“HAH! HAH! HAH!”

The summoning, staccato laugh of Lieutenant-Colonel Bixley careen and carom of the Club walls, shattering the usual somnolent, contemplative silence that most of us less roturierians pay top dollar membership dues to revel in. ‘Ah! Bixley must be at the broadsheets again!’ we presume and shuffle across the well-worn wooden floors to gather round to see what press clipping it is that has so tickled his humerus.

We, the legacy members, don’t normally indulge such boisterous performances within the Club’s confines, especially from the ‘strivers’ as Wendall Pounding refers to them, which the Lieutenant-Colonel most certainly is. Born in a work camp somewhere along the frontiers of New Brunswick (note the ‘New’ is the designation, as in ‘Nouveau’), to humble lumber jackery, Bixley hasn’t a whit of blue blood coursing through his veins, his status attained exclusively through exploits on far-flung battlefields like Gagetown, Stavanger, Gander, Niederheid, Casteau and the inhospitable milieu of Norfolk in the wilds of Virginia. It’s never a bad thing to have a combat veteran filling out a Club’s membership ranks. It reflects a certain patriotic enthusiasm and a most definite shade of diversity.

“… did not say that 186,000 Gazans had died,” Bixley reads to the group I join that had gathered as he lounged comfortably in a leather wingback that he, in all likelihood, hadn’t booked with the executive for official sitting authorization, “it suggested speculatively that 186,000 might eventually die indirectly as a result of the conflict from various causes.”

He looked up from behind the newspaper pages and scanned the faces of his ad hoc audience. I attempted to adapt my visage to those around me, Fainsworth, Lord Brunswick, Tandy-Moore, most immediately in my vicinity, as I hadn’t yet divined the gist, as it were, of the Lieutenant-Colonel’s impromptu exhibition. Eyes, penetrating but still unconvinced. Mouth, slightly downturned without giving way to a grimace. Furrowed brows and noses as detecting an undetermined yet compelling odor.

“Speculation, gents,” Bixley informs us. “That’s what the letter is damning. Speculation. Conjecture. Idle gossip. Spurious, antisemitic guesswork, yes?”

The crowd nods. A signal, it felt to me, for him to proceed while lacking in acceptance of whatever argument he was putting forward for us to consider. I made a mental note to follow up with the executive to ensure that Bixley would properly and officially register to sit in the chair he currently occupied, had annexed, as Putin had the Crimea, going forward.

“The letter also ignored factors that may increase average life expectancy in Gaza,” he continued reading, “bearing in mind that one of the biggest health issues in Gaza prior to the current war was obesity!”

“HAH! HAH! HAH!”

He bark-laughs again, startling the more wobbly segment of his audience, members like Hutchison, who stumbled back a few paces, unsteadily, before being righted by Bromley and Tydewater. The old boy wasn’t used to being up on his feet for such a duration as this one was turning out to be. Not outside of church services, in such secular ministrations as we found ourselves currently subject to.

“It’s top-notch, gentlemen!” Bixley thundered as if putting his troops through their military tos-and-fros. “Can’t you see? Grade A, filigreed, take no prisoners repudiation. Capital S Stuff and capital N Nonsense, as you might say.”

What parvenus like the Lieutenant-Colonel had not learned quite yet was just how skittish the Club establishment could be. It startled easily. Loud noises put them off their stride. Discombobulation set in. What was required was more a smooth, soothing tone of explanation.

“Don’t you see, gents?” Bixley continued, something of a minor annoyance creeping into his uppity tone, it struck me as. “He’s saying that restricting aid, cutting off food supplies, inducing dietary access to the point of near starvation will assist in combatting the epidemic of obesity that had been plaguing the population! It’s a brilliant rhetorical ploy, yes?”

A certain disquiet descends upon the gathering, an unease discernible only to those born with the breeding and sense to intuit it. A discreet opprobrium, shall we say. A silent Tsk Tsk. There are some things, sir, thoughts and ideas that are not to be stated out loud, in groups of more than three or four at the very maximum. Even within the cloistered confines of the Club. Realpolitik is the Art of sweeping the dirty work of maintaining Order under the rug of propriety.

The Lieutenant-Colonel realizes that he’s made some misstep, an implicit social miscue, as the crowd dissipates around him, mumbling, harumphing and grousing its displeasure. “But… But… But don’t you see?” is all he can muster in a weak defense we hope he never displayed at the fronts that he served on. It is Tandy-Moore who wields the dagger first, instructing Bixley that he better have his Ts crossed and Is dotted in properly registering his seating arrangements if he insists on kicking up another public ruckus like this one.

The next Executive meeting will indeed by a spicy congress as we will inevitably be excoriating those responsible for putting Bixley up for membership.

That evening at home, when I relate the tale to M’Lady of the Manor, she withers me with an astringent look, and I realize my mistake too late. She is of the younger generation, like Lieutenant-Colonel Bixley, and does not abide by the same rules of decorum in political talk as we ‘ancients’, as she calls me when her dander has been gotten up. First, she ferociously points out, how dare we denigrate and deride a former member of our valiant Armed Forces. “A Lieutenant-Colonel, no less!” And furthermore, as a much more fervent hawk on foreign affairs than I am, especially when it comes to matters of Israel’s security, there should be no limits placed on either discourse or actions, she contends mightily, as I remember another Iron Lady, Golda Meir, once stood. “Strength and power are the only things these people understand,” she declares as if such a sentiment has never been previously declared. “Nothing can ever be taken off the table. Winners do not commit war crimes. Winners mete out justice.”

Even through my cowering, I am so proud (and more than a little titillated) of the dressing down I’m receiving.

She then storms off toward another wing of the house in a fashion that tells me, we shall be sleeping separately this evening, even more separately than usual.

I turn and reach for the bell to summon a filling of my snifter, to steady my heightened innervations.

M’Lady’s not wrong, I concede. These are different times. Still, there is something to be said for always keeping your hands clean and your reputation above repute. That hardly seems possible with frank and open admissions of your intent.

It’s moments like this when I distinctly feel my age.

And relieved that we have rigidly maintained our stance against admitting women to the membership rolls of the Club.