'I beg your pardon?' says my father.
'You said you can't "beat" an egg. And I said -'
'Oh very good, Jumbo,' says my father suddenly getting the joke. 'Very, very good. Hear that one, Lucy?'
'It's very stale, Daddy.'
'But good in parts, what?' says the Brigadier.
'Ah now there's one you will enjoy, Lucy,' says Father. 'Have you heard the one about the curate's egg? Good in parts?'
'No.'
'You tell it, Jumbo. You're bound to make a better fist of it than I -'
The egg-related mirth continues for quite some considerable length of time and we all have to listen politely while Father and his old pal Jumbo bat their jokes back and forth. All of us, that is, save Price, who is so busy flirting sotto voce with Caro Ashenden he doesn't even notice Father's pointed observation that, now he's got a new estate manager, he hopes he'll be able finally to get hold of some hens capable of laying more than one egg a week.
But the laughter soon stops, I can tell you, when people see what the main course is. Woolton bloody pie, would you believe it, which actually knowing my father I would, but I can see the guests are having some trouble coming to terms with the shock.
You know what Woolton pie is, don't you? It's a fearful mess of carrots, turnips, parsnips, spuds all mixed together with an oatmeal stock, invented for the Minister of Food by the head chef at the Savoy, though I can assure you you'd never guess as much from the taste, which is bland beyond measure. Now, clearly, you have to put up with a lot worse when you're out in the field. But when you've been invited for dinner at a place like Great Meresby, with five tenanted farms and the best beef in all Herefordshire, you do rather expect something a little more piquant to go with your Cheval Blanc '32, don't you?
Anyway, no one's quite sure whether to make a joke about it or pretend it's not happening, which enables Lavinia Crumblebeech to seize the moment and ask James once more if he'd care to tell us all about his MC. But this time, she asks it with her eyes fixed in a very beady glare on Lucy, as if to say: 'Any smart remarks, young miss, and you're curtains.'
James tries, not altogether successfully, to arrange his features into an expression of modest reluctance, takes a deep, preparatory breath and begins: 'Well —'
'Miss Crumblebeech, if I may intrude for a moment so as to spare Major Coward his blushes,' says Mrs 'Jumbo' Watson. 'You ought to know that there are few things a fighting man likes less than talking about his exploits in mixed company. Am I not right, Major Coward?'
'I was about to say that very thing, Mrs Watson,' says James, causing Lucy to snigger so much that snot begins pouring out of her nose, forcing her to dive below the table as if she has just dropped her napkin.
'Decent show, all the same, MC and bar. I've not met many who can make that claim,' observes the airborne Colonel.
'And even fewer who can beat it. Only one I know, in fact. Danish fellow by the name of Anders Lassen.'
'Very handy with a knife,' I say, before I can stop myself.
The Cheval Blanc is just too damned good not to drink lots of, unfortunately, and I'm afraid it has loosened my tongue.
'You know him?'
'We've worked together occasionally,' I say, with a nervous glance at Price. And a rightly nervous one, too, judging by the innumerable daggers his look throws back at me.
'Have you, by Jove? What, in the Med?'
'I'm not sure I ought to say,' I say, blushing like a schoolgirl.
'Very commendable,' says the Brigadier.
'Rather convenient, too,' says James snidely. Absolutely loathes it, he does, when anyone else even threatens to steal the limelight. Especially if it's me.
I shouldn't rise, I know, but James does have this effect. 'James, not everyone shares your urgent need to go round boasting about how heroic they've been,' I say.
'Boys!' says Mother.
'Please, Emily,' says Jumbo. 'Some of us were rather enjoying the sport.'
'Rather! Pistols at dawn!' says Lucy.
'Same with my paras,' observes Todhunter. 'It's all very well training them up to a peak of aggression, but if there aren't any Germans around, they end up knocking hell out of each other.'
My father leans forward. He was badgering Todhunter at drinks before dinner and now here he goes again: 'Sounds like Dickie might do rather well with you.'
Todhunter comes over all coy and starts muttering about how the recruitment process isn't quite as simple as that. Don't altogether blame him. For all he knows, I could be the tall- tale-telling pansy my little brother is so keen to paint me as. And frankly, that suits me just fine.
