Theirs Was The Kingdom (81 page)

She looked at it without taking it and said, finally, “There’s no call for that, soldier-boy. I haven’t earned it, have I?”

“Oh, yes, you have,” he replied. And she smiled, vaguely, saying, “Stuff an’ nonsense, soldier-boy. It was only like I said. You fellows go long enough without seeing a girl and lose the knack for a spell. You aren’t the first I come across. Will you be dropping in the Empire again?”

“If I get a chance before sailing for India.”

“Ah,” she said, sadly, “India now, is it? Well, then, it don’t look as if I’ll have a chance to make it up to you, does it? Damn that old fool! You weren’t just business to me, I can tell you that!” And she stood on tiptoe, leaned forward, kissed him softly, and went out and up the stairs to Lucy’s room. He laid the sovereign on the bedside table and went downstairs where the policeman was peering anxiously up and down Long Acre, as though afraid of being caught with the recumbent Bejasus when his sergeant showed up.

A stream of carts was passing now, all laden high with produce for Covent Garden and among them, after an anxious moment or two, they saw Mr. Skilly, perched on the step of a four-wheeler. Skilly held the door whilst Alex and the constable bundled the colonel inside and the policeman said, “Where to, sir?”

“Smith Street,” Alex told him. “I can’t recall the number but I’ll recognise the house. Tell the cabby it’s on the left, just before you come to Park Lane.” He got in, inhaling the stale, tobacco-laden atmosphere of the musty interior, and a moment later they were on their way.

2

It was a longish journey, for the horse was either very old or very tired, and they were some time getting clear of the ever-increasing market traffic. Every time the cab paused under a gaslight he caught a glimpse of the Colonel’s face, a pinkish blob fringed with fiery whiskers, deeply engraved wrinkles, and a nose like the bowl of an old pipe. He was snoring now, with his mouth wide open, and once, in a marginally stronger light, Alex saw a long white scar that ran diagonally from the right ear to the cleft in the double chin. He thought glumly, “A lance or a tulwar slash, poor old devil. He’s been rough-housed all his life, and who gives a damn about what becomes of him now? Not the Government, certainly, whose battles he’s been fighting since he was younger than me, for they’ll be showing him the door if he carries on like this.”

But then the cabby called, “About here, sir?” Alex got out, recognising the house where he had called a month or so before to collect some papers relating to his attachment.

The cabby, even more of an old ruin than the Colonel, served the office of Mr. Skilly, in taking Colonel Corcoran’s heels, and between them they heaved him across the pavement and up the five steps to the front door. No light showed, but looking through the letter box Alex saw a gleam reflected in a mirror beyond the stairs; when he rang the bell a third time there was movement in the shadows, and he was relieved to see a gas jet flare, revealing a tall, broad-shouldered servant tucking his nightshirt into his trousers. Alex paid the cabby and dismissed him, supporting Bejasus, still snoring, by holding him against the pillar of the portico. A moment later the door opened and the servant was seen to be a middle-aged man, who held himself very straight, almost certainly a trained batman. No explanation was necessary. All he said was, “I’ll take him, sir, if you’ll be good enough to go ahead and open that door left of the stairs. Any message, sir?”

No, said Alex, no message, but recollecting that the Colonel might well have left some of his belongings in Lucy’s room, added, “If he asks, you could tell him he passed out in a house in Long Acre. I’m on his strength, but don’t tell him one of us brought him home. I daresay he won’t recall a thing about it in the morning.”

“No, sir,” the man said, lightly, “he rarely does, but don’t you worry. I can handle him, sir. I served through the Burma campaign with him.”

Alex opened the heavy door and batman and burden passed in, the soldier servant kicking the door shut with his heel, as if to emphasise the fact that he was now in sole charge. Alex turned back into the hall, regretting now that he had dismissed the cab, for he was feeling very jaded, but then a light showed on the stairs and he looked up to see a small figure in a quilted dressing-gown, holding a candle above her head. For a moment he thought it was a child, but then he saw that it was a young woman, with her hair in curlers, and wished himself out of this, recalling suddenly that Bejasus had a daughter who kept house for him here. She called, sharply, “Wait! It’s Captain Swann, isn’t it?”

