He and Dominic Jones were enthused by yarns of conflict and exploration in King Solomon’s Mines, Treasure Island and Sanders of the River but, above all, by Kim. Herbert saw himself as a district commissioner in some remote province of Africa, the ruler of an area as big as any country in Europe, sitting by the tent door at dusk while his native bearer set out supper on a camp table. Puffing at his pipe, he would see a range of purple-coloured mountains to be trekked through the following week, into an equally extensive territory administered by Dominic, a social and courtesy visit before coming back to his own zone for another six months, no doubt fighting through an ambush of rebellious tribesmen on the way.
They talked of enlisting into the army, as an easy escape route into a wider world. The war would be on for years, and give them time to take part in an almost abortive and bloody but finally glorious attack on the mainland of Europe as members of a do-or-dare commando unit. On their return as heroes they would be cheered. Dominic pictured them with caps at a jaunty angle, toting walking sticks, and each with an arm in a sling. ‘Let’s chuck in a black eye-patch for good measure,’ Herbert laughed, at comforting fantasies which, by their nobility of unreality, fed his spirit and made life easier to endure.
The first sentence of Ovid’s Metamorphoses — his favourite reading — stayed in his mind for a long time: ‘My task is to tell of bodies which have been changed into forms of a different kind.’
And into different minds, he supposed, because if you altered one the other must change as well. But what body, and what mind? Who gave them to us? And who the hell was it fixed me up with mine, I would like to know? Whoever it was had made a different job of him compared to the others. For example, he didn’t know, for much of the time anyway, what mind and what body had been given him, because the relationship they had to each other didn’t always correspond to how he felt. Even so, he could handle them all right because his outer casing of memory and experience was strong enough to let him control them, and would protect him until such time as he didn’t need either any more. Nevertheless, it was difficult, one might almost say a fight, but since everything to do with the world was fighting, and since he enjoyed fighting, he kept bleak misery away.
Such uncertainties were no bother when, loaded like a hiker and clutching his single-shot Boer War rifle, he set out on the five-mile obstacle course, eager for cold air after the rigid stuffiness of class room or dormitory. He changed in a few minutes from a more or less clean schoolboy into the roughest of filthy-dirty ragamuffins as he went over a wall with rifle and kit, hands quick at the nets for speed, a metamorphosis not described in Ovid. He crawled through irrigation pipes, then waded a ditch, avoiding the splash of boots into cress and frogspawn. On his belly under pegged nets he relished the soil whose odours recalled Simla so keenly. He crossed the broader stream by a Tarzan rope, ballet-danced along a tree trunk and panted up a hill steep enough to be called an escarpment so that he could only get to the top by cunning zigzags. A hundred yards more or less on the level between scrub and sheep holes, he wended through a zone of bushes, and finally up fifty steps before dropping a dozen feet into home base, laughing at the poor sap who broke his ankle last year, while Herbert with his big stride made the course quicker than anyone else.
He absorbed the mixture of art and precision in map reading, able with no problem to transform in his mind the diagrammatic scheme on paper to the reality of fields and woods on the ground. He seemed made for the rough-house of minor tactics, manoeuvres and field days, and even drill with its fuss of polished boots and drying blanco. Most of all he looked forward to annual camp when, whatever the weather, he and Dominic set up a tent and cooked their mess in tins over the smallest of fires — careful because of the blackout — by a stream inside the wood.
Whether cold rain dropped on to khaki serge from the tent lining, or moisture fell from breath and sweat after a day in dry heat being stuka’d by flies and midges, Herbert was relaxed enough to be himself and not who anyone expected him to be. At which times he wasn’t bothered by that first sentence from Ovid at all.
Nor was he when he manipulated the Bren, the Short Lee Enfield and the Sten, learning how to fire and pick to pieces and put them together again, hearing the satisfying click of symmetry from metal parts that fitted so perfectly into place. He got high scores on the range, and didn’t care that each bull’s eye at the butts winked at a despised face to be obliterated. By sixteen he had grown into a marker on which others formed their ranks. To pass his certificate ‘A’ (Part One) was easy, and made him the obvious candidate for promotion, so that he went up stripe by stripe to the rank of sergeant.
Problems subordinated to routine and discipline became no problem at all, and he couldn’t dislike such a life when there was none other he felt he could deserve, an attitude which gave him less problems to contend with. Tall and lean, he had the same dark hair and Roman nose as his father (broken after a harder match than usual) with Maud’s well-shaped lips and blue eyes.
Hugh’s missives from active service were short and curt: ‘I’m happy to hear about your attachment to the Cadet Force. Don’t forget that one day the army will be your home, so always let me know of any progress. I’m sure you’ll make a good soldier.’
In more frequent letters Maud, this time driving an ambulance on the Burmese frontier, told him to do well in academic subjects, and not spend more of his time playing soldiers than was necessary to make him a credit to the school. In the meantime she was sorry not to be seeing anything of him, but she was sure he understood it was all due to this blasted war.
Herbert also enjoyed days when the whole school set out in a mob on a cross-country run through brackeny woods, and by fields along muddy hedgerows where it was hard to maintain a sense of direction if you were leading. Keeping landmarks in view was good practice in going ruler-straight from A to B and not getting lost.
He wondered whether Uncle Richard, a retired clergyman who lived in Malvern, had learned the same as a boy. If so he hadn’t remembered much. The sleepy aspect below his domed bald head, and his black rather shoddy clothes gave Herbert no confidence in his ability with the motor car when he drove to the school one Saturday and took him to tea at the Abbey Hotel.
He smiled at the clumsy old buffer not being able to see much beyond the length of his car, during the sick-making twenty-five miles an hour along leafy and unsignposted lanes though it pleased Herbert in that at any moment a five-ton army lorry (or tank for preference) might speed around the bend in front and give a touch of real life to their journey as they clambered bruised and maybe even amused out of a ditch after being overturned.
Knowing how much his uncle enjoyed such outings Herbert felt no need to talk, and in any case it wasn’t done with a grown-up who might be shepherding only by way of duty. After every excursion the old man slipped him a quid, drooling and winking at how vital the odd sovereign had been in his own schooldays; which must have been before the Flood, Herbert smiled, relishing the added padding to his stomach which the copious tea provided. ‘Thank you’, he said, folding the lovely green note into quarters and putting it in his pocket.