by David Niven
However, there was so much new, so much to enjoy that it was almost two years before the deadening horror of the whole thing finally descended upon me and enveloped me like a black Bedouin tent. In the meanwhile Trubshawe’s guidance continued apace. He explained to me that I could hire polo ponies for fifteen shillings a month and that apart from buying some mallets, I had nothing to worry about financially, the grooms being soldiers and the poniss all being on the regimental strength as officers’ chargers. In addition, as I got better at the game, he assured me that many naval officers would be delighted to lend me their ponies just to keep them exercised during the long periods they would be away at sea.
All this was indeed true and I found myself quite soon with as many mounts as I could play and quite a respectable handicap.
The Marsa Polo Club was the smart place to be—smart in the most colonial sense of the word; it was mounted suburbia. It was parasols and fraightfully refained voices. It was ‘Boy bring me a stingar’, and naval wives who announced with a smirk—‘We’re going in to have our bottom scrubbed next week,’ but it was still heady stuff compared with what I had been exposed to before and I thrived on it. Girls there were in plenty. Apart from the resident ones, daughters of senior officers and officials, there were also for several months a year hundreds of young and lonely naval officers’ wives. There was in addition the ‘Fishing Fleet’, a motley collection of passed-over debs and pink-cheeked country cousins who annually timed their arrival to coincide with the return, after many months at sea, of several thousand sex-starved mariners. Finally,’ there were the whores, and Valletta was full of professionals busily catering to the needs of all ranks of the biggest fleet in the world. Many were mid-European or Russians, refugees of impeccable lineage with sisters plying the same desperate trade in Singapore and fathers driving taxis in Paris. There was a professionally languid Captain in the Headquarters wing who wore a monocle. His wife was very pretty in a sort of chocolate boxy way and could have been described in polite society as a flirt; anywhere else she would have been called a cock teaser.
I had, it’s true, nibbled her ear and snapped her garter a couple of times while watching the polo from her car, but nothing more, so I was all unsuspecting when a runner informed me that the Captain wished to see me immediately in his company office. I entered and saluted. He was busy looking over some ammunition returns with the Quartermaster Sergeant. I fidgeted around for a while but he still did not look up. Finally, head still down, he spoke. ‘Niven, are you very much in love with my wife?’
My toes tried to grip the floor through my brogues to stop me from keeling over.
‘No, sir…not at all, sir,’ I murmured and then, for no apparent reason, I added, ‘Thank you very much, sir.’
‘Well, if you’re not,’ said the Captain, putting some papers in a folder, ‘be a good chap, don’t go telling her you are…upsets her you know. Now Quartermaster Sergeant, about the Range Allotment of 303…’
I saluted the top of his head and withdrew.
After that I decided to be a good deal more selective in my nibbling and snapping.
The Fleet was sailing for several weeks of exercises off the Greek islands, leaving behind literally hundreds of ladies in different stages of availability. I discussed the situation with the wife of the Signals Officers of a destroyer who had made it very obvious that she had no intention of sitting around twiddling her thumbs during his absence. It was a nasty little intrigue really but quite exciting especially-when the husband gave a party in his cabin before he sailed and said to me, ‘Look after Eunice for me till I get back.’
‘I certainly will,’ I said, avoiding her eye.
When sailing time came, Eunice and I climbed to the top of the cliffs and watched the splendid spectacle of the entire Mediterranean Fleet steaming out of the harbour, Royal Marine bands playing and bunting fluttering. We used my field glasses and paid particular attention to her husband’s destroyer. He was on the bridge. We had told him where we would be watching and with his binoculars he found us. Lots of waving went on and we even staged a big amorous embrace to make him laugh. I wish I could report that I felt a twinge of shame at that moment but I didn’t. I had other feelings of a more animal nature to contend with.
The Fleet sailed away into the sunset and disappeared over the horizon bearing the poor cuckold-to-be towards Corfu; never has a safer stage been set for infidelity but Eunice was in no rush and decided to savour the moment. After all, we had at least six weeks ahead of us in which to indulge ourselves so she insisted that I take her to the Sliema Club to a party with some others, escort her home to her house and then…
So we danced close and drank champagne and toasted each other over the rim of our glasses, all very high powered romantic stuff; finally I found myself in her bed.
Some far from routine thrashing around was going on because Eunice was an expert at prolonging everything when suddenly she went rigid.
‘Christ!’ she hissed, ‘he’s back!’
He was too and downstairs in the sitting room.
