by Sapper
It all occurred owing to a shortage of milk – condensed or otherwise. We were on a line, which though safe – or more or less so – did not admit of our obtaining the genuine article with any ease. I appealed to Driver Robert Brown, our sheet-anchor – our Admirable Crichton. He it is who buys us eggs; he gets us bread and pork chops; anon he obtains tinned salmon mingled with sardines. Once he essayed some fizzy water – Eau Gazeuse is, I believe, the correct name. Something got mixed, and the mess lowered a dozen Apenta before retiring to bed. However, that is another story.
Into the ears then of this our guide and mentor, our home within a home, our ever-ready gas cooker, I whispered the word milk. He said he knew of a cow, and he’d see what could be done.
Soon after he left with a tin receptacle and an air of determination; an hour after he returned with neither. He retired into the cook-house, and shortly after there came voices in wordy warfare.
“You mean to say you ain’t got no milk?” demanded the cook aggrievedly.
“No – I ain’t.” Brown emerged and mopped his brow wearily.
“Couldn’t you find the cow? I told you where it was.” The Doctor’s orderly ceased placing chloride of lime on the tomb of a rat. “And wot ‘ave you done to your face? It’s ’orrible. Worse than usual.”
“Less about my face.” Brown’s retort was a trifle heated. “I tells you, when I got to that there place you told me of – you couldn’t see the perishing cow for the crowd. There was a row of blokes with mess tins, and one of ’em ’ad a dixie. When it come to my turn, I sits down by the old girl, and puts the tin on the floor. I got one jet going for about five seconds and that missed the blooming bucket. Then she shut up, and not another drop could I get. A perisher in the gunners, ’e says, ‘Pull ’arder’ ’e says, ‘Great strength returns the penny.’ So I got down to it like, just to wake ’er up, when blowed if she didn’t ’op it. ’Opped it, and kicked me in the faice as a souvenir.” He felt the injured member tenderly.
“I don’t know as ’ow I notice much the matter with it.” The cook gazed impassively at Brown’s face. “It looks just like it always did, worse luck. But then it ain’t the sort of face as is affected by little things like that. As the medical profession observed it is a norrible thing – your face. Ain’t it, Bob?”
This appeal for confirmation to the face’s owner touched me greatly. However, as I am quite unable to record the answer – and the rest of the conversation does not call for comment – I will pass on to the moment when I mentioned the shortage of condensed milk and the failure up to the present to supply the genuine to an indignant mess. I may mention – en passant – that in a moment of imbecility I had permitted myself to be thrust into the position of mess caterer. The Doctor used to do it – but he fell in love, and was unable to do anything but play “Somewhere a Voice is Calling” on the gramophone. As the record was cracked, there was a general feeling of relief when the junior subaltern strafed a mouse with it. However, the Doctor being beyond human help, his mantle descended on me. I was away when it did so – but that is by the way. The result would probably have been the same. Brown, as I have said, did it all; but I was the figurehead – on me descended the wrath of outraged officers compelled to eat sardines past their first youth, and the scene after the little episode of the Apenta water was quite dreadful.
“Why not go yourself and milk the bally cow if Brown can’t?” remarked one of them unfeelingly. “Sing to it, dearie – one of those little ballads of your early youth. Something is bound to occur.”
And then up spake Horatius – it is his name – he being the one that owned Aunt Araminta. “The old girl has just written me asking me if we want anything. I’ll tell her to send some condensed along. Of course it won’t be here for some time – but it’s better than nothing.” He turned over the last sheet. “She is sending a hamper, as a matter of fact. Perhaps there’ll be some in it.”
“Two to one it’s nothing but moth balls,” remarked the Doctor irreverently. “Heavens! do you remember the time the old dear got one mixed up in her home-made potted meat – and the Major broke his tooth on it.”
It was the next day that the parcel arrived. A shower of white balls descended to the floor, two odd socks, some peppermint bull’s-eyes, a letter, and the bottle.
“Great heavens!” muttered Horatius, gingerly inspecting the collection. “What has the old girl sent?” He opened the letter, read it, and asked for whisky.
My dear nephew – he read, in a hushed voice. I am sending you a bottle of the new milk – Dr Trapheim’s Pepnotised Milk. As you will gather from perusing the label on the bottle, it is a marvellous discovery. At first I feared from the inventor’s name that he might be of Germanic extraction, but subsequent inquiries enabled me to discover that he is in reality the son of a Swedish Jew who married a girl from Salt Lake City. So, of course, he must be all right.
In this wonderful milk, my dear nephew, there are three million germs to the cubic foot – or is it inch? I forget which. Anyway, a very large number of nutritious germs exist in it. You remember poor Pluto?
“The pug,” he explained hoarsely, and continued reading.
Regularly for a week before his death he drank a saucerful each night – and it eased him wonderfully. You remember his dreadful asthma. It quite left him, and he would lie for hours without movement after drinking it.
I hastened to buy a bottle – and send it to you all, with my very best wishes,
Your affectionate,
Aunt Araminta.
PS – It may have different effects on different people. The cook, silly girl, has given notice.
And for a space there was silence. Then Horatius picked up the bottle, and in a hushed voice recited the label.
