‘That poodle-faker here again?’ he thunders when Lillian’s mother returns from chaperoning another of their daughter’s extended perambulations around the garden with the constant cleric.
At his tennis court after luncheon, the Colonel watches the hapless Reverend Elliott slicing shot after shot into the net, as Lillian serves and volleys with unchristian velocity and determination.
‘The fellow’s a duffer,’ the Colonel tells his wife. ‘Tell him I want to see him my study.’ He stomps up the steps to the terrace before turning. ‘I suppose he should finish his game first. If he can.’
~
‘I imagine you have intentions towards my daughter, sir,’ the Colonel barks, folding his copy of The Times and hauling himself up to stand in front of the rouge marble fireplace, where he sucks deeply on his cheroot. He doesn’t invite his perspiring visitor to sit.
‘I …’
‘Come sir, don’t take me for a fool.’
‘Sir, I greatly admire the Christian spirit with which Lillian ministers to the parish poor.’
‘A field in which you yourself have much experience.’
‘I’m sorry … I don’t quite follow you.’
The Colonel exhales lustily, gusting his smoke across the no-man’s land of the stuffy study towards his adversary. ‘I shall speak plainly. What the devil were you doing while our brave lads were doing their duty defeating the Hun? Dishing out soup and psalms?’
‘I … I was studying theology at Cuddesdon … outside Oxford … then serving my first curacy at St Mary’s Whitechapel.’
‘Whitechapel? You didn’t feel called to Flanders or Mesopotamia? Even as a god wallah?’
‘I did sir, but–’
‘But what?’ the Colonel says, grinding the stub of his cheroot into his ashtray.
‘I felt the Lord directing me to serve him at home, and–’
‘Whitechapel is hardly the Western Front.’
‘And to consider my mother.’
‘Your mother?’
‘After Arnold, Percival, and Laurence.’ Reverend Elliott sits down suddenly. ‘The same regiment,’ he says, his voice cracking. ‘Passchendaele.’