Читать книгу Royal Regiment - Gilbert Frankau - Страница 49
Оглавление§ 1
Colonel Sir Guy Wethered’s thoughts were still peculiar as he watched his guest open the door for his young wife. Danger had always stimulated him. And this might be danger of a new kind.
“I made her marry me”, he brooded. “And I’ll damn well make her stay married to me. Whether she wants to or whether she doesn’t.”
Not that there could be any real danger from Rusty. All the same ...
Meanwhile the door had closed.
“Whiskey?” asked the Hawk then.
“Thanks.”
“Pour me out a B. and S. at the same time, will you?”
Rockingham came to the fire with the two glasses. He was still poignantly aware of Camilla’s handclasp; and, just for a second, the sheer incongruity of this natural history museum as a setting for her beauty irritated him.
Irritating, too, was the Hawk’s, “That lady wife of mine’ll knock your head off if you play tennis with her”.
But after that he grinned, showing his pointed teeth; and went on:
“No fool like a middle-aged one. Never thought I’d let myself in for matrimony. Not my line of country. Always liked my freedom. You’re the same, I gather. Or doesn’t the fair sex interest you?”
The pointblank question demanded an answer.
“I wouldn’t mind getting married”, said Rusty Rockingham, “if I could find the right girl.”
“Not so easy nowadays.”
The Hawk showed his teeth again; and continued talkative while he ruminated, “Good-looking chap up to a point. Ought to take a bit more trouble with his appearance, though”.
Presently he asked, “Did you give your mother my message?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” He fell silent for a moment. “Do you think she’d like to be called on? I’m taking Camilla up to town for a few days next month. It’s a bit dull for her down here.”
There was nothing to say but, “I’m sure mother would like to see you again, sir”. Rockingham said it. Hawk Wethered repeated, “Good.
“I’ll drop her a line”, he continued. “Just scribble her address for me and leave it with Merivale. I fancy I’ll be turning in now. Where’s that stick of mine?”
Rockingham found him his stick. He hauled himself upright.
“This knee’s giving me gyp”, he admitted. “Lend me your arm, there’s a good chap.”
They made their way up the stairs together; went to their respective rooms.
§ 2
Only when he was alone did Rockingham realise how often—during the last half-hour—his thoughts had wanted to stray from the Hawk to the Hawk’s Camilla. Now—thank goodness—he could let them have free play.
Or would it be better not to think of her at all? Possibly. If one could manage it. But could one manage it—with Coningsby’s poem singing again, echoing and re-echoing through every chamber of one’s mind?
“A virgin in the fight she stands.” Curious, that she should make that very impression. It seemed almost impossible that she should be any man’s—least of all the Hawk’s—wife.
He smoked half a pipe on that, considering her character—as he fondly imagined—with complete objectivity. For fear still stood away. Neither was he aware, even subconsciously, of any danger, when he reached the conclusion that it would be pleasant to renew acquaintanceship.
Pleasant, too, as he wrote down his mother’s address and telephone number on a sheet of the Hawk’s crested notepaper, proved the thought that “the old lady” would meet this intriguing personality.
“Wonder what her opinion’ll be”, he speculated as he climbed into bed.
He slept dreamlessly till his host’s soldier servant deposited a teatray at his bedside and drew the chintz curtains. His emotions—in so far as the mechanical actions of shaving, bathing and dressing allowed him any—were still pleasurable. Definitely, a good weekend!
This last thought pursued him downstairs to the dining room. The footman brought breakfast and a morning paper as the clock struck eight.
Twenty minutes later, he was in the open air, making his way down the five steps and under the archway which led to the garage. Automatically, his mind gave him back, “Tell Graves to put his car away”.
The man in gaiters and shirtsleeves, plying chamois leather on windscreen and windows, seemed faintly surprised at being addressed by name.
“I was just going to bring her round for you, sir”, he said.
“That’s all right. I don’t expect my bag’s ready yet.”
The modest tip drew a salute. Suddenly the man’s face seemed familiar. “Haven’t I seen you before?” asked Rockingham.
