'So I gathered.'
'It's bloody mad— drill, Charlie!'
'Nothing wrong with drill, my dear chap. When you can fight as well as the Guards, then you can stop drilling, I always say
—and your fellows have become a shower, an absolute shower. Worse than Bastable's there, even.' Major Tetley-Robinson nodded at Bastable, noticed the marmalade pot again, and helped himself to another spoonful. 'Apart from which, drill used to be a PRO speciality—we've always drilled like regulars, not territorials. And ... if you ask me, that's why we've been sent out here, to France, when other chaps are still kicking their heels in Blighty. Because a smart soldier is a good soldier—'
Bastable raised his copy of The Times quickly to cut off the view. It wasn't that he disagreed with the Major, but he couldn't bear to see the Major finish his marmalade.
'—team-work, self-confidence . . . not having to think, because one already knows—"
Bastable tried to concentrate on his Times. It was nearly a week old, and he had already been through it twice, from cover to cover, so now he was rationing himself to one column per breakfast, nodding or shaking his head in exactly the same places and greeting remembered names like old dummy4
friends.
'—and although most territorial units are downright slovenly, we've always, been different—'
Major Tetley-Robinson was moving inexorably into the History and Traditions of the Regiment of which he was the acknowledged custodian.
'—we do not bear the royal honour of "The Prince Regent's Own" for nothing—'
He was coming to the famous parade of 1801, when the Regent had reviewed the new Regiment in the skin-tight uniforms of his own design—red coats with primrose-yellow facings and dove-grey pantaloons, snowy pipe-clay and glittering brass and leather; the only pity was that the Prince had subsequently taken his custom to Brighton, which was a rather vulgar town, in preference to Captain Bastable's own native Eastbourne; but, to its credit, the regiment had done its best to correct that aberration in later years.
'—this lanyard, which every man wears as of right as a PRO—
'the primrose-yellow-and-dove-grey lanyard always formed the peroration of the Major's pep talk '—is the symbol of his pride in his regiment and in himself for being privileged to belong to it. Which, as an officer of the regiment, you ought to know, Wimpy, by God!'
'But I do know that, Charlie,' protested Captain Willis wearily. 'Prinnie granted it to us on account of the exceptionally stylish cut of our uniforms—it wasn't a battle dummy4
honour, it was a fashion honour, for heaven's sake.'
Tetley-Robinson raised an admonitory finger. 'But we wore that lanyard at the Somme, man—and at Gommecourt and Ginchy and the Transloy Ridges . . . aye, and on the Scarpe and Tadpole Copse and Picardy and the Sambre! By God, man! Where's your sense of history?'
'Yes, I do know—' Captain Willis still seemed set on holding his indefensible salient, '—but—'
' And they tried to take it away from us, too . . . Said it identified us—Huh! "So much the better!" says the Colonel.
"Let the Hun know what he's in for!" Wrote to the Colonel-in-Chief, and he wrote to the King, who happened to be a relative of his in a manner of speaking. So that was the last we heard of that— after we returned their damn bit of paper marked "Kindly refer all future correspondence on this subject to His Majesty the King-Emperor"— that settled their little hash.'
'Yes, Charlie, I know—'
'So this lanyard means that we're different, Wimpy—and don't you ever forget it.'
'I won't, Charlie—I promise you faithfully that I won't.'
Captain Willis; drew a deep breath and looked up and down the table presumably in the hope of finding a little moral support somewhere, and found none. 'But, you know, in a way that is precisely the point I am trying to make. I mean ...
drill... at a time like this. That's not just different, that's a dummy4
clear case of deus quos vult perdere, dementat prius.'
'What's that?' At the furthest end of the table Major Audley roused himself from the copy of The Field in which he had hitherto been buried. Of all the officers in the regiment, Major Audley was usually the most elegantly silent. At the same time, nevertheless, he had established a reputation for possessing vast knowledge, both military and general, of the sort which could only be acquired by a perfect balance of practical experience, expensive education and natural-born intelligence.
'I said deus quos—' began Captain Willis.
'Heard you. Euripides, Joshua Barnes's translation is the best one.'
It didn't surprise Captain Bastable that major Audley could instantly identify Captain Willis's Latin quotation, which his own eight agonized years of Latin had left him incapable of translating. Indeed, it surprised him less than the quotation itself, though as a former schoolmaster Captain Willis was full of quotations, and as he had been a classics master, most of them were in Latin or Greek, and all of them might just as well have been in Swahili for any sense Captain Bastable could make of them. (It was an added coincidence, and the only virtue he had yet found in Willis, that the man had numbered Major Audley's only son amongst his pupils, and had spoken glowingly of the boy's intellectual capacity; but that had merely confirmed Captain Bastable's views on heredity—like father, like son, was the natural order of dummy4
things; he himself, and the success and prosperity of Bastable's of Eastbourne, was proof of that.) Major Audley squinted down the breakfast table. That pot . . .
Cooper's?' he enquired.
'It is,' said Major Tetley-Robinson obsequiously. 'Help yourself, Nigel. Here, Bastable—push it on down. There's still a good scraping in it, round the sides.'
Major Audley scrutinized the faces round the table. 'Whose pot?' he enquired.
Bastable examined the crumbs of bread on his plate. It was certainly true that the mess cook's attempts to turn French bread into toast had been disastrous. But the bread itself, although strange and foreign, was quite tasty when un-toasted. It seemed to him (although he knew he would never dare advance such a suggestion in public) that it was a mistake to attempt to convert French food into English food: when in Rome—even though the thought smacked of Captain Willis—it would be more sensible to eat as the Romans did.
Or in this case the French, deplorable people though they were in most other respects.
'Yours, Bastable?' asked Major Audley.
Bastable blushed to the roots of his hair: he could literally feel the blush suffuse his face. But he forced himself to look Major Audley in the eye because he did not wish the Major to think him a coward. 'Do please help yourself, Nigel,' he croaked, wondering only for a moment how Major Audley dummy4
had identified him from the rest. But of course. Major Audley had identified him because Major Audley was Major Audley.
The question contained its own answer, simply.
'Thank you, Bastable.' Major Audley applied the last of the marmalade to his bread. 'Since I assume the rest of you gentlemen have consumed Bastable's delicacy, then his drinks in the mess tonight are on you.' He lifted the piece of bread in Bastable's direction. 'Meanwhile... your continued health, Bastable ... the condemned man eats his hearty breakfast.'
'Hah!' said Captain Willis, with immense feeling, as though Major Audley had vindicated his protest. 'Precisely!'
Bastable experienced an indigestible mixture of conflicting emotions. Major Audley had acknowledged his existence, and in a most generous and gentlemanly fashion; yet he had done so in more words than were seemly, at least for him; and (what was worse) there had definitely been something in those words—a mere suggestion, perhaps, but an undoubted suggestion nevertheless—that his inclination was to support Captain Willis against Major Tetley-Robinson.