The Valley of Bones (29 page)

‘Who is going to take your place?’

‘It will be Sergeant Humphries, I do
believe.’

‘I hope Humphries does the job as well
as you have.’

‘Ah, well, sir, Humphries is a good
NCO, and he should be all right, I do think.’

‘Thank you for all your help.’

‘Oh, it was a pleasure, sir …’

Before CSM Cadwallader could say more
– not a man to take lightly opportunity to speak at length on the occasion of
such a leave-taking, he was certainly going to say more, much more – Corporal
Gwylt came running up. He saluted perfunctorily. Evidently I was not the object
of his approach. He was tousled and out of breath.

‘Excuse me, sir, may I speak to the
Sergeant-Major?’

‘Go ahead.’

Gwylt could hardly contain his
indignation.

‘Somebody’s broke in and stole the
Company’s butter, Sergeant-Major, and the lock’s all bust and the wire ripped
out of the front of the meat-safe where it was put, and the Messing Corporal do
think it be that bugger Sayce again that has taken the butter to flog it, so
will you come and see right away, the Messing Corporal says, that we have your
witness, Sergeant-Major, if there’s a Summary of Evidence like there was those
blankets …’

CSM Cadwallader shortened his speech
in preparation to a mere goodbye and grip of the hand. There was no alternative
in the circumstances. He looked disappointed, but characteristically put duty
before even the most enjoyably sententious of valedictions. He and Corporal
Gwylt hurried off together. By this time the truck that was to take me to
Divisional Headquarters had driven up. An NCO was parading the men who were to
travel up in it for medical treatment. Gwatkin appeared. He had been busy all
the morning, but had promised he would turn up to see me off. We talked for a
minute or two about Company arrangements, revisions proposed by Kedward.
Gwatkin had resumed his formality of manner.

‘Perhaps you’ll arrive at the ITC
yourself, Nick,’ he said, ‘on the way to something better, of course, but it’s
used as a place of transit. I trust I’ll be gone by then, but it would be good
to meet.’

‘We may both turn up on the same
staff,’ I said, without great seriousness.

‘No,’ he said gravely, ‘I’ll never get
on the staff. I don’t mind that. All I want is to carry out regimental duties
properly.’

He tapped his gaiter with the swagger stick
he carried. Then his tone changed.

‘I had some rather bad news from home
this morning,’ he said.

‘You’re not in luck.’

‘My father-in-law passed away. I think
I told you he had been ill for some time.’

‘You did. I’m sorry. Did you get on
very well with him?’

‘Pretty well,’ said Gwatkin, ‘but this
will mean Blodwen’s mother will have to move in with us. I like her all right,
but I’d rather that didn’t have to happen. Look, Nick, you won’t speak to
anyone about last night.’

‘Of course not.’

‘It was bloody awful,’ he said.

‘Of course.’

‘But a lesson to me.’

‘One never takes lessons to heart. It’s
just a thing people talk about – learning by experience and all that.’

‘Oh, but I do take lessons to heart,’
he said. ‘What do you think then?’

‘That one just gets these knocks from
time to time.’

‘You believe that?’

‘Yes.’

‘You really believe that everyone has
that sort of thing happen to them?’

‘In different ways.’

Gwatkin considered the matter for a
moment.

‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘I can’t help
thinking it was just because I was such a bloody fool, what with Maureen and
making a balls of the Company too. I thought at least I was being some good as
a soldier, but I was bloody wrong.’

I thought of Pennistone and his
quotations from Vigny.

‘A French writer who’d been a regular
officer said the whole point of soldiering was its bloody boring side. The
glamour, such as it was, was just a bit of exceptional luck if it came your
way.’

‘Did he?’ said Gwatkin.

He spoke without a vestige of
interest. I was impressed for the ten thousandth time by the fact that
literature illuminates life only for those to whom books are a necessity. Books
are unconvertible assets, to be passed on only to those who possess them
already. Before I could decide whether it was worth making a final effort to
ram home Vigny’s point, or whether further energy thus expended was as wasteful
of Gwatkin’s time as my own, Kedward crossed the yard.

‘Rowland,’ he said, ‘come to the
cookhouse at once, will you. It’s serious.’

‘What’s happened?’ said Gwatkin, not
pleased by this interruption.

‘The Company butter’s been flogged. So
far as I can see, storage arrangements have been quite irregular. I’d like you
to be present while I check facts with the CQMS and the Messing Corporal.
Another thing, the galantine that’s just arrived is bad. Its disposal must be
authorized by an officer. I’ve got to straighten out this butter business
before I do anything else. Nick, will you go along and sign for the galantine.
Just a formality. It’s round at the back by the ablutions.’

‘Nick’s just off to Div HQ,’ said
Gwatkin.

‘Oh, are you, Nick?’ said Kedward. ‘Well
best of luck, but you will sign for the galantine first, won’t you?’

‘Of course.’

‘Goodbye, then.’

‘Goodbye, Idwal, and good luck.’

Kedward hastily shook my hand, then
rushed off to the scene of the butter robbery, saying: ‘Don’t be long, Rowland.’

Gwatkin shook my hand too. He smiled
in an odd sort of way, as if he dimly perceived it was no good battling against
Fate, which, seen in right perspective, almost always provides a certain beauty
of design, sometimes even an occasional good laugh.

‘I leave you to your galantine, Nick,’
he said. ‘Best of luck.’

I gave him a salute for the last time,
feeling he deserved it. Gwatkin marched away, looking a trifle absurd with his
little moustache, but somehow rising above that. I went off in the other
direction, where the burial certificate of the galantine awaited signature. A
blazing sun was beating down. For this, my final duty at Castlemallock,
Corporal Gwylt, who was representing the Messing Corporal, elsewhere engaged in
the butter investigation, had arranged the galantine, an immense slab of it, in
its wrappings on a kind of bier, looking like a corpse in a mortuary. Beside
the galantine, he had placed a pen and the appropriate Army Form.

‘Oh, that galantine do smell something
awful, sir,’ he said. ‘Sign the paper without smelling it, I should, sir.’

‘I’d better make sure.’

I inclined my head with caution, then
quickly withdrew it. Corporal Gwylt was absolutely right. The smell was
appalling, indescribable. Shades of the
Potemkin,
I
thought, wondering if I were going to vomit. After several deep breaths, I set
my name to the document, confirming animal corruption.

‘I’m leaving now, Corporal Gwylt.
Going up to Division. I’ll say goodbye.’

‘You’re leaving the Company, sir?’

‘That I am.’

The Battalion’s form of speech was
catching.

‘Then I’m sorry, sir. Good luck to
you. I expect it will be nice up at Division.’

‘Hope so. Don’t get into too much
mischief with the girls.’

‘Oh, those girls, sir, they never give
you any peace, they don’t.’

‘You must give up girls and get a
third stripe. Then you’ll be like the Sergeant-Major and not think of girls any
longer.’

‘That I will, sir. It will be better,
though I’ll not be the man the Sergeant-Major is, I haven’t the height. But don’t
you believe the Sergeant-Major don’t like girls. That’s just his joke. I know
they put something in the tea to make us not want them, but it don’t do boys
like me no good, it seem, nor the Sergeant-Major either.’

We shook hands on it. Any attempt to
undermine the age-old army legend of sedatives in the tea would be as idle as
to lecture Gwatkin on Vigny. I returned to the truck, and climbed up beside the
driver. We rumbled through the park with its sad decayed trees, its Byronic
associations. In the town, Maureen was talking to a couple of corner-boys in
the main street. She waved and blew a kiss as we drove past, more as a matter
of routine, I thought, than on account of any flattering recognition of myself,
because she seemed to be looking in the direction of the men at the back of the
truck, who, on passing, had raised some sort of hoot at her. Now they began to
sing:

‘She’ll be wearing purple socks,
And she’s always in the pox,
And she’s Mickey McGilligan’s daughter,
Mary-Anne …’

