Supervising a platoon of Cadet Officers at Cambridge would have been a snug alternative to “general service abroad” (provided that I could have bluffed the cadets into believing that I knew something about soldiering). I was going there to be interviewed by the Colonel and clinch my illusory appointment; but I was only doing this because I considered it needful for what I called “strengthening my position.” I hadn’t looked ahead much, but when I did so it was with an eye to safeguarding myself against “what people would say.”
When I remarked to Tyrrell that “people couldn’t say I did it so as to avoid going back to France if I had been given a job in England,” he pulled me up short.
“What people say doesn’t matter. Your own belief in what you are doing is the only thing that counts.” Knowing that he was right, I felt abashed; but I couldn’t help regretting that my second decoration had failed to materialize. It did not occur to me that a Bar to one’s Military Cross was a somewhat inadequate accretion to one’s qualifications for affirming that the War was being deliberately prolonged by those who had the power to end it. Except for a bullet hole in my second best tunic, all that I’d got for my little adventure in April consisted in a gilt-edged card on which the Divisional General had inscribed his congratulations and thanks. This document was locally referred to as “one of the Whincop’s Bread Cards,” and since it couldn’t be sewn on to my tunic I did my best to feel that it was better than nothing.
Anyhow, on a glaring hot morning I started to catch a train to Cambridge. I was intending to stay a night there, for it would be nice to have a quiet look round and perhaps go up to Grantchester in a canoe. Admittedly, next month was bound to be ghastly; but it was no good worrying about that. … Had I enough money on me? Probably not; so I decided to stop and change a cheque at my bank in Old Broad Street. Changing a cheque was always a comforting performance. “Queer thing, having private means,” I thought. “They just hand you out the money as if it was a present from the Bank Manager.” It was funny, too, to think that I was still drawing my Army pay. But it was the wrong moment for such humdrum cogitations, for when my taxi stopped in that narrow thoroughfare, Old Broad Street, the people on the pavement were standing still, staring up at the hot white sky. Loud bangings had begun in the near neighbourhood, and it was obvious that an air-raid was in full swing. This event could not be ignored; but I needed money and wished to catch my train, so I decided to disregard it. The crashings continued, and while I was handing my cheque to the cashier a crowd of women clerks came wildly down a winding stairway with vociferations of not unnatural alarm. Despite this commotion the cashier handed me five one-pound notes with the stoical politeness of a man who had made up his mind to go down with the ship. Probably he felt as I did—more indignant than afraid; there seemed no sense in the idea of being blown to bits in one’s own bank. I emerged from the building with an air of soldierly unconcern; my taxi-driver, like the cashier, was commendably calm, although another stupendous crash sounded as though very near Old Broad Street (as indeed it was). “I suppose we may as well go on to the station,” I remarked, adding, “it seems a bit steep that one can’t even cash a cheque in comfort!” The man grinned and drove on. It was impossible to deny that the War was being brought home to me. At Liverpool Street
