Private's Progress (2 page)

S
TANLEY’S TRAIN INEXPLICABLY
arrived at Paddington twenty-five minutes early. His father’s itinerary had quite overlooked this possibility. Mr. Windrush, rather reluctantly, had left his desk to wish his son well from the front door. The rather absurd little khaki figure had waved awkwardly from out of the taxi window.

“Good gracious,” thought Mr. Windrush as it pulled away, “he’s waving with his umbrella.”

At Paddington Stanley became conscious of having brought the umbrella with him, and almost decided to leave it in the train. The thing was now, however, so fixed in his mind that his conscience would not allow him this course, and he walked to the barrier with it in one hand and his suitcase in the other. There was a little delay while he ferreted out his wallet for the railway warrant, with a press of travellers fidgeting behind. From these came an audible murmur of “Fred Karno”.

Stanley took a bus to Chelsea and went up to Philip’s and Catherine’s flat. It took him some time to make himself heard, and the door opened onto a blast of sound. A young woman in a man’s check shirt confronted him. Her hair was neutral and braided.

“Terence is using a hair-drier on the Underground Women,” she said urgently.

“Is Mrs. Young still here?” asked Stanley.

“Please come in,” said the young woman, going abruptly into the flat and leaving the door ajar. She seemed to vanish immediately and completely.

Stanley came in and looked around. The place was filled with the whirr of the hair-drier. He stood there, stunned with the sound. Of the young woman there was no sign.

Philip, however, stood near the window, applying the drier closely to a canvas. Stanley waited for a while and then went over and tapped him timidly.

Philip glanced round and then flung down the drier.

“Oh!” he said, recovering, and switching the machine off. “I thought the soldiery were creeping in. How are you? Look at the effect.
Decay!
It’s the quick drying that gets that. How are my Women? Tell me they’re
plastic.
Everyone does. Are they? Now where’s Catherine?”

An inner door opened and Catherine appeared. She was in jumper and slacks and was shoeless. Her long fair hair was untidy over her shoulders.

“Stanley, darling!” she cried gleefully, nuzzling him briefly and filling the room with a perfume of bath salts. “Forgive my Constant Nymphing outfit, but you’re early. Why do
you
have to wear
that
kind of hat? Did Nita let you in?”

“Oh,” said Stanley, “was that——”

“That was,” said Philip firmly. “Most peculiar. She is, I understand, a veganin.”

“A Vegan,” said Catherine. “And really
very
sweet.”

“She refers to me,” said Philip, reeling up the
hair-drier
flex, “as ‘Terence’.”

“Oh,” said Stanley.

“Shall I soften her up for you, darling?” offered Catherine. “As it is, she’s moping. That’s why she’s here. She has a husband in Charlotte Street who’s living with some odd man.”

“No, really,” said Stanley anxiously. “Look, Kat, I’ve to report at Gravestone by three. If you could …”

He broke off helplessly with a gesture of his umbrella.

“Actually it sounds very wet of them,” said Catherine, “insisting on a time. Will they commission you, or will it be sordid?”

“Well,” said Stanley, “they select people now. We may have to have a Board.”

“Psychiatrists,” said Catherine, appreciatively. “Think of all the lovely cosy questions. Well, now, lunch. Count Nita out; she’ll ferret up some nut-meat roast and the like. Let’s go to the Parapluie and save the rations. Then we can have a rout at the Brass Farthing afterwards and Nita can join us there. How lovely to see you. Clearly you
must
turn up
blind
at Gravestone.”

Nita did not in fact reappear before they went out and walked to the Parapluie.

The Parapluie was in a side street off King’s Road. Externally, it achieved something less than
sophistication
by being coated in flat yellow wash. Inside, a good deal of irregular half-partitioning and sudden changes of floor level gave the impression that its builders had been obstinately at loggerheads. From time to time in the ’thirties it had enjoyed some reputation as a firm base for late trips to sightsee
newspaper-covered 
sleepers on the riverside benches. Its fortunes were entirely unpredictable. Two inexplicable bankruptcies, attributed to lack of custom, had paved the way for its being snapped up by its present Armenian proprietor, who had laid on the yellow wash, ubiquitous inside as well as out, and had lined the walls with a myriad of the uglier Van Gogh reproductions, reduced to postcard size and framed funereally in black.

