So I was very happy to have G.C. back in camp and so was Mary. He was happy to be back too because we had become a family and we always missed each other when we were apart. He loved his job and believed in it and its importance almost fanatically. He loved the game and wanted to care for it and protect it and that was about all he believed in, I think, except a very stern and complicated system of ethics.
He was a little younger than my oldest son and if I had gone to Addis Ababa to spend a year and write back in the middle thirties as I had planned I would have known him when he was twelve since his best friend then had been the son of the people I was going out to stay with. But I had not gone because Mussolini’s armies had gone instead and my friend that I had been going out to stay with had been moved to another diplomatic post and so I had missed the chance to know G.C. when he was twelve. By the time I met him he had a long, very difficult and unrewarding war behind him plus the abandonment of a British Protectorate where he had made the start of a fine career. He had commanded irregular troops, which is, if you are honest, the least rewarding way there is to make a war. If an action is fought perfectly so that you have almost no casualties and inflict large losses on the enemy it is regarded at Headquarters as an unjustified and reprehensible massacre. If you are forced to fight under unfavorable conditions and at too great odds and win but have a large butcher bill the comment is, “He gets too many men killed.”
There is no way for an honest man commanding irregulars to get into anything but trouble. There is some doubt as to whether any truly honest and talented soldier can ever hope for anything except to be destroyed.
By the time I met G.C., he was well started in another career in another British Colony. He was never bitter and he did not look back at all. Over the spaghetti and the wine he told us of how he had been reproved by some newly arrived expatriate civil servant for using a bad word which might be overheard by this young man’s wife. I hated for G.C. to have to be bored by these people. The old Pukka Sahibs have been often described and caricatured. But no one has dealt much with these new types except Waugh a little bit at the end of
He was very gaunt and looked in bad shape and I asked him if he would not stay and eat. But he had to go. I told him I could give him a couple of people who would look after him if “They” were after him. That my characters were familiar with the local “They” who would never bother him nor intrude on him. He said no, that the pistol was all he needed. We asked about a few mutual friends and he left. I sent two characters to pick him up at the door and tail him and check if anybody was after him. The next day their report was “Papa nobody is after him. He is a very chic type and he knows Paris very well. We checked with so and so’s brother and he says no one pursues him. He is in touch with the British Embassy but he is not an operative. This is only hearsay. Do you want the timetable of his movements?”
“No. Did he amuse himself?”
“Yes, Papa.”
“I’m happy. We will not worry about him. He has the pistol.”
“That worthless pistol,” one of the characters said. “But you warned him against it, Papa?”
“Yes. He could have had any pistol he wished.”
“Perhaps he would have been happier with a stinger.”
“No,” the other character said. “A stinger is too compromising. He was happy with that pistol.”
We let it go at that.