No More Parades - Ford Madox Ford (the gingerbread man read aloud .TXT) 📗

complicated effect. “You would say,” Tietjens said to himself, “that, all together, it ought to be enough to take my mind up.”

The upright trooper had a very complicated sentimental history. It was difficult to advise him before his fellows. He, however, felt no diffidence. He discussed the points of the girl called Rosie whom he had followed from Sydney to British Columbia, of the girl called Gwen with whom he had taken up in Aberystwyth, of the woman called Mrs. Hosier with whom he had lived maritally, on a sleeping-out pass, at Berwick St. James, near Salisbury Plain. Through the continuing voice of the half-caste Chinaman he discussed them with a large tolerance, explaining that he wanted them all to have a bit, as a souvenir, if he happened to stop one out there. Tietjens handed him the draft of a will he had written out for him, asked him to read it attentively and copy it with his own hand into his soldier’s small book. Then Tietjens would witness it for him. He said:

“Do you think this will make my old woman in Sydney part? I guess it won’t. She’s a sticker, sir. A regular July bur, God bless her.” The McGill graduate was beginning already to introduce a further complication into his story of complications with the Japanese Government. It appeared that in addition to his scholastic performances he had invested a little money in a mineral water spring near Kobe, the water, bottled, being exported to San Francisco. Apparently his company had been indulging in irregularities according to Japanese law, but a pure French Canadian, who had experienced some difficulties in obtaining his baptismal certificate from a mission somewhere in the direction of the Klondike, was allowed by Tietjens to interrupt the story of the graduate; and several men without complications, but anxious to get their papers signed so as to write last letters home before the draft moved, overflowed across Tietjens’ table⁠ ⁠…

The tobacco smoke from the pipes of the N.C.O.s at the other end of the room hung, opalescent, beneath the wire cages of the brilliant hurricane lamps hung over each table; buttons and numerals gleamed in the air that the universal khaki tinge of the limbs seemed to turn brown, as if into a gas of dust. Nasal voices, throat voices, drawling voices, melted into a rustle so that the occasional high, singsong profanity of a Welsh N.C.O.: Why the hell haffn’t you got your 124? Why the ⸻ hell haffn’t you got your 124? Don’t you know you haff to haff your bleedin’ 124’s? seemed to wail tragically through a silence⁠ ⁠… The evening wore on and on. It astounded Tietjens, looking at one time at his watch, to discover that it was only 21 hrs. 19. He seemed to have been thinking drowsily of his own affairs for ten hours⁠ ⁠… For, in the end, these were his own affairs⁠ ⁠… Money, women, testamentary bothers. Each of these complications from over the Atlantic and round the world were his own troubles: a world in labour: an army being moved off in the night. Shoved off. Anyhow. And over the top. A lateral section of the world⁠ ⁠…

He had happened to glance at the medical history of a man beside him and noticed that he had been described as C1⁠ ⁠… It was obviously a slip of the pen on the part of the Medical Board, or one of their orderlies. He had written C instead of A. The man was Pte. 197394 Thomas Johnson, a shining-faced lump of beef, an agricultural odd-jobman from British Columbia where he had worked on the immense estates of Sylvia Tietjens’ portentous ducal second cousin Rugeley. It was a double annoyance. Tietjens had not wanted to be reminded of his wife’s second cousin, because he had not wanted to be reminded of his wife. He had determined to give his thoughts a field day on that subject when he got warm into his fleabag in his hut that smelt of paraffin whilst the canvas walls crackled with frost and the moon shone⁠ ⁠… He would think of Sylvia beneath the moon. He was determined not to now! But 197394 Pte. Johnson, Thomas, was otherwise a nuisance and Tietjens cursed himself for having glanced at the man’s medical history. If this preposterous yokel was C3 he could not go on a draft⁠ ⁠… C1 rather! It was all the same. That would mean finding another man to make up the strength and that would drive Sergeant-Major Cowley out of his mind. He looked up towards the ingenuous, protruding, shining, liquid, bottle-blue eyes of Thomas Johnson⁠ ⁠… The fellow had never had an illness. He could not have had an illness⁠—except from a surfeit of cold, fat, boiled pork⁠—and for that you would give him a horse’s blue ball and drench which, ten to one, would not remove the cause of the bellyache⁠ ⁠…

His eyes met the noncommittal glance of a dark, gentlemanly thin fellow with a strikingly scarlet hatband, a lot of gilt about his khaki and little strips of steel chain-armour on his shoulders⁠ ⁠… Levin⁠ ⁠… Colonel Levin, G.S.O. II, or something, attached to General Lord Edward Campion⁠ ⁠… How the hell did fellows get into these intimacies of commanders of units and their men? Swimming in like fishes into the brown air of a tank and there at your elbow⁠ ⁠… ⸻ spies!⁠ ⁠… The men had all been called to attention and stood like gasping codfish. The ever-watchful Sergeant-Major Cowley had drifted to his, Tietjens’, elbow. You protect your orfcers from the gawdy Staff as you protect your infant daughters in lambswool from draughts. The dark, bright, cheerful staffwallah said with a slight lisp:

“Busy, I see.” He might have been standing there for a century and have a century of the battalion headquarters’ time to waste like that. “What draft is this?”

Sergeant-Major Cowley, always ready in case his orfcer should not know the name of his unit or his own name, said:

“No. 16 I.B.D. Canadian First Division Casual Number Four