The Valley of Bones (23 page)

‘Oh, the bloody Bank’s not that bad,’
he said laughing, ‘but it’s a bit different being here. Something better to do
than open jammed Home Safes and enter the contents in the Savings Bank Ledger.’

‘What’s a Home Safe, and why does it
jam?’

‘Kids’ money-boxes.’

‘Do the children jam them?’

‘Parents, usually. Want a bit of
ready. Try to break into the safe with a tin-opener. The bloody things arrive
back at the office with the mechanism smashed to pieces. When the cashier gets
in at last, he finds three pennies, a halfpenny and a tiddly wink.’

‘Still, brens get jammed too. It’s
traditional for machine-guns – you know, the Gatling’s jammed and the Colonel’s
dead. Somebody wrote a poem about it. One might do the same about a Home Safe
and the manager.’

Gwatkin ignored such disenchantment.

‘The bren’s a soldier’s job,’ he said.

‘What about Pay Parades and Kit
Inspection? They’re soldiers’ jobs. It doesn’t make them any more enjoyable.’

‘Better than taking the Relief Till to
Treorchy on a market day, doling out the money from a bag in old Mrs
Jones-the-Milk’s front parlour. What sort of life is that for a man?’

‘You find the army more glamorous,
Rowland?’

‘Yes,’ he said eagerly, ‘glamorous.
That’s the word. Don’t you feel you want to do more in life than sit in front
of a row of ledgers all day long? I know I do.’

‘Sitting at Castlemallock listening to
the wireless announcing the German army is pushing towards the Channel ports
isn’t particularly inspiring either – especially after an hour with the CQMS
trying to sort out the Company’s sock situation, or searching for a pair of battle-dress
trousers to fit Evans, J., who is such an abnormal shape.’

‘No, Nick, but we’ll be in it soon. We
can’t stay at Castlemallock for ever.’

‘Why not?’

‘Anyway, Castlemallock’s not so bad.’

He seemed desperately anxious to
prevent me from speaking hardly of Castlemallock.

‘I agree the park is pretty. That is
about the best you can say for it.’

‘It’s come to mean a lot to me,’
Gwatkin said.

His voice was full of excitement. I
had been quite wrong in supposing him disillusioned with the army. On the
contrary, he was keener than ever. I could not understand why his enthusiasm
had suddenly risen to such new heights. I did not for a moment, as we walked
along, guess what the answer was going to be. By that time we had reached the
pub judged by Gwatkin to be superior to M’Coy’s. The façade, it had to be
admitted, was remarkably similar to M’Coy’s, though in a back alley, rather
than the main street of the town. Otherwise, the place was the usual large
cottage, the ground floor of which had been converted to the purposes of a
tavern. I followed Gwatkin through the low door. The interior was dark, the
smell uninviting. No one was about when we entered, but voices came from a room
beyond the bar. Gwatkin tapped the counter with a coin.

‘Maureen …’ he called.

He used that same peculiar cooing note
he employed when answering the telephone.

‘Hull-ooe … hull-ooe …’ he would say,
when he spoke into the instrument. Somehow that manner of answering seemed
quite inappropriate to the rest of his character.

‘I wonder whether what we call
politeness isn’t just weakness,’ he had once remarked.

This cooing certainly conveyed no
impression of ruthless moral strength, neither on the telephone, nor at the
counter of this pub. No one appeared. Gwatkin pronounced the name again.

‘Maur-een … Maur-een …’

Still nothing happened. Then a girl
came through the door leading to the back of the house. She was short and
thick-set, with a pale face and lots of black hair. I thought her good-looking,
with that suggestion of an animal, almost a touch of monstrosity, some men find
very attractive. Barnby once remarked: ‘The Victorians saw only refinement in
women, it’s their coarseness makes them irresistible to me.’ Barnby would
certainly have liked this girl.

‘Why, it would be yourself again,
Captain Gwatkin,’ she said.

She smiled and put her hands on her
hips. Her teeth were very indifferent, her eyes in deep, dark sockets,
striking.

“Yes, Maureen.’

Gwatkin did not seem to know what to
say next. He glanced in my direction, as if to seek encouragement. This
speechlessness was unlike him. However, Maureen continued to talk herself.

‘And with another military gentleman
too,’ she said. ‘What’ll ye be taking this evening now? Will it be porter, or
is it a wee drop of whiskey this night, I’ll be wondering, Captain?’

Gwatkin turned to me.

‘Which, Nick?’

‘Guinness.’

‘That goes for me too,’ he said. ‘Two
pints of porter, Maureen. I only drink whiskey when I’m feeling down. Tonight
we’re out for a good time, aren’t we, Nick?’

