Anthony Powell - The Valley of Bones

‘I met Peter once there — at Stourwater, I mean.’

‘You know Donners too, do you. I’ve done a little business with him myself. I’m an oil man, you know. I was in the South American office before the war. Did you ever meet Peter’s sister, Jean? I used to see quite a bit of her there.’

‘I knew her ages ago.’

‘She married Bob Duport,’ said Brent, ‘who was with us on the famous occasion when the Vauxhall heeled over.’

There was a perverse inner pleasure in knowing that Brent had had a love affair with Jean Duport, which he could scarcely guess had been described to me by her own husband. Even though I had once loved her myself — to that extent the thought was painful, however long past — there was an odd sense of power in possessing this secret information.

‘I ran into Duport just before war broke out. I never knew him well. I gather they are divorced now.’

‘Quite right,’ said Brent.

He did not allow the smallest suggestion of personal interest to colour the tone of his voice.

‘I heard Bob was in some business mess,’ he said. ‘Chromite, was it? He got across that fellow Widmerpool, another of Donners’s henchmen. Widmerpool is an able fellow, not a man to offend. Bob managed to rub him up the wrong way. Somebody said Bob was connected with the Board of Trade now. Don’t know whether that is true. The Board of Trade wanted me to stay in Latin America, as a matter of fact.’

‘You’d have had a safe billet there.’

‘Glad to leave the place as it happened, though I was doing pretty well.’

‘How do you find yourself here?’

‘Managed to get into this mob through the good offices of our Military Attaché where I was. His own regiment. Never heard of them before.’

I supposed that Brent had been relieved to find this opportunity of moving to another continent after Jean had abandoned him. That disappointment, too, might explain his decision to join the army as a change of occupation. He was several years older than myself, in fact entering an age group to be reasonably considered beyond the range of unfriendly criticism for remaining out of uniform; especially if, as he suggested, his work in South America was officially regarded as of some national importance. I remembered Duport’s story clearly now. After reconciliation with Jean, they had sailed for South America. Brent had sailed with them. At that time Jean’s affair with Brent had apparently been in full swing. Indeed, from what Duport said, there was every reason to suppose that affair had begun before she told me of her own decision to return to her husband. So far as that went, Jean had deceived me as much as she had deceived Duport. Fortunately Brent was unaware of that.

‘How do you like the army?’

‘Bloody awful,’ he said, ‘but I’d rather be in than out.’

‘Me, too.’

The remaining students of the course were an unexceptional crowd, most of the usual army types represented. We drilled on the square, listened to lectures about the German army, erected barbed wire entanglements, drove 3-ton lorries, map read. One evening, preceding a night exercise in which one half of the course was arrayed in battle against the other half, Stevens showed a different side of himself. The force in which we were both included lay on the ground in a large semi-circle, waiting for the operation to begin. The place was a clearing among the pine woods of heathery, Stonehurst-like country. Stevens and I were on the extreme right flank of the semi-circle. On the extreme left, exactly opposite us, whoever was disposed there continually threw handfuls of gravel across the area between, which landed chiefly on Stevens and myself.

‘It must be Croxton,’ Stevens said.

Croxton was a muscular neurotic of a kind, fairly common, who cannot stop talking or creating a noise. He sang or ragged joylessly all the time, without possessing any of those inner qualities — like Corporal Gwylt’s, for example — required for making such behaviour acceptable to others. He was always starting a row, playing tricks, causing trouble. There could be little doubt that Croxton was responsible for the hail of small stones that continued to spatter over us. The moon had disappeared behind clouds, rain threatening. There seemed no prospect of the exercise beginning.

‘I think I’ll deal with this,’ Stevens said.

He crawled back into the cover of the trees behind us, disappearing in darkness. Some minutes elapsed. Then I heard a sudden exclamation from the direction of the gravel thrower. It was a cry of pain. More time went by. Then Stevens returned.

‘It was Croxton,’ he said.

‘What did you do?’

‘Gave him a couple in the ribs with my rifle butt.’

‘What did he think about that?’

‘He didn’t seem to like it.’

‘Did he put up any fight?’

‘Not much. He’s gasping a bit now.’

The following day, during a lecture on the German Division, I saw Croxton, who was sitting a few rows in front, rub his back more than once. Stevens had evidently struck fairly hard. This incident showed he could be disagreeable, if so disposed. He also possessed the gift of isolating himself from his surroundings. These lectures on the German army admittedly lacked light relief-after listening to many of them, I have preserved only the ornamental detail that the German Reconnaissance Corps carried a sabre squadron on its establishment — and one easily dozed through the lecturer’s dronings. On the other hand, to remain, as Stevens could, slumbering like a child, upright on a hard wooden chair, while everyone else was clattering from the lecture room, suggested considerable powers of self-seclusion. Another source of preservation to Stevens — unlike Gwatkin — was an imperviousness to harsh words. He and I had been digging a weapon pit together one afternoon without much success. An instructor came up to grumble at our efforts.

‘That’s not a damned bit of use,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t give protection to a cat.’

‘We’ve just reached a surface of rock, sir,’ said Stevens, ‘but I think I can say we’ve demonstrated the dignity of labour.’

The instructor sniggered and moved on, without examining the soil. Not everyone liked this self-confident manner of Stevens. Among those who disapproved was Brent.

‘That young fellow will get sent back to his unit,’ Brent said. ‘Mark my words. He’s too big for his boots.’

When the whole course was divided into syndicates of three for the purposes of a ‘tactical exercise without troops’, Brent and I managed to be included in the same trio. To act with an acquaintance on such occasions is an advantage, but it was at the price of having Macfaddean as the third partner. However, although Macfaddean, a schoolmaster in civilian life, was feverishly anxious to make a good impression on the Directing Staff, this also meant that he was prepared to do most of the work. In his middle to late thirties, Macfaddean would always volunteer for a ‘demonstration’, no matter how uncomfortable the prospect of crawling for miles through mud, for instance, or exemplifying the difficulty of penetrating dannert wire. When the task was written work, Macfaddean would pile up mountains of paper, or laboriously summarize, whichever method he judged best set him apart from the other students. He was so tireless in his energies that towards the end of the day, when we had all agreed on the situation report to be presented and there was some time to spare, Macfaddean could not bear these minutes to be wasted.

‘Look here, laddies,’ he said, ‘why don’t we go back into the woods and produce an alternative version? I’m not happy, for instance, about concentration areas. It would look good if we handed in two plans for the commander to choose from, both first-rate.’