“Mister, am I glad to see you again!” said Doris.
“Jump in,” said Basil.
“May I come in front with you?”
“Yes, jump in.”
“Really? No kidding?”
“Come on, it’s cold.” Doris got in beside Basil. “You’re here on sufferance.”
“What does that mean?”
“You can sit here as long as you behave yourself, and as long as Mickey and Marlene do too. Understand?”
“Hear that, you brats?” said Doris with sudden authority. “Behave, or I’ll tan yer arses for yer. They’ll be all right, mister, if I tell ‘em.”
They were all right.
“Doris, I think it’s a very good game of yours making the kids be a nuisance, but we’re going to play it my way in future. When you come to the house where I live you’re to behave, always. See? I may take you to other houses from time to time. There you can usually be as bad as you like, but not until I give the word. See?”
“O.K. partner. Give us a cig.”
“I’m beginning to like you, Doris.”
“I love you,” said Doris with excruciating warmth, leaning back and blowing a cloud of smoke over the solemn children in the back. “I love you more than anyone I ever seen.”
“Their week with the Harknesses seems to have had an extraordinary effect on the children,” said Barbara after dinner that night. “I can’t understand it.”
“Mr. Harkness said there were imponderabilia at Mill House. Perhaps it’s that.”
“Basil, you’re up to something. I wish I knew what it was.”
Basil turned on her his innocent blue eyes, as blue as hers and as innocent; they held no hint of mischief. “Just war work, Babs,” he said.
“Slimy snake.”
“I’m not.”
“Crawly spider.” They were back in the schoolroom, in the world where once they had played pirates. “Artful monkey,” said Barbara, very fondly.
Companies paraded at quarter-past eight; immediately after inspection men were fallen out for the company commanders’ orderly room; that gave time to sift out the genuine requests from the spurious, deal with minor offences, have the charge sheets made out properly and the names entered in the guard report of serious defaulters for the C.O.
“Private Tatton charged with losing by neglect one respirator, anti-gas, value 18/6.”
Private Tatton fell into a rambling account of having left this respirator in the N.A.A.F.I. and, going back for it ten minutes later, having found it gone.
“Case remanded for the commanding officer.” Captain Mayfield could not give a punishment involving loss of pay.
“Case remanded for the commanding officer. About turn. As you were. I didn’t say anything about saluting. About turn. Quick march.”
Captain Mayfield turned to the IN basket on his table.
“O.C.T.U. candidates,” said the Company Sergeant-Major.
“Who have we got? The Adjutant doesn’t take nil returns.”
“Well, sir, there’s Brodie.”
Brodie was a weedy solicitor who had appeared with the last draft.
“Really, Sergeant-Major, I can’t see Brodie making much of an officer.”
“He’s not much good in the company, sir, and he’s a man of very superior education.”
“Well put him down for one. What about Sergeant Harris?”
“Not suitable, sir.”
“He’s a man of excellent character, fine disciplinarian, knows his stuff backwards, the men will follow him anywhere.”
“Yessir.”
“Well what have you got against him?”
“Nothing against him, sir. But we can’t get on without Sergeant Harris in the company football.”
“No. Well, who do you suggest?”
“There’s our baronet, sir.” The Sergeant-Major said this with a smile. Alastair’s position in the ranks was a slight embarrassment to Captain Mayfield but it was a good joke to the Sergeant-Major.
“Trumpington? All right, I’ll see him and Brodie right away.”
The orderly brought them. The Sergeant-Major marched them in singly. “Quick march. Halt. Salute. Brodie, sir.”
“Brodie. They want the names of two men from this company as O.C.T.U. candidates. I’m putting your name in. Of course the C.O. makes the decision. I don’t say you will go to an O.C.T.U. I take it you would have no objection if the C.O. approves.”
“None, sir, if you really think I should make a good officer.”
