The Valley of Bones (26 page)

When I returned with the
Manual of Military Law,
Gwatkin was just finishing his
instructions to Kedward. At the end of these he curtly said good night to us
both. Then he went off, the Manual under his arm, his face stern. Kedward
looked at me and grinned. He was evidently surprised, not absolutely staggered,
by what had taken place. It was all part of the day’s work to him.

‘What a thing to happen,’ he said.

‘Going to lead to a lot of trouble.’

‘Old Bith was properly pissed.’

‘He was.’

‘I could hardly get him up the stairs.’

‘Did you have to take his arm?’

‘Heaved him up somehow,’ said Kedward.
‘Felt like a copper.’

‘What happened when you arrived in his
room?’

‘Luckily the other chap there went
sick and left the course yesterday. Bith’s got the room to himself, so things
weren’t as awkward as they might have been. He just tumbled on to the bed, and
I left him. Off to bed myself now. You’re for the Company Office tonight, aren’t
you?’

‘I am.’

‘Good night, Nick.’

‘Good night, Idwal.’

The scene had been exhausting. I was
glad to retire from it. Confused dreams of conflict pursued throughout the
night. I was in the middle of explaining to the local builder at home – who
wore a long Chinese robe and had turned into Pinkus, the Castlemallock
Adjutant-Quartermaster – that I wanted the front of the house altered to a pillared
façade of Isobel’s own design, when a fire-engine manned by pygmies passed,
ringing its bell furiously. The bell continued in my head. I awoke. It had
become the telephone. This was exceptional in the small hours. There were no
curtains to the room, only shutters for the blackout, which were down, so that,
opening my eyes, I saw the sky was already getting light above the outbuildings
of the yard. I grasped the instrument and gave the designation of the unit and
my name. It was Maelgwyn-Jones, Adjutant of our Battalion.

‘Fishcake,’ he said.

I was only half awake. It was almost
as if the dream continued. As I have said, Maelgwyn-Jones’s temper was not of
the best. He began to get very angry at once, as it turned out, with good
reason.

‘Fishcake …’ he repeated. ‘Fishcake – fishcake
– fishcake …’

Obviously ‘Fishcake’ was a codeword.
The question was: what did it mean? I had no recollection ever of having heard
it before.

‘I’m sorry, I—’

‘Fishcake!’

‘I heard Fishcake. I don’t know what
it means.’

‘Fishcake, I tell you …’

‘I know Leather and Toadstool …’

‘Fishcake has taken the place of
Leather – and Bathwater of Toadstool. What the hell are you dreaming about?’

‘I don’t think—’

‘You’ve bloody well forgotten.’

‘First I’ve heard of Fishcake.’

‘Rot.’

‘Sure it is.’

‘Do you mean to say Rowland hasn’t
told you and Kedward? I gave him Bathwater a week ago – in person – when he
came over to the Orderly Room to report.’

‘I don’t know about Fishcake or
Bathwater.’

‘Oh, Christ, is this one of Rowland’s
half-baked ideas about security? I suppose so. I told him the new code came
into force in forty-eight hours from the day before yesterday. Didn’t he
mention that?’

‘Not a word to me.’

‘Oh, Jesus. Was there ever such a
bloody fool commanding a company. Go and get him, and look sharp about it.’

I went off with all speed to Gwatkin’s
room, which was in the main part of the house. He was in deep sleep, lying on
his side, almost at the position of attention. Only the half of his face above
the moustache appeared over the grey-brown of the blanket. I agitated his
shoulder. As usual, a lot of shaking was required to get him awake. Gwatkin
always slept as if under an anaesthetic. He came to at last, rubbing his eyes.

‘The Adjutant’s on the line. He says
it’s Fishcake. I don’t know what that means.’

‘Fishcake?’

‘Yes.’

Gwatkin sat upright in his camp-bed.

‘Fishcake?’ he repeated, as if he
could hardly believe his ears.

‘Fishcake.’

‘But we were not to get Fishcake until
we had been signalled Buttonhook.’

‘I’ve never heard of Buttonhook either
– or Bathwater. All I know are Leather and Toadstool.’

Gwatkin stepped quickly out of bed.
His pyjama trousers fell from him, revealing sexual parts and hairy brown
thighs. The legs were small and boney, well made, their nakedness suggesting
something savage and untaught, yet congruous to his nature. He grabbed the
garments to him and held them there, standing scratching his head with the
other hand.

