‘I think that’s fair enough.’
‘Thank you, sir. In that case it may surprise you to learn that I can’t think of anybody whom I despise as thoroughly as I despise the major. I know you hate him yourself or I wouldn’t risk telling you this. You’ll be leaving us soon anyway.’
Archer’s puzzlement, which had been growing for the last five minutes, changed direction. ‘But I’ve got personal reasons.’
‘I too. Though they’re quite different from yours. He’s so sure he’s better. But in fact he’s shoddy material. Third rate. Not to be depended on. In many parts of the world over the next few years an important battle’s going to be fought — largely against the ideas that you yourself stand for, sir, if I may say so with all respect. The major’s going to be worse than useless to us there. To me and the people who think as I do. He’s soft. He’ll break. I can see him standing as a Labour candidate in ten years’ time if the wind’s still blowing that way. No principle. That’s the one thing I can’t forgive.’
Partly to throw off complacency at being taken into a fascist’s confidence, Archer stood up briskly and said: ‘I’ll take you up to the major now.’
‘Right, sir. I wish I’d been there to see him thrown out of that last parliament. Good for Hargreaves. And you yourself too, sir, of course.’
The muffled bang of an exploding petrol-tank reached them as they climbed the steep narrow stairs to the main ante-room. This had been created by the folding-back of folding doors between two former bedrooms and the importation of furniture from all over the house and elsewhere. Outside it was a tiny landing hedged by slender carved banisters. Archer left Doll here and went in
The major was sitting in half of the curious high-backed double armchair, a favourite of his despite its clear resemblance to part of a railway-carriage seat. Probably he found it suited his characteristic activity, the having of a word, whether denunciatory or conspiratorial, with someone. He had been having one now, an earnest one accompanied by gesture, with the young and usually solitary lieutenant-colonel of Engineers whose thirst for schnapps had established him as a local personality. In his hand at the moment was a glass not of schnapps but of the Mess’s whisky, a glass which, appearance suggested, had been emptied and refilled several times that evening. The colonel was rather elaborately accoutred with belt, holster, revolver and lanyard. Both he and the major, who likewise seemed to have taken drink, were dramatically illuminated by a many-tiered candelabrum that made great use of frosted glass.
Raleigh had interrupted his confidential word with the colonel to have a more public one with the Mess corporal, who was saying: ‘About forty, I should say, sir. Well dressed. Quite respectable.’
‘And where’s this picture she says she wants?’
‘It was in her bedroom when it was her bedroom, sir.’
‘But it isn’t her bedroom any more. The house isn’t hers either, it’s been requisitioned. It belongs to me. No, she can’t have her picture. I don’t care whether she painted it herself or not, she can’t have it. Go and tell her so, will you?’
When he saw that Archer was near, the major turned his back as far as was possible without actually kneeling on his seat. The emotion he felt for the ex-Speaker of the now officially dissolved parliament was not military disapprobation nor yet personal anger, but sadness at the other’s withholding of loyalty. All this and much more had been gone into at length the morning after Hargreaves had spied strangers. Archer had protested, with every appearance of sincerity, that the strangers could have been suffered to remain if anybody had thought to put forward a simple motion proposing this, and that nothing but general ignorance of procedure had brought about their exit. Raleigh paid no heed. In the course of a sad and objective appraisal of Archer’s disloyalty he had recounted rumours about Archer’s private life which, if repeated before witnesses and if the law of slander had run in the Army, might have been the occasion of awards in damages sufficient to buy and sell the contents of the Officers’ Shop. Then, still avowing sadness, the major had announced that his duty to the Company forbade the retention in its ranks of anybody so provenly disloyal. In other words, it was Burma for Archer as soon as the major’s pal at HQ could fix it. After that, the major had sadly shouted at Archer to get out of his sight.
Archer had, and as far as possible had stayed there. But now he had to get back into it for a moment. To facilitate this he leant against the sideboard (could it have been made of ebony?) and faced the couple in the double armchair.
The RE colonel, whose name was Davison, was not the kind of man to appeal to Raleigh. He was what Raleigh was fond of calling a disorganized sort of chap, meaning someone whose character had not been stripped down like a racing-car until nothing but more or less military components remained. But it was his policy to encourage colonels and such to be around. Colonel Davison, once acquainted with the volume and regularity of the Mess’s liquor supply, had needed no encouragement. At the moment he was saying in his public-school voice (another selling-point for the major): ‘But as I keep telling you, that’s why the Army’s so good. Because nobody could take the bloody nonsense seriously.’
The major came back with something inaudible to Archer, probably that he couldn’t go all the way with the colonel there.
‘Well, nobody with any sense, then,’ Davison said. ‘And that saves an awful lot of worry. Means you can start laughing.’
Again the major could not be heard, but this time he went on much longer. Davison listened, nodding steadily, his eyes on his glass, which he was rotating on the knee of his crossed leg. Archer’s attention wandered. It came to rest on Cleaver, who was half-lying on a purple sofa reading an unexpurgated edition of Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Archer had had a go at that too. General opinion in the Mess was that it ranked about halfway in the little library the batmen had been assiduously building up ever since the Company entered urban France: not so good as, say, Frank Harris’s My Life and Loves, but clearly better than the available non-fictional treatments of these themes, vital books by Scotsmen with titles like Married Happiness. Cleaver laughed silently to himself, then looked quickly and furtively round without catching Archer’s eye.
‘It’s all a joke,’ Davison said loudly. ‘The whole thing.’
The major saw Archer. ‘Yes?’
‘Sergeant Doll would like to see you, sir. He’s just outside.’
When Raleigh had gone, Davison patted the space beside him. ‘Come and sit down, laddie.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘Sir. Sir sir sir. Sir sir sir sir sir sir sir. Ha.’
From the way Davison swayed about in his seat as he said this, Archer concluded that he was not just drunk, but very drunk. ‘Nice little place we’ve got here, don’t you think?’
‘Oh, delightful. Delightful. Your poor major’s upset. Have you been being nasty to him? Have a drink. Corporal! More whisky needed here. Crash priority.’
‘I’m never nasty to majors,’ Archer said.
‘Aren’t you? I am. All the time. One of the consummations. Compensations. What do you do in Civvy Street, laddie?’ The colonel was perhaps five years older than Archer.
‘I don’t do anything. Not yet. I was a student.’
‘Jolly good luck to you. I’m an electrical engineer. So of course they put me on bridges. But it’s all experience. A very good preparation, the Army.’