“I don’t suppose you’ll make a good officer. They’re very rare. But I daresay you’ll make an officer of some kind.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“And as long as you’re in my company you won’t come into my office with a fountain pen sticking out of your pocket.”
“Sorry, sir.”
“Not so much talk,” said the Sergeant-Major.
“All right, that’s all, Sergeant-Major.”
“About turn. Quick march. As you were. Swing the right arm forward as you step out.”
“I believe we’ll have to give him a couple of stripes before we can get rid of him. I’ll see the Adjutant about that.”
Alastair was marched in. He had changed little since he joined the Army. Perhaps there was a slight shifting of bulk from waistline to chest, but it was barely perceptible under the loose battledress.
Captain Mayfield addressed him in precisely the same words as those he had used to Brodie.
“Yes, sir.”
“You don’t want to take a commission?”
“No, sir.”
“That’s very unusual, Trumpington. Any particular reason?”
“I believe a lot of people felt like that in the last war.”
“So I’ve heard. And a very wasteful business it was. Well if you won’t, I can’t make you. Afraid of responsibility, eh?”
Alastair made no answer. Captain Mayfield nodded and the Sergeant-Major marched him out.
“What d’you make of that?” asked Captain Mayfield.
“I’ve known men who think its safer to stay in the ranks.”
“Shouldn’t think that’s the case with Trumpington. He’s a volunteer, over-age to have been called up.”
“Very rum, sir.”
“Very rum, Sergeant-Major.”
Alastair took his time about returning to his platoon. At this time of the morning they were doing P.T. It was the one part of the routine he really hated. He lurked behind the cookhouse until his watch told him that they would have finished. When he reported back the platoon were putting on their jackets, panting and sticky. He fell in and marched with them to the dining-hut, where it was stuffy and fairly warm, to hear a lecture on hygiene from the medical officer. It dealt with the danger of flies; the medical officer described with appalling detail the journey of the fly from the latrine to the sugar basin; how its hairy feet carried the germs of dysentery; how it softened its food with contaminated saliva before it ate; how it excreted while it fed. This lecture always went down well. “Of course,” he added rather lamely, “this may not seem very important at the moment” snow lay heavy on every side of them “but if we go to the East…”
When the lecture was finished the company fell out for twenty minutes; they smoked and ate chocolate and exchanged gossip; qualifying every noun, verb or adjective with the single, unvarying obscenity which punctuated all their speech like a hiccup; they stamped their feet and chafed their hands.
“What did the––company commander want?”
“He wanted to send me to a––O.C.T.U.,” said Alastair.
“Well some––are––lucky. When are you off?”
“I’m staying here.”
“Don’t you want to be a––officer?”
“Not––likely,” said Alastair.
When people asked Alastair, as they quite often did, why he did not put in for a commission, he sometimes said, “Snobbery. I don’t want to meet the officers on social terms”; sometimes he said, “Laziness. They work too hard in wartime”; sometimes he said, “The whole thing’s so crazy one might as well go the whole hog.” To Sonia he said, “We’ve had a pretty easy life up to now. It’s probably quite good for one to have a change sometimes.” That was the nearest he ever came to expressing the nebulous satisfaction which lay at the back of his mind. Sonia understood it, but left it undefined. Once, much later, she said to Basil, “I believe I know what Alastair felt all that first winter of the war. It sounds awfully unlike him, but he was a much odder character than anyone knew. You remember that man who used to dress as an Arab and then went into the Air Force as a private because the thought the British Government had let the Arabs down? I forget his name but there were lots of books about him…. Well, I believe Alastair felt like that. You see he’d never done anything for the country and though we were always broke we had lots of money really and lots of fun. I believe he thought that perhaps if we hadn’t had so much fun perhaps there wouldn’t have been any war. Though how he could blame himself for Hitler I never quite saw…At least I do now in a way,” she added. “He went into the ranks as a kind of penance or whatever it’s called, that religious people are always supposed to do.”