A Splendid Little War (19 page)

“
Encore
,” Borodin said. “They want more.”

The crew reversed their positions while Hopton rehearsed the Russians. “Swing, swing together,” he sang to them, and they shouted it back to him. He took his place, and the crew, expert now, made the couch whizz to the rhythms of the next verse:

Rugby
may be more
clever,
Harrow
may make more
row
,
But
we'll
row for
ever
…

“I'm not a sentimental man,” the C.O. said to the adjutant, “but you must admit, Uncle, this warms the heart.”

“Those wheels are playing merry hell with that table.”

“Oh, bugger the table. These boys fought for England. Now for Russia. True patriotism.” He had a little trouble with the word, so he took another stab at it. “Patriotism.” Better.

Hopton finished the verse and the Russians took their cue. “Sving, sving togezzer,” they sang, a hundred and fifty of them, all swaying from side to side. Hopton responded: “With your
bodies
between your
knees
…”

“King and country,” Brazier said. “They swallow that claptrap when they enlist. It gets blown away in battle. Battle's the only test.”

“Nonsense. Loyalty's what matters.”

“Loyalty to your pals. Nobody else.”

The couch rolled to a halt. The crew had done two lengths; panting and sweating, they thought they had finished. Relentless, thunderous slow handclapping told them otherwise. Again, they reversed their positions. Hopton began verse three, and they sprinted away.

Others
will fill our
places,
Dressed
in the old light
blue,
We'll
recollect our
races,
We'll
to the flag be
true
…

Griffin pointed. “Hear that? We'll to the flag be true! We're here to save this world from bloody Bolsheviks.”

“Bully for you. I've fought all sorts of ruffians. Boers. Fuzzy-wuzzies. Huns. Not to save the world. Save the regiment. Sometimes the platoon.”

“Airmen are different, Uncle.”

Brazier grunted. “You live and die for your friends.”

Sving, sving, togezzer
, the Russians chanted, and then the stunt began to go wrong. Tired legs gave an unequal shove and the couch veered to the left. Hopton shouted a warning. They thought he was urging them on and their feet kicked harder until the whole gesticulating contraption shot over the edge and fell into the laps of half a dozen generals too fat and old and squiffy to avoid it. Everyone else cheered. The Royal Air Force could do no wrong.

Dawn was nudging the eastern horizon when the carriages left for Beketofka, moving at a gentle trot to avoid awakening the pilots. The drivers knew how best to earn a fat tip.

Only Brazier and Count Borodin were awake, and after the din of the banquet they enjoyed the silence of the countryside. Mist as soft as smoke filled the hollows. Sometimes a pair of ducks emerged, flying fast and noiseless, and vanished. A rim of sun showed itself. It picked out the mist tops and soon it was making long, elastic shadows of the carriages. It washed the sky clean of stars. Another fine day on the way.

As it rose, Brazier turned his face towards it and welcomed the warmth. The dazzle made his eyelids almost close. Almost. He made out a shape, a low silhouette. He shielded his eyes.

“Borodin,” he said quietly. “Isn't that your mass grave?”

“Yes, I expect so.”

“I'd like to see it.”

The count looked at him. If he said,
No, that's not possible
, or
Why? It's just plague victims
, if he said anything at all, the adjutant would not argue, he would simply get out and go. “If you must,” he said. He told the driver to stop and wait.

They walked across boggy heathland and stood on the edge of the hole. It was at least thirty yards long. It was half-full.

“All male, I see,” Brazier said. “A very selective plague.” He walked along the side. “But no boots. Perhaps they caught the disease through their feet.” He walked on. “And some without breeches. They don't look very sick, do they? Dead, yes. Sick, no.”

“Bolshevik commissars, officers and N.C.O.s,” Borodin said. “When
we take prisoners, we recruit the ordinary soldiers into our army. We shoot the rest. Boots and breeches are scarce in our army.”

“How many?”

“About three hundred. And you have my word that when the enemy take prisoners, they do not kill them as humanely as we do.”

