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most of Widmerpool’s dealings were with his own immediate
superior, Colonel Pedlar, so less likelihood of friction existed in the other
more explosive quarter. Naturally he was in touch with Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson
from time to time, but there was no day-to-day routine, during which
Hogbourne-Johnson was likely, sooner or later, to make himself disagreeable as
a matter of principle.
    Colonel
Pedlar, as “A. & Q.”, set no problem at all. Also a regular full colonel
with an M.C., he had little desire to be unaccommodating for its own sake. A
certain stiffness of manner in official transactions was possibly due to
apprehension that more might be required of him than he had to offer, rather
than an innate instinct, like Hogbourne-Johnson’s, to be unreasonable in all
his dealings. Colonel Pedlar seemed almost surprised to have reached the rank
he had attained; appeared to possess little or no ambition to rise above it, or
at least small hope that he would in due course be promoted to a brigade. The
slowness of his processes of thought sometimes irked his subordinate,
Widmerpool, even though these processes were on the whole reliable. If Colonel
Hogbourne-Johnson looked like an owl, Colonel Pedlar resembled a retriever, a
faithful hound, sound in wind and limb, prepared to tackle a dog twice his
size, or swim through a river in spate to collect his master’s game, but at the
same time not in the top class for picking up a difficult scent.
    Trouble with
Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson might never have arisen, as it did at that particular
moment, had not Colonel Pedlar been, quite by chance, out of the way. When it
came, sudden and violent, the cause was a far more humdrum matter than the
clandestine guiding of appointments. Indeed, the incident itself was such a
minor one, so much part of the day’s work, that, had I not myself witnessed it
– owing to the exceptional occurrence of Advance Headquarters and Rear
Headquarters being brought together in one element at the close of the three-day
exercise – I should always have believed some essential detail to have been
omitted from the subsequent story; guessed that nothing so trivial in itself
could have so much discomposed Widmerpool. That incredulity was due, I suppose,
to underestimation, even after the years I had known him, of Widmerpool’s
inordinate, almost morbid, self-esteem.
    During “schemes,”
the Defence Platoon was responsible for guarding the Divisional Commander’s
Advance Headquarters. This meant, on these occasions, accommodation for myself
in the General’s Mess; accordingly, temporary disengagement from Widmerpool,
whose duties as DAA.G. focused on Rear Headquarters. On the last evening of
this particular exercise, the Command three-day one, Advance H.Q. had been established,
as usual, in a small farmhouse, one of the scattered homesteads lying in the
forbidding countryside of the Command’s north-western area, right up in the
corner of the map. The first fifty-six hours had been pretty active – as
foreseen by me the night before we set out – giving little chance of sleep.
However, by the time the General and his operational staff sat down to a late
meal at the end of the third day, there was a feeling abroad that the main
exertions of the exercise might reasonably be regarded as at an end. Everyone
could take things easy for a short time. The General himself was in an
excellent temper, the battle against the Blue Force to all intents won.
    A single oil
lamp threw a circle of dim light round the dining table of the farm parlour
where we ate, leaving the rest of the room in heavy shadow, dramatising by its
glow the central figures of the company present. Were they a group of
conspirators – something like the Gunpowder Plot – depicted in the
cross-hatchings of an old engraved illustration? It was not exactly that. At
the same time the hard lights and shades gave the circle of heads an odd,
mysterious unity. The faces of the two colonels, bird and