‘All right,’ he said. ‘What do I do now?’
But the man didn’t even answer. ‘Corporal of the guard!’ he shouted. ‘Post Number Four!’ Then the corporal appeared.
‘Second Lieutenant Levine,’ he said. ‘My aeroplane’s in this hangar — —’
‘Not if you’re General Haig and your sword’s in there,’ the corporal said.
‘Right,’ he said, and turned. And for a moment he even thought of Conventicle, the Flight Sergeant; he had been a soldier long enough by now to have learned that there were few, if any, military situations which the simple cry of ‘Sergeant!’ would not resolve.
It was mainly this of course, yet there was a little of something else too: the rapport, not between himself and Conventicle perhaps, but between their two races — the middle-aged bog-complected man out of that race, all of whom he had ever known were named Evans or Morgan except the two or three named Deuteronomy or Tabernacle or Conventicle out of the Old Testament — that morose and musical people who knew dark things by simply breathing, who seemed to be born without dread or concern into knowledge of and rapport with man’s sunless and subterrene origins which had better never have seen light at all, whose own misty and music-ed names no other men could pronounce even, so that when they emerged from their fens and fastnesses into the rational world where men still tried to forget their sombre beginnings, they permitted themselves to be designated by the jealous and awesome nouns out of the old fierce Hebraic annals in which they as no other people seemed at home, as Napoleon in Austria had had his (the child’s) people with their unpronounceable names fetched before him and said ‘Your name is Wolf’ or ‘Hoff’ or ‘Fox’ or ‘Berg’ or ‘Schneider’, according to what they looked like or where they lived or what they did.
But he considered this only a moment. There was only one sure source, knowing now that even this one would not be too certain. But nothing else remained: Bridesman’s and Cowrie’s hut (That was one of the dangled prerequisites for being brave enough to get to be a captain: half a hut to yourself. The major had a whole one.), Cowrie looking at him from the pillow as Bridesman sat up in the other cot and lit the candle and told him.
‘Certainly it’s not over. It’s so far from over that you’re going on jobs tomorrow. Does that satisfy you?’
‘All right,’ he said. ‘But what happened? What is it? An armed sentry stopped me at the hangars thirty minutes ago and turned out the guard and the hangar doors were locked and a light inside and I could hear people doing something, only I couldn’t pass the bayonet and when they drove me away I heard a lorry and saw a torch moving about down at that archie battery this side the village and of course that’s fresh ammo being hurried up since archie quit at noon today too and naturally they’ll need a lot of ammo to quit with too — —’
‘If I tell you, will you let be and go to your hut and go to bed?’
‘Right,’ he said. ‘That’s all I ever wanted: just to know. If they’ve beat us, I want to stand my share too — —’
‘Beat us be blowed. There’s nobody in this war any longer capable of beating anyone, unless the Americans might in time — —’
‘And welcome,’ Cowrie said. But Bridesman was still talking:
‘A French regiment mutinied this morning — refused to go over. When they — the French — began to poke about to learn why, it seems that —— But it’s all right.’
‘How all right?’
‘It was only their infantry disaffected. Only troops holding the line. But the other regiments didn’t do anything. The others all seemed to know in advance that the one was going to refuse, but all the others did seem to be just waiting about to see what was going to happen to it. But they — the French — took no chances. They pulled the regiment out and replaced it and moved up guns and put down a heavy barrage all along their front, just like we did this afternoon. To give ourselves time to see what was what. That’s all.’
‘How that’s all?’ he said. Cowrie had put a cigarette into his mouth and, raised onto one elbow, was reaching for the candle when the hand stopped, less than a fraction of a second before it moved on. ‘What was the hun doing all this time?’ He said quietly: ‘So it’s over.’
‘It’s not over,’ Bridesman said harshly. ‘Didn’t you just hear what the major said at noon today?’
‘Oh yes,’ he said serenely. ‘It’s over. All the poor bloody stinking infantry everywhere, Frenchmen, Americans, Germans, us … So that’s what they’re hiding.’
‘Hiding?’ Bridesman said. ‘Hiding what? There’s nothing to hide. It’s not over, I tell you. Didn’t you just hear me say we have a job tomorrow?’
‘All right,’ he said. ‘It’s not over. How can it be not over then?’
‘Because it isn’t. What do you think we put down that barrage for today — we and the French and the Americans too — the whole front from the Channel in — blasting away a half year’s supply of ammo for except to keep the hun off until we can know what to do?’
‘Know to do what? What are they doing in our hangar tonight?’
‘Nothing!’ Bridesman said.
‘What are they doing in B Flight’s hangar, Bridesman?’ he said. The cigarette pack lay on the packing case which served for a table between the two cots. Bridesman half turned and reached his hand but before he had touched the pack Cowrie, lying back on one arm beneath his head, without looking around extended the cigarette already burning in his own hand. Bridesman took it.
‘Thanks,’ he said. He said: ‘I dont know.’ He said harsh and strong: ‘I dont want to know. All I know is, we have a job tomorrow and you’re on it. If you’ve a good reason for not going, say it and I’ll take someone else.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Goodnight.’
‘Goodnight,’ someone said.
But it wasn’t tomorrow. There was nothing tomorrow: only dawn and then daylight and then morning. No dawn patrol went out because he would have heard it, being already and long since awake. Nor were there any aeroplanes on the tarmac when he crossed to the mess for breakfast, and nothing on the blackboard where Collyer occasionally saw fit to scrawl things in chalk which no one really ever read, himself sitting long at the cleared table where Bridesman would more or less have to see him sooner or later, provided he wanted to. From here he could see across the aerodrome to the blank and lifeless hangars and watch the two-hourly relief of the pacing guards through the long coma-ed forenoon, the morning reft of all progress beneath the bland sky and the silence.
Then it was noon; he watched the Harry Tate land and taxi up to the office and switch off, and the trench coat get down from the observer’s seat and remove the helmet and goggles and toss them into the cockpit and draw out the stick and the red and brazen hat. Then all of them at lunch: the general and his pilot and the infantry officer and the whole squadron, the first lunch he could remember from which at least one flight and sometimes two were not absent, the general saying it not quite as well as the major because it took him longer, but saying the same thing:
‘It’s not over.
Not that we needed the French. We should simply have drawn back to the Channel ports and let the hun have Paris. It wouldn’t be the first time. ’Change would have got windy, but it wouldn’t have been their first time either. But that’s all past now. We have not only kept the hun fooled, the French have got their backs into it again. Call this a holiday, since like all holidays it will be over soon.
And there are some of you I think wont be sorry either’ — naming them off because he did keep up with records, knew them all ‘ — Thorpe, Osgood, De Marchi, Monaghan — who are doing damned well and will do better because the French have had their lesson now and so next time it will be the long vac. proper because when the guns stop next, it will be on the other side of the Rhine. Plenty of revs, and carry on.’ And no sound, though
