Commissioner Mets,’ he said.
‘Ah,’ said Wright, beginning to understand. ‘I’ve heard of him.’
‘Who is he?’ asked Kitty.
‘A bureaucrat with an unusual job. He’s going to give us back our culture.’
‘What’s our culture?’
‘English plays, English paintings, English music,’ said Alexander. ‘And English religion. That’s where I come in. I’m to interview Mr Glover on the Commissioner’s behalf, but unofficially.’
‘Oh,’ said Kitty, now quite lost.
‘But you’re a… you’re a soldier,’ said Wright, not substituting a noun, merely omitting an adjective.
‘I shouldn’t be acting in that capacity, doctor, just as a sort of free-lance intermediary. The Commissioner seems to think I know more about the English than he does; well, he hasn’t been here very long. I said I’d put in a word for him.’
‘And you want me to put in a word for you.
‘Yes.’
‘And if both these words are heeded, your Commissioner stands a chance of getting old Glover to lend a hand with restoring the English Church.’
‘Exactly.’
‘I can assure you that any – what was it? – willingness Glover might express to do something, anything you people want would be quite insincere, more words, mere words.’
‘Then tell him,’ said Alexander, suddenly tiring of all this patience and simulated modesty, ‘that I shall be calling on him tomorrow evening at six o’clock and that he’ll make himself available if he knows what’s good for him.’
This speech tickled Wright, who had long given up hope of hearing anything straightforward or tolerable from that quarter. ‘By all means.
Alexander thanked him, put on his cap and strode out of the room, followed by Kitty. Not very long afterwards the front door was again heard to shut. The doctor picked up his bag and prepared to leave in his turn.
6
Alexander’s regiment, the 4th Guards, was quartered in what until shortly before the Pacification had been a large private school. This stood in an extensive walled park where several considerable bodies of water and patches of vestigial or immature woodland were to be seen. There was plenty of room for officers, men, animals, equipment and stores in the long, box-shaped main building and the various minor structures, some dating back a couple of centuries, some only a few years old, that surrounded it or lay at a distance down the classically straight drive and across the gentle slopes of grassland where the regiment’s horses grazed.
A dozen of them, the property of the regimental headquarters group, were so occupied near the lodge when Alexander rode in that morning; he recognised the Colonel’s elegant grey and the heavily-built sorrel belonging to the commander of the support squadron. Further up the drive, a line of horsemen in battle order was assembled at the start of the obstacle course and being bawled at by a red-faced sergeant: 11 Troop, the command of the most ambitious and unpopular subaltern in the regiment. An echoing fusillade came from the distant red-brick shed that contained the pistol range. Alexander passed close to a section of troopers in the charge of an under- corporal taking their ease, caps off, tunics unbuttoned, chatting, skylarking, sleeping, sudden beneficiaries of one of those mysterious delays that characterise life in all armies in all ages. The under-corporal caught sight of Alexander and struggled to his feet, putting on his cap and drawing his tunic together, managing some sort of salute; Alexander returned it as smartly as one on parade and called a pleasant good morning. Been at the doctor’s, have we? thought the under-corporal; lucky for us and lucky for your chaps too. He was not especially inquisitive or well-informed, just a soldier on garrison duty abroad in peace-time.
At the gravel-dashed front of the 1920s villa that housed his men, the troop office and the non-security stores, Alexander inquired of his sergeant whether there was anything to report. There was not; there never was. Then, having handed the mare over to his orderly, he went on foot to the main house, informed his squadron commander of his return to duty and asked if there were any special orders. There were none; there never were any. The rest of the morning passed inspecting the men’s quarters, visiting the horse-lines, completing forms for the commissary, drinking tea and gossiping with the sergeant and one of the corporals, and finally doing something that was out of the ordinary and yet routine, making the monthly check of the security stores. Accompanied by the sergeant, a burly Latvian called Ulmanis, he again went to the main house, picked up from the orderly room an authorisation signed and dated by the adjutant and made his way to the reinforced door to the basement lift. Here a sergeant of Field Security and a sentry were stationed side by side. The sentry covered the arrivals with his pistol while the Security sergeant examined first Alexander’s identity-card, then the authorisation. At his nod, the sentry lowered his firearm, Alexander and Ulmanis turned their backs and the Security man pressed a row of numbered buttons in a sequence that was changed daily. The door slid aside. In the armoury it took the two visitors twenty minutes to establish that everything in the racks appertaining to the troop concerned, 8 Troop, was as it should have been. It was; it always was. As soon as the inspection was completed, Alexander followed standing orders by returning the authorisation to its source.
At 1430 hours Sergeant Ulmanis paraded the troop and reported all present and correct to Alexander. They numbered just twenty: one officer, one sergeant, one artificer-sergeant, four corporals, four under-corporals and nine troopers, the ninth being Alexander’s orderly, who was told off to remain in the office. The orders to mount, to proceed to the right and to march were successively given and obeyed. In their rough dark-grey undress uniforms and dull-yellow cross-belts 8 Troop were not a showy sight, but a trained eye would have noted the relaxed carriage of the riders and the fit condition of their mounts. Such an eye, or its owner, might also have noted the unusual composition of the small force: apart from those of the headquarters group, every riding-horse had attached to it a pack-horse, in each case a Cleveland cross-thoroughbred put back to a Welsh cob, specially trained to carry a heavy load across rough ground. Their burdens today were not quite what they would have been in action, but they were of identical weight and distribution. Breast-girths and cruppers kept the packs in place even at full gallop.
The party moved at a walk out of the main gateway, along the road and down a series of lanes for some kilometres; an unfamiliar stretch of terrain was required for the intended exercise, one not used in the same way before. Eventually Alexander, in the lead, reached a high point, raised his hand to signal a halt and passed the word for sub-section leaders. The eight NCOs dismounted and came forward.
‘You see that church?’
‘Yes, sir.’ ‘Yes, your honour.’ They saw it.
‘Good. Remember, anybody caught using a road goes straight on register. Sub-sections to the right extend in open order and await my signal. Double time.’
Very soon afterwards eight pairs of guardsmen were strung out twenty-five metres apart along the top of a grassy slope. Alexander, at the extreme right of the line, blew a loud blast on his whistle and they were away downhill at the gallop, the pack-horses not trailing the riding-horses but, as they had been schooled to, moving up level on the left-hand side for an improved field of view. It might have been thought that a glance at the map would have justified a couple of minutes’ delay, and certainly it might have been hoped (at least by the senior
