Kingsley Amis - Dear Illusion - Selected Stories

Then there had been the telephone-exchange-vehicle nonsense. On another convoy Archer had gone off without it, an action threatening similarly grave disservice to General Coles. Fortunately one of my sergeants, happening to watch Archer’s wagon-train lumbering out, had gone and kicked out of bed the driver of the exchange vehicle, promising violence if his wheels were not turning inside ten minutes. A message by motor-bike to the head of the convoy, recommending a short halt, had done the rest. Taxing Archer with this afterwards, I wrung from him the admission that the dipsomaniacal Sergeant Parnell had been the culprit. He had been ordered to warn all drivers overnight, but half a bottle of calvados, plus the thought of the other half waiting in his tent, had impaired his efficiency.

‘Why don’t you sack that horrible lush of yours?’ I had asked Archer in exasperation. ‘You must expect things like that to happen while he’s around. Raleigh would get him posted for you like a shot.’

‘I can’t do that,’ Archer had moaned, accentuating his habitual lost look. ‘Couldn’t run the section without him.’

‘To hell, man; better have no sergeant at all than him. All he ever does is talk about India and cock things up.’

‘I’m not competent, Jock. He knows how to handle the blokes, you see.’

That was typical. Archer was no less competent, or no more incompetent, than most of us, though with Raleigh, the Adjutant and Captain Rowney (the second-in-command of the Company) taking turns to dispute this with him, his chronic lack of confidence was hardly surprising. And it was obvious to me that his men loathed their sergeant, whereas Archer himself, thanks merely to his undeviating politeness to them on all occasions, was the only one of their immediate superiors whom they had any time for. Without their desire to give him personal support in return, anything might have happened every other day to General Coles’s communications, even, conceivably, to the campaign as a whole. According to Raleigh and the Adjutant, that was perhaps the most wonderful thing of all about Signals: junior officers got as much responsibility as the red-tab boys. But not as much pay, I used to mutter, nor as much power.

III

The afternoon had turned out fine, and I said as much to the Adjutant as, his goodwill mission evidently completed, he passed me on the wooden veranda of the hotel and got into his jeep without a word. Soon Raleigh, carrying a short leather-covered cane and a pair of string-and-leather gloves, turned up and walked me across the cobbled street to his office, pausing only to exhort a driver, supine under the differential of a three-tonner, to get his hair cut.

Raleigh’s office had the distinction of being housed in an Office. Pitted gilt lettering on the window advertised an anonymous society of mutual assurances. Archer had told me the other day how moved he had been, arriving there to be handed some distasteful errand or comradely rebuke, at the thought of the previous occupants in session, grouped blindfolded round a baize-covered table telling one another what good chaps they were.

He was in the outer room of the place now, sitting silently with the appalling Parnell among the clerks and orderlies. He looked more lost than usual, and younger than his twenty-one years, much too young to be deemed a competent officer. He was yawning a lot. I went up to him when the sergeant clerk called the major over to sign something.

‘Look, Frank,’ I said in an undertone: ‘don’t worry about this. This Court has no standing at all. Raleigh hasn’t the powers to convene it; the Company’s not on detachment. It’s a complete farce — just a bit of sabre-rattling.’

‘Yes, I know,’ he said. ‘Can I see you afterwards, Jock?’

‘I’ll come over to your section.’ The line-tests could wait.

I went into the inner room, a long low affair lit by a single window and an unshaded bulb that pulsed slowly. Rowney stood up and swept me a bow. ‘Ah, Captain D.A. Watson, Royal Signals, in person,’ he fluted. ‘Nice of you to look us up.’

‘I always like to see how you administrators live.’

‘Better than you long-haired scientists, I’ll be bound.’

‘Materially, perhaps. Spiritually, no.’ It was hard not to talk like this to Rowney.

‘Och aye, mon, ye’re maybe nae sae far frae the truth.’

‘Shall we get on, chaps?’ the major asked in his on-parade voice. ‘Don’t want to be all night over this.’ He opened a file and nodded to me. ‘Get Parnell in, will you?’

I got Parnell in. He smelt hardly at all of drink. He proceeded to give an oral rendering of his earlier written report: Raleigh had passed me a copy. At the relevant time he, Parnell, had been explaining the convoy’s route to the drivers. Then he had got into the cab of his usual lorry (the one carrying the cookhouse stuff, no doubt). Then they had moved off. Soon after arrival at the other end, Mr Archer had said the charging-engine was missing and he, Parnell, must go back for it. Going back for it and returning empty-handed had taken eleven hours. In reply to questions, Parnell said yes, he had looked in the right place; no, nobody had been hanging about there; no, neither he nor, as far as he knew, anyone else had been detailed to look after the charging-engine; and yes, he would wait outside.

Archer came in and probably did his best to salute the Court smartly. The effort forced you to notice how badly he did it. He started on a rigmarole similar to Parnell’s, then stopped abruptly and gazed at the major. ‘Look, sir,’ he said, biting his lips. ‘Can I put this quite simply?’

Raleigh frowned. ‘How do you mean, Frank?’

‘I mean I lost the charging-engine and that’s all there is to it. I should have made sure it was put on board and didn’t. I just forgot. I should have gone round afterwards and had a look to make sure we’d left nothing behind. But I forgot. It’s as simple as that. Just a plain, straightforward case of negligence and inefficiency. And all I can say is I’m very sorry.’

Rowney started to ask a question, but the major restrained him. ‘Go on, Frank,’ he said softly.

Archer seemed to be trembling. He said: ‘What makes me so ashamed is that I’ve let the Company down. Completely. And I don’t see what I can do about it. There just isn’t any way of putting it right. I don’t know what to do. It’s no use saying I’m sorry, I know that. I’ll pay for the thing, if you like. So much a month. Would that help at all? God, I am a fool.’

By this time he was shaking a good deal and throwing his hands about. I wondered very much whether he was going to cry. When he paused, blushing violently, I glanced at the other members of the Court. The head of the second-in-command was bent over the paper-fastener he was playing with, but Raleigh was staring hard at Archer, and on his face was a blush that seemed to answer Archer’s own. At that moment they looked, despite Raleigh’s farcical moustache, equally young and very alike. I felt my eyes widen. Was that it? Did Raleigh enjoy humiliating Archer for looking young and unsure of himself because he too at one time had been humiliated for the same reason? Hardly, for Raleigh was not enjoying himself now; of that I was certain.

Still holding his gaze, Archer burst out: ‘I’m so sorry to have let you down personally, Major Raleigh. That’s what gets me, failing in my duty by you, sir. When you’ve always been so decent to me about everything, and backed me up, and… and encouraged me.’

This last, at any rate, was a flagrant lie. Had it not been, Archer would not have been where he was now. And surely he must know he had lied.

The major turned his head away. ‘Any questions, Jack?’

‘No thank you, Major.’