fact of their being poor men, lived in great comfort. In fashionable regiments the mess was deserted after working hours by all except the orderly-officer. The Halberdiers had made this house their home for two hundred years. As Major Tickeridge often said: ‘Any damn fool can make himself comfortable.’ In their month in the regiment neither Guy nor Apthorpe had once been out to a meal.
They were the eldest of the batch of twenty probationary officers now under instructions in barracks Another similar group was said to be at the Depot. Presently they would be brought together. Some hundreds of National Service recruits were in training on the coast. Eventually in the spring they would all be interjoined with the regular battalions and the Brigade would form. This was a phrase in constant use. ‘When the brigade forms…’ It was the immediate end of all their present activity, awaited like a birth; the start of a new unknown life.
Guy’s companions were mostly young clerks from London offices. Two or three had come straight from public schools. One, Frank de Souza, was just down from Cambridge. They had been chosen, Guy learned from more than two thousand applicants. He wondered, sometimes, what system of selection had produced so nondescript a squad. Later he realized that they typified the peculiar pride of the Corps, which did not expect distinguished raw materials but confided instead in its age-old methods of transformation. The discipline of the square, the traditions of the mess, would work their magic and the
esprit de corps
would fall like blessed unction from above.
Apthorpe alone looked like a soldier. He was burly, tanned, moustached, primed with a rich vocabulary of military terms and abbreviations. Until recently he had served in Africa in some unspecified capacity. His boots had covered miles of bush trail.
Boots were a subject of peculiar interest to Apthorpe: He and Guy first met on the day they joined. Guy got into the carriage at Charing Cross and found Apthorpe seated in the corner opposite to him. He recognized the badges of the Halberdiers and the regimental horn buttons. His first thought was that be had probably committed some heinous breach of etiquette by travelling with a senior officer.
Apthorpe had no newspaper or book. He stared fixedly at his own feet for mile after mile. Presently by a process of furtive inspection Guy realized that the insignia of rank on Apthorpe’s shoulders were not crowns but single stars like his own. Still neither spoke, until after twenty minutes Apthorpe took out a pipe and began carefully filling it from a large rolled pouch. Then he said: ‘This is my new pair of porpoises. I expect you wear them too.’
Guy looked from Apthorpe’s boots to his own. They seemed very much alike. Was ‘porpoise’ Halberdier slang for ‘boot’?
‘I don’t know. I just told the man I always go to, to make me a couple of pairs of thick black boots.’
‘He may have given you cow.’
‘Perhaps he did.’
‘A great mistake, old man, if you don’t mind my saying so.’
He puffed his pipe for another five minutes, then spoke again: ‘Of course, it’s really the skin of the white whale, you know.’
‘I didn’t know. Why do they call it “porpoise”?’
‘Trade secret, old man.’
More than once after their first meeting Apthorpe reverted to the topic. Whenever Guy gave evidence of sophistication in other matters, Apthorpe would say: ‘Funny you don’t wear porpoises. I should have thought you were just the sort of chap who would.’
But the Halberdier servant who looked after them in barracks – one between four probationary officers – found great difficulty in polishing Apthorpe’s porpoises and the only criticism ever made of his turn-out on parade was that his boots were dull.
Because of their age Guy and Apthorpe became companions in most things and were called ‘Uncle’ by the younger officers.
‘Well,’ said Apthorpe, ‘we’d better get a move on.’
The luncheon break allowed no time for dawdling. On paper there was an hour and a half but the squad drilled in suits of privates’ dungarees (battle-dress had not yet been issued) and they had to change before appearing in the mess. Today Colour Sergeant Cook had kept them five minutes after the dinner call in expiation of Trimmer’s being late on parade that morning.
Trimmer was the only member of the batch whom Guy definitely disliked. He was not one of the youngest. His large, long-lashed, close-set eyes had a knowing look. Trimmer concealed under his cap a lock of golden hair which fell over his forehead when he was bare-headed. He spoke with a slightly refined Cockney accent and when the wireless in the billiards-room played jazz, Trimmer trucked about with raised hands in little shuffling dance steps. Nothing was known of his civilian antecedents; theatrical, possibly, Guy supposed. He was no fool but his talents were not soldierly. The corporate self-esteem of the Halberdiers did not impress Trimmer, nor did the solemn comforts of the mess attract him. The moment work ended Trimmer was off, sometimes alone, sometimes with a poor reflection of himself, his only friend, named Sarum-Smith. As surely as Apthorpe was marked for early promotion, Trimmer was marked for ignominy. That morning he had appeared at the precise time stated in orders. Everyone else had been waiting five minutes and Colour Sergeant Cork called out the marker just as Trimmer appeared. So it was twelve-thirty-five when they were dismissed.