They walked back to the carriage.

“You take it all very calmly,” Brazier said.

“How would it help if I were otherwise?”

“Ah. A good point.”

Jonathan Fitzroy's ad hoc committee met in a filthy temper.

It was Monday, it was bucketing down with rain, it had been raining everywhere all weekend, the entire county cricket programme had been washed out. The prospects for Wimbledon were grim. All the best salmon and trout rivers were in flood, the water looked like cocoa, two Welshmen had been drowned while trying to fish the Usk, probably poachers using worm as bait, so nobody grieved too much. Today's papers didn't help. They gave the government a good kicking for the unemployment figures (up again). They gloomed about farmers' warnings that the harvest would be ruined. And the Metropolitan Police had found a member of the House of Lords behind a bush in Hyde Park with a trooper from the Coldstream Guards, both stark naked, at three in the morning.

James Weatherby was reading the report in the
Mail
when General Stattaford sat beside him. “Look on the bright side,” the general said. “His Lordship is sixty-eight. The night was black as sin, the rain fell in torrents, and he was stripped to the skin. Makes you proud to be British, doesn't it?”

Weatherby grunted. “You can replace a trooper,” he said, “but we've lost a vote in the Lords. And that's serious.”

“Gentlemen,” Jonathan Fitzroy said. “May we start? Our last recommendation was, I'm afraid, rather kicked into touch by the P.M. ‘A decent life for all Russians' is good as far as it goes, but it doesn't go anywhere. His words. Rather like being kind to one another. Even the Cabinet agrees it's desirable, but
how?
”

“Do they want us to make policy?” Sir Franklyn Fletcher said.

“Because that wasn't in the original prospectus.”

Fitzroy was built like a bruiser but his footwork was nimble. “I think it revolves around what we feel the British people believe to be right and apt,” he said, “which in itself is a product of what they feel
can
be done. Thus what
should
happen and what
can
happen are so closely linked as to be virtually identical.” He beamed at each man in turn.

“Smooth,” Sir Franklyn murmured. “And slippery.”

“The people have had a bellyful of war,” Weatherby said. “I keep saying it because it keeps being true. No more war. I can think of only one thing that might conceivably change that. If the Bolsheviks start exploding bombs in Whitehall and St Paul's and Arsenal football ground, people might get angry enough to want to drop a few shells on Lenin and his friends.”

Sir Franklyn stretched his long legs and slid deeper into his armchair. His hands steepled until they touched his chin. “You make it sound like stamping out piracy in international waters, James,” he said.

“So it is. They're brigands, savages. What they've done in Russia …” Weatherby shook his head. “We don't want that here.”

“Foul baboonery,” Fitzroy added helpfully. “That's what Churchill called them in the Commons.”

“They boast about world domination,” Stattaford said. “Did their worst in Austria and Germany. Why wait? Retaliate first. Avoids a lot of bloodshed.”

“Alone?” Charles Delahaye said. It was the first word he had spoken since he arrived and it hung in the air. Nobody wanted to be the first to answer.

“Oh, bother,” Fitzroy said. “And we were going along so well. I suppose the question must be faced. Foreigners, I believe, are the province of the Foreign Office.”

Sir Franklyn sat up straight. “If you are hoping for allies to assist in a punitive expedition, then the list is short. Not Italy. Italy's manpower died on the battlefield. Not Japan. It has two divisions in Vladivostock, which is about as far from Moscow as we are from Canada, the journey takes a month, and Japan doesn't give a toss what Moscow does anyway. Not America. They've picked our chestnuts out of the fire once already, and they've got elections coming up. Not the Empire. We played the Mother Country card in the war, and we can't play it twice. That leaves France. After the Armistice they sent two divisions into the Ukraine and
kicked out the German occupying army, the only real force for law and order, treated the place like a French colony and made themselves despicable. French troops never wanted to be there, they mutinied, they departed faster than they arrived. Forget France. Yes, it's a very short list.”

