Clegg was standing very close to his mother, just touching her back with his front. She turned and gave him a look which said: ‘Careful. Not in front of the boy’. He gave her a look which said: ‘Blast the interfering little brat. You think of him too much. He wouldn’t notice anyway, the steaming great loon. Look at him, standing there all thumbs. Hasn’t found a single nail, even. You can’t spend your whole time worrying about him’. She gave him a look which said: ‘Now, Randy, we’ve been through all that’.
Robert had once heard his mother say: ‘If you’d only try to be nice to him, Randy.’ Mr Clegg had said: ‘But I do. I try all the time. I’m just not a child person, Emmie,’ and his mother had said: ‘He is taking to you a bit, isn’t he?’ and Mr Clegg had said: ‘I’ve tried to get him to call me Randolph. He won’t. It’s Mr Clegg this, Mr Clegg that. He does it to hurt me. I’m a sensitive man, Emmie. I’m easily hurt. You know that. I have delicate feelings. The boy knows that. Children sense these things. He calls me Mr Clegg to hurt me. He hates me.’
Robert would have been prepared to call him Randolph if he was even remotely Randolphish. That would have been only fair. But he never was. He was Mr Cleggish, and the more Randolphish he tried to be, the more Mr Cleggish he became. You will not have my mother, vowed Robert.
Mr Clegg began the simple task of removing the short length of wood which was holding nothing up. Robert felt that it might be dangerous, but they knew better than he.
Twice Mr Clegg’s hands touched Robert’s mother and paused momentarily before passing on. That sort of thing gave adults a big thrill. They really were the most extraordinary people. Especially since Mr Clegg’s hands were like uncooked fillets of plaice.
The length of wood was so rotten it came away in their hands. Two cross beams and a whole section of the ceiling collapsed with it. One of the beams struck his mother across the head. Mr Clegg fell in a shower of plaster.
Half his mother’s money went to Mr Clegg and half to Robert. Half of Robert went to Aunt Maud and half to Aunt Margaret. It was the fairest solution the family could find.
September, 1953. The first dark night at Catterick. Lectures from the hut sergeant and the two hut corporals. Practice at making bed-packs. Your bed-pack is not considered to be up to standard, probably because you have a refined voice. Out it goes on to a soaking flowerbed. Finally at 12.30 a.m. the lights are put out. You make your bed in the dark, and struggle into the damp sheets. Your bed smells of wet earth. The hut smells of huts. In the morning you are awakened at 4.14. After two and a half hours devoted to making straight lines round the barrack-room floor with boot polish you are allowed five minutes for breakfast. After two days of this sort of thing you have to wear your denims for the first time. They have been issued without buttons, and you have to sew the buttons on yourself. To you this smacks more of sheer inefficiency than of inspired character building. You begin to sew them on. Your efforts do not meet with success. You begin to master the technique, but it is too late, and you find yourself on parade with safety pins in place of fly buttons, and your trousers held up by the thread from your spare pair of green drawers cellular. As you march the safety pins stick into your genitals. This hurts. The trousers begin to slip. You look down. A voice yells out: ‘You can look down when your trousers fall down, Bellamy, and not before, yunnerstand?’ The voice says: ‘You can look down now, Bellamy.’ You pull your trousers up.
The squad halts and the corporal summons you to the front. He recognizes you as someone who makes the others laugh and is dangerous. He would like to break you. The corporal is a little tin god and a sadist. When he makes a joke, you laugh. When you make a joke, he does not laugh. He permits you to do up your trousers, commenting: ‘I wouldn’t have believed it. He’s tying himself up with his green drawers cellular.’ Obedient titters from F Squad. ‘You think you’re bloody funny, don’t you, Bellamy?’ says the corporal. ‘Yes, corporal.’ ‘Right. Then we’ll all laugh at you.’ The voice is calm, spiteful, holding great power in reserve. He is not altogether an unsubtle operator. He has a sense of rhythm, and even rations his swear words. ‘You will all go ha ha ha by numbers. Squad will laugh at Bellamy by numbers, squaaaaaaaaa – wait for it – squaaaaaaaaaaa krwghaaaarrrh. Tups three. Ha. Tups three. Ha. Tups three. Ha ha ha. Tups three. Stand at ice. Tups three. Stand easy. Are you funny, Bellamy?’ ‘They seem to think so.’ Titters and gasps. ‘Shurrup. They seem to think so what?’ ‘They seem to think so, corporal.’ ‘I suppose Mummy thinks you’re very funny, Bellamy, does she? I suppose the mater thinks you fraightfully amusing.’ ‘My mother’s dead, corporal.’ ‘I don’t care what she is, Bellamy, you’re in the army now. Any more impertinence you’re on a charge, yunnerstand, yunnerstand?’ ‘Yes, corporal.’ Your breath stinks of fascism. ‘Now listen, Bellamy, I can break you, I can break you just like that, yunnerstand? Yunnerstand?’ ‘Yes, corporal.’ ‘I’ve broken wogs, I’ve broken krauts, I can fucking break you, yunnerstand?’ ‘Yes, corporal.’ ‘If I have any more trouble from you I’ll shove your rifle so far up your fucking arse you’ll be coughing point two two bullets. Yunnerstand? Eh? Eh? Eh?’ ‘Yes, corporal.’ ‘What’s wrong? Itching, are you? Got crabs? What do you think you are, the London Zoo? Eh? Eh?’ ‘No, corporal.’ ‘God help me, he’s got safety pins in his balls. What’s wrong with you, Bellamy? Eh?’ ‘Nothing, corporal.’ ‘Potential bloody officer? You’re not fit to be a potential bloody sanitary inspector. Now get fell in.’
When you aren’t marching you’re up to your elbows in cold greasy water in a cookhouse sink, and when you aren’t up to your elbows in cold greasy water in a cookhouse sink you’re picking the loose leaves off the trees so that passing officers won’t be struck and possibly seriously injured by falling leaves. Three huts down the row there is a suicide.
January, 1956. All he remembered about Sally afterwards was that she had dark hair and a perfect physique. He met her at a party. She made a pass at him. Therefore he took her home. She was drunk, perhaps also a nymphomaniac. She kissed him with tremendous pressure and perfect teeth. She forced him back on the divan and ran her body over him as if he was a harp and she was a musician’s passionate fingers. They asked no questions about each other.
It was easy. She practically did it for him. He could have stopped at any moment, but didn’t. After all, he was only giving her what she wanted. It wasn’t hard to imagine a society in which she would get him on the national health.
Afterwards he wondered who had been using whom the most. He felt for Sally a disagreeable mixture of disgust and pity. He felt very young and small. He felt both a sinner and a prig. He lay in bed, no longer a virgin, ready now for Sonia, and he wondered just how much he had lost. Nothing, he suspected. And that was terrifying.
November, 1966. ‘She was a good woman. We shall all miss her,’ said the Rev. J. W. Scott.
‘I know I shall,’ said Robert.
‘She never came to church, but she was generous in her support of all our activities,’ said the Rev. J. W. Scott.
‘So I believe,’ said Robert.
‘She has been called to a better place,’ said the Rev. J. W. Scott.
‘She’s dead,’ said Robert.
Chapter 8
Hopes
He was ninety minutes late. It had been a hard day at the office.
‘I’ve missed you, Robert,’ said his wife, a delicate warmth and charm softening her severe, almost feudal Emmentaler-Battenburg beauty. Can this superb creature really be mine, thought Robert. I, dull gross
