Parade's End (96 page)

‘I shall apply to have you transferred to the Jewish regiment. In the meantime you can go back to the First Line Transport. You shouldn’t have been a Left journalist and have a name like Eisenstein. One or the other. Not both.’ The man said the name had been inflicted on his ancestry in the Middle Ages. He would prefer to be called Esau, as a son of that tribe. He pleaded not to be sent to the Jewish regiment, which was believed to be in
Mesopotamia,
just when the fighting there was at its most interesting.

‘You’re probably thinking of writing a book,’ Tietjens said. ‘Well, there are all Abanar and Pharpar to write about. I’m sorry. But you’re intelligent enough to see that I can’t take …’ He stopped, fearing that if the sergeant heard any more the men might make it hot for the fellow as a suspect. He was annoyed at having asked his name before the sergeant. He appeared to be a good man. Jews could fight… . And hunt! … But he wasn’t going to take any risks. The man, dark-eyed and erect, flinched a little, gazing into Tietjens’ eyes.

‘I suppose you can’t, sir,’ he said. ‘It’s a disappointment. I’m not writing anything. I want to go on in the Army. I like the life.’

Tietjens said:

‘I’m sorry, Smith. I can’t help it. Fall out!’ He was sorry. He believed the fellow. But responsibility hardens the heart. It must. A very short time ago he would have taken trouble over that fellow. A great deal of trouble, very likely. Now he wasn’t going to… .

A large capital ‘A’ in whitewash decorated the piece of corrugated iron that was derelictly propped against a channel at right angles to the trench. To Tietjens’ astonishment a strong impulse like a wave of passion influenced his being towards the left – up that channel. It wasn’t funk: it wasn’t any sort of funk. He had been rather irritatedly wrapped up in the case of Private Smith-Eisenstein. It had undeniably irritated him to have to break the chances of a Jew and Red Socialist. It was the sort of thing one did not do if one were omnipotent – as he was. Then … this strong impulse? … It was a passionate desire to go where you could find exact intellect: rest.

He thought he suddenly understood. For the Lincolnshire sergeant-major the word Peace meant that a man could stand up on a hill. For him it meant someone to talk to.

V

THE COLONEL SAID:

‘Look here, Tietjens, lend me two hundred and fifty quid. They say you’re a damn beastly rich fellow. My
accounts
are all out. I’ve got a loathsome complaint. My friends have all gone back on me. I shall have to face a Court of Inquiry if I go home. But my nerve’s gone. I’ve got to go home.’

He added:

‘I daresay you knew all that.’

From the sudden fierce hatred that he felt at the thought of giving money to this man, Tietjens knew that his inner mind based all its calculations on the idea of living with Valentine Wannop … when men could stand up on hills.

He had found the Colonel in his cellar – it really, actually was a cellar, the remains of a farm – sitting on the edge of his camp-bed, in his shorts, his khaki shirt very open at the neck. His eyes were a little bloodshot, but his cropped, silver-grey hair was accurately waved, his grey moustache beautifully pointed. His silver-backed hair-brushes and a small mirror were indeed on the table in front of him. By the rays of the lamp that, hung overhead, rendered that damp stone place faintly nauseating, he looked keen, clean, and resolute. Tietjens wondered how he would look by daylight. He had remarkably seldom seen the fellow by daylight. Beside the mirror and the brushes lay, limply, an unfilled pipe, a red pencil and the white buff papers from Whitehall that Tietjens had already read.

He had begun by looking at Tietjens with a keen, hard, bloodshot glance. He had said:

‘You think you can command this battalion? Have you had any experience? It appears you suggest that I take two months’ leave.’

Tietjens had expected a violent outbreak. Threats even. None had come. The Colonel had continued to regard him with intentness, nothing more. He sat motionless, his long arms, bare to the elbow, dependent over each of his knees, which were far apart. He said that if he decided to go he didn’t want to leave his battalion to a man that would knock it about. He continued staring hard at Tietjens. The phrase was singular in that place and at that hour, but Tietjens understood it to mean that he did not want his battalion discipline to go to pieces.

Tietjens answered that he did not think he would let the discipline go to pieces. The Colonel had said:

‘How do you know? You’re no soldier, are you?’

