The Valley of Bones (9 page)

I was
impressed by the speech, though there were moments when I thought Gwatkin’s
listeners might deride the images he conjured up, such as a man losing what
made him a man, or little sisters who had to be protected. On the contrary, the
Company listened spellbound, giving a low grunt of emphasis when the Glasshouse
was mentioned, like a cinema audience gasping aloud in pleasurable appreciation
of some peculiarly agonising sequence of horror film. I remembered Bracey, my
father’s soldier-servant, employing that very same phrase about his rifle being
the soldier’s best friend. After twenty-five years, that sentiment had stood up
well to the test of time and the development of more scientific weapons of war.

‘It does the
lads good to be talked to like that,’ said CSM Cadwallader afterwards. ‘Captain
does know how to speak. Very excellent would he have been to preach the Word.’

Even Gittins,
whose inherent strain of scepticism was as strong as any in the Battalion, had
enjoyed Gwatkin’s talk.

He told me so
when I came to the Store later, to check supplies of web equipment held there.

‘A fine
speech that was,
the Skipper’s,’ said Gittins.
‘That should make the boys take care of their
rifles proper, it should. And the rest of their stuff, too, I hope, and not
come round here scrounging what they’ve lost off me, like
a present at Christmas, it was.’

Kedward was
less impressed

‘Rowland doesn’t
half love jawing,’ he said, ‘I should just say so. But what’s he going to be
like when we get into action, I wonder, he is so jumpy. Will he keep his head at
that?’

The doubts
Kedward felt about Gwatkin were to some extent echoed by Gwatkin himself in
regard to Kedward.

‘Idwal is a
good reliable officer in many ways,’ he confided his opinion to me, ‘but I’m
not sure he has just the quality for leading men.’

‘The men like
him.’

‘The men can
like an officer without feeling he inspires them. Yanto told me the other day
he thought the men liked Bithel. You wouldn’t say Bithel had the quality of
leadership, would you?’

Gwatkin’s
dislike of Bithel was given new impetus by the Deafy Morgan affair, which
followed close on the homily about rifles. Deafy Morgan, as his cognomen – it
was far more than a mere nickname – implied, was hard of hearing. In fact, he
was as deaf as a post. Only in his middle to late thirties, he gave the
impression – as miners of that age often do – of being much older than his
years. His infirmity, in any case, set him apart from the hurly-burly of the
younger soldiers’ life, giving him a mild, even beatific cast of countenance,
an expression that seemed for ever untroubled by moral turmoil or disturbing
thought. It was probably true to say that Deafy Morgan did not have many
thoughts, disturbing or otherwise, because he was not outstandingly bright,
although at the same time possessing all sorts of other good qualities. In
short, Deafy Morgan was the precise antithesis of Sayce. Always spick and span,
he was also prepared at all times to undertake boring or tedious dudes without
the least complaint – in what could only be called the most Christlike spirit.
Even among good soldiers, that is a singular quality in the army. No doubt it
was one of the reasons why Deafy Morgan had not been relegated to the Second
Line before the Division moved. Not at all fit, he would obviously have to be
transferred sooner or later to the rear echelons. However, his survival was
mainly due not so much to this habit of working without complaint, rare as that
might be, as to the fact that everyone liked him. Besides, he had served as a
Territorial longer than any other soldier in the ranks, wanted to remain with
his friends – he was alleged to possess at home a nagging wife – so that no one
in authority had had the heart to put Deafy Morgan’s name on whatever Army Form
was required to effect his removal. He was in Bithel’s platoon.

Bithel himself
had recently been appointed Musketry Officer. This was not on account of any
notable qualifications for that duty, simply because the Battalion was short of
officers on the establishment, several being also absent on courses. By this
time Bithel’s individual status had become more clear to me. He was a
small-town misfit, supporting himself in peacetime by odd jobs, preferably
those on the outskirts of the theatrical world, living a life of solitude and
toping, always on the verge of trouble, always somehow managing to extricate
himself from anything serious. In the Battalion, there had been no repetition
of the dance of love round the dummy, not anything comparable with that in
exoticism. All the same, I suspected such expressions of Bithel’s personality
were dormant rather than totally suppressed. He was always humble, even
subservient, in manner, but this demeanour seemed to cloak a good opinion of
himself, perhaps even delusions of grandeur.

‘Have you ever
been interested in
the Boy Scout movement?’ he asked. ‘I was
keen about it at one
time. Wonderful thing
for boys. Gives them a chance. I threw it up in the end. Some of them are
little brutes, you know. You’d never guess the things they say. I was surprised
they knew about such matters.
And their language among themselves. You wouldn’t
credit it. I was told I was greatly missed
after my resignation. They have a great deal of difficulty in getting
suitable
fellows to help. There are some nasty types about.’

The army is at
once the worst place for egoists, and the best. Thus it was in many ways the
worst for Bithel, always being ordered about and reprimanded, the best for
Gwatkin, granted – anyway up to a point – the power and rank he desired.
Nevertheless, in the army, as elsewhere, nothing is for ever. Maelgwyn-Jones
truly said: ‘That day will pass, like other days in the army.’ Gwatkin’s
ambition – the satisfaction of his ‘personal myth’, as General Conyers would
have called it – might be temporarily realized, but there was always the danger
that a re-posting, promotion, minor adjustment of duties, might alter
everything. Even the obstacles set in the way of Bithel indulging the pottering
he loved, could, for the same reasons, be alleviated, if not removed entirely.
For instance, Bithel was tremendously pleased at being appointed Musketry
Officer. There were several reasons for this. The job gave him a certain
status, which he reasonably felt lacking, although there was probably less to
do at the range than during the day by day training of a platoon. In addition,
Bithel’s soldier-servant, Daniels, was on permanent duty at the butts.

‘I call him
the priceless jewel,’ Bithel used to say. ‘You know how difficult it is to get
a batman in this unit. They just don’t want to do the job, in spite of its
advantages. Well, Daniels is
a little marvel. I don’t say he’s always on time, or never forgets things. He
fails in both quite often. But what I like
about him is that he’s always got a cheerful word in all weathers. Besides, he’s
as clean as a whistle. A real pleasure to look
at when he’s doing PT, which is more than you can say
for some of them in early morning. In any case, Daniels is
not like
all those young miners, nice boys as they are. He is
more used to the world. You’re not boots for three months at
the Green Dragon in my home town without hearing some gossip.’

Others took a
less favourable view of Daniels, who, although skilled in juggling with dummy
grenades, was in general regarded as light-fingered and sly. There was, I found
in due course, nothing unusual in an officer being preoccupied – one might
almost say obsessed – by the personality of his servant, though on the whole
that was apt to occur in ranks senior to subaltern. The relationship seems to
develop a curious state of intimacy in an unintimate society; one, I mean, far
removed from anything to be thought of as overstepping established limits of
propriety or everyday discipline. Indeed, so far from even approaching the
boundaries of sexual aberration or military misconduct, the most normal of men,
and conscientious of officers, often provided the most striking instances. Even
my father, I remembered, had possessed an almost mystic bond with Bracey,
certainly a man of remarkable qualities. It was a thing not easily explicable,
perhaps demanded by the emotional conditions of an all-male society. Regular
officers, for example, would sometimes go to great pains to prevent their
servants suffering some deserved minor punishment for an infringement of
routine. Such things made Bithel’s eulogies of Daniels no cause for comment. In
any case, even if Bithel enjoyed the presence of Daniels at the range, it was
not Daniels, but Deafy Morgan, who was source of all the trouble.

‘Why on earth
did Bith ever send Deafy back there and then?’
said Kedward afterwards. ‘That bloody rifle could perfectly well have waited an
hour or two before it was mended.’

The question
was never cleared up. Perhaps Bithel was thereby given opportunity for a longer
hob-nob with Daniels. Even if that were the object, I am sure nothing dubious
took place between them, while the ‘musketry details’ were still at the butts.
Anything of the sort would have been extremely difficult, even if Bithel had
been prepared to take such a risk. Much more likely – Deafy Morgan being one of
his own men – Bithel had some idea of avoiding, by immediate action, lack of a
rifle in his platoon. Whatever the reason, Bithel sent Deafy Morgan back to
barracks by himself with a rifle that had developed some defect requiring the
attention of the Sergeant-Armourer. The range, where musketry instruction took
place, was situated in a deserted stretch of country, two or three miles by
road from the town. This distance could be reduced by taking a short cut across
the fields. In wet weather the path across the fields was apt to be muddy,
making the journey heavy going. Rain was not falling that day – some thing of a
rarity – and Deafy Morgan chose the path through the fields.

‘I suppose I
ought to have ordered him to go by road,’ Bithel said later. ‘But it takes such
a lot of shouting to explain anything to the man.’

The incident
occurred in a wood not far from the outskirts of the town. Deafy Morgan, by
definition an easy victim to ambush, was surrounded by four young men, two of
whom threatened him with pistols, while the other two possessed themselves of
his rifle. Deafy Morgan struggled, but it was no good.
The four of them made off at a run, disappearing behind a hedge, where, so the
police reported later, a car had been waiting. There was nothing for Deafy
Morgan to do but
return to barracks and report the incident. Sergeant Pendry,
as it happened, was Orderly Sergeant that day. He handled the trouble with
notable competence. Contact was made with the Adjutant, who was touring the
country in a truck in the course of preparing a ‘scheme’: the Constabulary, who
handled such matters of civil subversion, were at once informed. Deafy Morgan
was, of course, put under arrest.
There was a considerable to-do. This was just such an
incident as Maelgwyn-Jones outlined in his ‘internal security’ talk. The
Constabulary, perfectly accustomed to ambuscades of this type, corroborated the
presence of four suspects
in the neighbourhood, who had later withdrawn over the Border. It was an
unhappy episode, not least because
Deafy Morgan was so popular a figure. Gwatkin, as I have said, was particularly
disturbed by it. His mortification
took the form of blaming all on Bithel.

‘The CO will
have to get rid of him,’ Gwatkin said. ‘It can’t go on. He isn’t fit to hold a
commission.’

‘I don’t see
what old Bith could have done about it,’ said Breeze, ‘even though it was a bit
irregular to send Deafy back on his own like that.’

‘It may not
have been Bithel’s fault directly,’ said Gwatkin sternly, ‘but when something
goes wrong under an officer’s command, the officer has to suffer. That may be
unjust. He has to suffer all the same. In my opinion, there would be no
injustice in this case. Why, I shouldn’t wonder if the Colonel himself was not
superseded for this.’

That was true
enough. Certainly the Commanding Officer was
prepared for the worst, so far as his own appointment was
concerned. He said so in the Mess more than once. However, in the end nothing
so drastic took place. Deafy Morgan was courtmartialled, getting off with a
reprimand, together with transfer to the Second Line and his nagging wife. He
had put up some fight. In the circumstances, he could hardly be sent to
detention for losing his weapon and failing to capture four youngish assailants
for whom he had been wholly unprepared; having been certainly too deaf to hear
either their approach, or, at an earlier stage, the substance of Maelgwyn-Jones’s
security talk. The findings of the court-martial had just been promulgated,
when the Battalion was ordered to prepare for a thirty-six-hour Divisional
exercise, the first of its kind in which the unit had been concerned.

‘This is the
new Divisional Commander making himself felt,’ said Kedward. ‘They say he is
going to shake us up, right and proper.’

‘What’s he
called?’

To those serving
with a battalion, even brigadiers seem infinitely illustrious, the Divisional
Commander, a remote, godlike figure.

‘Major-General
Liddament,’ said Gwatkin. ‘He’s going to ginger things up, I hope.’

It was at the
start of this thirty-six-hour exercise – reveille at 4.30 a.m., and the first
occasion we were to use the new containers for hot food – that I noticed all
was not well with Sergeant Pendry. He did not get the Platoon on parade at the
right time. That was very unlike him. Pendry had, in fact, shown no sign of
breaking down after a few weeks energetic work, in the manner of Breeze’s
warning about NCOs who could not perform their promise. On the contrary, he
continued to work hard, and his good temper had something of Corporal Gwylt’s
liveliness about it. No one could be expected to look well at that hour of the
morning, but Sergeant Pendry’s face was unreasonably greenish at breakfast,
like Gwatkin’s after the crossing, something more than could be attributed to
early rising. I thought he must have been
drinking the night before, a foolish thing to do as
he knew the early hour of reveille. On the whole,
there was
very little drinking throughout the Battalion – indeed, small
opportunity for it with the pressure of training – but Pendry
had some reputation in the Sergeants’ Mess for capacity
in sinking a pint or two. I
thought perhaps the moment had come when Breeze’s prediction was now going to
be justified, that Pendry had suddenly reached the
point when he could no longer sustain an earlier efficiency. The day
therefore opened badly, Gwatkin justifiably angry that my
Platoon’s unpunctuality left him insufficient time to inspect the Company as
thoroughly as he wished, before parading with the rest of the Battalion. We
were to travel by bus
to an area some way from our base, where the exercise was
to take place.