Free Circles of Time by Phillip Rock Page A

time.”
    â€œLet’s not be modest. Old Woody, the hero of Mons.”
    â€œHero of Mons my arse.” He made a guttural sound deep in his throat that sounded like a threat, then poured brandy into the glasses and carried them back toward his desk. He walked stiffly and with great care. “Getting lame. If I were a horse I’d be shot out of pity.”
    â€œYou need sun. India, perhaps.”
    â€œ He told you to say that, didn’t he?” He handed Fenton a glass and then sat at his desk with a grateful sigh. “Bugger Blythe. I’m not going to spend my last years staring at the Himalayas. I’ve got that bit of rough shoot in Yorkshire and a sturdy little house to go with it.” He drank some of the brandy and then toyed with the glass, rolling it between his thick, strong hands. “I asked for the job of passing on your new orders. I’m sure you know why.”
    â€œI can guess.”
    â€œBlythe has prepared a letter I dictated. A letter ostensibly from you. I think it is a good letter, one that certain people in this building will be quite relieved to get. The letter states, in simple, soldier prose, your reluctant but necessary decision to retire from the army as of today in order to devote yourself to your family and business interests. The letter will be received with gratitude and your early retirement will be honored with a full colonelship. A nice little gesture on their part. What do you say to that?”
    â€œAh,” Fenton said.
    â€œAnd what does that peculiar sound signify?”
    â€œRelief. Rather like hearing the second shoe drop.”
    â€œThen I take it you intend to do the sensible thing and sign the letter?”
    â€œOn the contrary. I intend to receive my orders and comply with them.”
    â€œYou bloody fool.”
    It was uttered with a quiet intensity, not untinged with respect for the tall, hawk-faced man seated across from him. Sir Julian had never married, and at seventy was not likely to do so. His only living nephew was the nearest thing he would ever get to a son. He swallowed the rest of his brandy.
    â€œHow long have you been in the army?”
    â€œThirteen years.”
    â€œAnd you have no more idea how the system works than some Oxford Street ribbon clerk!”
    â€œMay I beg to differ, sir?”
    â€œYou may not, sir!” He was speaking to just another subordinate who needed a good dressing down, and, by God, he was the man to do it. “You believe you’ve served king and country for thirteen years, but that is not true. As a professional army officer you have served only the general staff. It’s they who set the standards, and one either complies with those standards or gets out. The staff has always had a horror of the unorthodox and they have had more than enough of it in the past few years, thank you very much! They’ve had to contend with Colonel Lawrence dashing about like some Drury Lane fairy in a bloody soppy burnoose. They’ve had Trenchard pulling his flying corps out of the army and forming his own service—and they have Elles wanting to do the same with his tanks. They do not like it, sir. They do not like it one bit. And they sense the seeds of heresy in you, by gad. Your peculiar behavior in nineteen seventeen will never be understood or forgiven. Your insistence on having Major Greville court-martialed was bad enough, but the mysterious appearance of the hearing transcripts in the hands of that German fella—”
    â€œMartin Rilke is not a German fella. ”
    â€œA Yank then, with a Boche name. A bleeding newspaper wallah. By all rights you should have been booted from the service if not bloody well shot!”
    Fenton’s expression was stone. “I followed the King’s Regulations to the letter with Charles. As for my giving the transcript to Rilke, there was no proof of it.”
    â€œNo proof of it,” the general sighed. Slumping back