His Second War Page 14

  He arranged his evenings with his usual method. Having discovered which of his friends did not mind travelling in the black-out, and could be relied upon to arrive punctually to dinner in an air raid, he drew up a duty roster, each man to his own fixed night; the introducer of his note-book being allotted Friday.

  He did not allow the blitz to interfere with his routine. He continued to sleep in his own bed, on the first floor, although a stick of bombs, pitching in his corner of the street, had completely destroyed the house adjoining his—it was a semi-detached house in which he lived—riddling his own roof, shattering every window in the house, and breaking great chunks of plaster off the ceiling. He was urged to leave the house and take a flat. He would not listen to such advice. He had lived in this house for thirty-five years. He was not going to have any German altering the fabric of his life.

  In the summer, during those brief three weeks of warmth, he dined out, as his wont had been, in the garden. His garden was not actually untended; he watered it and weeded the beds, but grass grew in the paths. And the two abandoned gardens next to it heightened a wilderness effect.

  In the next year the lease of the house was to expire. He did not know if he could be given an opportunity of renewing it. The top story of his house was no longer habitable, lathes were showing through the wallpaper in the drawing-room. Eventually the house would have to be pulled down. The whole section would have to be rebuilt. They were Victorian family houses, of the kind that would be hard to let in a world where servants would be hard to come by. The landlord might be glad of an opportunity to convert the property into flats. Perhaps, though, he thought, they’d let him keep it on, year by year. No one would bother to condemn a house in war-time.

  “I’ve been in it,” he would repeat, “for thirty-five years. How many Londoners can say that about their homes? When I think of all it’s seen, all the friends who’ve dined here—Rupert Brooke and Edward Thomas, Belloc and Max and H. G.—why should I want to leave?”

  His courage, his steadfastness, his resolute resolve to lead his private life to the end were as strong as ever. He had little patience with the totalitarian tendencies of the age. His constitution was strong, but breathing was a constant strain upon his lungs, and his temper was often short. He would burst out with wrath against municipal authorities, against the various lackeys of officialdom who bothered him with forms. Once, when he was sitting in the garden after dinner, a wireless in a neighbouring garden was turned on over-loudly. He jumped up from his chair. He stamped his feet.

  “It is intolerable,” he shouted, “is one allowed no peace, even in one’s own garden? Wireless. If it hadn’t been for the wireless that wretched demagogue, that cheap Cleon would never have got a nation even of subservient fools to follow him. Wireless, Munich.” His face went red with anger. “They might, though,” he growled. “Germans—they’ll do anything.” Then as suddenly his anger left him. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but when I think of what Germany has done—ruined my life twice. Taken all my friends from me, the friends of my middle age, and now the friends that I had found to take their places. Germans,” he’d say, “I’ve always known them for what they were. I’ve never made a friend of one. I’ve never asked one to my house. When I’ve had for business reasons to entertain one, I’ve taken him to a restaurant. Germans. They’re all the same.”

  72

  Every Friday night he went out to dine with Haynes; the week-ends he spent at Highgate with his parents. During the week there was the alternative of one or other of his clubs, or some friend to dine with. During the day there was his work with the P(W)D, that was strenuous, that had the attraction of novelty and variety; while night after night the guns thudded, and there was the whine of bombs, the dull detonations as they pitched; and running through it all, sustaining and vivifying it, was a proud front-line feeling, the knowledge that by staying here, by carrying on with one’s work, one was defying, one was defeating the hordes that had swept over Europe, that one was in the spearhead of the first attack, in the vanguard of Hitler’s first defeat.

  So the winter passed and the spring began, and with the spring came the lessening of the blitz as the Luftwaffe was withdrawn to the Eastern front, as Hitler’s spring offensive opened, as the grey succession of retreats began, in Libya, in Greece, in Crete.

