The conference broke up soon afterwards and in the Mess ante-room, where a few officers had gathered for a drink before the evening meal, Thurston was confronted by an exuberant Adjutant who at once bought him a drink. ‘Well, Tom,’ he said, ‘I reckon that fixes things up nice and neat.’
‘I don’t follow you, Bill.’
‘Step number one in cooking your friend Dally’s goose. Step number two will be on Monday, oh-nine-thirty hours, when I take the Colonel round the line-maintenance billet. You know what we’ll find there, don’t you?’
Thurston stared blankly at the Adjutant, whose eyes were sparkling like those of a child who has been promised a treat. ‘I still don’t get you, Bill.’
‘Use your loaf, Tommy. Dally’s blokes’ boudoir, can’t you imagine what it’ll be like? There’ll be dirt enough in there to raise a crop of potatoes, fag-ends and pee-buckets all over the shop and the rest of it. The Colonel will eat Dally for his lunch when he sees it.’
‘Dally’s got three days to get it cleaned up, though.’
‘He would have if he paid attention to what his Commanding Officer says. But I know bloody well he was writing a letter when that warning was given. Serves the bastard right, do you see? He’ll be off to the mysterious East before you can turn round.’
‘How much does the Colonel know about this?’
‘What I’ve told him.’
‘You don’t really think it’ll work, do you?’
‘I know the old man. You don’t, if you’ll excuse my saying so.’
‘It’s a lousy trick and you know it, Bill,’ Thurston said violently. ‘I think it’s completely bloody.’
‘Not at all. An officer who’s bolshie enough to ignore a CO’s order deserves all he gets,’ the Adjutant said, looking sententious. ‘Coming in?’
Still fuming, Thurston allowed himself to be led into the dining-room. The massive green-tiled stove was working well and the room was warm and cheerful. The house had belonged to the commandant of the Belgian military school. Its solid furniture and tenebrous landscape pictures had survived German occupation, though there was a large burn in the carpet that had been imputed, perhaps rightly, to the festivities of the Schutz Staffel. Jack Rowney, by importing photographs of popular entertainers, half-naked young women and the Commander-in-Chief, had done his best to document the Colonel’s thesis that the Officers’ Mess was also their home. The Adjutant, in excellent spirits, his hand on Thurston’s shoulder, sent Corporal Gordon running for a bottle of burgundy. Then, before they sat down, he looked very closely at Thurston.
‘Oh, and by the way, old boy,’ he said, a note of menace intensifying the quack in his voice, ‘you wouldn’t think of tipping your friend Dally the wink about this little treat we’ve got lined up for him, would you? If you do, I’ll have your guts for garters.’ Laughing heartily, he dug Thurston in the ribs and added: ‘Your leave’s due at the end of the month, isn’t it? Better watch out you don’t make yourself indispensable here. We might not be able to let you go, do you see?’
IV
Early on Monday Thurston was walking up from the Signal Office towards the area where the men’s barrack-rooms were. He was going to find his batman and arrange to be driven some twenty miles to the department of the Advocate-General’s branch which handled divorce. The divorce in question was not his own, which would have to wait until after the war, but that of his section cook, whose wife had developed an immoderate fondness for RAF and USAAF personnel.
Thurston was thinking less about the cook’s wife than about the fateful inspection, scheduled to take place any minute now. He realized he had timed things badly, but his trip had only just become possible and he hoped to be out of the area before the Colonel and the Adjutant finished their task. He was keen to do this because the sight of a triumphant Adjutant would be more than he could stand, especially since his conscience was very uneasy about the whole affair. There were all sorts of reasons why he should have tipped Dalessio off about the inspection. The worst of it was, as he had realized in bed last night, when it was too late to do anything about it, that his irritation with Dalessio over the matter of the Polish teleprinter had been a prime cause of his keeping his mouth shut. He remembered actually thinking more than once that a thorough shaking-up would do Dalessio no harm, and that perhaps the son of an Italian café-proprietor in Cascade, Glamorganshire, had certain disqualifications for the role of British regimental officer. He twisted up his face when he thought of this and started wondering just why it was that the Adjutant was persecuting Dalessio. Perhaps the latter’s original offence had been his habit of doing bird-warbles while the Adjutant and Rowney listened to broadcast performances of The Warsaw Concerto, the Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana, and other sub-classics dear to their hearts. Cheeping, trilling and twittering, occasionally gargling like a seagull, Dalessio had been told to shut up or get out and had done neither.
Thurston’s way took him past the door of the notorious line-maintenance billet. There seemed to be nobody about. Then he was startled by the sudden manifestation of two soldiers carrying brooms and a bucket. One of them had once been in his section and had been transferred early that year to one of the cable sections, he had forgotten which one. ‘Good-morning, Maclean,’ he said.
The man addressed came sketchily to attention. ‘Morning, sir.’
‘Getting on all right in No. I Company?’
‘Yes, thank you, sir, I like it fine.’
‘Good. What are you fellows up to so early in the morning?’
They looked at each other and the other man said: ‘Cleaning up, sir. Fatigue party, sir.’
‘I see; right, carry on.’
Thurston soon found his batman, who agreed with some reluctance to the proposed trip and said he would see if he could get the jeep down to the Signal Office in ten minutes. The jeep was a bone of contention between Thurston and his batman, and the batman always won, in the sense that never in his life had he permitted Thurston to drive the jeep in his absence. He was within his rights, but Thurston often wished, as now, that he could be allowed a treat occasionally. He wished it more strongly when a jeep with no exhaust and with seven men in it came bouncing down the track from the No. I Company billet area. They were laughing and two of them were pretending to fight. The driver was a lance-corporal.
Suddenly the laughing and fighting stopped and the men assumed an unnatural sobriety. The reason for this was provided by the immediate emergence into view of the Colonel and the Adjutant, moving across Thurston’s front.
They saw him at once; he hastily saluted and the Adjutant, as usual, returned the salute. His gaze met Thurston’s under lowered brows and his lips were gathered in the fiercest scowl they were capable of.
Thurston waited till they were out of sight and hurried to the door of the line-maintenance billet. The place was deserted. Except in illustrations to Army manuals and the like, he had never seen such perfection of order and cleanliness. It was obviously the result of hours of devoted labour.
He leant against the door-post and began to laugh.
V
‘I gather the plot against our pal Dally misfired somewhat,’ Bentham said in the Mess dining-room later that day.
Thurston looked up rather wearily. His jeep had broken down on the way back from the divorce expert and his return had been delayed for some hours. He had made part of the journey on the back of a motor-bike. Further, he had just read a unit order requiring him to make the jeep available at the Orderly Room the next morning. It wasn’t his turn yet. The Adjutant had struck again.