Men at Arms Read Online Free Page B

darkness, the baffling night that lay beyond the club doors. When the closing hour came the old soldiers and young soldiers and the politicians made up their same little companies to grope their way home together. There was always someone going Guy’s way towards his hotel, always a friendly arm. But his heart was lonely.
    Guy heard of mysterious departments known only by their initials or as ‘So-and-so’s cloak and dagger boys’. Bankers, gamblers, men with jobs in oil companies seemed to find a way there; not Guy. He met an acquaintance, a journalist, who had once come to Kenya. This man, Lord Kilbannock, had lately written a racing column; now he was in Air Force uniform.
    ‘How did you manage it?’ Guy asked.
    ‘Well, it’s rather shaming really. There’s an air marshal whose wife plays bridge with my wife. He’s always been mad keen to get in here. I’ve just put him up. He’s the most awful shit.’
    ‘Will he get in?
    “No, no, I’ve seen to that.. Three blackballs guaranteed already. But he can’t get me out of the Air Force.’
    ‘What do you do?’
    ‘That’s rather shaming too. I’m what’s called a “conducting officer”. I take American journalists round fighter stations. But I shall find something else soon. The great thing is to get into uniform then you can start moving yourself round. It’s a very exclusive war at present. Once you’re
in
, there’s every opportunity. I’ve got my eye on India or Egypt. Somewhere where there’ s no black-out. Fellow in the flats where I live got coshed on the head the other night, right on the steps. All a bit too dangerous for me. I don’t want a medal. I want to be known as one of the soft-faced men who did well out of the war. Come and have a drink.’
    So the evenings passed. Every morning Guy awoke, in his hotel bedroom, early and anxious. After a month of it he decided to leave London and visit his family.
     
    He went first to his sister, Angela, to the house in Gloucestershire which Box-Bender bought when he was adopted as Member for the constituency.
    ‘We’re living in the most frightful squalor,’ she said on the telephone. ‘We can’t meet people at Kemble any more. No petrol. You’ll have to change and take the local train. Or else the bus from Stroud if it’s still running. I rather think it isn’t.’
    But at Kemble, when he emerged from the corridor in which he had stood for three hours, he found his nephew Tony on the platform to greet him. He was in flannels. Only his close-cropped hair marked him as a soldier.
    ‘Hullo, Uncle Guy. I hope I’m a pleasant surprise. I’ve come to save you from the local train. They’ve given us embarkation leave and a special issue off petrol coupons. Jump in.’
    ‘Shouldn’t you be in uniform?’
    ‘Should be. But no one does. It makes me feel quite human getting out of it for a few hours.’
    ‘I think I shall want to stay in mine once I get it.’
    Tony Box-Bender laughed innocently. ‘I should love to see you. Somehow I can’t imagine you as one of the licentious soldiery. Why did you leave Italy? I should have thought Santa Dulcina was just the place to spend the war. How did you leave everyone?’
    ‘Momentarily in tears.’
    ‘I bet they miss you.’
    ‘Not really. They cry easily.’
    They bowled along between low Cotswold walls. Presently they came into sight of the Berkeley Vale far below them with the Severn shining brown and gold in the evening sun.
    ‘You’re glad to be going to France?’
    ‘Of course. It’s hell in barracks being chased round all day. It’s pretty good hell at home at the moment – art treasures everywhere and Mum doing the cooking.’
    Box-Bender’s house was a small, gabled manor in a sophisticated village where half the cottages were equipped with baths and chintz. Drawing-room and dining-room were blocked to the ceiling with wooden crates.
    ‘Such a disappointment, darling,’ said Angela. ‘I thought we’d been so clever. I