Hadrian’s Camp was a vast parade ground, a quarter-mile square, surrounded by a Third World village of tar-roofed wooden huts set in desolate open country whipped by a cold wind from the north Atlantic. It stood, or rather sprawled, outside Carlisle, a garrison town since Roman times.
I lived in one of the wooden huts together with fifteen other conscripts under the control of a corporal a year older than ourselves, whose bed stood nearest to the smoky coal-burning stove. We slept with every window sealed. One of the few class differences in England persisting to this day, although diluted, is that the upper believe fresh air is good for you, the lower that it should be avoided at all cost.
Reveille sounded at 5.30 am, while it was still dark. All the lights were switched on at once and the corporal began to shout. The muffled shapes in the twin rows of beds stirred into reluctant complaining life. A hand reached out from the malodorous lair of the man next to me, groping for a pack of cigarettes. He lit one with his cropped head still beneath the blankets and emerged blearily in a storm of coughing to greet the fug of dawn.
All day we were drilled, marched, made to run, screamed at and abused. Confined to camp, we polished the nailheads in the wooden floor and swept the parade ground clear of snow with the three-inch brushes issued to apply blanco to our belts.
The conscripts in my hut spoke in a wide variety of regional accents. I too had a distinctive accent. For some reason I had never modified the almost caricature voice I had inherited from my parents; it had never occurred to me that I could, any more than I could change the colour of my eyes.
Class awareness and class resentment were very real in England in the early ’fifties. I expected problems, but astonishingly none arose. Shared adversity makes for a powerful bond, of course, but my fellow soldiers could not have been nicer. I hadn’t been taught class consciousness, it had never been discussed at home. Mother believed herself upper class in the same unthinking way she believed she had two legs, and Father, for all his faults, was not a snob. With the exception of the king, Winston Churchill and a handful of dead writers, soldiers and explorers, he disliked everybody equally; his prejudice was impartial.
After four months’ basic training I was wrongly identified as a leader of men and sent south to Mons Officer Cadet School. I arrived among an intake of forty others in midwinter. Lined up on the square and shivering at attention, we were welcomed by Sergeant-Major Britain, 6’ 6” of ramrod spine, a furious red face with moustaches and a roar that carried for miles. Tired, cold, weighed down by equipment, we heard the list of planned atrocities they had in store for us. It concluded on a final note even more depressing than what had gone before. ‘… And furthermore,’ bellowed Sergeant-Major Britain, ‘From your pay will be deducted weekly a sum of two shillings and sixpence to pay for such little extra luxuries as lavatory paper and electric lightbulbs …’
The hut I slept in had only eight beds. The one next to mine was Rodney’s. He’d come here straight from Eton and his accent was even more preposterous than my own. Eighteen is young to achieve pomposity, but then his family was rather grand. His mother had been a lady-in-waiting, his father held a job at Court. Rodney and I were seated on our beds polishing our equipment one day when he asked, ‘When you’re commissioned, what regiment are you going into?’ There were Good Regiments and Bad Regiments, he explained.
‘Which is better to be in?’ I asked.
Rodney said a Good Regiment every time, explaining that he was going into the Royal Dragoons. He kindly offered to arrange for me to join him and I agreed, all things being equal.
A few weeks later I received a letter from Rodney’s father, who was honorary colonel, summoning me to an interview. He wrote that there was a train from London at 10.05 which reached Swindon at 11.36. He would meet me at the station.
He was awaiting me on the Down platform, a spindly, patrician figure in a tweed overcoat which reached his ankles – not at that period the height of fashion. He said, ‘There’s a train to London at 11.42. I’ll walk you over. What school did you go to?’
I told him.
‘Oh.’ There was a wealth of expressiveness in the way he said it. I would discover later that all except two of the regiment’s officers had been to Eton.
He grunted, cleared his throat, poked at a scrap of paper with his stick. Speech did not come easy as we crossed the footbridge to the Up platform.
‘Sport? Play games?’ he asked abruptly.
‘When I can,’ I lied enthusiastically.
