by Evelyn Waugh
‘Yes, certainly. You will lay on hot dinners for the battalion, a bath for me, artillery support and a few squadrons of fighter aircraft. That’s about all we want this morning, I think.’ Colonel Tickeridge was in high good humour. As he entered his headquarters he called: ‘Hi, there. Bring on the dancing-girls. Where’s Halberdier Gold?’
‘Just coming up, sir.’
Halberdier Gold was an old friend, since the evening at Matchet when he had carried Guy’s bag from the station, before the question even arose of Guy’s joining the corps. He smiled broadly.
‘Good morning, Gold; remember me?’
‘Good morning, sir. Welcome back to the battalion.’
‘Vino,’ called Colonel Tickeridge. ‘Wine for our guest from the higher formation.’
It was said with the utmost geniality but it struck a slight chill after the men’s warmer greeting.
Gold laid a jug of wine on the table with the biscuits and bully beef. While they ate and drank, Colonel Tickeridge told Major Erskine:
‘Quite a bit of excitement on the left flank. We were up with D Company and I was just warning Brent to expect fireworks in half an hour or so when the Commandos pull out, when I’m blessed if the blighters didn’t start pooping off at us with a heavy mortar from the other side of the rocks. De Souza’s platoon caught it pretty hot. Lucky we had the truck there to bring back the pieces. We just stopped to watch Brent winkle the mortar out. Then we came straight home. I’ve made some nice friends out there – a company of New Zealanders who rolled up and said please might they join in our battle – first-class fellows.’
This seemed the moment for Guy to say what had been in his mind since meeting Shanks.
‘That’s exactly what I want to do, Colonel,’ he said. ‘Isn’t there a platoon you could let me take over?’
Colonel Tickeridge regarded him benevolently. ‘No, uncle, of course there isn’t.’
‘But later in the day, when you get casualties?’
‘My good uncle, you aren’t under my command. You can’t start putting in for a cross-posting in the middle of a battle. That’s not how the army works, you know that. You’re a Hookforce body.’
‘But, Colonel, those New Zealanders—’
‘Sorry, uncle. No can do.’
And that, Guy knew from of old, was final.
Colonel Tickeridge began to explain the details of the rear-guard to Major Erskine. Sarum-Smith came to announce that the Commandos were coming through and Guy followed him out into the village and saw a line of dust and the back of the last Hookforce lorry disappearing to the south. There was a little firing, rifles and light machine-guns, and an occasional mortar bomb three-quarters of a mile to the north where the Halberdiers held their line. Guy stood between his friends, isolated.
A few hours earlier he had exulted in his loneliness. Now the case was altered. He was a ‘guest from the higher formation’, a ‘Hookforce body’, without place or function, a spectator. And all the deep sense of desolation which he had sought to cure, which from time to time momentarily seemed to be cured, overwhelmed him as of old. His heart sank. It seemed to him as though literally an organ of his body were displaced, subsiding, falling heavily like a feather in a vacuum jar; Philoctetes set apart from his fellows by an old festering wound; Philoctetes without his bow. Sir Roger without his sword.
Presently Colonel Tickeridge cheerfully intruded on his despondency.
‘Well, uncle, nice to have seen you. I expect you want to get back to your own people. You’ll have to walk, I’m afraid. The Adj and I are going round the companies again.’
‘Can I come too?’
Colonel Tickeridge hesitated, then said: ‘The more the merrier.’
As they went forward he asked news of Matchet. ‘You staff wallahs get all the luck. We’ve had no mail since we went into Greece.’
The Second Halberdiers and the New Zealanders lay across the main road, their flanks resting on the steep scree that enclosed the valley. D Company were on the far right flank, strung out along a water-course. To reach them there was open ground to be crossed.
As Colonel Tickeridge and his party emerged from cover a burst of fire met them.
‘Hullo,’ he said, ‘the Jerries are a lot nearer than they were this morning.’
They ran for some rocks and approached cautiously and circuitously. When they finally dropped into the ditch they found Brent and Sergeant-Major Rawkes. Both were preoccupied and rather grim. They acknowledged Guy’s greeting and then turned at once to their CO.
‘They’ve brought up another mortar.’
