by Alan Hackney
A side effect of this system was that he was posted from one platoon to another as he fell behind with his training, and became a figure universally known and respected throughout the camp, of which he had already been on the strength for eleven months. His wife, however, had not fully understood the Mabel episode, and it was this which had determined him to finish his training at last.
He showed Cox and Stanley a portion of her letter to him.
That Mabel Ballard is no better than a hore (it said). All painted and dolled up like Laugh Clown Laugh. I’ve had about enough of you running around like a ponce.
“Good job I don’t insult easy,” said George. “See, what it was, I never ’ad time to explain properly.”
A whistle blew.
“Get dressed!” shouted Sergeant Leggett.
“All go,” said Cox. “Still, mussengrumble. Seven days’ leave tomorrow.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
STANLEY HAD FORGOTTEN to make any arrangements about his leave, but took out a warrant for London. As he sat in the train, it occurred to him that he had omitted to take Cox’s advice about warrants. The best thing if you only wanted to go a short distance, Cox had said, was to get one made out for the North of Scotland (“Available for Messrs. Mac Brayne’s Services, though Gawd knows who they are”) and either use it yourself later, or sell it to some Scotsman not entitled to a warrant, swapping pay-books temporarily to match the names on the warrants.
There was no reply at Catherine’s flat, so Stanley made his way to the Parapluie, where he found them at lunch.
“Stanley!” cooed Catherine. “Leave? How splendid. Philip’s got another of his doses of malaria, poor lamb. Is the whisky doing it any good, darling?”
Philip gave a trembly nod.
“Hullo, Stanley,” he said, sweating.
“This man has got me with child,” announced Catherine. “Yes, preggers at last. I shall be getting my bell-tents shortly. They give you extra coupons and some tenuous right to priority in queues. I wonder what is the masculine of maternity dress. Paternity suit, perhaps?”
“Well, this is very nice,” said Stanley. “Can you celebrate, or do you have to have a special diet?”
“Alcohol keeps the baby small,” said Catherine. “My book says so, anyway. I’d rather like a gin if they can rise to it. Oh, and you’re not the only one on leave. Denny is, too.”
“Denny?” said Stanley.
“From Iceland,” said Catherine. “Back in circulation again. But I palmed him off very successfully onto Desmond. They’re over there.”
At a corner table Stanley could see the huge form of the gunner, and the slight, blond figure of Desmond, beaming at each other over their coffee.
“I think they’re very well suited,” said Catherine. “They used to be both such a nuisance. I think it must be what they were both looking for.”
“Good gracious,” said Stanley.
“I’ve finished with the sewers,” announced Philip.
“Oh, good,” said Stanley. “Do they—will it…?”
“Sell?” said Philip, mopping his brow. “Well, I’ve tried one or two public bodies. I might canvass a few trade-union headquarters. They might find it stimulating and evocative. I think I can claim that it captures the atmosphere quite well. It might perhaps stir them up to a bit of righteous indignation.”
“It’s a sweet picture,” said Catherine encouragingly, “but I think it’s about time you were taken home and put into bed, darling, while you still know where you are. Incidentally, Stanley, what’s going to happen to you now you’ve finished your training?”
“What I have come to visualise,” said Stanley, “is a nice, long cushy course; the longer the better—say three or four months. I don’t think I’ll be recommended for another Selection Board somehow. I could apply for one, of course, but I think it would be rather a waste of time.”
“Well, if you don’t get a course, what?”
“Then,” said Stanley. “it will probably be the old banana boat.”
“I see,” said Catherine. “Well, quite frankly, I don’t think there’s anywhere much to go these days. Italy seems a rotten idea at this time of the year. There’s always India, I suppose, but it seems to me your best bet would be to hang around till they start a proper Second Front in France. You’d probably have a much better time being fêted as a liberator, with all the wine and fatted daughters being brought out.”
They took Philip home and got him into bed.
*
The war by this time had reached a critical phase. The whole South of England was aswarm with American soldiers and negro-driven lorries. A general called Eisenhower was completing his plans for an invasion of the continent of Europe. Strange objects were being assembled in factories throughout the country; five-pointed white stars were painted on the bonnets of vehicles; well-known generals were beginning to gather in little-known places in Dorset.
When Stanley returned to Gravestone after a blameless week in London something of the mounting tension was apparent. There were more troops than ever in the area (“District’s goin’ down,” said Cox), week-end passes had been cut down to a ten-mile radius, and several buildings in the camp were being ringed with barbed wire. Into these things were dumped after dark.
Nearly all of Stanley’s platoon had come back from their leave. Within a week even George had returned, just in time for a spell in the cells before being drafted, with most of the others, to a service battalion. A few, including Stanley and Cox, remained, to await different postings, mostly to courses. Cox was suddenly sent on a driving and maintenance course, but Stanley was told that according to A.C.I.’s he was still to be regarded as a potential officer, and that there were all sorts of places to which he could not be posted.
“I don’t expect that’ll last long, lad,” remarked the sergeant-major. “It’s a discrepancy, a mere discrepancy. We’ll have to see what we can fix you up with, won’t we?” he added pleasantly. “Like a nice bit of ’ard, character-forming training, up, say at the Highland Fieldcraft place, eh?”
