The Valley of Bones (24 page)

‘Shall we go back to barracks?’

This designation of Castlemallock on
Gwatkin’s part added nothing to its charms. He turned towards the bar as we
were leaving.

‘Good night, Maureen.’

She was having too good a joke with
the red-haired humorist to hear him.

‘Good night, Maureen,’ Gwatkin said
again, rather louder.

She looked up, then came round to the
front of the bar.

‘Good night to you, Captain Gwatkin,
and to you, Lieutenant Jenkins,’ she said, ‘and don’t be so long in coming to
see me again, the pair of ye, or it’s vexed with you both I’d be.’

We waved farewell. Gwatkin did not
open his mouth until we reached the outskirts of the town. Suddenly he took a
deep breath. He seemed about to speak; then, as if he could not give sufficient
weight to the words while we walked, he stopped and faced me.

‘Isn’t she marvellous?’ he said.

‘Who, Maureen?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘She seemed a nice girl.’

‘Is that all you thought, Nick?’

He spoke with real reproach.

‘Why, yes. What about you? You’ve
really taken a fancy to her, have you?’

‘I think she’s absolutely wonderful,’
he said.

We had had, as I have said, a fair
amount to drink – the first time since joining the unit I had drunk more than
two or three half-pints of beer – but no more than to loosen the tongue, not
sufficient to cause amorous hallucination. Gwatkin was obviously expressing
what he really felt, not speaking in an exaggerated manner to indicate light
desire. The reason of those afternoon trances, that daydreaming while he nursed
the Company’s rubber-stamp, were now all at once apparent, affection for
Castlemallock also explained. Gwatkin was in love. All love affairs are
different cases, yet, at the same time, each is the same case. Moreland used to
say love was like sea-sickness. For a time everything round you heaved about
and you felt you were going to die – then you staggered down the gangway to dry
land, and a minute or two later could hardly remember what you had suffered,
why you had been feeling so ghastly. Gwatkin was at the earlier stage.

‘Have you done anything about it?’

‘About what?’

‘About Maureen.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, taken her out, something like
that.’

‘Oh, no.’

‘Why not?’

‘What would be the good?’

‘I don’t know. I should have thought
it might be enjoyable, if you feel like that about her.’

‘But I’d have to tell her I’m married.’

‘Tell her by all means. Put your cards
on the table.’

‘But do you think she’d come?’

‘I shouldn’t wonder.’

‘You mean – try and seduce her?’

‘I suppose that was roughly the line
indicated – in due course.’

He looked at me astonished. I felt a
shade uncomfortable, rather like Mephistopheles unexpectedly receiving a
hopelessly negative reaction from Faust. Such an incident in opera, I thought,
might suggest a good basis for an
aria.

‘Some of the chaps you meet in the
army never seem to have heard of women,’ Odo Stevens had said. ‘You never know
in the Mess whether you’re sitting next to a sex-maniac of nineteen or a
middle-aged man who doesn’t know the facts of life.’

In Gwatkin’s case, I was surprised by
such scruples, even though I now recalled his attitude towards the case of
Sergeant Pendry. In general, the younger officers of the Battalion were, like
Kedward, engaged, or, like Breeze, recently married. They might, like Pumphrey,
talk in a free and easy manner, but it was their girl or their wife who clearly
preoccupied them. In any case, there had been no time for girls for anyone,
married or single, before we reached Castlemallock. Gwatkin was certainly used
to the idea of Pumphrey trying to have a romp with any barmaid who might be
available. He had never seemed to disapprove of that. I knew nothing of his
married life, except what Kedward had told me, that Gwatkin had known his wife
all their lives, had previously wanted to marry Breeze’s sister.

‘But I’m married,’ Gwatkin said again.

He spoke rather desperately.

‘I’m not insisting you should take
Maureen out. I only asked if you had.’

‘And Maureen isn’t that sort of girl.’

‘How do you know?’

He spoke angrily this time. Then he
laughed, seeing, I suppose, that was a silly thing to say.

‘You’ve only met Maureen for the first
time, Nick. You don’t realize at all what she’s like. You think all that talk
of hers means she’s a bad girl. She isn’t. I’ve often been alone with her in
that bar. You’d be surprised. She’s like a child.’