‘Polo?’
‘Not actually, no.’
‘Hum. Find most of the other chaps do.’ We marched on a few paces. ‘Can’t really live on your pay, you know. Bad form to bring it up … but you’ve got money of your own?’
‘Well, Father …’ I began.
We came down the steps from the bridge and stood together on the Up platform. ‘And what regiment was he in?’ he asked.
He was a commando, I told him. Almost imperceptibly he winced; it was as though I’d confided that Father worked below stairs. I realised that going on to explain my ability with Sten guns etc. would be a mistake, this was not what the Colonel meant by ‘shooting’. But I had to say something. ‘But my Uncle Bobby was in the navy,’ I added.
He wasn’t mollified, but at least I hadn’t said the air force. ‘What did he do in it?’
‘What does the First Lord do? I think he sort of ran it.’
‘Hum.’ A moment or two passed and then he said, ‘Yes, gamble, do you?’ His expression hadn’t changed but his manner had.
I said I played a little poker.
‘Wild cards?’ he enquired with a flicker of interest.
‘Dealer’s choice,’ I told him.
‘Don’t care for them myself. Stick to stud and draw, I say, and you’ll be all right. Here’s your train.’
In due course Rodney and I were commissioned. One spring morning in 1952 we marched on to the parade ground as cadets and off it as officers while Sergeant-Major Britain saluted us. A fine moment. We were given a month’s leave prior to joining the regiment in Egypt, back pay, leave pay and uniform allowance, a total of £190. I was rich.
With unusually good timing, Mother and Father were both out of England. Apart from Nanny and Mrs Reeves, the house in Gilston Road was empty. I moved in. It was an enchanted period, a time of grace. I rose late, read the Telegraph over a nourishing hot breakfast prepared by Nanny, then sauntered downstairs to discuss the luncheon menu with Mrs Reeves. A little later, over a cup of coffee in the living room, I’d arrange my ongoing social diary on the telephone, then set out the placements on the dining-room table for that day’s lunch party. For a month I entertained lavishly – Alex, Nigel, Shirley and Charlotte, and others I knew by now.
For the first time in my life cash was no problem. The allowance of £120 to have my uniforms made seemed a gift, for I had a Turkish tailor who was confident he could run up the lot for £30. He’d done work for me before. He hadn’t made me any clothes exactly, but twice had adapted my one suit, nipping in the waist, narrowing the trousers to drainpipe width and adding a velvet collar to the jacket. Wearing the result on an earlier leave, I’d gone to a party and found renown.
The party had been in a cobbled mews warmed by braziers and lit by fairy lanterns, thrown by a man everyone knew as the Bogus Baron. That night, renown appeared in the shape of a small overweight American slung with cameras. ‘Hey, I sure like that get-up,’ he said. ‘How about some photos of your wardrobe. Are you a Man About Town?’
I said I certainly was.
‘That’s what the article’s called,’ he told me, ‘And I want it to be about you, ’cos you strike me as a very elegant and interesting person. I’ll come round to your house at twelve tomorrow. Where do you live?’
Swiftly I gave him a false address. Men About Town do not live at Mummy’s and have a nanny.
I woke early the next day and with some difficulty secured the house whose address I had given. Another problem was that I owned only one suit, which I had worn the night before. Moving fast I borrowed a varied range of costume during the morning. There was no time to be selective and the collection was wide, very wide indeed.
Even now, fifty years later, I experience an involuntary shudder, a flush of embarrassment, when I think of those clothes, those photographs, and the article which accompanied them with its toe-curling quotes: Frock coat, cigarette holder, curly brimmed bowler, white tie, green carnation, top hat, tailcoat and a swordstick – the caption underneath read ‘I only drink champagne’. Worst of all, the kimono: ‘In the evening I generally slip into something louche …’ Inadvertently I had invented unisex, which in the early ’fifties was hardly good. But just how bad I didn’t discover until later.