Stanley and the three remaining members of his platoon were being shifted at this time from hut to hut in the company lines as beds became vacant. They were not particularly popular, for there were no parades for them to attend, and they were never in any hut long enough to be roped in on the Room Jobs roster.
The strain of avoiding the orderly sergeant was beginning to tell, when Stanley, who had taken to reading unit orders, noticed an obscure item drawing attention to an A.C.I. on courses in oriental languages. He obtained the A.C.I. with some difficulty from the company runner, a stony, wall-eyed fellow with a heavy army bicycle, adept at the odd process of riding to attention. (“If riding a bicycle,” it said in Standing Orders, “do NOT salute an officer, but ride to attention, viz. holding the handlebars with both hands, brace head and body with a smart motion.”)
“Let’s ’ave it back a bit sharp,” said the runner, a man of some authority. “Only the C.S.M. wants to look up the latest on alimony payments this afternoon.”
The A.C.I. announced a series of courses for officers and other ranks with university training, to fit them for acting as translators in one of several Near and Far Eastern tongues. On successful completion, commissioned students would be transferred to the Intelligence Corps, and it was visualised that non-commissioned students, if suitable, should be awarded similar commissions. The minimum length of the initial course would be eight months, with additional courses in certain languages to turn them into interpreters. Attention of Commanding Officers was drawn to two further A.C.I.s; several other A.C.I.s were thereby cancelled.
To Stanley the choice seemed clearly to lie between Turkish and Japanese. He finally chose Japanese as having probably the most difficult script, and sent in his application through the Company office.
My dear Kat (wrote Stanley to his sister), I think I have probably found the longest and cushiest course in the trade.
PART TWO
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“KI SO NO, naka nari santo,” sang Stanley.
“Nania wei,” sang his two companions.
“Oi oi, ti oi oi oi, ti oi oi oi,” they sang together.
They were washing up.
Their flat, not far from the School of Oriental Languages, was leased from a lady who had gone to Sidmouth to avoid the flying-bombs. It was a magnificent place of bookcases and busts. An anti-aircraft general lived below and came up the stairs every Sunday morning to complain of the noise of revelry of the Saturday evening. The jeunesse dorée above greeted him politely each time and called him “old boy”. The general did not know they were in the Army.
Stanley wore uniform on Friday afternoons to collect his pay and ration allowances from the guard’s barracks to which he was theoretically attached. The other two were long-haired cavalry lieutenants and did not wear uniform at all: their pay came by cheque directly into their accounts at Coutts.
A P.T. run in Hyde Park, or a brief, half-hearted route march round Kensington Gardens or Westminster was occasionally thrust on them, but otherwise there was but little contact with the orthodox workings of the military machine. They habitually wore corduroys and check shirts and drifted in and out of lectures at the school given by a donnish general and his studious staff.
The rifle which the authorities at Gravestone had insisted Stanley should take with him on his posting stood untended and oxidising in the corner of a spare bedroom. It was impossible to get a clear view through the barrel.
Stanley hung up his tea-towel and washed his hands in the stainless sink.
“Cheerio, Neville,” he said, when he had put on his overcoat. “See you this evening.”
“Sayonara, old boy,” said Neville Hammersley-Forsyth, resplendent in one of the landlady’s flowered aprons.
“Cheero, John,” called Stanley through the bathroom door.
“O machidō sama,”1 shouted Lieutenant the Lord Purbeck from within. “Get some more bumf while you’re out, will you?”
“O jama itashimashita,”2 called Stanley.
It was a Saturday, the last of the Japanese course, which had been extended to rather over a year, and Stanley on the point of being painlessly commissioned as a Japanese interpreter, was going to order his service dress. He was meeting Catherine on the way in order to choose a christening present at Harrods for her five-month-old son.
He met Catherine at Hyde Park Underground.
“Otoko noko?” said Catherine.
“Hullo, Kat,” said Stanley. “No shop, please.”
“Japanese is such a twee language,” said Catherine. “What a pity they all look so odd in those horrid glasses.”
“How’s young Robert?”
“Feeding avidly. Philip’s taking him along the Embankment to look at the barges. Getting all domestic. The child is sweet, of course, but he’s putting on weight abominably. He looks just like the Michelin man. Perhaps we should have him christened that instead. Would it be too late to change the notification, do you think?”
“I expect he’ll even out into the usual shape,” said Stanley.
He bought Michelin’s silver spoon from the narrow and expensive wartime selection, and then went up to the Men’s Tailoring.
“I’ll hang about in Hats while you’re being measured,” said Catherine. “How heavenly if Philip does the nappies while I’m out.”
*
A tailor came up deferentially.
“I want a service dress, please,” said Stanley.
“Thank you, sir,” said the tailor. “If you’ll just deposit the coupons….”
While he was grovelling with a tape measure round the back of Stanley’s knees, Stanley caught a sudden glimpse in the long mirror confronting him of an immense figure with red-tabbed lapels passing laterally behind him. He tried to follow it with his eyes, but the tape-measuring hands restricted him.
