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

“Then leave it at that!” Tietjens said. He staggered a little until he reached the main lines. Then he marched. It was purgatory. They peeped at him from the corners of huts and withdrew⁠ ⁠… But they always did peep at him from the corners of huts and withdraw! That is the habit of the Other Ranks on perceiving officers. The fellow called McKechnie also looked out of a hut door. He too withdrew⁠ ⁠… There was no mistaking that! He had the news⁠ ⁠… On the other hand, McKechnie too was under a cloud. It might be his, Tietjens’, duty, to strafe McKechnie to hell for having left camp last night. So he might be avoiding him⁠ ⁠… There was no knowing⁠ ⁠… He lurched infinitesimally to the right. The road was rough. His legs felt like detached and swollen objects that he dragged after him. He must master his legs. He mastered his legs. A batman carrying a cup of tea ran against him. Tietjens said: “Put that down and fetch me the sergeant-cook at the double. Tell him the general’s going round the cookhouses in a quarter of an hour.” The batman ran, spilling the tea in the sunlight.

In his hut, which was dim and profusely decorated with the doctor’s ideals of female beauty in every known form of pictorial reproduction, so that it might have been lined with peach-blossom, Tietjens had the greatest difficulty in getting into his belt. He had at first forgotten to remove his hat, then he put his head through the wrong opening; his fingers on the buckles operated like sausages. He inspected himself in the doctor’s cracked shaving-glass; he was exceptionally well shaved.

He had shaved that morning at six-thirty: five minutes after the draft had got off. Naturally, the lorries had been an hour late. It was providential that he had shaved with extra care. An insolently calm man was looking at him, the face divided in two by the crack in the glass: a naturally white-complexioned double-half of a face: a patch of high colour on each cheekbone; the pepper-and-salt hair ruffled, the white streaks extremely silver. He had gone very silver lately. But he swore he did not look worn. Not careworn. McKechnie said from behind his back:

“By Jove, what’s this all about? The general’s been strafing me to hell for not having my table tidy!”

Tietjens, still looking in the glass, said:

“You should keep your table tidy. It’s the only strafe the battalion’s had.”

The general, then, must have been in the orderly room of which he had put McKechnie in charge. McKechnie went on, breathlessly:

“They say you knocked the general⁠ ⁠…”

Tietjens said:

“Don’t you know enough to discount what they say in this town?” He said to himself: “That was all right!” He had spoken with a cool edge on a contemptuous voice.

He said to the sergeant-cook who was panting⁠—another heavy, grey-moustached, very senior N.C.O.:

“The general’s going round the cookhouses⁠ ⁠… You be damn certain there’s no dirty cook’s clothing in the lockers!” He was fairly sure that otherwise his cookhouses would be all right. He had gone round them himself the morning of the day before yesterday. Or was it yesterday?⁠ ⁠…

It was the day after he had been up all night because the draft had been countermanded⁠ ⁠… It didn’t matter. He said:

“I wouldn’t serve out white clothing to the cooks⁠ ⁠… I bet you’ve got some hidden away, though it’s against orders.”

The sergeant looked away into the distance, smiled all-knowingly over his walrus moustache.

“The general likes to see ’em in white,” he said, “and he won’t know the white clothing has been countermanded.” Tietjens said:

“The snag is that the beastly cooks always will tuck some piece of beastly dirty clothing away in a locker rather than take the trouble to take it round to their quarters when they’ve changed.”

Levin said with great distinctness:

“The general has sent me to you with this, Tietjens. Take a sniff of it if you’re feeling dicky. You’ve been up all night on end two nights running.” He extended in the palm of his hand a bottle of smelling-salts in a silver section of tubing. He said the general suffered from vertigo now and then. Really he himself carried that restorative for the benefit of Miss de Bailly.

Tietjens asked himself why the devil the sight of that smelling-salts container reminded him of the brass handle of the bedroom door moving almost imperceptibly⁠ ⁠… and incredibly. It was, of course, because Sylvia had on her illuminated dressing-table, reflected by the glass, just such another smooth, silver segment of tubing⁠ ⁠… Was everything he saw going to remind him of the minute movement of that handle?

“You can do what you please,” the sergeant-cook said, “but there will always be one piece of clothing in a locker of a G.O.C.I.C.’s inspection. And the general always walks straight up to that locker and has it opened. I’ve seen General Campion do it three times.”

“If there’s any found this time, the man it belongs to goes for a D.C.M.,” Tietjens said. “See that there’s a clean diet-sheet on the messing board.”

“The generals really like to find dirty clothing,” the sergeant-cook said; “it gives them something to talk about if they don’t know anything else about cookhouses⁠ ⁠… I’ll put up my own diet-sheet, sir⁠ ⁠… I suppose you can keep the general back for twenty minutes or so? It’s all I ask.”

Levin said towards his rolling, departing back:

“That’s a damn smart man. Fancy being as confident as that about an inspection⁠ ⁠… Ugh!⁠ ⁠…” and Levin shuddered in remembrance of inspections through which in his time he had passed.

“He’s a damn smart man!” Tietjens said. He added to McKechnie:

“You might take a look at dinners in case the general takes it into his head to go round them.”

McKechnie said darkly:

“Look here, Tietjens, are you in command of this unit or am I?”

Levin exclaimed sharply, for him:

“What’s that? What the⁠ ⁠…”

Tietjens said:

“Captain McKechnie complains that he is the senior officer and should command this unit.”

Levin ejaculated:

“Of all the⁠ ⁠…” He addressed McKechnie with