Unconditional surrender (14 page)

Next morning Captain Fremantle reported to his commandant with the customary sheaf of confidential reports. He found Ludovic at a desk clear of all papers. The Pekinese puppy was in sole occupation of that oaken surface on which had been indited so many of Ludovic’s
pensées
; he gave intermittent attention to the efforts being made to divert him with a ping-pong ball, a piece of string, and an india-rubber.

‘What are you going to call him, sir?’ Captain Fremantle asked in the obsequious tones which usually provoked a rebuff. This afternoon he was received more kindly.

‘I’m giving it a lot of thought. Captain Claire called his dog Freda. That name is precluded by the difference of sex. I knew a dog called Trooper once – but he was a much bigger animal of quite different character.’

‘Something Chinese, perhaps?’

‘I shouldn’t like that at all,’ said Ludovic severely. ‘It would remind me of Lady Cripps’s Fund.’ He looked with distaste at the documents offered him. ‘Work,’ he said. ‘Routine. All right, leave them here.’ He tenderly bore the puppy to its basket. ‘Stay there,’ he said. ‘Daddy’s got to earn you your din-din.’

Captain Fremantle saluted and withdrew. Ludovic found the necessary forms and began his work of editing.

‘
De Souza O.K.
’ he read, and baldly translated:
The above named officer has satisfactorily completed his course and is highly recommended for employment in the field.

Of Gilpin he wrote:
Initial reluctance was overcome but with evident effort. It is recommended that further consideration should be given to the stability of this officer’s character before he is passed as suitable.

With deliberation he left Guy to the last. The chief instructor had written:
NBG. Too old. Spirit willing – flesh weak.
Ludovic paused, seeking the appropriate, the inevitable words for the sentence he was determined to pronounce. As a child he had been well grounded in Scripture and was familiar with the tale of Uriah the Hittite in its resonant Jacobean diction, but though tempted, he eschewed all archaisms in composing this
pensée
.
A slight accident
, he wrote,
in no way attributable to this officer’s infirmity or negligence, prevented his completing the full course. However he showed such outstanding aptitude that he is recommended for immediate employment in action without further training.

He folded the papers, marked them
Most Secret
, put them in a nest of envelopes and summoned his staff-captain.

‘There,’ he said to the puppy, ‘Daddy’s finished his horrid work. Did you think you’d been forgotten? Was you jealous of the nasty soldier-men?’

When Captain Fremantle reported, he found Ludovic with the puppy on his heart, buttoned into his tunic, only its bright white head appearing.

‘I’ve decided what to call him,’ Ludovic said. ‘You may think it rather a conventional name but it has poignant associations for me. His name is Fido.’

THE
Transit Camp, despite all Jumbo’s manifest will to give Guy a position of privilege there – he had come during the last year to regard him almost as a contemporary; no longer as an adventurous temporary officer but as a seasoned Halberdier cruelly but unjustly relegated like himself to an unheroic role – was not an ideal place for the bedridden. It had served well as a place to leave in the early morning for HOO HQ and as a place to return to late from Bellamy’s. It was not the place to spend day and night – particularly such nights as Guy now suffered, made almost sleepless by the throb and dead weight of his plastered knee. For two days the relief from music and from the attentions of the conscientious objector was solace enough. Then a restless melancholy began to afflict him. Jumbo noticed it.

‘You ought to see more fellows,’ he said. ‘It’s awkward here in some ways. Can’t have a lot of women coming in and out. Oughtn’t really to have civilians at all. Isn’t there anyone who’d take you in? Nothing easier than to draw lodging allowances.’

Guy thought: Arthur Box-Bender? He would not be welcome. Kerstie Kilbannock? Virginia was living there.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t believe there is.’

‘Pity. How would it be if I sent a message to your club? Your porter might send some fellows round. How’s the knee today by the way?’

