Anthony Powell - The Valley of Bones

‘Except for Williams, T., sir, that is gone on the MT course and taken his rifle with him, and Jones, A., that is sick with the ring-worm, and Williams, H, that is on leave, and those two rifles the Sergeant-Armourer did want to look at that I told you of, sir, and the one with the faulty bolt in the Company Store for the time being, you said, and I will see about. Oh, yes, and Williams, G. E., that has been lent to Brigade for a week and has his rifle with him. That is the lot I do believe, sir.’

Gwatkin seemed satisfied with this reckoning.

‘Have you rendered your report?’ he asked.

‘Not yet, sir.’

‘See I have the nominal roll this evening, Sergeant-Major, by sixteen-hundred hours.’

‘That I will, sir.’

‘Mr Kedward.’

‘Sir?’

‘Your cap badge is not level with the top seam of the cap-band.’

‘I’ll see to it as soon as I get back to the Mess.’

Gwatkin turned to me.

‘Officers of our Battalion wear bronze pips, Mr Jenkins.’

‘The Quartermaster told me in the Mess last night he could get me correct pips by this evening.’

‘See the QM does so, Mr Jenkins. Officers incorrectly dressed are a bad example. Now it happens that Sergeant Pendry here, who is Battalion Orderly Sergeant this week, will be your own Platoon Sergeant.’

Sergeant Pendry grinned with great friendliness, his blue eyes flashing in high-lights caught by the gas-jets, making them more than ever like Peter Templer’s in the old days. He held out his hand. I took it, not sure whether this familiarity would conform with Gwatkin’s ideas about discipline. However, Gwatkin seemed to regard a handshake as normal in the circumstances. His tone had been austere until that moment; intentionally, though perhaps rather unconvincingly austere. Now he spoke in a more friendly manner.

‘What is your Christian name, Mr Jenkins?’

‘Nicholas.’

‘Mine is Rowland. The Commanding Officer says we should not be formal with each other off parade. We are brother officers — like a family, you see. So, when off duty, Rowland is what you should call me. I shall say Nicholas. Mr Kedward told you his name is Idwal.’

‘He has. I’m calling him that. In practice, it’s Nick for me.’

Gwatkin gazed at me fixedly, as if not altogether sure what I meant by ‘in practice’, or whether it was a term properly to be used by a subaltern to his Company Commander, but he did not comment.

‘Come along, Sergeant Pendry,’ he said, ‘I want to look at those urine buckets.’

We saluted. Gwatkin set off on his further duties as Captain of the Week — like the Book of the Month, I frivolously thought to myself.

‘That went off all right,’ said Kedward, as if presentation to Gwatkin might have proved disastrous. ‘I don’t think he took against you. What must I show you now? I know, the ablutions.’

That was my first sight of Rowland Gwatkin. It could hardly have been more characteristic, in so much as he appeared on that occasion almost to perfection in the part for which he had cast himself: in command, something of a martinet, a trifle unapproachable to his subordinates, at the same time not without his human side, above all a man dedicated to duty. It was a clear-cut, hard-edged picture, into which Gwatkin himself, for some reason, never quite managed to fit. Even his name seemed to split him into two halves, poetic and prosaic, ‘Rowland’ at once suggesting high deeds:

… When Rowland brave, and Olivier,

And every paladin and peer,

On Roncesvalles died!

‘Gwatkin’, on the other hand, insinuated nothing more impressive than ‘little Walter’, which was not altogether inappropriate.

‘Rowland can be a bloody nuisance sometimes,’ said Kedward, when we knew each other better. ‘He thinks such a mighty lot of himself, do you know. Lyn Craddock’s dad is manager of Rowland’s branch, and he told Lyn, Rowland’s not all that bloody marvellous at banking. Not the sort that will join the Inspectorate, or anything like that, not by a long chalk. Rowland doesn’t care much about that, I expect. He just fancies himself as a great soldier. You should keep the right side of Rowland. He can be a tricky customer.’

That was precisely the impression of Gwatkin I had myself formed; that he took himself very seriously, was eminently capable of becoming disagreeable if he conceived a dislike for someone. At the same time, I felt an odd kind of interest in him, even attraction towards him. There was about him something melancholy, perhaps even tragic, that was hard to define. His excessively ‘regimental’ manner was certainly over and above anything as yet encountered among other officers of the Battalion. We were still, of course, existing in the comparatively halcyon days at the beginning of the war, when there was plenty to eat and drink, tempers better than they subsequently became. If you were over thirty, you thought yourself adroit to have managed to get into uniform at all, everyone behaving almost as if they were attending a peacetime practice camp (this was a Territorial unit), to be home again after a few weeks’ change of routine. Gwatkin’s manner was different from that. He gave the impression of being something more than a civilian keen on his new military role, anxious to make a success of an unaccustomed job. There was an air of resolve about him, the consciousness of playing a part to which a high destiny had summoned him. I suspected he saw himself in much the same terms as those heroes of Stendhal — not a Stendhalian lover, like Barnby, far from that — an aspiring, restless spirit, who, released at last by war from the cramping bonds of life in a provincial town, was about to cut a dashing military figure against a back-cloth of Meissonier-like imagery of plume and breastplate: dragoons walking their horses through the wheat, grenadiers at ease in a tavern with girls bearing flagons of wine. Esteem for the army — never in this country regarded, in the continental manner, as a popular expression of the national will — implies a kind of innocence. This was something quite different from Kedward’s hope to succeed. Kedward, so I found, did not deal in dreams, military or otherwise. By that time he and I were on our way back to the Mess. Kedward gratifyingly treated me as if we had known each other all our lives, not entirely disregarding our difference in age, it is true, but at least accepting that as a reason for benevolence.

‘I expect you’re with one of the Big Five, Nick,’ he said.

‘Big five what?’

‘Why, banks, of course.’

‘I’m not in a bank.’

‘Oh, aren’t you. You’ll be the exception in our Battalion.’

‘Is that what most of the officers do?’

‘All but about three or four. Where do you work?’

‘London.’

Banks expunged from Kedward’s mind as a presumptive vocation, he showed little further curiosity as to how otherwise I might keep going.

‘What’s London like?’

‘Not bad.’

‘Don’t you ever get sick of living in such a big place?’

‘You do sometimes.’

‘I’ve been in London twice,’ Kedward said. ‘I’ve got an aunt who lives there — Croydon — and I stayed with her. I went up to the West End several times. The shops are bloody marvellous. I wouldn’t like to work there though.’

‘You get used to it.’

‘I don’t believe I would.’

‘Different people like different places.’

‘That’s true. I like it where I was born. That’s quite a long way from where we are now, but it’s not all that different. I believe you’d like it where my home is. Most of our officers come from round there. By the by, we were going to get another officer reinforcement yesterday, as well as yourself, but he never turned up.’