The Valley of Bones (2 page)

‘Indeed, I’m sorry, sir,’ said the
Sergeant-Major, beginning to shout again, though apparently not much put out by
this asperity of manner. ‘See you at first, I did not, sir.’

Kedward stepped forward, as if to put
an end to further fault finding, if that were possible.

‘This is Mr Jenkins,’ he said. ‘He
joined yesterday and has been posted to your company, Captain Gwatkin.’

Gwatkin fixed me with his angry little
black eyes. In appearance, he was in several respects an older version of
Kedward. I judged him to be about my own age, perhaps a year or two younger.
Almost every officer in the unit looked alike to me at that very early stage;
Maelgwyn-Jones, the Adjutant, and Parry, his assistant sitting beside him at
the table, indistinguishable as Tweedledum and Tweedledee, when I first
reported to the Orderly Room the evening before. Later, it was incredible
persons so dissimilar could ever for one moment have appeared to resemble one
another in any but the most superficial aspects. Gwatkin, although he may have
had something of Kedward’s look, was at the same time very different. Even this
first sight of him revealed a novelty of character, at once apparent, though
hard to define. There was, in the first place, some style about him. However
much he might physically resemble the rest, something in his air and movements
also showed a divergence from the humdrum routine of men; if, indeed, there is
a humdrum routine.

‘It’s no more normal to be a
bank-manager or a bus-conductor, than to be Baudelaire or Genghis Khan,’
Moreland had once remarked. ‘It just happens there are more of the former
types.’

Satisfied at last that he had taken in
sufficient of my appearance through the dim light of the barrack-room, Gwatkin
held out his hand.

‘Your name was in Part II Orders, Mr
Jenkins,’ he said without smiling. ‘The Adjutant spoke to me about you, too. I
welcome you to the Company. We are going to make it the best company in the
Battalion. That has not been brought about yet. I know I can rely on your
support in trying to achieve it.’

He spoke this very formal speech in a
rough tone, with the barest suggestion of sing-song, his voice authoritative,
at the same time not altogether assured.

‘Mr Kedward,’ he went on, ‘have the
new intake laid out their blankets properly this morning?’

‘Not all of them,’ said Kedward.

‘Why not, Sergeant-Major?’

‘It takes some learning, sir. Some of
them is not used to our ways yet. They are good boys.’

‘Never mind whether they are good
boys, Sergeant-Major, those blankets must be correct.’

‘Indeed, they should, sir.’

‘See to it, Sergeant-Major.’

‘That I will, sir.’

‘When was the last rifle inspection?’

‘At the pay parade, sir.’

‘Were the Company’s rifles correct?’

‘Except for Williams, T., sir, that is
gone on the MT course and taken his rifle with him, and Jones, A., that is sick
with the ring-worm, and Williams, H,. that is on leave, and those two rifles
the Sergeant-Armourer did want to look at that I told you of, sir, and the one
with the faulty bolt in the Company Store for the time being, you said, and I
will see about. Oh, yes, and Williams, G. E., that has been lent to Brigade for
a week and has his rifle with him. That is the lot I do believe, sir.’

Gwatkin seemed satisfied with this
reckoning.

‘Have you rendered your report?’ he
asked.

‘Not yet, sir.’

‘See I have the nominal roll this
evening, Sergeant-Major, by sixteen-hundred hours.’

‘That I will, sir.’

‘Mr Kedward.’

‘Sir?’

‘Your cap badge is not level with the
top seam of the cap-band.’

‘I’ll see to it as soon as I get back
to the Mess.’

Gwatkin turned to me.

‘Officers of our Battalion wear bronze
pips, Mr Jenkins.’

‘The Quartermaster told me in the Mess
last night he could get me correct pips by this evening.’

‘See the QM does so, Mr Jenkins.
Officers incorrectly dressed are a bad example. Now it happens that Sergeant Pendry
here, who is Battalion Orderly Sergeant this week, will be your own Platoon
Sergeant.’

Sergeant Pendry grinned with great
friendliness, his blue eyes flashing in high-lights caught by the gas-jets,
making them more than ever like Peter Templer’s in the old days. He held out
his hand. I took it, not sure whether this familiarity would conform with
Gwatkin’s ideas about discipline. However, Gwatkin seemed to regard a handshake
as normal in the circumstances. His tone had been austere until that moment;
intentionally, though perhaps rather unconvincingly austere. Now he spoke in a
more friendly manner.

