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Red Over Green
Red Over Green
Red Over Green
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Red Over Green

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Red Over Green, first published in 1956, is a novel set in the period of 1938-1940, and is based, in part, on author Robert Henriques’ own experiences with the British Commandos, a special forces unit formed in 1940. Much of the novel, however, concern main character Barry Maurice’s love for his wife who has an incurable disease, and an his love for a young woman who Barry has helped get a divorce from her husband. Other portions of the book describe the recruiting, waiting, leaves in London, training, and planning, and finally the actual Commando raid and aftermath in a military hospital. Overall, a realistic look at human frailties, the unpreparedness of England for the war, the lack of trained personnel, and how a Commando operation was planned and executed.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateFeb 25, 2020
ISBN9781839742576
Red Over Green

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    Red Over Green - Robert D. Q. Henriques

    © Burtyrki Books 2020, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

    Publisher’s Note

    Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

    We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

    RED OVER GREEN

    A novel by

    ROBERT HENRIQUES

    TABLE OF CONTENTS

    Contents

    TABLE OF CONTENTS 4

    Author’s Note 5

    CHAPTER ONE 6

    CHAPTER TWO 23

    CHAPTER THREE 41

    CHAPTER FOUR 58

    CHAPTER FIVE 71

    CHAPTER SIX 86

    CHAPTER SEVEN 96

    CHAPTER EIGHT 117

    CHAPTER NINE 131

    CHAPTER TEN 145

    CHAPTER ELEVEN 163

    CHAPTER TWELVE 174

    CHAPTER THIRTEEN 196

    CHAPTER FOURTEEN 210

    CHAPTER FIFTEEN 228

    CHAPTER SIXTEEN 245

    REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 255

    Author’s Note

    With one exception, all the characters and events of this book are invented.

    During the war, I did in fact serve in the Commandos and took some part in certain raids and other seaborne assaults. For a time I was Brigade Major of the first Special Service Brigade, in which all the Commandos in Britain were grouped during 1940-42. Later I was head of the Planning Section at Combined Operations Headquarters (C.O.H.Q.).

    What happens in this story was not what I actually experienced or anything very like it. The planning headquarters, towards the end of the book, does not resemble C.O.H.Q.; the people are not drawn in any respect from those who served there; the raid that I have described never took place; nor was any raid with similar objectives and methods ever mounted or even planned. In particular, I have deliberately made the whole thing impossible by staging it in the autumn of 1940, when it could not have taken place until the spring of 1941 at the earliest.

    One of the characters does in fact resemble a subaltern officer of mine who was subsequently killed and who was a very dear friend. This is the only character that is not pure invention. Apart from him, I hope that nobody will see any actual person, living or dead, in these pages. For that is the truth.

    R. H.

    * * *

    To my daughter, Jane

    CHAPTER ONE

    June 1938

    At one o’clock of the June morning the telephone rang. It was a horrid awakening. Barry fumbled for the instrument in the dark and in the most offensive manner compatible with the desire to reassure his wife beside him said, Hallo, hallo, hallo! What next?

    This is George Hatherley-Cooke. There was no reply from your house at Bendon.

    Not surprising, Colonel, seeing we’re here!

    In London, are you? the colonel said. That’s a pretty silly question, isn’t it? Your wife isn’t with you?

    She certainly is.

    Is she better?

    No.

    I’m in camp, the colonel said. Wales, the Welsh coast. I hardly know how to make my apologies, old boy. I scarcely dare ask—

    I should take courage, said Barry. Rosamond is now awake.

    She woke slowly from her drugs; she lay, pale and beautiful, with her eyes on Barry and her ears half hearing the conversation. When Barry had put down the telephone, he started to argue gently with his wife. The discussion continued for a long time, tender but ruthless, twisting and turning towards its inevitable conclusion. Barry said, Even if I started at crack of dawn, even if I was well on my way by crack of dawn— For the sake of his conscience he was arguing against the proposition. Besides, he said to his wife, the weekends are yours.

