Sky High (11 page)

The front door clicked.

That would be Sue. Friday evening. She would have been out helping Mrs. Macintyre with library night at the Institute. Now she was going to cook the supper which Mrs. Bannister, the daily, had put ready.

He wondered, and not for the first time, whether she didn’t do too much of that sort of thing. Social work, housework. All work and no play. She was only just eighteen. At eighteen, a girl ought to be out and about nearly every evening. Dances, balls, dinner parties. Simla in the nineties. Early morning rides round Jakko. His wife-to-be coming into a dance at Vice Regal Lodge on her father’s arm. Low fronts; tight sleeves; ostrich feather, bracelets winking with such tiny diamonds as an impecunious subaltern could afford. A young lady named Vivienne who, he had once fondly imagined—he coughed severely and switched his thoughts back towards the present.

Sue was attractive to men. The General, who had watched the process, would have been hard put to it to say just when it had happened: at what moment she had stopped walking and talking and thinking like a schoolgirl; at what moment she had become conscious of her body as an asset and her clothes as a weapon. He himself had been dimly aware, for some time, that the change had taken place, but it had only been brought home to him at the Staff College Ball. Indeed, some of the remarks he had overheard had seemed to him to verge on indecorum. He had had to be very stiff with old General Manktelow.

But was there anyone definite in view? A succession of eligible hussars, lancers, riflemen, guardsmen and horse gunners had danced with her and, subsequently, asked her out to parties, mostly refused.

At one time he had imagined that Tim was the one. The thought had troubled him a little. At first analysis Tim was all right. No money, agreed. But in Army circles one tended to be suspicious of a young man with money. On the other hand, his stock was undeniably excellent. They didn’t come any finer than Liz and Bill Artside. Liz herself was the daughter of Sally Hope who, come to think of it, had been a Coutts. And the Artsides had been solid stuff for generations. If Tim had been a horse, thought the General, I’d have backed him both ways for speed and stamina. But he wasn’t a horse. He was a man. And the General had a slight feeling of unease about him. Was it the fact of his having grown up without father or brothers? Or was it something to do with the war? Difficult to say. But once you got to know Tim you realised that he had a lot of the qualities of an iceberg. He was solid; he was dangerous if you crossed his path; and there was a good deal more of him below the surface than showed above it.

However, said the General, as he drained his glass, that didn’t answer the main question. Did Sue go for him? And if so, how far and how deeply? He had heard about the quarrel they had had on Tuesday evening. That was a bad sign – or a good, according as you viewed the prospect.

If he really thought the matter important enough he could, he supposed, ask Sue about it.

Or could he?

The truth was that the General was more than a little afraid of his granddaughter.

‘My dear Hubert,’ said Major-General Rockingham-Hawse, ‘how splendid to see you. They told me you were on the war-path and I hoped you’d come and look me up. We usually get such dreary visitors in establishments. You’re looking very fit.’

‘Of course I’m looking fit,’ said the General. ‘I
am
fit.’

How fat Rockinghorse was getting! It must be the effect of sitting in an office all day. He would have to find an opportunity of warning him tactfully of the dangers he was running.

‘How’s Tiddler? I hear he’s settled in your part of the world.’

‘I ran into him the other day,’ said the General.

‘He’s looking very old. I’m afraid another winter will break him up.’

‘Will do if it’s anything like last winter,’ agreed Rockingham-Hawse, glancing complacently round his own steam-heated office. ‘Terrible climate. I wonder we don’t all pull out and go to live in Kenya. Have you seen anything of Bunji lately?’

But Bunji was somewhat summarily disposed of. The General felt it was time to get down to business.

He had given considerable thought to his tactics, in the train, on the way up, and had decided that a modified form of the truth would serve best.

‘I’ll tell you how you can help me,’ he said. ‘You may have read in the newspapers about a man at Brimberley who got his house blown up.’

‘I not only read about it, General, but remembered that you lived at Brimberley, and wondered what the poor chap might have done to offend you.’

‘Well,’ said the General, ‘I might have blown him up if I’d thought of it, but actually it wasn’t me, this time. The theory is it was an accident.’

