A Man Could Stand Up - Ford Madox Ford [49]
Tietjens said:
'You're attached to Division Headquarters, and you'll get back to it. Now! At once!...And you won't come back here. Not while I'm in command...Fall out...'
That was really a duty--a feudal duty!--performed for the sake of rag-time fellows. They wanted to be rid--and at once!--of dipsomaniacs in command of that unit and having the disposal of their lives...Well, the moment McKechnie had uttered the words: 'The poor b----y old pals,' an illuminating flash had presented Tietjens with the conviction that, alone, the C.O. was too damn good an officer to appear a dipsomaniac, even if he were observably drunk quite often. But, seen together with his fellow McKechnie, the two of them must present a formidable appearance of being alcoholic lunatics!
The rest of the poor b----y old pals didn't really any more exist. They were a tradition--of ghosts! Four of them were dead: four in hospital: two awaiting court-martial for giving stumer cheques. The last of them, practically, if you excepted McKechnie, was the collection of putrescence and rags at that moment hanging in the wire apron...The whole complexion of Headquarters would change with the going of McKechnie.
He considered with satisfaction that he would command a very decent lot. The Adjutant was so inconspicuous you did not even notice him. Beady-eyed, like a bird! Always preoccupied. And little Aranjuez, the signalling officer! And a fat fellow called Dunne, who had represented Intelligence since the Night Before Last! 'A' Company Commander was fifty, thin as a pipe-stem and bald; 'B' was a good, fair boy, of good family; 'C' and 'D' were subalterns, just out. But clean...Satisfactory!
What a handful of frail grass with which to stop an aperture in the dam of--of the Empire! Damn the Empire! It was England! It was Bemerton Parsonage that mattered! What did we want with an Empire! It was only a jerrybuilding Jew like Disraeli that could have provided us with that jerry-built name! The Tories said they had to have someone to do their dirty work...Well: they'd had it!
He said to McKechnie:
'There's a fellow called Bemer--I mean Griffiths, 0 Eleven Griffiths, I understand you're interested in for the Divisional Follies. I'll send him along to you as soon as he's had his breakfast. He's first-rate with the cornet.'
McKechnie said:
'Yes sir,' saluted rather limply and took a step.
That was McKechnie all over. He never brought his mad fits to a crisis. That made him still more of a bore. His face would be distorted like that of a wild-cat in front of its kittens' hole in a stone wall. But he became the submissive subordinate. Suddenly! Without rhyme or reason!
Tiring people! Without manners!...They would presumably run the world now. It would be a tiresome world.
McKechnie, however, was saluting. He held a sealed envelope, rather small and crumpled, as if from long carrying. He was talking in a controlled voice after permission asked. He desired Tietjens to observe that the seal on the envelope was unbroken. The envelope contained 'The Sonnet'.
McKechnie must, then, have gone mad! His eyes, if his voice was quiet, though with an Oxford-Cockney accent--his prune-coloured eyes were certainly mad...Hot prunes!
Men shuffled along the trenches, carrying by rope-handles very heavy, lead-coloured wooden cases: two men to each case. Tietjens said:
'You're "D" Company?...Get a move on!...'
McKechnie, however, wasn't mad. He was only pointing out that he could pit his Intellect and his Latinity against those of Tietjens: that he could do it when the great day came!
The envelope, in fact, contained a sonnet. A sonnet Tietjens, for distraction, had written to rhymes dictated by McKechnie...for distraction in a moment of stress...
Several moments of stress they had been in together. It ought to have formed a bond between them. It hadn't...Imagine having a bond with a Highland-Oxford-Cockney!
Or perhaps it had! There was certainly the sonnet. Tietjens had written it in two and a half minutes, he remembered, to stave off the thought of