‘I believe I’ve made a frightful
balls,’ he said.

‘What’s to be done?’

‘Didn’t I mention the new codes to you
and Idwal?’

‘Not a word.’

‘God, I remember now. I thought I’d
leave it to the last moment for security reasons – and then I went out with
Maureen, and forgot I’d never told either of you.’

‘Well, I should go along to the
telephone now, or Maelgwyn-Jones will have apoplexy.’

Gwatkin ran off quickly down the
passage, still holding up with one hand the untied pyjama trousers, his feet
bare, his hair dishevelled. I followed him, also running. We reached the
Company Office. Gwatkin took up the telephone.

‘Gwatkin ...’

There was the hum of the Adjutant’s
voice at the other end. He sounded very angry, as well he might.

‘Jenkins didn’t know …’ Gwatkin said, ‘I
thought it best not to tell junior officers until the last moment … I didn’t
expect to get a signal the first day it came into operation … I was going to
inform them this morning …’

This answer must have had a very
irritating effect on Maelgwyn-Jones, whose voice crepitated for several
minutes. I could tell he had begun to stutter, a sure sign of extreme rage with
him. Whatever the Adjutant was asserting must have taken Gwatkin once more by
surprise.

‘But Bathwater was to take the place
of Walnut,’ he said, evidently appalled.

Once more the Adjutant spoke. While he
listened, Gwatkin’s face lost its colour, as always when he was agitated.

‘To take the place of Toadstool? Then
that means—’

There was another burst of angry words
at the far end of the line. By the time Maelgwyn-Jones had ceased to speak,
Gwatkin had recovered himself sufficiently to reassume his parade ground
manner.

‘Very good,’ he said, ‘the Company
moves right away.’

He listened for a second, but
Maelgwyn-Jones had hung up. Gwatkin turned towards me.

‘I had to tell him that.’

‘Tell him what?’

‘That I had confused the codewords.
The fact is, I forgot, as I said to you just now.’

‘Forgot to pass on the new codewords
to Idwal and me?’

‘Yes – but not only are the codewords
new, the instructions that go with them are amended in certain respects too.
But what I said was partly true. I had muddled them in my own mind. I’ve been
thinking of other things. God, what a fool I’ve made of myself. Anyway, we
mustn’t stand here talking. The Company is to march on the Battalion right
away. Wake Idwal and tell him that. Send the duty NCO to CSM Cadwallader, and
tell him to report to me as soon as the men are roused – he needn’t bother to
be properly dressed. Get your Platoon on parade, Nick, and tell Idwal to do the
same.’

He hurried off, shaking up NCOs,
delivering orders, amplifying instructions altered by changed arrangements. I
did much the same, waking Kedward, who took this disturbance very well, then
returning to the Company Office to dress as quickly as possible.

‘This is an imperial balls-up,’
Kedward said, as we were on the way to inspect our platoons. ‘What the hell can
Rowland have been thinking about?’

‘He had some idea of keeping the
codeword up his sleeve till the last moment.’

‘There’ll be a God Almighty row about
it all.’

I found my own Platoon pretty well
turned out considering the circumstances. With one exception, they were clean,
shaved, correctly equipped. The exception was Sayce. I did not even have to
inspect the Platoon to see what was wrong. It was obvious a mile off. Sayce was
in his place, no dirtier than usual at a casual glance, even in other respects
properly turned out, so it appeared, but without a helmet. In short, Sayce wore
no headdress at all. His head was bare.

‘Where’s that man’s helmet, Sergeant?’

Sergeant Basset had replaced Sergeant
Pendry as Platoon Sergeant, since Corporal Gwylt, with his many qualities, did
not seriously aspire to three stripes. Basset, basically a sound man, had a
mind which moved slowly. His small pig eyes set in a broad, flabby face were
often puzzled, his capacities included none of Sergeant Pendry’s sense of
fitness. Sergeant Pendry, even at the time of worst depression about his wife,
would never have allowed a helmetless man to appear on parade, much less fall
in. He would have found a helmet for him, told him to report sick, put him
under arrest, or devised some other method of disposing of him out of sight.
Sergeant Basset, bull-necked and worried, began to question Sayce. Time was
getting short. Sayce, in a burst of explanatory whining, set forth a thousand
reasons why he should be pitied rather than blamed.

‘Says somebody took his helmet, sir.’

‘Tell him to fall out and find it in
double-quick time, or he’ll wish he’d never been born.’

Sayce went off at a run. I hoped that
was the last we should see of him that day. He could be dealt with on return.
Anything was better than the prospect of a helmetless man haunting the ranks of
my platoon. It would be the last straw as far as Gwatkin was concerned, no
doubt Maelgwyn-Jones too. However, while I was completing the inspection, Sayce
suddenly appeared again. This time he was wearing a helmet. It was too big for
him, but that was an insignificant matter. This was no time to be particular,
still less to ask questions. The platoon moved off to take its place with the
rest of the Company. Gwatkin, who looked worried, but had now recovered his
self-possession, made a rapid inspection and found nothing to complain of. We
marched down the long drives of Castlemallock, out on to the road, through the
town. As we passed the alley leading to Maureen’s pub, I saw Gwatkin cast an
eye in that direction, but it was too early in the morning for Maureen herself,
or anyone else much, to be about.

‘Something awful are the girls of this
town,’ said Corporal Gwylt to the world at large, ‘never did I see such a way
to go on.’

When we reached Battalion
Headquarters, there was a message to say the Adjutant wanted an immediate word
with Captain Gwatkin. Gwatkin returned from this interview with a set face. It
looked as if subordinates might be in for a bad time, such as that after the
Company’s failure to provide ‘support’. However, Gwatkin showed no immediate
desire to get his own back on somebody, though he must have had an unenjoyable
ten minutes with Maelgwyn-Jones. We set out on the day’s scheme, marching and
countermarching across the mountains, infiltrating the bare, treeless fields.
From start to finish, things went badly. In fact, it was a disastrous day.
Still, as Maelgwyn-Jones had said, it passed, like other days in the army, and
we returned at length to Castlemallock, bad-tempered and tired. Kedward and I
were on the way to our room, footsore, longing to get our boots off, when we
met Pinkus, the Adjutant-Quartermaster, the malignant dwarf from the
Morte d’Arthur.
His pleased manner showed there was trouble in
the air. He had a voice of horrible refinement, which must have taken years to
perfect, and somewhat recalled that of Howard Craggs, the left-wing publisher.

‘Where’s your Company Commander?’
asked Pinkus. ‘The Commandant wants him pronto.’

‘In his room, I suppose. The Company’s
just been dismissed. He’s probably changing.’

‘What’s this about putting one of the
officers of the course under arrest? The Commandant’s bloody well brassed off about it,
I
can tell you – and, what’s more, the Commandant’s own helmet
is missing, too, and he thinks one of your fellows has taken it.’

‘Why on earth?’

‘Your Platoon falls in just outside
his quarters.’

‘Much more likely to be one of the
permanent staff on Fire Picquet.
They
pass just by the door.’

‘The Commandant doesn’t think so.’

‘I bet one of the Fire Picquet pinched
it.’

‘The Commandant says he doesn’t trust
your mob an inch.’

‘Why not?’

‘That’s what he says.’

‘If he wants to run down the Regiment,
he’d better take it up with our Commanding Officer.’

‘Make enquiries, or there’ll be
trouble. Now, where’s Gwatkin?’

He went off, mouthing refinedly to
himself. I saw what had happened. In the stresses following realization that he
had forgotten about the changed codewords, Gwatkin had also forgotten Bithel.
During the exertions of the day in the field, I, too, had given no thought to
the events of the previous night, at least none sufficient to consider how best
the situation should be handled on our return. Now, back at Castlemallock, the
Bithel problem loomed up ominously. Bad enough, in any case, to leave the
matter unattended made it worse than ever. Even Kedward had no copybook
solution.

‘My God,’ he said, ‘I suppose old Bith
ought to have been under escort all day. Under my escort, too, if it comes to
that. It was Rowland’s last order to me.’

‘Anyway, Bithel should have been
brought up before the Commandant within twenty-four hours and charged, as a
matter of routine. That’s the regulation, isn’t it?’

‘Twenty-four hours isn’t up yet.’

‘Still, it’s a bit late in the day.’

‘Rowland’s going to find this one
tough to sort out.’

‘There’s nothing we can do about it.’

‘Look, Nick,’ said Kedward, ‘I’ll go
off right away and see exactly what’s happened before I take my boots off.
Christ, my feet feel like balloons.’