'Not to worry, Colonel,' I say, to spare his blushes. 'After what I saw happening to the F'allschirmjager in Crete, you'd never catch me on a parachute again.'
The Colonel nods as if I've confirmed all his worst suspicions: any man who doesn't like jumping out of aeroplanes under fire from 800 feet clearly needs his head examining.
The Brigadier, unfortunately, does not appear to have been so easily put off by my fib. He regards me curiously, as if to say: 'Hmm. So you've done a bit of parachuting too? Dark horse, ain't you?' He's been giving me these looks at intervals ever since the drinks we had in the library before dinner.
What's frustrating is that I've been trying so jolly hard — as per Price's strict instructions — not to give the game away. It's a bugger that the reference to Anders Lassen slipped out, because now the Brigadier has a pretty good idea I've seen commando service. Generally, though, I think I've been doing rather well. Only with hindsight do I now realise that the game was lost within a few minutes of our first chat together when, striving desperately to keep the conversation from anything that had to do with my military service, I happened to mention our summer jaunts before the war to watch Price race Mother's horses at Deauville.
'Lovely there, I've heard,' he says.
'Oh, it is. The whole Normandy coast, absolute bliss.'
'Know it well, do you?'
'Parts of it, yes. We had this wonderful mare — Blaise of Glory — came in first in '37, and to celebrate we spent a week riding from village to village along the French coast, ending up in this dear little fishing village. Port something - I say, Price. Can you remember the name of that place Port whatsit we ended up in on our riding tour?'
'Can't say that I do, Mr Richard.'
'Course he does,' I say sotto voce to the Brigadier. 'Etched on his brain, I would imagine, after what he got up to with the village postmaster's wife, which, I might tell you, meant that we couldn't hang around quite as long as we would have liked. Now, what was its name. Port . . . Port-en-Bessin, that's it.'
'Port-en-Bessin? Never heard of it,' says the Brigadier. Which I now know was the most arrant of lies.
Anyway, back to dinner, where Gina has decided to speak up. 'May I ask a silly question?' she says, with the sort of disingenuous simper that could flatten a man at fifty paces. And in an instant all the chaps round the table are prostrate with eagerness to help this radiant young beauty in any way they can.
'Ask away, my dear,' says the Brigadier.
'I was wondering how important it is to be lucky in war?'
'Oh, good Lord,' says the Brigadier. 'It's the most important thing in the world. Makes all the difference between life and death, winning and losing. Wouldn't you say, Ajax?'
'That's what Napoleon always said. Didn't mind what other qualities his generals had so long as they were lucky. But I think it's a lot of superstitious guff, myself. The truth, as Wellington knew, is that you make your own luck.'
'Come, Ajax. You've seen chaps stop bullets with their pocket bibles and their cigarette cases. You've seen ones who just know - they absolutely know — their luck's run out and ten minutes later they're dead.'
'And what of all the men who weren't saved by their bibles and their cigarette cases? And what of all the ones, convinced they were going to die, as all of us have been at one time or another, who've lived to te
ll the tale. Luck be damned. It's a matter of percentages. Back me up here, Myles.'
'Well, I would, sir, except there's the damnedest fellow in my unit by the name of Lucky Lucas. The men swear by him. Some of them have been with him since Dunkirk and they all say that just so long as you touch his cap badge before an engagement -'
'Pshaw!'
'Yes, well, I thought so, too, but it does seem to work.'
'Good God, man. Don't say you've been participating in this charade yourself?'
'All I know is that I've seen far too many men who haven't touched Lucas's badge come unstuck.'
My father harrumphs. 'This fellow Lucas, must be an NCO now, I would imagine.'
'He's a sergeant.'
'There you are, then, it has nothing to do with luck. It's what an experienced sergeant does. Keeps his men alive.'
'So if experience and luck are the same thing,' says Gina, 'that must mean that a man who has been through an awful, awful lot of battles —'
'Aha,' says the Brigadier, beaming. 'I see what you're driving at. You're worried about your young chap, that it?'
Gina reddens.
