MCC disappeared suddenly from sight into the darkened shop and came back and set a single lead toy soldier down in the centre of the table.
‘That’s off the bric-a-brac table,’ said Mrs Povey, puzzled.
‘Yes. Can I have it?’
‘Of course you can have it. Don’t be silly.’
‘Thank you,’ and he put it into his breast pocket. ‘Now I’ve been paid.’
The next moment he was leaning agitatedly on the arm of Mrs Povey’s chair. ‘But what’s wrong with me? What have you got against me? Is it my age?’
‘No! What age are you?’
Ailsa did not catch his answer. ‘Well, is it because I have no money?’
‘No. I told you, the money’s yours if you want it … and anyway, I think you knew it was there in the book before we found it.’
‘That’s it, then! You think I was in league with Latvian Johnny or Birdman Sweeney. Ha! You think I’m a criminal on the run! I swear I’m not!’
‘Don’t be foolish. Of course I don’t think that. It’s just that you seem to know a lot more than is quite … Look here, MCC. I don’t know anything about you. I mean who are your people? Where’s your family home? What’s your real name?’
There was no answer.
‘All right, then. Where are your belongings? Don’t you own anything? Don’t you have a change of clothing anywhere - in a suitcase in a lost property office perhaps? Nothing?’
MCC patted his breast pocket. ‘I have this. It’s a beginning,’ he said hopefully.
‘But that’s what I’m getting at. Where are your own toy soldiers, MCC? What became of the toy-box you had as a child? Where did you grow up? Where were you born? Where’s home?’
There was an extremely long pause. MCC took out the lead soldier again and looked into its blobby, badly painted face. ‘My great-grandfather was a general in the Boer War.’
‘That’s a long way to go back,’ said Mrs Povey dubiously. ‘Why do I get the feeling you’re going to tell me a story?’
‘Everyone’s personal history is a story,’ said MCC woundedly. ‘But I won’t tell one if you don’t want me to.’
‘Oh go ahead, do.’
He hesitated, as if collecting the words of the story together in his head. His face took on a great sadness. Mrs Povey clearly saw it, for her old apologetic voice returned just for an instant. ‘I only want what’s best for Ailsa.’
‘That’s dangerous,’ he said, placing the lead soldier precisely in the centre of the table again.
‘I think I know what’s best for my own child!’ Mrs Povey retorted hotly.
But MCC had squatted down beside the table and had his chin resting on its edge, looking at and beyond the soldier through one eye, as if it were the sights of a rifle. Ailsa crept two stairs lower and forgot that she was trembling from head to foot.
***
‘You shame me, boy!’
Wellington George Armstrong stood on the hearthrug between the two winged chairs which flanked the blazing fire. On the one side sat his godfather, silent, smoking; on the other his father, shouting and as red-faced as the King’s Scarlet. Wellington George Armstrong bowed his head.
‘Stand up straight, boy! Stand to attention!’ blared his father. ‘I would have thought that uniform had backbone in it even if you haven’t. You shame me in front of your godfather!’
‘I don’t mean to, sir.’
The General gave a snort of disgust and, taking a pair of walnuts from the dish beside his chair, cracked them together between his two hands, as if he would have liked to do something similar to his son. ‘Cowardice! I never thought to give life to a coward! I’d sooner have stayed a bachelor.’ He threw the broken shells into the fire where they burned with a series of pistol-crack explosions. The General seemed to take delight in the start his son gave at the noise, thinking it proof of cowardice. What he did not quite realize was that a shard of hot shell had flown off the coals and struck the boy’s hand. Wellington George Armstrong bit his lip. The pain of the interview was far greater.
‘It isn’t that I don’t want to be in the army, sir. It’s just that I do want to be a doctor, sir,’ he said, but the heat from the fire behind him felt like a foretaste of Hell whose oven doors stood open in wait for him for speaking such blasphemy.
‘Don’t bandy words with me, boy. You’ve been bred a soldier, educated for a soldier, dressed as a soldier — and now you say you don’t want to be a soldier. You want to be a doctor instead! It’s a coward’s excuse. It’s a callous, wilful slight on me and on your grandfather and on his father before him! Cowardice makes a fellow spiteful. I’ve seen it in the regiments. A coward’s always out to make the unkind cut. Well, you’ve hurt me, boy, if it gives you any satisfaction. You’ve really put the blade to my heart and twisted it, boy, and things will never be the same between you and me!’
Wellington George Armstrong was helpless to defend himself. He was well aware that his father’s feelings were indeed hurt - that he was probably heart-broken by the announcement that his only son did not want to be a soldier. It had taken every ounce of courage Wellington could muster to speak his mind. That courage had quickly run out. Everything his father said was true: he was a coward. He had come home from the military academy determined to be a doctor instead of a soldier. His trunk was not yet unpacked and his resolve was already weakening.
He had steeled himself against all the wrong things. The beating and the bellowing he had foreseen. But one glimpse of the misery behind his father’s bulging eyes and Wellington was all set to surrender, to crumble, to give in and to be a soldier.
If only his godfather would intervene! Wellington had staked all his hopes on Uncle Charlie: he was an army surgeon, after all, and ought to understand. And he had always been sympathetic, in the letters they exchanged during termtime. But now he just sat in the wing-chair and smoked and smiled and smiled and smoked, as Wellington’s resolve melted away.
‘I’ll give you one last chance,’ growled the General in a menacing, low voice. ‘Give up this fool’s idea of yours and swear allegiance to the regiment as you did on your eighth birthday with your poor mother looking on. Your hand on Halbeard! Do it!’
Oh how well Wellington remembered that eighth birthday, that ritual swearing of loyalty to the family regiment, his hands hardly able to reach the stuffed head of a past regimental mascot which hung over the fireplace. Five years later the mangy old hound still glared out into the room, baring its yellow teeth, its glassy eyes dulled by soot from the fire. Halbeard, the dead mascot, growled down at Wellington, full of disappointment. Wellington quailed, his determination and all his hopes ebbing into the hearthrug. He reached up to put his hand into the open, mummified mouth …
‘Tell you what!’ exclaimed Uncle Charlie, lurching forwards in his chair with an amiable grin. ‘Why don’t you fight it out on the battlefield - the two of you - man to man?’
Father and son stared at him.
‘A war game! A game of strategy!’ cried Uncle Charlie, jumping up and heaving aside the furniture until an area of Turkey carpeting emerged, patchy with fading. He pushed Wellington off the hearthrug and threw this in a heap in the middle of the area, declaring, ‘Higher ground!’ He took off his smoking jacket and flung that down, too, in a bundle. ‘Where’re your lead soldiers lad? Fetch ’em down!’
Slothful Uncle Charlie had been a source of despair and disappointment to Wellington: Uncle Charlie in braces and high-waisted trousers and shirt unbuttoned at the cuffs, pulling the furniture about the room, was downright alarming, especially since he was, in effect, suggesting a further humiliation for his godson. How could Wellington, at thirteen, beat his esteemed officer father at a game of strategy? There was an element of luck in a war game, but not one large enough. Never. Wellington looked pleadingly at his godfather, hoping to be spared the game. But however hard he tried, he simply could not catch Uncle Charlie’s eye. He fetched his box of lead soldiers. It was the first present his
father had ever given him, when he was two, saying, ‘One day, Wellington, you’ll be a smart soldier like these fellows!’
‘I’ll call the shots!’ cried Uncle Charlie excitedly. To him it all seemed a great joke, and yet it was Wellington’s future they were playing for!
Lying on their faces, head to head across the Turkey carpet and rumpled hearthrug, father and son took up the role of enemies. Wellington’s toy soldiers were ranged between them, conscripted and forced into the strangest of all battles. The firelight flickered on the flecks of gold paint which made one a major, one a general, and on the unnatural pink of their painted lead faces and on the shiny brass artillery with which Wellington had never played.
‘Good! Very good! An excellent idea of yours, Charles,’ said the General. ‘A battle for self-determination, eh lad? Like some damned Balkan uprising.’
Wellington felt at a further disadvantage being half wedged beneath the sideboard. He struggled to remember the elements of battle plan they had already taught him at school, but his mind was a blank. He could only hope that the dice were kind to him.
Luck gave no quarter. Luck showed no mercy at all.
The General’s troops advanced across the Turkey carpet to the foot of the hearthrug, their progress determined by rolls of the dice - three, five, six. They had the mountain to shelter them from Wellington’s artillery now, and soon they would take the high ground and pick off Wellington’s men with throws of five and six. His troops scurried to the shelter of the smoking jacket, and a sorry, demoralized crew they seemed to Wellington. He could almost see the fear etched on their misshapen lead faces. Beyond the battlescape loomed the huge, fire-bright face of his father, its whiskers as menacing as dark clouds gathering around a setting sun. There was no body — only face: grinning, complacent face.
‘Dysentery!’ cried Uncle Charlie suddenly and startlingly.
‘What?’ snapped the General. ‘What d’you mean, “dysentery”? Who put dysentery in the rules?’
‘No rules in this game,’ said Uncle Charlie cheerfully, patrolling the edge of the battlefield on hands and knees. ‘No favouritism! Dysentery strikes both sides. What do you do?’
The General herrumphed and reared up off the carpet. He had seen plenty of dysentery on active service. It killed men surer than bullets. But do? What do about it? ‘Don’t catch your drift, man. Dig latrines, of course. Dig plenty of latrines.’
‘Still, shall we say a twenty per cent mortality?’ said Uncle Charlie, knocking down one in five of the General’s men. ‘And you, Wellington? What would you do?’
Wellington too was confused. He scowled with bewilderment but he said, ‘Set up field hospitals. Give daily equal parts of salt and sugar in boiled water, and dig separate latrines for the men affected and for the men not.’
‘Sugar and salt? What are you now - a chef?’ bawled the General over the summit of the hearthrug.
‘Sound medicine. Sound medicine,’ Charles interrupted. ‘Shall we say five per cent mortality?’ and he picked off just two of Wellington’s troopers. ‘Carry on.’
The set-back soured the General’s mood. He ploughed doggedly on up the hearthrug and took the high ground, dominating the battlefield. Charles threw the dice. ‘Six!’ he declared, and six of Wellington’s men lay down to an everlasting sleep on the turkish plush of the plain, far distant from the comforts of their green baize beds in the wooden toy-box. Wellington (who was overblessed with imagination) could almost hear their groans and smell the cordite on their singed and gory jackets. Poor men. To die in such a very poor cause as the wilful disobedience of Wellington George Armstrong, thirteen. Halbeard, the dead, stuffed mascot, grinned down at him with his bared teeth. The noise of the dice rolling sounded as loud as cannon roar.
‘Mutiny!’
‘Oh now look here, Charles. Don’t louse up the game.’ The General sat up, his clothes straining, too tight for lying on the floor in comfort. ‘Mutiny? Mutiny ain’t in the rules.’
‘But this ain’t a game, General,’ said Uncle Charlie, getting to his feet. ‘This is the matter of a lifetime. Mutiny. One quarter of your troops mutiny, General. However, they are seized on by the remaining loyal troopers and chained to the munition carts. How do you handle the situation?’
‘Shoot them like the dogs they are,’ said the General, and it was plain that he too could smell the cordite and hear the rattle of the chains. He picked out his own soldiers as if he were picking maggots out of cake, and threw them disdainfully into the seat of the armchair. ‘That’s how to deal with a mutiny, lad,’ he murmured towards Wellington, having for the moment forgotten that his son did not thirst after such knowledge.
It was Uncle Charlie who seemed now to be holding the only high ground in the living room, for he was standing up and they were lying on their faces at his feet. ‘And you, Wellington?’ he said.
‘A mutiny, too?’
‘Don’t try to be clever, lad. Just say honestly what you’d do.’ Uncle Charlie had stopped smiling.
Wellington was startled by this sudden ferocity into answering truthfully. ‘In the middle of a war, sir? I suppose I’d promise to look into their grievances as soon as we got home and beg them to trust and serve me until then.’
‘Pah!’ The General struck his fist so hard against the floor that Wellington felt the other end of the floorboard lift under his thigh. But Uncle Charlie cut short any tirade by recommencing the battle. ‘Wait! Wait!’ protested the General. ‘You’ve forgotten to penalize the boy for the mutiny!’
‘But he shot none of his men. You shot yours,’ said Charles in a quick, businesslike voice. ‘Shall we go on?’