    You needn’t worry on that account.

    Of course, he said, George Hatherley-Cooke could be pretty useful—

    "Nor on that account either," Rosamond said. She spoke in a slow, pale voice from her bed, but smiling.

    But you said I should go? Barry asked.

    Because you want to, darling.

    But I don’t, he said.

    Then I shouldn’t go.

    He had gone too far. Of course, he said, considered purely as a matter of business, of doing a good turn to a useful client, your friend George H.-C.—

    She said, He’s my mother’s friend and my father’s.

    A very long drive on a Sunday.

    She was smiling at him all the time, lovingly of course, but also as if she wanted him to know, or at least to suspect, that she too was playing this game. Dutiful to the game, she suggested, Perhaps you could take a friend?

    Whatever friend would come? he asked.

    I might not necessarily know, she said, still smiling. Nor would I ask.

    I haven’t got that kind of friend, he said.

    She simply continued to smile affectionately, lovingly. Scarcely awake, she lay beyond the direct light, in the shadow of the lampshade, her face pale and almost luminous from her long illness. Her hair, which was truly golden, was spread on the pillow, waterweed afloat. You want me to persuade you to go, she said. "I should go, darling."

    Purely as a matter of business, he insisted.

    If you prefer it that way, she said. But try to find a friend. Try to think of someone.

    Behind her smile, her eyes might be anxious. He kissed her, saying, I love you very much; I will never love anybody else. In this belief he telephoned Kate in the very early morning, when it was still deepest night, waiting with confidence for her small, startled voice, indignant with the telephone that woke her up. The instrument clicked and clanked as she fumbled for it, still in the dark, from the tides of sleep. She was a deep sleeper; she adored and worshipped sleep.

    "Who is it? You! At this hour of the night! Wait! She was switching on the lamp and looked at the clock. At this hour indeed!" Her voice ran up and down the scale, a mouse on the keyboard.

    He said, In two or three hours it’ll be daybreak.

    "What an indecent thought! What day might it be?"

    Sunday—just, he said.

    Oh, is it? And isn’t there a rule or something? Isn’t one always being told that the weekends are reserved for somebody else?

    This is the exception, he said. We’re in London tonight.

    Are we? Why, for instance?

    Another specialist, he said. He had to be seen yesterday.

    On a Saturday?

    He was going to Spain today.

    Why?

    Does it matter?

    One likes to know these things. If people are to be woken up at such an hour in such a fashion, they like to understand the situation.

    He’s going on his holiday, I suppose.

    Who is?

    The specialist.

    What—in the middle of June, the middle of the season?

    Oh, for God’s sake! Barry said. How soon can you start? She said, One is not starting anywhere for another—six hours at least. Is this clock really right?

    I expect so. In six hours we’ve got to be in Wales.

    Not Kate, thank you very much.

    In half an hour she was beside him in the car, her legs drawn beneath her, her arms across her breasts, hands on her shoulders. She was a very small girl. Can’t you make yourself any smaller? he asked.

    Unhappily not, she said. "One would prefer to make oneself nothing; one feels unspeakably humiliated; not at all appreciating this masterful attitude, especially at such an hour. Such an hour, Mr. Barry. Her voice was soft and deliberate, with unexpected twists and exaggerated modulations. To be carried away by a gentleman—not knowing why or where—and scarcely when—at seventy-five miles an hour—"

    Eighty-five.

    That speedometer is surely wrong. They all are.

    Not on a Bentley.

    A very old Bentley.

    Would you like to drive?

    I would like to return to sleep.

    Sleep then, he said. He put his hand on top of her head, spreading his fingers and able to clasp her head, a claw on a globe. She had fine brown hair with curls in front—brown hair and blue, incompetent eyes. She was soon asleep until, an hour later, she was wakened by the shudders of the car when the tire punctured. How ghastly! she said. Where do you think we are?

    On the Oxford bypass.