He was surprised to be identified so easily, for he had only been on the regimental strength a little over a month and as a supernumerary awaiting transfer to India had made few friends.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, diffidently, “I… er… I brought the Colonel home. He wasn’t feeling so well.” She said, evenly, “You don’t have to lie about him to me, Captain Swann. He wasn’t hurt, was he? And it wasn’t in public, I hope?”

“No,” he said, wretchedly, “it was at the house of some friends. We’d been to see the show at the Empire and he… well, he overdid it a little. No one else was involved. I brought him home by cab.”

“How much was the fare and tip, Mr. Swann?”

“Fare and tip?” He gaped at her, a tiny figure, not much taller than his eight-year-old brother, Edward. “No more than a shilling or two. I really don’t remember, Miss Corcoran.”

But she said, drily, “I think you do. Anyway, I intend to pay you. I really don’t see why you should be out of pocket on his account. Besides, you look tired, Captain Swann, so come below stairs and I’ll brew you some coffee. I brew excellent coffee. I learned how to make it in the West Indies. I was born in Barbados and my mother died there. Please,” and giving him no opportunity to refuse she pattered across the hall and through the green baize door used by the batman. “I expect Tilson will be down for coffee in an hour or so. It depends how much Father has shipped. Sometimes he won’t stir until morning, but Tilson can handle him. Tilson won’t stand any nonsense.”

They were in a basement kitchen now, a spotlessly clean room, full of gleaming pots and pans and with every surface polished, as for company inspection. Someone, he suspected it would be she, had the servants well in hand. There was a fire rustling in the range and she set a large iron kettle on the hob. He said, “Could I… is there somewhere I could wash, Miss Corcoran?” She nodded towards the scullery and went about setting a tray and cups. There was a pump in the scullery and he flushed the trough, washing his hands and face with carbolic soap and thinking, wryly, “She’s a colonel’s daughter all right, and I wouldn’t care to fall out with her, but it’s odd she doesn’t keep a tighter rein on the old boy…” He came back and stood about indecisively, but she paid him no further heed until the coffee was made and he complimented her on it, thinking he had never stood so much in need of it, for his mouth was parched with all that champagne and his stomach sour with Cecilia’s indifferent whisky. She said, briskly, “Take a seat, do.” And he said, sitting at the scrubbed table, “I’m surprised you know my name. I’m only a supernumerary, Miss Corcoran.”

“I know more than your name,” she said. “I make it my business to know every officer and senior N.C.O. assigned to us, and it’s as well I do, for he’d never remember and there would be endless muddles. I even know who your father is and where you live. I know where you’re going too, as soon as you can get a passage. You can smoke if you like, Captain.”

It was more or less an order. He took out his cigar case and lit one of his cheroots. Slightly, very slightly, he began to adjust to her, looking across the table at the small earnest face, with those absurdly unflattering curling pins and huge, grey eyes. The eyes, he decided, more than compensated for the homeliness of the other features—squarish chin, heavy for so small a person; short, broad nose; and compressed and rather prim mouth. He thought fleetingly of Cecilia and decided that there could have been no greater contrast between the two women who had held him in conversation that night. But then, neither did Miss Corcoran have anything at all in common with her rumbustious old father. He looked into the grey eyes again, fascinated by their authority. It was not so surprising that she knew so much about him. Eyes like that might hold half the secrets of the world. He said, “I should apologise to you, Miss Corcoran. For disturbing you this way, in the middle of the night. I ought to have managed it more discreetly.”

“Nobody can be discreet with the Colonel in tow,” she said. “But I prefer not to talk about him. Suppose we talk about you?”

“What is there to talk about?”

“A great deal, I’d say. Why, for instance, with a business as lucrative as Swann-on-Wheels, and you being an eldest son, you chose the army? And why you haven’t made better use of your astonishing luck.”

“My luck?”