Wellington had more men. The General held more ground. The scene was set for a war of attrition dragging on and on, death by death, until a handful of men were left triumphantly huddled on either Hearthrug Hill or Jacket Bluff.
His father’s blood running in Wellington’s veins began to quicken. A few lucky throws of the dice, another advantage tossed his way by Uncle Charlie, and perhaps he could massacre his father’s troops and still be left with a man or two standing. He realized, from a pain in his jaw, that he was grinding his teeth hard together. The reason for winning the battle slipped little by little out of his mind. The desire to win, the desire to kill, the desire to humiliate his tyrannical enemy rose up like lava through the seams of a volcano.
‘Hostage taken,’ said Uncle Charlie.
‘Oh d**n you, Charles!’ The General uttered an oath Wellington had never even thought he knew. ‘More trickery?’
‘War’s full of trickery, General. You don’t need me to tell you that.’ Charles had retired to the fireplace and was smoking another cigarette and casually leaning against the mantelpiece, his eyes fixed fast on the battlefield. He was deaf to entreaties, this aloof god of war. ‘Your son, General, has been taken hostage. Give up the hill. Surrender. Or his throat will be cut at dawn.’
The General began to cough — huge, convulsive coughs intended to disguise a complete loss of self-control. Across the jagged peak of Hearthrug Hill, he saw the wide, blue, ingenuous eyes of his son watching him, watching him. He must not show the boy an example of weakness. Valour was the very thing at issue. Cowardice was the very crime which had come between father and son. He must give his boy some example of strength - show him the stuff of English pluck. He had to prove how infinitely finer was the profession of a soldier than that of a doctor! ‘A British officer’s first duty is to his Queen and Country, no matter what the personal cost,’ said the General, overloud.
Uncle Charlie cut his speech short and summed up briskly: ‘Your son’s throat is cut. The hill remains in your hands.’
The General gave an involuntary smile of relief: that hill had come to mean so very much to him.
Uncle Charlie called across the room in a sharp, imperious voice. ‘You, Wellington. Your father has been taken hostage. What do you do?’
Wellington lifted his forehead off the carpet. Tears were running down
his cheeks and splashing on to the pile of discarded — (dead) — lead soldiers heaped up beside the battlefield. He rested on his father the same look of bewilderment, hurt and reproach that the General had seen in the eyes of young men dying in field-hospital hammocks under fly-blown foreign skies.
‘Answer honestly, Wellington!’ shouted Uncle Charlie.
So Wellington put out his hand and picked up a fistful of the soldiers from Jacket Bluff and hurled them clumsily, overarm, over the summit of Hearthrug Hill, at his father’s big, round, florid face. ‘Surrender, of course,’ he hissed between shapeless, quivering lips.
A silence filled the room that was broken only by Wellington’s quick, agitated breathing and the crack of walnut shells in the firegrate - a sound reminiscent of a cavalry battle over, as the horsemaster tours the field, shooting maimed animals.
Uncle Charlie stepped into the battlefield, his satin-taped trousers and soft leather shoes bringing the whole landscape down to scale. It was, after all, only a yard or two of carpet. He extricated his smoking jacket, letting the last of Wellington’s toy soldiers fall on to the carpet pile.
And with his jacket returned to his shoulders, Uncle Charlie returned to his slow, indolent, smiling former self, slouching into an armchair and luxuriantly lighting another cigarette. ‘You see what a scurvy soldier he’d make, Tom?’ he said conversationally to the man stretched out on the floor. ‘Something of the killing instinct missing, don’t you know? Gives in to mutineers. Surrenders out of sheer sentiment. Better let him be a doctor hadn’t we? He’d be a liability to the Queen.’
The General did not answer. He and his son looked at one another, face to face across the Turkey carpet. All lines of communication were severed, like telegraph wires brought down by shelling. The red glow of the dying fire cast a red gash of light across Wellington’s face and throat, and the eyes might just as well have been dead.
Wellington George Armstrong left military academy and ultimately studied medicine. He went to France as a volunteer surgeon at the beginning of the First World War and was killed at the battle of Passchendaele by a mudslide. His father died in bed not long afterwards - of a broken heart, some say.
A Pack of Lies Page 14