“Cures consumption, eradicates eczema, intimidates itch, and routs rabies. Makes bonny bouncing babies.” He choked slightly, and passed it on to me. There was nothing that milk wouldn’t do. Its effect on the human system was like rare wine, only permanent. It caused a clarity of vision, an improvement in intellect, a brightening of brain that started with the first bottle drank, and increased and multiplied with every succeeding bottle. It enlarged the bust in one paragraph, and removed double chins in another. Old and young alike thrived on it – it was the world’s masterpiece in health-giving foods. Moreover it was impossible to tell it from ordinary milk when drinking it. That was its great charm. It could be used in tea or coffee or drunk neat. It made no odds. After one sip you bagged a winner. The betting was about a flyer to a dried banana skin that after a bottle you became a sort of superman.
It was while we were sitting a little dazedly with the bottle occupying a position of honour in the centre of the dug-out that we heard the Major’s voice outside – also the General’s, to say nothing to two staff officers. They had walked far and fast, and I gathered from the conversation that Percy the pip-squeak – gun, small, Hun variety – had thrust himself upon them. Their tempers did not seem all that one could desire. The prevalent idea, moreover, appeared to be tea.
“We’d better decant it, in a jar,” said Horatius gloomily. “The General loathes tea without milk, and it says on the bottle you can’t tell the difference.”
The Doctor, however, was firm. He refused to allow anyone to drink it without being told, and as he pointed out if you tell a distinctly warm and irritable old gentleman that the apparently harmless liquid he sees in an ordinary jug on the table is in reality a pepnotised breed with three million germs to the cubic inch in it – he will probably not be amused, but will send you back to the trenches as a dangerous individual.
Horatius pointed out still more gloomily that to offer the old gentleman a bottle which expressly set out to eradicate eczema and intimidate itch was an even less likely way to his favour.
The General’s entrance at that moment, however, settled the matter, and we began tea. It was not a cheerful meal to start with – rather the reverse. In fact, when I had explained and apologised for the absence of
any milk, and introduced the bottle to the meeting, the atmosphere of the dug-out resembled a lawyer’s office when the relatives hear their aunt’s money has been left to a society for providing cannibals with unshrinkable wool underclothes.
“Who sent the damn’ stuff?” asked the Major coldly.
“Aunt Araminta.” Horatius nervously removed the wire that held in the cork. One of the staff officers carefully picked up the bottle and proceeded to read the label, while the General’s expression was that of a man who gazes at short range into the mouth of a gun.
“It’s wonderful stuff,” continued Horatius. “Roll, bowl, or pitch, you bag a coconut every time you drink it. My aunt, sir, speaks most highly of it.” He turned to the General, who received the news without enthusiasm.
“Three million bugs to the cubic inch,” read the staff officer musingly. “And if there are twenty cubic inches in the bottle, we get sixty million bugs. Allowing for casualties, and in order to be on the safe side in case the makers swindled, call it fifty million.”
“I think,” remarked the General, breaking an oppressive silence, “I will have a whisky and soda.”
It was at that moment I noticed the cork. My shout of warning came too late. With great force and a noise like a black Maria, it flew from the bottle, and from point-blank range embedded itself in the General’s left eye. The entire mess became covered with a species of white foam, but the General took the brunt. For a moment there was a dreadful silence, and then with a wild shout we hurled ourselves through the doorway. I have smelt many smells in many cities: I have stood outside tallow works. I have lived in the salient of Ypres. I have – but why elaborate? I say it with solemnity and earnestness: I have never smelt anything like that milk? Never in my wildest moments have I imagined that such a smell could exist. It was superhuman, stupendous, wonderful.
The General, who had lost his eyeglass in the excitement and then trodden on it, was running round in small circles, holding his nose. He was unable at any time to see with his right eye, and a portion of cork still remained in his left. Without cessation he trumpeted for assistance.
“Wipe it off,” he howled. “Wipe the damn’ stuff off, you fat-headed idiots.” He fell heavily into a Johnson hole, and became temporarily winded.
From all directions men were emerging with helmets on, thinking a new form of gas had been evolved by the Hun. A neighbouring doctor, seeing the General in a recumbent position, rushed up to render assistance, while two staff officers, assisted by the Major, made gingerly dabs at the old gentleman with handkerchiefs.
At last it was over. The cork plucked from his eye, he arose and in splendid isolation confronted us. After swallowing hard once or twice, he spoke.
“I do not know if this was a jest.” His voice was hoarse. “My eyeglass is broken, the sight of my other eye irreparably damaged. I am now going to Corps Headquarters, and provided the Corps Commander can sit in the same room with that cursed woman’s fifty million stinking bacilli, I propose to ask him to let you try them at once on the Germans.”
Amidst a solemn hush he departed – with two staff officers at a discreet distance. I gather that the spectacle of their departure by car, with the one who’d failed to get the seat next to the driver sitting on the step at the side, and the General enthroned alone like a powerful-smelling fungoidal growth, was not the least pathetic incident of the afternoon.
But Aunt A is not popular.
