Old Filth - Jane Gardam [87]
“Your father’s regiment?” they said. “The Gloucesters?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I know your father.”
“I’m afraid I hardly do, sir. I was on my way—”
“So we understand. There is, I suppose, no news from Changi?”
“No, sir.”
“I hope very much that we’ll hear something and that he will hear of you. Well do what we can.”
The middle one nodded at the other two who got up and went out.
“We have a proposal to make to you, Feathers. You were a member of your school’s OTC, I understand, and have done some basic training—can march and so forth?”
“Well, I could, sir.”
“It doesn’t leave you. We have decided to send you to the platoon that is guarding Queen Mary.”
Eddie stared. “But she’s well guarded, sir. And she’s in the Pacific Ocean or somewhere.”
“Not the ship. The Queen. The mother of our Monarch. She is down here in the West Country. We have one hundred and fifty men in her defence and four particular bodyguards. What’s the matter?”
“It is not s-s-soldiering, sir.”
Instead of darkening with rage, the Colonel’s blue eyes shut and opened again quickly.
“Only a run-in, Feathers. Not for the rest of the War. It is to finish your restoration. I notice you have a stammer and I have heard that it can be chronic. You would find it hard to give orders. The stammer must be removed.”
“It is only i-in-int-int-ermittent, sir. It re-t-urns when it is comm-comm-ented on.”
“You will report to Badminton barracks tomorrow at fourteen hundred hours. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
“But there is one more thing. Your health.”
“I’m a hundred per cent, sir.”
“I wonder if you know what has been the matter with you, Feathers?”
“Fever, sir. A bug from Sierra Leone. Pretty lethal, I suppose. They never told me.”
“You have been infected, Feathers, with three different types of parasitic worm. And certainly from Sierra Leone.”
“Sir?”
“But that has not troubled us. The worms are gone. We know how to treat these things. But the other thing was more serious. You have been suffering from a venereal disease.”
“What is that, sir?”
The Colonel looked at him warily.
“You have been in close contact with a woman.”
“She died of gangrene, sir, on the ship after Cadiz. I only did what I could. Miss Robertson. She was over seventy—”
“I doubt that she was the source of the infection. What I am saying, Feathers, is that you have acquired sexual knowledge through a most unpalatable source. Isn’t this true?”
A long and thoughtful silence.
“It was dark, sir. I never really looked at her. I never thought of her as palatable or unpalatable. She just climbed in. I’d no idea how to do it, and she had. She gave me buttermilk, sir. It was in Northern Ireland, sir.”
The Colonel paced hurriedly across to the window and stood looking out intently.
“Were you taught nothing at school, Feathers?”
“I have won a scholarship to Oxford, sir.”
A sort of sob from the window. A pause for recovery.
“Feathers, I have decided that this disreputable episode should not be passed on to Badminton. Primarily because of Queen Mary. I hope I am not being unwise.”
“Thank you. Yes, sir. I can’t think that Queen Mary would be in any danger from me.”
“Go! Enough!” roared the Colonel. “You’re dismissed, Feathers. Go.”
Afterwards the Colonel wondered if he’d been made fun of. Beaten in argument. Run rings round.
Feathers wasn’t certain, either.
And so, this October, Filth was in a wheelchair being pushed round the Badminton meadows around Badminton House by the nice girl and her grandmother, their feet crunching on the crystalline grass. They stood at a distance from the great house.
“The cedar’s gone,” said Filth. “Well, well.”
“Oh, the cedar’s gone,” said the grandmother. “Not so very long after Queen Mary. The sixties. She’d be pleased. It was what might be called a running