Читать книгу Royal Regiment - Gilbert Frankau - Страница 6

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Rusty Rockingham’s nearest way to the door brought him past the Hawk, who said, reseating himself for a moment, disdainful of custom, to finish his third glass of port:

“Didn’t see you in the anteroom before dinner. What are you doing up here? I thought you were commanding the Turban battery”.

“I still am, sir. But they’re mechanising us; and I’m doing a three weeks’ course.”

“Serve you right.” The thin red lips grinned as they repeated their favourite phrase. “Long time since I was your captain in the old forty-eighth. Do you remember my giving you your nickname?”

The memory (“Mr. Rockingham, a little harness cleaning seems indicated. This surcingle buckle is as rusty as your hair.”) amused them both. Discipline relaxed as Wethered pushed back his chair.

“You retaliated in kind”, he went on. “Though I only found it out afterwards. You didn’t know that, eh? ‘Pounced on me like the hawk he is’, was the phrase you used. And it’s stuck to me ever since.”

He took Rockingham’s arm as they passed out, by the alcove where the statue of Armed Science stands and the band plays on guest nights; but relinquished it once they were in the hall.

From the music room at the top of the staircase came the thump of a piano.

“Our subalterns”, quoted Hawk Wethered, “have quite a lot of evening work to do. Noisy young bastards. It’s queer how soon one loses the habit of communal living. You realise I’ve committed matrimony since we last met.”

“Didn’t you receive the letter I wrote you, sir?”

“Now you come to mention it, I’m afraid I did. And your mother’s. Believe I forgot to answer hers, too. Apologise for me when you see her. I was sent up to Waziristan a few days after the wedding. By the way, how is your mother?”

“Fairly well, I’m glad to say.”

A mess waiter, who happened to be coming out through it, held open the first door of the green-walled, picture-hung anterooms. They went in; and found two empty saddlebags by the fire.

“Drink?” asked the Hawk.

“Not for the moment.”

“I oughtn’t to either. Still, when one does happen to be removed from the wifely supervisions——”

He pressed the bell; ordered a double brandy and soda.

One or two other members of the mess drifted up to, drifted away from them as they continued to chat, aimlessly, the senior making most of the conversation; at a pause in which Rockingham’s eyes wandered to the portrait of a man he had known well in life.

“Your uncle, wasn’t he?” The Hawk had not missed that momentary lack of concentration.

“Great uncle.”

“He always reminds me of your father. Pity about that. How old would your father be if the Huns hadn’t scuppered him?”

“About seventy.”

“Still young enough to command a Corps.” The harsh voice rasped to sarcasm. “We’ll all be Methuselahs by the next show. Unless”, he fell silent for a second, “it’s accelerated.

“Take yourself.” The voice changed, became friendly once more. “If my memory’s right, you left the Shop in nineteen eleven. That means you’re well over forty, with twenty-five years’ service, four and a half of ’em active, behind you. If war were to break out tomorrow, what would be your command? Six eighteen-pounder bundooks, four of ’em nineteen-eighteen vintage, and about a hundred flannel-footed soldiers.

“And it isn’t as if you were a bonehead either”, continued the Hawk, burying his tight black moustache in his drink.

Rockingham smiled:

“Promotion is rather slow these days. But I’m no worse off than the others”.

“Very philosophical. By the way, I suppose you realise I’m your C.R.A.?”

They chatted on, aimlessly again, till both anterooms were almost empty.

“You’d better have a nightcap”, commanded Hawk Wethered; and pressed the bell for the second time.

“I’m not convinced in my own mind”, he said abruptly, “that the next war to end war isn’t going to be accelerated.”

The junior’s face showed no trace of a smile.

“You don’t really mean that, sir?”

“I’m not accustomed to saying things I don’t mean.” Just for a moment, the Hawk was all the brigadier. He glared at the waiter, who fled after putting down the two glasses; and repeated himself, as though he were making some doubtful order absolutely clear.

“And I’m not talking without the book”, he went on. “I was through the Canal three weeks ago. Met an old Arab I used to know. In Port Said. Rather trust him than the newspaper wallahs. Don’t you make any mistake about this fellow Mussolini. He’s no more mad than I am—or than Kitchener was when we mopped up the Sudan. The Italianos are right on the job. Badoglio’ll be in Addis before you can say League of Nations. A nice smack in the eye for us that’ll be. And, in my opinion, it won’t end there.”

“But Mussolini wouldn’t tackle us?”

“Wouldn’t he—if he saw half a chance of bringing it off, if he could coax Hitler to go in with him. Once a tiger starts man-eating, he doesn’t stop until someone puts a rifle bullet between his eyes. I’m not sure we oughtn’t to have done that right away. These twopenny-ha’penny sanctions. I ask you! Could we have played his game any better? He’s got his whole nation behind him now. He’s only to win this war—and they’ll believe him when he tells ’em he can win the next.”

The Hawk crossed the long legs that ended in the spurred Wellingtons and lit himself a fat Turkish cigarette.

“You don’t look as if you relished my prospect”, he went on. “I gather you’d rather wait for your promotion to lieutenant-colonel till it comes along in the usual way.”

“Well”—it had always been advisable, Rockingham remembered (and it was more than ever necessary now that he was one’s own brigadier) not to rub the Hawk up the wrong way—“I’m not precisely keen on another war.”

“Neither am I”—Hawk Wethered laughed—“at the present moment. The civilian population is too rotten with pacifism for one thing. And for another, well”—again he laughed—“thanks to our precious government, we’re not exactly ready. Rearmament’s a joke so far. You agree with me there, I hope?”

They were on safe ground again. One only had to give the Hawk the word, and he would go on cursing “these lousy politicians who can’t see an inch in front of their noses” till midnight.