Chapter 7
Driver Robert Brown
Four or five years ago, in the dim, hazy time when Europe lay at peace, there arrived at the station in England where I was fortunate enough to be serving a batch of eight recruits. They were very raw and very untrained, and it was the doubtful pleasure of the unit in which I was, to undertake periodically the training of such batches in order to relieve a somewhat overtaxed depot elsewhere. This batch – like unto other similar batches – aspired to become drivers in His Majesty’s Corps of Royal Engineers. Occasionally their aspirations were realised – more often not, for the terms of their service were two years with the colours and ten with the reserve, and at the end of two years the average man may just about be considered capable of looking after two horses and a set of harness – really looking after them – and not before. Then they go, or most of them, and the service knows them no more. However, all that is beside the point.
Wandering dispassionately round the stables one day, I perceived the eight, mounted on blankets, sitting on their horses, while a satirical and somewhat livery rough-riding corporal commented on the defects of their figures, their general appearance, and their doubtful claim to existence at all, in a way that is not uncommon with rough-riders. Then for the first time I saw Brown – Driver Robert Brown, to give him his full name.
“I ’ad a harnt once, No. 3. She was sixty-four, and weighed twenty stone. And if she’d ’a been sitting on that there ’orse of yours she’d have looked just like you: only ’er chest grew in front and not be’ind like yours.”
No. 3 was Driver Robert Brown. I passed on. The presence of an officer sometimes tends to check the airy persiflage which flows so gracefully from the lips of riding instructors.
A week after I inquired of the corporal as to the progress of his charges. “Not bad, sir,” he said – “not bad. The best of them easy is that there Brown. He don’t look much on a horse – in fact, he looks like a sack o’ potatoes – but ’e’s a tryer, and we’ll turn ’im into something before we’ve done.”
Then one day – about four in the afternoon – I happened to wander through the stables. They were deserted apparently save for the stableman – until, in a corner, I came upon Driver Brown. He was giving his horse sugar, and making much of him – to use the riding-school phrase. We had a talk, and he told me things, when he got over his shyness – about his parents and where he lived, and that he loved animals, and a lot else besides. From then on I kept my eye on Brown, and the more I did so, the more I liked him. He was no beauty – he was not particularly smart – but he was one of the best. His NCOs swore by him – his two horses had never looked better – his harness was spotless. In addition to that he played back in the football eleven, if not with great skill, at any rate with immense keenness. He had exactly the figure for a zealous full back, and was of the type who kicked with such vim that when he missed the ball – which he generally did – he invariably fell heavily to the ground. Thus Robert Brown – recruit.
When his two years were up, Brown elected to stay on in the service. The service consisting in this case of his commanding officer, his NCOs and myself, it could find no reason why he shouldn’t – in fact, and on the contrary, many very excellent reasons why he should. So Brown took on for his seven. Shortly afterwards, owing to a marked propensity of my servant to combine the delights of old Scotch with the reprehensible custom of sleeping off those delights in my best easy chair – one bought on the hire system, not the Government issue, where sleep under any circumstances is completely out of the question – owing, as I say, to this unpleasant propensity, I approached my commanding officer. NCOs were annoyed – they entreated, they implored, and the issue was in doubt, till a providential attack of influenza laid my CO low for the time, and the senior subaltern – myself – reigned in his stead. Then the sergeant-major laughed, and resigned himself to the inevitable. Driver Robert Brown became my servant, and the desecrator of my padded armchair retired – after a short period of durance vile – to seek repose on stable buckets.
During the forthcoming six months I am bound to admit I suffered – dreadfully. You do not make a servant in a day; but he tried his level best. We had shirt parades, in which I instructed him in the art of studding shirts, with little hints thrown in as to the advisability of wreaking his will on the shirt for dinner before he cleaned my parade boots for the following morning – not after. We delved into the intricacies of washing lists, and he waxed indignant over the prices charged. They seemed to me quite ordinary, but Brown would have none of it. I di
d not often study them – bills were never one of my hobbies; but one day it suddenly struck me the month’s bill was smaller than usual. That was the awful occasion when changing quickly for cricket. I thought something was wrong with the shirt; it seemed rather stiffer in front than the average flannel – moreover, it had no buttons. Howls for Brown. Vituperation for lack of buttons.
“But, sir, that’s an evening shirt you’ve got on. One I washed myself to save the washing bill.” Tableau.
Then I prepared lists on pieces of paper as to the exact things I required packed in my suitcase when I departed for weekends. There was the hunting weekend, and the ball-dance weekend, and the weekend when I stayed ’neath the parental roof, and – er – other weekends too numerous to mention. I would grunt Dance, or Home, or Brighton at him when he brought me my tea on Friday morning, and then during the morning he would, with the aid of the correct list, pack the necessary. There were occasional lapses. Once I remember – it was lunchtime on Friday, and we were being inspected. The mess was full of brass hats, and my train was 2.45. I had howled Dance at Brown as I passed my room before lunch, and was hoping for the best, when the mess waiter told me my servant wanted me for a moment. I went outside.
“Please, sir, them thin ones of yours is full of holes and the other three are at the wash.” His voice like himself was good and big. “Shall I run down and buy a pair and meet you at the station?”
