by Evelyn Waugh
‘I’m not allowed to talk. The matter is sub judice.’
‘Like that matter of the boot. You’ve heard the latest? That lunatic Apthorpe has taken refuge in the hospital. I bet he’s shamming.’
‘I don’t think so. He looked pretty sick when he came back from his leave up-country.’
‘But he’s used to this climate. Anyway, we’ll catch him when he comes out. If you ask me I’d say he was in worse trouble than you are.’
This talk of Apthorpe brought back tender memories of Guy’s early days in barracks. He asked permission of the brigade major to visit him.
‘Take a car, Uncle.’ Everyone was anxious to be agreeable. ‘Take a bottle of whisky. I’ll make it all right with the mess president.’ (They were rationed to one bottle a month in this town.)
‘Will that be all right with the hospital?’
“Very much all wrong, Uncle. That’s your risk. But it’s always done. Not worth while calling on a chap in hospital unless you bring a bottle. But don’t say I told you. It’s your responsibility if you’re caught.’
Guy drove up the laterite road, past the Syrian stores and the vultures, noticing nothing except the dawdling natives who obstructed his way; later a few printed pages would create, not recall, the scene for him and make it forever memorable. People would say to him in eight years time: ‘You were there during the war. Was it like that?’ and he would answer: ‘Yes. It must have been.’
Then out of the town by a steep road to the spacious, whitish hospital, where there was no wireless to aggravate the suffering, no bustle; fans swung to and fro, windows were shut and curtained against the heat of the sun.
He found Apthorpe alone in his room, in a bed near the window. When Guy entered he was lying doing nothing, staring at the sun-blind with his hands empty on the counterpane. He immediately began to fill and light a pipe.
‘I came to see how you were.’
‘Rotten, old man, rotten’
‘They don’t seem to have given you much to do.’
‘They don’t realize how ill I am. They keep bringing me jigsaws and Ian Hay. A damn fool woman, wife of a box-wallah here, offered to teach me crochet. I ask you, old man, I just ask you.’
Guy produced the bottle he had been concealing in the pocket of his bush-shirt.
‘I wondered if you’d like some whisky.’
‘That’s very thoughtful. In fact I would. Very much. They bring us one medicine-glassful at sundown. It’s not enough. Often one wants more. I told them so, pretty strongly, and they just laughed. They’ve treated my case all wrong from the very first. I know more about medicine than any of those young idiots. It’s a wonder I’ve stayed alive as long as I have. Toughness. It takes some time to kill an old bush hand. But they’ll do it. They wear one down. They exhaust the will to live and then – phut. You’re a goner. I’ve seen it happen a dozens times.’
‘Where shall I put the whisky?’
‘Somewhere I can reach it. It’ll get damned hot in the bed, but I think it’s the best place.’
‘How about the locker?’
‘They’re always prying in there. But they’re slack about bed making. They just pull the covers smooth before the doctor’s round. Tuck it in at the bottom, there’s a good chap.’
There was only a thin sheet and a thin cotton counterpane Guy saw Apthorpe’s large feet, bereft of their ‘porpoises’, peeling with fever. He tried to interest Apthorpe in the new brigadier and in his own obscure position, but Apthorpe said fretfully: ‘Yes, yes, yes, yes. It’s all another world to me, old man.’
He puffed at his pipe, let it go out, tried with a feeble hat to put it on the table beside him, dropped it, noisily in that quiet place, on the bare floor. Guy stooped to retrieve it but Apthorpe said: ‘Leave it there; old man. I don’t want it. I only tried to be companionable.’
When Guy looked up he saw tears on Apthorpe’s colourless cheeks.
‘I say, would you like me to go?’
‘No, no. I’ll feel better in a minute. Did you bring a cork-screw? Good man. I think I could do with a nip.’
Guy opened the bottle, poured out a tot, recorked and replaced the spirit under the sheet.
‘Wash out the glass, old man, do you mind? I’ve been hoping you’d come – you especially. There’s something worrying me.’
‘Not the signalman’s boot?’