“Only once, sir. Marvellous memory, you must have. I was in the fifty-second battery. When we were brigaded with the Turbans. At Nowshera. In twenty-seven, that was. I had a young horse out one afternoon. Couldn’t manage him nohow—till you rode up and told me to loosen me bit chain.”
Graves gossiped for a while. He insisted on warming up the engine.
“Hope I’ll be seeing you again, sir”, he said, just before Rockingham drove back to the front door, where Merivale and the footman were both waiting.
He gave Merivale the paper he had written overnight. The footman put his bag in the dickey.
He tipped again; was just about to drive off when he heard a window frame creak, and looked up.
The window, directly over his head, was flung open. Out of it, leaned Camilla. He perceived that she was still in négligé. One hand clasped red silk across her bosom; the other rested on the sill.
“I’ve two orders for you”, she laughed. “From the brigadier. He says, ‘Don’t forget to leave your mother’s address’, and that you’re to take a message to his headquarters. You’re to tell them he won’t be there till half-past eleven. And that a doctor’s to be in attendance.”
“Tell the C.R.A.”, laughed back Rockingham, “that the first of his orders has already been complied with, and that the second will be carried out immediately. I hope his knee isn’t any worse this morning.”
The Hawk’s face joined his wife’s at the window. Ostentatiously, he put his arm round her.
“There’s life in the old dog yet”, grinned the Hawk. “Tell ’em I want Laking. He said he might be going up to London today. So buzz off. Otherwise he may be gone before you get there.
“Laking”, he rasped. “Don’t forget the name, please.”
“That’ll be all right, sir.” And, a moment later, the commander of the Turban battery was away.
§ 3
The commander of the Turban battery drove back for Aldershot—taking the same road by which he had come—a good deal faster than his habit. Momentarily, he had forgotten his complex about motor accidents. Sheer annoyance banished it from his mind.
There seemed no particular reason for this annoyance. After all the Hawk was one’s superior officer as well as one’s host, so why shouldn’t he “throw his weight about”, especially if his knee were giving him gyp?
Nevertheless, one resented that last peremptoriness.
“No right to speak to me as though I were a newly joined subaltern”, thought Rockingham. “Especially in front of his servants.”
Or should it be, “Especially in front of his wife”?
Imaginatively, he could still see the picture of the Hawk’s arm encircling his wife. And that, also, annoyed him, until, making the turnpike, he slowed to his usual steady pace.
His thoughts veered then—tacking back very gradually to the exact point where he had abandoned them while he changed out of khaki into mufti on the Saturday.
Would Botley return to duty this week? A good thing—perhaps—if he did. The sooner one got this business between him and Godden settled, the better. A damn nuisance, if one had to lose Godden. What a pest women could be ...
This reflection brought him to the outskirts of Aldershot. A few more minutes—and he was at divisional headquarters. There he found Bryce-Atkinson, and gave him the Hawk’s message.
“He would insist on seeing the A.D.M.S.”,[3] commented Bryce-Atkinson, one hand grasping for the telephone, the other shuffling some papers on his desk. “Just wait till I find out if it’s O.K., will you? There’s something among this junk you might take along for me.”
The R.A.M.C. officer’s, “Blast him. All right. I’ll be there”, was clearly audible. Bryce-Atkinson said, “Thank you very much, sir”, and hung up.
“Here we are”, he went on, producing a buff form. “Not really urgent. But Headworth rang up on Saturday to know if we had any news of the fellow. It seems that Ralph Lyttelton wants him back rather badly ... Pity ... Because it doesn’t look as though he’d get him back at all.”
The name at the head of that form was “Botley”. Two letters from the report underneath it blazed at Rockingham’s eyes.
“Pity”, repeated Bryce-Atkinson. “Still, he may get over it. Wonderful what they can do for T.B. nowadays.”
“Quite”, agreed Rockingham. “Funny thing to happen, though.”
“Why?”
But on second thoughts it seemed unnecessary to enlighten the brigade major’s curiosity; and the commander of the Turban battery, having glanced at his wristwatch, excused himself with a smiling, “Tell you some other time. Got a lot of work to do this morning”.
“So have I, as it happens.”
“Then so long.”
| [3] | Assistant Director of Medical Services. |