Tietjens said he had commanded in the line a company at full strength – nearly as large as the battalion and, out of it, a unit of exactly eight times its present strength. He did not think any complaints had been made of him. The Colonel said, frostily:

‘Well! I know nothing about you.’ He had added:

‘You seem to have moved the battalion all right the night before last. I wasn’t in a condition to do it myself. I’m not well. I’m obliged to you. The men appear to like you. They’re tired of me.’

Tietjens felt himself on tenterhooks. He had, now, a passionate desire to command that battalion. It was the last thing he would have expected of himself. He said:

‘If it becomes a question of a war of motion, sir, I don’t know that I should have much experience.’

The Colonel answered:

‘It won’t become a war of motion before I come back. If I ever do come back.’

Tietjens said:

‘Isn’t it rather like a war of motion now, sir?’ It was perhaps the first time in his life he had ever asked for information from a superior in rank – with an implicit belief that he would get an exact answer. The Colonel said:

‘No. This is only falling back on prepared positions. There will be positions prepared for us right back to the sea. If the Staff has done its work properly. If it hasn’t, the war’s over. We’re done, finished, smashed, annihilated, non-existent.’

Tietjens said:

‘But if the great
strafe
that, according to Division, is due now …’

The Colonel said: ‘What?’ Tietjens repeated his words and added:

‘We might get pushed beyond the next prepared position.’

The Colonel appeared to withdraw his thoughts from a great distance.

‘There isn’t going to be any great
strafe
,’ he said. He was beginning to add: ‘Division has got… .’ A considerable thump shook the hill behind their backs. The Colonel sat listening without much attention. His eyes
gloomily
rested on the papers before him. He said, without looking up:

‘Yes, I don’t want my battalion knocked about!’ He went on reading again – the communication from Whitehall. He said: ‘You’ve read this?’ and then:

‘Falling back on prepared positions isn’t the same as moving in the open. You don’t have to do more than you do in a trench-to-trench attack. I suppose you can get your direction by compass all right. Or get someone to, for you.’

Another considerable crump of sound shook the earth, but from a little further away. The Colonel turned the sheet of paper from Whitehall over. Pinned to the back of it was the private note of the Brigadier. He perused this also with gloomy and unsurprised eyes.

‘Pretty stiff, all this,’ he said, ‘you’ve read it? I shall have to go back and see about this.’

He exclaimed:

‘It’s rough luck. I should have liked to leave my battalion to someone that knew it. I don’t suppose you do. Perhaps you do, though.’

An immense collection of fire-irons: all the fire-irons in the world fell just above their heads. The sound seemed to prolong itself in echoes, though of course it could not have; it was repeated.

The Colonel looked upwards negligently. Tietjens proposed to go to see. The Colonel said:

‘No, don’t. Notting will tell us if anything’s wanted… . Though nothing can be wanted!’ Notting was the beady-eyed Adjutant in the adjoining cellar. ‘How could they expect us to keep accounts straight in August 1914? How can they expect me to remember what happened? At the Depot. Then!’ He appeared listless, but without resentment. ‘Rotten luck …’ he said. ‘In the battalion and … with this!’ He rapped the back of his hand on the papers. He looked up at Tietjens.

‘I suppose I could get rid of you; with a bad report,’ he said. ‘Or perhaps I couldn’t … General Campion put you here. You’re said to be his bastard.’

‘He’s my god-father,’ Tietjens said. ‘If you put in a bad report of me I should not protest. That is, if it were on the grounds of lack of experience. I should go to the Brigadier over anything else.’

‘It’s the same thing,’ the Colonel said. ‘I mean a godson. If I had thought you were General Campion’s bastard, I should not have said it… . No; I don’t want to put in a bad report of you. It’s my own fault if you don’t know the battalion. I’ve kept you out of it. I didn’t want you to see what a rotten state the papers are in. They say you’re the devil of a paper soldier. You used to be in a Government office, didn’t you?’

Heavy blows were being delivered to the earth with some regularity on each side of the cellar. It was as if a boxer of the size of a mountain were delivering rights and lefts in heavy alternation. And it made hearing rather difficult.

‘Rotten luck,’ the Colonel said. ‘And McKechnie’s dotty. Clean dotty.’ Tietjens missed some words. He said that he would probably be able to get the paperwork of the battalion straight before the Colonel came back.