‘No, no, no, no. Do you suppose I’d let a little tick like Dunn worry me? No, it’s something on my conscience.’
There was a pause during which the whisky seemed to perform its beneficient magic. Apthorpe shut his eyes and smiled. At last he looked up, and said: ‘Hullo, Crouchback, you here? That’s lucky. There’s something I wanted to say to you. Do you remember years ago, when we first joined, I mentioned my aunt?’
‘You mentioned two.’
‘Exactly. That’s what I wanted to tell you. There’s only one.’
‘I am sorry.’ All the talk lately had been about people killed by bombs. ‘Was it an air-raid? Leonard caught one …’
‘No, no, no: I mean, there never was more than one. The other was an invention. I suppose you might call it a little joke. Anyway, I’ve told you.’
After a pause Guy could not resist asking : ‘Which did you invent, the one at Peterborough or the one at Tunbridge Wells?’
‘The one at Peterborough, of course!’
‘Then where did you hurt your knee?’
‘At Tunbridge Wells.’ Apthorpe giggled slightly at his cleverness like Mr Toad in The Wind in the Willows.
‘You certainly took me in thoroughly.’
‘Yes. It was a good joke, wasn’t it? I say, I think I’d like a drop more whisky.’
‘Sure it’s good for you?’
‘My dear fellow, I’ve been just as ill as this before and pulled through – simply by treating it with whisky.’
He sighed happily after this second glass. He really did seem altogether better and stronger.
‘There’s another point I want to talk about. My will.’
‘You needn’t start thinking about that for years yet.’
‘I think about it now. A great deal. I haven’t much. Just a few thousand in gilt-edged my father left me. I’ve left it all back to my aunt of course. It’s family money, after all, and ought to go back. The one at Tunbridge Wells not’ – roguishly – ‘the good lady at Peterborough. But there’s someone else.’
Guy thought: could this inscrutable man, have a secret, irregular ménage? Little dusky Apthorpes, perhaps?
‘Look here, Apthorpe, please don’t go telling me anything about your private affairs. You’ll be awfully embarrassed about it later, if you do. You’re going to be perfectly fit again in a week or two.’
Apthorpe considered this.
‘I’m tough,’ he admitted. ‘I’ll take some killing. But it’s all a question of the will to live. I must set everything in order just in case they wear me down. That’s what keeps worrying me so.’
‘All right. What is it?’
‘It’s my gear,’ said Apthorpe. ‘I don’t want my aunt to get hold of it. Some of it’s at the Commodore’s at Southsand. The rest is at that place in Cornwall, where we last camped. I left it in Leonard’s charge. He was a trustworthy sort of chap, I always thought.’
Guy wondered: should he make it plain about Leonard? Better leave it till later. He had probably left Apthorpe’s treasure at the inn when they went to London. It might be traced eventually. This was no time to add to Apthorpe’s anxieties.
‘If my aunt’s got it, I know exactly what she’d do. She’d hand the whole thing over to some High Church boy-scouts she’s interested in. I don’t want High Church boy-scouts playing the devil with my gear.’
‘No. It would be most unsuitable.’
‘Exactly. You remember Chatty Corner?’
‘Vividly.’
‘I want him to have it all. I haven’t mentioned it in my will. I thought it might hurt my aunt’s feelings. I don’
t suppose she really knows it exists. Now I want you to collect it and hand it over to Chatty on the quiet. I don’t suppose it’s strictly legal but it’s quite safe. Even if she did get wind of it, my aunt is the last person to go to law. You’ll do that for me, won’t you, old man?’
‘Very well. I’ll try.’
‘Then I can die happy – at least if anyone ever does die happy. Do you think they do?’
‘We used to pray for it a lot at school. But for goodness sake don’t start thinking of dying now.’
‘I’m a great deal nearer death now,’ said Apthorpe, suddenly huffy, ‘than you ever were at school.’
There was a rattle at the door and a nurse came in with a tray.
‘Why! Visitors! You’re the first he’s had. I must say you seem to have cheered him up. We have been down in the dumps, haven’t we?’ she said to Apthorpe.