Nobody spoke. Stattaford got up and walked to a window, exercising his left leg as he went. Rain turned the glass to a wandering blur. “Bit of Hun ironmongery,” he said, still flexing. “Doesn't like this weather.”

A tap on the door, and a maid came in, wheeling a trolley. The ceremony of tea helped dispel the feebleness of Allies. Well, former Allies. Platitudes about the weather were exchanged. They all agreed it was beyond a joke. “I've got a beat on the Test,” Sir Franklyn said sadly. “Can't cast a fly in this deluge. Hampshire's just a lake.” He bit into a custard cream.

“If it keeps up, the whole country will be washed away,” Jonathan Fitzroy said. “End up floating into the Atlantic, I expect.”

“The Navy will save us,” Weatherby said. “Always does.”

“The Navy's in the Baltic,” Charles Delahaye said. “How do I know? Because the Treasury pays its bills. Hefty bills, too.”

“Not the whole Navy, surely?” Fitzroy said.

“A significant fleet. Not cheap.”

That took their minds off the rain.

“Doing what?” Weatherby said. He looked at General Stattaford.

“I'm a soldier, old chap. Ask an admiral.”

“Doing its duty,” Sir Franklyn said. “We are mounting a vigorous diplomatic campaign to protect the Baltic States against Bolshevik attempts to seize them. The Navy provides a presence.”

“A presence,” Weatherby said. “Does it go bang-bang, by any chance?”

“When requested, the Navy assists by discouraging enemy troop movements. We also discourage interference by the Soviet Navy. It has a large base at Kronstadt, at the head of the Baltic. Guarding Petrograd.”

“Discourage. Is that a diplomatic word for ‘sink on sight'?”

Sir Franklyn had said enough. He found a handkerchief and blew his nose and re-folded the handkerchief and took his time over it.

“In brief,” Fitzroy said, “we keep this fleet in the Baltic to bombard Bolsheviks ashore and afloat. Since this is not common knowledge, nor likely to be, I don't quite see how it helps us to reassure the British people about why we are in Russia.”

“I do,” Stattaford said. “The railway runs from Petrograd straight to Moscow. Five hundred miles. Give the Navy a free hand. Sink the Russian fleet. Land two brigades of Guards, and I guarantee we'll be in Moscow in a week. The Reds will be dead. Problem solved.”

“Splendid,” Delahaye said. “Just as long as we don't interfere in Russia's internal affairs.”

Weatherby chuckled. Fitzroy sighed. Sir Franklyn stared at the ceiling and stroked his jaw. Stattaford glared. “Is that a joke?” he demanded.

“Only if the Prime Minister was joking,” Delahaye said. “It's what he told the House of Commons. I was there, I heard. He said you should never interfere in the internal affairs of another country, however badly governed.”

“The
Daily Express
agrees,” Weatherby said. “They say – and I quote – the frozen plains of Eastern Europe are not worth the bones of a single British grenadier. Big circulation, the
Express
.”

“Beaverbrook's grubby rag. The man's a damned Canadian. Got no loyalty to this country.”

Fitzroy clapped his hands. “Gentlemen, gentlemen. Aren't we barking up the wrong tree? Surely it's not intervention when we are simply assisting the Russians to cleanse their own house? Help them achieve what all honest, decent, patriotic Russians are fighting for?”

“The damn plains aren't frozen,” Stattaford growled at Weatherby. “It's summer, for God's sake. Have some common sense.” He sat in silence for the rest of the discussion. Eventually Sir Franklyn suggested something along the lines of
Answering the call of freedom and justice
. Nobody cheered, but nobody could improve on it.

There was nothing seriously wrong with the Chevrolet ambulance. Russian drivers, both Red and White, had failed to service it and after much bullying its engine had quit. A couple of springs were broken. The steering had hit so many potholes that it was cross-eyed. But all this was nothing that an R.A.F. squadron of fitters and metal-bashers couldn't repair overnight. They gave it back to Lacey after breakfast. “Thanks awfully,” he said. “I shall have you all Mentioned in Despatches.” He gave them a case of Guinness.