Guy was not seriously injured – something had been cracked, something else twisted out of place; he was in slightly worse condition than he had been after the Halberdier guest night; no more than that – but he was hampered and in pain. His calf and ankle were swollen by the constriction of the plaster.

‘I believe I shall be a lot more comfortable without this thing on it.’

‘Who put it on?’

‘One of the Air Force doctors.’

‘Soon get that off,’ said Jumbo. I’ll send my man up at once.’

Obediently the RAMC major attached to the camp – one of the lighter posts of that busy service – came to Guy’s room with a pair of shears and laboriously removed the encumbrance.

‘I suppose it’s all right doing this,’ he said. ‘They ought to have sent me the X-ray pictures, but of course they haven’t. Does it seem more comfortable like that?’

‘Much.’

‘Well, that’s the important thing. I dare say a spot of heat might help. I’ll send along a chap with a lamp.’

This reincarnation of Florence Nightingale did not appear. The swelling of calf and ankle slightly subsided; the knee grew huge. Instead of a continuous ache Guy suffered from frequent agonizing spasms when he moved in the bed. They were on the whole preferable.

The immediate result of Jumbo’s appeal to Bellamy’s was a visit from Lieutenant Padfield. He came in the morning, when most men and women in London were ostensibly busy, bearing the new number of
Survival
and a Staffordshire figure of Mr Gladstone; also a fine bunch of chrysanthemums, but these were not for Guy.

‘I’m on my way to the Dorchester,’ he explained. ‘Ruby had rather a misfortune last night. One of our generals over here is a great admirer of
Peter Pan
. Ruby asked him to dinner to meet Sir James Barrie. She kindly asked me too. I was surprised to learn Barrie was still alive. Well, of course, he isn’t. We waited an hour for him and when at last she rang for dinner they said room-service was off and that there was a red warning anyway. “That’s what it is,” she said. “He’s gone down to a shelter. Ridiculous at his age.” So we got no dinner and the general was upset and so was Ruby.’

‘You do lead a complicated life, Loot.’

‘The same sort of thing is happening all the time in New York, they tell me. All the social secretaries are in Washington. So I thought, a few flowers…’

 ‘You might take her Mr Gladstone too, Loot. It was a very kind thought but, you know, I’ve nowhere to put him.’

‘Do you think Ruby would really like it? Most of her things are French.’

‘Her husband was in Asquith’s cabinet.’

‘Yes, of course he was. I’d forgotten. Yes, that would make a difference. Well I must be going.’ The Lieutenant dallied at the door uncertainly regarding the earthenware figure. ‘The Glenobans sent you many messages of condolence.’

‘I don’t know them.’

‘And so did your Uncle Peregrine – such an interesting man… You know I don’t really think this would go well in Ruby’s room.’

‘Give it to the Glenobans.’

‘Are they Liberals?’

‘I dare say. Lots of Scotch are.’

‘I might change it for a highlander. There was one in the same shop.’

‘I’m sure the Glenobans would prefer Mr Gladstone.’

‘Yes.’

At length the Lieutenant departed on his work of mercy, leaving Guy to
Survival
.

This was the issue on which little Fido had gorged. It had gone to press long before Everard Spruce received Ludovic’s manuscript. Guy turned the pages without interest. It compared unfavourably in his opinion with the Squadron Leader’s ‘comic’ particularly in the matter of draughtsmanship. Everard Spruce, in the days when he courted the Marxists, dissembled a discreditable, personal preference for Fragonard above Léger by denying all interest in graphic art, affirming stoutly and correctly that the Workers were solidly behind him in his indifference. ‘Look at Russia,’ he would say. But the Ministry of Information in the early days of
Survival
, before the Russian alliance, had pointed out that since Hitler had proclaimed a taste for ‘figurative’ painting, defence of the cosmopolitan
avant garde
had become a patriotic duty in England. Spruce submitted without demur and
Survival
accordingly displayed frequent ‘art supplements’, chosen by Coney and Frankie.

