So Well Remembered (29 page)

George didn’t enquire what squeezing warbles was.

“And yet she could be the great lady too—doing the society stuff if
ever she felt like it. I’ve often thought she’d have made a damn fine
actress… And when she made up her mind about something, nothing on earth or
under heaven would stop her… My God, the wires she pulled to get out to
Hong Kong after the war started.”

“I thought you said he’d given up the job.”

“He had, but he didn’t much like farming, and after a year of it he went
abroad again—for an oil company. Mother didn’t like it, but she
followed him, and I didn’t see either of them again till ‘thirty-nine, when
they came home on six months’ leave. They were still in London in the
September, and father offered his services to the Government but they told
him he couldn’t do better than go back to his job with the oil company. So he
did—alone at first, because of the war and because mother was mad with
him for wanting to go back at all—but of course she soon followed as
before. She always followed him everywhere, though I guess they neither of
them expected to end up in a Jap prison-camp.”

“End up?”

“Well, no, I didn’t mean THAT. Oh God, I hope not.”

“You don’t really know what happened?”

“Not a thing—except that they WERE in Hong Kong when the Japs took
over. That’s definite. All the rest is rumour.”

George caught the sudden tremor in his voice, and made haste to change the
subject.

Once—and for the first time since the initial interview and
misunderstanding—they mentioned the former Lord Winslow. “I don’t
really remember him,” Charles said. “I think he disapproved of dad’s
marriage, or something of the sort. But from all accounts he was a very
distinguished piece of Stilton in his way.”

George was not quite sure what this meant; besides, he was thinking of the
phrase ‘something of the sort’ and wondering how much, or little, it
concealed. “A great authority on housing,” he remarked safely.

“So are you, aren’t you?”

George smiled. “I was one of six kids brought up in four rooms. Not a bad
way to become a PRACTICAL authority.”

“I should think it was also a pretty good education for your father.”

“Well, no—because he wasn’t interested in earthly houses so much as
in heavenly mansions.” George chuckled.

“A good thing his son didn’t take after him, then. I hear you’ve done
rather well for that town of yours.”

“Not so badly. I reckon Browdley’s five per cent better than it might have
been if I’d never been born.”

“That’s modest of you.”

“Nay, I’d call it swelled head. Takes a lot for one man by himself to make
five per cent of difference to anything.”

“Same in flying. The idea of the lone hero soaring into the blue on a
mission of his own is a bit outmoded.”

“Aye, it’s all team-work nowadays.” George added hastily: “Not that I’m
much of an expert on military affairs.”

“Is anybody? What about all the so-called experts who’ve been wrong? About
the Maginot Line, for instance?”

George sighed. “I was wrong about that too, without being an expert.”

“I suppose you were fooled by the last war—superiority of defence
over attack, and so on?”

“To some extent. I couldn’t help remembering the Somme.”

“You were there?”

“Er… yes.”

“What were you in—the poor bloody infantry?”

“No.”

“Artillery? Sappers?”

“No… I… er… I wasn’t in the armed forces at all.”

“War correspondent? You’re still in the newspaper business, aren’t
you?”

“I was—in a small way—until recently.”

Charles laughed. “I WON’T be fobbed off with a mystery! What WERE you in
the last war, for God’s sake?”

George then answered the question that he had not been asked for a long
time, and which he never went out of his way to encounter, but which, when it
was put directly, he always answered with equal directness. “I was a
conscientious objector,” he said.

There was a little silence for a moment—not an awkward one, but a
necessary measuring-point in the progress of an intimacy. And this was the
moment that made George sure he was liked and not merely tolerated by the
youth whose less injured hand moved slowly across the arm of the wheelchair
towards him.

“Conchy in the last war, eh?” The hand reached out. “Shake, then. Because
that’s what
I
might be in the next—if they have a next.”

George took the wrinkled burned-red hand, though he thought it an ironic
occasion to have first done so. Presently Charles went on: “What happened?
You had a bad time?”