The noise rolled downhill like a heavy cloud. The Colonel continued talking and Tietjens, not being very accustomed to his voice, lost a good deal of what he said but, as if in a rift, he did hear:

‘I’m not going to burn my fingers with a bad report on you that may bring a General on my back – to get back McKechnie who’s dotty… . Not fit to …’

The noise rolled in again. Once the Colonel listened to it, turning his head on one side and looking upwards. But he appeared satisfied with what he heard and recommenced his perusal of the Horse Guards letter. He took the pencil, underlined words and then sat idly stabbing the paper with the point.

With every minute Tietjens’ respect for him increased. This man at least knew his job – as an engine-driver does, or the captain of a steam tramp. His nerves might have gone to pieces. They probably had; probably he could not go very far without stimulants: he was probably under bromides now.

And, all things considered, his treatment of Tietjens had been admirable and Tietjens had to revise his view of it. He realised that it was McKechnie who had given him the idea that the Colonel hated him, but he would not have said anything. He was too old a hand in the Army to give Tietjens a handle by saying anything definite… . And he had always treated Tietjens with the sort of monumental
deference
that, in a Mess, the Colonel should bestow on his chief assistant. Going through a door at meal-times, for instance, if they happened to be side by side, he would motion with his hand for Tietjens to go first, naturally though, taking his proper precedence when Tietjens halted. And here he was, perfectly calm. And quite ready to be instructive.

Tietjens was not calm: he was too much bothered by Valentine Wannop and by the thought that, if the
strafe
was on, he ought to be seeing about his battalion. And of course, by the bombardment. But the Colonel said, when Tietjens with the aid of signs again made proposals to take a look around:

‘No. Stop where you are. This isn’t the
strafe
. There is not going to be a
strafe
. This is only a little extra Morning Hate. You can tell by the noise. That’s only four point twos. There’s nothing really heavy. The really heavies don’t come so fast. They’ll be turning on to the Worcesters now and only giving us one every half-minute… . That’s their game. If you don’t know that, what are you doing here?’ He added: ‘You hear?’ pointing his forefinger to the roof. The noise shifted. It went away to the right as a slow coal-wagon might. He went on:

‘This is your place. Not doing things up above. They’ll come and tell you if they want things. And you’ve got a first-rate Adjutant in Notting and Dunne’s a good man… . The men are all under cover: that’s an advantage in having your strength down to three hundred. There’s dug-outs for all and to spare… . All the same, this is no place for you. Nor for me. This is a young man’s war. We’re old ’uns. Three and a half years of it have done for me. Three and a half months will do for you.’

He looked gloomily at his reflection in the mirror that stood before him.

‘You’re a gone coon!’ he said to it. Then he took it and, holding it for a moment poised at the end of a bare white arm, flung it violently at the rough stones of the wall behind Tietjens. The fragments tinkled to the ground.

‘There’s seven years’ bad luck,’ he said. ‘God take ’em, if they can give me seven years worse than this last I’d find it instructive!’

He looked at Tietjens with infuriated eyes.

‘Look here you!’ he said. ‘You’re an educated man… . What’s the worst thing about this war? What’s the
worst
thing? Tell me that!’ His chest began to heave. ‘It’s that they won’t let us alone. Never! Not one of us! If they’d let us alone we could fight. But never… . No one! It’s not only the beastly papers of the battalion, though I’m no good with papers. Never was and never shall be… . But it’s the people at home. One’s own people. God help us, you’d think that when a poor devil was in the trenches they’d let him alone… . Damn it: I’ve had solicitors’ letters about family quarrels when I was in hospital. Imagine that! … Imagine it! I don’t mean tradesmen’s dunnings. But one’s own people. I haven’t even got a bad wife as McKechnie has and they say you have. My wife’s a bit extravagant and the children are expensive. That’s worry enough… . But my father died eighteen months ago. He was in partnership with my uncle. A builder. And they tried to do his estate out of his share of the business and leave my old mother with nothing. And my brother and sister threw the estate into Chancery in order to get back the little bit my father spent on my wife and children. My wife and children lived with my father whilst I was in India… . And out here… . My solicitor says they can get it out of my share: the cost of their keep. He calls it the doctrine of ademption… . Ademption … Doctrine of… . I was better off as a sergeant,’ he added gloomily. ‘But sergeants don’t get let alone. They’ve always got women after them. Or their wives take up with Belgians and they get written to about it. Sergeant Cutts of “D” Company gets an anonymous letter every week about his wife. How’s he to do his duty! But he does. So have I till now… .’ He added with renewed violence: