Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh [89]
Boy Mulcaster wandered towards us and sat down, without encouragement, by my side.
'Drink running short in there,' he said, helping himself from our bottle and emptying it. 'Not a soul in the place I ever set eyes on before—all black fellows.'
Anthony ignored him and continued: 'So then we left Marseille and went to Tangier, and there, my dear, Sebastian took up with his new friend. How can I describe him? He is like the footman in Warning Shadows—a great clod of a German who'd been in the Foreign Legion. He got out by shooting off his great toe. It hadn't healed yet. Sebastian found him, starving as tout to one of the houses in the Kasbah, and brought him to stay with us. It was too macabre. So back I came, my dear, to good old England—Good old England,' he repeated, embracing with a flourish of his hand the Negroes gambling at our feet, Mulcaster staring blankly before him, and our hostess who, in pyjamas, now introduced herself to us.
'Never seen you before,' she said. 'Never asked you. Who are all this white trash, anyway? Seems to me I must be in the wrong house.'
'A time of national emergency,' said Mulcaster. 'Anything may happen.'
'Is the party going well?' she asked anxiously. 'D'you think Florence Mills would sing? We've met before,' she added to Anthony.
'Often, my dear, but you never asked me tonight.'
'Oh dear, perhaps I don't like you. I thought I liked everyone.'
'Do you think,' asked Mulcaster, when our hostess had left us, 'that it might be witty to give the fire alarm?'
'Yes, Boy, run away and ring it.'
'Might cheer things up, I mean.'
'Exactly.'
So Mulcaster left us in search of the telephone.
'I think Sebastian and his lame chum went to French Morocco,' continued Anthony. 'They were in trouble with the Tangier police when I left them. The Marchioness has been a positive pest ever since I came to London, trying to make me get into touch with them. What a time that poor woman's having! It only shows there's some justice in life.'
Presently Miss Mills began to sing and everyone, except the crap players, crowded to the next room.
'That's my girl,' said Mulcaster. 'Over there, with that black fellow. That's the girl who brought me.'
'She seems to have forgotten you now.'
'Yes. I wish I hadn't come. Let's go somewhere.' Two fire engines drove up as we left and a host of helmeted figures joined the throng upstairs.
'That chap, Blanche,' said Mulcaster, 'not a good fellow. I put him in Mercury once.'
We went to a number of night clubs. In two years Mulcaster seemed to have attained his simple ambition of being known and liked in such places. At the last of them he and I were kindled by a great flame of patriotism.
'You and I ' he said, 'were too young to fight in the war. Other chaps fought, millions of them dead. Not us. We'll show them. We'll show the dead chaps we can fight, too.'
'That's why I'm here,' I said. 'Come from overseas, rallying to old country in hour of need.'
'Like Australians.'
'Like the poor dead Australians.'
'What you in?'
'Nothing yet. War not ready.'
'Only one thing to join—Bill Meadows' show Defence Corps. All good chaps. Being fixed in Bratt's.'
'I'll join.'
'You remember Bratt's?'
'No. I'll join that, too.'
'That's right. All good chaps like the dead chaps.'
So I joined Bill Meadows' show, which was a flying squad, protecting food deliveries in the poorest parts of London. First I was enrolled in the Defence Corps, took an oath of loyalty, and was given a helmet and truncheon; then I was put up for Bratt's Club and, with a number of other recruits, elected at a committee meeting specially called for the occasion. For a week we sat under orders in Bratt's and thrice a day we drove out in a lorry at the head of a convoy of milk vans. We were jeered at and sometimes