He despised them because he despised himself for the same reason. He was oppressed by the doubt that had troubled them, and a page or two after his quotation from Wordsworth he had written: ‘If ever I found proof, if ever I could be certain, that Gideon Wishart murdered Old Dandy Pitcairn, then I might, I think, live happily in Weddergarth. For murder is the great evil, and requires great punishment, demands great recompense. If Gideon murdered, or caused to be murdered, Old Dandy, then the child that Dandy’s son begot on Barbara Gifford was entitled by natural law to the estates he got, and that his descendants kept, by the lesser justice of Scots law. Murder would legitimate our title, and if murder could be shown forth, I would sleep more easily….’

  Silver left hospital a week or two before I did, and we dined together in Sorrento on the eve of his going. He spoke again of his intention to live ‘sensibly and quite selfishly’, as he said, in the Far East; but he would not tell me what he and Grierson proposed to do.

  ‘There are several problems to be solved before we’ll know for certain that we can do what we want to do,’ he said, ‘and till then, we’re saying nothing. But our plan’s a good one, and if and when it’s properly launched—that may give you a hint—I want to talk to you about it. I might persuade you to join us.’

  ‘That isn’t very likely.’

  ‘You may think differently when you know more. And you would be very useful to us. We must have someone who can organize and—well, maintain supplies, let us say. That’s your line of country, and apparently you ride it very well.’

  He pointed to the new ribbon on my tunic: I had recently been given an O.B.E.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘I’m not an adventurer, and whatever your scheme is, it’s evidently—is unorthodox the word? And that wouldn’t suit me. I’m orthodox—in the social sense—because I need orthodoxy. I believe in traditions, because without them I wouldn’t know what to do. I don’t walk alone, I take tradition’s hand and go where I’m led.’

  ‘I’ll lead you, if that’s all you need.’

  ‘I prefer tradition,’ I said.

  ‘Wait till the war’s over. It’s been going on so long, you’ve forgotten the horrors of peace. Let us have another bottle of wine.’

  ‘You won’t persuade me that way.’

  ‘I don’t expect to. But next year—some time next year—I’ll write to you….’

  I had the good fortune to rejoin my division in time to share the exhilaration and the sweeping movement of the victory that brought an end to the war in Italy—and then, near Vicenzo, in a Palladian house that would have raised her voice to ecstasy, I got word of my poor mother’s death. She had been staying with friends who lived near Salisbury, and on a fine afternoon, at tea on the lawn with a bishop most suitably beside her, she had taken suddenly ill, and died before midnight….

  I had spoken of her to Silver. I had told him that she, writing under her maiden name, was one of the female authors with whom he had consoled himself in northern seas; and I had listened with interest to his admiration of her.

  ‘She doesn’t despise a good old-fashioned plot,’ he said. ‘Indeed her plots are all very old and quite out of fashion—till she goes to work on them. She treats people, and situations, too, as if they were onions. She peels them. Peel after peel comes away—you had no idea there were so many—and the cruelty of it brings tears to your eyes. Is she cruel?’

  ‘Not intentionally.’

  ‘But she enjoys peeling. And at last, when you think there’s nothing left, she exposes the heart of the situation. It looks white and small, and translucently candid—and the flavour is what the flavour at the heart of an onion should be. Is she candid?’

  ‘That’s an understatement. She dramatizes all her moods….’

  It was when I was about thirteen that I began to look at her objectively. I had realized already that she and her ‘temperament’ were the cause of the recurrent gloom and unhappiness to which my young life, and Peter’s, were subject. They came and overshadowed us—these periods of misery—like the storm-clouds that pour across a hill in the West Highlands, and suddenly darken the bright valley below. And she was the storm-centre. Always.