‘Rum sort of accident.’

‘Well – yes. As a matter of fact that part of it’s rather confidential.’

‘Top secret, eh?’

‘That’s it. Political.’

The General was well aware of the paralysing power of the word ‘political’ when spoken inside the War Office. Rockingham-Hawse immediately pursed his lips, said, ‘Ah, yes. I see. Yes,’ and looked inscrutable; a feat which was not difficult, as his well-baked, finely glazed face offered little foothold for changes of expression.

‘The fellow had been going round posing as a Major.’

‘Before he got blown up?’

‘Oh – yes – definitely. Had been calling himself Major MacMorris, getting a lot of credit on tick, and that sort of thing.’

‘A phoney?’

‘I think so. That’s what I want to find out – quietly – if I can. I think he was a phoney all right. But if by any chance he wasn’t, well, you see, it might be awkward.’

‘It certainly might. You said his name was MacMorris “Mac”, by the way, or “Mc”?’

‘Mac, I think.’

‘What sort of age?’

‘Forty-ish. We had the idea that if he did any soldiering it was before the last war. There was a photograph—’

The General explained about the photograph and Rockingham-Hawse brightened considerably.

‘Have you got it?’

‘I’m afraid it seems to have got blown up, too.’

‘I see. Do you know his Christian names?’

‘I haven’t been able to find anyone in Brimberley who was on Christian name terms with him, but it’s thought to have been James.’

‘I expect he registered somewhere. Coal or chicken food or something. The police—’

‘I expect he did,’ said the General smoothly. ‘And I expect the police could find out, but at the moment I’m not particularly anxious to trouble them.’

‘Political?’

‘Political.’

‘Well, we’ll probably be able to find something for you. We’ve got pretty good officers’ records here. And it’s surprising how people keep in touch with us, even after they’ve left the Army. A lot of them are on reserves of one sort and another. I expect we shall be able to eliminate nine candidates out of ten straight away.’

‘It’s very good of you,’ said the General, and meant it.

‘Not at all. It may take a little time but we should be able to get on to it. Always supposing—’

‘Always supposing,’ agreed the General, ‘that MacMorris
was
his name. That’s a possibility, I agree. But if he was using a false name and rank that proves something too.’

‘Wouldn’t go round changing his name unless he’d got something to hide,’ agreed Rockingham-Hawse. ‘Well, that’s that. I’ll give you a ring when I find out something.’

‘Afraid you’re not getting rid of me as easily as that,’ said the General genially. ‘There’s something else. Although I don’t suppose it’s in your department. I want to look at some old Court Martial proceedings.’

‘That’ll be the J.A.G. Let’s walk along and see if Porky’s in.’

Major Hogg was in, and was pleased to see the General. He was too young to have had much contact with him professionally but his father had been adjutant when the General had been Second-in-Command of the regiment in South Africa.

The General wasted no finesse on him, but simply told him what he wanted.

Major Hogg said: ‘As far as the Court Martial goes there shouldn’t be any difficulty about that. We keep Court Martial papers almost indefinitely. In fact, I was looking at some Peninsular War ones the other day. Courts of Inquiry are a different kettle of fish. If the Inquiry produced results which led directly to disciplinary action, then you might find copies with the court papers – or, on the other hand, if the whole thing was obviously going to be done again almost immediately at a Court Martial, I expect we shouldn’t bother to keep the earlier record.’

‘Where do Court of Inquiry papers go?’

Major Hogg said hesitantly, ‘Now you’re asking me something. They belong to the unit that holds the court. I expect they’d keep them, for a time, at Regimental headquarters – with the war diary and the G.1098 and junk like that. Always supposing they do keep them. An active regiment hasn’t got much room for bumf.’

‘But this wouldn’t have been a regiment. It was a headquarters. A Corps headquarters, I think.’

‘Well, that’s a bit more hopeful. Which Corps?’

‘Whichever Corps,’ said the General slowly, ‘was running Cologne in 1921.’

Major Hogg’s face fell.

‘It’s a long time ago, isn’t it?’ he said.