Ever since these labours he had sat in the front room of the place, with an air of languid, potential ferocity (as if one would not be surprised to see him suddenly snatch and dissect a harmless insect), perpetually stroking an intense cat, which protruded from his jacket, and watching a fabulously large and incessant stream of customers.

For this, the war had been largely responsible. The obvious
demi-mondaine
character of the place was
attractive
to some. To others, who might hardly scrape up a ration book among a round dozen, it was an essential source of food.

Stanley was fascinated by the tail of the cat
throughout
his lunch. It hung down like a subsidiary beard over the Armenian’s stomach and switched about here and there, hovering like the hand of an indecisive pickpocket. The Armenian’s stare was patient and objective. It took in Catherine’s elegant clothing (she had always shopped at Harrods even through the lean periods which had been Philip’s frequent lot over the three years of their marriage) and rejected with
something
like courtesy the warm glance she accorded him.

Catherine talked incessantly till the coffee, for which the Parapluie was execrated by even its most enthusiastic
patrons, waving gaily to every third customer, and telling the name, life history (and in case of doubt, the sex) of each to her brother.

“Well, look here,” said Philip. “There’s probably no time for the Brass Farthing before they close. It’s two.”

Stanley started.

“My train!” he moaned. “It’s at 2.5!”

He scrabbled feverishly under the table for his webbing equipment.

“Good gracious,” said Catherine. “Will you be arrested? My poor sweet! Can’t you ring them up and explain? I always used to do that, in the Land Army. Some farmers were quite beastly at first, but they soon got the idea. Shall
I
ring up?”

“No,” said Stanley hastily. “No. I’d better get to Victoria and see what can be done. Wait a minute.” He got out his warrant and studied the back of it.

“R.T.O.” he said. “That’s it. See the R.T.O.”

They caught a bus.

At Victoria Catherine said: “I’ll look after your umbrella, darling. You’ll give them a twitch going in with that.”

Stanley went into the R.T.O.’s office and joined a queue.

It might have been a queue in the Buttery of his college. A curious collection of obvious ex-
undergraduates
in ill-fitting battledresses and equipment were having their passes stamped with rapidity by an R.E. sergeant, prematurely grizzled and hollow-eyed. As he stamped them he made briskly opinionated
comments
to another apathetic sergeant at his side.

“Look at these geezers,” he said, stamping away.
“You ever seen a shower like this come in? Done up like a sackapertaters. Think they was workin’ their tickets, steada first day called up. Bus broke down! Left me case in the Tube! One bloke says: ‘I come over dizzy sudden.’ I said: ‘Yer,’ I said, ‘comin’ the old soldier already?’
All
you
men!”
he honked abruptly.
“Catch
the
3.5!”

They all drifted outside and clustered loosely
together
, as if they were seeking warmth and would have got closer but for not having been introduced.

Catherine came up again with a packet of sandwiches, and hooked Stanley’s umbrella into his webbing belt.

The electric train braked relentlessly. A large man, standing to get down a wicker hamper from the rack, sat down suddenly on Stanley with a furious cry of “Bastard!”

“Gravestone East!” shrilled a voice outside. It was a porter, female and muscular.

Stanley heaved his suitcase to the barrier and out into the station-yard. The loose group formed up again and made its way hopefully to an army lorry. Here they waited for ten minutes till a driver slammed into the cab and drove indifferently away, leaving them in the roadway.

A corporal of the military police came up to them.

“Barracks?” he said briefly. “Mile up on the right. Best get weavin’, else be late.”

Meekly they picked up their belongings and
straggled
up the road, past mean shops and a peeling
hoarding
, and then along the faded green railings of the barracks.

At the gate stood two sergeants and a group of corporals.

“Guard-Room, Guard-Room!” they said, pointing. “Report in.”

They were snappy and prim. Their stripes gleamed with white ink. One or two of the corporals, in an excess of energy, stamped their iron heels on the asphalt with absent-minded precision.

Stanley queued with the others in the Guard-Room and then waited outside.

The barracks had originally centred round the drill square. To the right of the gate stood the Officers’ Mess and Quarters, girdled by some gap-toothed urban shrubbery. Across the expanse of the square were large buildings in Council Estate red brick bearing names of campaigns: Assam, Mesopotamia, Peninsula. These were newer than the Officers’ Quarters, and had replaced the wooden buildings of the former mule lines. To the far left ran a long hotchpotch of yellow brick, grey-slated, single-storey edifices, now serving as offices and stores, while immediately inside the gates, on the left, stood the rickety “F” Block, an ugly, flimsy, two-storey structure in buff-painted weather-boarding. It seemed doubtful whether it could support the slates of its roof, but it had, in fact, survived a whole series of condemnations.

