Woolwich, Staff College, the lot. I’m about as regular as you can get.’
‘I suppose this is…to us it’s the worst sort of interruption to our lives, but I suppose for you it’s the thing you’ve been waiting for.’
‘All you War Service types think that,’ said Pelling, ‘but if you think that any regular soldier likes fighting wars, you’re quite wrong.’ He saw the Lieutenant glance at his badges. ‘Oh, we get promotion, but only at the expense of having our nice little club invaded by a lot of amateurs who don’t want to be there. The peacetime army is quite a different show. A chap doesn’t go into that in the hope that there will eventually be a war.’
‘No, I suppose not.’
‘You won’t believe it,’ said Pelling, ‘but peacetime soldiering can be good fun, especially for a youngster straight from school. The army’s so small that one gets to know everyone. One travels a lot, and there’s ample leave as well as polo, cricket and rugger. It’s not at all bad, Lieutenant, believe me. Even the parade ground can have a curious satisfaction.’
‘The parade ground?’
‘A thousand men, perfectly still and silent…and able to move in precise unison. Professional dancers probably share the same elation.’
‘Like marching behind a military band? We did that once, passing out of OCTU.’
‘That’s a part of it, but for me a silent parade ground has even more of a ritualistic effect. The body moves and yet the mind remains. There is a separation of physical and spiritual self that can liberate the mind like nothing else I know.’
‘Are you a Buddhist, sir?’ It was a reckless guess.
‘Once I nearly was,’ admitted Pelling.
‘And now?’
‘I am slowly rediscovering Christianity.’
Pelling had told no one about the time he’d spent billeted in the monastery near Naples, of the long conversations he’d had with the Abbot, arguing so fiercely that at times they were both yelling. Apart from his driver no one knew of the trips to the slum villages, and not even the driver could have guessed the effect that time had had upon him. ‘I’m going into a monastery,’ said Pelling.
‘Really?’ He stared at the Colonel, trying to see some strange secret.
Pelling nodded. He did not doubt that he would go back to the great white building with its orchards and its library and the life that went on without interruption for century after century. It was arranged that he would get both the tractors going again and find or build a lorry that would take the produce into Naples where they would get a better price for their vegetables.
There had been times during the fighting when only the promise of a cloistered life kept Colonel James Pelling going. He visualized himself thirty years hence; stouter than Father Franco and quieter than Father Mario – and perhaps less devout than either. Yet, as the old man had explained, the Order had in the past received men with doubts, and some of these had become its most valuable sons. Would one ever get used to being called ‘Father James’, Pelling wondered.
‘Do you believe there is a heaven for tractors, Father James?’
‘If there isn’t, Brother, then Father James will not go there.’ They were truly good, those simple men.
‘Would you be able to stand that?’ It was the Lieutenant speaking. ‘The quiet: I’d go bonkers.’
‘It’s not a silent Order,’ said Pelling.
‘You’ve no family then?’
‘A father.’ He’d go – what was the word the Lieutenant had used? – bonkers. Yes, he’d go bonkers all right. But Pelling was determined not to repeat the mistakes of his father’s solitary life. Days in the boat yard or at the drawing-board, lunch in the pub with the works manager. Dinner in the yacht club, or a late snack left by cook: dry ham sandwiches clamped under a plate. And what was the purpose of his father’s life: a couple of knots gained by hull modifications, a win at Cowes, a telegram from a transatlantic cup winner. That wasn’t enough for him, not nearly enough. Pelling could hear the soldiers below talking about what they would do with their lives after the war.
‘Mr Steeple, sir.’ It was Wool’s voice calling softly, ‘Two Mark IVs turning off the road near the track at two o’clock.’
Lieutenant Steeple said, ‘Sergeant Manley, get your sniper’s rifle. Have a go at their visors. You never know, you might star his periscope glass.’
The Lieutenant was too late grabbing for the glasses. ‘They’ve stopped,’ grunted Pelling. He rubbed the lenses with a handkerchief and then looked again. ‘Nice hull-down position if they were going to batter us.’ Their guns hadn’t traversed, so it was difficult to know whether they were covering the main road or the farmhouse to the east of it. The Lieutenant picked pieces of straw from his duty battle-dress blouse while he waited for the next move.
‘You should wear denims,’ said Pelling without taking the glasses from his eyes. ‘That rough battle-dress material picks up straw and stuff.’ He couldn’t see very well, for the morning sun reflected on the dry, dusty soil so that it shimmered as he remembered the desert had done.
‘No, no, no, sir,’ interrupted Wool. He chuckled and flicked ash from his cigar. ‘It wasn’t hot and sunny, it was a close overcast day. There had been rain that morning. Not the sort of rain we got a few weeks later, but rain. And it wasn’t morning, it was late afternoon when the German tanks arrived, very late, almost dark. You were in the cellar drinking tea with that Mr Steeple, the officer. I came down the cellar steps and said, “Any more tea for anyone? There are a couple of Tedeschi tanks outside the front door.”’
‘Damn!’ shouted Steeple. Pelling looked around for a place to stand his mug of tea and then decided to drink it hurriedly. It scalded his mouth. Pelling let Steeple up the steps first. It was his show, but Pelling couldn’t resist interfering.
‘Radio?’ called Pelling.
‘Bishop!’ yelled Steeple. ‘Tell Company: Two Ted Mark IVs moving in on us fast.’ He looked at Pelling and said more calmly, ‘No, wait a minute, make that: Two Mark IVs, range nine hundred, bearing oh three five.’
Everyone stood very quietly listening to the radio operator patiently repeating the message. Only Pelling and Steeple could see the two enemy tanks. The others were just staring very hard at the wall and the rafters, as if by opening their eyes wide they would be able to hear better. It must have been three or four minutes before anyone spoke and then Wool said, ‘Listen to that nightingale sing! It’s as clear as a glass of Worthington…’
‘Couldn’t have been me,’ chuckled Wool. ‘I couldn’t tell a nightingale from a budgerigar; still can’t.’ He puffed his cigar. ‘What I do remember, though, is you making us black our faces with soot from the stove. Regular Sioux war party we looked.’
Wool had often played Red Indians when he stayed with his Gran. Blacking his face was an important part of that. He’d take his uncle’s boat and row along the stream. Using the oar against the river-bed, he could push himself right in among the reeds so that he and the boat disappeared. The cars on the road to Bishopsbridge were stage coaches, but pedestrians were miners and no honourable Indian brave would scalp them.