  Every day the war news grew worse; yet every day life in London became more normal. A heavy raid was the exception rather than the rule. One made one’s plans on the assumption that there would be no raid. One’s own life grew easier and pleasanter, and in proportion as it grew pleasanter that feeling of elation faded. One was no longer in the vanguard of an attack. One was in a backwater. One drew admittedly a first long, slow breath of relief at being able to enjoy a full night’s sleep, at being spared that endless tear at the nerves of the long whine of the shells, every single one of which must, you felt, pitch right on top of you.

  Then summer came, with its extra two hours of daylight, and one realized how much one had missed the daylight; one found one’s self doing jolly picnic things like taking sandwiches out on Hampstead Heath after the day’s work. There were hours of relief during the summer of 1941 that could only be appreciated by those who had lived through the blitz. Even so there was no longer that proud and happy feeling about one’s heart: London had ceased to be a front line bastion. It had become a playground. Theatres were opening again. Restaurants had been repaired. London had become a place where soldiers wanted to spend their leave. Once again trains ran to time and those who had sheltered during the winter in their rural fastnesses returned by them. A boom was starting, for cinemas, theatres, restaurants; for anyone who had anything to sell. A man in uniform could no longer feel that he was “soldiering” as he walked London streets.

  And in a way, too, the P(W)D had changed. It had enlarged, become organized, centralized and departmentalized. The rooms had been divided and redivided with matchboarding, so that where once there had been two people there now were six. And two scientists and their secretaries had been brought into the office, and a pilot officer with experience in equipment, and a bustling high-pressure business man with a crown upon his shoulder instituted a new filing system that not even the pilot officer understood, and a new system of correspondence by which he signed personally every letter that was not signed by the Colonel or the D.G., so that to the world at large, P(W)D and his initials were interchangeable hieroglyphics; and a regular reservist had been brought in to act as liaison with the military. And another novelist had been brought in as a film expert because it was considered that the staff captain was overworked.

  And as a result of all these changes he found himself confined to the “Q” side of the office, where his ignorance on all technical matters was a constant embarrassment—not only to himself. He never knew what any of the things were that he was ordering—whether a conical canister, for instance, was something that you sent by lorry or slipped into a Don R’s pocket. And there was no doubt, no doubt at all, that in its reconstructed state the particular job to which he had been delegated could have been much better done by someone else. And so after much heartsearching and some regret he wrote the letter with which this narrative began. “Dear Colonel, I think the time has come …”

  So that here he was in the third autumn of the war watching the waters of the South Atlantic wash against the grey camouflaged sides of the S.S.—ville.

  73

  CAPE TOWN, NOVEMBER 1941

  There was a long line of lights under the clear-cut razor edge of Table Mountain and the neon lights were flashing along the streets. Shop windows exhibited their wares like museum exhibits.

  During that second long winter of the war, when for days on end he had not known what daylight was, he had felt that when peace came, when lights were again released, he would stagger blinded, as one does when one comes out of a cinema into the sunlight. He didn’t, though. It was surprising how easily it all came back, how simply one re-accepted what one had always kn
own. It was like re-meeting a person with whom one has been truly intimate; one forgets that one has ever been away.

  74

  “THE OLD SWEAT”

  He joined the ship at Aden. He had a crown upon his shoulder. He was wearing the 1915 medal and an M.C. with bar. He was short and fat and bald and over fifty. His hair was cut in a narrow fringe above his ears. His collar was open at the throat and the sweat that ran down his forehead, branching to the left and right above his eyes, collected in a pool below his Adam’s apple to disperse in tributary streams into the thick mat of hair that showed damply dark through the thin poplin of his shirt. His false teeth fitted loosely and his lips were perpetually parted in a grin. He was clean-shaven. He was not more than five-foot seven high and he weighed over two hundred pounds.

  As he waddled up the gang-plank, followed by a valise, three suit-cases and a kit-bag, he seemed a ridiculous caricature of Tweedledee. The moment, however, that he began to talk, one forgot his appearance, his age, his grossness; one was conscious only of the extreme brightness of his eyes, the gregariousness of his smile. He gave a sense of youthfulness, almost of boyishness.