‘Get in that cupboard,’ ordered Eunice.
It was pretty ridiculous because my clothes were all over the floor but I did as I was told and stood quaking in a black hole that smelled of mothballs.
I didn’t have time to reflect on the old French farce situation that I was in. All I could think of was the certain death that would soon come up those stairs.
Eunice was made of different stuff. She went down naked to meet him. ‘Darling, how did you get back?’
’
‘Stripped a bloody turbine thirty miles out…towed back.’ Somehow she persuaded him to get in the car and go and get a bottle of champagne so they could celebrate.
I dressed in about eleven seconds and with my shoes on the wrong feet shot downstairs and out of the house. I was impotent for days. So long as the ex-ranker, Henry Hawkins, was Adjutant, my interest in things military remained at least dormant. Somehow, he could revive it after telling me the frustrating news that, after months of training, the twenty best men in my platoon had been posted to the Second Battalion in India. Somehow, he encouraged me when a great favourite of mine, a gigantic piper from the Western Isles, was listed as a deserter and caught trying to stow away on a tanker bound for Cardiff.
‘Johnstone will be court-martialled,’ said Hawkins, ‘he is in cells now and wants you to defend him.’ Any man had the right to nominate any officer he wished to defend him before a court-martial. Flattered by this demonstration of respect but alarmed by his poorly developed sense of self-preservation, I hurried off to the military prison where Johnstone was incarcerated.
‘Hoo many days d’ye think I’ll git, sorr? demanded the prisoner before I was half way in his cell.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’ll do everything I can to prove you intended to come back so they might make it ‘absent without leave’ instead of ‘desertion’ but I’m afraid you’ll get between sixty days and six months whichever way it goes.’
‘Naebody’s goin’ tae put me awa’ in the glass hoos for six months,’ said Johnstone slowly and with that he put his left hand round the edge of the great iron door of the cell and with his right hand, slammed it shut. All four fingers of his left hand were smashed and dangling like those of a rag doll.
A few weeks later, when he was back in a cell once more awaiting his court-martial, he asked to see me again. It is incredible that I fell into the trap.
‘Hoo mony days will they put me awa’ for noo, sorr? he asked but before I could answer, the door clanged shut and he was grinning triumphantly at the same mangled hand.
He never did go to prison. He was dismissed from the service as an undesirable character. He came to say goodbye before he left and was very depressed that he would never be able to play the pipes again.
One sad day, Henry Hawkins, the subalterns’ friend, was promoted to Major, and his place was temporarily taken by ‘The Weasel’.
‘The Weasel’ was a most u
nsavoury piece of work. Yellow teeth protruded from beneath a small nicotine-stained moustache and a receding chin did nothing much to help a pair of shifty eyes that were pinned together like cuff-links above a beaky nose. On his thin chest there were no medals for valour. He made a bad move early. He called Trubshawe in and informed him that he drank too much. Questioned as to how he could have arrived at such an outlandish conclusion, the Weasel announced that he had carefully checked Trubshawe’s mess bill and would check all subalterns’ mess bills each month in the future. Trubshawe quickly made arrangements with Mr. Gifford for a sizeable proportion of his future alcoholic intake to be charged as ‘C.O.D. packages’, but the Weasel’s spy system was born that day and from then on none of us felt secure, least of all myself when he said to me, ‘I’ve been looking through your file, Niven—I wouldn’t say that the Argylls have missed you very much, would you?
He was never openly hostile to me till one day when platoon training was at its height. I was given the task of attacking a small hill across a mile and a half of completely barren land. The Colonel, accompanied by the second in command and several other officers, was on top of the hill. He listened uninterestedly while the Weasel gave his orders.
‘N° 3 Platoon will attack demonstrating the fullest possible use of cover: road and sea are your boundaries, both inclusive.’ As we marched down the dusty road to our start point out of sight in a dip, ‘Ginger’ Innes and I held a council of war. At all costs we must try to avoid cutting ourselves to pieces crawling in full view across a mile and a half of razor-sharp volcanic outcrop, but nobody in the platoon could swim unnoticed a mile and a half naked, let alone wearing full equipment. The road, too, was in full view and so dusty that the approach of a goat sent ‘a cloud of tell-tale white puffs billowing into the sky. Salvation, however, in the shape of a half-empty bus stood waiting in the hollow as we descended below the line of vision of the group on the hill. Country women, wearing voluminous black faldetza head dresses, were already seated in the bus clasping on their knees baskets of chickens, fish and other goodies which they were taking to market.