‘You see, old man, they wear me down. Thanks for coming. Good-bye.’
‘I smell something I shouldn’t,’ said the nurse. ‘
‘Just a drop of whisky I happened to have in my flask, nurse,’ Guy answered.
‘Well, don’t let the doctor hear about it. It’s the very worst thing. I ought really to report you to the S.M.O., really I ought.’
‘Is the doctor anywhere about?’ Guy asked. ‘I’d rather like to speak to him.’
‘Second door on the left. I shouldn’t go in if I were you. He’s in a horrid temper.’
But Guy found a weary foolish man of his own age. ‘Apthorpe? Yes. You’re in the same regiment, I see. The Applejacks, eh?’
‘Is he really pretty bad, doctor?’
‘Of course he is. He wouldn’t be here if he wasn’t.’
‘He talked a lot about dying.’
‘Yes, he does to me, except when he’s delirious. Then he seems worried about a bomb in the rears. Did he ever have any experience of the kind, do you know?’
‘I rather think he did.’
‘Well, that accounts for that. Queer bird, the mind. Hides things away and then out they pop. But I mustn’t get too technical. It’s a hobby horse of mine, the mind.’
‘I wanted to know, is he on the danger list?’
‘Well, I haven’t actually put him there. No need to cause unnecessary alarm and despondency. His sort of trouble hangs on for weeks often and just when you think you’ve pulled them through, out they go, you know.
‘Apthorpe’s got the disadvantage of having lived in this Godforsaken country. You chaps who come out fresh from England have got stamina. Chaps who live here have got their blood full of every sort of infection. And then, of course, they poison themselves with whisky. They snuff out like babies. Still, we’re doing the best for Apthorpe. Luckily we’re rather empty at the moment so everyone can give him full attention.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
The R.A.M.C. man was a colonel but he was seldom called ‘sir’ by anyone outside his own staff. ‘Have a glass of whisky?’ he said gratefully.
‘Thanks awfully, but I must be off.’
‘Any time you’re passing.’
‘By the way, sir, how is our Brigadier Ritchie-Hook?’
‘He’ll be out of here any day now. Between ourselves he’s rather a difficult patient. He made one of my young officers pickle a Negro’s head for him. Most unusual.’
‘Was the pickling a success?’
‘Must have been, I suppose. Anyway he keeps the thing by his bed grinning at him.’
8
NEXT morning at dawn a flying-boat landed at Freetown.
That’s for you,’ said Colonel Tickeridge. ‘They say the Brig. will be fit to move tomorrow.’
But there was other news that morning. Apthorpe was in a coma.
‘They don’t think he’ll ever come out of it,’ Colonel Tickeridge said. ‘Poor old Uncle. Still there are worse ways of dying and he hasn’t got a madam or children or anything.’
‘Only an aunt,’ said Guy.
‘Two aunts, I think he told me.’
Guy did not correct him. Everyone at Brigade Headquarters remembered Apthorpe well. He had been a joke there. Now the mess was cast into gloom, less at the loss of Apthorpe than at the thought of death so near, so unexpected.
‘We’ll lay on full military honours for the funeral.’
‘He’d have liked that.’
‘A good opportunity to show the flag in the town.’
Dunn fussed about his boot.
‘I don’t see how I’ll be able to recover now,’ he said. ‘It seems rather ghoulish somehow, applying to the next of kin.’
‘How much is it?’
‘Nine shillings.’
‘I’ll pay.’
‘I say, that’s very sporting of you. It’ll keep my books in order.’
The new brigadier went to the hospital that morning to inform Ritchie-Hook of his imminent departure. He returned at lunch-time.
‘Apthorpe is dead,’ he said briefly. ‘I want to talk to you, Crouchback, after lunch.’
Guy supposed the summons was connected with his move order and went to the brigadier’s office without alarm. He found both the brigadier and the brigade major there, one looking angrily at him, the other looking at the table.
‘You heard that Apthorpe was dead?’
‘Yes, Sir.’
‘There was an empty whisky bottle in his bed. Does that mean anything to you?’
Guy stood silent, aghast rather than ashamed.
