Anthony Powell - The Kindly Ones

‘I’ll come up with you to make sure the blackout won’t fall down,’ said Jeavons. ‘Never do to be fined as a warden.’

‘Good night, Nick.’

‘Good night.’

They went upstairs. Stanley Jeavons threw down what was apparently the last of his papers. He took the pipe from his mouth and began to knock it out against his heel. He sighed deeply. ‘I think I’ll have a glass of beer too,’ he said. He helped himself and sat down again. ‘It’s extraordinary,’ he said, ‘how you get a hunch from a chap’s handwriting if he’s done three years for fraudulent conversion.’

‘In business?’

‘In business, too. I meant in what I’m doing now.’

‘What are you doing?’ ‘Reservists.’ ‘For the army?’

‘Sorting them out. Got a pile of their personal details here. Stacks more at the office. Brought a batch home to work on.’

‘Then what happens?’

‘Some of them get called up.’

‘I’m on some form of the Reserve myself.’

‘Which one?’

I told him.

‘You’ll probably come my way in due course — or one of my colleagues’.’

‘Could it be speeded up?’

‘What?’

‘Finding my name.’

‘Would you like that?’

‘Yes.’

‘Don’t see why not.’

‘You could?’

‘M’m.’

‘Fairly soon?’

‘How old are you?’

I told him that too.

‘Health A1?’

‘I think so.’

‘School OTC?’

‘Yes.’

‘Get a Certificate A there?’

‘Yes.’

‘What arm is your choice?’

‘Infantry.’

‘Any particular regiment?’

I made a suggestion.

‘You don’t want one of the London regiments?’

‘Not specially. Why?’

‘Everyone seems to want a London regiment,’ he said. ‘Probably be able to fix you up with an out-of-the-way regiment like that.’

‘It would be kind.’

‘And you’d like to get cracking?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll see what we can do.’

‘That’s very good of you.’

‘Might take a week or two.’

‘That’s all right.’

‘Just let me write your name in my little book.’

Jeavons returned to the room.

‘That friend of yours is absolutely cooked,’ he said. ‘He’d have been happy to sleep on the floor. His blackout is all correct now, if he doesn’t interfere with it. Well, Stan, I don’t know how much Lil is going to enjoy living in a cottage with Mrs W.’

‘Lil will be all right,’ said Stanley Jeavons. ‘She can get on with all sorts.’

‘More than I can,’ said Jeavons.

Stanley Jeavons shook his head without smiling. He evidently found his brother’s life inexplicable, had no desire whatever to share its extravagances. Jeavons moved towards the table where the beer bottles stood. Suddenly he began to sing in that full, deep, unexpectedly attractive voice, so different from the croaking tones in which he ordinarily conversed:

‘There’s a long, long trail a-winding

Into the land of … my dreams,

Where the night … ingale is singing

And the white moon beams.

There’s a long, long night of waiting,

Until my dreams all … come true …’

He broke off as suddenly as he had begun. Stanley Jeavons began tapping out his pipe again, perhaps to put a stop to this refrain.

‘Used to sing that while we were blanco-ing,’ said Jeavons. ‘God, how fed up I got cleaning that bloody equipment.’

‘I shall have to go home, Ted.’

‘Don’t hurry away.’

‘I must.’

‘Have some more beer.’

‘No.’

‘Come and see us soon,’ said Jeavons, ‘before we all get blown up. I’m still not satisfied with the fold of that curtain. Got the blackout on the brain. You haven’t a safety-pin about you, have you, Stan?’

Outside the moon had gone behind a bank of cloud. I went home through the gloom, exhilarated, at the same time rather afraid. Ahead lay the region beyond the white-currant bushes, where the wild country began, where armies for ever campaigned, where the Rules and Discipline of War prevailed. Another stage of life was passed, just as finally, just as irrevocably, as on that day when childhood had come so abruptly to an end at Stonehurst.