Anthony Powell - The Valley of Bones

‘Tell them to carry on,’ he said, pointing his long stick at me. ‘What’s the name of this officer?’

‘Second-lieutenant Jenkins, sir,’ said Gwatkin, who was under great strain.

‘How long have you been with this unit, Jenkins?’

I told the General, who nodded. He asked some further questions. Then he turned away, as if he had lost all interest in me, all interest in human beings at all, and began rummaging furiously about the place with his stick. After exploring the corners of the barn, he set about poking at the roof.

‘Have your men been dry here?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘There is a leak in the thatch here.’

‘There is a leak in that corner, sir, but the men slept the other end.’

The General, deep in thought, continued his prodding for some seconds without visible effect. Then, as he put renewed energy into the thrusts of his stick, which penetrated far into the roofing, a large piece of under-thatch all at once descended from above, narrowly missing General Liddament himself, completely overwhelming his ADC with debris of dust, twigs and loam. At that, the General abandoned his activities, as if at last satisfied. Neither he nor anyone else made any comment, nor was any amusement expressed. The ADC, a pink-faced young man, blushed hotly and set about cleaning himself up. The General turned to me again.

‘What did your men have for breakfast, Jenkins?’

‘Liver, sir.’

I was impressed by his retention of my name.

‘What else?’

‘Jam, sir.’

‘What else?’

‘Bread, sir — and margarine.’

‘Porridge?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Why not?’

‘No issue, sir.’

The General turned savagely on Gwatkin, who had fallen into a kind of trance, but now started agonisingly to life again.

‘No porridge?’

‘No porridge, sir.’

General Liddament pondered this assertion for some seconds in resentful silence. He seemed to be considering porridge in all its aspects, bad as well as good. At last he came out with an unequivocal moral judgment.

‘There ought to be porridge,’ he said.

He glared round at the platoon, hard at work with their polishing, oiling, pulling-through, whatever they were doing. Suddenly he pointed his stick at Williams, W. H., the platoon runner.

‘Would you have liked porridge?’

Williams, W.H., came to attention. As I have said, Williams, W.H., was good on his feet and sang well. Otherwise, he was not particularly bright.

‘No, sir,’ he said instantly, as if that must be the right answer.

The General was taken aback. It would not be too much to say he was absolutely staggered.

‘Why not?’

General Liddament spoke sharply, but seriously, as if some excuse like religious scruple about eating porridge would certainly be accepted as valid.

‘Don’t like it, sir.’

‘ You don’t like porridge ?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Then you’re a foolish fellow — a very foolish fellow.’

After saying that, the General stood in silence, as if in great distress of mind, holding his long staff at arm’s length from him, while he ground it deep into the earthy surface of the barnhouse floor. He appeared to be trying to contemplate as objectively as possible the concept of being so totally excluded from the human family as to dislike porridge. His physical attitude suggested a holy man doing penance vicariously for the sin of those in his spiritual care. All at once he turned to the man next to Williams, W. H., who happened to be Sayce.

‘Do you like porridge?’ he almost shouted.

Sayce’s face, obstinate, dishonest, covered with pock-marks showed determination to make trouble if possible, at the same time uncertainty as how best to achieve that object. For about half a minute Sayce turned over in his mind the pros and cons of porridge eating, just as he might reflect on the particular excuse most effective in extenuation of a dirty rifle barrel. Then he spoke.

‘Well, sir—’ he began.

General Liddament abandoned Sayce immediately for Jones, D.

‘—and you?’

‘No sir,’ said Jones, D., also speaking with absolute assurance that a negative answer was expected of him.

‘—and you?’

‘No, sir,’ said Rees.

Moving the long stick with feverish speed, as if he were smelling out witches, the General pointed successively at Davies, J., Davies, E., Ellis, Clements, Williams, G.

No one had time to answer. There was a long pause at the end of the line. Corporal Gwylt stood there. He had been supervising the cleaning of the bren. General Liddament, whose features had taken on an expression of resignation, stood now leaning forward, resting his chin on the top of the stick, his head looking like a strange, rather malignant totem at the apex of a pole. He fixed his eyes on Gwylt’s cap badge, as if ruminating on the history of the Regiment symbolized in the emblems of its design.

‘And you, Corporal,’ he asked, this time quite quietly. ‘Do you like porridge?’

An enormous smile spread over Corporal Gwylt’s face.

‘Oh, yes, yes, sir,’ he said, ‘I do like porridge. I did just wish we had had porridge this morning.’

Slowly General Liddament straightened himself. He raised the stick so that its sharp metal point almost touched the face of Corporal Gwylt.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘look, all of you. He may not be the biggest man in the Division, but he is a sturdy fellow, a good type. There is a man who eats porridge. Some of you would do well to follow his example.’

With these words, the Divisional Commander strode out of the barn. He was followed by Gwatkin and the ADC, the last still covered from head to foot with thatch. They picked their way through the mud towards the General’s car. A minute later, the pennon disappeared from sight. The inspection was over.

‘The General is a funny-looking chap,’ said Breeze afterwards. ‘But there’s not much he misses. He asked where the latrines were constructed. When I showed him, he told me dig them downwind next time.’

‘Just the same with me,’ said Kedward. ‘He made some of the platoon turn up the soles of their boots to see if they wanted mending. I was glad I had checked them last week.’

We returned from the exercise to find Germany had invaded Norway and Denmark.

‘The war’s beginning now,’ said Gwatkin. ‘It won’t be long before we’re in it.’

His depression about failing to provide ‘support’ in the field was to some extent mitigated by the Company tying for first place in a practice march across country. In fact, at the time when Sergeant Pendry returned from his leave, Gwatkin certainly felt his prestige as a Company Commander in the ascendant. Pendry on the other hand — who had left for home almost immediately after the termination of the thirty-six-hour exercise — came back looking almost as gloomy as before. He returned, however, far more capable of carrying out his duties. No one knew how, if at all, he had settled his domestic troubles. I had never seen a man so greatly changed in the course of a few weeks. From being broad and heavily built, Pendry had become thin and haggard, his formerly glittering blue eyes sunken and glassy. All the same, he could be relied upon once more as Platoon Sergeant. His energy was renewed, though now all the cheerfulness that had once made him such a good NCO was gone. There was no more lateness on parade or forgetting of orders: there was also no more good-natured bustling along of the platoon. Pendry nowadays lost his temper easily, was morose when things went wrong. In spite of this change, there was little to complain of in his work. I told Gwatkin of this improvement.

‘I expect Pendry put his foot down,’ Gwatkin said. ‘It’s the only way with women. There should be no more difficulty with him now.’