The Soldier's Art (5 page)

Colonel
Pedlar, as “A. & Q.”, set no problem at all. Also a regular full colonel
with an M.C., he had little desire to be unaccommodating for its own sake. A
certain stiffness of manner in official transactions was possibly due to
apprehension that more might be required of him than he had to offer, rather
than an innate instinct, like Hogbourne-Johnson’s, to be unreasonable in all
his dealings. Colonel Pedlar seemed almost surprised to have reached the rank
he had attained; appeared to possess little or no ambition to rise above it, or
at least small hope that he would in due course be promoted to a brigade. The
slowness of his processes of thought sometimes irked his subordinate,
Widmerpool, even though these processes were on the whole reliable. If Colonel
Hogbourne-Johnson looked like an owl, Colonel Pedlar resembled a retriever, a
faithful hound, sound in wind and limb, prepared to tackle a dog twice his
size, or swim through a river in spate to collect his master’s game, but at the
same time not in the top class for picking up a difficult scent.

Trouble with
Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson might never have arisen, as it did at that particular
moment, had not Colonel Pedlar been, quite by chance, out of the way. When it
came, sudden and violent, the cause was a far more humdrum matter than the
clandestine guiding of appointments. Indeed, the incident itself was such a
minor one, so much part of the day’s work, that, had I not myself witnessed it
– owing to the exceptional occurrence of Advance Headquarters and Rear
Headquarters being brought together in one element at the close of the three-day
exercise – I should always have believed some essential detail to have been
omitted from the subsequent story; guessed that nothing so trivial in itself
could have so much discomposed Widmerpool. That incredulity was due, I suppose,
to underestimation, even after the years I had known him, of Widmerpool’s
inordinate, almost morbid, self-esteem.

During “schemes,”
the Defence Platoon was responsible for guarding the Divisional Commander’s
Advance Headquarters. This meant, on these occasions, accommodation for myself
in the General’s Mess; accordingly, temporary disengagement from Widmerpool,
whose duties as DAA.G. focused on Rear Headquarters. On the last evening of
this particular exercise, the Command three-day one, Advance H.Q. had been established,
as usual, in a small farmhouse, one of the scattered homesteads lying in the
forbidding countryside of the Command’s north-western area, right up in the
corner of the map. The first fifty-six hours had been pretty active – as
foreseen by me the night before we set out – giving little chance of sleep.
However, by the time the General and his operational staff sat down to a late
meal at the end of the third day, there was a feeling abroad that the main
exertions of the exercise might reasonably be regarded as at an end. Everyone
could take things easy for a short time. The General himself was in an
excellent temper, the battle against the Blue Force to all intents won.

A single oil
lamp threw a circle of dim light round the dining table of the farm parlour
where we ate, leaving the rest of the room in heavy shadow, dramatising by its
glow the central figures of the company present. Were they a group of
conspirators – something like the Gunpowder Plot – depicted in the
cross-hatchings of an old engraved illustration? It was not exactly that. At
the same time the hard lights and shades gave the circle of heads an odd,
mysterious unity. The faces of the two colonels, bird and beast, added a note
deliberately grotesque, surrealist, possibly indicating a satirical meaning on
the part of the artist, a political cartoonist perhaps. The colonels were
placed on either side of General Liddament, who sat at the head of the table,
deep in thought. His thin, cleanshaven, ascetic features, those of a
schoolmaster or priest – also a touch of Sir Magnus Donners – were yellowish in
complexion. Perhaps that tawny colour clarified the imagery, for now it became
plain.

Here was
Pharaoh, carved in the niche of a shrine between two tutelary deities, who
shielded him from human approach. All was manifest. Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson
and Colonel Pedlar were animal-headed gods of Ancient Egypt. Colonel
Hogbourne-Johnson was, of course, Horus, one of those sculptured
representations in which the Lord of the Morning Sun resembles an owl rather
than a falcon; a bad-tempered owl at that. Colonel Pedlar’s dog’s muzzle, on
the other hand, was a milder than normal version of the jackal-faced Anubis,
whose dominion over Tombs and the Dead did indeed fall within A. & Q.’s
province. Some of the others round about were less easy to place in the
Egyptian pantheon. In fact, one came finally to the conclusion, none of them
were gods at all, mere bondsmen of the temple. For example, Cocksidge, officer
responsible for Intelligence duties, with his pale eager elderly-little-boy
expression – although on the edge of thirty – was certainly the lowest of
slaves, dusting only exterior, less sacred precincts of the shrine, cleaning
out with his hands the priest’s latrine, if such existed on the temple premises.
Next to Cocksidge sat Greening, the General’s A.D.C., pink cheeked, fair
haired, good-natured, about twenty years old, probably an alien captive
awaiting sacrifice on the altar of this anthropomorphic trinity. Before anyone
else could be satisfactorily identified, Colonel Pedlar spoke.