    Do you think so? She went to sleep again; but when the hammering on the rear wheel was prolonged, she climbed out and stood with her hands on her hips and one toe pointed. It was the racing type of wheel, and he had removed the hub-cap. You shouldn’t have to hit it, she said. I expect it’s crooked. That hammer thing is for something quite different. He threw it in the road and got himself up. He was rather stout, short of breath. Not very fit, are we? she said, and he walked away to the hood of the car. Now somebody is cross. Squatting by the wheel, she called, If I were you, I would light myself a cigarette and just not panic. It was still dark enough for the match to flare in the morning. Angry, now? she said.

    He was not, of course, angry or even irritated. While she fiddled with the wheel he waited at the other end of the car until she should discover, and admit, that the thing was in fact stuck and that she was no more able to dislodge it than he was. Such trials and admissions were essential to the conflict of love, of lust; perhaps it was neither love nor lust, but some intermediate emotion demanding cruelty and tenderness, desire and denial, resistance and surrender, a struggle for power, essential to the rules of the game, the conventions of the sport, the tactics of this warfare.

    In the primeval light he could just perceive her, a very small, dark creature squatting like a frog beside a wheel as big as herself. The kind of ruthless tenderness that the sight inspired in him —at this moment which was neither light nor dark, void nor substance, but a replay of the first phases of creation—made him afraid of himself and also afraid, on his own behalf, of what the future was going to do to him. There was a certainty of pain ahead. He knew that he was creating pain for himself, and perhaps for her also, by each remark, each action. He heard her voice: It only wanted kindness, but one can’t actually lift it off. Is there a cigarette?

    He came to her from the front of the car. It’s somewhat bigger than yourself, he said.

    Somewhat, she said, as he picked up the wheel which she had freed. Where are my cushions?

    Are you going to drive?

    If you have my cushions.

    Certainly, he said. They’re part of the car.

    Are they? Are they part of the car? She repeated the question. Are they part of the car, Mr. Barry, my cushions? He showed her the cushions which, when packed behind her, enabled her to reach the pedals and drive the car. "So one has some rights left," she said.

    Propped with her cushions, she always drove his car as fast as he did himself, but more smoothly and safely. All your pretense of incompetence! he said.

    Am I incompetent? she asked.

    Quite the reverse.

    Am I?

    Dawn—comes the dawn! he said. They were climbing a hill, and the tops of the trees ahead trembled with the first stroke of sunrise. Forty minutes since the puncture, he said, and forty-two miles.

    Naturally.

    Sixty-three miles an hour.

    So I had calculated. She stopped the car on the high crest of the Cotswolds, where they looked down upon the rosy mists, and across at the scarcely perceptible hills surmounted by gilt-edged cloud and pale green sky which was now absorbing color from the earth, for these few moments of sunrise, until it became blue by daylight. Very dramatic, she said.

    Why are we afraid of beauty?

    Why indeed? She got out of the car, and he joined her. Their long, thin shadows bobbed and slid towards each other. Giraffes, she said.

    Resting his arm across her shoulders, his chin on her head, he joined the shadows together. We are one, my Kate.

    Not to mention my husband and your wife.

    Not to mention them for the moment.

    The far hills had now caught the sunrise. Is that where we’re going? she asked.

    More or less.

    More, she said, getting into the car. More! Come on! Get in! Don’t loiter about! Don’t fuss! She drove on. More, more, more, till we can’t stop.

    Meaning precisely?

    One doesn’t always have to mean everything precisely. Everyone isn’t lawyers. She braked sharply and pulled the car down a byroad to the left.

    To what end or purpose? he asked.

    Shorter and quicker and to miss Cheltenham. For Wales it has to be Gloucester, doesn’t it?

    You know this road? When?

    Once.

    When?

    Must one tell everything all at once? So boring, she said. It’s unbelievable, he said, that it’s scarcely two months.

    Is it so long as that?

    Fifteenth April, he said.

    "What a memory!"