With illustrations of the two required uniforms I paid a visit to my tailor in his cramped room in Soho. A tiny, wizened man in a golden toupée, he worked seated cross-legged on his bench, eyes narrowed against the smoke of a hand-rolled cigarette stuck permanently to his lower lip.
‘Ever such a nice look,’ he said in a cockney accent as he studied the drawings. ‘Yes, very theatrical. Don’t know about the swordbelt, though, I’ve never worked in leather.’
I explained that I would buy the correct belts, buckles, engraved buttons, insignia etc., and accessorise myself.
‘I do like the yellow stripe slashing the evening trousers and fitting over the riding boots. Chain mail’s a good touch. Spurs are clever.’ He picked up the other drawing. ‘Now this safari suit …’
‘Service dress,’ I corrected him.
He pursed his lips, angling the illustration to the light. ‘You can see what they’re getting at, of course, but they haven’t followed it through. Look at the width of those trousers, so loose in the bum. Oh dear, oh dear … wouldn’t suit you at all.’
I agreed that the trousers were unfashionably baggy. It was an old drawing.
He nodded confidently. ‘Just you leave it to me, I know what you want.’
Time passed. I went for a final fitting. ‘I’ve done you proud, you have to grant. You look like you stepped out of a bandbox,’ said my tailor.
I studied my reflection a little doubtfully in the full-length mirror. The effect was striking, though the chain mail and sword took a little getting used to.
My leave drew to its end. I’d run out of money and was quite glad when one day a telegram arrived inviting me to join my regiment.
I reported to Goodge Street Deep Underground. Twelve hours later my Dakota transport touched down on the military airfield in the British Canal Zone. Two years later President Nasser would nationalise the Suez Canal and, after a brief, disastrous military action, the Brits would be kicked out for ever. But for the moment we were still hanging in there, and I had come to help. Our role was a traditional one: subduing the natives.
Along the noxious, flyblown, eighty-mile length of the canal a series of fortified tented camps contained a garrison of 80,000 men and 33 female telephone operators. Beyond the perimeter of razor wire a barren desert wasteland stretched to the horizon. It was insufferably hot.
The Royals – soon to become the Blues and Royals, the Queen’s household cavalry – had pitched their camp apart from all the rest. Indeed, they never spoke to all the rest – they considered themselves of a different order entirely. Inside this floodlit and guarded compound a group of rich young men were kept in close confinement. Killers of foxes, flingers of bread rolls baying at the sound of breaking glass, corporal restriction was nothing new to them; they had been to Eton.
It was a world of elaborate formal ritual. The night of my arrival we dressed for dinner in ceremonial blues uniform, riding boots and spurs, to eat courses of tinned disgustingness while seated at a long polished table so overloaded with monstrous artefacts – the Regimental silver – that it was almost impossible to see across.
I could not help noticing that nobody spoke to me throughout the meal. At its end a stranger approached. His form-fitting tunic decorated with chain mail had three pips on the epaulettes. ‘Bradish-Ellames. I’m the adjutant,’ he announced in a strangled voice. ‘I’ll see you in my office at 9 am.’
I visited him next day. The previous evening I’d worn my blues uniform, now he met my service dress. The trousers were the ultimate in fashion, so narrow and tight it was impossible to sit down – not that I was invited to sit. The arrangement of pockets, epaulettes and buttons was roughly similar to his own, though the material was of lighter weight more suitable for the local climate, and any impartial observer must have agreed that my choice of a subtly different shade of khaki was an improvement.
Seated at his desk, the adjutant was breathing heavily and appeared to be in the grip of strong emotion. He tore his gaze from me, rose abruptly and made for the window, where he stood rigid with his back to me. Suddenly he wheeled about, stepped to the desk, tugged open a drawer and from it extracted gingerly a disgusting, dog-eared, much fingered magazine, sweat stained and soiled. He dropped it on the desk in front of me, averting his gaze. ‘You might as well know. This arrived in the mess two weeks ago.’
It fell open naturally at the oft-read page, the photographs, damp, grubby, avidly pored over. I stared, hypnotised, at the poised figure in the photographs holding the nine-inch cigarette holder, languid eyes half closed in supercilious irony. ‘I have to tell you that while you are here none of us wish to speak to you,’ the adjutant informed me.