‘What is your Christian name, Mr
Jenkins?’

‘Nicholas.’

‘Mine is Rowland. The Commanding
Officer says we should not be formal with each other off parade. We are brother
officers – like a family, you see. So, when off duty, Rowland is what you
should call me. I shall say Nicholas. Mr Kedward told you his name is Idwal.’

‘He has. I’m calling him that. In
practice, it’s Nick for me.’

Gwatkin gazed at me fixedly, as if not
altogether sure what I meant by ‘in practice’, or whether it was a term
properly to be used by a subaltern to his Company Commander, but he did not
comment.

‘Come along, Sergeant Pendry,’ he
said, ‘I want to look at those urine buckets.’

We saluted. Gwatkin set off on his
further duties as Captain of the Week – like the Book of the Month, I
frivolously thought to myself.

‘That went off all right,’ said
Kedward, as if presentation to Gwatkin might have proved disastrous. ‘I don’t
think he took against you. What must I show you now? I know, the ablutions.’

That was my first sight of Rowland
Gwatkin. It could hardly have been more characteristic, in so much as he
appeared on that occasion almost to perfection in the part for which he had
cast himself: in command, something of a martinet, a trifle unapproachable to
his subordinates, at the same time not without his human side, above all a man
dedicated to duty. It was a clear-cut, hard-edged picture, into which Gwatkin
himself, for some reason, never quite managed to fit. Even his name seemed to
split him into two halves, poetic and prosaic, ‘Rowland’ at once suggesting
high deeds:

… When Rowland brave, and Olivier,
And every paladin and peer,
On Roncesvalles died!

‘Gwatkin’, on the other hand,
insinuated nothing more impressive than ‘little Walter’, which was not
altogether inappropriate.

‘Rowland can be a bloody nuisance
sometimes,’ said Kedward, when we knew each other better. ‘He thinks such a
mighty lot of himself, do you know. Lyn Craddock’s dad is manager of Rowland’s
branch, and he told Lyn, Rowland’s not all that bloody marvellous at banking.
Not the sort that will join the Inspectorate, or anything like that, not by a
long chalk. Rowland doesn’t care much about that, I expect. He just fancies
himself as a great soldier. You should keep the right side of Rowland. He can
be a tricky customer.’

That was precisely the impression of
Gwatkin I had myself formed; that he took himself very seriously, was eminently
capable of becoming disagreeable if he conceived a dislike for someone. At the
same time, I felt an odd kind of interest in him, even attraction towards him.
There was about him something melancholy, perhaps even tragic, that was hard to
define. His excessively ‘regimental’ manner was certainly over and above
anything as yet encountered among other officers of the Battalion. We were
still, of course, existing in the comparatively halcyon days at the beginning
of the war, when there was plenty to eat and drink, tempers better than they
subsequently became. If you were over thirty, you thought yourself adroit to
have managed to get into uniform at all, everyone behaving almost as if they
were attending a peacetime practice camp (this was a Territorial unit), to be
home again after a few weeks’ change of routine. Gwatkin’s manner was different
from that. He gave the impression of being something more than a civilian keen
on his new military role, anxious to make a success of an unaccustomed job.
There was an air of resolve about him, the consciousness of playing a part to
which a high destiny had summoned him. I suspected he saw himself in much the
same terms as those heroes of Stendhal – not a Stendhalian lover, like Barnby,
far from that – an aspiring, restless spirit, who, released at last by war from
the cramping bonds of life in a provincial town, was about to cut a dashing
military figure against a back-cloth of Meissonier-like imagery of plume and
breastplate: dragoons walking their horses through the wheat, grenadiers at
ease in a tavern with girls bearing flagons of wine. Esteem for the army – never
in this country regarded, in the continental manner, as a popular expression of
the national will – implies a kind of innocence. This was something quite
different from Kedward’s hope to succeed. Kedward, so I found, did not deal in
dreams, military or otherwise. By that time he and I were on our way back to
the Mess. Kedward gratifyingly treated me as if we had known each other all our
lives, not entirely disregarding our difference in age, it is true, but at
least accepting that as a reason for benevolence.

‘I expect you’re with one of the Big
Five, Nick,’ he said.

‘Big five what?’

‘Why, banks, of course.’

‘I’m not in a bank.’

‘Oh, aren’t you. You’ll be the
exception in our Battalion.’