    A memorable date, he said. I met you at the St. James’s bar, by previous appointment, on twenty-second April, nineteen hundred thirty-eight.

    You said the fifteenth.

    I spoke to you on the telephone on the eighteenth. We’ve said all this before. Like’a child, he said, you want the familiar story every night.

    The eighteenth isn’t the fifteenth, she said.

    On the fifteenth I got a letter from yours sincerely Geoffrey Ramsay.

    Saying what?

    I’ve told you often.

    One forgets.

    To the best of my recollection, it read, ‘This is to introduce my niece, Mrs. McClaren, who wants the advice of a solicitor and whom I think you might help. I’d be much obliged—’ it said.

    So Mr. Ramsay was much obliged? she said.

    What else could I do for an old friend of my schooldays? One of my few, very few friends, he said.

    So then?

    The moment I got that letter I felt— He would not continue the repetition. You know perfectly well, he said. Three times, on three successive days, I tried to ring you up. I don’t know why I didn’t write. But each time I heard the telephone ringing in your empty flat, I felt— I’ve said it so often. Until at last you answered, and at the sound of your voice I felt— Driving very fast, almost too fast, along this narrower byroad, she asked, You felt and you felt and you felt—what?

    A new chemical injected into the bloodstream.

    All this chemistry business! she said. So technical!

    Let us please keep it chemical.

    Just as you wish.

    Chemical from the start, he said; but by now he could scarcely believe himself that the tingling and agitation of the nerves had all started with a few typewritten lines on thick office notepaper, from an old friend, no longer even an acquaintance.

    She said, One may be misjudging the situation, but didn’t Mr. Ramsay think you might help his niece?

    Haven’t I helped her?

    Far from it.

    We don’t really handle divorce in my office, he said. Besides I know Harry, you forget.

    "Who forgets?"

    That’s perfectly fair, he said. He was only too ready to accuse and convict himself. Poor Harry the husband! It would be most professionally improper, he said, for M. Barry, solicitor, to act against his friend Harry in the matter of divorce; but not a professional matter, and scarcely even unusual, for M. Barry Esquire to steal this same friend’s wife.

    She said, Your friend’s wife wasn’t his to be stolen. She wasn’t a chattel.

    No—he had lost you first.

    It seemed so, she said sadly.

    I wonder why. He was a nice chap.

    He took one for granted, she said.

    Poor Harry!

    She said, Wales is a long way, isn’t it?

    He asked if he should drive, but she said no—a long monosyllable left hanging. For a moment of early morning of radiant mists trailing the hills between Gloucester and Ross, he felt understanding between them, alliance and sadness. In the silence he felt themselves parting, hands clasped and their arms being extended as they drew away from each other, fingers lingering for a last touch until they were separate; their hands fell away and, as the gap increased, they were forced into opposition, were enemies, contestants. Resisting the separation he said, I do understand.

    Do you think so?

    He said, Poor Harry was done for before old Barry stepped into the breach. He felt himself sniggering; he heard his voice with distaste, his words dictated by this momentary strain. There were others, of course.

    Were there?

    I met him— A Mr. Something Penny, or a Mr. Penny Something—

    Something.

    He felt her rebuke or her entreaty but he had to say, Poor Penny!—much as he hated it—remembering the tall, thin man who came into the St. James’s bar as if he were both hoping and fearing to find Kate there, and who suffered the shock of the meeting, and the introduction, with the shy smile of someone sorely hurt. Also he remembered the delectable and contemptible feeling of pity and power of the man in possession for the man rejected. Barry disliked himself but he said, he had to say, Poor old Penny! The ways of a woman are wondrous strange. His words disgusted himself but had to be said. Poor Penny, a handsome chap! Something of a lad, isn’t he, when he gets on a horse? Wasn’t it the Grand National?

    Yes, he won that.

    He didn’t actually win it.

    Didn’t he? What does it matter?

    Not in the least, he said, still overpowered by the miracle. And old Barry, old enough, almost, not quite, to be your father —if my calculations are correct—a puffing oaf, fat, flabby, and unfit, short, stout, and squat, a humble lawyer, no better, no worse—how did he get this Kate?

    How indeed? she asked, bewildered herself.

    He still could not stop. Penny had everything.

    She said, That was his big mistake.

    The lorry came round the bend much too fast, swinging out past the cyclist, blocking the road. What Barry felt, in the half-second, was fear not of mutilation but of discovery, hospital, police, the telephone call to his wife. Kate took the car on to the steep verge. As it struck the transverse ditch, her shoulder and Barry’s were jolted against each other. It hurt even Barry, but she got the car back on to the road and, without halting, drove on fast.

    While he was still cramped in the stomach and breathless with the fright, he said, A very big car for a very small girl! That was superb, terrific.

    Was it? She was very happy with herself. So Mr. Ramsay was much obliged, she said.

    Quite angrily he said, I sent you to Paine and Reece. There’s nobody better for divorce.

    For hours and hours, she said, one sat with Mr. Reece Junior in his office while he said no to everything one suggested.

    Then ‘no’ was the right answer.

    He was not at all pleased to be given it back.

    He made improper suggestions?

    Naturally! Doesn’t everyone? You should ask your wife.

    She’s a lot older than you.

    How old?

    Two years younger than me, thirteen years older than you.

    How old is that?

    I’m thirty-five, he said.

    Am I only twenty? It feels much older than that.

    Why do you play this silly game? he asked.

    Is it silly? A person has to play something or she would just have to do away with herself. One doesn’t think about ages, about people being old or young. Oh no, thank you—one has grown out of that! Somebody is either adult or not.

    When is somebody adult?

    When he has been hurt enough, she said. You need hurting, Mr. Barry. You need to be hurt.

    Are you to do the hurting?

    Preferably not. It isn’t amusing to hurt people. It’s better even to be hurt; and one has had enough of that She spoke remotely, as if he were an impersonal listener. She said, But you, Mr. Barry, you like hurting Kate.

    I certainly don’t.

    Why not? One rather thought you did. She was driving slowly now.

    He would not say what she wanted to hear said; he would not use the word love. He said, "This thing is purely chemical. Let us have no mistakes about that! This thing is self-indulgence, lust. This thing is irresistible. Drive on, Mrs. McClaren, and to hell with both of us!"

    And your wife?

    You don’t want to talk about Rosamond.

    Nevertheless she has to be considered. One must consider everything relevant. There she sits in Hertfordshire or Bedfordshire or somewhere, in your little Georgian house—

    Jacobean.

    It’s all the same. And she has a walled garden where she cuts flowers for the house, and she has a gardener—

    Three days a week.

    Three days a week are quite enough, more than enough, for so small a garden. And she’s an invalid—

    Convalescent.

    She always will be convalescent. Some people can afford to be. And she’s a very beautiful lady with golden hair, not just red or reddish or auburn or ginger, but really golden which is very rare, you know—

    Kate, please stop!

    Everybody can’t be a beautiful lady with golden hair. And naturally you love her very much, and everyone else is just chemical. One must get it straight.

    Kate—

    And she has you on Saturdays and Sundays. But because somebody, some colonel or other, rang up on a Saturday night—

    Hatherley-Cooke.

    This Colonel Hatherley-Cooke rings up in a great state on a Saturday night. And it’s Kate’s Sunday off. But she’s dragged out of bed; she’s spoken to on the telephone by Mr. Barry who, doubtless, is speaking from the next room to his wife’s in that little Jacobean house—no, in his London house—and he goes back to his wife and kisses her, saying— What does he say exactly?

    Please, Kate—

    He loves his wife, of course?

    Yes.

    So one would hope. Then what does he feel for Kate? He did not know the answer and dared not find it; and if it should confront him, he had no scales for weighing his guilt. Guilty, he said.

