Parade's End (51 page)

He threw his sonnet across to Mackenzie, who with a background of huddled khaki limbs and anxious faces was himself anxiously counting out French currency notes and dubious-looking tokens… . What the deuce did men want to draw money – sometimes quite large sums of money, the Canadians being paid in dollars converted into local coins – when in an hour or so they would be going up? But they always did and their accounts were always in an incredibly entangled state. Mackenzie might well look worried. As like as not he might find himself a fiver or more down at the end of the evening for
unauthorised
payments. If he had only his pay and an extravagant wife to keep, that might well put the wind up him. But that was
his
funeral. He told Lieutenant Hotchkiss to come and have a chat with him in his hut, the one next the mess. About horses. He knew a little about horse-illnesses himself. Only empirically, of course.

Mackenzie was looking at his watch.

‘You took two minutes and eleven seconds,’ he said. ‘I’ll take it for granted it’s a sonnet … I have not read it because I can’t turn it into Latin here … I haven’t got your knack of doing eleven things at once… .’

A man with a worried face, encumbered by a bundle and a small book, was studying figures at Mackenzie’s elbow. He interrupted Mackenzie in a high American voice to say that he had never drawn fourteen dollars seventy-five cents in Thrasna Barracks, Aldershot.

Mackenzie said to Tietjens:

‘You understand. I have not read your sonnet. I shall turn it into Latin in the mess, in the time stipulated. I don’t want you to think I’ve read it and taken time to think about it.’

The man beside him said:

‘When I went to the Canadian Agent, Strand, London, his office was shut up …’

Mackenzie said with white fury:

‘How much service have you got? Don’t you know better than to interrupt an officer when he is talking? You must settle your own figures with your own confounded Colonial paymaster. I’ve sixteen dollars thirty cents here for you. Will you take them or leave them?’

Tietjens said:

‘I know that man’s case. Turn him over to me. It isn’t complicated. He’s got his paymaster’s cheque, but doesn’t know how to cash it and of course they won’t give him another… .’

The man with slow, broad, brown features looked from one to the other officer’s face and back again with a keen black-eyed scrutiny as if he were looking into a wind and dazed by the light. He began a long story of how he owed Fat-Eared Bill fifty dollars lost at House. He was perhaps half-Chinese, half-Finn. He continued to talk, being in a state of great anxiety about his money. Tietjens addressed himself to the cases of the Sydney Inniskilling ex-trooper
and
the McGill graduate who had suffered at the hands of the Japanese Educational Ministry. It made altogether a complicated effect. ‘You would say,’ Tietjens said to himself, ‘that, all together, it ought to be enough to take my mind up.’

The upright trooper had a very complicated sentimental history. It was difficult to advise him before his fellows. He, however, felt no diffidence. He discussed the points of the girl called Rosie whom he had followed from Sydney to British Columbia, of the girl called Gwen with whom he had taken up in Aberystwyth, of the woman called Mrs. Hosier with whom he had lived maritally, on a sleeping-out pass, at Berwick St. James, near Salisbury Plain. Through the continuing voice of the half-caste Chinaman he discussed them with a large tolerance, explaining that he wanted them all to have a bit, as a souvenir, if he happened to stop one out there. Tietjens handed him the draft of a will he had had written out for him, asked him to read it attentively and copy it with his own hand into his soldier’s small book. Then Tietjens would witness it for him. He said:

‘Do you think this will make my old woman in Sydney part? I guess it won’t. She’s a sticker, sir. A regular July bur, God bless her.’ The McGill graduate was beginning already to introduce a further complication into his story of complications with the Japanese Government. It appeared that in addition to his scholastic performances he had invested a little money in a mineral water spring near Kobe, the water, bottled, being exported to San Francisco. Apparently his company had been indulging in irregularities according to Japanese law, but a pure French Canadian, who had experienced some difficulties in obtaining his baptismal certificate from a mission somewhere in the direction of the Klondike, was allowed by Tietjens to interrupt the story of the graduate; and several men without complications, but anxious to get their papers signed so as to write last letters home before the draft moved, overflowed across Tietjens’ table.