The Duke of Wellington had thought little of it on its erection. Successive Commanding Officers had put in for its demolition, and on the eve of the Crimean War it had been condemned. Hostilities, however, had brought a timely reprieve, and it survived till 1897, when preparations were again made for pulling it down.
The outbreak of the Boer War had saved it once more and it was used as a vast blanket store. 1914, again, was no time to be fussy, and for four years a series of drafts slept uncomfortably in it, while cold winds poked in at them from all the seams of its woodwork. When in 1939 its demolition had been finally agreed on by the War Office, the then Commanding Officer, an acute mind, made a bet with the Quartermaster that war would break out that year. One small outhouse had actually been cleared when the international conflict put a stop to all building and it again acquired an enhanced value. Drafts still passed through it, and it was taken care of by two wizened men of Depot Company, who walked a daily hundred and fifty yards to running water for their wash and shave.

The barracks had spread lopsidedly from the square down towards the river. A red-brick Naafi and an echoing Nissen gymnasium near the stone cook-houses hid from the main road a whole poultry farm of black creosoted huts, where a large part of the barracks’ greatly expanded population now lived. Several fine old elms had been cut down to ensure symmetrical lines for these huts, but they were all set at an angle to the other buildings of the barracks, and squatted aloof and brooding down the slope to the calm and stately River Gravel which gave the town its name.

Stanley leaned on his umbrella and contemplated as much of it as he could see.

“RIGHT!” shouted a sergeant.
“Getfellininfrees!”

The Quartermaster kitted them out, and they marched again, doubly loaded, for an inoculation.

“Tet-tox and T.A.B.,” said the sergeant briskly. “Your lucky day. Lovely. Gittinthere!”

The medical officer worked through them
systematically
. “Roll your sleeves
right
up,” said an orderly, swabbing with spirit. “Both arms.”

“Sergeant,” said Stanley. “This battledress. It looks peculiar.”

“Q.M. issued you with it, didn’t he, lad?" asked the sergeant.

“Yes.”

“Then it’s all right,” said the sergeant promptly. “All that whitish sort of stuff: anti-gas impregnated that one is. Lovely.”

The battledress seemed to be patched with a pale yellow powder. The material was stiff, and the
unpowdered
areas were an ugly, greenish hue. No one else’s seemed like it.

“Outside!”
shouted the sergeant.
“Gefellin!”

They marched to hand in their civilian documents and sign for their Army pay-books, and then joined another throng to be sorted out into huts. Lists were called out.

“You lot,” said a corporal. “Into Sebastopol, on your right. Kit on the bed and out sharp for tea parade. Move!”

After tea the corporal said:

“See this? Corporal Sutton’s bed, ’ere, is laid out like yours must be. Take a good look. Ask what you can’t see; blankets folded, holdall, housewife, laid out in front, boots with all studs in down the bottom end, so; no civvy kit allowed, all to be packed off home. After six o’clock make your bed down. All right?
Scrub webbing and brasses up pukka till arpass sem supper.”

“Gather round here,” said the corporal. “Siddown, siddown. Right. Now you’re in the Army. What does that mean? I’ll tell you what it means. Nobody likes the Army. You got to do what you’re told. You got to be smart and soldierlike. And what’s that? That’s smart. When you’re walkin’ about the town, no ’ands in pockets, d’you follow me? And this town, being it’s a garrison town, is a very notorious place. Shockin’. Terrible. There’s women ’ere, lot of women ’ere, that fancy soldiers. You may laugh. You may smile. Why, only the other night … but we’ll skip that for the moment. Only my advice to you is: be very very
careful
. The M.O.’ll tell you all about it tomorrow. I’m Corporal Miller. That’s Corporal Sutton, doin’ ’is brasses still. Your platoon sarnt’s Sarnt Morris, Comp’ny Commander Major ’Arkness. C.O.’s
Lootenant
-Colonel Ellis. It’s all pinned up on the door, words and music. You got to know the whole issue. Corp Sutton’ll talk to you now about your training, and I shall be orf up the town. Any questions? Right. Cheero.”