    They drove very fast and in silence for quite a time. How’s Mr. Barry? she asked. It was a question she was always asking, a joke, a silly joke, a habit between them.

    Hating himself like hell, Barry said.

    That’s better. That’s as it should be.

    Shall I drive?

    If I were you, I would go to sleep, she said.

    Nice sleep? she asked when he awoke.

    Deep and dreamless. How long was it?

    I was at pains not to disturb a busy solicitor. I drove with particular prudence.

    But no sacrifice of speed, he said, looking at the mileage and the clock. Where are we?

    Must one always know where one is?

    Don’t you?

    We are here. Isn’t that enough?

    They changed places, and he drove for an hour or so into Llangerall. This is probably our best chance on a Welsh Sunday, he said. Supposing I leave you here to find us a room, and I come back when I’ve done with Hatherley-Cooke?

    The sea would be nice. Don’t they have a sea anywhere about? This isn’t very nice, is it? So squalid!

    We can move tomorrow.

    So there’s to be a tomorrow?

    What did you think?

    One thought one was a convenience; a chemical convenience, of course, being always given to understand—

    You’ve got your wedding-ring?

    In my bag.

    Put it on.

    I certainly shan’t.

    You won’t get a room without it.

    Sometimes, she said, you are depressingly insensitive.

    Please will you take that little suitcase and put on your wedding-ring, and I’ll meet you at the station at twelve o’clock for lunch?

    She took the suitcase. It will rain, she said. One can predict a whole morning in the rain, hauling a suitcase round this terrible town.

    If you get a room, you can go to sleep in it; you can even get breakfast.

    It is going to rain, she said. One can see that; one can see it miles off. Go and find your camp!

    The morning had folded up into mist by nine o’clock when Barry found the camp. A windless day; there was no sound of the sea but only a feeling that it was close beneath a cliff, and that the cliff’s edge would be just beyond the creeping tents that melted in the mist and were the source of a shout, a song abruptly stopped, a whistle answered, a puppy’s yelp—isolated emissions rolling downhill to the sentry at the gate from a foreign community, slightly hostile to the stranger who had to enter it with a plunge, the Bentley roaring up the headland turf a good deal too fast.

    Ten miles an hour! said Hatherley-Cooke, standing outside the mess tent. He was short, broad, pink, and vigorous; he was dressed in flannel trousers, a jersey, an old coat.

    Sorry, Colonel—no offense!

    You’d like breakfast?

    Who wouldn’t?

    I can spare you two hours between now and church.

    Good of you, Colonel.

    Good of you to make the journey. I trust it will be to our mutual advantage.

    In which trust, Barry said, I abandoned a night’s sleep. The colonel took Barry into the marquee, where a dozen officers were still at breakfast. We all sleep a deal too much, the colonel said, don’t we, Charlie, don’t we, Monty, what would you say to it, Ted? Barry, you know these faces? Barry resisted knowing these faces. They were not really familiar but only likenesses to people met before, perhaps long ago, met elsewhere, somewhere, perhaps on an Essex farm or in a Bendon street, and not to be identified with this young man and his deference, or that one and his authority—all of them in uniform except their colonel—or all those who exchanged, across their breakfast, their allusive and exclusive jokes. Since he had no part in their masquerade, he must stay right outside it—all or nothing; camaraderie or enmity—since he would not make the effort of politeness, which was not part of the bargain, he must remain truculent. He said—but with a smile, I know none of them.

    They’re all from Essex—many from Bendon itself.

    I’m only at Bendon weekends.

    I know. Is Rosamond fully recovered?

    Not yet.

    Poor thing! It’s an interminable complaint.

    A six-hour drive through the night for eggs and bacon and this impertinent chat, with its intimate hints, from a man whom he himself had met only twice or thrice, in a London office for instructions, across an Essex dinner-table, at tea and tennis in his mother-in-law’s garden. Seeing we’ve so little time, Colonel—

    We’ll go to my tent.