It proved to be the case.
‘It’s just not on,’ Rodney whispered to me in my tent. ‘Honestly, those uniforms … simply not playing the game!’ But in the mess he avoided me like everyone else; I had been sent to Coventry.
I did not feel comfortable in my exclusion. What swine they are, I thought, pompous, conceited and stuck-up. But it was no use telling myself these people were despicable, I only knew it hurt. And wasn’t I a bit ridiculous myself, with my penniless affectations and preposterous uniforms? Yes I was, but they were still swine.
But if there was pain in my situation, there was also compensation. The hostility of my brother officers made me acceptable to my men.
There’s a duff troop in every regiment, composed of drunks, the psychopathic, the ornery and the troublemakers no one wants under their command – least of all in a shooting action. Voted shit of the year, it was fitting I should be given that troop to lead. I had nine men under me. Their previous troop leader had been invalided back to England when a turret hatch slammed shut on his hand, amputating three fingers; the question of who had unlocked the hatch to cause the accident remained unanswered. I came to the job with considerable unease, but a fortunate event changed everything.
Scouse Rae, my Daimler’s gunner, who came from a Liverpool family of petty criminals for three generations, broke into the NAAFI one night, drank an entire bottle of gin at the bar together with incalculable pints of beer, then left the spigot running to fall asleep in the growing lake of pale ale which expanded to flow in a river across the floor and beneath the hut’s front door to cause his arrest, rather wet and smelling strongly, soon afterwards. Charged with stealing government property, he was to be court-martialled.
He asked me to defend him. I did so against Bradish-Ellames, who was prosecuting before a court consisting of the colonel and three officers. In the Manual of Military Law the definition of theft is ‘taking away with intent to deprive permanently’. Arguing that Rae had not ‘taken away’ because he’d passed out in situ before being able to do so, I got him off to Bradish-Ellames’s visible displeasure and subsequent ill will.
But the verdict’s effect upon the morale of my troop and my relationship with them was enormously encouraging. Pincher, the Daimler’s driver, became my devoted batman, stealing lightbulbs, lavatory paper, soap, razor blades, equipment and stamps from other officers’ tents to furnish my own.
His thievery and my relative comfort went undetected, for no one visited my tent. In the mess my brother officers continued to cut me, and in time I think they came to find my presence there as inhibiting and awkward as I did myself. I was sent away frequently to man the Eskine Line (an imaginary line drawn across the desert twenty miles away) to watch for the enemy who might come pouring over it to seize the canal at any moment.
The idea of seeing hordes of hysterical, out-of-control Arabs charging over the horizon towards me was unnerving. I asked what I should do if they appeared.
‘Fire one shell at them, radio their position and pull back,’ I was told. The armoured cars could do 50 mph, both forwards and in reverse. I learned to my surprise that the role of the cavalry in war is to run away at first sight of the enemy.
Of course, there was never any real likelihood they would appear. We loaded up the armoured cars with food and water for a week, then drove on to the desert, navigating by compass, to pitch camp more or less in the right spot in an empty, featureless landscape of wadis, rock and ochre-coloured sand. Over the radio I’d report my position to the regiment, calling them every few hours to say no sign of the enemy yet, actually.
The sun was hot but the air very dry – ideal for tanning. My men sat in the shade listening to the radio and playing cards, while I sunbathed and read Anthony Powell. The nights were cool. There was no twilight, darkness came quickly. We’d light a fire and sit around it beneath the stars while Pincher ran up a gourmet meal enhanced with Fortnum’s jars he’d stolen from the officers’ tents. I provided drink – I felt it was the least that I could do.
