Читать книгу H.M.S - John Graham Bower - Страница 7

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The air was thick with smoke, and a half-circle of officers sat clustered round the stove in the smoking-room. True—there was no fire in the stove, but that did not count. A stove was a place you sat around and jerked cigarette ash at, or, if you were long enough, rested your heels on. The party consisted of six ship's officers and a guest. A few feet away a Bridge-party was in progress. It was the usual Naval party, and was composed of one man who could play, two who thought they could, and one who had come in in response to urgent demands to "make up a four," and who held no illusions about his own play or his partner's. However, he argued well, which was a help. The game appeared to go in spasms—a few minutes' peace punctuated only by subdued oaths, and then a cross-fire of abuse and recriminations—usually opened by the fourth player, who had somewhere learnt the wonderful feminine art of getting in first accusation, and then dodging his opponents' salvoes behind a smoke-screen of side-issues.

The group by the stove were not in the least disturbed by the game behind them. They had heard Naval Bridge played before, and knew that it was only when the players became polite that trouble was in the offing. The talk, as always, was of the War, and swung with startling suddenness from one queer aspect to another. The Senior Engineer was leaning back in his chair, his pipe between his teeth, listening to the mixture of views and voices from either side of him.

"What do they want this saluting order at all for? They're making everybody salute everybody in London now, and they say it isn't safe to walk down the Haymarket to the Admiralty, because the traffic stands to attention for you."

"All damn nonsense. There's too much saluting—that sort, I mean—and there's too little of the other sort. Let's have an order that every civilian must salute a wounded man, or a man with a wound stripe, and then I'll take Provost-Marshal and see it done."

"They'd chuck their hands in. They're all talking of Democracy now, and a wounded man would count as a gilded autocrat."

"Democracy, my foot! I know their sort of Democracy. It's like Russia's special brand—do as you please, and make all you can for yourself. A civilian's no good till he's a conscript or done his time in the Territorials. If they want democracy they can come here. This is the most democratic Service in the world."

"But you can't run down civilians over this war; why—the whole Army's civilian now. They haven't done so badly, though they had to wait for war before they moved."

"Whose fault was it they didn't help before? It wasn't ours. But that's just what I'm saying. They're all right once they've been drilled, but no damn good till they have been. We ought to put the whole lot through a short course of drill and a week of trench work, and let them go again."

The guest's voice broke in—"You mean, I take it, that the people who are going to make the peace are the people who have not yet learnt discipline?"

"Yes, sir—that's about it. They haven't learnt to think for their side instead of their own private ends."

"Call 'em politicians and have done with it, Pongo!"

"Well, they are—aren't they? They get the politicians they like, and they appoint men of their own sort, so they are all politicians really."

"Well, I think that's being rather hard on them. They have to take the men the party whips gave them. I think they're a poor lot, but I wouldn't call them politicians."

The guest moved uneasily. "I don't quite see your point," he said. "Is the term 'politician' one of reproach or praise? I once stood for my local constituency and——"

The young officer with his heels on the stove gave a sudden snort. "Don't you believe him, he's pulling your legs—so don't apologise. He's no politician, anyway."

The guest laughed. "Well, I'm not in politics now," he said. "What is your definition of this strange animal?"

There was a pause, and then a cautious reply, "Well, he's an M.P."

"But I know some very charming M.P.'s—are they all politicians?"

"Oh no, sir. They're different. It's a question of standards, really."

"Ah, but what are the standards?"

"Well, you see—we have one—and civilians have another, business people and so on, and then there's the politicians."

"You ought to write a dictionary, Pongo—you snub-nosed old shell-back. No, I ain't scrapping, and if you get up I'll take your chair."

"Whose got a cigarette? No, not one of your stinkers—gimme one of yours, Guns."

The officer addressed politely passed a cigarette across in his fingers, and turning in his chair beckoned to a marine servant who was just returning with an empty tray from the Bridge table.

"A cigarette, please, waiter—and debit it to the account of my honourable friend Mr. Maugham, here. I'll stop your cadging, Pongo—if I have to take on the tobacco accounts to do it."

"Lucky there's no shortage of 'baccy, or all the armies would strike."

"Well, that'd be one way to stop the war. You can't fight without it. Wish we had some tobacco shares. Some people must be making a lot."

"Not so much as the food people."

"I don't believe the food people do make so much. It's the world shortage that causes the trouble, not the prices—or rather one involves the other."

"It isn't so much that. It's a rise of prices all round. Things get expensive, so the country strikes for higher wages and gets them—then prices go up because the sovereign has depreciated, and they strike again. It goes on in a vicious circle."

"Can't be a circle—because that's progression. You've got to get to a smash in time."

"Yes, it means there'll be just as much cash in the world, but every one will be poor. Cash isn't wealth—work is wealth, and all work nowadays is wasted. We're chucking it into the air in Flanders."

"Well, we'll last out this war, and then have to lash out."

"Oh yes—there'll be room to lash out in, too. We'll be back in Elizabeth's days—lots of room for every one, but no capital."

"So long as there are no Huns we'll be happy, so what's the odds? Give us a match."

"Well, I want a few Huns left to compare notes with after this. It would be dull to hear our own side only. One couldn't meet their Army, of course, but their Navy's not so bad. They've tried to fight clean, at any rate, and they fight good and 'earty. Yes, I know about Fritz, but if you had orders to torpedo liners, wouldn't you do it? 'Course you would, if you were told they were carrying munitions and you were saving your country by it. There are Fritzes who like it, certainly, but we have to give the others the benefit of the doubt."

"Well, I'd like to read their logs and so on after the war, though we'll be so damn sick of all the truck they'll publish here when the Censor pays off that we wont want to read much of anything."

"It isn't the stuff just after the war one would like to read. I'd like to be alive in a hundred years to read the truth."

"Well, you wont be if you knock my drink over with your hairy hoofs—sit still!"

"It'd do you good if I did knock it over—your hoary-headed old rip. Guns, do you think they'll have raised our pay in a hundred years' time?"

"I doubt it. They'll pay off the Navy and economise as soon as peace is signed—"

"—And we'll have another war on our hands inside six months—we always do; we've always retrenched after a war, and then had to give bonuses to get the men back inside a year."

"Well, they'll pay off the battleships, anyway—and only keep the fast cruisers and the submarines."

"You and your submarines! Have you heard from your brother lately?"

"Yes, he tells me if I'm going to join I've got to remember it's the greatest honour to be—half a sec., I've got the letter here—to be alive and able to get into the greatest and most efficient Service of the Greatest Navy the world has ever seen, in the Greatest event in History since the Moon broke off."

There was a two seconds' silence (which is long for a Naval discussion), then—

"Well, cutting out the swollen-headed tosh about the Greatest Service, which I take it he means to refer to submarines, I don't know that he's far wrong."

"Well, I suppose we shall have our pasts and presents all looked up, and that people at the U.S. Institution will argue about us like they did a few years ago about Trafalgar."

"No fear. They'll all be peaceful then, and we'll be barbarians, and not to be spoken of."

"Barbarian, my foot! We're the cleanest lot in England, and the English are cleaner than most races."

"Do you think there'll be another battle?"

"Oh, help! If that cag's going to start, I'm off. Good-night, sir."

"I must go too, Jim," said the guest, with a startled glance at the clock. "Where did I leave my coat?"

The Senior Engineer rose and followed them out, hearing as he passed through the door an unwearying voice by the stove—"I know a chap on Beatty's staff, and he says they'll fight next spring or summer."