Dad's Army

by Graham McCann

  May 12. Got a single copy of the Blackfriars Bi-weekly News. There was a short list of several names they had omitted; but the stupid people had mentioned our names as ‘Mr and Mrs C. Porter’. Most annoying! Wrote again and I took particular care to write our name in capital letters, POOTER, so that there should be no possible mistake this time.

  May 16. Absolutely disgusted on opening the Blackfriars Biweekly News of today, to find the following paragraph: ‘We have received two letters from Mr and Mrs Charles Pewter, requesting us to announce the important fact that they were at the Mansion House Ball.’ I tore up the paper and threw it in the waste-paper basket. My time is far too valuable to bother about such trifles.28

  Both men are just bright enough to realise, deep down, that they are not bright enough. Rarely does either man dare to tell a joke, and, whenever one of them does, it invariably rebounds straight back in his reddened face (GOWING: ‘Hulloh, Pooter, why your trousers are too short!’ POOTER: ‘Very likely, and you will find my temper “short” also.’ GOWING: ‘That won’t make your trousers longer, Juggins’).29 There is something desperately inevitable about Pooter’s discovery, immediately after having sent off a carefully worded letter of thanks, that there are actually two, rather than one, ‘p’s in ‘appreciate’ (‘Awfully vexed at this’),30 or Mainwaring’s premature return from placing the town hall under martial law (‘It was closed. Doesn’t open till nine in the morning’), or Pooter’s shiny-soled slip-up on the dance floor (‘I expressed myself pretty strongly on the danger of having a plain polished floor with no carpet or drugget’),31 or Mainwaring’s ill-timed encounter with Pike’s gravy boat (‘You stupid boy!’). Each man’s future, clearly, is littered with banana skins both physical and spiritual.

  The one significant difference between these two characters stems from the fact that Pooter is lucky enough to be married to Carrie, a woman whom he genuinely loves, whereas Mainwaring is unlucky enough to be married to Elizabeth, a woman whom he genuinely fears. Carrie Pooter – ‘my dear, pretty wife’32 – forgives her husband his failings (‘You, dear old Charlie, are not handsome, but you are good, which is far more noble’),33 laughs at most of his painfully laboured puns, allows him to seize her round the waist and launch into a ‘wild kind of polka’,34 and is ‘not above putting a button on a shirt, mending a pillow-case, or practising the “Sylvia Gavotte” on our new cottage piano.’35 Elizabeth Mainwaring, in stark contrast, forgives her husband nothing, never laughs, never dances, never goes out, and is above doing far too many things to mention.

  Starve Pooter of affection and one ends up with Mainwaring: the hope has grown a little leaner, the heart a little harder. Wilson – the only member of the platoon to have had the misfortune to have met Mainwaring’s spouse – considers her to be ‘well, er, a bit odd, you know’, while Pike, who has spoken to her on the telephone, notes that she is ‘always cross’. Even Mainwaring himself, who does his best to be discreet, has been known to confess that his wife is ‘a very highly strung woman’: ‘Slightest noise, she tosses and turns till sunrise. Dustbin lid blew off last night, and before you could say “Jack Robinson” she was under my bunk with a gas mask on. Took me twenty minutes to persuade her to come out.’ When Mainwaring plans to treat his cheddar-loving wife to a toasted cheese supper – ‘I might have a little surprise for you tonight’, he tells her cheerily on the telephone – she misreads his intentions and lets him know in no uncertain terms that she is absolutely appalled. When he attempts to give her ‘a very good dressing down’ for burning all of his sausage rolls, he ends up receiving a nasty black eye (the result, he later claims unconvincingly, of having ‘bumped into the door of the linen cupboard’). He longs for romance – his chaste, cherished affair with Fiona Gray was proof of that – but his marriage brings him nothing but misery, and sometimes, in spite of his brave face, the sad soul within shows through: ‘You can’t have Mrs Mainwaring eating broken glass’, Jones exclaims after Pike has accidentally smashed Elizabeth’s latest bottle of sleeping tablets. ‘That could be fatal – that could mean instant death!’ Mainwaring is silent for a moment or two while he ponders this remark, and then, distractedly, mutters: ‘Yes … Just … just dust them over a bit.’36 Bereft of real companionship at home, he seeks it out in the Home Guard.

