Anthony Powell - The Valley of Bones

‘Maureen …’ he called.

He used that same peculiar cooing note he employed when answering the telephone.

‘Hull-ooe … hull-ooe …’ he would say, when he spoke into the instrument. Somehow that manner of answering seemed quite inappropriate to the rest of his character.

‘I wonder whether what we call politeness isn’t just weakness,’ he had once remarked.

This cooing certainly conveyed no impression of ruthless moral strength, neither on the telephone, nor at the counter of this pub. No one appeared. Gwatkin pronounced the name again.

‘Maur-een … Maur-een …’

Still nothing happened. Then a girl came through the door leading to the back of the house. She was short and thick-set, with a pale face and lots of black hair. I thought her good-looking, with that suggestion of an animal, almost a touch of monstrosity, some men find very attractive. Barnby once remarked: ‘The Victorians saw only refinement in women, it’s their coarseness makes them irresistible to me.’ Barnby would certainly have liked this girl.

‘Why, it would be yourself again, Captain Gwatkin,’ she said.

She smiled and put her hands on her hips. Her teeth were very indifferent, her eyes in deep, dark sockets, striking.

“Yes, Maureen.’

Gwatkin did not seem to know what to say next. He glanced in my direction, as if to seek encouragement. This speechlessness was unlike him. However, Maureen continued to talk herself.

‘And with another military gentleman too,’ she said. ‘What’ll ye be taking this evening now? Will it be porter, or is it a wee drop of whiskey this night, I’ll be wondering, Captain?’

Gwatkin turned to me.

‘Which, Nick?’

‘Guinness.’

‘That goes for me too,’ he said. ‘Two pints of porter, Maureen. I only drink whiskey when I’m feeling down. Tonight we’re out for a good time, aren’t we, Nick?’

He spoke in an oddly self-conscious manner. I had never seen him like this before. We seated ourselves at a small table by the wall. Maureen began to draw the stout. Gwatkin watched her fixedly, while she allowed the froth to settle, scraping its foam from the surface of the liquid with a saucer, then returning the glass under the tap to be refilled to the brim. When she brought the drinks across to us, she took a chair, refusing to have anything herself.

‘And what would be the name of this officer?’ she asked.

‘Second-Lieutenant Jenkins,’ said Gwatkin, ‘he’s one of the officers of my company.’

‘Is he now. That would be grand and all.’

‘We’re good friends,’ said Gwatkin soberly.

‘Then why haven’t ye brought him to see me before, Captain Gwatkin, I’ll be asking ye?’

‘Ah, Maureen, you see we work so hard,’ said Gwatkin. ‘We can’t always be coming to see you, do you understand. That’s just a treat for once in a while.’

‘Get along with ye,’ she said, smiling provocatively and showing discoloured teeth again, ‘yourself’s down here often enough, Captain Gwatkin.’

‘Not as often as I’d like, Maureen.’

Gwatkin had now recovered from the embarrassment which seemed to have overcome him on first entering the pub. He was no longer tongue-tied. Indeed, his manner suggested he was, in fact, more at ease with women than men, the earlier constraint merely a momentary attack of nerves.

‘And what would it be you’re all so busy with now?’ she asked. ‘Is it drilling and all that? I expect so.’

‘Drilling is some of it, Maureen,’ said Gwatkin. ‘But we have to practise all kind of other training too. Modern war is a very complicated matter, you must understand.’

This made her laugh again.

‘I’d have ye know my great-uncle was in the Connaught Rangers,’ she said, ‘and a fine figure of a man he was, I can promise ye. Why, they say he was the best-looking young fellow of his day in all County Monaghan. And brave too. Why, they say he killed a dozen Germans with his bayonet when they tried to capture him. The Germans didn’t like to meet the Irish in the last war.’

‘Well, it’s a risk the Germans won’t have to run in this one,’ said Gwatkin, speaking more gruffly than might have been expected in the circumstances. ‘Even here in the North there’s no conscription, and you see plenty of young men out of uniform.’

‘Why, ye wouldn’t be taking all the young fellows away from us, would ye?’ she asked, rolling her eyes. ‘It’s lonely we’d be if they all went to the war.’

‘Maybe Hitler will decide the South is where he wants to land his invasion force,’ said Gwatkin. ‘Then where will all your young men be, I’d like to know.’

‘Oh God,’ she said, throwing up her hands. ‘Don’t say it of the old blackguard. Would he do such a thing? You think he truly may, Captain Gwatkin, do ye?’

‘Shouldn’t be surprised,’ said Gwatkin.

‘Do you come from the other side of the Border yourself?’ I asked her.

‘Why, sure I do,’ she said smiling. ‘And how were you guessing that, Lieutenant Jenkins?’

‘I just had the idea.’

‘Would it be my speech?’ she said.

‘Perhaps.’

She lowered her voice.

‘Maybe, too, you thought I was different from these Ulster people,’ she said, ‘them that is so hard and fond of money and all.’

‘That’s it, I expect.’

‘So you’ve guessed Maureen’s home country, Nick,’ said Gwatkin. ‘I tell her we must treat her as a security risk and not go speaking any secrets in front of her, as she’s a neutral.’

Maureen began to protest, but at that moment two young men in riding breeches and leggings came into the pub. She rose from the chair to serve them. Gwatkin fell into one of his silences. I thought he was probably reflecting how odd was the fact that Maureen seemed just as happy talking and laughing with a couple of local civilians, as with the dashing officer types he seemed to envisage ourselves. At least he stared at the young men, an unremarkable pair, as if there were something about them that interested him. Then it turned out Gwatkin’s train of thought had returned to dissatisfaction with his own peacetime employment.

‘Farmers, I suppose,’ he said. ‘My grandfather was a farmer. He didn’t spend his time in a stuffy office.’

‘Where did he farm?’

‘Up by the Shropshire border.’

‘And your father took to office life?’

‘That was it. My dad’s in insurance. His firm sent him to another part of the country.’

‘Do you know that Shropshire border yourself?’

‘We’ve been up there for a holiday. I expect you’ve heard of the great Lord Aberavon?’

‘I have, as a matter of fact.’

‘The farm was on his estate.’

I had never thought of Lord Aberavon (first and last of his peerage) as a figure likely to go down to posterity as ‘great’, though the designation might no doubt reasonably be applied by those living in the neighbourhood. His name was merely memorable to myself as deceased owner of Mr Deacon’s Boyhood of Cyrus, the picture in the Walpole-Wilsons’ hall, which always made me think of Barbara Goring when I had been in love with her in pre-historic times. Lord Aberavon had been Barbara Goring’s grandfather; Eleanor Walpole-Wilson’s grandfather too. I wondered what had happened to Barbara, whether her husband,

Johnny Pardoe (who also owned a house in the country of which Gwatkin spoke) had been recalled to the army. Eleanor, lifelong friend of my sister-in-law, Norah Tolland, was now, like Norah herself, driving cars for some women’s service. Gwatkin by his words had certainly conjured up the past. He looked at me rather uncomfortably, as if he could read my mind, and knew I felt suddenly carried back into an earlier time sequence. He also had the air of wanting to elaborate what he had said, yet feared he might displease, or, at least, not amuse me. He cleared his throat and took a gulp of stout.