But he was an ex-soldier, and he straightened his back, knowing that some things just have to be faced, however unpleasant. He tugged fretfully at the jacket of what he called his town suit, a charcoal-grey chalk stripe.
“All because of a measly letter, too,” he added to himself for good measure. “Rotten poor show on the Mem’s part. And someone she doesn’t even know.” Because, it was true, he had remembered far too late that “Loopy” Drinkwater and he had been messmates before his secondment to General Bollingsworth’s staff in KL and therefore before the advent of Mrs. Maj. Garside, nee Hetty Bollingsworth. “Well, I don’t care. Don’t know that I won’t give her a bit of cold shoulder of my own.”
And with that cheering if deeply implausible thought, he left the house. At least the Memsahib had left the garage doors and the main gates open for him when she left in her Morris shooting brake.
Before leaving, he took a stroll around the orchard, or what he liked to call the orchard, to take a roll call of the Ribstone Pippins and the Cox’s Orange. In fact, there were barely twenty trees, but it was a pleasant quarter-acre or so, to which Jimbo frequently escaped when the Mem was out of sorts, or to smoke a last cigar before turning in. The whole property was bounded by a high wall of venerable weathered red brick, built when the house and grounds were owned by the local squire. This gave Jimbo the pleasant feeling of being in a fortified place, and kept the villagers out. Not that the villagers often wanted to come in, especially when the Mem was out of sorts.
He drove his ancient Rover out of the high wooden gates, which he religiously closed lest the underclasses should gawp importunately at the imposing frontage of Dar-es-Salaam, a habit which the Mem was intent on stamping out. Driving down the lane which led to the main village street and then to the station, Jimbo tried to remember the last occasion on which he and Loopy Drinkwater had soldiered together.
“Singapore,” Jimbo said aloud, hastily returning the salute of Sergeant Bosworth, who comprised the sole and entire police presence in Handlebury, “Singapore is where it was. Dear old Loopy. Wonder what he’s doing now.”
At half-past nine three mornings later, someone pulled the vast iron handle at the front door of Dar-es-Salaam, which rang the equally monumental bell in the hall.
Jimbo was alone in the kitchen at that time, the Mem having gone off to one of her W.I. meetings to plan the logistics of preparing rhubarb tarts and apple turnovers with which they were later due to pelt an under-secretary of state for agriculture as a protest against something. Peltings were a regular and popular activity for the members of the Handlebury W.I., which was viewed by most competent authorities as a Home Counties version of the Shining Path.
Jimbo had just put his dishes neatly in the sink for Mrs. Whipple, their cleaning lady and occasional cook, and was vaguely planning his morning, when the bell rang. He went to the door.
The figure who greeted him on the doorstep was a slight man in a violently green suit and a brown trilby. He had a narrow face, close-set eyes, and a traplike mouth surmounted by a bristly ginger moustache. Jimbo looked at him.
“Jimbo!” said the man, “Jimbo, after all these years! It’s me, ol’ man. It’s Loopy! Loopy Drinkwater! Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten your old messmate.”
“Good God,” said Jimbo. “Good God. Loopy, can it really be you?”
“None other, ol’ man. Was in the neighbourhood, saw your picket lines, and thought I’d respond to your kind invitation.”
Indeed, now Jimbo realised that there was a brown suitcase standing at the other man’s feet.
“Good God,” he said. “Good God.”
“Aren’t yer going to ask a chap in, then, Jimbo?”
Jimbo stood aside dumbly and waved the man in. To tell the truth, he was shocked at the change in his old friend and messmate. Loopy had lost at least forty pounds in weight and an inch in height. He must have been through it a bit, thought Jimbo, seen some hard times. The same hard times had also apparently caused a pronounced strabismus in his right eye.
“Good God, Loopy,” said Jimbo, “you’ve changed a bit, I must say, ol’ man.”
“Been through the mill a bit, Jimbo, since we last raised a glass.” Loopy put down his suitcase by the hall stand. “When was that, by the way? I’ve been trying to think.”
“Singapore,” said Jimbo, “Singapore. I was trying to remember myself only the other day.”
“Ah,” said Loopy, “Singapore. That’s it. It’s coming back to me now. Gin Slings in the Long Bar at Raffles, wasn’t it? Speaking of which—”
“Come through,” said Jimbo, “and I’ll show you the rest of the old place.”
“Show me to the drinks tray, ol’ man, that’s all I need at the moment.”
So Jimbo led Loopy into the sitting room and sat him down in an armchair by the empty fireplace, then prepared a stiff brandy and soda for Loopy and a much weaker one for himself. He wondered what the Mem was going to have to say about this. Spirits at half-past nine. Oh, Lord.
He sat down in another armchair and raised his glass.
“Mud in yer eye,” said Loopy, and swigged, which did not prevent the rogue eye from fixing Jimbo unnervingly over the rim of the glass.
“I can’t get over how you’ve changed, ol’ man,” said Jimbo. “I hardly recognised you.”
“Well, ol’ man, that’s what wars do for yer. Knock yer about a bit. Knock bits off yer.”
“But you’re retired now, Loopy, surely.”
“Oh, a chap with his wits about him can always find someone to come up with the dibs,” said Loopy, smiling at Jimbo to reveal brownish teeth. “Experience. ’S what they’re short of, yer see. Specially in Africa and the Asias.”
Jimbo nodded slowly. “Well, Loopy, it’s jolly nice to see you again. After all this time.”
“Could have knocked me down with a feather when I saw yer letter in Man o’ War,” said Loopy. “I thought, have to look old Jimbo up one of these days and accept his kind invitation. And lo and behold, few days later, where should I be, arranging a bit of business, but in the locality. And here we are.”
Jimbo’s heart was sinking.
“Absolutely delighted, ol’ man,” he said. A lie. “And the Mem’ll be absolutely delighted, too.” An outrageous lie. And demonstrably so that evening when the Mem walked into the kitchen, flushed from tart-throwing and with the light of battle still in her eyes, to find the worthy Mrs. Whipple preparing potatoes in a vicious, tight-lipped, I-never-saw-the-like sort of way. She also found, in a sitting room filled with a disgusting blue fog, two men who reeked of spirits and who had quite clearly been drinking all day.
When she walked in, Jimbo immediately jumped to his feet.
“Gah,” he said, without knowing exactly why, “Hetty, my dearest, look who’s come to see us.” He had a dangerous colour, did Jimbo, and his movements were not those of a man in full command of himself. “Allow me ter introduce dear old Captain Drinkwater. Dear old Loopy, this is my dear old wife.” This last did not go down as well as it might have.
They looked at each other. The Mem saw a hideous suit, unnecessarily green, crumpled up in an armchair like a badly-wrapped parcel. Inside it was a small ratlike individual who seemed to be not so much wearing the suit as leaking very slowly out of it. Loopy, seeing a large woman with grey hair like steel wool, piercing blue eyes, not entirely unprotruding, and a chin like a Russian Navy icebreaker, knew instantly what those Easter Island johnnies had been banging on about.
Loopy clambered out of his armchair and approached the Mem in what could only be described as a controlled fall. He put out his hand.