“How went the
battle, Derrick?” he asked.

There had been
silence until then. Everyone was tired. Besides, although Colonel
Hogbourne-Johnson and Colonel Pedlar were not on notably good terms with each
other, they felt rank to inhibit casual conversation with subordinates. Both
habitually showed anxiety to avoid a junior officer’s eye at meals in case
speech might seem required. To make sure nothing so inadvertent should happen,
each would uninterruptedly gaze into the other’s face across the table, with
all the fixedness of a newly engaged couple, eternally enchanted by the
charming appearance of the other. The colonels were, indeed, thus occupied when
Colonel Pedlar suddenly put his question. This was undoubtedly intended as a
form of expressing polite interest in his colleague’s day, rather than to show
any very keen desire for further tactical information about the exercise, a
subject with which Colonel Pedlar, and everyone else present, must by now be
replete. However Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson chose to take the enquiry in the
latter sense.

“Pretty
bloody, Eric,” he said. “Pretty bloody. If you want to know about it, read the
sit-rep.”

“I’ve read it,
Derrick.”

The assonance
of the two colonels’ forenames always imparted a certain whimsicality to their
duologues.

“Read it
again, Eric, read it again. I’d like you to. There are several points I want to
bring up later.”

“Where is it,
Derrick?”

Colonel Pedlar
seemed to possess no intellectual equipment for explaining that he had
absolutely no need, even less desire, to re-read the situation report. Perhaps,
having embarked on the subject, he felt a duty to follow it up.

“Cocksidge
will find it for you, Eric, writ in his
own fair hand. Seek out the sit-rep, Jack.”

In certain moods,
especially when he teased Widmerpool, the General was inclined to frame his
sentences in a kind of Old English vernacular. Either because the style
appealed equally
to himself, or, more probably, because use of it implied compliment to the
Divisional Commander, Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson also favoured this mode of
speech. At his words, Cocksidge was on his feet in an instant, his features
registering, as ever, deference felt for those of higher rank than himself.
Cocksidge’s demeanour to his superiors always recalled a phrase used by Odo
Stevens when we had been on a course together at Aldershot:

“Good morning,
Sergeant-Major, here’s a sparrow for your cat.”

Cocksidge was,
so to speak, in a chronic state of providing, at a higher level of rank,
sparrows for sergeant-majors’ cats. His own habitual incivility to subordinates
was humdrum enough, but the imaginative lengths to which he would carry
obsequiousness to superiors displayed something of genius. He took a keen
delight in running errands for anyone a couple of ranks above himself, his
subservience even to majors showing the essence of humility. He had made a
close, almost scientific study of the likes and dislikes of Colonel
Hogbourne-Johnson and Colonel Pedlar, while the General he treated with reverence
in which there was even a touch of worship, of deification. In contact with
General Liddament, so extreme was his respect that Cocksidge even abated a
little professional boyishness of manner, otherwise such a prominent feature of
his all-embracing servility, seeming by its appealing tone to ask forbearance
for his own youth and immaturity. Widmerpool, to do him justice, despised
Cocksidge, an attitude Cocksidge seemed positively to enjoy. The two colonels,
on the other hand, undoubtedly approved his fervent attentions, appeared even
appreciative of his exaggeratedly juvenile mannerisms. In addition, it had to
be admitted Cocksidge did his job competently, apart from such elaborations of
his own personality. Now he came hurriedly forward with the situation report.

“Thanks, Jack,”
said Colonel Pedlar.

He studied the
paper, gazing at it with that earnest, apparently uncomprehending stare, of
which Widmerpool had more than once complained.