‘Road inclusive’ had been the Weasel’s orders so, blessing my good fortune, I judiciously scattered the platoon about the bus. Some lay on the floor with the goats and shielded from view by the black tent-like confections on the good ladies’ heads, the whole platoon motored peacefully past the unsuspecting brass. Half a mile behind them was another dip in the road. There we debussed and with their backs towards us, our quarry were easy to stalk. Thirty yards from the group, while our two Lewis guns happily opened up with their football rattles, the rest of us charged with fixed bayonets and blood-curdling yells. Perhaps I overdid it a little on arrival by saying to a stunned Weasel, ‘Bang bang, you’re dead!’ Not only did he give me a monumental bollocking in front of my own men, calling me among other things a ‘bloody boy scout’, but he sent us, at the double, a mile and a half to our original starting point and then made us crawl back across the volcanic razors. Far from holding this purgatory against me, the Jocks said they had enjoyed the whole day hugely and the episode was ever after referred to as ‘the Desperate Battle of the Bus’. Trubshawe was not the Weasel’s type of man at all and his wonderful eccentricities were like a red rag to a bull. Trubshawe’s steel helmet caused a certain strain on an important parade.
‘Can’t possibly wear the bloody thing, old man, it’s too heavy and red hot to boot so I’ve had this little number run up for the occasion.’ He then placed on his head a papier-miche replica that was as light as a feather and from three feet was indistinguishable from the original. ‘Can’t go wrong, old man, I’ll get one for you next time.’
Throughout that increasingly sulphurous morning, I watched Trubshawe jealously as he strode about at the head of his platoon as fresh as a daisy with his helmet on at rather a rakish angle like a yachting cap. Just before the end of the parade, the threatening storm broke and in the torrential downpour, Trubshawe’s hat melted and closed over his ears. An uncertain twittering came from the ranks behind him as the soldiers beheld their splendid officer transformed into something resembling a very lanky hirsute pantomime gnome with a bluebell on his head.
The Weasel confined Trubshawe to barracks for that but Trubshawe hired a string quartet to play for him in the evenings in his room. As his quarters happened to be immediately above the Weasel’s lair, he was soon released. I don’t believe that Trubshawe was ever a very serious soldier though he was full of compassion for those who were. He was able to indulge this rather aloof, though never patronising attitude towards the military because, like many officers-in the regiment, he had a private income which handsomely papered over the bare patches between a subaltern’s pay and the financial facts of garrison life. I had no such cushion but Trubshawe’s generosity, which was boundless, made it possible for me to be constantly in his company without feeling a sponger.
I was two years on the island before the Weasel gave me an affirmative answer to my many requests for two months’ leave and permission to spend them in the United Kingdom.
One night in a dilapidated ferry boat, The Knight of Malta, and I was in Tunis whence a freighter took me to Marseilles, followed by a long train journey to Calais, Dover, Portsmouth and Bembridge.
Two years had wrought awful havoc with the beauty of my mother but when Grizel told me that ‘Mum’s pains’ were more and more frequent, so selfishly occupied was I with my immediate pleasures that I only dimly realised how serious her illness had become. She herself was gay and vague and wonderful and pushed it all aside as something boring she had to live with. Tommy was nowhere to be seen and my brother, who was now busy growing bananas on Norfolk Island, was back from the South Pacific. Bembridge was in full swing and I had an unforgettable home-coming.
Nessie had never been a great correspondent and her last letter had filled me with unease. It had ended ominously…’I’ve a bit put by now, dear, and I’ve found a bloke who might suit very nicely, so I might say thanks ever so and piss off to America. He knows all about me and says it makes no difference. If I do decide, I hope you get back before I go so I can see you. I’ll close now—love—Nessie.’
I never did see her again. When I arrived in London, I gathered from her friends and co-workers that she had left a month before to get married in Seattle. Most unreasonably, I felt jealous and jilted. She never wrote to me again.
∨ The Moon’s a Balloon ∧
SEVEN
After my leave, I pondered deeply about my military and, with increasing pressure, my financial future.
Brian Franks had been at Bembridge and was learning the hotel business. At the moment, he was working his way up through the kitchens of the Dorchester but was filled with enthusiasm and painted a glowing picture of his prospects.
Most of my other friends had, by now, left University, and were launched on glamorous and seemingly profitable careers in business. I felt rather left out of the scheme of things, a feeling that was not helped by meeting two young ofcers on leave from the Argylls in Bermuda. Their regiment was not only heading soon for China but in every way it sounded a far happier and more human situation than the one in which I had found myself on my return to Malta.