  He arrived a few minutes before lunch, and there was a thick crowd beside the bar. Without pushing his way in, without appearing to take precedence, he had within ten seconds caught the barman’s eye.

  “A glass of beer, Donald, and no ice now, mind, in it.”

  He took a long gulp and from the way the beads of sweat on his forehead swelled into rivulets one might have imagined that the liquid had mounted rather than descended.

  “That’s good,” he said, “that’s very good. We were rationed on beer in Aden. We are rationed on beer in Eritrea. Five bottles a week, that’s all. Not that I let that worry me. I’ve my own private store. Still, when I do see unrationed beer—come on there, Donald, another—presto.”

  He called the barman “Donald.” He called the waiter “Donald.” He called everyone to whom he gave orders “Donald.” “They like it,” he said. “They feel it’s friendly.”

  The word punctuated his conversation. He was always ordering things. He was as hungry as he was thirsty. The menus on the Belgian ship were lengthy and elaborate. Most of his fellow passengers after having overeaten themselves for the first few days in the relieved surprise at finding themselves released from rationing, had taken to missing every other course. The major, however, showed no such moderation.

  “Boy, but this is good,” he said. “I knew it would be. They talk about French cooking, but Belgian’s better. I stayed an extra week in that God-awful Aden so that I could get a passage on this ship. It was a grim week, but it’s worth it now. Some more of that fish salad, Donald.”

  He was stationed in Eritrea in charge of some branch of ordnance. He had been in Middle East since the first Christmas. He had liked Cairo in a way, but there had been too many red tabs there. One had to play third fiddle all the time. Besides, he was only a captain then.

  “What one wants in a war, what one wants at any time as far as that goes,” he insisted, “is some puddle that one can be the biggest fish in.” That’s what he’d been looking for, that’s what he had found. He had had it all planned out. Years ago he had planned it out: “During the last war in those ruddy trenches, and, oh boy, did I sit in them, Ypres in that first October, wounded at Neuve Chapelle, back in time for the Somme, wounded again there, patched up in time to catch a packet up at Wipers. Lucky I did, if I hadn’t I shouldn’t be here. All of my lot that was left got mopped up in March ’18. And none of my wounds had any real effect—no lasting effect, I mean, not like some of those poor devils who got gassed, that at the time had seemed to have got off lightly, but haven’t been free from illness since.”

  Yes, he had had a lucky war, he said, and not a bad war either in certain ways. Amiens, oh, boy—that was a place coming straight back to it from the line. No, not a bad war at all.

  But not, of course, what a war could really be. Not what this war was. One needed to be the right age to enjoy a war, something between forty-five and sixty. If one was younger one couldn’t stand anything but active soldiering, “seeing all one’s friends go, I mean. It’s the old sweats who have the time. With a bit of luck, I used to think, I ought to be just the right age when the next war comes. That’s why I stayed in the reserve so that I could be back in the army almost before the balloon went up. The right age. That was the point and that’s exactly what I was. I’ve had a lucky break all right. Hi, Donald, what about another cutlet?”

  There are some men for whom this war has been a lucky break and he was one of them. Before the last war he had been a junior shipping clerk. He had married in 1917, during a leave from France. His first child was born while he was recovering from his last wound at Ypres. The moment the war was over he had had to start in working, and at the ladder’s foot. He was a man without family or financial backing. But he had energy and drive. He was the kind of man that other men could trust. He was the kind of man that people of all classes liked. He was so obviously good-hearted. And, up to a point, he had succeeded. He was production manager in a city firm: a position that supported a semi-detached villaish kind of house at Sutton.

  He produced a photograph of his house, and of his family. He had two daughters, one of whom was married; a son who was in his second year at one of the smaller public schools. From the photograph of the younger daughter one could guess how pretty his wife had been. The house had a cosy look, with its box hedge, its herbaceous border, its tennis court and crazy pavement paths, and hammock seat. A pleasant family life. But hardly an adventurous existence.