  Mainwaring has wed himself to the war effort. It has become his grand passion, his one true vocation, and he simply cannot understand why the grip it has on others is often so much looser than the one it has on him. ‘I mean, fancy men not wanting to come on parade! It’s the highlight of my day! Do you know, once I’m having my tea, I can feel the excitement mounting inside of me. I put on my uniform, and I march down here to the parade, and I feel a warm glow of pride in what we’re doing and what we’ve achieved. We’re doing something for England!’37

  He is the kind of Englishman who takes a particularly great sense of pride from the thought that St George was far smaller than his dragon. Even when a bomb lands on his bank, and all of the windows have been smashed, and the door of his office is jammed, and part of his wall is missing, and water has started dripping down from the ceiling on to his desk, Mainwaring merely puts up his umbrella and refuses to budge:

  You see that chair? Well, that’s my chair; the Manager’s chair. This is my desk; the Manager’s desk. My office; the Manager’s office. I wasn’t made Manager overnight, you know, it was a long, hard struggle: office boy, clerk, Assistant Chief Clerk, Chief Clerk, Assistant Manager and, finally, Manager. It’s taken me twenty-five years to get this office, and there’s no red-necked, beer-swilling foreigner going to throw me out of it!38

  What he knows – or rather, what he thinks he knows – of the outside world could be scribbled down in stark black and white on the back of a postage stamp. He is not too keen on the French (‘They’re never very much good after lunch, you know’), exasperated by the Italians (‘a shambles’), suspicious of the Russians (although he acknowledges that ‘they can’t be all that bad otherwise they wouldn’t be on our side’), quietly contemptuous of the Americans (‘a few extras’, he calls them, ‘a second eleven, as it were’) and, of course, he detests the Germans (‘a nation of unthinking automatons’ who do not respect the laws of cricket). Mainwaring does know what he loves, and what he loves is England – his very own green and pleasant, proper, prudent, not too posh, not too common, hat-tipping, hardworking, game-playing vision of England – and he is prepared to give his all in order to defend it. ‘I have to be a hard man,’ he insists, ‘otherwise we’d all be under the Nazi jackboot by now!’

  Wilson, Mainwaring believes, is a soft man. ‘You worry me,’ he moans. ‘You’d do anything rather than face up to your responsibilities. You’ve never really grown up, have you? You’re not a middle-aged Chief Clerk at all – you’re a sort of Peter Pan!’ Nothing seems more great an obstacle to Mainwaring’s dream of creating a ‘well-oiled fighting machine’ than his sergeant’s obdurate over-politeness:

  MAINWARING Wheel them in.

  WILSON All right sir. (goes to doorway) Would you, er, would you kindly, er, step this way, please?

  MAINWARING Oh, Wilson! Bark it out! Bark it out!

  WILSON Right. (raises his voice) Would you kindly step this way please!39

  John Le Mesurier played Wilson like a thorn that had found a side:

  It seemed to me that Arthur, on screen, identified a central, but rarely performed, character in the British class system – the product of the lower middle class – essentially conservative, fiercely patriotic and strong on the old values – but a natural opponent of idle aristocrats as much as of upstart workers. Naturally, Captain Mainwaring disapproved of Sergeant Wilson, whose accent and manners suggested a comfortable background, one that had evidently removed any sense of ambition or daring. Indications of sloppiness or excessive caution (‘Do you think that’s wise?’) were met by explosions of indignation and a frenzy of activity signalling another usually hopeless adventure for the Walmington Home Guard.40

&nb
sp; Mainwaring knows that, in spite of all of his huffing and puffing, he will almost certainly remain stuck on the same rung of the social ladder, whereas Wilson, in spite of his chronic reluctance to huff and puff, will continue to rise blithely from one rung to the next, acquiring along the way such privileges as membership of the exclusive golf club (‘I’ve been trying for years to get in there!’ Mainwaring protests), lunching on hard-to-find smoked salmon (‘I had snoek fishcake at the British Restaurant!’) and inheriting an eye-catching aristocratic title. The only thing stopping Mainwaring from becoming a revolutionary, Wilson realises, is the fact that he is such a snob:

  MAINWARING Things’ll be very different after the war, you mark my words! The common man will come into his own. This country will be run by professionals: doctors, lawyers … bank managers …

  WILSON You mean people like you?