There was one such in the current issue, ten shiny pages of squiggles. Guy turned from them to an essay by the pacific expatriate Parsnip, tracing the affinity of Kafka to Klee. Guy had not heard of either of these famous names.

His next caller was his uncle, Peregrine.

Uncle Peregrine, like the Lieutenant, had ample leisure. He brought no gift, supposing his attendance was treat enough. He sat holding his umbrella and soft, shabby hat and looked at his nephew reproachfully.

‘You should take more care of yourself,’ he said, ‘now that you are the head of the family.’

He was five years younger than Guy’s father but he looked rather older; an imperfect and ill-kept cast from the same mould.

When the Lieutenant spoke of Peregrine Crouchback as ‘interesting’ he was making a unique judgement. A man of many interests certainly, well read, widely travelled, minutely informed in many recondite subjects, a discerning collector of bibelots; a man handsomely apparelled and adorned when he did duty at the papal court; a man nevertheless assiduously avoided even by those who shared his interests. He exemplified the indefinable numbness which Guy recognized intermittently in himself; the saturnine strain which in Ivo had swollen to madness, terror of which haunted Box-Bender when he studied his son’s letters from prison-camp.

In 1915 Uncle Peregrine contracted a complicated form of dysentery on his first day in the Dardanelles and was obliged to spend the rest of the war as ADC to a colonial governor who repeatedly but vainly cabled for his recall. In the nineteen twenties he had hung about the diplomatic service as honorary attaché. Once Ralph Brompton, as first secretary, had been posted to the same embassy, and had sought to make him the chancery butt; unsuccessfully; his apathetic self-esteem was impervious to ridicule; no spark could be struck from that inert element. For the last decade, after the decline in the value of the pound, Uncle Peregrine had made his home in London, in an old-fashioned flat near Westminster Cathedral, at whose great functions he sometimes assisted in various liveries. Perhaps he was a legitimate object of interest to an inquiring foreigner like the Lieutenant. He could have occurred nowhere else but in England and in no period but his own.

Uncle Peregrine quite enjoyed the war. He was naturally frugal and welcomed the excuse to forgo wine and food, to wear his old clothes and to change his linen weekly. He was quite without fear for his own safety when the bombs were falling. He rejoiced to see so many of his gloomier predictions of foreign policy fulfilled. For a time he busied himself with the despatch of parcels to distressed civilians in enemy hands. Lately he had found more congenial work. There was a ‘salvage drive’ in progress in the course of which public-spirited citizens were exhorted to empty their shelves so that their books could be pulped to produce official forms and
Survival
. Many rare and beautiful volumes perished before it occurred to the ministry that they could more profitably be sold. A committee was then authorized to survey two centuries of English literature laid out, backs uppermost, in what had once been a school gymnasium; male and female, the old buffers poked among the bindings, making their choice of what should be saved, priced, and put into the market. They met two or three times a week for their business, in which, as in all matters, Uncle Peregrine was scrupulously honest; but he exercised the prerogative of pre-emption enjoyed by the stall-holders of charitable bazaars. He invariably asked a colleague to decide the price of anything he coveted; if it fell within his means, he paid and bore it off. Not more than twenty items had been added to his little library in this way, but every one was a bibliophile’s treasure. The prices were those which the old amateurs remembered to have prevailed in the lean last years of peace.

‘A young American protégé of mine told me you were here,’ he continued. ‘You may remember meeting him with me. It doesn’t seem much of a place,’ he added critically surveying Guy’s room. ‘I don’t think I ever heard of it before.’

He inquired into the condition of Guy’s knee and into the treatment he was receiving. Who was his medical man? ‘Major Blenkinsop? Don’t think I’ve ever heard of him. Are you sure he understands the knee? Highly specialized things, knees.’ He spoke of an injury he himself sustained many years before on a tennis-lawn at Bordighera. ‘Fellow I had then didn’t understand knees. It’s never been quite the same since.’