“Well,” answered George, a little dazed at the extent to which they were
talking as if they had known each other all their lives, “I was on the Somme,
as I said, and THAT was a pretty bad time. My brother—one of my
brothers—and I—were in the same Ambulance Unit. He was
killed.”

“Driving an ambulance?”

“No. We were both stretcher-bearers.”

“Not exactly the safest job on earth.”

“No.”

“But you came through all right?”

“I was gassed—not very badly, but it led to pneumonia and a medical
discharge. Probably saved my life in the long run.”

Charles said, with a touch of pathos: “What did it feel like—after
that? When you were out of hospital, I mean, but still not well enough to do
things normally? How did you get used to things again?”

“I didn’t, because the things I’d been used to before the war were things
I didn’t intend to get used to again—ever… But of course in your case
it’s different.”

“I don’t know that it is, particularly… But tell me about how you got
started again. In business, wasn’t it? A newspaper?”

“Aye, but it sounds too important when you put it that way. Just a
bankrupt small-town weekly. Nobody’s bargain, they practically threw it at
me, but I thought it would help me in local politics.”

“And it did?”

George nodded. “I was lucky. One of those handy by-elections cropped up,
and there I was—the youngest town councillor Browdley had ever
had.”

“How old were you then?”

“Let me see… it was April ‘seventeen when they let me out of hospital,
and the election was in the September following. I’d be thirty-one.”

“You didn’t lose any time.” Charles thought for a moment, then added:
“Wasn’t it against you to have been a conscientious objector?”

“Quite a bit. The other side used it for all they were worth, but
Browdley’s got a mind of its own in local matters even in war- time.” George
chuckled. “I was for lowering the fares on municipal buses before eight in
the morning. That got all the factory workers.”

Charles smiled. “You weren’t a pacifist in the election, then?”

“I was if anybody asked me, but I used most of my eloquence on the bus
fares.”

“The war must have been on your mind, though.”

“Aye, it was—just as it still is.”

After another pause Charles said thoughtfully: “So you think it’s wrong to
take human life under any circumstances?”

“I did then.”

“You mean you don’t think so any more?”

“That’s about it. I’m not so sure of a lot of things as I was in those
days. I don’t hate war any less, but the problem doesn’t look so simple for
an individual to make up his mind about. Seems to me there are times when
life’s less important than a few other things, and those are the times when
taking it—and giving it—are the only things we can do. It’s the
price we have to pay if we can’t get what we want any cheaper.”

“And what IS it that we want?”

“I don’t know what YOU want, but if I had a boy I’d want a better world
for him than either your generation or mine has had.”

“A world fit for heroes to live in, eh?”

“Nay, I’d rather call it a world fit for ordinary folks to be heroic in…
And I can’t see it coming unless we win this war. I don’t see it necessarily
coming even if we DO win it… But there’s a CHANCE if we do.”

“Quite a change in your attitude from last time.”

“Aye—but that doesn’t mean I regret what I did then. Seems to me I
was right for a reason I couldn’t have foreseen. Doesn’t what’s happening now
prove it? What good did that first war do—all the misery and butchery I
saw on the Somme? What was it for? To save freedom? There was less in the
world afterwards. To crush Germany? Germany was strong again within a
generation. To fix Europe once and for all? Europe got unfixed again worse
than ever…”

“I’ll tell you one thing it did, Mr. Boswell—it gave some of you
chaps who survived it twenty years of a damned good time. It gave you twenty
years of movies and dog-racing and charabanc-outings and stock-market gambles
and holidays on the Continent and comfortable living—twenty years of
the kind of fun WE may not have, even if we DO survive.”

George answered: “
I
didn’t have twenty years of fun. I had twenty
years of trying to improve a little town called Browdley—trying to put
up a few schools and pull down a few slums—trying to make some headway
against the greed and selfishness of those old Victorian shysters who ran the
place for half a century like a slave-barracks…”

“And what does that prove? Merely that we all get saddled with old debts.
You had the Victorian mess to deal with—I’ve got yours.”

“MINE?”