For a start, Trubshawe had fallen in love and Much of his time was taken up by a beautiful blonde called Margie Macdougall who was spending a few weeks with Celia Tower, the equally beautiful wife of a lieutenant commander in destroyers. Trubshawe in love was something to behold. He went about looking pale and interesting. I charged him with being off his feed but he refuted this in a dazed way and mumbled that Margie was a Christian Scientist and that although he did not wholeheartedly agree with much of her indoctrination, he was prepared, under certain conditions, to forego a sizeable percentage of his daily ration of bottled goods. Sinister cracks were appearing in the Trubshavian faqade. ‘We should give up blood sports, old man. No more the chase, be it fox, stag or field mouse. Amateur theatricals—that’s something for us.’
&nbs
p; In a day or two my bemused friend and I presented ourselves to Captain Hoskins of the Rifle Brigade who was Military Secretary to the Governor and the undisputed leading light of the Malta Amateur Dramatic Society. After reading a few lines from Frederick Lonsdale’s The Last of Mrs. Cheyney, we would-be amateurs were dusted aside with the classic, professional brush-off—‘Nothing for you at the moment but don’t call us—we’ll call you!’
We drowned our disappointments in a sea of ‘gimlets’ in the ‘snake pit’—the ladies’ annex of the Union Club in Valletta, while Margie looked on with an apprehensive eye and Celia with a twinkle.
‘It’s a plot, old man. We’d better get our own show together and break the monopoly.’
So, we resuscitated an old regimental concert party called ‘The Hornets’ and presented an abysmal confection for three consecutive nights at the Coronado Canteen, above the Dockyards.
As in all ‘amateur dramatics’, the performers had a wonderful time and went on far too long in front of a stoic and partisan audience. We regaled ourselves, and spasmodically our friends, with scenes stolen from the Co-Optimists, and the Hulberts, interlarded with Highland dancing and Sauchiehall Street wit.
Trubshawe had designed the posters which announced the forthcoming event in these terms—
OFF LIKE A FLASH!!! (AS THE NIGHTLIGHT SAID TO THE NIGHTDRESS)
These posters were sent round to all the wardrooms and gunrooms of the Mediterranean Fleet so the Weasel, in an ugly scene in which he invoked regimental honour, ordered us to visit every ship in turn, to apologise to the Mess President of each one and to retrieve the offending advertisements. Anthony Pleydell-Bouverie and David Kelburn came with us and it was a miracle that we didn’t all drown in pink gin during our futile efforts to obtain the surrender of documents which the Royal Navy had no intention of giving up. At least it had the beneficial result of getting Trubshawe further off the wagon—‘Weasel’s orders, old man’. Trubshawe and I had by now become the focal point of the Weasel’s distaste. Hardly a week went by when we were not saluted by his orderly—‘Report immediately to Battalion Orderly Room, gentlemen, please,’ and off we’d trot to collect another raspberry. So many did we collect at one point, that when the whole shooting match marched out of barracks and went under canvas for summer manoeuvres, we decided not to be outdone when it came to the decoration of our tents. The colonel had a little marker stuck in the ground at the entrance to his marked ‘C. O.’, and there were others denoting the citizens of all the important tepees—‘2nd I⁄C’, ‘Adj.’Q. M.’R. S.M.’ etcetera so Trubshawe and I persuaded the Armourers’ painter to install a couple for us ‘Chief Raspberry Picker’ and ‘Asst. Raspberry Picker’. The Jocks were delighted but the Weasel hammered another nail in our coffin. The summer manoeuvres were something that Lady Baden-Powell would have been ashamed of if conducted by a group of Brownies and I was still close enough to Sandhurst to be staggered by the fact that a long halt in the proceedings was always called at midday. While the Jocks sat in searing heat among the crickets and lizards devouring their ‘stew and duff’ and swigging down their ‘gunfire’, the officers repaired to a huge marquee where Mr. Gifford, in a white tropical suit and white shoes aided by three mess waiters, presided over an Ascot-type meal of gargantuan proportion. About this time, the Raspberry Pickers received a reinforcement—John Royal, a vast young man of phenomenal physical strength and an anarchist at heart. He appeared one day straight from Sandhurst and I want to introduce him clearly because he will turn up again much later in this dull story and, as he may enliven it, I don’t want him, on his reappearance, to pass unnoticed.
