Ripeness is All by Eric Linklater

Author:Eric Linklater
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2012-02-26T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

As soon as the ladies had withdrawn Wilfrid came round and sat beside Stephen. ‘Christmas is going to be perfectly hateful this year,’ he said with a sigh.

‘It’s going to be worse for me than for you,’ said Stephen.

Arthur helped himself to brandy. The glass was of the generous balloon shape, and held a lot. Arthur took handsome advantage of its capacity. Before Daisy’s watchful eyes he had been compelled, throughout dinner, to let the wine pass him by, and now he was naturally eager to make up for lost time. He gulped the brandy as though Bisquit Dubouché, nearly sixty years old, were meant to quench a man’s thirst. It quenched, more happily and almost immediately, his sense of reality. He set his elbows on the table and leaned forward to listen to the General and Sir Gervase. This was the kind of company he preferred above all other. A soldier and a proconsul! Arthur felt the twin flames of war and imperialism warm his heart. He also had been a soldier. He had helped, if not to build, at least to defend an empire. He waited impatiently for an opportunity to say so.

Sir Gervase was talking about a study he had read of the Mahratta campaigns. ‘Rapid movement, decisive action, and independent judgement were the reasons for our success,’ he declared.

‘There was damned little opportunity for any of those in the last war,’ said the General.

Arthur finished his brandy. ‘It’s interesting to hear you say that,’ he said to Sir Gervase: and turned with a bland smile to the General, ’because I once had a most unusual chance to exercise independent judgement, and also to show the effect of rapid movement.’

‘Where was that?’ asked the General.

‘At the battle of Cambrai,’ said Arthur.

The General grunted. His own war service had been confined to garrison duty in India.

A dreaming beatitude made Arthur’s eyes more soft and velvety, a deeper brown. He replenished his glass.’ We’d gone forward behind the tanks, you know,’ he said, ‘and really the first day was quite easy. We had to do some mopping-up of course’ – Arthur passed over this unpleasant detail with a deprecatory smile – ‘and the Fifty-First, poor devils, were held up for a while in front of Flesquières. But except for that it was really quite good going. We pushed on very fast, and cut round behind Flesquières – we and the Fifty-First – and to keep the story short we got to Fontaine-Notre-Dame, on one of the main roads to Cambrai, and found ourselves practically in open country. We’d gone right through the Boches, and there was really nothing to stop us from simply walking ahead.’

‘What about Bourlon Wood?’ asked the General.

‘Yes, they still held part of Bourlon Wood,’ said Arthur quickly, ‘but what I mean is that in front of us, actually in front of us, there was no opposition and the road to Cambrai was open. But of course we couldn’t do anything about it, because the men were exhausted, and we’d no reserves.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.