“I’ve seen
this,” he said. “Seems all right, Derrick. Take it back where it belongs, Jack.”

“Glad it seems
all right to you, Eric,” said Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson, “because I rather
flatter myself the operational staff, under my guidance, did a neat job.”

The bite in
his tone should have conveyed warning. He terminated this comment, as was his
habit, by giving a smirk, somehow audibly extruded from the left-hand side of
his mouth, a kind of hiss, intended to underline the aptness or wit of his
words. Unless in a bad humour he would always give vent to this muted sound after
speaking. The fact was Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson did not attempt to conceal his
own sense of superiority over a brother officer, inferior not only in
appointment, regiment and mental equipment, but also in a field where Colonel
Hogbourne-Johnson felt himself particularly to shine, that is to say in the
arena where men of the world sparklingly perform. The play of his wit was often
directed against the more leisurely intellect of Colonel Pedlar, whose efforts
to keep up with all this parade of brilliance occasionally landed him in
disaster. It was so on that night. After giving a glance at the situation
report, he handed it back to Cocksidge, who received the document with bent
head, as if at Communion or in the act of being entrusted with a relic of supreme
holiness. There could be no doubt that the sit-rep had at least confirmed
Colonel Pedlar in the belief that nothing remained to worry about where the
exercise was concerned.
At such moments as this one he was inclined to overreach himself.

“Going to finish
up with a glass of port to-night, Derrick,” he asked, “now that our exertions
are almost at an end?”

“Port, Eric?”

A wealth of
meaning attached to the tone given by Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson to the name of
the wine. Widmerpool’s mother, years before, had pronounced “port” with a
similar interrogative inflexion in her voice, though probably to imply her
guests were lucky to get any port at all, rather than for the reasons impelling
Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson so precisely to enunciate the word.

“Yes, Derrick?”

“Not to-night,
Eric. Port don’t do the liver any good. Not the sort of port we have in this
Mess anyway. I shall steer clear of port myself, Eric, and I should advise you
to do the same.”

“You do?”

“I do, Eric.”

“Well, I think
I’ll have a small glass nevertheless, Derrick. I’m sorry you won’t be
accompanying me.”

Colonel Pedlar
gave the necessary order. Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson shook his head in
disapproval. He was known to favour economy; it was said, even to the extent of
parsimony. A glass of port was brought to the table. Colonel Pedlar, looking
like an advertisement for some well-known brand of the wine in question, held
the glass to the lamp-light, turning the rim in his hand.

“Fellow in my
regiment was telling me just before the war that his grandfather laid down a
pipe of port for him to inherit on his twenty-first birthday,” he remarked.

Colonel
Hogbourne-Johnson grunted. He did this in a manner to imply observation of that
particular custom, even the social necessity of such a provision, was too well
accepted in decent society for any casual commendation of the act to be
required; though the tradition might be comparatively unfamiliar in what he was
accustomed to describe as “Heavy” infantry; and, it might be added, not much of
a regiment at that.

“Twelve dozen
bottles,” said Colonel Pedlar dreamily. “Pretty good cellar for a lad when he
comes of age.”

Colonel
Hogbourne-Johnson suddenly showed attention. He began to bare a row of teeth
under the biscuit-coloured bristles and small hooked nose.

“Twelve dozen,
Eric?”

“That’s it,
isn’t it, Derrick?”

Colonel Pedlar
sounded nervous now, already aware no doubt that he had ventured too far in
claiming knowledge of the world; had made, not for the first time, an
elementary blunder.

“
Twelve dozen
?”
repeated Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson.

He added
additional emphasis to the question, carrying the implication that he himself
must have misheard.”

“Yes.”

“You’re wide
of the mark, Eric. Completely out of the picture.”

“I am,
Derrick?”

“You certainly
are, Eric.”

“What is a
pipe then, Derrick? I’m not in the wine trade.”

“Don’t have to
be in the wine trade to know what a pipe of port is, old boy. Everyone ought to
know that. Nothing to do with being a shopman.
More than
fifty
dozen. That’s a pipe. You’re absolutely out in
your calculations. Couldn’t be more so. Mismanaged your slide-rule. Landed in
an altogether incorrect map-square. Committed a real bloomer. Got off on the
wrong foot, as well as making a false start.”