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disliked was having to wrangle
with a lot of not very well-informed adversaries face to face. In these
attitudes poor health may well have played a part, for even unhampered by ‘pacifist’
convictions, his physical state would never have allowed any very active
participation in the war.
    However much recognized as,
anyway in his own eyes, living
in a more or less chronic convalescence, Erridge was certainly not expected to
die in his middle-forties. George Tolland,
next brother in point of age, was another matter. George,
badly wounded in the Middle East, had long been too ill
to be brought home. From the first, it seemed unlikely he would survive. Back
in England, he made some sort of recovery, then
had a relapse, almost predictable from the manner
in which Death had already cast an eye on him. The funeral had been only a few
months before. George’s wife Veronica, pregnant at the time, had not yet given
birth. The question of the baby’s sex, in the light of inheritance, added
another uncertainty to the present situation.
    The following morning I set out
for London. The train was late. Waiting for it like myself was a man in a blue-grey
mackintosh, who strolled rather furtively up and down the platform. His
movements suggested hope to avoid recognition, while a not absolutely
respectable undertaking was accomplished. At first the drooping moustache
disguised him. It was an adjunct not at all characteristic. Then, a minute or two
after, the nervous swinging walk gave this figure away. There could be no
doubt. It was Books-do-furnish-a-room Bagshaw.
    The cognomen dated back to the
old Savoy Hill days of the BBC, though we had not known each other in that very
remote period. A year or two older than myself, Bagshaw had been an occasional
drinking companion of Moreland’s. They shared a taste for white port. Possibly
Bagshaw had even served a brief stint as music critic. The memory persisted – at
our first encounter – of Bagshaw involved in an all but disastrous incident on
top of a bus, when we were going home after Moreland had been conducting a
performance of
Pelleas and Melisande
. If
Bagshaw, at no moment in his past, had ever written music criticism, that must
have been the sole form of journalism he had omitted to tackle. We had never
seen much of each other, nor met for seven or eight years. Bagshaw’s war turned
out to have been waged in the Public Relations branch of the RAF. He had grown
the moustache in India. Like a lot of acquaintances encountered at this period,
his talk had become noticeably more authoritative in tone, product of the war
itself and its demands, or just the ponderous onset of middle age. At the same
time he had surrendered none of his old wheedling, self-deprecatory manner,
which had procured him a wide variety of jobs, extracted him from equally
extensive misadventures. He was in the best of spirits.
    ‘The subcontinent has its
moments, Nicholas. It was a superlative experience, in spite of the Wingco’s
foul temper. I had to tell that officer I was not prepared to be the Gunga Din
of Royal Air Force Public Relations in India, even at the price of being
universally accepted as the better man. There were a lot of rows, but never
mind. There was much to amuse too.’
    This clearcut vignette of
relations with his Wing-Commander defined an important aspect of Bagshaw’s
character, one of which he was very proud.
    ‘You’re a professional rebel,
Bagshaw,’ some boss-figure had remarked when sacking him.
    That was true in a sense,
though not in such an entirely simple sense as might be supposed at first
sight. All the same, Bagshaw had obtained more than one subsequent job merely
on the strength of repeating that estimate of himself. The label gave potential
employers an enjoyable sense of risk. Some of them lived to regret their
foolhardiness.
    ‘After all, I warned him at the
start,’ Bagshaw used to say.
    The roots of this