The Valley of Bones (7 page)

We had reached a fork in the road. One
way led to barracks, the other to billets. Gwatkin seemed suddenly to come to a
decision.

‘Why don’t you come down to the
Company Office too?’ he asked.

He spoke roughly, almost as if he were
demanding why I had disobeyed an order.

‘Would there be room?’

‘Plenty.’

‘We’re pretty thick on the ground
where I am at present, even though Idwal is on the Anti-gas course at the
moment.’

‘It won’t be so lively sleeping in the
office.’

‘I can stand that.’

‘The great thing is you’re on the
spot. Near the men. Where every officer should be.’

I was flattered by the suggestion.
Kedward was at the Corps School of Chemical Warfare at Castlemallock – usually
known as the Anti-gas School – so that Breeze and I were Gwatkin’s only
subalterns at that moment, and there was a lot of work to do. As I have said,
accommodation at the billets had little to recommend it. The Company Office was
at least no worse a prospect. To be in barracks would be convenient, not least
in its reduction of continual trudging backwards and forwards to the billets.

‘I’ll have my kit taken down this
evening.’

That was the beginning of my
comparative intimacy with Gwatkin. Sharing with him the Company Office at night
altered not only our mutual relationship, but also the whole tempo of night and
morning. Instead of the turmoil of Kedward, Breeze, Pumphrey and Craddock
getting dressed, talking, scuffling, singing, there was only the occasional
harsh, serious, professional comment of Gwatkin; his tense silences. He slept
heavily, often dropping off before the electric light was out and the blackout
down; never, like myself, lying awake listening to the talk in the Company
Store next door. The partition between the store and the office did not reach
all the way to the ceiling, so that conversation held in the store after Lights
Out, although usually carried out in comparatively low tones – in contrast with
the normal speech of the unit – was often audible. Only the storeman, Lance-Corporal
Gittins, was supposed to sleep in the store at night, but, in practice, the
room usually housed several others; semi-official assistants of Gittins,
friends, relations, Company personalities, like Corporal Gwylt. These would
gather in the evening, if not on guard dudes, and listen to the wireless;
several of those assembled later staying the night among the crates and piles
of blankets, to slumber in the peculiar, musty smell of the store, an odour
somewhere between the Natural History Museum and an oil-and-colour shop.
Lance-Corporal Gittins was CSM Cadwallader’s brother-in-law. He was a man not
always willing to recognise the artificial and temporary hierarchy imposed by
military rank.

‘Now, see it you must, Gareth,’ I
heard the Sergeant-Major’s voice once insisting on the other side of the
partition. ‘In time of peace – in the mine – you are above me, Gareth, and
above Sergeant Pendry. Here, that is not. No longer is it the mine. In the
Company we are above you. It would be good you remember that, Gareth.’

Gittins was a figure of some prestige
in the Company, not only on account of dominion over valuable stock-in-trade,
but also for his forcible character. Dark, stocky, another strongly pre-Celtic
type, he could probably have become sergeant – even sergeant-major – without
difficulty, had he wished for promotion. Like many others, he preferred to
avoid such responsibilities, instead ruling the store, where he guarded every
item as if it were his own personal property acquired only after long toil and
self-denial. Nothing was more difficult than to extort from him the most
insignificant replacement of kit.

‘I tell you, not without the Skipper’s
direct order,’ was his usual answer to such requests. This circumspection was
very generally respected. To coax anything from Gittins was considered a
triumph. One of the attractions of the store was its wireless, which would
sometimes be tuned in to Haw-Haw’s propaganda broadcast from Germany. These
came on just after midnight:

‘… This is
Chairmany
calling …
Chairmany
calling … These are the stations Koln, Hamburg and DJA …
Here is the news
in English … Fifty-three more British aircraft were shot
down over Kiel last night making a total of one hundred and
seventeen since Tuesday … One hundred and seventeen
more British aircraft have been shot down in forty-eight hours …
The British people are asking their Government why British
pilots cannot stay in the air … They
are
asking why British aircraft is inferior to
Chairman
aircraft … The British
people are asking themselves why they have lost the war in the air … They are
asking, for example, what has
happened to the Imperial Airways Liner
Ajax …
Why
is
the Imperial Airways Liner
Ajax
three weeks overdue, they
are asking … We can tell you .. . The Imperial Airways Liner
Ajax
is at the bottom
of the sea … The fishes are swimming in and out of the wreckage of the Imperial Airways Liner
Ajax …
The Imperial Airways Liner
Ajax
and her escort were shot down by
Chairman
fighter
planes… The British have lost the war in the air … They have lost the
war in the air … It is the same on the water … The
Admiralty is wondering about the
Resourceful …
They are worried at the Admiralty about the
Resourceful …
They need not worry about the
Resourceful
any
more … We will tell them about the
Resourceful …
The
Resourceful
is at the bottom of the sea with the Imperial Airways
Liner
Ajax
… The
Resourceful
was
sunk by a
Chairman
submarine …
The Admiralty is in despair at
Chairman
command of the sea … Britain has lost
the war
on the sea … One hundred and seventy-five thousand
gross registered
tons of British
shipping was sent to the bottom last
week … The British Government is in despair
at
these losses in the air and on the water … That is not the only thing that makes
the British Government despair … Not by any
means … The food shortage in Britain is becoming
acute … The evacuated women and children are living in misery … Instead of
food, they are being fed on lies … Government lies … Only
Chairmany
can tell you the truth … The
Chairman
radio speaks the truth … The
Chairman
radio
gives the best and latest news
…
Chairmany
is winning the war … Think it over, Britain, think it
over …
Chairmany
is winning the war … Listen, Britain … Listen, Britain …
We repeat to all listeners in the Far East … Listen, South America …’

Someone in the store turned the
button. The nagging, sneering, obsessive accents died away with a jerk, as if a
sack had been advantageously thrust over the speaker’s head, bestowing an
immediate sense of relief at his extinction. There was a long pause next door.

‘I do wonder he can remember all that,’
said a voice, possibly that of Williams, W.H., one of the singers of Sardis,
now runner in my platoon.

‘Someone writes it down for him, don’t
you see,’ said another voice that could have been Corporal Gwylt’s.

‘And do they give him all those
figures too?’

‘Of course they do.’

‘So that is it.’

‘You must know that, lad.’

‘What a lot he do talk.’

‘That’s for they pay him.’

‘Bloody sure he is Germany will win the
war. Why does he call it like that –
Chairmany –
it’s
a funny way to speak to be sure.’

‘Maybe that’s the way they say it
there.’

‘If Hider wins the war, I tell you,
lad, we’ll go down the mine for sixpence a day.’

No one in the store attempted to deny this
conclusion. There was another pause and some coughing. It was not easy to tell
how many persons were collected there. Gittins himself appeared to have gone to
sleep, only Gwylt and Williams, W. H., unable to bring the day to a close. I thought they too must
have nodded off, when suddenly Williams’s voice sounded again.

‘How would you like to go up in an
aircraft, Ivor?’

‘I would not mind that so much.’

‘I hope I do not have to do that.’

‘We are not in the RAF, lad, what are
you thinking?’

‘I would not like it up there I am
sure too.’

‘They will not put you up there, no
worry.’

‘You do not know what they will do,
look at those parachutists, indeed.’

‘You make me think of Dai and Shoni
when they went up in a balloon.’

‘And what was that, I wonder.’

‘They took two women with them.’

‘Did they, then?’

‘When the balloon was in the sky, the
air began to leak something terrible out of it, it did, and Dai was frightened,
so frightened Dai was, and Dai said to Shoni, Look you, Shoni, this balloon is
not safe at all, and the air is leaking out of it terrible, we shall have to
jump for it, and Shoni said to Dai, But, Dai, what about the women? and Dai
said, Oh, fook the
women, and Shoni said, But have we time?’

‘We shall not have any time to sleep
till morning break, I am telling you, if you will jaw all through the night,’
spoke another voice, certainly Lance-Corporal Gittins, the storeman, this time.
‘How many hundred and hundred of those Dai and Shoni stories have I in all my
days had to hear, I should like to know, and most of them said by you, Ivor. Is
tarts never out of your thought.’