  Objective vision, which I was certainly developing by the age of thirteen, discovered that she enjoyed the storms she sent out; and this, at first, astonished me. For Peter and I, in our misery, had until then been made more miserable by the thought that our gracious, most tall and beautiful mother was suffering, too. It was a great relief when I perceived what bunkum that was. It was she who brewed and precipitated the storms, and took her pleasure in them. She watched the performance of the drama she had concocted, and as her own Bernhardt revelled in her own performance.

  Objectivity and my first acquaintance with Chaucer came together. The study of English literature is indeed the proper base of education, and from Chaucer I learnt that mysterious and whimsical word ‘cuckold’. Both Peter and I had been puzzled by the relationship to the family of old Charles Aytoun; who sometimes stayed with us in the Highlands, and with whom my mother seemed to spend much of her time when she was in London. My father, to my mother, always spoke of him as ‘your admirer’.

  But what exactly was an admirer? It was an unclassified addition to the cousins, uncles, and aunts whose precise connection with us had sometimes been as hard to understand as algebra; ‘admirer’ was even more bewildering. There were, we knew, people who admired pictures, poetry, or a view: we could not understand why admiration of these things gave them a recognized status, but we accepted it as part of the irrational world we were beginning to explore. But why should our mother—as if she were ‘The Thin Red Line’ (a picture we revered), or ‘Lepanto’ (a poem we recited with rapture), or the Coolins of Skye (a view that everyone told us was magnificent)—why should she have an admirer?

  Then, by wicked association of two mysteries, I asked myself: Was an admirer one who cuckolded? That meant, of course, that my adored and noble father was a cuckold—and, though I did not know what a cuckold was, it was clearly something exposed to shame and derision.

  At the thought of this possibility I was quite overcome by dismay; and for some time I regarded my mother with horror. From this estrangement I was rescued, as from many other predicaments, by my father himself; who, I had to admit, continued to show, not merely that he was fond of his wife, but extremely proud of her. And therefore, I told myself, it was impossible to suppose that she had done anything to his dishonour.

  My mother always claimed that she was descended from an uncle of the poet Shelley; and, in consequence of this, that her literary aptitude was natural, hereditary, and would reappear in me. My father took her pretensions seriously, and felt quite sure that she was—as she certainly believed—a great writer, secure of her place in the tradition of English writing. His respect for her genius gave him great happiness.

  Charles Aytoun also respected her: of that there is no doubt. But I am not quite sure of the value of his respect. For a quarter of a century he reviewed books—biography was his favourite subject—for a Sunday newspaper, and his critical essays were always erudite, urbane, and regretful of the past. The memoirs of a lady of fashion who had known Napoleon III—a book about the Goncourts or the pre-Raphaelites—these were always sure of his wistful and most polished regard; and on a Sunday morning blessed by such a topic one could hear him purring like a plump, well-fed, and favoured cat before a clear, bright fire.

  A tom-cat? I really do not know.

  Chapter Twelve

  Several months after the end of the war I was in London, on leave, and met Charles Aytoun in Button’s, who promptly asked me, ‘And what are you going to do now?’

  ‘Whatever I’m told to do,’ I said. ‘I haven’t much choice.’

  ‘But you’re not going to stay in the Army?’

  ‘What better can I do?’

  ‘You have such abilities, my dear boy! Abilities you have never developed. Surely the Army is mere waste of time now? You could write, if you cared to—your mother always said so, and your dear mother was never wrong.’

  ‘And what ought I to write?’

  ‘What we’re all waiting to hear! What only you young men can tell us. You young men who have been fighting this war that has kept us alive. How did you manage to keep us alive? And for what purpose?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’ve often wondered, but I’ve never found an answer.’

  ‘You don’t mean to say it was a useless war?’

  ‘It was an unnecessary war, but it wasn’t useless. It did keep us alive—but about what we’re going to do next, I’ve no idea.’

  ‘So you can’t help us?’

  ‘Only by staying in the Army.’

  ‘And what good will that do?’

  ‘We’ll continue to protect you, and give you a chance to make up your minds about the future.’