‘Can you pin-point it?’
‘They keep moving. They’re going easy with their ammunition at present but they’ve got the range.’
Colonel Tickeridge stood and searched the land ahead through his field-glasses. A bomb burst ten yards behind; all crouched low while a shower of stone and metal rang overhead.
‘We haven’t anything to spare for a counter-attack,’ said Colonel Tickeridge. ‘You’ll have to give a bit of ground.’
In training Guy had often wondered whether the exercises at Penkirk bore any semblance to real warfare. Here they did. This was no Armageddon, no torrent of uniformed migration, no clash of mechanical monsters; it was the conventional ‘battalion in defence’, opposed by lightly armed, equally weary small forces. Ritchie-Hook had done little to inculcate the arts of withdrawal, but the present action conformed to pattern. While Colonel Tickeridge gave his orders, Guy moved down the bank. He found de Souza and his depleted platoon. He had a picturesque bandage round his head. Under it his sallow face was grave.
‘Lost a bit of my ear,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t hurt. But I’ll be glad when today is over.’
‘You’re retiring at midnight, I gather.’
‘“Retiring” is good. It sounds like a maiden aunt going to bed.’
‘I dare say you’ll be in Alexandria before me,’ said Guy. ‘Hookforce is last out, covering the embarkation. I don’t get the impression that the Germans are anxious to attack.’
‘D’you know what I think, uncle? I think they want to escort us quietly into the ships. Then they can sink us at their leisure from the air. A much tidier way of doing things.’
A bomb exploded short of them.
‘I wish I could spot that damned mortar,’ said de Souza.
Then an orderly summoned him to company headquarters, Guy went with him and rejoined Colonel Tickeridge.
It took little time to mount the withdrawal on the flank. Guy watched the battalion adjust itself to its new line. Everything was done correctly. Colonel Tickeridge gave his orders for the hours of darkness and for the final retreat. Guy made notes of times and lines of march in which the Halberdiers and New Zealanders would pass through Hookforce. Then he took his leave.
‘If you run across any blue jobs,’ said Colonel Tickeridge, ‘tell them to wait for us.’
For the third time Guy followed the road south. Night fell. The road filled with many men. Guy found the remnants of his headquarters where he had left them. He did not inquire for Major Hound. Sergeant Smiley offered no information. They fell in and set out into the darkness. They marched all night, one silent component of the procession of lagging, staggering men.
Another day; another night.
‘Night and day,’ crooned Trimmer, ‘you are the one. Only you beneath the moon and under the sun, in the roaring traffic’s boom—’
‘Listen,’ said Ian Kilbannock severely, ‘you are coming to the Savoy to meet the American Press.’
‘In the silence of my lonely room I think of you.’
‘Trimmer.’
‘I’ve met them.’
‘Not these.These are Scab Dunz, Bum Schlum, and Joe Mulligan. They’re great fellows, Scab, Bum, and Joe. Their stories are syndicated all over the United States. Trimmer, if you don’t stop warbling I shall recommend your return to regimental duties in Iceland. Bum and Scab are naturally antifascist. Joe is more doubtful. He’s Bo
ston Irish and he doesn’t awfully care for us.’
‘I’m sick of the Press. D’you see what the Daily Beast are calling me – “The Demon Barber”?’
‘Their phrase, not ours. I wish I’d thought of it.’
‘Anyway, I’m lunching with Virginia.’
‘I’ll get you out of that.’
‘It isn’t exactly a hard date.’
‘Leave it to me.’
Ian picked up the telephone and Trimmer lapsed into song.
‘There’s oh such a burning, yearning, churning under the hide of me—’
‘Virginia? Ian. Colonel Trimmer regrets he’s unable to lunch today, madam.’
‘The demon barber? It never occurred to me to lunch with him. Ian, do something, will you? for an old friend. Persuade your young hero that he utterly nauseates me.’
‘Is that quite kind?’
‘There are dozens of girls eager to go out with him. Why must he pick on me?’
‘He says there’s a voice within him keeps repeating, “You, you, you.”’
‘Cheek. Tell him to go to hell, Ian, like an angel.’
Ian rang off.
‘She says you’re to go to hell,’ he reported.