‘I asked: “Does that mean anything to you?’
‘Yes, Sir. I took him a bottle yesterday afternoon.’
‘You knew it was against orders?’
‘Yes Sir.’
‘Any excuse?’
‘No, sir, except that I knew he liked it and I didn’t realize it would do him any harm. Or that he’d finish it all at once.’
‘He was half delirious, poor fellow. How old are you, Crouchback?’
‘Thirty-six, Sir.’
‘Exactly. That’s what makes everything so hopeless. If you were a young idiot of twenty-one I could understand it. Damn it, man, you’re only a year or two younger than I am.’
Guy stood still saying nothing. He was curious how the brigadier would deal with the question.
‘The S.M.O. of the hospital knows all about it. So do most of his staff, I expect. You can imagine how he feels. I was with him half the morning before I could get him to see sense. Yes, I’ve begged you off, but please, understand that what I’ve done was purely for the Corps. You’ve committed too serious a crime for me to deal with summarily. The choice was between hushing it up and sending you before a court martial. There’s nothing would give me more personal satisfaction than to see you booted out of the army altogether. But we’ve one sticky business on our hands already – in which incidentally you are implicated. I persuaded the medico that we had no evidence. You were poor Apthorpe’s only visitor but there are orderlies and native porters in and out of the hospital who might have sold him the stuff’ (he spoke as though whisky, which he regularly and moderately drank, were some noxious distillation of Guy’s own). ‘Nothing’s worse than a court martial that goes off half-cock. I also told him what a slur it would be on poor Apthorpe’s name. It would all have had to come out. I gather he was practically a dipsomaniac and had two aunts who think the world of him. Pretty gloomy for them to hear the truth. So I got him to agree in the end. But, don’t thank me, and, remember, I don’t want to see you again ever. I shall apply for your immediate posting out of the brigade as soon as they’ve finished with you in England. The only hope I have for you is that you’re thoroughly ashamed of yourself. You can fall out now.’
Guy left the office unashamed. He felt shaken, as though he had seen a road accident in which he was not concerned. His fingers shook but it was nerves not conscience which troubled him; he was familiar with shame; this trembling, hopeless sense of disaster was something of quite another order; something that would pass and leave no mark.
He stood in the ante-ro
om sweating and motionless and was presently aware of someone at his elbow.
‘I see you aren’t busy.’
He turned and saw Dunn. ‘No.’
‘Perhaps you wouldn’t mind my mentioning it then? This morning you very kindly offered to settle that matter of the boot.’
‘Yes, of course. How much was it? I forget. Nine pounds, wasn’t it?’
‘Good Lord, no. Nine shillings.’
‘Of course. Nine shillings.’ Guy did not want to show Dunn his trembling hands. ‘I’ve no change now. Remind me tomorrow.’
‘But you’re off tomorrow, aren’t you?’
‘So I am. I forgot.’
His hands when he took them out of his pockets trembled less than he had feared. He counted out nine shillings.
‘I’ll make out the receipt in Apthorpe’s name if it’s all the same to you.’
‘I don’t want a receipt.’
‘Must keep my books straight.’
Dunn left to put his books straight. Guy remained standing.
Presently the brigade major came out of the office.
‘I say, I’m awfully sorry about this business,’ he said. ‘It was a damned silly thing to do. I see that now.’
‘I did say it was your responsibility.’
‘Of course. Of course.’
‘There was nothing I could possibly have said.’
‘Of course not. Nothing.’
They took Ritchie-Hook out of the hospital before Apthorpe. Guy had half an hour to wait on the quay. The flying-boat lay out. All round the bum-boats floated selling fruit and nuts.
‘Have you got my nut packed up safely, Glass?’
‘Yes, Sir.’
Halberdier Glass was in a black mood. Ritchie-Hook’s servant was travelling home with his master. Glass had to stay behind.
Colonel Tickeridge had come down to the quay.
He said: ‘I don’t seem to bring luck to the officers I pick for promotion. First Leonard, then Apthorpe.’
‘And now me, sir.’
‘And now you.’
