Mrs. Tim of the Regiment (5 page)

‘That's the sentence,' the Child points out with a wave of his pipe. ‘Just like a woman to give the sentence before the verdict. Now if women ever become judges, we shall see '

But what we should see if women became judges is destined to remain in oblivion, for at this moment loud voices or rather one loud voice is heard in the hall.

‘My God, it's the C.O.,' says Jack in awestruck tones.

The Child proves himself a man of action by seizing me bodily and stowing me behind the curtains before I can say a word.

‘Your deal, Jack,' says Tubby's voice firmly, and I gather that they have taken up their positions round the card table.

The room is suddenly full of the colonel's voice – ‘Still at it,' he booms, and I can almost see him rubbing his hands in his hearty way. ‘When I was young I never spent a whole Saturday afternoon playing cutthroat bridge – it was golf or girls in those days. Haw, haw, haw! My God what a froust! Why don't you open one of the windows?'

‘Tubby's got dreadful toothache, Sir,' explains the Child blandly. ‘Neuralgia, you know, Sir – awfully afraid of a draught.'

‘Umph – better see the dentist and have it out. Lost my train by one minute so I thought I'd look in here and see how things were. Lost my handkerchief too – most annoying – thought I might have dropped it here somewhere – How did the lecture go, Christie?'

Tim's voice is heard announcing that the lecture went well. He must have come in with the colonel.

The dust of ages emanating from the curtain makes me want to sneeze – this would be fatal so I rub my nose and swallow hard hoping for the best.

‘Must see Morley before I go,' the colonel is saying. ‘That return must be sent in on Monday the one about the rifles.'

‘Major Morley is in Orderly Room now, Sir,' says the Child in honeyed accents. ‘Shall I tell him you want him, Sir?'

‘Yes no, I'll go round and see him there. Your car's outside, Christie. Perhaps you would give me a lift to the station for the 6:55?'

Under cover of the colonel's noisy exit I hear Tim asking anxiously if ‘the wife has gone home'.

‘You will find her at home, Sir,' the Child assures him. They seem to have moved out into the hall now and I am wondering whether it is safe to leave my hiding place when I hear them coming back.

‘It's a brown silk one with white spots,' says the colonel. ‘I may have dropped it here at lunchtime, perhaps in the window when I was looking out '

‘Oh no, Sir,' says Tubby's voice anxiously, ‘I'm sure I should have noticed it, Sir.'

‘More likely to be in one of the chairs down the side,' suggests Jack.

I hear the squeak of castors as they move the chairs, and, for the first time, I began to be rather anxious as to the result of this absurd prank. Will these boys suffer if I am found? It has all happened so naturally I see now that it would have been better to have been found smoking a cigarette on the fender stool than lurking behind the curtain.

‘Look out, Baxter, clumsy fool – my foot,' growls the colonel.

‘Oh sorry, Sir.'

‘Here's your handkerchief, Sir.'

‘Better be quick if you want to catch Major Morley, Sir.'

They move off again, the colonel trumpeting cheerfully among the white spots. ‘Missed it at the station,' I hear him say. ‘Wouldn't have lost it for anything – given to me by a lady – haw, haw, haw.'

All laugh loudly at this sally on the art of the henpecked colonel, and the irrepressible Child suggests respectfully that the colonel is a ‘gay dog'.

I hear Cassandra's roar of protest as Tim starts her up, and in a few moments more I am released from my dusty hiding place by my fellow conspirators. They are all giggling feebly.

‘My hat!' says Tubby wiping his forehead. ‘That was a near thing, boys
. Did
you see Uncle Frankie making for the window?'

‘You rolled the chair over his pet corn!' cries the Child hysterically.

‘I feel like the Johnny whose hair turned white in a single night,' Jack owns. ‘Wondered whether I should pretend to go potty and collar the old man – '

‘Drinks all round, and then home in my Rolls,' announces the Child.

‘The lies you told!' Tubby cries, laughing helplessly.

