The Balliols (43 page)

Through the grey-green fields of Kent the train ran into Folkestone. A wind was blowing from the shore. In the Pullman carriage there was a craning of necks, a rubbing of window panes to see whether or not there were white horses out at sea. There were more than white horses. Quite definitely it was going to be rough. Hugh thanked heaven he was sleepy. He would go below at once. He would be asleep before the boat had started. He had no sentimental “last minute” wish to take a last look at the white cliffs. He felt none of the obvious emotion of the soldier leaving for the war. He was glad it had come at last, the test for which he had been in training for sixteen months. He had hated being out of things when he had heard others comparing notes of front-line experience. He wanted to be at one with his generation, to move side by side, in step with his age, to miss nothing that his generation accounted as experience. He did not see war in terms of Agincourt and Crecy. He did not expect glamour of it. He expected it to be dull, shot through by hours of horror, lit by an occasional excitement. He knew that through how many dark and lonely days he would
turn for comfort and reassurance to the knowledge that Joyce was waiting for him. He would carry her memory as the crusaders had carried amulets. As he stepped off the dock on to the gang-plank he thought in a moment of prescience and vision, “For all that she means to me now, she'll mean a hundred times more to me before I set foot on this dock again.”

A Week later an orderly walked into the ante-room of the machine-gun base depot.

“Are any of the following gentlemen in the mess, please? Mr. Ashworth, Mr. Kennedy, Mr. Balliol.…”

“Yes.”

“Sir, you have been posted to the 305th Machine Gun Company. You are to have your kit ready by six o'clock. A lorry will take you to the station.”

“What shall I do then?”

“The R.T.O. will tell you.”

The R.T.O. consulted a sheaf of papers.

“The 305th Machine Gun Company? That'll be the 131st division. That'll be Ambreville. They'll tell you there.”

In England Hugh had experienced that side of war-office officialdom which Ian Hay had christened “the practical joke department.” He had indented for three G.S. wagons and received four mules. His bank account had been mysteriously credited with an allowance for lodging, light and fuel during a month that he had spent in barracks. He had filled up endless forms to account for the loss on night manœuvres of one entrenching tool and finally received in compensation a prismatic compass. But he had imagined that things were run more efficiently in France. It did not seem to be so. Through thirteen long, bleak hours, he changed trains, saluted majors with blue hat bands, shivered in an unheated carriage. He was hurried on from train to train, from R.T.O. to R.T.O. as though the administrative authorities were indulging in some elaborate adult version of “Old Maid”; as though he were the unlucky card, which each player in turn passes on to the next, indifferent to its ultimate destination, with a sigh of thanksgiving the moment he is relieved of his own responsibility. Seven o'clock had come before he reported to the R.T.O. at Ambreville. At last, he thought, at last! He was to repeat those two words a great many times, with a great many varieties of intonation, during the next twelve hours.

The R.T.O., like every other R.T.O. along the track, was affable, courteous, encouraging.

“Mr. Balliol? The 305th Machine Gun Company? Splendid! They'll be glad to have you. They're at Rideau now. About fifteen kilometres off.”

“How am I to get there?”

“You're in luck. On ordinary nights you'd have to walk; to-night the light-duty railway is running a carriage down there. You can go in that as far as Langeais, then walk. It's quite simple. Anyone will tell you the way. You're jolly lucky to have the railway.”

With a kindly smile the R.T.O. turned his attention to the next claimant.

Rather dubious about his good fortune, Hugh returned to the railhead, to be informed by a military policeman that the train was due any minute.

“There's no time for me to get anything to eat, then? “He had existed the whole day on nothing more substantial than the small packet of sandwiches issued to him at the Base depot.

The policeman was somewhat shocked at the implied suggestion that military railheads possessed restaurants.

“Oh no, sir, there be no time for that. Train's due any minute, it's the only train to-night. You can't afford to miss it. Let's see, where be you going? Rideau, sir? Then you'll have to change at Lillecourt.”

“The R.T.O. told me to change at Langeais.”