“They call you ‘Lucky’ Swann, don’t they? You got through Isandlwana, Rorke’s Drift, Tel-el-Kebir, and a sail down the Nile in a burning paddle-steamer. Don’t you
want
to get on, Captain Swann?”

“Of course I do, but a company, at twenty-five—that isn’t standing still, is it, Miss Corcoran?”

“Regimentally? No, I suppose not, providing you don’t stick there and you well might, in India. I didn’t mean that, exactly.”

“What else can a man do except keep his record clean and hope for promotion?”

“Whatever you had in mind when you first went soldiering, I imagine.
Did
you have anything in mind?”

Against all probability he found her easy to talk to, easier than anyone he had met, so that his diffidence left him and he had a sense of enjoying her interrogation. He said, “I don’t think I had anything specific in mind, other than travel and adventure. I soon had my fill of that, but then something odd happened. I saw what could be done by training and discipline at Rorke’s Drift, and it made up my mind for me in a way. I was ready to go home and be a haulier after that awful scare, but once I’d had time to think about it I decided to try again. This time as a regular.”

“But that was seven years ago. What’s happened since? I don’t mean in the field, but your private attitude to the profession.”

“I don’t know… It’s become routine, I suppose. One learns to adapt, to integrate, and as for personal ambition, well, one takes pot luck, the way one does under fire.” He was suddenly aware of giving too much away. “Why are you asking me all these questions, Miss Corcoran? How can it matter to you whether I get on or don’t get on?”

She said slowly, “I’m interested in people, in professional soldiers particularly. Like you I come from a long line of soldiers, and it annoys me to see an honourable profession degraded to the status of a music hall joke. The kind of joke you and my father probably heard tonight at the Empire. Providing you went there for jokes, that is.”

He had no idea how to reply to this. It was a clear indication that she was very well aware of the fact that he and her father had spent the evening in the company of whores, so he fell back on the main substance of his remark.

“How do you mean, exactly? How is the army being degraded by being made the subject of music hall jokes?”

“Do I have to explain that to a man who brought my father home tonight?”

“But he’s terribly popular with all ranks, Miss Corcoran. I’m not just saying so. He really is. Everyone respects any man who has collected a dozen wounds leading from the front. As to his private life…”

“I don’t give a damn about his private life,” she said, savagely, “it’s his professional outlook that maddens me. His, and yours, and that of every other popinjay who thinks soldiering is a matter of wearing fancy dress and mincing up and down the promenades at a place like the Empire! It isn’t, you know. It’s a great deal more than that. Real soldiering requires brains and I always did hate waste.”

“Waste?”

“Wicked waste!” She looked at him levelly. “In twenty-five years’ time, providing you dodge the bullets, you’ll be an exact replica of that used-up old man in there, snoring his head off, watched over by an enlisted man who has become a sort of keeper. Do you realise that, Captain Swann? Does your father, who did something practical with his life?”

He was silent, and she respected his silence, giving him time, no doubt, to absorb the impact of such an uncompromising accusation. Finally, he said, “If you mean I should apply for a staff college vacancy I don’t mind you knowing I haven’t got the brains to pass the extrance exam.”

“I’m not talking about staff college but of specialisation. You aren’t staff material but you could be a great success as a specialist. In ten years from now specialisation will be essential. Even the boneheads in Whitehall will come to admit that. So far we’ve fought savages, Zulus, Indo-Chinese, dervishes, but one day you’ll have to face Europeans, with weapons as good or better than yours. When you do, without specialists in the field, you’ll go down like partridges and deserve to. That’s what I’m talking about, Mr. Swann!”

Her drive, her lucidity, and her terrible singlemindedness reminded him of his father. Almost everyone he knew spoke inconsequentially and off the cuff, their thinking regulated, if at all, by some newspaper article or prejudice picked up in the mess or parade-ground, but she didn’t speak like that at all. Every word she uttered was the result of unremitting thought, so that it was like listening to someone with a crystal-clear set of convictions, with the directness and experience of, say, the Duke of Wellington. He said, with a gesture of bewilderment, “You’re a young woman, Miss Corcoran… it seems so strange, so unusual that you should bother your head about such things…”