‘Never else?’
‘Reckon we will when the Germans comes.’
The humorous possibilities of a German invasion I had often heard adumbrated. Sometimes my father — in spite of my mother’s extreme dislike of the subject, even in jest — would refer to this ludicrous, if at the same time rather sinister — certainly grossly insulting — incursion as something inevitable in the future, like a visit to the dentist or ultimately going to school.
‘You’ll carry a bayonet always if the Germans come?’
‘You bet.’
‘You’ll need it.’
‘Bayonet’s a man’s best friend in time of war,’ said Bracey.
‘And a rifle?’
‘And a rifle,’ Bracey conceded. ‘Rifle and bayonet’s a man’s best friend when he goes to battle.’
I thought a lot about that remark afterwards. Clearly its implications raised important moral issues, if not, indeed, conflicting judgments. I used to ponder, for example, what appeared to be its basic scepticism, so different from the supreme confidence in the claims of heroic companionship put forward in all the adventure stories one read. (Thirty years later, Sunny Farebrother — in contrast with Bracey — told me that, even though he cared little for most books, he sometimes re-read For Name and Fame; or Through Khyber Passes, simply because Henty’s narrative recalled to him so vividly the comradeship he had himself always enjoyed under arms.) Bracey shared none of the uplifting sentiments of the adventure stories. That was plain. Even within my own then strictly limited experience, I could see, unwillingly, that there might be something to be said for Bracey’s point of view. All the same, I knew Bracey had himself seen no active service. His opinion on such subjects must be purely theoretical. In short, the door was not irretrievably closed on the romantic approach. I felt glad of that. During the rest of our journey to the Barracks, however, Bracey did not enlarge further upon the theme of weapons versus friendship.
We had a brief conversation at the gate with the Orderly Corporal, stabled the pony, set off across the parade-ground. The asphalt square was deserted except for three figures pacing its far side, moving briskly and close together, as if attempting to keep warm in the sharp weather of early spring. This trio marched up and down continually, always turning about at the same point in their beat. The two outside soldiers wore equipment; the central file was beltless, his right hand done up in a white bandage.
‘Who are they?’
‘Prisoner and escort.’
‘What are they doing?’
‘Exercising a bloke under arrest.’
‘What’s he done?’
‘Chopped off his trigger finger.’
‘By accident?’
‘Course not.’
‘How, then?’
‘With a bill.’
‘On purpose?’
‘You bet.’
‘Whatever for?’
‘Saw his name in Orders on the draft for India.’
‘Why didn’t he like that?’
‘Thought the climate wouldn’t suit him, I reckon.’
‘But he won’t have any finger.’
‘Won’t have to go to India neither.’
‘Were you surprised?’
‘Not particular.’
‘Why not?’
‘Nothing those young blokes won’t do.’
Once again Bracey expressed no judgment on the subject of this violent action, but I was aware on this occasion of a sense of disapproval stronger than any he had allowed to take shape in relation to assaulting Military Policemen. Here, certainly, was another story to make one ponder. I saw that the private soldier under arrest must have felt a very active dislike for the thought of army life in the East to have taken so extreme a step to avoid service there: a contrast with the builder of Stonehurst, deliberately reminding himself by the contents and architecture of his house of former Indian days. Like Bracey’s picture of ambushed Redcaps, the three khaki figures, sharply advancing and retiring across the far side of the square, demonstrated a seamy, menacing side of army life, one which perhaps explained to some extent the reprobation in which Edith and Billson held soldiers as husbands. These haphazard — indeed, decidedly disreputable — aspects of the military career by no means entirely repelled me; on the contrary, they provided an additional touch of uneasy excitement. At the same time I saw that such episodes must have encouraged Bracey to form his own strong views as to the ultimate unreliability of human nature, his reliance on bayonets rather than comrades. In fact his unspoken attitude towards this painful, infinitely disagreeable, occurrence fitted perfectly with that philosophy. What use, Bracey seemed by implication to argue, would this bandaged soldier be as a companion in arms, if he preferred the loss of a forefinger to the completion of his military engagements when their circumstances threatened to be uncongenial to himself? That was Bracey’s manner of looking at things, his inner world, perhaps to some extent the cause of his ‘funny days’. A bugle, shrill, yet desperately sad, sounded far away down the lines.
‘What is he blowing?’
‘Defaulters.’
We passed through hutted cantonments towards the football field.
‘Albert cut his finger the other day,’ I said. ‘There was a lot of blood.’
‘Lot of fuss too,’ said Bracey.
That was true. Albert’s world of feeling was a very different one from Bracey’s. A nervous man, he disliked violence, blood, suffragettes, anything of that kind. He was always for keeping the peace in the kitchen, even when his own scathing comments had started the trouble.
‘I should not wish to cross the Captain in any of his appetites,’ he had once remarked to my mother, when discussing with her what the savoury was to be on the menu for dinner that night.
Accordingly, Albert had been dreadfully alarmed when my father, on a day taken from duty to follow the local hounds, a rare occurrence (heaven knows what fox-hunting must have been like in that neighbourhood), having cut himself shaving that morning, managed in the course of breakfast, the wound reopening, to get blood all over his white breeches. Certainly the to-do made during the next half-hour justified perturbation on a cosmic scale. For my father all tragedies were major tragedies, this being especially his conviction if he were himself in any way concerned. On this occasion, he was beside himself. Bracey, on the other hand, showed calmness in the face of the appalling dooms fate seemed to have decreed on the bungalow and all its inhabitants. While my mother, distressed as ever by the absolutely unredeemed state of misery and rage that misfortune always provoked in my father’s spirit, attempted to prepare infinitesimal morsels of cotton-wool to stem the equally small, no less obstinate, flux of blood, Bracey found another pair of riding-breeches, assembled the equipment for extracting my father from his boots, fitted the new breeches, slid him into his boots again. Finally, all this in a quite remarkably short space of time for the completion of so formidable, so complicated, so ultimately thankless a series of operations, Bracey gave my father a leg into the saddle. The worst was over; too much time had not been lost. Later, when horse and rider had disappeared from sight on the way to the meet, the nervous strain he had been through caused Bracey to remain standing at attention, on and off, for several minutes together before he retired to the kitchen. I think the day turned out, in any case, no great success: rain fell; hounds streamed in full cry through a tangle of wire; my father was thrown, retaining his eyeglass in his eye, but hurting his back and ruining his hat for ever. In short, evil influences — possibly the demons of Stonehurst or even the Furies themselves — seemed malignantly at work. However, that was no fault of Bracey’s.
‘Why did you think it wrong of Billson to give the little boy a slice of cake?’ I asked.