The tobacco smoke from the pipes of the N.C.O.s at the other end of the room hung, opalescent, beneath the wire cages of the brilliant hurricane lamps hung over each table; buttons and minerals gleamed in the air that the universal khaki tinge of the limbs seemed to turn brown,
as
if into a gas of dust. Nasal voices, throat voices, drawling voices, melted into a rustle so that the occasional high, sing-song profanity of a Welsh N.C.O.: Why the
hell
haffn’t you got your 124? Why the — hell haffn’t you got your 124? Don’t you
know
you haff to haff your bleedin’ 124s? seemed to wail tragically through a silence… . The evening wore on and on. It astounded Tietjens, looking at one time at his watch, to discover that it was only 21 hrs. 19. He seemed to have been thinking drowsily of his own affairs for ten hours… . For, in the end, these were his own affairs… . Money, women, testamentary bothers. Each of these complications from over the Atlantic and round the world were his own troubles: a world in labour; an army being moved off in the night. Shoved off. Anyhow. And over the top. A lateral section of the world… .

He had happened to glance at the medical history of a man beside him and noticed that he had been described as C1… . It was obviously a slip of the pen on the part of the Medical Board, or one of their orderlies. He had written C instead of A. The man was Pte. 197394 Thomas Johnson, a shining-faced lump of beef, an agricultural odd jobman from British Columbia where he had worked on the immense estates of Sylvia Tietjens’ portentous ducal second cousin Rugeley. It was a double annoyance. Tietjens had not wanted to be reminded of his wife’s second cousin, because he had not wanted to be reminded of his wife. He had determined to give his thoughts a field day on that subject when he got warm into his fleabag in his hut that smelt of paraffin whilst the canvas walls crackled with frost and the moon shone… . He would think of Sylvia beneath the moon. He was determined not to now! But 197394 Pte. Johnson, Thomas, was otherwise a nuisance and Tietjens cursed himself for having glanced at the man’s medical history. If this preposterous yokel was C3 he could not go on a draft … C1 rather! It was all the same. That would mean finding another man to make up the strength and that would drive Sergeant-Major Cowley out of his mind. He looked up towards the ingenuous, protruding, shining, liquid, bottle-blue eyes of Thomas Johnson… . The fellow had never had an illness. He could not have had an illness – except from a surfeit of cold, fat, boiled pork – and for
that
you would give him a horse’s blue ball and drench which, ten to one, would not remove the cause of the belly-ache… .

His eyes met the non-committal glance of a dark, gentlemanly thin fellow with a strikingly scarlet hat-band, a lot of gilt about his khaki and little strips of steel chain-armour on his shoulders… . Levin … Colonel Levin, G.S.O. II, or something, attached to General Lord Edward Campion… . How the hell did fellows get into these intimacies of commanders of units and their men? Swimming in like fishes into the brown air of a tank and there at your elbow – spies! … The men had all been called to attention and stood like gasping codfish. The ever-watchful Sergeant-Major Cowley had drifted to his, Tietjens’, elbow. You protect your orfcers from the gawdy Staff as you protect your infant daughters in lambswool from draughts. The dark, bright, cheerful staffwallah said with a slight lisp:

‘Busy, I see.’ He might have been standing there for a century and have a century of the battalion headquarters’ time to waste like that. ‘What draft is this?’

Sergeant-Major Cowley, always ready in case his orfcer should not know the name of his unit or his own name, said:

‘No. 16 I.B.D. Canadian First Division Casual Number Four Draft, sir.’

Colonel Levin let air lispingly out between his teeth.

‘No. 16 Draft not off yet … Dear, dear! Dear, dear! … We shall be strafed to hell by First Army… .’ He used the word hell as if he had first wrapped it in eau-de-Cologned cotton-wadding.

Tietjens, on his feet, knew this fellow very well: a fellow who had been a very bad Society water-colour painter of good family on the mother’s side, hence the cavalry gadgets on his shoulders. Would it then be good … say good taste to explode? He let the sergeant-major do it. Sergeant-Major Cowley was of the type of N.C.O. who carried weight because he knew ten times as much about his job as any Staff officer. The sergeant-major explained that it had been impossible to get off the draft earlier. The colonel said:

‘But surely, sergeant-majah …’

The sergeant-major, now a deferential shopwalker in a
lady’s
store, pointed out that they had had urgent instructions not to send up the draft without the four hundred Canadian Railway Service men who were to come from Etaples. These men had only arrived that evening at 5.30 … at the railway station. Marching them up had taken three-quarters of an hour. The colonel said:

‘But surely, sergeant-majah …’

Old Cowley might as well have said ‘madam’ as ‘sir’ to the red hat-band… . The four hundred had come with only what they stood up in. The unit had had to wangle everything: boots, blankets, tooth-brushes, braces, rifles, iron-rations, identity discs out of the depot store. And it was now only twenty-one twenty… . Cowley permitted his commanding officer at this point to say:

‘You must understand that we work in circumstances of extreme difficulty, sir… .’