‘Some children know a thing or two.’

Gwatkin did not even bother to
consider that point of view.

‘I don’t know why I think her quite so
wonderful,’ he admitted, ‘but I just do. It worries me that I think about her
all the time. I’ve found myself forgetting things, matters of duty, I mean.’

‘Do you go down there every night?’

‘Whenever I can. I haven’t been able
to get away lately owing to one thing and another. All this security check, for
instance.’

‘Does she know this?’

‘Know what?’

‘Does Maureen know you’re mad about
her?’

‘I don’t think so,’ he said.

He spoke the words very humbly, quite
unlike his usual tone. Then he assumed a rough, official voice again.

‘I thought it would be better if I
told you about it all, Nick,’ he said. ‘I hoped the thing wouldn’t go on inside
me all the time so much, if I let it out to someone. Unless it stops a bit, I’m
frightened I’ll make a fool of myself in some way to do with commanding the
Company. A girl like Maureen makes everything go out of your head.’

‘Of course.’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘Yes.’

Gwatkin still did not seem entirely
satisfied.

‘You really think I ought to take her
out?’

‘That’s what a lot of people would do –
probably a lot of people are doing already.’

‘Oh, no, I’m sure they’re not, if you
mean from the School of Chemical Warfare. I’ve never seen any of them there. It
was quite a chance I went in myself. I was looking for a short cut. Maureen was
standing by the door, and I asked her the way. Her parents own the pub. She’s
not just a barmaid.’

‘Anyway, there’s no harm in trying,
barmaid or not.’

During the rest of the walk back to
Castlemallock, Gwatkin did not refer again to the subject of Maureen. He talked
of routine matters until we parted to our rooms.

‘The Mess will be packed out again
tomorrow night,’ he said. ‘Another Anti-Gas course starts next week. I suppose
all that business will begin again of wanting to take my men away from me for
their bloody demonstrations. Well, there it is.’

‘Good night, Rowland.’

‘Good night, Nick.’

I made for the stables, where I shared
a groom’s room with Kedward, rather like the sleeping quarters of Albert and
Bracey at Stonehurst. As Duty Officer that night, Kedward would not be there
and I should have the bedroom to myself, always rather a treat. I was aware now
that it had been a mistake to drink so much stout. Tomorrow was Sunday, so
there would be comparatively little to do. I thought how awful Bithel must feel
on parade the mornings after his occasional bouts of drinking. Reflecting on
people often portends their own appearance. So it was in the case of Bithel. He
was among the students to arrive at the School the following week. We should,
indeed, all have been prepared for Bithel to be sent on an Anti-Gas course. It
was a way of getting rid of him, pending final banishment from the Battalion,
which, as Gwatkin said, was bound to come sooner or later. I was sitting at one
of the trestle tables of the Mess, addressing an envelope, when Bithel peered
through the door. He was fingering his ragged moustache and smiling nervously.
When he saw me, he made towards the table at once.

‘Nice to meet again,’ he said,
speaking as usual as if he expected a rebuff. ‘Haven’t seen you since the
Battalion moved.’

‘How have you been?’

‘Getting rockets, as usual,’ he said.

‘Maelgwyn-Jones?’

‘That fellow’s got a positive down on
me,’ Bithel said, ‘but I don’t think it will be for long now.’

‘Why not?’

‘I’m probably leaving the Battalion.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘There’s talk of my going up to
Division.’

‘On the staff?’

‘Not exactly – a command.’

‘At Div HQ?’

‘Only a subsidiary command, of course.
I shall be sorry to leave the Regiment in some ways, if it comes off, but not
altogether sorry to see the back of Maelgwyn-Jones.’

‘What is it? Or is that a secret?’

Bithel lowered his voice in his
accustomed manner when speaking of his own affairs, as if there were always a
hint of something dubious about them.

‘The Mobile Laundry Unit,’ he said.

‘You’re going to command it?’

‘If I’m picked. There are at least two
other names in for it from other units in the Division, I happen to know – one
of them very eligible. As it happens, I have done publicity work for one of the
laundries in my own neighbourhood, so I have quite a chance. In fact, that
should stand very much in my favour. The CO seems very anxious for me to get
the appointment. He’s been on the phone to Division about it himself more than
once. Very good of him.’

‘What rank does the job carry?’

‘A subaltern’s command. Still, it’s
promotion in a way. What you might call a step. The war news doesn’t look very good, does it,
since the Belgian Government surrendered.’

‘What’s the latest? I missed the last
news.’

‘Fighting on the coast. One of our
Regular Battalions has been in action, I was told this morning. Got knocked
about pretty badly. Do you remember a rather good-looking boy called Jones, D.
Very fair.’

‘He was in my platoon – went out on
the draft.’

‘He’s been killed. Daniels, my batman,
told me that. Daniels gets all the news.’

‘Jones, D. was killed, was he. Anyone
else from our unit?’

‘Progers, did you know him?’

‘The driver with a squint?’

‘That’s the fellow. Used to bring the
stuff up to the Mess sometimes. Dark curly hair and a lisp. He’s gone too.
Talking of messing, what’s it like here?’

‘We’ve had beef twice a day for just
over a fortnight – thirty-seven times running, to be precise.’

‘What does it taste like?’

‘Goat covered with brown custard
powder.’

We settled down to talk about army
food. When I next saw CSM Cadwallader, I asked if he had heard about Jones, D.
Corporal Gwylt was standing nearby.

‘Indeed, I had not, sir. So a bullet
got him.’

‘Something did.’

‘Always an unlucky boy, Jones, D.,’
said CSM Cadwallader.

‘Remember how sick he was when we came
over the water, Sergeant-Major?’ said Corporal Gwylt, ‘terrible sick.’

‘That I do.’

‘Never did I see a boy so sick,’ said
Corporal Gwylt, ‘nor a man neither.’

This was the week leading up to the
withdrawal through Dunkirk, so Jones, D. and Progers were not the only fatal
casualties known to me personally at that period. Among these, Robert Tolland,
serving in France with his Field Security Section, was also killed. The news
came in a letter from Isobel. Nothing was revealed, then or later, of the
circumstances of Robert’s death. So far as it went, he died as mysteriously as
he had lived, like many other young men to whom war put an end, an unsolved
problem. Had Robert, as Chips Lovell alleged, lived a secret life with ‘night-club
hostesses old enough to be his mother?’ Would he have made a lot of money in
his export house trading with the Far East? Might he have married Flavia
Wisebite? As in musical chairs, the piano stops suddenly, someone is left
without a seat, petrified for all time in their attitude of that particular
moment. The balance-sheet is struck there and then, a matter of luck whether
its calculations have much bearing, one way or the other, on the commerce
conducted. Some die in an apparently suitable manner, others like Robert on the
field of battle with a certain incongruity. Yet Fate had ordained this end for
him. Or had Robert decided for himself? Had he set aside the chance of a
commission to fulfil a destiny that required him to fall in France; or was
Flavia’s luck so irredeemably bad that her association with him was sufficient
– as Dr Trelawney might have said – to summon the Slayer of Osiris, her pattern
of life, rather than Robert’s, dominating the issue of life and death? Robert
could even have died to escape her. The potential biographies of those who die
young possess the mystic dignity of a headless statue, the poetry of enigmatic
passages in an unfinished or mutilated manuscript, unburdened with contrived or
banal ending. These were disturbing days, lived out in suffocating summer heat.
While they went by, Gwatkin, for some reason, became more cheerful. The war
increasingly revealed persons stimulated by disaster. I thought Gwatkin might
be one of this fairly numerous order. However, there turned out to be another
cause for his good spirits. He revealed the reason one afternoon.

‘I took your advice, Nick,’ he said.

We were alone together in the Company
Office.

‘About the storage of those live Mills
bombs?’

Gwatkin shook his head, at the same
time swallowing uncomfortably, as if the very thought of live grenades and
where they were to be stored, brought an immediate sense of guilt.

‘No, not about the Mills bombs,’ he
said, ‘I’m still thinking over the best place to keep them -I don’t want any
interference from the Ordnance people. I mean about Maureen.’

For a moment the name conveyed
nothing. Then I remembered the evening in the pub: Maureen, the girl who had so
greatly taken Gwatkin’s fancy. Thinking things over the next day, I had
attributed his remarks to the amount of stout we had drunk. Maureen had been
dismissed from my mind.