‘Lies – I told no lies,' replies the Child indignantly. ‘I told Captain Tim he'd find wifie at home, and so he will when he's pushed off Uncle Frankie by the 6.55. Where are the lies? Fetch the drinks, Tubby, we can't ring for Smithers.'

‘Fetch them yourself,' says Tubby. He is busy with paper and pencil, and is obviously perpetrating one of his celebrated poems on the occasion.

‘My God!' cries the Child. ‘Is there nobody in this ruddy regiment to do a spot of work but myself !'

‘What rhymes with station?' asks Tubby unabashed. ‘Damnation, of course,' replies Jack. ‘And it's just what Uncle Frankie would have said – though why you are wasting your time I don't know. You can't put it in the magazine – there was nearly a riot in the Mess over the last muck you put in.'

‘It's my muse,' Tubby explains, moistening his pencil with the tip of a very red tongue. ‘The urge for self-expression is very strong in great poets like me.' He holds up his glass and calls upon us to bear witness that the Child is a murderer, having drowned a perfectly good drink which never did him any harm.

‘What about the poem, Tubs?' says Jack.

Tubby simpers shyly, but after a very little persuasion he reads out the following effusion:

‘Uncle Frankie.
Lost his hankie
Going to the station,
He lost his train
And was profane,
Just like the Bull of Bashan.'

(‘I put that in because ladies are present.')

‘His journey spoiled,
His purpose foiled,
He then returned to pester.
Then Uncle Frankie
Found his hankie
And, very nearly, Hester.'

‘Dashed cheek,' says Jack, giggling inanely.

The Child makes no comment – poetry is not his strong point – but turning to me he enquires if I will come again another wet afternoon as it has been ‘such fun'.

I reply that it is not my idea of fun.

‘Why not?' cry all three imbeciles. ‘Is our fire not warm? Have our cocktails no sting? Is our conversation not witty? Are our chairs not comfortable?'

I reply in the words of Le Rat des Champs –
‘Adieu donc, fie du
plaisir que le craint peut corrompre
.'

‘That's French,' says Jack triumphantly, but Tubby who is more erudite – as well as being the regimental poet – replies:

‘Italian, me lad, from a poem called Don Juan by a poet called Don Byrono. The poor man was drowned in a storm while escaping from his wife in a cockleshell on Lake Como – '

I hear no more of this potpourri of literary history as I am hustled away by the Child. Tubby follows us into the hall shouting that the second verse of his poem will be ready tomorrow and will deal faithfully with Aunt Loo's horror at the non-appearance of her spouse, and with Hannibal crossing the Alps, and Christopher Robin's lecture on a rear-guard action with elephants.

We hasten to the old Gun Stables where the officers keep their cars, the Child protesting volubly that I must be home before Tim so that my alibi may be secure. I am to be sitting by the fire with my darning basket when Tim returns – a picture of domesticity. (This wretched darning basket of mine is a perennial joke in the regiment.) Thus the Child babbles on, the while he tries vainly to get a kick out of his aged and battle-scarred Trojan.

‘It's no damn use,' he says at last. ‘I think the brute must have died in the night – we must just borrow Rex Bolton's Alvis. Fortunately my key fits his door.'

Rex Bolton's Alvis being more amenable to persuasion, we are soon careering gaily out of the barracks gate where two sentries at rigid attention, and one mud-bespattered figure in a service burberry waves its arms and shouts upon its gods.

‘Rex Bolton,' says the Child succinctly as he jams the Alvis into top with a grating sound.

Thanks to the admirable speed of the Alvis, I am changed and seated by the fire when Tim and Cassandra reach home.

‘It's a mercy you didn't wait,' Tim informs me. ‘Had a lecture pushed on to me at the last moment and then had to take the old man to the station –what a life! Thank Heaven we'll be out of all this soon.'

I make sympathetic noises.

Tim expands confidentially. ‘You know, Hester, I'm certain those young devils in the Mess were up to some mischief this afternoon. Shouldn't be surprised if they had a girl hidden behind the curtain.'