‘Why, Gareth, you talk about tarts
too,’ said Williams, W. H. ‘What was that you was telling my butty of Cath
Pendry yesterday?’

‘What about her?’

Gittins sounded more truculent this
time.

‘Her and Evans the checkweighman.’

‘You was not meant to hear that, I
tell you, Williams, W. H.’

‘Come on, Gareth,’ said Gwylt.

‘Never mind you, Ivor.’

‘Oh, that do sound something I would
like to hear.’

No one answered Gwylt. There was a lot
more coughing, some throat clearing, then silence. They must all have gone to
sleep. I was on the point of doing the same, had even reached a state of only
semi-consciousness, when there was a sudden exclamation from the direction of
Gwatkin’s bed. He had woken with a start and was feeling for his electric
torch. He found the torch at last and, clambering out of bed, began to put up
the blackout boards on the window frame.

‘What is it, Rowland?’

‘Turn the light on,’ he said, ‘I’ve
got this board fixed now.’

I switched on the light, which was
nearer my bed than his.

‘I’ve just thought of something,’
Gwatkin said agitatedly. ‘Do you remember I said units had been issued with a
new codeword for intercommunication within the Brigade?’

‘Yes.’

‘What did I do with it?’

He seemed almost to be talking in his
sleep.

‘You put it in the box, didn’t you?’

Gwatkin’s usual treatment of the flow
of paper that entered the Company Office daily was to mark each item with the
date in the inked letters of the Company’s rubber-stamp, himself initialling
the centre of its circular mauve impression. He would treat the most trivial
printed matter in this way, often wryly smiling as he remarked: ‘This becomes a
habit.’ The click of the instrument on an official document, together with his
own endorsement ‘R. G.’ – written with a flourish – seemed to give him a
feeling of having settled that matter once and for all, a faint but distinct
sense of absolute power. If classified as ‘Secret’ or ‘Confidential’, the stuff
was put in a large cashbox, of which Gwatkin himself kept the key. The Company’s
‘Imprest Account’ was locked away in this box, together with all sorts of other
papers which had taken Gwatkin’s fancy as important. The box itself was kept in
a green steel cupboard, the shape of a wardrobe, also locked, though its key
was considered less sacred than that of the cashbox.

‘Are you sure I put it in the box?’

‘Pretty sure.’

‘Codewords are vital.’

‘I know.’

‘I’d better make certain.’

He put on a greatcoat over his
pyjamas, because the nights were still fairly cold. Then he began fumbling
about with the keys, opening the cupboard and bringing out the cash-box. There
was not much room in the Company Office at the best of time, when both beds
were erected, scarcely any space at all in which to operate, so that the foot
of my own bed was the only convenient ledge on which to rest the box while
Gwatkin went through its contents. He began to sort out the top layer of
papers, arranging them in separate piles over the foot of my bed, all over my
greatcoat, which was serving as eiderdown. I sat up in bed, watching him strew my legs with
official forms and instructional leaflets of one kind or another. He dealt them
out with great care, as if diverting himself with some elaborate form of
Patience, military pamphlets doing duty for playing cards. The deeper he delved
into the cashbox, the more meticulously he arranged the contents. Among other
items, he turned out a small volume bound in faded red cloth. This book, much
tattered, was within reach. I picked it up. Opening at the fly-leaf: I read: R.
Gwatkin, Capt.’, together with the designation of the Regiment. The title-page
was that of a pocket edition of
Puck of Pook’s Hill.
Gwatkin gave a sudden grunt. He had found whatever he was seeking.

‘Here it is,’ he said. ‘Thank God. I
remember now. I put it in a envelope in a special place at the bottom of the
box.’

He began to replace the papers, one by
one, in the elaborate sequence he had ordained for them. I handed him
Puck of Pook’s Hill.
He took the book from me, still apparently
pondering the fearful possibilities consequent on failure to trace the
codeword. Then he suddenly became aware I had been looking at the Kipling
stories. He took the little volume from me, and pushed it away under a
Glossary of Military Terms and Organization in the Field.
For a
second he seemed a shade embarrassed.