Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh [4]
He seldom complained. Though himself a man to whom one could not confidently entrust the simplest duty, he had an overmastering regard for efficiency and, drawing on his modest commercial experience, he would sometimes say of the ways of the Army in pay and supply and the use of 'man-hours': 'They couldn't get away with that in business.'
He slept sound while I lay awake fretting.
In the weeks that we were together Hooper became a symbol me of Young England, so that whenever I read some public utterance proclaiming what Youth demanded in the Future and what the world owed to Youth, I would test these general statements by substituting 'Hooper' and seeing if they still seemed as plausible. Thus in the dark hour before reveille I sometimes pondered: 'Hooper Rallies', 'Hooper Hostels', 'International Hooper Cooperation', and 'the Religion of Hooper'. He was the acid test of all these alloys.
So far as he had changed at all, he was less soldierly now than when he arrived from his OCTU. This morning, laden with full equipment, he looked scarcely human. He came to attention with a kind of shuffling dance-step and spread a wool-gloved palm across his forehead.
'I wan't to speak to Mr Hooper, sergeant-major ... well, where the devil have you been? I told you to inspect the lines.'
'Am I late? Sorry. Had a rush getting my gear together.'
'That's what you have a servant for.'
'Well, I suppose it is, strictly speaking. But you know how it is. He had his own stuff to do. If you get on the wrong side of these fellows they take it out of you other ways.'
'Well, go and inspect the lines,now.'
'Rightyoh.'
'And for Christ's sake don't say "rightyoh".'
'Sorry. I do try to remember. It just slips out.'
When Hooper left the sergeant-major returned.
'C.O. just coming up the path, sir,' he said.
I went out to meet him.
There were beads of moisture on the hog-bristles of his little red moustache.
'Well, everything squared up here?'
'Yes, I think so, sir.'
'Think so? You ought to know.'
His eyes fell on the broken window. 'Has that been entered in the barrack damages?'
'Not yet, sir.'
'Not yet? I wonder when it would have been, if I hadn't seen it.'
He was not at ease with me, and much of his bluster rose from timidity, but I thought none the better of it for that.
He led me behind the huts to a wire fence which divided my area from the carrierplatoon's, skipped briskly over, and made for an overgrown ditch and bank which had once been a field boundary on the farm. Here he began grubbing with his stick like a truffling pig and presently gave a cry of triumph. He had disclosed one of those deposits of rubbish which are dear to the private soldier's sense of order: the head of a broom, the lid of a stove, a bucket rusted through, a sock, a loaf of bread, lay under the dock and nettle among cigarette packets and empty tins.
'Look at that,' said the commanding officer. 'Fine impression that gives to the regiment taking over from us.'
'That's bad,' I said.
'It's a disgrace. See everything there is burned before you leave camp.'
'Very good, sir. Sergeant-major, send over to the carrier-platoon and tell Captain Brown that the C.O. wants this ditch cleared up.'
I wondered whether the colonel would take this rebuff; so did he. He stood a moment irresolutely prodding the muck in the ditch, then he turned on his heel and strode away.
'You shouldn't do it, sir, ' said the sergeant-major, who had been my guide and prop since I joined the company. 'You shouldn't really.'
'That wasn't our rubbish.'
'Maybe not, sir, but you know how it is. If you get on the wrong side of senior officers they take it out of you other ways.'
As we marched past the madhouse, two or three elderly inmates gibbered and mouthed politely behind the railings.
'Cheeroh, chum, we'll be seeing you'; 'We shan't be long now'; 'Keep smiling till we meet again', the men called to them.
I was marching with Hooper at, the head of the leading platoon.
'I say, any idea where we're off to?'
'None.'
'Do you think it's the real thing?'