Gavin Lyall - Honourable Intentions

Aunt Maud’s house in Cheltenham was really quite large, in a rambling way; it just seemed too small for the possessions she and her late husband had accumulated. Every small table was draped with a fringed embroidered cloth and then jammed with framed photographs, bowls of pot-pourri, vases and little silver knick-knacks – each with a very dull history. Every wall was coated with elaborate frames, in which were incompetent landscapes. Each door had a heavy velvet curtain with a brass rail on it, to keep out draughts, and every window curtain was as elaborately draped as a rococo Madonna. It would have been a bad place for kittens, drunks and children, if one could conceive of Aunt Maud allowing such creatures in.

It smelt of dust and old ladies, the other of whom was Ranklin’s mother.

“You still haven’t married, Matthew,” Aunt Maud told him. “I imagine you want your family name to continue.” Her tone made it clear that she couldn’t imagine why . “You’re not getting any younger.”

“I’m thirty-nine,” Ranklin said. Though with his round, innocent face he looked ten years younger, something that no longer bothered him.

“I suppose you’re putting it off in the hope of being promoted to Major. An Army Captain’s pay can’t be all that generous, judging by how much you give your poor mother.” His mother was sitting on the far side of the fireplace, silently doing embroidery, and Ranklin was depressed to see that she was beginning to adopt Aunt Maud’s style: severe floor-length dresses in grey or muddy colours over prim white blouses with high collars fastened with cameo brooches. Damn it, as a child he had thought her the prettiest woman in the world.

But now age was bringing out the family resemblances: the same lack of chin, the pursed lips, the slightly hooked nose, along with grey hair drawn into a severe bun. Soon they would be just two dusty, old and near-identical sisters whose marriages had been episodes, long passed.

“And are you still living in Whitehall Court? I am given to understand that that is a very expensive address. No wonder you can’t afford to send your poor mother a proper allowance.”

“The War Office pays for the flat. It’s right across the street so I can act as a sort of caretaker.”

“And do you do anything else besides caretaking ?”

“They send me abroad from time to time.”

“Where to?”

“I’ve been to France, Germany, Italy-”

“Oh, only the Continent? The Captain thought of those places as being local.”

Aunt Maud was the widow of a Navy Captain and didn’t think it odd that he had left her with a comfortable inheritance. Ranklin, who knew that a Navy Captain was unlikely to have earned more than ?500 a year, thought it distinctly odd. He wondered how often the Captain, while earning a DSO for suppressing Malayan pirates, had shared in their booty or taken a bribe to look the other way.

“But just what is it you do! Mind, I’ve never been clear about what the Army did. Now, the Navy’s task is quite clear: preserving the Empire and keeping the world trade routes open.”

Ranklin had had enough. Ignoring his mother’s pleading look, he said: “Trade? Oh, I don’t think the Army has anything to do with trade.”

They were now in for five minutes of penal silence, quite likely timed to the second by Aunt Maud, before she would decide she had not heard that. Not forgiven it: forgiveness was a word she understood only in church, and there only in the abstract.

But suppose he had told the truth – that he was attached to the Secret Service Bureau and its unofficial (and reluctant) deputy chief? Aunt Maud would have said that he was as big a fantasist as his brother had been and that there was something odd about Ranklin blood.

In fact his father had been a conventionally successful farm-owner – not farmer, that sounded too muddy for a Gloucestershire squire – who had died soon after the Captain, ten years ago. So Ranklin’s elder brother Frederick had inherited earlier than he had expected, and when agricultural prices began to slide, he started dabbling in gold shares, being warmly welcomed by those who understood such things.

When Frederick found he hadn’t understood, being a man of honour he killed himself with a shotgun. He might have done it where his mother was less likely to find his near-headless body, but perhaps he had other things on his mind. A lot of legal fees later, Mrs Ranklin had come to Cheltenham while Matthew was about to become bankrupt and resign his Army commission. Going off to fight for the Greeks in the 1912 Balkan War was simply opportunism: his only skill was in commanding artillery.

Still, a bankrupt mercenary soldier does seem rather caddish, and this had attracted the recently-formed Secret Service Bureau. Becoming unofficial second-in-command was partly because he was older than the other London-based agents, and partly because he wasn’t as much of a cad as the Bureau’s Chief had hoped. However, since he needed someone who would run the office without embezzling the furniture, he gave the job to Ranklin.

The five minutes’ rigid silence ended with: “Perhaps you are pinning your hopes of promotion on their being a European war, Matthew?”

Ranklin considered his answer carefully. The world had scraped through 1913, when things had looked very sombre, but everyone seemed to agree that the first months of this year had seemed brighter. But the danger time wouldn’t come until late summer, when the harvest was in and reservists could be called up.

“We’re all still arming,” he said. This was indisputable, even by Aunt Maud.

“Exactly!” she said triumphantly. “I don’t approve of Winston Churchill, but he does seem to understand that this country depends on the Navy.”

“Perhaps the trouble is that the Navy can’t really influence what happens on land.”

“Fiddlesticks. The boy,” Aunt Maud turned to Ranklin’s mother, “seems never to have heard of blockade.”

“I think submarines and mines have made-”

“And what will happen when we’ve trounced the German fleet?”

“Er . . . I’m afraid I don’t know.”

“If they haven’t had the sense to give up already, you and your Army will land a few miles from Berlin and march in.”

Oddly, she wasn’t alone in planning this. Lords of the Admiralty had had the same farcical idea for decades. Ranklin did his best to look apologetic. “I doubt the Army’s big enough for that.”

“I know, I know. And that is why we have had to ally ourselves with the French.” Clearly an exceptionally Satanic sect. “Our natural enemy! King George should have got rid of the Liberal government first thing. And then told the French to go about their business. His Majesty had a naval upbringing, you know, but quite clearly he would not have made a good Captain.”

“Really? I do believe Mr Lloyd George-” He hadn’t bothered to think up what he believed, knowing he’d never get to say it. His mother winced, but it was too late.

“Lloyd George is an anarchist! A charlatan! A Methodist ! I have Heard Things about him that I Will Not Repeat!” But she would be in a better mood afterwards. Mention of Lloyd George always acted like an enema on Aunt Maud.

Before he left on Tuesday morning, Ranklin gave his mother an envelope holding thirty pounds in notes. As usual, she said it was too much and he said he was sorry it wasn’t more. But it didn’t make any difference: she would just hand it over, gratefully, to Aunt Maud. Then he kissed them both and walked off towards the station.