'Well, let me reassure you, young lady, that while nothing is certain in war, I'd say a strapping young Guards officer who's been lucky enough to bag himself an MC and bar, stands an odds-on chance of making it past the finishing post.'
While the Brigadier smiles his blessing at what he imagines to be the happy couple, elsewhere round the table there is much embarrassed wriggling.
'Um, actually, sir, it wouldn't quite be accurate to describe me as Gina's chap. Delightful though that might be,' says James.
'Really? I'm so sorry. I could have sworn your father —'
The Brigadier trails off, having suddenly noticed his wife's desperate semaphoring.
'And besides,' says James, expertly gliding past the Brigadier's faux pas, 'if it's luck Gina's looking for, she's sitting next to the wrong Coward.'
And would you believe the bugger's actually pointing at me. What's more Gina is smiling at me, as if to say, 'Yes, I know he is. He's the luckiest man on earth and I love him for it.' And I'm thinking to myself, in so far as it's possible to think straight when you're half cut on Cheval Blanc and you've got the world's most beautiful girl looking at you in such an adoring way, 'There's something fishy going on here.' But quite what James's game is, I can't immediately fathom, which makes it very hard for me to decide how to respond.
Do I reply with the modest truth, which is that, really, I'm no more lucky than the next man, and if I were, then how come after all I've been through I'm not a general by now with a VC and three bars?
Or do I play up to this new image as the Dick 'Lucky' Coward Gina is apparently so desperate to believe me to be?
'If I've been lucky, it's all down to one man,' I say. 'And he's sitting over there.'
'You leave me out of it,' Price growls.
And as officers like to do, we all laugh at this bravura display of salt-of-the-earth NCO wit.
'Whatever the reason, you do seem to have made it through a fair few scrapes,' says Gina, blue eyes fixed on me intently as if to say — well, what, I'm not sure. Her behaviour has left me as puzzled as James's. Is she trying to stir things up by taking turns to make each of us jealous? Has she been trying desperately to be cross with me after this morning's incident but now given up because she simply finds me too irresistible?
And frankly right now, who gives a damn what the reason is, I think, as I put on a shy smile and wallow in the sea of warm, admiring looks.
The way James is wriggling you'd think he had a dozen maggots up his bum. Which makes it all the more surprising when he says: 'Absolutely. I sometimes ask myself how on earth it can be that I've landed all this —' he indicates the ribbons on his chest — 'When poor old Dickie has ended up with nothing.' (By 'nothing' he means my DFC. According to my father — from whom my brother takes his lead - a DFC doesn't count as a proper medal. 'They give 'em out with the rations,' he says.)
'You've changed your tune!' observes Mrs Watson.
'Ah well. In vino Veritas,' says James, which again is pretty rum because he scarcely drinks.
'Still plenty of time, as I keep telling him,' says my father. 'Bit of spunk on the push to Berlin and he'll have overtaken you in no time, James.'
'Then I wish him well. It's about time he had a stroke of luck,' says James, and I can begin to see what his game is, because now everyone's beaming at him instead. Such a nice chap. How fearfully we misjudged him.
'And of course any help that any of our guests might be able to afford Dickie in that direction will be most appreciated,' says my father, looking at Brigadier Watson and Colonel Todhunter. 'The future of this estate may be in your hands.'
'Ah, now, I did hear rumours about this,' says the Brigadier. 'Is it true, then, Ajax? You're really planning to decide the succession on which of your boys has the better war?'
'Sounds like a good film in there somewhere,' says Julius Greene.
'After John died - you remember my eldest boy, don't you? Went down with the Hood? — it seemed the only fair decision. Though not everyone would agree,' he says, with a nod towards my mother. 'Think I've been a bit harsh on your Dickie, don't you, dear?'
'It's not about favourites, Ajax, it's about how we do things. When the eldest son dies, the next-eldest son — even if he's only the eldest by a matter of minutes - takes his place. It's the English way and it has worked perfectly well for centuries.'
'Well, I'll tell you what worked for me in the trenches. I'd promote a chap according to how well he fought; how hungry he was for victory. If I'd decided it on where he stood in the family tree, it'd still be stalemate in Flanders today. Isn't that so, Price?'