‘Oh.’
‘Why don’t you lay off Virginia? There’s nothing in it for you.’
‘But there is, there was. She can’t put on this stand-offish turn with me. Why, in Glasgow—’
‘Trimmer, you must have seen enough of me to know that I’m the last man in the world you should choose to confide in – particularly on questions of love. You must forget all about Virginia, all about all these London girls you’ve been going about with lately. I’ve got a great treat in store for you. I’m going to take you round the factories.You’re going to boost production. Lunch-hour talks. Canteen dances. We’ll find you all kinds of delicious girls. You’re in for a lovely time, Trimmer, in the midlands, in the north, far away from London. But meanwhile you must do your bit for Anglo-American relations with Scab and Bum and Joe. There’s a war on.’
In the staff-car which took them to the Savoy, Ian tried to put Trimmer in the picture.
‘… You won’t find Joe much interested in military operations, I’m glad to say. He’s been brought up to distrust the “red coats”. He looks on us all as feudal colonial oppressors, which, I will say for you, Trimmer, you definitely are not. We’ve got to sell him the new Britain that is being forged in the furnace of war. Dammit Trimmer, I don’t believe you’re listening.’
Nor was he. A voice within him kept forlornly repeating, ‘You, you, you.’
Ian Kilbannock, like Ludovic, had a gift of tongues. He spoke one language to his friends, another to Trimmer and General Whale, another to Bum, Scab, and Joe.
‘Hiya, boys,’ he cried, entering the room. ‘Look what the cat’s brought in.’
It was not for economy that these three fat, untidy men lived cheek by jowl together; their expense accounts were limitless. Nor was it, as sometimes in the past, for motives of professional rivalry; in this city of communiqués and censorship there were no scoops to be had, no need to watch the opposition. It was the simple wish for companionship; their common condition of exile; the state of their nerves. Low diet, deep drinking and nightly alarms had transformed them, or rather had greatly accelerated processes of decay that were barely noticeable in the three far-feared ace reporters who had jauntily landed in England more than a year ago. They had covered the fall of Addis Ababa, of Barcelona, of Vienna, of Prague. They were here to cover the fall of London and the story had somehow gotten stale. Meanwhile they were subject to privations and dangers which, man and boy, they had boastfully endured for days at a time, but which, prolonged indefinitely and widely shared, became irksome.
Their room overlooked the river but the windows had been criss-crossed with sticking plaster and few gleams of sunshine penetrated them. Inside, the electric light burned. There were three typewriters, three cabin-trunks, three beds, a tumbled mass of papers and clothes, numberless cigarette-ends, dirty glasses, clean glasses, empty bottles, full bottles. Three pairs of bloodshot eyes gazed at Trimmer from three putty-coloured faces.
‘Bum, Scab, Joe, this is the boy you’ve all been wanting to meet.’
‘Is that a fact?’ asked Joe.
‘Colonel McTavish, I’m pleased to meet you,’ said Bum.
‘Colonel Trimmer, I’m pleased to meet you,’ said Scab.
‘Hey,’ said Joe.’ Who is this joker? McTavish? Trimmer?’
‘That is still being discussed at a high level,’ said Ian. ‘I’ll let you know for certain before your story is released.’
‘What story?’ asked Joe balefully.
Scab came to the rescue.
‘Don’t mind Joe, Colonel. Let me fix you a drink.’
‘Joe isn’t feeling too hot this morning,’ said Bum.
‘I just asked what’s the guy’s name and what’s the story. What’s not too hot about that?’
‘What say we all have a drink?’ said Bum.
Of Trimmer’s abounding weaknesses hard drinking was not one. He did not enjoy whisky before luncheon. He refused the glass thrust upon him.
‘What’s wrong with the guy?’ asked Joe.
‘Commando training,’ said Ian.
‘Is that so? Well, I’m just a goddam newsman and I don’t train. When a guy won’t drink with me, I drink alone.’
Scab was the most courtly of the trio.
‘I can guess where you want to be right now, Colonel,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ said Trimmer, ‘Glasgow, in the station hotel, in a fog.’
