‘Oh, there’s a lot more to it than that, I’m quite sure. People are browned off with something, or rather somebody, a lot of somebodies. They’re protesting against—’
‘Well, you and I are never going to see eye to eye there, sir, are we? — not even if we discuss it all night. We might as well accept it.’
‘Will you join me in a glass of whisky, Sergeant? If it doesn’t seem too like drowning your sorrows while I celebrate.’
‘Thank you, sir, I will. You’ve certainly got something to celebrate, and everybody else seems to be doing it, so I don’t see why I shouldn’t join in.’
Doll and Archer sat in the little sitting-room — all painted screens and wax fruit and clocks under glass domes — of the farmhouse that contained the Officers’ Mess. Outside, a widespread uproar was distantly audible: shouts, the revving of jeep and motor-cycle engines, the braying of a trombone that was being blown through rather than played. Ten minutes ago what sounded very much like a long burst of light-machine-gun fire had come from the direction of the Signal Office. There was no reason to suppose that all this was a demonstration of Socialist triumph over cowed and silent Tories. Whether or not Doll was right about the motives which had prompted the return of a Labour Government in Great Britain, the local reaction to it tonight was largely non-political in temper.
‘They’re keeping hard at it,’ Doll said, pointing out of the open window to a sudden burst of flame somewhere across the road. It was brighter than the now hour-old bonfire in the billet area. A few figures could be seen in the light of the new conflagration, reeling in and out of the darkness like pantomime drunks. ‘Funny how nobody seems to be interfering. The major’s right about one thing, anyway. Discipline’s going. Ah, thank you, sir.’ He raised one of the glasses of whisky which the Mess corporal had brought in response to Archer’s bellow. ‘Well. A solemn moment. What shall it be? I give you England, Mr Archer.’
‘England.’ Not your England, Archer said to himself, not the petrol-flogging CQMS’s England, not the Major’s England or Cleaver’s England or the Adjutant’s or the Colonel’s or Jack Rowney’s or Tom Thurston’s England, but to a certain extent Hargreaves’s England and absolutely my England, full of girls and drinks and jazz and books and decent houses and decent jobs and being your own boss. He said in a friendly tone: ‘I wonder whether England’s going to turn out the way you’d like her to.’
‘Oh, I’ve no doubt she won’t, sir. But that’s not really going to concern me much. I shan’t be there, you see. Emigration’s the thing for me, as soon as I can fix it up.’
‘Really? Where are you thinking of? Canada? Australia?’
‘I think Africa, Mr Archer. A place where there’s room for initiative and where a determined man can still make his way. Kenya, perhaps, or one of the Rhodesias. There’s some scope there. No, I’ve been thinking about it for a long time and today’s news really decided me. Taken a load off my mind, in a way. Funny thing, I should be feeling depressed, with the Socialists getting in, but I don’t at all. Quite the contrary, in fact.’ Doll drained his glass.
‘How about another of those?’
‘No, thank you, sir, I really should be getting along and seeing the major. It’s what I came for, after all.’
‘I’ll take you up.’
‘There is just one point you might be able to help me with first, sir, if you would.’ Doll opened the buff file-cover he had brought with him. ‘This posting advice. I expect you know how the major’s got all that organized. He can send who he likes. Well, he’s asked to provide eight bodies of various kinds. All Signal Office Personnel. They’ll be entraining for the UK in a couple of days, twenty-eight days’ leave, then the boat for Burma. I should imagine they’ll all be joining the same unit out there. Now the major’s been in a funny mood recently. Sort of withdrawn. Normally he’d nominate all these bodies personally, but this morning he gave me three names and told me to fill in the others myself. Not like him at all. Anyway, I was just wondering if there’s anybody in your section you’d care to lose. Apart from Hargreaves, that is. He was one of the major’s three, as you probably know.’
‘Yes, he did mention it to me. Tell me, Sergeant Doll, is there a vacancy for a switchboard-operator on that list?’
‘There is, sir. Two, in fact.’
‘Mm. It’s tempting, but I’m afraid—’
‘Perhaps it’ll help you to make up your mind, Mr Archer, if I tell you now that I wasn’t going to bother the major with signing the order himself. He’s got enough on his mind already. And of course any officer’s signature would do. Yours, for instance, sir.’
Archer hesitated. ‘He’s bound to see the file copy.’
‘Yes, sir, but that won’t be until tomorrow morning, will it? And I was thinking of dropping the top copy off for transmission at the Signal Office tonight when I go back down. Get it out of the way.’
‘He could cancel it and send an amended list.’
‘Oh, do you think that’s likely, sir? Major Raleigh wants to be thought of as someone who can take a quick decision and stick to it. It’s like a moral code with him.’
‘A good point, Sergeant. Very well, then. I think I’ll nominate Signalman Hammond.’
‘14156755 Signalman Hammond, J. R., SBO DII?’ Doll ran his fingertip along a line of typing. ‘Anybody else? Right. Now, if you’d just sign here, sir… Thank you. I suppose you’ll be off yourself soon, Mr Archer, won’t you, after what you were telling me?’
‘I imagine so. Well, you won’t be needing the major after all now, I suppose.’
‘Oh yes I will, sir. That was just a routine matter. Something far more important has come up. There’s a signal here from War Office telling 424 Wireless Section, 502 Line Section and 287 DR Section to stand by to move on twenty-four hours’ notice. Half the Company. They’ve obviously decided we’re to be broken up.’
‘That’s important all right,’ Archer said. ‘To the major more than anyone else, probably.’
‘My feeling exactly, sir. That was why I thought it couldn’t wait till the morning. I reckoned I had to let him know about it tonight.’ Doll’s eyes grew distant.
‘He’d set his heart on taking the Company out East.’
‘Oh, don’t I know it, Mr Archer. That’s the end of that ambition. I wonder what the next pipe-dream will be.’ Suddenly getting to his feet, Doll roamed about the room with his hands in his pockets, an uncharacteristic bodily movement. ‘It may surprise you to learn, sir,’ he said cordially, ‘that I’m by way of being a bit of an angler. Been at it since I was a boy. Well now, it used to surprise me very much at first how badly I got on with other anglers. Jealousy rather than congratulations if you managed to pull off something a bit out of the ordinary. No end of disagreements over red hackles and what-not. And a lot of boredom too. Now in one way you wouldn’t expect that, sir, would you? You’d expect people who’d got interests in common to get on better with one another than the average, not worse. But when you come to think about it it’s not so odd. Someone who’s a bit like yourself can rub you up the wrong way worse than a chap who’s totally different. Well, there’s one obvious instance. I bet a lot of the lads in this Company hate their Officers and NCOs a sight worse than they ever hated Jerry. They know them, you see.
‘You’ll have to forgive me for reciting you a sermon, Mr Archer, but this is a point about human nature that’s always interested me. And it has got an application. I take it I wouldn’t be intruding on your mental privacy, so to speak, sir, if I hazarded a guess that you regard myself and the major as pretty much birds of a feather?’