‘Whatever made you think that?' I wonder, in a voice trembling with suppressed mirth. Having decided to make a clean breast of the whole adventure to Tim, I find these suspicions of his somewhat amusing.

Tim laughs – ‘You should have been there – they were tumbling over each other to be nice to Uncle Frankie and to get him out of the place. Jack went white as a ghost when the old man made a move towards the window. Wonder what Grace would say if she knew – I'll get on to them tomorrow about it, see if I don't.'

I thread my needle carefully before I reply: ‘I wouldn't say anything about it if I were you – you might discover that the girl behind the curtain was your own wife.'

Tim roars with laughter. ‘My good soul, I know better than that. I bet the girl behind the curtain was a peach – one of the Child's ‘specials.' I very nearly went back after parking the old man with Morley, to have a look at her – I bet she was worth looking at.'

Tim is very tiresome sometimes.

Eighteenth January

Letter from Bryan asking why we ‘went off without saying goodbye' and informing us that he has got his ‘remove' and is in a different ‘dorm'. The rest of the letter is taken up with calculations as to how many days it is until the Easter holidays and ends with the pious hope that the writer may develop ringworm or some such complaint ‘like Brunton did last term', in which case he will be sent home forthwith. Feel that this would be an undesirable occurrence especially as we have just sent him a cheque for a large sum to defray the term's expenses.

I also receive a letter from Lady Morley of Charters Towers, inviting me to accompany Tim on the 29th January and stay two nights at Charters Towers for the point-to-point races. Great argument between Tim and self regarding the invitation as I feel I have no clothes worthy of the occasion, and Tim says that my last year's tweeds and a fur coat is all that I shall require. Am bitterly aware that Tim is one of those men who do not understand clothes or women, but reflect afterwards that perhaps this is just as well in some ways. Men who understand women being sometimes too understanding of women other than their wives.

Major Morley comes in to tea and says that of course I must go, and that he will take us in his car.

Nineteenth January

Tim reminds me unnecessarily at breakfast that the Bensons and the McDougalls are coming to dinner tonight and asks me to tell Annie not to breathe heavily down the back of his neck when she is waiting at table. Spend half an hour wondering how I can possibly put this in a tactful manner and realise that I can't. Decide to say nothing about it and hope for the best.

Am still in the later stages of my toilet when Mrs. Benson arrives and is shown straight into my bedroom. This is not Annie's fault – she is merely carrying out instructions – Mrs. Benson has upset plans by arriving ten minutes early. I am aware that Tim is not ready either, having fished a stud up his back for him about three minutes ago.

‘And how do you think you will like Westburgh?' says Mrs. Benson as she dabs her nose with blue powder in front of my glass. ‘I hear it does not rain all the time, and the smoke is really quite healthy.'

Tim enters in his shirt sleeves to ask me to tie his tie for him, but backs out hastily at the sight of Mrs. Benson, while I make signs to him behind her back to hurry downstairs to the colonel. Can see he does not know in the least what I mean.

The McDougalls arrive about twenty minutes late, by which time we have all come to the end of our conversation, and the colonel is pacing up and down the room like a wild beast. They are full of the most abject apologies, their car wouldn't start and they have only just now been able to get a taxi from the garage. Smile brightly and say it does not matter at all, though I am nearly frantic at the thought of the mushroom soufflé, which I know will be like leather.

The colonel is by now in a towering rage, and dabs at his burnt fish in positive disgust. Fortunately the beef olives are quite eatable, and the pudding is a trifle, so I breathe a sigh of relief.

Grace McDougall gradually wins the colonel to a better mood by flirting with him outrageously; but this annoys both Mrs. Benson and Captain McDougall, so things are not much improved. The soufflé does not turn up at all, its place on the menu is taken by a few cheese straws which I know have been mouldering at the back of the kitchen cupboard for about three weeks, but which look nice, having been dusted thoroughly and reheated.