‘Certainly not,’ said the General. ‘Do you realise that by 1921, I had practically finished my military career?’

‘It all depends how you look at it,’ agreed Major Hogg.

‘It was the year I went to my prep school. Now, let’s think about this. We’d better look up “Pronto” Phipps. He knows all there is to be known about moribund formations. They hate killing anything off in his department. Put everything into “suspended animation”. Makes you think of a live codfish in ice, doesn’t it? All his records go into cold storage.’

Colonel Phipps, who was a tall, thin scholarly man wearing the faded ribbons of the D.S.O. and Croix de Guerre, welcomed the General with serious enthusiasm, but looked doubtful when he heard what he wanted.

‘I could find what Corps was in charge of Cologne in 1921,’ he said. ‘There would be no difficulty about that. I only hope it
was
a pukka Corps, and not some improvised arrangement. There’s always complete chaos when we win a war. God knows what would happen if we lost one.
If
it was a proper set-up, and
if
someone thought it worth while preserving the records – we did with some of the last war Divisions, I know – prestige reasons – then it’s just possible the papers will be at Staines.’

‘Staines?’

‘Yes. There’s no place for storing records here. The Department took over an old car factory at Staines in 1930 and we’ve been keeping papers there ever since. There’s a character called Sergeant-Major Bottler in charge of it. He’s about the oldest non-commissioned officer still serving. If anyone knows where to put his hands on it Bottler will. I’ve got to go to Staines on Monday, anyway—’

‘It’s very good of you.’

‘Not a bit. Glad to help.’

The General walked out into Whitehall. As he was passing the Cenotaph a thought occurred to him. It was, he considered, absolutely typical of the whole organisation that no one had ever bothered to inquire why he wanted the papers. Absolutely typical.

He hailed a taxi and made for his club.

Moth:

‘No, my complete master, but to jig off a tune at the tongue’s end, canary to it with your feet, humour it with turning up your eyelids, sigh a note and sing a note, sometime through the throat, as if you swallow’d love with singing love; sometime through the nose, as if you snuff’d up love by smelling love; with your hat pent-house-like o’er the shop of your eyes; with your arms crossed on your thin-belly doublet, like a rabbit on a spit, or your hands in your pocket, like a man after the old Painting, and keep not too long in one tune, but a snip and away: these are complements, these are humours, these betray nice wenches—’

The day had started well for Liz.

She had never before had occasion to walk up the Charing Cross Road, being aware of it only as part of the taxi route between the shopping territory of Oxford Street and the railway terminals of Victoria and Waterloo. Now that she was able to devote herself to it in detail it seemed to have a certain fascination.

She had walked up, past the facade of St. Martin- in-the-Fields, to what she imagined must be the beginning of the road itself. It was not at all easy to be sure, since it was composed chiefly of theatres, which of course had no numbers, and then a good deal of underground station; but just as the station stopped she had found a bookshop, numbered 34, and a milk bar, 36, and then she knew she was on her way.

There seemed to be quite a lot of bookshops and milk bars (as well as the more ordinary bars). There were also shops which sold contraceptives. Liz was enchanted. She knew all about contraceptives in theory, and almost nothing in practice. They were things which one got, if one needed them, from one’s family doctor. It had never occurred to her as possible that there could be shops which dealt in nothing else; shops which were prepared to display such things, even to advertise their peculiar attractions, in their windows.

The general public seemed to hurry past them in a sated way, but Liz remained anchored for a full five minutes, until, through the glass window, she observed the assistant, who had been sitting behind the counter reading a newspaper, to be eyeing her curiously. Whereupon she moved on.

Apart from the bookshops and the milk bars and the contraceptive shops there were doorways.

The doorways were, on the whole, helpful, because they had numbers over them. In some the doors were shut, in others, open. A few had no doors at all. Liz peered into one such hinterland. It seemed to be a communal hall serving a dozen one-roomed businesses. As Liz was looking curiously about her, a bulky woman with frizzled hair came slowly down the steep interior stair. She came so slowly, and so entirely filled the narrow staircase, that she looked more like a lift coming down a shaft than an ordinary person coming downstairs.