‘Is that what most of the officers do?’

‘All but about three or four. Where do
you work?’

‘London.’

Banks expunged from Kedward’s mind as
a presumptive vocation, he showed little further curiosity as to how otherwise
I might keep going.

‘What’s London like?’

‘Not bad.’

‘Don’t you ever get sick of living in such
a big place?’

‘You do sometimes.’

‘I’ve been in London twice,’ Kedward
said. ‘I’ve got an aunt who lives there – Croydon – and I stayed with her. I
went up to the West End several times. The shops are bloody marvellous. I
wouldn’t like to work there though.’

‘You get used to it.’

‘I don’t believe I would.’

‘Different people like different
places.’

‘That’s true. I like it where I was
born. That’s quite a long way from where we are now, but it’s not all that
different. I believe you’d like it where my home is. Most of our officers come
from round there. By the by, we were going to get another officer reinforcement
yesterday, as well as yourself, but he never turned up.’

‘Emergency commission?’

‘No, Territorial Army Reserve.’

‘What’s he called?’

‘Bithel – brother of the VC. Wouldn’t
it be great to win a VC.’

‘He must be years younger than his
elder brother then. Bithel got his VC
commanding one of the regular battalions in 1915 or I’ve heard my father speak
of him. That Bithel must be
in
his sixties at least.’

‘Why shouldn’t he be much younger than
his brother? This one played rugger for Wales once, I was told. That must be
great too. But I think you’re right. This Bithel is not all that young. The CO
was complaining about the age of the officers they are sending him. He said it
was dreadful, you are much too old. Bithel will probably be even older than
you.’

‘Not possible.’

‘You never know. Somebody said they
thought he was thirty-seven. He
couldn’t be as old as that, could he. If so, they’ll have to find him an
administrative job after the Division moves.’

‘Are we moving?’

‘Quite soon, they say.’

‘Where?’

‘No one knows. It’s a secret, of
course. Some say Scotland, some Northern Ireland. Rowland thinks it will be
Egypt or India. Rowland always has these big ideas. It might be, of course. I
hope we do go abroad. My dad was in this battalion in the last war and got sent
to the Holy Land. He brought me back a prayer-book bound in wood from the
Cedars of Lebanon. I wasn’t born then, of course, but he got the prayer-book
for his son, if he had one. Of course that was if he didn’t get killed. He hadn’t
even asked my mum to marry him then.’

‘Do you use it every Sunday?’

‘Not in the army. Not bloody likely.
Somebody would pinch it. I want to hand it on to my own son, you see, when I
have one. Are you engaged?’

‘I was once. I’m married as a
consequence.’

‘Are you really. Well, I suppose you
would be at your age. Yanto Breeze – that’s Rowland’s other Platoon Commander –
is married now. The wedding was a month ago. Yanto’s nearly twenty-five, of
course. What’s your wife’s name?’

‘Isobel.’

‘Is she in London?’

‘She’s living in the country with her
sister. She’s waiting to have a baby.’

‘Oh, you are lucky,’ said Kedward, ‘I
wonder whether it will be a daughter. I’d love a little daughter. I’m engaged.
Would you like me to show you a photograph of my fiancée?’

‘Very much.’

Kedward unbuttoned the breast-pocket
of his tunic. He took out a wallet from one of the compartments of which he
extracted a snapshot. This he handed over. Much worn by constant affectionate
reference, the features of the subject, recognisably the likeness of a girl,
were otherwise all but effaced. I expressed appreciation.

‘Bloody marvellous, isn’t she,’ said
Kedward.

He kissed the faded outlines before
returning the portrait to the notecase.

‘We’re going to get married if I
become a captain,’ he said.

‘When will that be, do you think?’

Kedward laughed.

‘Not for ages, I suppose,’ he said. ‘But
I don’t see why I shouldn’t be promoted one of these days, if the war goes on
for a while and I work hard. Perhaps you will too, Nick. You never know. There’s
this bloody eighteen months to get through as second-lieutenant before you get
your second pip. I think the war is going on, don’t you? The French will hold
them in the Maginot Line until this country builds up her air strength. Then,
when the Germans try to advance, chaps like you and me will come in, do you
see. Of course we might be sent to the help
of Finland before that, fight the Russkis instead of the Germans. In any case,
the decisive arm is infantry. Everybody agrees about that – except Yanto Breeze
who says it’s the tank.’