  ‘But you must have a voice in the future.’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. We supply the accompaniment, that’s all. We’re the scaffolding, and we’ll hold you up while you build. We’re soldiers, not thinkers, and it’s not our job to design the building. That’s your job. But for God’s sake don’t under-esteem us or under-pay us, because you can’t do your job without us. The best architect in the world can’t do anything without scaffolding.’

  ‘Oh, my dear boy,’ said Charles, ‘how quickly you’ve grown up! You used to be such a nice, amenable child, and now you have a mind of your own—and frankly I don’t like what you’re saying. How old are you?’

  ‘Twenty-nine.’

  ‘No, no! Your mother—your mother was so young, till the day of her death. Oh, dear me, I’m out of touch, I fear.’

  He did indeed look very old, and rather pathetic; but only with the pathos of a natural decline. Under his silky crop of white hair his face, though shrunken, was still pink and white, and his body, though diminished in height, was still erect. I brought him another brandy, and presently, with a little cackle of laughter, he said, ‘Well, I’ve had a good life, I can’t deny it, and I hope, my dear boy, that you will live as long, and enjoy your years as much as I have.—But do tell me, Tony, what the young men want us to do?’

  I wanted to tell him to shut up; but that, of course, was hardly possible. All the old men of his sort I now found boring, because they seemed so helpless. Many younger men, too, affected a foolish air of resentment and regret: resentment against the Russians, against the Socialists who were now governing us, and regret for a life of vanished riches which, in fact, most of them had never known.

  I, to begin with, supported the Socialist government. Its foreign policy was inept, in its domestic policy it foolishly neglected book-keeping, and most of the Socialist Members seemed as loudly and lushly pleased with themselves as actresses; but they were trying to reform society, and heaven knows that a social reformation was overdue. When I went back to the Army in Austria I was quickly labelled as a very red Socialist for saying this, but as a lieutenant-colonel I could afford to show some eccentricity, and in spite of it I found myself living more easily with my fellow-officers—on lighter and more genial terms with them—than for some years past. My second wound had done me a lot of good.

  I spent about a year in Klagenfurt, and then, with inevitable reduction in rank, went to the Staff College. There, after the first couple of months, I complained that we were merely being taught to fight the battle of Alamein over again, and discovered, to my surprise, that in the upper reaches of the Army criticism was no longer resented. I learnt a lot, and on the whole enjoyed my two years as a student.

  From there I went as second-in-command to a battalion in Germany, and found day-to-day discipline, training, and routine rather boring.—I read, a year or two ago, an English translation of de Vigny’s Servitude et Grandeur Militaires, and from an introduction to it (as good, in parts, as the best parts of de Vigny) I copied out the following passage:

  The army is more than an occupation, more than a profession; it is a way of life, a dedication. Within its ranks there is room neither for the undisciplined enthusiasm of the volunteer nor the impotent reluctance of the conscript. They are merged in the common mould of discipline, become indistinguishable in the uniform of abnegation. And this personal surrender to a dedicated way of life has, like every mystery, its visible signs and ceremonies. The donning of the vestments by the priest, the sacred dance before the altar, the chanting of the ritual are at once the symbols of initiation and a rhythmic, almost hypnotic, control of the physical which must precede all essential spiritual experience. So it is with the soldier: his uniform, his music, and his drill are all means to an arcane ideal, the state of military grace. They set him apart, mark him as a member of a dedicated sect and thereby exact the tribute of emotion. For the wail of the shell is implicit in the sound of the bugle calling across the Park, the roll of musketry in the beating drums, and the beautiful precision of the ceremonial on the Horse Guards Parade echoes the tramp of dead feet marching down alien roads.

  That is perfectly true, and admirably said; but I have no great liking for ritual. I am, by nature, a staff officer, not a regimental officer—and in a battalion I realized, more and more strongly, that it was the side of staff duties that really had my interest. I was, then, immensely pleased when, in 1950, I was offered promotion and a posting to Hong Kong as D.A.Q.