The graceful colonel was lost in an absent contemplation of his perfectly elegant knees.

‘I know, of course… .’ he lisped. ‘Very difficult …’ He brightened up to add: ‘But you must admit you’re unfortunate… . You must admit that… .’ The weight settled, however, again on his mind.

Tietjens said:

‘Not, I suppose, sir, any more unfortunate than any other unit working under a dual control for supplies… .’

The colonel said:

‘What’s that? Dual … Ah, I see you’re there, Mackenzie… . Feeling well … feeling fit, eh?’

The whole hut stood silent. His anger at the waste of time made Tietjens say:

‘If you understand, sir, we are a unit whose principal purpose is drawing things to equip drafts with… .’ This fellow was delaying them atrociously. He was brushing his knees with a handkerchief! ‘I’ve had,’ Tietjens said, ‘a man killed on my hands this afternoon because we have to draw tin-hats for my orderly room from Dublin on an A.F.B. Canadian from Aldershot… . Killed here… . We’ve only just mopped up the blood from where you’re standing… .’

The cavalry colonel exclaimed:

‘Oh, good gracious me! …’ jumped a little and examined his beautiful, shining, knee-high aircraft boots. ‘Killed! … Here! … But there’ll have to be a court of
inquiry.
… You certainly are
most
unfortunate, Captain Tietjens… . Always these mysterious … Why wasn’t your man in a dug-out? … Most unfortunate… . We cannot have casualties among the Colonial troops… . Troops from the Dominions, I mean… .’

Tietjens said grimly:

‘The man was from Pontardulais … not from any Dominion… . One of my orderly room… . We are forbidden on pain of court martial to let any but Dominion Expeditionary Force men go into the dug-outs… . My Canadians were all there… . It’s an A.C.I. local of the eleventh of November… .’

The Staff officer said:

‘It makes, of course, a difference! … Only a Glamorganshire? You say … Oh, well… . But these mysterious …’

He exclaimed, with the force of an explosion, and the relief:

‘Look here … can you spare, possibly ten … twenty … eh … minutes? … It’s not exactly a service matter … so per …’

Tietjens exclaimed:

‘You see how we’re situated, colonel …’ and, like one sowing grass seed on a lawn, extended both hands over his papers and towards his men… . He was choking with rage. Colonel Levin had, under the chaperonage of an English dowager, who ran a chocolate store down on the quays in Rouen, a little French piece to whom he was quite seriously engaged. In the most naïve manner. And the young woman, fantastically jealous, managed to make endless insults to herself out of her almost too handsome colonel’s barbaric French. It was an idyll, but it drove the colonel frantic. At such times Levin would consult Tietjens, who passed for a man of brains and a French scholar as to really nicely turned compliments in a difficult language… . And as to how you explained that it was necessary for a G.S.O. II, or whatever the colonel was, to be seen quite frequently in the company of very handsome V.A.D.s and female organisers of all arms … It was the sort of silliness as to which no gentleman ought to be consulted… . And here was Levin with the familiar feminine-agonised wrinkle on his bronzed-alabaster brow… . Like a beastly soldier-man out of a revue. Why didn’t the ass burst into gesture and a throaty tenor… .

Sergeant-Major Cowley naturally saved the situation. Just as Tietjens was as near saying
Go to hell
as you can be to your remarkably senior officer on parade, the sergeant-major, now a very important solicitor’s most confidential clerk, began whispering to the colonel… .

‘The captain might as well take a spell as not… . We’re through with all the men except the Canadian Railway batch, and they can’t be issued with blankets not for half an hour … not for three-quarters. If then! It depends if our runner can find where Quarter’s lance-corporal is having his supper, to issue them… .’ The sergeant-major had inserted that last speech deftly. The Staff officer, with a vague reminiscence of his regimental days, exclaimed: