No More Parades_ A Novel - Ford Madox Ford [18]
'You must understand that we work in circumstances of extreme difficulty, sir...'
The graceful colonel was lost in an absent contemplation of his perfectly elegant knees.
'I know, of course...' he lisped. 'Very difficult...He brightened up to add: 'But you must admit you're unfortunate...You must admit that...' The weight settled, however, again on his mind.
Tietjens said:
'Not, I suppose, sir, any more unfortunate than any other unit working under a dual control for supplies...'
The colonel said:
'What's that? Dual...Ah, I see you're there, Mackenzie...Feeling well...feeling fit, eh?'
The whole hut stood silent. His anger at the waste of time made Tietjens say:
'If you understand, sir, we are a unit whose principal purpose is drawing things to equip drafts with...' This fellow was delaying them atrociously. He was brushing his knees with a handkerchief!'I've had,' Tietjens said, 'a man killed on my hands this afternoon because we have to draw tin-hats for my orderly room from Dublin on an A.F.B. Canadian from Aldershot...Killed here...We've only just mopped up the blood from where you're standing...'
The cavalry colonel exclaimed:
'Oh, good gracious me!...' jumped a little and examined his beautiful shining knee-high aircraft boots. 'Killed!...Here!...But there'll have to be a court of inquiry...You certainly are most unfortunate, Captain Tietjens...Always these mysterious...Why wasn't your man in a dug-out?...Most unfortunate...We cannot have casualties among the Colonial troops...Troops from the Dominions, I mean...'
Tietjens said grimly:
The man was from Pontardulias...not from any Dominion...One of my orderly room...We are forbidden on pain of court martial to let any but Dominion Expeditionary Force men go into the dug-outs...My Canadians were all there...It's an A.C.I. local of the eleventh of November...'
The Staff Offcer said:
'It makes of course, a difference!...Only a Glamorgan-shire? You say...Oh well...But these mysterious...'
He exclaimed, with the force of an explosion, and the relief:
'Look here...can you spare possible ten...twenty...eh...minutes?...It's not exactly a service matter...so per...'
Tietjens exclaimed:
'You see how we're situated, colonel...' and like one sowing grass seed on a lawn, extended both hands over his papers and towards his men...He was choking with rage. Colonel Levin had, under the chaperonage of an English dowager, who ran a chocolate store down on the quays in Rouen, a little French piece to whom he was quite seriously engaged. In the most naïve manner. And the young woman, fantastically jealous, managed to make endless insults to herself out of her almost too handsome colonel's barbaric French. It was an idyll, but it drove the colonel frantic. At such times Levin would consult Tietjens, who passed for a man of brains and a French scholar as to really nicely turned compliments in a difficult language...And as to how you explained that is was necessary for a G.S.O. II, or whatever the colonel was, to be seen quite frequently in the company of very handsome V.A.D.'s and female organizers of all arms...It was the sort of silliness as to which no gentleman ought to be consulted...And here was Levin with the familiar feminine-agonized wrinkle on his bronzed-alabaster brow...Like a beastly soldier-man out of a revue. Why didn't the ass burst into gesture and a throaty tenor...
Sergeant-Major Cowley naturally saved the situation. Just as Tietjens was as near saying Go to hell as you can be to your remarkably senior officer on parade, the sergeant-major, now a very important solicitor's most confidential clerk, began whispering to the colonel...
'The captain might as well take a spell as not...We're through with all the men except the Canadian Railway batch, and they can't be issued with blankets not for half an hour...not for three-quarters. If then! It depends if our runner can find where Quarter's lance-corporal is having his supper, to issue them...! The sergeant-major had inserted that last speech deftly. The Staff officer, with a vague reminiscence of his regimental days, exclaimed: