Tremor of Intent Read Online Free PDF

Antichrist Germany never came into it. ‘She has done it again, declaring war, backed by the Jews with their wads of greasy notes.’ A brief impersonation of International Finance. ‘This war, boys, is going to be a terrible thing. Europe will soon beswarming, if not swarming already, with ravaging and pillaging soldiery. It will be Ireland all over again, the leering and tramping louts, not a thought in their heads but this damnable sex, an abomination before Almighty God and His Blessed Mother.’ Soon Roger Casement was brought in. And then he gave us the news that all scholarships were temporarily suspended. I said to Roper, after a morning of yawning lounging in the school library, ‘Let’s go out and get drunk.’
    â€˜Drunk? Can we?’
    â€˜
I
certainly can. As for
may
, who’s to stop us?’
    Bitter beer was fivepence a pint in the public bars. We drank in the Clarendon, the George, the Cuddy, the King’s Head, the Admiral Vernon. Bradcaster smelt of khaki and diesel-fuel. There was also a sort of headiness of promise of the night – this damnable sex. Did not the girls in the streets seem to flaunt more, more luscious-lipped, bigger-breasted? It was always unwise ever to think Father Byrne
totally
wrong about anything. Over my sixth pint I saw myself in uniform of a subaltern of the 1914–18 War, girls panting as they smelt the enemy blood coming off me as I passed the ticket-barrier at Victoria Station, London, home for a spot of leave. Hell in those trenches, girls. Tell us more. I said now to Roper: ‘Going to volunteer. This dear country we all love so much.’
    â€˜Why?’ swayed Roper. ‘Why so much? What has it done for you or for me?’
    â€˜Freedom,’ I said. ‘It can’t be so bad a bloody country if it lets buggers like Father Byrne attack it in morning assembly. You think about that. What are you going to choose – England or bloody Father Byrne?’
    â€˜And,’ said Roper, ‘I thought I’d be going to Oxford.’
    â€˜Well, you’re not. Not yet you’re not. They’re going to have us both sooner or later. Best make it sooner. We’re going to volunteer.’
    But before we could go and do that, Roper was sick. He had notrue hearty English beer-stomach. He was sick in a back-alley near the Admiral Vernon, and this rationalist moaned and groaned prayers like ‘Oh Jesus Mary and Joseph’ as he tried to get it all up. The scientific approach to life is not really appropriate to states of visceral anguish. I told Roper this while he was suffering, but he did not listen. He prayed however: ‘Oh God God God. Oh suffering heart of Christ.’ But the next day, very pale, he was prepared to go with me to a dirty little shop that had been turned into a recruiting centre. The cold deflation of crapula perhaps made him see himself as temporarily empty of a future; the only thing he could be filled with in these times was his generalised young man’s destiny. And, of course, that went for me too.
    â€˜What will our parents say?’ wondered Roper. ‘We should really write and tell them what we’re doing.’
    â€˜Reconcile yourself to the jettisoning of another responsibility,’ I said, or words to that effect. ‘We’ll send them telegrams.’ And off we went to see a sergeant with a dreadful cold. I put in for the Royal Corps of Signals. Roper couldn’t make up his mind. He said: ‘I don’t want to kill.’
    â€˜You dod’t have to,’ said the sergeant. ‘There’s always the Bedics.’ He meant the Medics. The Royal Army Medical Corps. RAMC. Rob all my comrades. Run Albert matron’s coming. Roper bravely joined that mob.
    It seems strange, looking back, that the British armed forces had as yet no room for genuine skills, except of the most elementary trigger-squeezing, button-pressing kind. All the time Roper