Scoop-Evelyn-Waugh [11]
The Foreign Contacts Adviser of the Beast telephoned the emporium where William was to get his kit and warned them of his arrival; accordingly it was General Cruttwell, F.R.G.S., himself who was waiting at the top of the lift shaft. An imposing man: Cruttwell Glacier in Spitsbergen, Cruttwell Falls in Venezuela, Mount Cruttwell in the Pamirs, Cruttwell's Leap in Cumberland, marked his travels; Cruttwell�s Folly, a waterless and indefensible camp near Salonika, was notorious to all who had served with him in the war. The shop paid him six hundred a year and commission, out of which, by contract, he had to fund his annual subscription to the R.G.S. and the electric treatment which maintained the leathery tan of his complexion. Before either had spoken the General sized William up; in any other department he would have been recognized as a sucker; here, amid the trappings of high adventure, he was, more gallantly, a greenhorn. "Your first visit to Ishmaelia, eh? Then perhaps I can be some help to you. As no doubt you know, I was there in '97 with poor 'Sprat' Larkin ..." "I want some cleft sticks, please," said William firmly. The General's manner changed abruptly. His leg had been pulled before, often. Only last week there had been an idiotic young fellow dressed up as a missionary... "What the devil for?" he asked tartly. "Oh, just for my despatches, you know." It was with exactly such an expression of simplicity that the joker had asked for a tiffin gun, a set of chota pegs and a chota mallet. "Miss Barton will see to you," he said, and turning on his heel he began to inspect a newly-arrived consignment of rhinoceros-hide whips in a menacing way. Miss Barton was easier to deal with. "We can have some cloven for you," she said brightly. "If you will make your selection I will send them down to our cleaver." William, hesitating between polo sticks and hockey sticks, chose six of each; they were removed to the workshop. Then Miss Barton led him through the departments of the enormous store. By the time she had finished with him, William had acquired a well, perhaps rather overfurnished tent, three months' rations, a collapsible canoe, a jointed flagstaff and Union Jack, a handpump and sterilizing plant, an astrolabe, six suits of tropical linen and a sou'wester, a camp operating table and set of surgical instruments, a portable humidor, guaranteed to preserve cigars in condition in the Red Sea, and a Christmas hamper complete with Santa Claus costume and a tripod mistletoe stand, and a cane for whacking snakes. Only anxiety about time brought an end to his marketing. At the last moment he added a coil of rope and a sheet of tin; then he left under the baleful stare of General Cruttwell.
It had been arranged for him that William should fly to Paris and there catch the Blue Train to Marseilles. He was just in time. His luggage, which followed the taxi in a small pantechnicon, made him a prominent figure at the office of the Air Line. "It will cost you one hundred and three pounds supplement on your ticket," they said after it had all been weighed. "Not me," said William cheerfully, producing his travellers' cheques. They telephoned to Croydon and ordered an additional aeroplane.
Mr. Pappenhacker of the Twopence was a fellow passenger. He travelled as a man of no importance; a typewriter and a single, "featherweight" suitcase constituted his entire luggage; only the unobtrusive Messageries Maritimes labels distinguished him from the surrounding male and female commercial travellers. He read a little Arabic Grammar, holding it close to his nose, oblivious to all about him. William was the centre of interest in the motor omnibus, and in his heart he felt a rising, wholly pleasurable excitement. His new possessions creaked and rattled on the roof, canoe against astrolabe, humidor against ant-proof clothes box; the cleft sticks lay in a bundle on the opposite seat; the gardens of South London sped past. William sat in a happy stupor. He had never wanted to go to Ishmaelia, or, for that matter, to any foreign country, to earn fifty pounds a week, or to own a jointed flagstaff or a camp operating table; but when he told Mr. Salter that he wanted nothing except to live at home and keep his job, he had hidden the remote and secret ambition of fifteen years or more. He did, very deeply, long to go up in an aeroplane. It was a wish so far from the probabilities of life at Boot Magna, that William never spoke of it; very rarely consciously considered it. No one at home knew of it except Nannie Bloggs. She had promised him a flight if she won the Irish Sweepstake, but after several successive failures she had decided that the whole thing was a popish trick and refused to take further tickets, and with her decision William's chances seemed to fade beyond the ultimate horizon. But it still haunted his dreams and returned to him, more vividly, in the minutes of transition between sleep and wakefulness, on occasions of physical exhaustion and inner content, hacking home in the twilight after a good day's hunt, fuddled with port on the not infrequent birthdays of the Boot household. And now its imminent fulfilment loomed through the haze that enveloped him as the single real and significant feature. High over the chimneys and the giant monkey-puzzle, high among the clouds and rainbows and clear blue spaces, whose alternations figured so largely and poetically in Lush Places, high above the most ecstatic skylark, above earth-bound badger and great crested grebe, away from people and cities to a region of light and void and silence