Kingsley Amis - Dear Illusion - Selected Stories

‘How about another of those?’

‘No, thank you, sir, I really should be getting along and seeing the major. It’s what I came for, after all.’

‘I’ll take you up.’

‘There is just one point you might be able to help me with first, sir, if you would.’ Doll opened the buff file-cover he had brought with him. ‘This posting advice. I expect you know how the major’s got all that organized. He can send who he likes. Well, he’s asked to provide eight bodies of various kinds. All Signal Office Personnel. They’ll be entraining for the UK in a couple of days, twenty-eight days’ leave, then the boat for Burma. I should imagine they’ll all be joining the same unit out there. Now the major’s been in a funny mood recently. Sort of withdrawn. Normally he’d nominate all these bodies personally, but this morning he gave me three names and told me to fill in the others myself. Not like him at all. Anyway, I was just wondering if there’s anybody in your section you’d care to lose. Apart from Hargreaves, that is. He was one of the major’s three, as you probably know.’

‘Yes, he did mention it to me. Tell me, Sergeant Doll, is there a vacancy for a switchboard-operator on that list?’

‘There is, sir. Two, in fact.’

‘Mm. It’s tempting, but I’m afraid—’

‘Perhaps it’ll help you to make up your mind, Mr Archer, if I tell you now that I wasn’t going to bother the major with signing the order himself. He’s got enough on his mind already. And of course any officer’s signature would do. Yours, for instance, sir.’

Archer hesitated. ‘He’s bound to see the file copy.’

‘Yes, sir, but that won’t be until tomorrow morning, will it? And I was thinking of dropping the top copy off for transmission at the Signal Office tonight when I go back down. Get it out of the way.’

‘He could cancel it and send an amended list.’

‘Oh, do you think that’s likely, sir? Major Raleigh wants to be thought of as someone who can take a quick decision and stick to it. It’s like a moral code with him.’

‘A good point, Sergeant. Very well, then. I think I’ll nominate Signalman Hammond.’

‘14156755 Signalman Hammond, J. R., SBO DII?’ Doll ran his fingertip along a line of typing. ‘Anybody else? Right. Now, if you’d just sign here, sir… Thank you. I suppose you’ll be off yourself soon, Mr Archer, won’t you, after what you were telling me?’

‘I imagine so. Well, you won’t be needing the major after all now, I suppose.’

‘Oh yes I will, sir. That was just a routine matter. Something far more important has come up. There’s a signal here from War Office telling 424 Wireless Section, 502 Line Section and 287 DR Section to stand by to move on twenty-four hours’ notice. Half the Company. They’ve obviously decided we’re to be broken up.’

‘That’s important all right,’ Archer said. ‘To the major more than anyone else, probably.’

‘My feeling exactly, sir. That was why I thought it couldn’t wait till the morning. I reckoned I had to let him know about it tonight.’ Doll’s eyes grew distant.

‘He’d set his heart on taking the Company out East.’

‘Oh, don’t I know it, Mr Archer. That’s the end of that ambition. I wonder what the next pipe-dream will be.’ Suddenly getting to his feet, Doll roamed about the room with his hands in his pockets, an uncharacteristic bodily movement. ‘It may surprise you to learn, sir,’ he said cordially, ‘that I’m by way of being a bit of an angler. Been at it since I was a boy. Well now, it used to surprise me very much at first how badly I got on with other anglers. Jealousy rather than congratulations if you managed to pull off something a bit out of the ordinary. No end of disagreements over red hackles and what-not. And a lot of boredom too. Now in one way you wouldn’t expect that, sir, would you? You’d expect people who’d got interests in common to get on better with one another than the average, not worse. But when you come to think about it it’s not so odd. Someone who’s a bit like yourself can rub you up the wrong way worse than a chap who’s totally different. Well, there’s one obvious instance. I bet a lot of the lads in this Company hate their Officers and NCOs a sight worse than they ever hated Jerry. They know them, you see.

‘You’ll have to forgive me for reciting you a sermon, Mr Archer, but this is a point about human nature that’s always interested me. And it has got an application. I take it I wouldn’t be intruding on your mental privacy, so to speak, sir, if I hazarded a guess that you regard myself and the major as pretty much birds of a feather?’

‘I think that’s fair enough.’

‘Thank you, sir. In that case it may surprise you to learn that I can’t think of anybody whom I despise as thoroughly as I despise the major. I know you hate him yourself or I wouldn’t risk telling you this. You’ll be leaving us soon anyway.’

Archer’s puzzlement, which had been growing for the last five minutes, changed direction. ‘But I’ve got personal reasons.’

‘I too. Though they’re quite different from yours. He’s so sure he’s better. But in fact he’s shoddy material. Third rate. Not to be depended on. In many parts of the world over the next few years an important battle’s going to be fought — largely against the ideas that you yourself stand for, sir, if I may say so with all respect. The major’s going to be worse than useless to us there. To me and the people who think as I do. He’s soft. He’ll break. I can see him standing as a Labour candidate in ten years’ time if the wind’s still blowing that way. No principle. That’s the one thing I can’t forgive.’

Partly to throw off complacency at being taken into a fascist’s confidence, Archer stood up briskly and said: ‘I’ll take you up to the major now.’

‘Right, sir. I wish I’d been there to see him thrown out of that last parliament. Good for Hargreaves. And you yourself too, sir, of course.’

The muffled bang of an exploding petrol-tank reached them as they climbed the steep narrow stairs to the main ante-room. This had been created by the folding-back of folding doors between two former bedrooms and the importation of furniture from all over the house and elsewhere. Outside it was a tiny landing hedged by slender carved banisters. Archer left Doll here and went in

The major was sitting in half of the curious high-backed double armchair, a favourite of his despite its clear resemblance to part of a railway-carriage seat. Probably he found it suited his characteristic activity, the having of a word, whether denunciatory or conspiratorial, with someone. He had been having one now, an earnest one accompanied by gesture, with the young and usually solitary lieutenant-colonel of Engineers whose thirst for schnapps had established him as a local personality. In his hand at the moment was a glass not of schnapps but of the Mess’s whisky, a glass which, appearance suggested, had been emptied and refilled several times that evening. The colonel was rather elaborately accoutred with belt, holster, revolver and lanyard. Both he and the major, who likewise seemed to have taken drink, were dramatically illuminated by a many-tiered candelabrum that made great use of frosted glass.

Raleigh had interrupted his confidential word with the colonel to have a more public one with the Mess corporal, who was saying: ‘About forty, I should say, sir. Well dressed. Quite respectable.’

‘And where’s this picture she says she wants?’

‘It was in her bedroom when it was her bedroom, sir.’

‘But it isn’t her bedroom any more. The house isn’t hers either, it’s been requisitioned. It belongs to me. No, she can’t have her picture. I don’t care whether she painted it herself or not, she can’t have it. Go and tell her so, will you?’