His mind began to revolve rapidly. There seemed something very familiar about it …
The tailor was speaking.
“I beg your pardon?” said Stanley.
“I was just saying, sir, we are prepared, as always, to wait for settlement of the account, but the coupons we must have. It’s not our choice, of course, sir.”
“Of course,” said Stanley. “Could you tell me, I wonder, who that was?”
“I saw no one, sir.”
“A full colonel, or a general,” said Stanley. “He passed just now. I think he must have gone into one of the fitting-rooms.”
“I’m afraid you must be mistaken, sir. There was nobody. Now, if you’ll just hold the arm so, sir.”
“I think I may know him,” said Stanley.
“Who, sir?”
“The man who passed by. I could have sworn …”
“An officer come for alterations, perhaps, sir?”
“Yes, yes,” said Stanley. “I think I’ll wait for him to come out.”
“As you wish, sir. May I have the address, sir?”
Tailors were among the small group of shop people who did not largely abandon the canons of courtesy to customers in wartime London. But though courteous, the man was graciously unhelpful in this matter. Stanley waited a full quarter-of-an-hour among the racks of Air Force jackets, but while there was a constant thin flow of officers through the department, there was no sign of the colonel.
He gave it up and sought Catherine in Hats.
“Hullo, darling,” she said. “It was bliss trying them on.”
“Kat,” said Stanley. “Do you know who I think I saw?”
He gripped her arm suddenly and pointed towards a narrow staff staircase on their right. Down it was coming into view the lower half, then the red tabs, then the complete figure of a huge brigadier. Bushy black eyebrows on his red face matched what they could see of his bushy black hair. He was smoking a large cigar.
“Uncle Bertram!” said Catherine.
*
Brigadier Bertram Tracepurcel was the only surviving maternal uncle of Stanley and Catherine. He had visited them several times in their childhood as a captain on leave, but had been an unknown quantity since 1936, when he had been posted to the East. Stanley’s father had never particularly welcomed him in the house, and Sarah had been openly suspicious. Stanley as a small child had said “Forgive us our Tracepurcels” in his prayers for some years, uncorrected. Sarah thoroughly approved of the sentiment. Stanley’s mother, to whom she had been devoted, was the only Tracepurcel for whom Sarah had any sympathy, and Uncle Bertram was unquestionably their black sheep.
When he had been adjutant of his regiment in Malaya he had been widely known for his all-night drinking and card-playing, after which it was his daily practice to appear mounted, with a cigar, to supervise the first parade of the day. After this he would ride away and retire to bed till half-past three in the afternoon, when he would rise and work energetically till dinner.
The war had brought him accelerated promotion, and he now ran a clandestine War Office department concerned in operations of a minor, obscure, but sometimes spectacular character behind enemy lines.
He stood now before them, scrutinised them closely, and said:
“Meet me at the Cote d’Ivoire in an hour.”
He turned about and walked immediately away.
*
Stanley and Catherine waited in the ormolu anteroom of the Cote d’Ivoire.
“I hope he turns up,” said Stanley uneasily. “I wonder if you have to have lunch once they’ve taken your coat.”
But presently Uncle Bertram, now in thick blue Harris tweeds, came towards them.
“Well, how are you both?” he asked genially. “You must forgive the cloak-and-dagger stuff, but my work is of rather a confidential nature.”
“I was sure I saw you go by in the Men’s Tailoring,” said Stanley.
“I was told someone was asking after me,” said Bertram. “That’s why I came down the other stairs. One can’t be too careful. However, tell me about yourselves.
”
After they had lunched, Bertram looked thoughtfully at Stanley.
“Japanese, eh?” he mused. “Um. Now, one most important thing. Please say nothing to anybody about meeting me. This is vitally important. Now I wonder if Anton can rise to any cream for the coffee.”
“Impossible,” said Catherine.
“Anton knows my simple tastes,” said Bertram.
They had cream.
“Thanks for the adorable lunch,” said Catherine, “but I must get back for Michelin’s two o’clock feed.”
“Grand,” said Bertram. “Now please wait three minutes after I’ve gone. I’ll settle up first, of course. It’s been charming to see you both again, but I rather think I won’t be able to again before the end of the war.”
“Oh, Bertram,” said Catherine. “No more lunches?”
“It won’t be long,” said Bertram. He looked at his watch. “Well, farewell,” he said. “I’ll keep you posted.”
They saw him getting into his teddy-bear overcoat in the anteroom, then smile and go out into Piccadilly.
“Oh dear,” said Catherine. “Not a very satisfactory chat on the whole. I wonder how he manages these liqueurs?”
*
A week later Stanley and his comrades received their posting instructions. Stanley’s was unique. The others were all to go East, but Stanley’s said cryptically: “Attached HATRACK, War Office.”
“Hatrack, old boy?” said Neville. “It sounds a very phoney establishment.”
Stanley duly reported to the War Office. Though his natural timidity made him disinclined for field operations, he nonetheless felt that his posting here was rather shameful.