“Who else’s? You surely don’t claim that you used those twenty years
successfully? The last war mightn’t have been so worthless unless you’d made
it so…” Charles added, smiling: “Not that I mean anything personal, of
course. You risked your life, same as I have, and then you came home and did
what seemed to you worth doing. But it WASN’T worth doing—because the
main thing wasn’t right. And the main thing was the peace. Why weren’t you a
conscientious objector to THAT?”

George answered gravely: “Aye, you’ve a right to ask. I’m quite ready to
take blame for plenty that I did—and plenty that I didn’t do. I can see
now, like a lot of folks, that I was living in a fool’s paradise— if by
any stretch of imagination you can call Browdley any sort of paradise. Maybe
if I’d had a better education—”

“Depends on what you call a better education.”

“I daresay I’d call yours one. What was it—Eton and Oxford?”

“No. Charterhouse and Cambridge… and also Berlin.”

“WHAT? You were educated in BERLIN?”

“Not IN Berlin—OVER Berlin.” And then the boy laughed rather wildly.
“Sorry. I’ve been waiting to work that off on somebody, but you were the
first to give me a cue.”

George smiled. “I see what you mean.”

“You ought to. After all, you were at the University of the Somme
yourself.”

“Aye, but don’t let’s be over-dramatic. War doesn’t teach anybody much
—except to hate it. If you hate it beyond a certain point you go out of
your mind, so if you don’t want to do that you have to forget it somehow or
other, and I suppose that’s mostly what I and millions of others did.” George
paused a moment before taking a further plunge in intimacy: “And that’s what
you’ll do too, my lad, unless you’re the exception that proves the rule.
Maybe you are. But if you aren’t… well, there’s a maternity ward next door
for you to think of. Aren’t you afraid that some day all those kids will
blame you as you’re blaming me—not personally, but as a
generation?”

“A damned hard question, and the answer is yes, I AM afraid. I’m scared
stiff… and I’m not hopeful. But what the hell can I do? Lads of my age, as
you call them, have the war to win first, before we can bother with anything
else. Give us a chance to do one thing at a time, for Christ’s sake.”

“Give US a chance, then, too—even if it’s only a chance to help you.
Some of us still have one foot out of the grave.”

The door opened and the nurse entered. She had heard the raised voices and
the laughter-sound as she walked along the corridor, and now she was in time
to catch George’s last sentence. It must have seemed to her a strange
conjunction, justifying the acerbity with which she approached the
wheel-chair, whipped out a thermometer, and said to George: “You mustn’t make
him laugh, Mr. Boswell—it would be very bad for the new skin. And you
really have talked to him enough, I think… if you don’t mind…”

It was true; it was the longest time George had yet stayed. “I
understand,” he said, smiling to both of them.

Charles then asked the nurse if she would fetch him some more of the
lozenges.

She went out exclaiming: “My goodness, Lieutenant, have you used them up
already?”

“Seems like it, nurse.” Then, when the door closed, he turned quietly to
George. “Just a moment—before you go. I wanted to say this, but we got
talking about so many other things… I’ve had the tip they mean to transfer
me somewhere else—for facial surgery and what not. Probably before you
come again… so if they do, and I send you my new address, would
you—would you have the time—to—to write to me—
occasionally?”

George laid his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Aye,” he answered. “I will
that.” The long argument had given him such mental stimulation that now
emotion came to him with an impact; after those four words he was speechless,
stricken at the sudden thought of an end to the visits.

The nurse came hurrying back with a fresh bottle of lozenges, then spied
one still half-f on the table beside the bed. “Well, I do declare—
you didn’t finish the others after all! He’s so absent- minded, Mr.
Boswell… Aren’t you, Lieutenant?”

George stammered his goodbyes, and wondered as he left the hospital what
was the matter with him to have used up so much time in talking politics. Of
course it was the mere zest of a debate that had led him on, exhilarating him
as it always did—recalling the remark once made by a teetotal friend
that drink would have been wasted on George, since a good hard-hitting
argument produced on him the same effects, even to the hangover the next day,
when he wondered what he had said in the heat of the moment that might have
given offence, or that he didn’t exactly mean.