Trouble with Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson might never have arisen, as it did at that particular moment, had not Colonel Pedlar been, quite by chance, out of the way. When it came, sudden and violent, the cause was a far more humdrum matter than the clandestine guiding of appointments. Indeed, the incident itself was such a minor one, so much part of the day’s work, that, had I not myself witnessed it — owing to the exceptional occurrence of Advance Headquarters and Rear Headquarters being brought together in one element at the close of the three-day exercise — I should always have believed some essential detail to have been omitted from the subsequent story; guessed that nothing so trivial in itself could have so much discomposed Widmerpool. That incredulity was due, I suppose, to underestimation, even after the years I had known him, of Widmerpool’s inordinate, almost morbid, self-esteem.
During “schemes,” the Defence Platoon was responsible for guarding the Divisional Commander’s Advance Headquarters. This meant, on these occasions, accommodation for myself in the General’s Mess; accordingly, temporary disengagement from Widmerpool, whose duties as DAA.G. focused on Rear Headquarters. On the last evening of this particular exercise, the Command three-day one, Advance H.Q. had been established, as usual, in a small farmhouse, one of the scattered homesteads lying in the forbidding countryside of the Command’s north-western area, right up in the corner of the map. The first fifty-six hours had been pretty active — as foreseen by me the night before we set out — giving little chance of sleep. However, by the time the General and his operational staff sat down to a late meal at the end of the third day, there was a feeling abroad that the main exertions of the exercise might reasonably be regarded as at an end. Everyone could take things easy for a short time. The General himself was in an excellent temper, the battle against the Blue Force to all intents won.
A single oil lamp threw a circle of dim light round the dining table of the farm parlour where we ate, leaving the rest of the room in heavy shadow, dramatising by its glow the central figures of the company present. Were they a group of conspirators — something like the Gunpowder Plot — depicted in the cross-hatchings of an old engraved illustration? It was not exactly that. At the same time the hard lights and shades gave the circle of heads an odd, mysterious unity. The faces of the two colonels, bird and beast, added a note deliberately grotesque, surrealist, possibly indicating a satirical meaning on the part of the artist, a political cartoonist perhaps. The colonels were placed on either side of General Liddament, who sat at the head of the table, deep in thought. His thin, cleanshaven, ascetic features, those of a schoolmaster or priest — also a touch of Sir Magnus Donners — were yellowish in complexion. Perhaps that tawny colour clarified the imagery, for now it became plain.
Here was Pharaoh, carved in the niche of a shrine between two tutelary deities, who shielded him from human approach. All was manifest. Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson and Colonel Pedlar were animal-headed gods of Ancient Egypt. Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson was, of course, Horus, one of those sculptured representations in which the Lord of the Morning Sun resembles an owl rather than a falcon; a bad-tempered owl at that. Colonel Pedlar’s dog’s muzzle, on the other hand, was a milder than normal version of the jackal-faced Anubis, whose dominion over Tombs and the Dead did indeed fall within A. & Q.’s province. Some of the others round about were less easy to place in the Egyptian pantheon. In fact, one came finally to the conclusion, none of them were gods at all, mere bondsmen of the temple. For example, Cocksidge, officer responsible for Intelligence duties, with his pale eager elderly-little-boy expression — although on the edge of thirty — was certainly the lowest of slaves, dusting only exterior, less sacred precincts of the shrine, cleaning out with his hands the priest’s latrine, if such existed on the temple premises. Next to Cocksidge sat Greening, the General’s A.D.C., pink cheeked, fair haired, good-natured, about twenty years old, probably an alien captive awaiting sacrifice on the altar of this anthropomorphic trinity. Before anyone else could be satisfactorily identified, Colonel Pedlar spoke.
“How went the battle, Derrick?” he asked.
There had been silence until then. Everyone was tired. Besides, although Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson and Colonel Pedlar were not on notably good terms with each other, they felt rank to inhibit casual conversation with subordinates. Both habitually showed anxiety to avoid a junior officer’s eye at meals in case speech might seem required. To make sure nothing so inadvertent should happen, each would uninterruptedly gaze into the other’s face across the table, with all the fixedness of a newly engaged couple, eternally enchanted by the charming appearance of the other. The colonels were, indeed, thus occupied when Colonel Pedlar suddenly put his question. This was undoubtedly intended as a form of expressing polite interest in his colleague’s day, rather than to show any very keen desire for further tactical information about the exercise, a subject with which Colonel Pedlar, and everyone else present, must by now be replete. However Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson chose to take the enquiry in the latter sense.
“Pretty bloody, Eric,” he said. “Pretty bloody. If you want to know about it, read the sit-rep.”
“I’ve read it, Derrick.”
The assonance of the two colonels’ forenames always imparted a certain whimsicality to their duologues.
“Read it again, Eric, read it again. I’d like you to. There are several points I want to bring up later.”
“Where is it, Derrick?”
Colonel Pedlar seemed to possess no intellectual equipment for explaining that he had absolutely no need, even less desire, to re-read the situation report. Perhaps, having embarked on the subject, he felt a duty to follow it up.
“Cocksidge will find it for you, Eric, writ in his own fair hand. Seek out the sit-rep, Jack.”
In certain moods, especially when he teased Widmerpool, the General was inclined to frame his sentences in a kind of Old English vernacular. Either because the style appealed equally to himself, or, more probably, because use of it implied compliment to the Divisional Commander, Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson also favoured this mode of speech. At his words, Cocksidge was on his feet in an instant, his features registering, as ever, deference felt for those of higher rank than himself. Cocksidge’s demeanour to his superiors always recalled a phrase used by Odo Stevens when we had been on a course together at Aldershot:
“Good morning, Sergeant-Major, here’s a sparrow for your cat.”
Cocksidge was, so to speak, in a chronic state of providing, at a higher level of rank, sparrows for sergeant-majors’ cats. His own habitual incivility to subordinates was humdrum enough, but the imaginative lengths to which he would carry obsequiousness to superiors displayed something of genius. He took a keen delight in running errands for anyone a couple of ranks above himself, his subservience even to majors showing the essence of humility. He had made a close, almost scientific study of the likes and dislikes of Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson and Colonel Pedlar, while the General he treated with reverence in which there was even a touch of worship, of deification. In contact with General Liddament, so extreme was his respect that Cocksidge even abated a little professional boyishness of manner, otherwise such a prominent feature of his all-embracing servility, seeming by its appealing tone to ask forbearance for his own youth and immaturity. Widmerpool, to do him justice, despised Cocksidge, an attitude Cocksidge seemed positively to enjoy. The two colonels, on the other hand, undoubtedly approved his fervent attentions, appeared even appreciative of his exaggeratedly juvenile mannerisms. In addition, it had to be admitted Cocksidge did his job competently, apart from such elaborations of his own personality. Now he came hurriedly forward with the situation report.