In the mornings I usually read for an hour or so after breakfast. Later we’d have gunnery practice, which everyone enjoyed. We’d attach an empty five-gallon jerrycan behind Coates and Tatnell’s Dingo at the end of a long wire. Coates and Tatnell would drive off and hide while we demounted the Bren guns from the cars, loaded up and made ready for them. We never knew exactly where they would appear. Suddenly they’d be racing through the broken ground forty yards away. Aiming for the jerrycan clanging and bouncing in the air behind the Dingo, we’d blast it with our combined firepower of three Brens, my .38 service revolver, and the Colt .45 and .22 revolvers I’d kept with me since Arisaig. The Brens were the best fun, for every sixth round was tracer; you didn’t aim the gun but directed it along a stream of light with runaway power rattling in your hands.
We took turns and everyone enjoyed the game immensely. Once, when we’d become really good at it, I suggested we try it with the two-pounder in the Daimler. Rae clambered into the gunner’s seat, I took my position in the turret. Coates and Tatnell drove off as usual while Rae loaded a shell in the breech. There was a choice of armour – piercing and high-explosive; we thought high-explosive would be best.
We tried a left and right traverse with the gun turret to make sure it ran free, and got ready. All at once I saw the Dingo lip the crest of the escarpment and come speeding down the wadi. ‘Traverse right, right,’ I shouted. The turret spun round … ‘Steady! Aim .…’ the jerrycan was leaping all over the place .… ‘Fire!’
There was a deafening crack. It felt like two open hands smacking my ears hard. Way ahead of the jerrycan and only twenty yards behind the Dingo I saw the flash of an explosion, a burst of blue-white smoke. Boom! The shock lifted the speeding Dingo on its way, a hail of grit and stones rattled against its armour plating, chipping the paint.
I felt a lurch of horror and dismay, it could have been a real disaster, yet everyone cheered. They thought it wonderful and wanted another go, but Coates and Tatnell wouldn’t play any more. Rotten spoilsports, they sulked and said they wanted to go home.
The philosophy, theory, practice and day-to-day conduct of the army is based upon discipline. Discipline causes the soldier to snap instantly to attention, crying, ‘Yessir!’ Discipline is what makes him go over the trench top and charge the enemy in the face of certain death.
I don’t believe we ever discussed the subject in my troop. It was understood that when with the regiment we obeyed the outward forms of discipline, saluting and so on, but while out camping in the desert we should not. It was not only Christ’s teaching to treat others as you wish them to treat you, in my view it’s an effective and more successful way to achieve results. But I came face to face with a problem which provided a further slant on the matter.
A few months after my arrival in the Canal Zone there was a mutiny. It was hardly surprising it should occur. Confined to camp, without access to women or distraction of any kind, life was very boring. One evening one of the Highland regiments ran amuck and for a few riotous hours their camp became a glorious Saturday-night Gorbals in the desert. They set fire to a couple of cars, doused an officer with beer and barricaded themselves in the NAAFI where they drank everything in sight, threw up and were easily overpowered.
A number of men were arrested. No military prison existed in the Zone and briefly three of the ringleaders were boarded out in our cells. An armed escort delivered them shackled together in chains, tiny, tough, glowering little men who looked as dangerous and unstable as wild beasts and who were clearly hungover.
Rodney, who was duty officer, came in late to dinner that night, his face pinker than usual and smudged with black streaks. ‘They set fire to the guard house,’ he exclaimed. ‘And Corporal of Horse Grayson. Too beastly.’
Next morning the prisoners were separated. Two of them were moved on and farmed out elsewhere. That day it was my turn to be duty officer, an event which occurred every ten days or so. One rose early, for it took longer than usual to dress. The ensemble was in blue, lavishly ornamented, and across the chest a gold and silver pouch was slung in the fashion of a telegram delivery boy. A sword was worn.
Six foot two inches of ramrod martinet, the duty colour sergeant, who was dressed only slightly less gorgeously than myself, accompanied me everywhere around the camp, a gleaming, stamping, shouting machine. With him I changed the guard, checked the armoury, examined the vehicle lines and tasted the men’s lunch with a shudder.