“Oh no, sir, no. Lillecourt. It's much nearer. ‘Ere, Bill!” he shouted to a perspiring orderly. “What be the nearest place for Rideau?”

“Oh, ah should think as ‘ow Millemont were,” replied Bill, without looking up from the floorboard he was scrubbing. “Or else Fleurville. One of the two, any'ow.”

Hugh looked at the Sergeant hopelessly.

“Where am I to get out?”

“Can't say as ‘ow it matters much, sir. They be all close enough anyway. I'm for Lillecourt myself. But each man to ‘is own opinion.”

With this final expression of a philosophy of general toleration, the Sergeant departed to a Y.M.C.A. canteen, leaving Hugh seated on his valise, to grow hungrier and hungrier every minute, as he watched the raindrops splash in the muddy puddles.

The train did not arrive till ten minutes past nine. It was not a train at all; a collection of four open trucks. But Hugh could not
have welcomed the Golden Arrow with greater relish. He shouldered his valise on to a truck, and climbed in after it; cheered by the Sergeant, who, having deceived and deserted him for upwards of two hours, arrived at the last moment in eager expectation of largesse with the useful information that on the whole he had best get out at Maintenant-Les-Loges.

If this were a game of “Old Maid” one of the players had cheated somewhere, Hugh suspected. One or other of the R.T.O.'s instead of passing on the unwanted card to his next door neighbour, had dropped it underneath the table and made an end of the business altogether.

“I suppose I shall get somewhere, sometime,” he reflected.

He was to feel dubious on this point later, after forty shivering minutes in an open truck when he and his valise were deposited at Langeais. He was assured that he would find Rideau without any difficulty. A corporal in the R.E.'s promised to look after his valise till his own company had time to collect it in the mess cart. The mess cart did find it in the end, but it wore a depleted look. Everyone seemed anxious for him to start as speedily as possible. It was just down the main road; less than two kilometres; twenty minutes' walk at the outside.

Hopefully Hugh set out.

Soon he caught a glimpse through the moon-struck dusk of houses and roofs and gables. There rose before him visions of food, a bed, and rest.

But the game of “Old Maid” was only to begin in earnest. Rideau was one of the villages from which, after heavy fighting, the Germans had retreated only a few months back. There remained of it nothing but broken walls and leaning arches. In the dark, it presented an appearance of complete and utter desolation. There were no signs of life. Hugh had thought that as soon as he reached Rideau his odyssey would be completed. He now saw that it had only just begun.

Of the 305th M.G. Company there were no signs. Nor were there any signs of recognizably human habitation. After twenty minutes stumbling among stone-strewn paths he saw a light glimmering beneath a particularly dilapidated outhouse. With hope reborn, he beat on the door and pushed it open.

It was the quarters of the regimental S.M. of the 24th Westshire Regiment.

“I say, do you know where the 305th M.G. Company is?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, look here; can I see any of your officers? They might know.”

The S.M. drew himself to his full height. He was an old regular and a guardsman. He was not used to being woken up in the middle of the night by every new army officer who chose to walk in. It was out of order.

“I'm sorry, sir, it can't be done.”

“But look here.… I mean … can't I see the adjutant or someone?”

“It can't be done, sir, it can't be done.”

Hugh, realizing that he could gather nothing from this relic of reaction, turned dismally to the deserted street. Under a farther light a group of gunners were playing Crown and Anchor. No, they didn't know nothing about no Machine Guns, “but Bill at the cookhouse, ‘e might know summat. ‘Is brother was a machine gunner.”

Not so hopefully now, Hugh sought the cookhouse. “No,” said Bill, “I don't know where they could be. My brother ‘e's in the 323rd; but they're in England still. I dunno I'm sure, but the Corporal of the gas guard might tell 'ee. 'E do know more than I do about these things.”

The Corporal of the gas guard was equally vague. He thought there were some Machine Guns somewhere in Rideau; but where they were he didn't know. Hugh thanked him with frigid gratitude. He had read that a soldier's first night in the line was an unforgettable experience. It was.