'Very likely, sir.'
'"Very likely, sir", he says. Bugger wasn't even listening. Always been his own man, haven't you, Price?'
'If you say so, sir.'
'Of course, if either of you were going to take on my Dickie, you realise you'd have to take Price with you,' says my father to the Brigadier and the Colonel. 'Inseparable they are. Have been, right from the beginning.'
'That so? We can never have too many experienced NCOs.'
'What the General appears temporarily to have forgotten, sir, is that since my discharge he has relied on me to run his estate.'
'Quite right, Price. Quite right, terribly good of you to think of me. But we're only talking a matter of months, aren't we, Jumbo? Christmas at the latest? I'm sure we'll manage to rub along until then.'
After dinner I lie in bed trying to read War and Peace by candlelight, far too excited to sleep. My eyes are swimming, my head's throbbing, my heart's racing faster than Mahmoud at the '36 Derby. Tonight, against all the odds, has turned out to be one of the best of my life.
Why? Well, if you'd seen all the adulation I got once the ladies had withdrawn, you wouldn't need to ask. A few more drunken anecdotes - Stalingrad (the expurgated version); Churchill; and the time I accidentally pissed on Hitler's leg - and they were on me like sharks after blood. Todhunter urging me to re-consider my views on parachutes: 'If only I could tell you about the shows our division has in the pipeline. Trust me, old man, you'd rather die than miss out on the fun . . .' The Brigadier pressing the merits of his Royal Marine Commandos: 'Might be tricky squeezing you in as an officer at this late stage, I fear. But I think I can safely say that, where we're going, you'll have earned yourself a field promotion from the ranks within a week, and enough gongs to secure yourself the estate within a fortnight . . .' Julius Greene chipping in with an 'If it's life at the sharp end you want, don't underestimate the Army Film Unit. You'll find our casualty rate as reassuringly high as anything you could hope for in a red or green beret.' And all the while, James looking miffed and left out, and my father half-beaming at me with something approaching paternal pride, as if, for the first time in my existence, he's finally seen the point of me.
The only person unmoved by this orgy of lionising
is, of course, Price. 'Just you dare, just you bleeding dare!' his sharp little looks keep telling me. 'It's all right, old chap,' say the ones I give him back. 'Everything's in hand, just you see.'
It is too. The night draws on, the flattery and the invitations to commit myself to one or other combat unit grow more and more desperate, but still I manage to resist them all. Sorry, chaps, I say. Doctor's orders. And while Father can barely contain his crossness, Price looks as pleased with me as I have ever seen him. It might have cost me the estate but even that might not be such a disaster, I'm beginning to think. Not when I know now that just around the corner lies a far, far greater prize.
I'm talking, of course, about Gina. I don't want to sound mercenary here — I promise you I'd love her just as much if all she had to her name was a set of rags and a hovel — but it is quite comforting to think that however splendid Great Meresby may be it pales into insignificance before the vast- ness and majesty of the lands and properties which will one day be Gina's.
So that's what I'm thinking about now, as I lie in bed. About the extraordinary meaningful look Gina gave me over the Woolton pie. The one that said: 'Yes, you are lucky, my hero Dick! And there's nothing a beautiful girl like me needs more in this troubled world than a stout fellow like you by her side. I love you, Dick. I've always —'
Enough! I swipe the thought away because, really, these Russian names are quite complicated enough, without the distraction of Gina and all that Cheval Blanc swimming about my head.
Very noisy, by night, Great Meresby. Very unconducive to reading a difficult Russian book (in translation, obviously. If my Russian had been that good it would have spared me an awful lot of bother back in '43). All those creaking doors and groaning floorboards and mysterious knocking noises, you'd think the place was haunted - which it quite possibly is. I certainly used to think so as a child. There's one of them now.
Knock. Knock.
Of course, ideally it wouldn't be a ghost at all. It would be Gina. Wearing nothing but a diaphanous nightgown. 'I'm so sorry. I couldn't sleep,' she'd say. 'I can't stop thinking of you.' 'It's perfectly OK,' I'd reply. 'I have just the remedy.'
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