During the afternoon it was my duty to inspect the cells. The colour sergeant and I marched towards them in step across the beaten sand, unspeaking and glittering in the sun. There were several prisoners, a man who had stolen petrol, one who’d caused a fight, another who had overstayed his leave. Plus, of course, the mutineer. At each cell the ritual was the same. The colour sergeant flung open the metal door, screamed, ‘Prisoner, ’shun!’ followed me in and lurked attentively while I inspected. Inside, the geometric arrangement of every cell was identical and immaculate. Each item of the man’s equipment, cleaned, blancoed and polished, was laid out on the bed in precisely regulated pattern. At the head of the bed the blankets were folded to an exact rectangle, at the foot the prisoner stood quivering to attention.
I would cast my eye over the cell, enquire ‘Any complaints?’ to which he would answer sharply ‘No, sir!’ and we would leave. There was never any deviation from this prescribed scenario.
We came to the last cell. The colour sergeant threw back the door and I was already inside before it struck me as curious that he had omitted to shout, ‘Prisoner, ’shun!’ as he always had before. Then the view drove all thought from my mind.
The place was devastated, an utter shambles. Equipment was everywhere – ripped, torn, mangled, pissed on. The buckled wreckage of the metal bed lay twisted against the wall and a sea of horsehair covered everything. Shaved head and unshaved chin, a beetle-browed Glaswegian mannikin squatted in the carnage wearing only his soiled underpants. Glaring at me from small red eyes, he conveyed an impression of considerable menace. ‘Any complaints?’ I heard myself ask ineptly.
‘Fuck off,’ he snarled.
Nothing in the Manual of Military Discipline and Procedure had prepared me for this. I was uncertain how to act. It struck me that the best thing to do was to follow his suggestion. I turned round and strode out the cell. The colour sergeant’s boots crashed the floor in an about turn as he followed me. I waited while he locked the cell, then together we marched down the passage into the fierce sunlight and, side by side in perfect step, commenced the 200-yard march across the desert parade ground, flashing and jangling with silver and brass and chain mail and patent leather and spurs, got up like Christmas trees with our boots pounding the sand into a dust cloud rising behind our splendid passage.
The colour sergeant did not speak. He offered no comment, no explanation, and we’d marched a hundred yards in silence before I felt obliged to ask, ‘That last prisoner … why wasn’t he standing to attention in a spotless cell beside the bed laid out with his equipment in the regulation manner?’
Face steadfast to the front, the colour sergeant’s answer rang out loud, clear and immediate. ‘Because he didn’t want to, sir!’
The full force of revelation swept over me as I marched. The man had not offered violence, hadn’t protested, had not refused; he’d just made his attitude perfectly clear: No one can make you do anything you don’t want to do! I marched onward a wiser and more disobedient man.
A month or so after this event the Royals were posted back to England en route for the regiment’s new station with British Forces on the Rhine.
Handing over its armoured cars to the Lifeguards, who were replacing us, we travelled to Port Said in armed convoy. The men were embarked at once, but the officers passed a half day in the town before the troop ship set sail that evening. Attended by a crowd of importuning beggars, the flower of young English manhood strutted the foreign streets observing the lives of the inhabitants with undisguised contempt.
Returning to the ship, one voice among the surrounding clamour caught my attention. ‘Psst, Spanish fly?’ it asked. An Arab beckoned from the shadow of a warehouse with a furtive gesture. As I came closer he exposed a glimpse of what lay in his hand – a round resinous ball. ‘You want make jig-jig all night all day long?’
He had a sore on his lip, was villainous to look at, and anyway it was not a practical suggestion, the ship was leaving in a couple of hours. Again he drew the thing from beneath his robe. It had the soft consistency of plasticine and a slightly scented smell that was not unpalatable. A lunatic dream took shape.
‘How do I know it works?’ I asked.
‘Oh, him work,’ he said, affronted. ‘Him work fucking well.’
‘How much?’
‘Five pounds.’
It was a huge sum. I paid quickly and hurried to join the ship.