He spoke in an oddly self-conscious
manner. I had never seen him like this before. We seated ourselves at a small
table by the wall. Maureen began to draw the stout. Gwatkin watched her
fixedly, while she allowed the froth to settle, scraping its foam from the
surface of the liquid with a saucer, then returning the glass under the tap to
be refilled to the brim. When she brought the drinks across to us, she took a
chair, refusing to have anything herself.

‘And what would be the name of this
officer?’ she asked.

‘Second-Lieutenant Jenkins,’ said
Gwatkin, ‘he’s one of the officers of my company.’

‘Is he now. That would be grand and
all.’

‘We’re good friends,’ said Gwatkin
soberly.

‘Then why haven’t ye brought him to
see me before, Captain Gwatkin, I’ll be asking ye?’

‘Ah, Maureen, you see we work so hard,’
said Gwatkin. ‘We can’t always be coming to see you, do you understand. That’s
just a treat for once in a while.’

‘Get along with ye,’ she said, smiling
provocatively and showing discoloured teeth again, ‘yourself’s down here often
enough, Captain Gwatkin.’

‘Not as often as I’d like, Maureen.’

Gwatkin had now recovered from the
embarrassment which seemed to have overcome him on first entering the pub. He
was no longer tongue-tied. Indeed, his manner suggested he was, in fact, more
at ease with women than men, the earlier constraint merely a momentary attack
of nerves.

‘And what would it be you’re all so busy
with now?’ she asked. ‘Is it drilling and all that? I expect so.’

‘Drilling is some of it, Maureen,’
said Gwatkin. ‘But we have to practise all kind of other training too. Modern
war is a very complicated matter, you must understand.’

This made her laugh again.

‘I’d have ye know my great-uncle was
in the Connaught Rangers,’ she said, ‘and a fine figure of a man he was, I can
promise ye. Why, they say he was the best-looking young fellow of his day in
all County Monaghan. And brave too. Why, they say he killed a dozen Germans
with his bayonet when they tried to capture him. The Germans didn’t like to
meet the Irish in the last war.’

‘Well, it’s a risk the Germans won’t
have to run in this one,’ said Gwatkin, speaking more gruffly than might have
been expected in the circumstances. ‘Even here in the North there’s no
conscription, and you see plenty of young men out of uniform.’

‘Why, ye wouldn’t be taking all the
young fellows away from us, would ye?’ she asked, rolling her eyes. ‘It’s
lonely we’d be if they all went to the war.’

‘Maybe Hitler will decide the South is
where he wants to land his invasion force,’ said Gwatkin. ‘Then where will all
your young men be, I’d like to know.’

‘Oh God,’ she said, throwing up her
hands. ‘Don’t say it of the old blackguard. Would he do such a thing? You think
he truly may, Captain Gwatkin, do ye?’

‘Shouldn’t be surprised,’ said
Gwatkin.

‘Do you come from the other side of
the Border yourself?’ I asked her.

‘Why, sure I do,’ she said smiling. ‘And
how were you guessing that, Lieutenant Jenkins?’

‘I just had the idea.’

‘Would it be my speech?’ she said.

‘Perhaps.’

She lowered her voice.

‘Maybe, too, you thought I was
different from these Ulster people,’ she said, ‘them that is so hard and fond
of money and all.’

‘That’s it, I expect.’

‘So you’ve guessed Maureen’s home
country, Nick,’ said Gwatkin. ‘I tell her we must treat her as a security risk
and not go speaking any secrets in front of her, as she’s a neutral.’

Maureen began to protest, but at that
moment two young men in riding breeches and leggings came into the pub. She
rose from the chair to serve them. Gwatkin fell into one of his silences. I
thought he was probably reflecting how odd was the fact that Maureen seemed
just as happy talking and laughing with a couple of local civilians, as with
the dashing officer types he seemed to envisage ourselves. At least he stared
at the young men, an unremarkable pair, as if there were something about them
that interested him. Then it turned out Gwatkin’s train of thought had returned
to dissatisfaction with his own peacetime employment.

‘Farmers, I suppose,’ he said. ‘My
grandfather was a farmer. He didn’t spend his time in a stuffy office.’

‘Where did he farm?’

‘Up by the Shropshire border.’

‘And your father took to office life?’

‘That was it. My dad’s in insurance.
His firm sent him to another part of the country.’

‘Do you know that Shropshire border
yourself?’

‘We’ve been up there for a holiday. I
expect you’ve heard of the great Lord Aberavon?’

‘I have, as a matter of fact.’

‘The farm was on his estate.’

I had never thought of Lord Aberavon
(first and last of his peerage) as a figure likely to go down to posterity as ‘great’,
though the designation might no doubt reasonably be applied by those living in
the neighbourhood. His name was merely memorable to myself as deceased owner of
Mr Deacon’s
Boyhood of Cyrus,
the picture in the Walpole-Wilsons’ hall, which
always made me think of Barbara Goring when I had been in love with her in
pre-historic times. Lord Aberavon had been Barbara Goring’s grandfather;
Eleanor Walpole-Wilson’s grandfather too. I wondered what had happened to
Barbara, whether her husband,

Johnny Pardoe (who also owned a house
in the country of which Gwatkin spoke) had been recalled to the army. Eleanor,
lifelong friend of my sister-in-law, Norah Tolland, was now, like Norah
herself, driving cars for some women’s service. Gwatkin by his words had
certainly conjured up the past. He looked at me rather uncomfortably, as if he could read my mind,
and knew I felt suddenly
carried back into an earlier time sequence. He also had the air of wanting to
elaborate what he had said, yet feared he might displease, or, at least, not
amuse me. He cleared his throat and took a gulp of stout.

‘You remember Lord Aberavon’s family
name?’ he asked.

‘Why, now I come to think of it, wasn’t
it “Gwatkin”?’

‘It was – same as mine. He was called
Rowland too.’

He said that very seriously.

‘I’d quite forgotten. Was he a
relation?’

Gwatkin laughed apologetically.

‘No, of course he wasn’t,’ he said.

‘Well, he might have been.’

‘What makes you think so?’

‘You never know with names.’

‘If so, it was miles distant,’ said
Gwatkin.

‘That’s what I mean.’

‘I mean so distant, he wasn’t a
relation at all,’ Gwatkin said. ‘As a matter of fact my grandfather, the old
farmer I was talking about, used to swear we were the same lot, if you went
back far enough – right back, I mean.’

‘Why not, indeed?’

I remembered reading one of Lord
Aberavon’s obituaries, which had spoken of the incalculable antiquity of his
line, notwithstanding his own modest start in a Liverpool shipping firm. The
details had appealed to me.

‘Wasn’t it a very old family?’

‘So they say.’

‘Going back to Vortigern – by one of
his own daughters? I’m sure I read that.’

Gwatkin looked uncertain again, as if
he felt the discussion had suddenly got out of hand, that there was something
inadmissible about my turning out to know so much about Gwatkin origins.
Perhaps he was justified in thinking that.

‘Who was Vortigern?’ he asked
uneasily.

‘A fifth-century British prince. You
remember – he invited Hengist and Horsa. All that. They came to help him. Then
he couldn’t get rid of them.’

It was no good. Gwatkin looked utterly
blank. Hengist and Horsa meant nothing to him; less, if anything, than
Vortigern. He was unimpressed by the sinister splendour of the derivations
indicated as potentially his own; indeed, totally uninterested in them. Thought
of Lord Aberavon’s business acumen kindled him more than any steep ascent in
the genealogies of ancient Celtic Britain. His romanticism, though innate, was
essentially limited – as often happens – by sheer lack of imagination.
Vortigern, I saw, was better forgotten. I had deflected Gwatkin’s flow of
thought by ill-timed pedantry.

‘I expect my grandfather made up most
of the stuff,’ he said. ‘Just wanted to be thought related to a man of the same
name who left three-quarters of a million.’

He now appeared to regret ever having
let fall this confidence regarding his own family background, refusing to be
drawn into further discussion about his relations, their history or the part of
the country they came from. I thought how odd, how typical of our island – unlike
the Continent or America in that respect – that Gwatkin should put forward this
claim, possibly in its essentials reasonable enough, be at once attracted and
repelled by its implications, yet show no wish to carry the discussion further.
Was it surprising that, in such respects, foreigners should find us hard to
understand? Odd, too,
I
felt obstinately, that the incestuous Vortigern should link
Gwatkin with Barbara Goring and Eleanor
Walpole-Wilson. Perhaps it all stemmed from that ill-judged negotiation with
Hengist and Horsa. Anyway, it linked me, too, with
Gwatkin in a strange way. We had some more stout.
Maureen was now too deeply involved in local gossip with
the young farmers, if farmers they were, to pay further
attention to us. Their party had been increased by the
addition of an older man of similar type, with reddish hair and the demeanour
of a professional humorist. There was a good deal of laughter. We had to fetch
our drinks from the counter ourselves. This seemed to depress Gwatkin still
further. We talked rather drearily of the affairs of
the
Company. More customers came in, all apparently on the closest terms
with Maureen. Gwatkin and I drank a fair amount
of stout. Finally, it was time to return.