David Blackburn

Fathers, sons and the beauty of a “borrowed” book

I spent the weekend in Dublin; consequently, I am suffering from what Apthorpe would have called ‘Bechuana tummy’. For the uninitiated, Apthorpe is the premier fool in Men at Arms, the first book in Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour trilogy. I was reading it in bed last night and was wryly amused by this joke, which hangs over two chapters:

‘The two lame men climbed into the car and returned to Kut-al-Amara in alcoholic gloom.

 Chapter 7

Next day Apthorpe had a touch of Bechuana tummy, but he rose none the less.’

I return to Men at Arms often, but never without reason. I did so this time because Father’s Day fell yesterday. My father is of a generation and I am of a temperament: we don’t do Father’s Day. This is not an edict, but an unspoken agreement between blood relatives. If asked to explain ourselves, we might say that Father’s Day is a commercial nonsense, like Valentine’s Day or some such. Yet it’s strange the way that commercial nonsense works its way into the mind.

My copy of Men at Arms is really my father’s. He lent it to me when I was 15, saying that I might enjoy it. I did, very much, and never returned it. It’s like its rightful owner: slightly discoloured but soldiering on. It is a Penguin paperback, priced at 6d. The front cover carries the unmistakeable work of Quentin Blake: depicting the hero, Guy Crouchback, and another of the fools, Brigadier Richie-Hook. The spine is wearing and the covers’ edges have frayed; but this worthless paperback has been treated with such care by two regular readers that not one page is lost or torn.

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