David certainly was deplorably untidy, and his absentmindedness when off duty was another propensity which made him unpopular. Also, as I have already hinted, he wasn’t good at being “seen but not heard.” “Far too fond of butting in with his opinion before he’s been asked for it,” was often his only reward for an intelligent suggestion. Even Birdie Mansfield (who had knocked about the world too much to be intolerant) was once heard to exclaim, “Unless you watch it, my son, you’ll grow up into the most bumptious young prig God ever invented!”—this protest being a result of David’s assertion that all sports except boxing, football, and rock climbing were snobbish and silly.
From the floor of the tent, Holman (a spick and span boy who had been to Sandhurst and hadn’t yet discovered that it was unwise to look down on temporary officers who “wouldn’t have been wanted in the Regiment in peacetime”) was now saying, “Anyhow I was at Clitherland with him last month, and he fairly got on people’s nerves with his hot air about the Battle of Loos, and his brainwaves about who really wrote the Bible.” Durley then philosophically observed, “Old Longneck certainly isn’t the sort of man you meet every day. I can’t always follow his theories myself, but I don’t mind betting that he’ll go a long way—provided he isn’t pushing up daisies when Peace breaks out.” Holman (who had only been with us a few days and soon became more democratic) brushed Durley’s defence aside with “The blighter’s never satisfied unless he’s turning something upside down. I actually heard him say that Homer was a woman. Can you beat that? And if you’ll believe me he had the darned sauce to give me a sort of pi-jaw about going out with girls in Liverpool. If you ask me, I think he’s a rotten outsider, and the sooner he’s pushing up daisies the better.” Whereupon Perrin (a quiet man of thirty-five who was sitting in a corner writing to his wife) stopped the discussion by saying, “Oh, dry up, Holman! For all we know the poor devil may be dead by now.”
Late that night I was lying in the tent with The Return of the Native on my knee. The others were asleep, but my candle still guttered on the shell