This hadn’t been written, either: it had been taped or taken down in dummy1
shorthand from someone long afterwards . . . someone highly literate and discerning, with a trained mind and memory, recollecting not only his memories of long ago, but also the facts and impressions which a young and inquiring mind had soaked up in combat, to fit him for his ‘temporary’ career.
Papa had been just like that.
He looked up at Colonel Butler. “Who wrote this, Colonel? Or can’t you tell me?”
Butler gazed at him with a hint of approval, as though he understood what lay behind the question. “I don’t suppose it matters if you know, Captain. At least . . . let’s say it’s one of our most distinguished and enlightened High Court judges. Somebody I’d like to come up before if I was innocent—and not if I was guilty. Okay?”
He was a fine-looking man, and dressed well in a horsey sort of way. In wet weather in action he wore breeches and riding-boots with his battledress blouse. His nickname . . . though not to anybody as junior as I . . .was ‘Squire’— he had served once, some time, with the son of one of his tenants, who called him that instead of ‘sir’, and the name stayed with him. In fact, they said that between Dunkirk and the Tunisian campaign he spent every leave down on his estate in Duntisbury Chase, so it wasn’t inappropriate. . . . But I know that all the regular officers, who in our regiment occupied all the captaincies and above at the beginning of the Italian campaign . . . they all thought very well of him, as a horseman and a gentleman, as well as professionally—
dummy1
the old-fashioned order, if you like— and the other ranks worshipped him. As for the subalterns . . . and by now they were entirely temporary officers . . . they trusted his calm competence, and responded to him as ... as an elder brother, perhaps— quite terrifyingly exacting in the line but always friendly.. .. It isn’t true to say that we would have died for him, because you don’t think of it like that— you may have to die, it’s always a possibility, because that’s the nature of war, but no one wants to. But he was the closest one I came to who might have made me think like that, if the choice had been put to me. Which it wasn’t, thank God! Where was I, though? It’s the facts you want— Montecassino, yes . . .
Well, the regiment performed quite adequately there, and when they gave him his DSO we were all well-pleased for him, even though some of us had been a bit miffed in the past because all the gongs went to the regulars, by custom, because they needed them professionally, and we were going back to civilian life afterwards, and wouldn’t need such things. . . . But when he got it we were perfectly content— and he made it plain, of course, that he regarded it as a form of congratulations to the regiment for doing its job properly.
The last sheet came to him.
But he didn’t get any more promotion during the war, as I recall—
because he was already quite young for his rank, the way the army conducts its arcane affairs . . .But there were the divisional dummy1
reunions, and I used to see him there, off and on, and from below the salt we all watched his progress, the way one does . . . I think he was a brigade major in one of the few undisbanded divisions in
‘46, and then he was a half-colonel again, as GSO I in the British Army of the Rhine— we cracked a bottle of champagne over that, I do remember . . . In fact, that’s when we realised where he’d been at one stage, between campaigns— on one of the short war-time courses at the Staff College . . . Which shows that they’d got some sense— and that legged him up to Brigadier General Staff eventually, and finally Major-General as Second-in-Command, BAOR— missiles, and things, which he was quite bright enough to handle . . . But that would have been when Duntisbury Chase was pulling him away, with his retirement coming up— CBE, naturally . . . though we would have voted for a K— a knighthood . . . But then that never was Maxwell style: do your duty and keep a gentlemanly profile—’ fear God and honour the King‘— and make sure everyone below you is all right, that was his style . . . Also there was some family trouble— daughter and son-in-law killed in a smash somewhere. . . never met his wife, bit of an invalid— blissfully happy marriage though, they say . . . But there was this little granddaughter they were bringing up— something like that, anyway. . . . That’s all— I’m not going to pronounce on the manner of his passing, because that may conceivably become my business one day, and I shall reserve my views on that until then, just in case.
He handed back the full collection to the Special Branch man—or, dummy1
as he noticed when the man replaced them in the folder, perhaps not the full collection.
“Yes, there is more.” Colonel Butler had observed his glance at the folder. “There is the recollection from an aged general, whose GSO III he was, and a letter from a headmaster, on whose board of governors he served, who knew him well more recently, and a conversation in the Eight Bells which was taped ten days ago surreptitiously by a plain-clothes detective, not long after his death
—the local taxi-man talking to the local ne’er-do-well, with occasional mumblings from his retired groom, who could think back as far as his father and his uncle. But they all simply confirm what the judge said in their own different ways.”
Behedikt nodded. “He was a well-respected man.”
“More than that. Perhaps a glance at the first page of what the Vicar said at the funeral might help you. Andrew?” The Colonel paused. “Did you meet the Vicar on your tour, Captain?”
“No sir.”
“Aye . . . well, it’s too small to maintain a clergyman of its own now, the village. But it’s a Maxwell living, and the old General paid out of his own pocket for a retired priest to look after the parish.”
Most of you, who today fill this little church which he loved, in this place which he loved and shared with us, will have known our dear Squire too well for any words of mine to be necessary. Some of you grew up with him, and knew him as a boy and a young man; some dummy1