‘No, sir. Where you want to be right now is in Crete. Your boys are putting up a wonderful fight there. You heard the Old Man on the radio last night? There is no question, he said, of evacuating Crete. The attack has been held. The defence is being reinforced. It’s a turning-point. There’s going to be no more withdrawal.’
‘We’re with you in this,’ said Bum generously, ‘all the way. I don’t say there haven’t been times I’ve hated you limeys’ guts. Abyssinia, Spain, Munich, that’s all done with, Colonel. What wouldn’t I give to be in Crete. That’s where the news is today.’
‘You may remember,’ said Ian, ‘you asked me to bring Colonel McTavish to lunch. You thought he could give you a story.’
‘That’s right. We did, didn’t we? Well, how about we have another drink first, even if the Colonel can’t join us?’
They drank and they smoked. The hands which lit the cigarettes became steadier with each glass, the genial tones more emotional.
‘I like you, Ian, even if you are a lord. Hell, a man can’t help it if he’s a lord. You’re all right, Ian, I like you.’
‘Thank you, Bum.’
‘I like the Colonel too. He don’t say much and he don’t drink any but I like him. He’s a regular guy.’
Even Joe softened enough to say: ‘Anybody says the Colonel isn’t all right, I’ll punch his teeth in.’
‘Everyone says the Colonel’s all right, Joe.’
‘They better.’
Presently the time for luncheon passed.
‘There isn’t anything fit to eat around here, anyway,’ said Joe.
‘I’m not hungry right now myself,’ said Bum.
‘Food? I can take it or leave it,’ said Scab.
‘Now, boys,’ said Ian. ‘Colonel McTavish is a pretty busy man. He’s here to give you his story. How about asking him anything you want now?’
‘All right,’ said Joe. ‘What else have you done, Colonel? That raid of yours was good copy. They ate it up back home. You got decorated. You got made Colonel. So what? Where else have you been? Tell us what you did this week and the week before. How come you’re not in Crete?’
‘I’ve been on leave,’ said Trimmer.
‘Well, that’s a hell of a story.’
‘Here’s the angle, boys,’ said Ian. ‘The Colonel here is a portent – the new officer which is emerging from the old hide-b
ound British Army.’
‘How do I know he’s not high-bound?’
‘Joe, you don’t have to be so suspicious,’ said Scab. ‘Anyone with eyes in his head can see he isn’t hide-bound.’
‘He doesn’t look high-bound,’ Joe conceded, ‘but how do I know he isn’t. Are you high-bound?’
‘He’s not hide-bound,’ said Ian.
‘Why don’t you let the Colonel answer for himself? I put it to you, Colonel, are you or are you not high-bound?’
‘No,’ said Trimmer.
‘That’s all I wanted to know,’ said Joe.
‘You asked him. He told you,’ said Bum.
‘Now I know. So what the hell?’
Presently through the fumes of tobacco and whisky a great earnestness enveloped Scab.
‘You’re not hide-bound, Colonel, and I’ll tell you why. You’ve had advantages these stuff-shirts haven’t had. You’ve worked, Colonel. And where have you worked? On an ocean liner. And who have you worked for? For American womanhood. Am I right or am I right? It all ties in. I can make a great piece out of this. How it’s the casual personal contacts that make international alliances. The beauty parlour as the school of democracy. You must have had some very very lovely contacts on that ocean liner, Colonel.’
‘I had the pick of the bunch,’ said Trimmer.
‘Tell them,’ said Ian, ‘about your American friends.’
A small pink gleam of professional interest broke in the journalists’ eyes while Trimmer by contrast lapsed into trance.
‘There was Mrs Troy,’ he began.
‘I don’t think that’s quite what the boys want,’ said Ian.
‘Not every voyage, of course, but two or three times a year. Four times in 1938 when half our regulars were keeping away because of the situation in Europe. She wasn’t afraid,’ mused Trimmer. ‘I always looked for her name on the passenger list. Before it was printed I used to slip into the office and take a dekko. There was something about her – well, you know how it is – like music. When she had a hangover I was the only one who could help. There was something about me, she said, the way I massaged the back of her neck.’
‘But you must have met other, more typical Americans?’
‘She isn’t typical. She isn’t American except she married one and she hadn’t any use for him. She’s something quite apart.’