There were no villages in the country
traversed, rarely even farms or hovels. One mile looked like another, except
when once we passed a pair of stone pillars, much battered by the elements,
their capitals surmounted by heraldic animals holding shields. Here were
formerly gates to some mansion, the gryphons, the shields, the heraldry,
nineteenth century in design. Now, instead of dignifying the entrance to a
park, the pillars stood .starkly in open country, alone among wide fields: no
gates; no wall; no drive; no park; no house. Beyond them, towards the far
horizon, stretched hedgeless ploughland, rank grass, across the expanses of
which, like the divisions of a chess-board, squat walls of piled stone were
beginning to rise. The pillars marked the entrance to Nowhere. Nothing remained
of what had once been the demesne, except these chipped, over-elaborate coats
of arms, emblems probably of some lord of the Law, like the first Castlemallock,
or business magnate, such as those who succeeded him. Here, too, there had been
no heirs, or heirs who preferred to live elsewhere. I did not blame them. North
or South, this country was not greatly sympathetic to me. All the same, the day
was sunny, there was a vast sense of relief in not being required to settle the
Company butter problem, nor take the Platoon in gas drill. Respite was
momentary, but welcome. At the back of the vehicle the hospital party sang
gently:

‘Open now the crystal fountain,
Whence the healing stream doth flow:
Let the fire and cloudy pillar
Lead me all my journey through:
  Strong Deliverer,
  Strong Deliverer
Be thou still my strength and shield …’

Gwatkin, Kedward and the rest already
seemed far away. I was entering another phase of my war. By this time we had
driven for an hour or two. The country had begun to change its character. Mean
dwellings appeared more often, then the outer suburbs of a large town. The
truck drove up a long straight road of grim houses. There was a crossroads
where half a dozen ways met, a sinister place such as that where Oedipus,
refusing to give passage, slew his father, a locality designed for civil strife
and street fighting. Pressing on, we reached a less desolate residential
quarter. Here, Divisional Headquarters occupied two or three adjacent houses.
At one of these, a Military Policeman stood on duty.

‘I want the DAAG’s office.’

I was taken to see a sergeant-clerk.
No one seemed to have heard I was to arrive. The truck had to move on. My kit
was unloaded. The DAAG’s office was consulted from the switchboard, a message
returned that I was to ‘come up’. A soldier-clerk showed the way. We passed
along passages, the doors of which were painted with the name, rank and
appointment of the occupants, on one of them:

Major-General
H. de C. Liddament, DSO,
MC.
Divisional Commander

The clerk left me at a door on which
the name of the former DAAG – ‘Old Square-arse’, as Maelgwyn-Jones designated
him – was still inscribed. From within came the drone of a voice apparently
reciting some endless chant, which rose and fell, but never ceased. I knocked.
No one answered. After a time, I knocked again. Again there was no answer. Then
I walked in, and saluted. An officer, wearing major’s crowns on his shoulder,
was sitting with his back to the door dictating, while a clerk with pencil and
pad was taking down letters in shorthand. The DAAG’s back was fat and humped, a
roll of flesh at the neck.

‘Wait a moment,’ he said, waving his
hand in the air, but not turning.

He continued his dictation while I
stood there.

‘… It is accordingly felt … that the
case of the officer in question – give his name and personal number – would be
more appropriately dealt with – no – more appropriately regulated – under the
terms of the Army Council Instruction quoted above – give reference – of which
para II, sections (d) and (f), and para XI, sections (b) and (h), as amended by
War Office Letter AG 27/9852/73 of 3 January, 1940, which, it would appear,
contemplate exceptional cases of this kind … It is at the same time emphasised
that this formation is in no way responsible for the breakdown in
administration – no, no, better not say that – for certain irregularities of
routine that appear to have taken place during the course of conducting the
investigation of the case,
vide
page 23, para 17 of the
findings of the Court of Inquiry, and para VII of the above quoted ACI, section
(e) – irregularities which it is hoped will be adjusted in due course by the
authorities concerned . .

The voice, like so many other
dictating or admonitory voices of even that early period of the war, had
assumed the timbre and inflexions of the Churchill broadcast, slurred
consonants, rhythmical stresses and prolations. These accents, in certain
circumstances, were to be found imitated as low as battalion level. Latterly,
for example, Gwatkin’s addresses to the Company could be detected, by an attentive
ear, to have veered away a little from the style of the chapel elder, towards
the Prime Minister’s individualities of delivery. In this, Gwatkin’s harangues
lost not a little of their otherwise traditional charm. If we won the war,
there could be no doubt that these rich, distinctive tones would be echoed for
a generation at least. I was still thinking of this curious imposition of a
mode of speech on those for whom its manner was totally incongruous, when the
clerk folded his pad and rose.