Peter Jameson, master of men since boyhood, saw this new entity growing; began, in his pride of it, to forget civilian troubles. Stark, true to his words with Straker, had taken P.J. into the Orderly Room—not yet as Adjutant but only on probation.
To Conway or Pettigrew, outdoor fellows, the work would have been dull, desk-tying: but for one brought up in the City, the employment had its fascination. P.J. assisted by the meticulous R.G.A. clerk—Sergeant Barber—ran his Orderly Room as he would have run a business—filing-systems, card-indices, a diminutive stenographer (picked unwillingly from the Ammunition Column), type-writers. . . . And, the day’s work over, there was always Driver Jelks waiting with “Little Willie” (as Peter christened the frisky wicked-looking bay which Hutchinson had selected for him), and a long kicking scamper across the Downs, and Driver Garton, his red-cheeked yellow-haired Orderly, waiting with hot water for the rubber bath in the bare wooden cubicle which Peter, by right of his position on “H.Q.,” occupied alone.
One by one, other officers joined them: Percy Rorke, a pert lad, fresh from school, christened by common accord, “Monkeyface”: a jovial Irish doctor, Ted Carson by name: a few undistinguished subalterns whom Stark sent to plague Billy Williams in the Ammunition Column.
Purves, as Orderly Officer to the Colonel, began to pick his Headquarters Staff of Signallers: Corporal Waller (“Lewis” Waller of course), who had been a telephonist in private life; Gunners Seabright and Pirbright (bosom friends, constantly scrapping, known by their intimates as “the Poluskis”), Driver Nicholson (a wireless operator by profession) and the rest.
So May warmed towards June, and the remarkable days slid by. The Brigade grew—not even Stark realized exactly how—towards efficiency. If only they could get one—just one—real 18-pounder gun! But that was denied them; so volunteer parties of officers and men would take wagon on Saturday afternoons to Preston Barracks at Brighton, and there pay limber-gunners good half-crowns for the privilege of half-an-hour’s peering through real dial-sights, half-an-hour’s clicking at “practice” breech-blocks.
They took their work in deadly earnest, these stubborn North Countrymen; studied their gun-drill pamphlets by themselves; were ill folk to discipline by such officers as they suspected deficient in knowledge.
But even Stark’s most ruby language, they accepted with a smile. He knew his job!
§ 5
To Peter, sitting alone at his wooden table in the bare Orderly Room Hut one evening, monthly list of promotions before him, cloud of cigar-smoke round his head, came Bombardier Pitman—clean-shaven, lantern-jawed, destined to succeed Sergeant Barber, whose duties would take him to the Base once the Brigade reached France, in his clerkdom.
“There’s an Infantry Officer asking for you, sir,” said the Bombardier in broadest Yorkshire.