We sailed at sunset. Soon after the Royals’ officers assembled in the first-class saloon, loud with indignation. Conditions afloat were not those to which they were accustomed. Quite large and senior officers found themselves stacked three to a cabin and sharing a shower. I remained quiet in the grumbling storm. The Royals were not the only troops returning on the ship; in the adjutant’s list I had as usual been separated from my fellows and assigned to share a cabin with two airforce officers – beyond the pale in regimental terms.
Shown there by a steward, I’d chosen the best bunk, unpacked, and sat fondling my Spanish fly when the ship began to move. Neither of my room-mates had turned up. Quickly I deranged their bunks; with pillows and my suitcase I humped the blankets into the shape of seasick airmen. By nature untidy, I let myself go. Within a few minutes the look of the place was enough to deter the casual visitor, who would have recoiled from what was clearly an overcrowded, unhealthy slum. I sought out and bribed the steward. Back in my revolting lair I practised the sound of fighter pilots throwing up. Privacy was assured.
In ugly mood the regimental herd moved in to dinner. I left the table early, returning to the saloon where the vast silver orb of the regimental coffee urn had been set up and bubbled upon its burner. Around its swollen sides the steaming horses of the Heavy Brigade galloped in bass relief, charging each other’s bottoms. Bending to adjust the flame, I raised the lid minutely and dropped the Spanish fly into the scalding contents.
In pairs, in small bellicose groups, the regimental officers tramped into the saloon from dinner, port glasses clutched in their hands and a high colour mounting to their cheeks as they assembled round the coffee urn. I did not take a cup myself, but watched with gleeful anticipation as they served themselves, then with anticipation turning to disappointment, for I saw no change in them at all. They sprawled, they drank, they grunted in conversation. They belched and farted as usual after dinner. And then … and then … Did I imagine it, or did a restlessness fall upon the first-class saloon? They rose to their feet, they paced, they hitched their trousers, they stamped, they roared.
Certainly disquiet had infected them. They called for drink, countermanded their orders, bawled out the barman. Loud, argumentative conversations were begun, only to be abandoned in mid-sentence. A game was started, getting round the room without touching the floor. Normally popular, even over this new course tonight it did not answer. After breaking a couple of coffee tables it was abandoned, their hearts were elsewhere. Restlessly they kicked the furniture, peered from the portholes at the sliding waste of water, impatience in their glance, bloodshot longing in their eyes. For what? A kill? The unmentionable?
And then abruptly they retired, leaving me to stare at the swollen orb of the coffee urn as a vision danced before my eyes … the officers and gentlemen of the Royal Dragoons in uncontrollable homosexual rut. Aboard ship, buggers can’t be choosers.
Alone in my cabin I slept well, waking at 8 am, the sky bright, the sea untroubled. I dressed and made my way to the dining saloon. Tables laid and waiting, the place was deserted. The steward seemed surprised to see me. ‘You up, you well?’ he said. ‘My, my.’
‘Not at all well,’ I murmured, simulating weakness.
‘Not hungry are you, surely?’
‘Certainly not,’ I answered in a sickly voice, looking ravenously at the crisp rolls, the mounds of butter, the eggs and bacon sizzling in the griddle pans. ‘But a coffee might be good for me, perhaps just one piece of toast.’
I retired to my cabin to read, but hunger brought me out again at noon. The dining saloon was still empty. ‘My, you’re a one,’ the steward said, ‘The only one.’
‘The others …?’ I enquired.
‘No they won’t be eating,’ he said quite definitely. He’d gone with beef tea to a couple of cabins and returned shaken. ‘Losing it at both ends, spewing their guts up,’ he reported.
‘Serious?’ I asked nervously. Even in my furthest imaginings I hadn’t intended to become a mass murderer.
‘Nah,’ he said. ‘Came over a little queer is all, but that’s behind them. It’ll pass. A few days at sea and they’ll be right as rain again, you’ll see.’
Yes, I thought, I probably would. Nothing would change these people. Whatever happened to them, one couldn’t hope for any lasting moral improvement. However, during the time the vessel was mine and before my fellow officers became their unspeakable selves again, I determined to enjoy the voyage.
Studying the menu, I ordered a large and well-earned lunch.