‘General and Mrs Conyers are coming next week,’ I said.
‘It was me told you that,’ said Albert.
‘Will you cook something special for them?’
‘You bet.’
‘Something very special?’
‘A mousse, I ’spect.’
‘Will they like it?’
‘Course they will.’
‘What did Mrs Conyers’s father do to you?’
‘I told you.’
‘Tell me again.’
‘All years ago, when I was with the Alfords.’
‘When you helped him on with his overcoat ‘
‘Put a mouse down the sleeve.’
‘A real one?’
‘Course not — clockwork.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Let out a yell.’
‘Did they all laugh?’
‘Not half, they did.’
‘Why did he do it?’
‘Used to tell me, joking like, “I’ve got a grudge against you, Albert, you don’t treat me right, always telling me her Ladyship’s not at home when I want most to see her. I’m going to pay you out” — so that’s what he did one day.’
‘Perhaps General Conyers will play a trick on Bracey.’
‘Not him.’
‘Why not?’
‘Wasn’t General Conyers put the mouse down the sleeve, it were Lord Vowchurch. No one’s going to do a thing like that to Bracey — let alone General Conyers.’
‘When does Bracey come back from leave?’
‘Day-after-tomorrow.’
‘Where did he go?’
‘Luton.’
‘What did he do there?’
‘Stay with his sister-in-law.’
‘Bracey said he was glad to get back after his last leave.’
‘Won’t be this time if the Captain has something to say to him about that second-best full-dress tunic put away in the wrong place.’
Bracey was the soldier-servant, a man unparalleled in smartness of turn-out. His appearance suggested a fox-terrier, a clockwork fox-terrier perhaps (like Lord Vowchurch’s clockwork mouse), since there was much of the automaton about him, especially when he arrived on a bicycle. Sometimes, as I have said, he was quartered in the stables with Albert. Bracey and Albert were not on the best of terms. That was only to be expected. Indeed, it was a ‘miracle’ — so I had heard my parents agree — that the two of them collaborated even so well as they did, ‘which wasn’t saying much’. Antagonism between soldier-servant and other males of the establishment was, of course, traditional. In the case of female members of the staff, association might, still worse, become amorous. Indeed, this last situation existed to some extent at Stonehurst, where the endemic difficulties of a remote location were increased by the burden of Bracey’s temperament, moody as Albert’s, though in an utterly different manner.
Looking back, I take Bracey to have been younger than Albert, although, at Stonehurst, a large moustache and face shiny with frenzied scrubbing and shaving made Bracey seem the more time-worn. Unmarried, he was one of those old-fashioned regular soldiers with little or no education — scarcely able to read or write, and on that account debarred from promotion — whose years of spotless turn-out and absolute reliability in minor matters had won him a certain status, indeed, wide indulgence where his own idiosyncrasies were concerned. These idiosyncrasies could be fairly troublesome at times. Bracey was the victim of melancholia. No one seemed to know the precise origin of this affliction: some early emotional mishap; heredity; self-love allowed to get out of hand — any of these could have caused his condition. He came of a large family, greatly dispersed, most of them earning a respectable living; although I once heard Edith and Billson muttering together about a sister of Bracey’s said to have been found drowned in the Thames estuary. One brother was a bricklayer in Cardiff; another, a cabman in Liverpool. Bracey liked neither of these brothers. He told me that himself. He greatly preferred the sister-in-law at Luton, who was, I think, a widow. That was why he spent his leave there.
Bracey’s periodic vexation of spirit took the form of his ‘funny days’. Sometimes he would have a ‘funny day’ when on duty in the house. These always caused dismay. A ‘funny day’ in barracks, however trying to his comrades, could not have been equally provoking in that less intimate, more spacious accommodation. Perhaps Bracey had decided to become an officer’s servant in order that his ‘funny days’ should enjoy their full force. On one of these occasions at Stonehurst, he would sit on a kitchen chair, facing the wall, speaking to no one, motionless as a man fallen into a state of catalepsy. This would take place, of course, only after he had completed all work deputed to him, since he was by nature unyieldingly industrious. The burden of his melancholy was visited on his colleagues, rather than my parents, who had to put up with no more than a general air of incurable glumness diffused about the house, concentrated only whenever Bracey himself was addressed by one or other of them. My father would sometimes rebel against this aggressive, even contagious, depression — to which he was himself no stranger — and then there would be a row. That was rare. In the kitchen, on the other hand, they had to bear with Bracey. On such occasions, when mealtimes approached, Bracey would be asked, usually by Billson, if he wanted anything to eat. There would be silence. Bracey would not turn his head.
‘Albert has made an Irish stew,’ Billson — as reported by Edith — might say. ‘It’s a nice stew. Won’t you have a taste, Private Bracey?’
At first Bracey would not answer. Billson might then repeat the question, together with an inquiry as to whether Bracey would accept a helping of the stew, or whatever other dish was available, from her own hand. This ritual might continue for several minutes, Billson giggling, though with increased nervousness, because of the personal element involved in Bracey’s sadness. This was the fact that he was known to be ‘sweet on’ Billson herself, who refused to accept him as a suitor. Flattered by Bracey’s attentions, she was probably alarmed at the same time by his melancholic fits, especially since her own temperament was a nervous one. In any case, she was always very self-conscious about ‘men’.
‘I’ll have it, if it is my right,’ Bracey would at last answer in a voice not much above a whisper.
‘Shall I help you to a plate then, Private Bracey?’
‘If it’s my right, I’ll have a plate.’
‘Then I’ll give you some stew?’
‘If it’s my right.’
‘Shall I?’
‘Only if it’s my right.’
So long as the ‘funny day’ lasted, Bracey would commit himself to no more gracious acknowledgment than those words, spoken as if reiterating some charm or magical formula. No wonder the kitchen was disturbed. Behaviour of this sort was very different from Albert’s sardonic, worldly dissatisfaction with life, his chronic complaint of persecution at the hands of women.
‘I haven’t had one of my funny days for a long time,’
Bracey, pondering his own condition, would sometimes remark.
There was usually another ‘funny day’ pretty soon after self-examination had revealed that fact. Indeed, the observation in itself could be regarded as a very positive warning that a ‘funny day’ was on the way. He was a great favourite with my father, who may have recognised in Bracey some of his own uncalm, incurious nature. From time to time, as I have said, there was an explosion: dire occasions when Bracey would be ordered back to the regiment at twenty-four hours’ notice, usually after a succession of ‘funny days’ had made kitchen society so unendurable that life in the world at large had also become seriously contaminated with nervous strain. In the end, he was always forgiven. Afterwards, for several weeks, every object upon which a lustre could possibly be imposed that fell into Bracey’s hands would be burnished brighter than ever before, reduced almost to nothingness by energetic scouring.