He picked up
Survival
, glanced at the illustrations, remarked without hostility: ‘Ah,
modern
’, and then passed on to public affairs. ‘Shocking news from the eastern front. The Bolshevists are advancing again. Germans don’t seem able to stop them. I’d sooner see the Japanese in Europe – at least they have a king and some sort of religion. If one can believe the papers we are actually helping the Bolshevists. It’s a mad world, my masters.’

Finally he said: ‘I came with an invitation. Why don’t you move into my flat until you are fit? There’s plenty of room, I’ve still got Mrs Corner; she does what she can with the rations. The lift works – which is more than a lot of people can claim. There’s a Dutch Dominican – not that I approve of Dominicans in the general way – giving a really interesting series of Advent conferences at the Cathedral. You can see he doesn’t like the way the war’s going. You’d be better off than you are here. I’m at home most evenings,’ he added as though that constituted an inestimable attraction.

It was the measure of Guy’s melancholy that he did not at once reject the offer; that in fact he accepted it.

Jumbo arranged for an ambulance to take him to his new address. The lift, as promised, bore him up to the large, dark, heavily furnished flat and Mrs Corner, the housekeeper, received him as an honourably wounded soldier.

Not very far away Colonel Grace-Groundling-Marchpole was studying a list submitted to him for approval.

‘Crouchback?’ he said. ‘Haven’t we a file on him?’

‘Yes. The Box-Bender case.’

‘I remember.
And
the Scottish nationalists.’

‘And the priest in Alexandria. There’s been nothing much on him since.’

‘No. He may have lost contact with his headquarters. It’s just as well we didn’t pull him in at the time. If we let him go to Italy he may lead us into the neo-fascist network.’

‘It won’t be so easy keeping track of him there. The Eighth Army is not security conscious.’

‘No. It’s a moot point. On the whole, perhaps, the noes have it.’

He wrote:
This officer cannot be recommended for secret work in Italy
, and turned to the name of de Souza.

‘Communist party member of good standing,’ he said. ‘Quite sound at the moment.’

The room in which Guy was to spend six weeks and make a momentous decision, had seldom been occupied during Uncle Peregrine’s tenancy. Its window opened on a brick wall. It was furnished with pieces from the dispersal of Broome. Guy lay in a large old bed ornamented with brass knobs. Here Major Blenkinsop paid him a cursory visit.

‘Still pretty puffy, eh? Well, the only thing is to keep it up.’

Through Jumbo’s good offices Guy was able to lay in some gin and whisky. The circle of his acquaintances had widened in the last four years. During his first days at the flat he received several visitors, Ian Kilbannock among them. After twenty minutes of desultory gossip he said: ‘You remember Ivor Clare?’

‘Yes, indeed.’

‘He’s joined the Chindits in Burma. Surprising, don’t you think?’

Guy thought of his first view of Ivor in the Borghese Gardens. ‘Not altogether.’

‘The whispering campaign took some time to reach the Far East. Or perhaps he got bored with vice-regal circles.’

‘Ivor doesn’t believe in sacrifice. Who does nowadays? But he had the will to win.’

‘I can’t think of anything more sacrificial than plodding about in the jungle with those desperadoes. I don’t know what he thinks he’s going to win there.’

‘There was a time I was very fond of Ivor.’

‘Oh, I’m
fond
of him. Everyone is and everyone has forgotten his little
faux pas
in Crete. That’s what makes it so rum his charging off to be a hero now.’

When Ian left, Guy brooded about the antithesis between the acceptance of sacrifice and the will to win. It seemed to have personal relevance, as yet undefined, to his own condition.

He re-read the letter from his father which he carried always in his pocket book.
‘The Mystical Body doesn’t strike attitudes or stand on its dignity. It accepts suffering and injustice ... Quantitative judgements don’t apply.’