Anthony Powell - The Valley of Bones

‘Why not?’

‘Don’t know. Suppose I hadn’t done much about it. There’d been some trouble at one of our places up the river. Production dropped from forty or fifty, to twenty-five barrels a day. I had to go along there and take a look at things. That was one of the reasons why she hadn’t heard from me for some time.’

‘Fact was you were tired of it.’

‘Jean seemed to think so, the way she carried on. She was bloody rude when we parted. Anyway, she had the consolation of feeling she broke it off herself. Women like that.’

So it appeared, after all, the love affair had been brought to an end by Brent’s apathy, rather than Jean’s fickleness. Even Duport had not known that. He had supposed Brent to have been, in his own words, ‘ditched’. It had certainly never occurred to Duport, as a husband, that Brent, his own despised hanger-on, had actually been pursued by Jean, had himself done the ‘ditching’. I, too, had little cause for self-congratulation, if it came to that.

‘How did Duport find out about yourself and his wife?’

‘Through their dear little daughter.’

‘Good God — Polly? I suppose she must be twelve or thirteen by now.’

‘Quite that,’ said Brent. ‘Fancy you’re remembering. I expect Bob spoke of her when you saw him. He’s mad about that kid. Not surprising. She’s a very pretty little girl. Will need keeping an eye on soon — perhaps even now.’

‘Did Bob find out while it was still going on?’

‘Just before the end. Polly let out something about a meeting between Jean and me. Bob remarked that if it had been anyone else he’d have been suspicious. Then Jean flew off the handle and told him everything. Bob couldn’t believe it at first. Didn’t think I was up to it. He always regarded me as an absolute flop where women were concerned. It was quite a blow to him in a way. To his pride, I mean.’

In this scene between the Duports, I saw a parallel to the occasion when I had myself made a slighting remark about Jimmy Stripling, and Jean, immediately furious, had told me of her former affair with him. The pattern was, as ever, endlessly repeated. There was something to be admired in Brent’s lack of vanity in so absolutely accepting Duport’s low estimate of his own attractions, even after causing Duport’s wife to fall in love with him. Whatever other reason Brent might have had for embarking on the matter, a cheap desire to score off Jean’s husband had played no part whatever. That was certain. Duport, cuckolded or no, remained Brent’s ideal of manhood.

‘I think it’s just as well Bob finally got rid of her,’ Brent said. ‘Now he’ll probably find a wife who suits him better. Work Jean out of his system. Anyway he’ll have a freer hand to live the sort of life he likes.’

The tramp of men and sound of singing interrupted us. A detachment of Sappers were marching by, chanting their song, voices harsh and tuneless after those of my own Regiment:

‘You make fast, I make fast, make fast the dinghy,

Make fast the dinghy, make fast the dinghy,

You make fast, I make fast, make fast the dinghy,

Make fast the dinghy pontoon.

For we’re marching on to Laffan’s Plain,

To Laffan’s Plain, to Laffan’s Plain,

Yes we’re marching on to Laffan’s Plain,

Where they don’t know mud from shit…’

The powerful rhythms, primitive, incantatory, hypnotic, seemed not only the battle hymn of warring tribes, but also a refrain with obscure bearing on what Brent had just told me, a general lament for the emotional conflict of men and women. The Sappers disappeared over the horizon, their song dying away with them. From the other direction, Macfaddean approached at the double. He was breathless when he arrived beside us.

‘Sorry to keep you laddies waiting,’ he said, still panting, ‘but I’ve found a wizard alternative concentration area. Here, look at the map. We won’t revise our earlier plan, just show up this as a second choice. It means doing the odd spot of collating. Give me the coloured pencils. Now, take down these map references. Look sharp, old man.’

Meanwhile, the problem of how best to reach Frederica’s house when leave was granted remained an unsolved one. I asked Stevens whether he were going to spend the weekend in Birmingham.

‘Much too far,’ he said, ‘I’m getting an aunt and uncle to put me up. It won’t be very exciting, but it’s somewhere to go.

He named a country town not many miles from Frederica s village.

‘That’s the part of the world I’m trying to reach myself. It’s not going to be too easy to get there and back in a weekend. Trains are rotten.’

‘Trains are hopeless,’ said Stevens. ‘You’ll spend the whole bloody time going backwards and forwards. Look here, I’ve got a broken-down old car I bought with the proceeds of my writing activities. It cost a tenner, but it should get us there and back. I can put my hand on some black market petrol too. Where exactly do you want to go?’

I named the place.

‘I’ve heard of it,’ said Stevens. ‘My uncle is an estate agent in those parts. I’ve probably heard him talk of some house he’s done a deal with in the neighbourhood — your sister-in-law’s perhaps. I can drop you there easily, if you like. Then pick you up on Sunday night, when we’re due back here.’

So it was arranged. The day came. Stevens’s car, a Morris two-seater, started all right. We set off. It was invigorating to leave Aldershot. We drove along, while Stevens talked about his family, his girls, his ambitions. I heard how his mother was the daughter of a detective-inspector who had had to leave the force on account of drink; why he thought his sister’s husband, a master in a secondary school, was rather too keen on the boys; what a relief it had been when he had heard, just before taking leave of his unit for the Aldershot course, that he had not got a local girl in the family way. Such confidences are rare in the army. Narcissistic, Stevens was at the same time — if the distinction can be made — not narrowly egotistical. He was interested in everything round him, even though everything must eventually lead back to himself. He asked about Isobel. It is hard to describe your wife. Instead I tried to give some account of Frederica’s household. He seemed to absorb it all pretty well.

‘Good name, “Frederica”,’ he said, ‘I was christened ‘Herbert”, but a hieroglyphic like “Odo” was put on an envelope addressed to me when I was abroad, and I saw at once that was the thing to be called. I was getting fed up with being “Bert” as it was.’

Apart from the unexpected circumstance that Stevens and I should be driving across country together, the war seemed far away. Frederica had lived in her house, a former vicarage, for a year or two. A widow, she had moved to the country for her children’s sake. Not large, the structure was splayed out and rambling, so that the building looked as if its owners had at some period taken the place to pieces, section by section, then put it together again, not always in correct proportions. A white gate led up a short drive with rose bushes on either side. The place had that same air of intense respectability Frederica’s own personality conveyed. In spite of war conditions, there was no sign of untidiness about the garden, only an immediate sense of having entered a precinct where one must be on one’s best behaviour. Stevens stopped in front of the porch. Before I could ring or knock, Frederica herself opened the door.

‘I saw you coming up the drive,’ she said.

She wore trousers. Her head was tied up in a handkerchief. I kissed her, and introduced Stevens.

‘Do come in for a moment and have a drink,’ she said. ‘Or have you got to push on? I’m sure not at once.’