  MAINWARING All right, yes: people like me.

  WILSON (smiling mischievously) You mean ‘common?’

  MAINWARING Now watch it, Wilson!

  WILSON I didn’t know you were a socialist, sir.

  MAINWARING How dare you! You take that back!

  WILSON But you just said that, after the war, the country was going to be run by common men like you.

  MAINWARING I said nothing about ‘common men’! I said ‘the common man’! People who’ve got somewhere by their own efforts – not because their father had a title. Their day’s over!

  WILSON Well! I wonder what will happen to them?

  MAINWARING Ha! They’ll go to work – that’s what’ll happen to them! We shall have true democracy.

  WILSON Well, supposing they don’t want to go to work?

  MAINWARING Well, they won’t have any say in the matter!41

  Wilson’s aristocratic matter-of-factness, his disinclination to shake his imagination out of its slumbers (save for those occasions when someone likens his looks to those of the dashing Jack Buchanan – ‘Do you really think so?’), stands in stark contrast to Mainwaring’s wild idealism (‘We are in the front line every minute of our lives here!’). It is not that Wilson is incapable of authentic thoughts and emotions; it is just that, as a somewhat enervated pragmatist, he is not prepared to rehearse them:

  INSTRUCTOR Right! Now, I’m a gestapo officer. Now you, sergeant –

  WILSON Mmm? Yes?

  INSTRUCTOR What are you doing in France?

  WILSON I’m not in France.

  INSTRUCTOR Oh, yes, you are! You got there by parachute. I’ve captured you, and now I’m interrogating you.

  WILSON Oh, I see. Well: ‘Bonjour.’

  INSTRUCTOR You’re not supposed to tell me anything! Now: What are you doing in France?

  WILSON I don’t know.

  INSTRUCTOR You’re trying to blow up a munitions factory.

  WILSON (sounding bored) All right: I was trying to blow up a munitions factory.

  INSTRUCTOR So! You admit it!

  WILSON Oh, really! This is too absurd!

  INSTRUCTOR I’ll show you how absurd it is! (gets hold of Wilson’s hand) I’m putting matches underneath your fingernails! I’m setting light to them! They’re burning down! Now they’ve reached your fingers! You’re in agony! How do you like that?

  WILSON Well, to be absolutely honest, it isn’t really bothering me very much!42

  It takes a great deal to rouse Wilson from his well-bred placidity (even the persistent Mrs Pike, who continues to harbour hopes of a marriage proposal, has to make do with the loan of his ration book); bad manners, however, will always rattle him:

  WILSON Oh, now, really, sir!

  MAINWARING What’s the matter?

  WILSON Well, I really must protest, sir. Just because you’re the officer you don’t have to take the hammock! I mean, you just strut over there, put your hand out and say, ‘I’m taking that!’ I mean, it’s just the sort of behaviour I cannot stand!

  MAINWARING (sounding shaken) Well, I’m very sorry, Wilson. Perhaps it was a little unthinking of me. A little undemocratic. But you know I’m the last person in the world to take advantage of my position.

  WILSON Oh, really, sir?

  MAINWARING We shall take it in turns, of course.

  WILSON Thank you.

  MAINWARING But I shall use it first.43

  Wilson, unlike Mainwaring, is clearly unsuited to times of war – his class has conditioned him to shilly-shally, whereas Mainwaring’s has conditioned him to scrap – but, at the right moment, in the right circumstances, he is quite capable of confounding his critics: ‘When the occasion demands’, he assures his sceptical captain with one of his wry little smiles, ‘I can bawl and shout – just like you.’ The Germans, from a distance, fail to fire his fiercest feelings: while he acknowledges the fact that some of them have ‘rather an abrupt manner’, their uniforms strike him as ‘awfully smart’ (‘they really do something for one, don’t you think?’) and he cannot stop himself from observing that they seem ‘awfully well-disciplined’. He finds more than enough to motivate him, however, in the contemplation of his own heartfelt English idyll:

  Every day, I walk up the high street to work, and, as I pass those little shops, a nice, friendly, warm atmosphere seems to come wafting out – I mean, even from that dreadful fellow Hodges’ greengrocer’s – and then I stroll on a little bit further and I pass Frazer’s funeral parlour, and then before I cross the road to come to the bank there’s Jones’ butcher shop – white tiles all gleaming and shining, and old Jones standing there with his straw hat on and wearing his striped apron, and giving me a cheery wave – and do you know, sir, it sort of, I don’t know, it sort of sets me up for the day. I feel it’s my time, you see.44

  It made for a strange relationship, this marriage of the right stuff and the real thing, but, somehow, it worked. Each man knows, in his heart of hearts, that he needs the other. Wilson knows that, if Mainwaring was not there to push him, he might very well stagnate, whereas Mainwaring knows that, if Wilson was not there for him to push against, he might very well fall flat on his face (‘They recognise authority when they see it. Er, you’d better come with me’). When one of them comes up with the answers, the other comes up with the questions; when one orders Pike to prime the grenades, the other persuades him to load them with dummy detonators; when one praises his platoon for having guts, the other prays that he will never get to see any. It is, in the circumstances, a most appropriate partnership: unorthodox, edgy, amateurish, improbably effective and very, very, English.

  CHAPTER VIII

  A Scot, a Spiv and a Stupid Boy

  To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections.

  EDMUND BURKE1

  A single expression, boldly conceived and uttered, will sometimes put a whole company into their proper feelings.

  THOMAS PAINE2

  Frazer, Walker and Pike: every time Mainwaring saw them he sighed. Each one, he believed, undermined his ideal of a well-managed uniformity: Frazer was not English, Walker was not respectable and Pike was not very bright. It took only one tart remark from the Scot – ‘R-r-r-rubbish!’ – one furtive little favour from the spiv – ‘Psst! Oi – I got your cheese!’ – or one piece of unsolicited advice from the stupid boy – ‘Shoot him, Mr Mainwaring – go on, you’ve got the authority!’ – to upset the captain’s foolish consistency. He was stuck with them, and sometimes he had no choice but to rely on them, but he never stopped thinking of them as problems posing as solutions.

  Each one, in his own way, is an outsider. James Frazer, for example, is a solitary Scot, the sole member of Walmington-on-Sea’s Caledonian Society, a man whose only company outside of the platoon is the flickering light from his single candle. He was born, according to Croft and Perry,3 a long time ago on the Isle of Barra, a wild and lonely place just off the west coast of Scotland. He joined his first ship at the age of fourteen, and spent the next 35 years sailing the seven seas (amassing in the pr
ocess a veritable treasure trove of tales concerning strange, exotic lands and dark, supernatural happenings). The First World War saw him rise to the position of chief petty officer in the catering branch of the Royal Navy, and then slide back down the ranks after he was found guilty of hitting another officer with the crooked end of a boat hook during a moment of intoxication. When he retired from his nautical career he chose to settle in Walmington-on-Sea, where, after a brief flirtation with philately, he opened up a funeral parlour next door to Jones’ butcher’s shop in the high street. He remains a bachelor, although he was once engaged to a ‘long-legged Scottish lass’ called Jessie (she disappeared – he assumed that she had been blown off a cliff and was carried out to sea – only to reappear some time later in Singapore, from where she wrote to him, requesting what he considered to be an exorbitant sum of money to pay for her return fare), and he continues to admire, from a distance, ‘soncy’ young women with ‘big, strong thighs’. He is not a great optimist.

  Joe Walker, the genial outlaw, was born in Plaistow, East London. He learned, at an early age, to live on his wits, and he served his apprenticeship on some of the city’s shadiest streets and stalls. He moved down to Walmington-on-Sea, rather suddenly, as soon as the Second World War broke out, and promptly registered his occupation as a banana salesman and supplier of illuminated signs. His business is based in Slope Alley, where he makes use of two old garages at the bottom of a friend’s yard, but he has also been known to secrete some of his ‘wholesale supplies’ in a variety of other locations scattered around the town. His time in the Home Guard was interrupted early on by a short spell at an artillery training base, and, ever since his return (he was discharged after it was discovered that he was allergic to corned beef), he has served the platoon in a number of unorthodox, but often rather ingenious, ways.4