    From the tent at the end of the line, at the top of the hill, they could look down upon the sea. Rather a pleasant view, the colonel said.

    You want to buy Patterson’s?

    All right, old son! The colonel turned his face from the sea. Yes, Patterson’s, he said. I’ve been offered a controlling interest. An option till Wednesday night. He sat on a canvas chair, Barry upon the bed with, beside him, the papers displayed —accounts, balance sheets, valuations.

    At this game Barry fancied himself. It smells quite good, he said. Of course, I can’t advise you on the spot.

    Any other advice, old boy, is not much use.

    This little lot—I can take it away and be back tomorrow? Hatherley-Cooke said, I shouldn’t remind you, perhaps, that you have to be in London tonight?

    Things have, as you might say, adjusted themselves differently.

    Since one o’clock this morning?

    Since later than that.

    I’m to mind my own damned business?

    No, Colonel, but I’m minding yours.

    That’s your job.

    Yes, Colonel.

    At this stage they were reasonably well matched in the contest. Essentially there had to be contest in the relationship of Hatherley-Cooke with anyone of his choice. He chose people for their promise of resistance. I want your frank advice, Barry. Barry said nothing. I’m not asking the opinion of a chartered accountant. Barry remained silent. You’re not an accountant, of course? They were both gazing out to sea from the open tent. I’d like you to take into account my reasons for—he lay back, stretched, and breathed deeply—for even entertaining this project. Motionless, extended in his chair, the colonel’s posture was aggressive and inciting. He fixed his eyes on Barry, and his face was somehow alight. Barry lounged on the bed. There was a pleasant tension brewing when the colonel jumped up and continued stretching and flexing himself afoot. I must change for church, old son. You’ll be out of the way on the bed.

    Yes, Colonel, Barry said. Reclining on the low camp bed and army blankets, his foot tapped the tent-boards as he worked the thing out.

    Don’t fidget, old chap!

    Sorry, Colonel! I was deep in thought.

    That’s the stuff!

    Yes, Colonel, Barry said, enjoying the pretentious title. The man was only a territorial soldier, a weekend soldier, an enlarged Boy Scout. Nevertheless, here he was legitimately established, if only for a fortnight, in command of his own regiment whose brass band, somewhere down the hill, was engaged in last-minute practice: All People Who on Earth Do Dwell...

    The colonel swung about. You know, he said, I’m always putting up the backs of people I particularly want to stroke. Aren’t you a bit that way yourself? I dare say we’ll fit.

    Fit what?

    The colonel was pulling his jersey over his head and had no need to answer. He undressed briskly. His every movement performed, word uttered, and breath taken were infused with a tremendous vigor which had a delayed action in its effect on others. To some it was obnoxious. Steadily it wore them down as the man’s true nature showed itself. At first—on previous occasions when Barry had met him—the colonel was a pink, partly bald, dapper little man of Barry’s own height. He had a somewhat ineffectual, high-pitched voice. Now, in his tent, without his shirt, he seemed obtrusively powerful in both character and physique, his apparent shortness being an illusion of his breadth and depth, and his dapperness a disguise for his restless, almost overbearing, almost painful vitality. He pulled off his trousers and stood in his pants. Precisely he aligned his feet together, stiffened his knees, bent forwards and down until the knuckles of his clenched fists rested on the tent-boards. From this position he squinted up at Barry. Can you do this?

    Not to save my life, Barry said.

    Or this? The colonel lay flat on his back, raised his arms aloft, and got quite gracefully to his feet, his arms still outstretched.

    I’ve never even attempted it, Barry said.

    If you don’t mind my saying so, you don’t look any too fit.

    I’m resigned to my age, if that’s what you mean, Barry said.

    Your age, old son! The colonel was rhythmically taking the sea air—in, out. You can’t be much above forty? Five years younger than myself.

    Let it pass! There was nothing of use to be found along the side-track of comparative ages, critical surprise that Barry was five years younger than the colonel’s charitable guess.

    The colonel

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