When I got back to our tent in the Transport Lines I found everyone in a state of excitement. Dottrell and the ration-party had returned from their all-night pilgrimage with information about yesterday’s attack. The Brigade had reached its first objectives. Two of our officers had been killed and several wounded. Old man Barton had got a nice comfortable one in the shoulder. Hawkes (a reliable and efficient chap who belonged to one of the other Companies) had been sent for to take command of C Company, and was even now completing his rapid but methodical preparations for departure.
The reserve Echelon was an arid and irksome place to be loafing about in. Time hung heavy on our hands and we spent a lot of it lying in the tent on our outspread valises. During the sluggish mid-afternoon of that same Saturday I was thus occupied in economizing my energies. Durley had nicknamed our party “the eight little nigger boys,” and there were now only seven of us. Most of them were feeling more talkative than I was, and it happened that I emerged from a snooze to hear them discussing “that queer bird Cromlech.” Their comments reminded me, not for the first time, of the diversified impressions which David made upon his fellow Fusiliers.
At his best I’d always found him an ideal companion, although his opinions were often disconcerting. But no one was worse than he was at hitting it off with officers who distrusted cleverness and disliked unreserved utterances. In fact he was a positive expert at putting people’s backs up unintentionally. He was with our Second Battalion for a few months before they transferred him to “the First,” and during that period the Colonel was heard to remark that young Cromlech threw his tongue a hell of a lot too much, and that it was about time he gave up reading Shakespeare and took to using soap and water. He had, however, added, “I’m agreeably surprised to find that he isn’t windy in trenches.”
David certainly was deplorably untidy, and his absentmindedness when off duty was another propensity which made him unpopular. Also, as I have already hinted, he wasn’t good at being “seen but not heard.” “Far too fond of butting in with his opinion before he’s been asked for it,” was often his only reward for an intelligent suggestion. Even Birdie Mansfield (who had knocked about the world too much to be intolerant) was once heard to exclaim, “Unless you watch it, my son, you’ll grow up into the most bumptious young prig God ever invented!”—this protest being a result of David’s assertion that all sports except boxing, football, and rock climbing were snobbish and silly.
From the floor of the tent, Holman (a spick and span boy who had been to Sandhurst and hadn’t yet discovered that it was unwise to look down on temporary officers who “wouldn’t have been wanted in the Regiment in peacetime”) was now saying, “Anyhow I was at Clitherland with him last month, and he fairly got on people’s nerves with his hot air about the Battle of Loos, and his brainwaves about who really wrote the Bible.” Durley then philosophically observed, “Old Longneck certainly isn’t the sort of man you meet every day. I can’t always follow his theories myself, but I don’t mind betting that he’ll go a long way—provided he isn’t pushing up daisies when Peace breaks out.” Holman (who had only been with us a few days and soon became more democratic) brushed Durley’s defence aside with “The blighter’s never satisfied unless he’s turning something upside down. I actually heard him say that Homer was a woman. Can you beat that? And if you’ll believe me he had the darned sauce to give me a sort of pi-jaw about going out with girls in Liverpool. If you ask me, I think he’s a rotten outsider, and the sooner he’s pushing up daisies the better.” Whereupon Perrin (a quiet man of thirty-five who was sitting in a corner writing to his wife) stopped the discussion by saying, “Oh, dry up, Holman! For all we know the poor devil may be dead by now.”
Late that night I was lying in the tent with The Return of the Native on my knee. The others were asleep, but my candle still guttered on the shell box at my elbow. No one had mumbled “For Christ’s sake put that light out”; which was lucky, for I felt very wide-awake. How were things going at Bazentin, I wondered. And should I be sent for tomorrow? A sort of numb funkiness invaded me. I didn’t want to die—not before I’d finished reading The Return of the Native anyhow. “The quick-silvery glaze on the rivers and pools vanished; from broad mirrors of light they changed to lustreless sheets of lead.” The words fitted my mood; but there was more in them than that. I wanted to explore the book slowly. It made me long for England, and it made the War seem waste of time. Ever since my existence became precarious I had realized how little I’d used my brain in peacetime, and now I was always trying to keep my mind from stagnation. But it wasn’t easy to think one’s own thoughts while on active service, and the outlook of my companions was mostly mechanical; they dulled everything with commonplace chatter and made even the vividness of the War ordinary. My encounter with David Cromlech—after three months’ separation—had reawakened my relish for liveliness and originality. But I had no assurance of ever seeing him again, or of meeting anyone who could stir up my dormant apprehensions as he did. Was it