He wandered on. A mounted Captain assured him that he would find Brigade Headquarters second on the right, and third on the left, that they would be able to tell him there for certain. But it was not very helpful information, for in the dark it was impossible to tell the difference between a track, a disused tradesman's entrance, and a gap between two battered houses. After following innumerable blind alleys and tripping over countless wires, he was unable to discover the point from which he had started, so that “second on the right and third on the left” became as useful a guide as longitudinal bearings would be to a mariner without a compass.

But a limit is set to the longest pilgrimage. At last even the most weather-beaten Ulysses sees the white crags of his long-loved Ithaca. Shortly after one o'clock there came upon Hugh's ears the well-known pop-pop-pop of the Vickers Gun. Eagerly he hurried in the direction of the sound. The Company Headquarters dug-out loomed a few yards beyond the gun emplacement.

“At last,” he thought. “At last!”

At last he would be able to get some food, a bed and sleep. He marched smartly into the dug-out. Recollecting quickly all he had been taught at the Inns of Court about reporting himself to his unit, he clicked his spurs and heels together, gave the regulation salute and rapped out:

“Lieutenant Balliol, sir, reporting for duty.”

The Captain looked at him, half in surprise, half in amusement.

“What company are you reporting to?” he asked at last.

“The 305th Machine Gun Company, sir.”

The Captain laughed.

“Sorry, old son, this is the wrong place. Your crowd have gone up north. We relieved them here last night!”

On the following morning, in the light of day and with informed guidance, Hugh discovered the whereabouts of his company. It was a moment that he had a little dreaded. Life in a machine gun company was, he knew, very different from life in an ordinary battalion. A machine gun company lived very much upon its own. It was under the direct orders of Brigade. Its ten officers led a self-contained, independent life. They were separated for long periods from one another: three sections scattered over a Brigade front, with the adjutant, the captain, the transport officer, and one section in reserve at details. The company worked only occasionally together, as a whole before a show or after a show; or during a divisional rest. In consequence the happiness or unhappiness of an officer, at any rate, the personal atmosphere of his life, depended far more on the success or failure of one or two personal relationships than would that of a platoon officer in a line battalion. Hugh could guess how much depended on the two or three officers with whom he was brought most in contact. The inquiries that he made about his future captain, from the company whose guest he had by misadventure found himself, were emphatically answered.

“The skipper of the 305th? Rickman, a first-class fellow. Everyone likes him. Youngish, about thirty-three. Good-looking, good athlete, very generous; got a good deal of money; always stands the mess champagne after a bad time in the line and sends a couple of barrels of beer round to the men. They all swear by him. Somebody told me that he wrote poetry. But”—it was added hastily—“you'd never think that to look at him.”

From this description Hugh was not absolutely convinced that the skipper was his type. It suggested a rather overwhelming heartiness. He had not, however, been two minutes in the headquarters of his new company before he had realized that he was in luck. He was welcomed by one of those few men who can contrive to look at the same time extremely smart and extremely comfortable in uniform, with a handshake that was firm and friendly, yet did not crush the fingers.

“So you've got here at last. I can't say how glad I was when I heard you were coming to my company. You won't know me; though you may have heard my name. But I know your sister Lucy very well. I worked for your father for several years.”

“What, you're not Roy Rickman?”

“That's the criminal. We shall have lots to tell each other, I expect. I've seen your sister since you have. I know her husband. I got engaged to be married just about the time she did. And I want to hear all about your parents. When I knew them first they were just starting to build that house of theirs in Hampstead. What was it called? Ilex. You're still there, I suppose?”

It was as unlike as could be to the reception that he had expected from his company commander. But Hugh's pleasure was only in part due to the surprise of finding a personal friend where he had least expected one. It was very largely a relief in recognizing in Rickman the kind of soldier he would be proud to serve under. As an athlete he had always known that he could only play well if he were himself captain or were well captained. He needed to lead, or to be led by someone on whom he could rely.