Then they had doubled to their quarters, thrown their rifles and equipment on their beds, and changed into service dress. Complete with canes and gloves (which had to be buttoned before emerging. A junior officer seen buttoning his gloves on the steps would be sent back to dress) they had marched in pairs to the Officers’ House. This was the daily routine. Every ten yards they saluted or were saluted. (Salutes in the Halberdiers’ Barracks were acknowledged as smartly as they were given. The senior of the pair was taught to count: ‘Up. One, two, three. Down.’ In the hall they removed their caps and Sam-Brownes.
Theoretically there was no distinction of rank in the mess ‘Except, Gentlemen, the natural deference which youth owes to age’, as they were told in the address of welcome on their first evening; Guy and Apthorpe were older than most of the regular captains and were, in fact, treated in many ways as seniors. Together they now went into the mess at a few minutes after one.
Guy helped himself to steak-and-kidney pie at the sideboard and carried his plate to the nearest place at the table. A mess orderly appeared immediately at his elbow with salad and roast potatoes. The wine butler put a silver goblet of beer before him. No one spoke much. ‘Shop’ was banned and there was little else in their minds. Over their heads two centuries of commanding officers stared dully at one another from their gilt frames.
Guy had joined the Corps in a mood of acute shyness born of conflicting apprehension and exultation. He knew little of military life save stories he had heard from time to time of the humiliations to which new officers were liable; of ‘subalterns’ courts martial’ and gross ceremonies of initiation. He remembered a friend telling him that in his regiment no one noticed him for a month and that the first words spoken to him were: ‘Well, Mr Bloody, and what may your name be?’ In another regiment a junior officer said ‘Good morning’ to a senior and was answered: ‘Good morning, good morning, good morning, good morning, good morning, good morning, good morning. Let that last you for a week.’ There had been nothing at all like that in the hospitable welcome he and his fellows received from the Halberdiers. It seemed to Guy that in the last weeks he had been experiencing something he had missed in boyhood, a happy adolescence.
Captain Bosanquet, the adjutant, coming cheerfully into the mess after his third pink gin, stopped opposite Guy and Apthorpe and said: ‘It must have been pretty bloody cold on the square this morning.’
‘It was rather, sir.’
‘Well, pass the word to your chaps to wear great-coats this afternoon.’
‘Very good, sir.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘Oh, you two poops,’ said Frank de Souza, the Cambridge man, opposite. ‘That means we’ll have to let out all our equipment again.’
So there was no time for coffee or a cigarette. At half past one Guy and Apthorpe put on their belts, buttoned their gloves, looked in the glass to see that their caps were straight, tucked their canes under their arms and strode off in step to their quarters.
‘Up. One, two, three. Down.’ They acknowledged a fatigue party called to attention as they passed.
At their steps they broke into a run. Guy changed, and began hastily adjusting his webbing equipment. Blanco got under his fingernails. (This was the time of day which, all his life since school, Guy had spent in an easy chair.) It was permissible to double in drill suits. Guy arrived on the edge of the barrack square with half a minute in hand.
Trimmer looked terrible. Instead of buttoning his great coat across the chest and clipping it tight at the throat, he had left it open. Moreover he had made a mess of his equipment. He had let one side strap down at the back, the other in front with monstrous effect.
‘Mr Trimmer, fall out, sir. Go to your quarters and come back here properly dressed in five minutes.
As you were
. One pace
back
from the rear rank, Mr Trimmer.
As you were
. On the command “Fall out” you take one pace back with the left foot. About turn, quick march.
As you were
. Swing the right arm level with the belt as the left foot goes forward. Now get it right. Fall out. And let me not see any laughter, Mr Sarum-Smith . There’s not an officer in this squad so smart as he can laugh at another. Any officer I see laughing at another officer on parade will find himself up before the adjutant. All right. Stand easy. While we wait for Mr Trimmer, well just run through a little Corps history. The Royal Corps of Halberdiers was first raised by the Earl of Essex, for service in the Low Countries in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. It then bore the name of the Earl of Essex’s Honourable Company of Free Halberdiers. What other sobriquets has it earned, Mr Crouchback?’