  And three years earlier the owner of that house must have seemed anything but an adventurous figure as he caught the same train to London, morning after morning.

  It was easy to picture him in a dark, not very well cut suit with a bowler hat, an umbrella, and papers tucked beneath his arm. With his lack of height, his baldness, his fatness, he could have served as a caricaturist’s model, for the “little man” struggling along with a burden of responsibilities, of mounting incometax, of threatened wars, of children with opinions of their own.

  The war had taken ten years off his age, or rather it had removed him from the category of age. He was a major now with a row of medals, a rather dashing major with his laugh, his vitality, his capacity to eat and drink without ill effects. He was a man without the weight of responsibilities. He had the confidence of one who is giving instead of receiving orders, and there is all the difference in the world between an unpressed cloth suit, with a waistcoat that has gone in creases, a stiff collar that by the end of the day had lost its stiffness, and the open throat of a smock-like holland tunic with short-cut sleeves, and a crown upon the shoulder. Yes, he was having a good war all right.

  “I’ve found the right kind of job,” he said, “and the right place for it. You wait till you see Asmara. Boy—and how. Donald, what are you doing with that John Collins?”

  75

  O.E.T.

  Asmara is eighty kilometers and seven thousand feet from the hot and arid port that had been planned as the gateway to Mussolini’s empire. If there exists in the world to-day a spot drearier than Massawa, he had been spared in the course of many travels the sight of it. The harbour is littered with wrecked shipping. Funnels and masts project above the water. A two-thousand ton liner tilts, gutted at her moorings. A couple of small steamers lie half submerged, turned over on their sides. The quay—with the flimsy wedding-cake effect of the Banca d’Italia, with the moorish dome of the Governor’s Palace half screened by palms, with advertisements of Vermouth, Fernet Branco and C.I.T. trips to Egypt fading from the dirty stucco of a colonnade of abandoned offices—has the look of a series of Hollywood sets in process of dismantlement. There is no sign of animation along the waterfront: silence and emptiness, a few Arab boys swinging their legs over the stone work, a couple of soldiers lounging beside a truck—as though all the actors and producers and cameramen had gone to lunch, leaving a few
stage hands on the set—the doorway to Mussolini’s empire. And beyond it the hills rise, brown and sullen.

  And it is in the middle of those hills on a plateau in those hills, that had been set, as Italy’s supreme colonial gesture, the city of Asmara. Little, more ridiculous, more pathetic, or in its own way remarkable, had he ever seen. The road that rises to it is a triumph of that inherited talent that drove, eighteen hundred years ago, those long, straight roads through Britain. Broad and trim and cambered, it mounts into the hills through country that is unrelieved by vegetation, by any signs of industry. The villages are mere scatterings of native hutments. Occasionally one passes a jackal; now and again a pack of baboons stare at one incuriously. There are lorries on the road and tankers and an overhead cable cuts an “as the crow flies” transport system from the coast. But for the most part there is just road, the cliffs on one side and railings, white and black, upon the other, with Il Duce and Il Re preceded with the vast double V of viva viva cut and inscribed into the cliffs—mile after mile of road with the air cooling and the landscape growing bleaker, and the question “why?” growing more insistent. Why this road, one asks oneself, why that gateway of Massawa? What purpose did they serve: an assembly point in the Abyssinian war? Perhaps, but even so … And then suddenly the road swings into Asmara.

  If the road mounting through that empty country had seemed inexplicable even as a gesture, the city that is its crown seems the most fantastic improbability. There it stands, surrounded by its hills, its roads leading into a vacuum, a full-sized colonial city with flats and churches and cathedrals, its Via Benito Mussolini flanked with shops and offices. There is a great boulevard like the Promenade des Anglais, its centre lined with shrubs and lit with lamps. There are villas and restaurants and cinemas and theatres. Its glass-ceilinged maison is one of the “spot sights” of Middle East.