Unconditional surrender by Evelyn Waugh Page B

without the characteristic smell of pipe and retriever. Ludovic did not smoke and he had never owned a dog.
    When he was appointed, he was told: ‘It’s no business of yours who your “clients” are or where they are going. You simply have to see they’re comfortable during the ten days they spend with you. Incidentally, you will be able to make yourself pretty comfortable too. I don’t imagine the change will be unwelcome’ – looking at his file – ‘after your experiences in the Middle East.’
    For all his tutelage under Sir Ralph Brompton in the arts of peace Ludovic lacked Jumbo Trotter’s zest for comfort and his ingenuity in pursuing it. He shared a batman with his staff-captain, Fremantle; his belt and boots always shone. He cherished an old trooper’s fetish for leather. His establishment drew a special scale of rations, for it catered for ‘clients’ who were taking vigorous physical exercise and suffering, most of them, from nervous anxiety. Ludovic ate heavily but without discrimination. His life was the life of the mind and there was little to occupy it in his official duties. The staff-captain had charge of administration; three athletic officers performed the training and these brave young men went in fear of Ludovic. They had less information even than he about the identity of their pupils. They did not know even the initial letters of the departments they served, and they believed, rightly, that when they visited the market town, security police in plain clothes offered them drinks and tried to draw them into indiscretion on the subject of their employment. They reported at the end of each course on the prowess of their ‘clients’. Ludovic transcribed and where necessary paraphrased their verdicts and forwarded them in a nest of envelopes to the sponsors.
    One morning at the end of November he settled to this, which was almost his only task. Training reports lay on his desk.
PT OK
, he read,
but a nervous type. Got worse. Had to be pushed out for last jump. NBG.
–
His excellent physique is not matched by psychological stamina
, he wrote. Then he consulted Roget and under the heading of Prospective Affections found: ‘Cowardice, pusillanimity, poltroonery, dastardness, abject fear, funk, dunghill-cock, coistril, nidget, Bob Acres, Jerry Sneak.’
    ‘Nidget’ was a new word. He moved to the dictionary and found: ‘
Nidget
; an idiot. A triangular horseshoe used in Kent and Sussex.’ Not applicable. ‘Dunghill-cock’ was good, but perhaps too strong. Major Hound had been a dunghill-cock. He tried ‘coistril’ and found only: ‘
Coistrel
: a groom, knave, base fellow’ and the quotation: ‘the swarming rabble of our coistrell curates.’
    His eyes followed the columns, like a prospector’s panning for gold. Everywhere in the dross of ‘coition … cojuror … colander’ nuggets gleamed. ‘
Coke-upon-Littleton
: cant name of a mixed drink …’ – He seldom frequented the bar in the anteroom. He could hardly call for Coke-upon-Littleton. Perhaps it could be used in rebuke. ‘Fremantle, it seemed to me you had had one too many Cokes-upon-Littleton last night.’ – ‘Coke’ he noted was pronounced ‘cook’. ‘Colaphize: to buffet and knock …’; and so browsed happily until recalled to his duties by the entrance of his staff-captain with an envelope marked ‘secret’. He hastily completed the report:
Failed to eradicate faults in training. Not recommended for active operations
, and signed at the foot of the sheet.
    ‘Thank you, Fremantle,’ he said. ‘You can take the confidential reports, seal them and give them to the despatch rider to take back. What did you think of our last batch?’
    ‘Not up to much.’
    ‘A rabble of coistrell curates?’
    ‘Sir?’
    ‘Never mind.’
    Each batch of ‘clients’ left early in the morning to be succeeded by the next in the late afternoon two days later. The intervening period was one of ease for the staff when, if they