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beast, added a note
deliberately grotesque, surrealist, possibly indicating a satirical meaning on
the part of the artist, a political cartoonist perhaps. The colonels were
placed on either side of General Liddament, who sat at the head of the table,
deep in thought. His thin, cleanshaven, ascetic features, those of a
schoolmaster or priest – also a touch of Sir Magnus Donners – were yellowish in
complexion. Perhaps that tawny colour clarified the imagery, for now it became
plain.
    Here was
Pharaoh, carved in the niche of a shrine between two tutelary deities, who
shielded him from human approach. All was manifest. Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson
and Colonel Pedlar were animal-headed gods of Ancient Egypt. Colonel
Hogbourne-Johnson was, of course, Horus, one of those sculptured
representations in which the Lord of the Morning Sun resembles an owl rather
than a falcon; a bad-tempered owl at that. Colonel Pedlar’s dog’s muzzle, on
the other hand, was a milder than normal version of the jackal-faced Anubis,
whose dominion over Tombs and the Dead did indeed fall within A. & Q.’s
province. Some of the others round about were less easy to place in the
Egyptian pantheon. In fact, one came finally to the conclusion, none of them
were gods at all, mere bondsmen of the temple. For example, Cocksidge, officer
responsible for Intelligence duties, with his pale eager elderly-little-boy
expression – although on the edge of thirty – was certainly the lowest of
slaves, dusting only exterior, less sacred precincts of the shrine, cleaning
out with his hands the priest’s latrine, if such existed on the temple premises.
Next to Cocksidge sat Greening, the General’s A.D.C., pink cheeked, fair
haired, good-natured, about twenty years old, probably an alien captive
awaiting sacrifice on the altar of this anthropomorphic trinity. Before anyone
else could be satisfactorily identified, Colonel Pedlar spoke.
    “How went the
battle, Derrick?” he asked.
    There had been
silence until then. Everyone was tired. Besides, although Colonel
Hogbourne-Johnson and Colonel Pedlar were not on notably good terms with each
other, they felt rank to inhibit casual conversation with subordinates. Both
habitually showed anxiety to avoid a junior officer’s eye at meals in case
speech might seem required. To make sure nothing so inadvertent should happen,
each would uninterruptedly gaze into the other’s face across the table, with
all the fixedness of a newly engaged couple, eternally enchanted by the
charming appearance of the other. The colonels were, indeed, thus occupied when
Colonel Pedlar suddenly put his question. This was undoubtedly intended as a
form of expressing polite interest in his colleague’s day, rather than to show
any very keen desire for further tactical information about the exercise, a
subject with which Colonel Pedlar, and everyone else present, must by now be
replete. However Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson chose to take the enquiry in the
latter sense.
    “Pretty
bloody, Eric,” he said. “Pretty bloody. If you want to know about it, read the
sit-rep.”
    “I’ve read it,
Derrick.”
    The assonance
of the two colonels’ forenames always imparted a certain whimsicality to their
duologues.
    “Read it
again, Eric, read it again. I’d like you to. There are several points I want to
bring up later.”
    “Where is it,
Derrick?”
    Colonel Pedlar
seemed to possess no intellectual equipment for explaining that he had
absolutely no need, even less desire, to re-read the situation report. Perhaps,
having embarked on the subject, he felt a duty to follow it up.
    “Cocksidge
will find it for you, Eric, writ in his
own fair hand. Seek out the sit-rep, Jack.”
    In certain moods,
especially when he teased Widmerpool, the General was inclined to frame his
sentences in a kind of Old English vernacular. Either because the style
appealed equally
to himself, or, more probably, because use of it implied compliment to the
Divisional Commander,