  I did not, however, take up my appointment. The war in Korea began about the end of June, and twice my sailing orders were cancelled. Then, in November, my promotion was positively deferred and I was sent to Korea to study and report on the system of supply which our 27th and 29th Brigades had had to evolve, or adopt, in the large American army in which they were serving.

  I was flown out, but the Army’s air transport is sometimes hardly as quick as a steamer, and Christmas was near at hand before I reached Seoul. I was, I thought, prepared for the sub-arctic weather, against which I had been warned—both mentally and materially prepared—but I had never imagined the cold ferocity, the lethal malignity of the Siberian wind that blew, not always, thank God, but every few days, and went on blowing for two or three days at a time. That took me by surprise, and frightened me; and the country and its wretched people assaulted me with sheer dismay.

  I shall not try to describe Korea—neither the war there, nor its people—for the sufficient reason that I have not the skill to put in words what only Goya, perhaps, could have put in drawing. How horrible life was in that stricken land! There, it may be, was the only campaign in history in which soldiers, who are notorious grumblers, complained primarily, not of their own discomforts, but of the agonies of the refugees who came flooding down from the north. What could be done for them? Very little, and that was made more difficult by the abominable policemen. Our soldiers had to face, not only Siberian wind and a multitudinous enemy, but the knowledge that their own allies included people as malignant as any the Communists could produce. On the other hand, there were many South Koreans who were civilized, courteous, charming, and kind; and they, whom we had come to help, did not like us. It was a confusing war.

  On a frozen desert, under some white hills north of Seoul, I spent Christmas Day with the 29th Brigade, and at night returned to my tolerable (though not inviting) quarters in the city. Seoul had only a few more days to live, and the peace of Christmas did not last. By January 1st the Chinese had broken through positions held by a Korean division, and presently, after a day and a night of fighting, of initial loss and successful counter-attack, the 29th Brigade was ordered to withdraw. The 5th Fusiliers broke contact successfully, but the Ulsters were heavily attacked in a long, curving, narrow valley through which they had to march, in darkness, on a slippery track between frozen paddy-fields.

  I had gone forward on the main road as far as the entrance to the valley, where transport waited for the battalion. The greater part of it came out before midnight, but still in the valley were the battle patrol and a missing platoon, some mortars and their crews, and the reconnaissance troop of the 8th Hussars: they had been fighting a rearguard action, and the battalion had lost touch with them.

  I drove along the road to the last rearguard positions of an American regiment and, while I was talking to a sergeant there, a few men came down from the hill above us, out of the invisible dark, and were challenged.

  ‘Ulsters,’ they replied.

  There were about a hundred in all, under an officer of their regiment who had taken command in a burning village. Its narrow road was blocked by a tank that had shed a track, there were Chinese all round them—voices crying from the dark, mortar bombs whistling, bursting, in a continuous din—but with three remaining tanks they fought their way out of the trap. They marched a little farther, and were halted by a burnt-out tank that lay athwart their path—the slippery path between frozen rice-fields—and their running tanks could neither shift it nor pass it. They set fire to their three runners, turned west, and took to the hills; and in gross darkness their officer led them safely down to the road.

  There was a wounded man who had collapsed after crossing the hills, and I offered to take him into Seoul. A tall and well-built young Rifleman was looking after him, and he came too, to support the wounded man in the back seat of my jeep. We drove slowly along the jolting, abominably rough road, and the Rifleman gave me a very clear and well ordered account of the fighting in the valley. Or rather, he began to give me an account of it; for after a few minutes I interrupted him to ask, ‘Are you Irish? You don’t sound like it.’

  ‘No, sir,’ he said. ‘My home’s in Shetland.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Shetland, sir. Do you not know where it is?’

  ‘I do indeed. Do you live in Lerwick?’

  ‘About twenty miles from Lerwick. On the west coast.’

 

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