THE GENERAL’S PRIVATE CAMPAIGN By Rose Boucheron 1970 looking up at the ceiling as if by concentrating they could see through into the General’s room. Finally, Edith lowered her gaze. “It is, really,” she said hesitantly “a little exciting, wouldn’t say, Lyddy?” “Edith!” Lydia said in her must awesome voice. “How can you say such a thing? You must be out of your mind.” Edith bit her lip. “Well, I just thought -” “A beautiful house like this” - Lydia said. “It’s disgraceful. Our property will lose its value, and Father will lose his reason. I shouldn’t wonder. You’ll have to tell him,” she said abruptly. “Oh dear!” Edith wailed. For of the two she was the more timid. Lydia was taller, slim and cool. They both had one thing in common however, and that was a healthy respect for their father, the General. “You could have knocked me down with a feather when the girl in the butcher’s shop said, “When are they going to start building at The Pines?” Then Mr. Busby said it was all in the local paper—so I bought one.” Lydia looked down at the news-paper on the kitchen table. Among all the legal jargon, one thing stood out clearly. Planning permission had been given to erect twenty houses on the property known as The Pines in Fircross Lane. “Well,” Lydia remarked grimly. “Father will stop them. He won’t allow it, of course.” “Suppose he can’t?” Edith said. “Stop them, I mean!” “Father?” Lydia said in disbelief. “Can’t?’” She laid the General’s tray with silver teapot and cream jug and four chocolate biscuits. “I’ll take his tea in now—but you can tell him. Well,” she snapped. “You brought the news in—not me.” But after all, it was Lydia who told him. They sat on the sofa in the drawing-room and smoothed sensible tweed skirts over their knees until the General said: “Stop fidgeting!” It was then that Lydia in a sudden burst of confidence took the bull by the horns. “Father,” she said, the words coming out all at once. “The Pines—next door—has been sold to a development company—they’re going to build twenty houses.” They thought the old man was going to explode. His face flamed puce, the white moustaches quivered. “He is eighty-four you know,” Edith whispered during the long tirade. They finally calmed him, and he insisted on reading the local paper for himself. Edit brought it in and found his glasses. “I hope you’ll forbid it, Father,” Lydia said. “What do you think I’m going to do?” the General roared. And so the battle began. The General telephoned, he wrote long letters, he even went to the council offices. Organize a petition he would not, since he had never mixed with his neighbors, he said, and did not intend to start now. The council offices assured him that the development would in no way affect him. The site would be cleared and twenty very nice looking houses would be built. Care would be taken to ensure— and so on, and so forth. At long last, the weary General had to admit defeat for the first time in his life. Summer brought the tractors and the bulldozers. They roared down the carriage drive next door, across green lawns, and right up to the house. The General hobbled alongside his fence brandishing hip stick, but all to no avail. Great muddy lorries came and parked on the rose beds, and swarms of bare, sun-browned men took over. The General and his daughters watched in silence as a vast army of woodfellers cat down every tree in sight, as a great bonfire was lit on the tennis court. Then strange-looking young men, with shoulder-length hair, tattooed arms and beads, began on the house. Windows came out, staircases were thrown on to the lawns, yellowed sinks and baths saw their first light of day, cisterns lay brokenly at the foot of the great wistaria. Presently the roof tiles were flung down, then the chimney pots, then the very walls themselves. Finally, nothing remained but a great fire which glowed orange on the rubble, and the General was reminded of a battlefield in Flanders many years before. Only Edith felt a tiny crumb of interest. It was different, anyway. Look how exposed everything was, how airy and bright... Then the foundations went down and up came the houses. Each one exactly alike with a garage, a small patio, and a pocket handkerchief lawn. Eight sat at the foot of the General’s garden, six each side of the new road by The General’s fence. They were red brick, with neat windows, four bedrooms, two bathrooms, a fitted kitchen and a downstairs loo—with their shiny red roofs looking like little hats. Each back lawn had a whiz-around dryer and each front lawn a bay tree. Edith and Lydia hurried down the brand-new road one dusky evening to see for themselves. Even Lydia was impressed. “Well,” she said grudgingly, “they give them plenty for their money.” “That beautiful kitchen,” Edith said. “And the bathroom... “Still,” Lydia said, “little boxes. You can’t get away from it.” Like a neat little regiment, the houses waited for their new occupants, while the General grew more depressed than ever. He sat on his balcony rocking to and fro. “Damn well please myself,” he said, sitting in full view of the new residents. “All our privacy has gone,” Edith said. “You can’t sunbathe in the garden, or have tea.” “Since when have you wanted to sunbathe?” Lydia said. “You’ll be telling me next you’ve bought a bikini.” Edith blushed at the unaccustomed word. “I,” Lydia said, “shall continue to have tea on the lawn as it they were not there.” The General took to sitting inside his room with the doors to the balcony open. “The butcher calls them sentry boxes,” Edith said, trying to amuse him. “Does he,” the General said grimly. “More like matchboxes.” For a moment, the girls remembered the sound of their mother’s light laugh as sire poured tea for them, the lacy parasols, the scent of roses, themselves it’s lacy pinafore’s, long, long ago. “Sentry boxes,” the General growled, “sentry boxes.” He dozed off and dreamed he was back in Flanders. It was late when he awoke and in the quickly growing dusk he saw that every light in the new houses was switched on. All the windows glowed orange and yellow, and the sight somehow warmed the old man’s heart. He liked that—the fact that they all looked exactly alike, and as he watched it seemed for a moment as if they moved on little legs. Left right, left right, like a row of soldiers. The next morning he was awake at six thirty, and he sat up in bed and looked out into the darkness. Every window in every house was ablaze with light. Now that was something he liked to see. No lazy ones—all up and about. He heaved himself out of bed and got into his thick dressing-gown. He opened the doors to the balcony and stood outside for a few moments, breathing deeply. No. 1, 2 and 3, he counted, yes they were all up and about. Later in the morning, the General watched as twenty washing lines whirled around in the breeze, and as he dozed it seemed once more that the little houses moved along in time to a brisk march. He could hear an Army band playing “Blaze Away!”, and before he slept imagined that each house saluted as it passed him. That night, at almost the identical time, the lights went on and the windows glowed orange and yellow, and downstairs Edith remarked to Lydia how well the old man was looking. “You don’t think he’s going to be ill,” Lydia said. “He looked a little flushed, I thought.” “He is eight-five,” Edith said. Much later, the General waited for the lights to he extinguished. His large pocket watch said 11.45 p.m., and all the lights but one were out. He gazed irritably into the darkness at No. 7, which still burned a light in the kitchen downstairs. Presently, to his relief, it was extinguished and the light came on upstairs. For a time it shone out like a beacon, then went out. The General looked below at the silhouette of the houses in the darkness. Midnight, and all was well. All tucked up for the night, and once again he imagined they began to march. He drew his curtains and got into bed, pulling the bed-clothes around his ears. Already he could hear the strains of “Colonel Bogey,” and the thump, thump, thump of heavy boots. He closed his eyes, happy in the knowledge that his own private little army slept. THE END © Rose Boucheron 1970