Anthony Powell - The Valley of Bones

‘You remember Lord Aberavon’s family name?’ he asked.

‘Why, now I come to think of it, wasn’t it “Gwatkin”?’

‘It was — same as mine. He was called Rowland too.’

He said that very seriously.

‘I’d quite forgotten. Was he a relation?’

Gwatkin laughed apologetically.

‘No, of course he wasn’t,’ he said.

‘Well, he might have been.’

‘What makes you think so?’

‘You never know with names.’

‘If so, it was miles distant,’ said Gwatkin.

‘That’s what I mean.’

‘I mean so distant, he wasn’t a relation at all,’ Gwatkin said. ‘As a matter of fact my grandfather, the old farmer I was talking about, used to swear we were the same lot, if you went back far enough — right back, I mean.’

‘Why not, indeed?’

I remembered reading one of Lord Aberavon’s obituaries, which had spoken of the incalculable antiquity of his line, notwithstanding his own modest start in a Liverpool shipping firm. The details had appealed to me.

‘Wasn’t it a very old family?’

‘So they say.’

‘Going back to Vortigern — by one of his own daughters? I’m sure I read that.’

Gwatkin looked uncertain again, as if he felt the discussion had suddenly got out of hand, that there was something inadmissible about my turning out to know so much about Gwatkin origins. Perhaps he was justified in thinking that.

‘Who was Vortigern?’ he asked uneasily.

‘A fifth-century British prince. You remember — he invited Hengist and Horsa. All that. They came to help him. Then he couldn’t get rid of them.’

It was no good. Gwatkin looked utterly blank. Hengist and Horsa meant nothing to him; less, if anything, than Vortigern. He was unimpressed by the sinister splendour of the derivations indicated as potentially his own; indeed, totally uninterested in them. Thought of Lord Aberavon’s business acumen kindled him more than any steep ascent in the genealogies of ancient Celtic Britain. His romanticism, though innate, was essentially limited — as often happens — by sheer lack of imagination. Vortigern, I saw, was better forgotten. I had deflected Gwatkin’s flow of thought by ill-timed pedantry.

‘I expect my grandfather made up most of the stuff,’ he said. ‘Just wanted to be thought related to a man of the same name who left three-quarters of a million.’

He now appeared to regret ever having let fall this confidence regarding his own family background, refusing to be drawn into further discussion about his relations, their history or the part of the country they came from. I thought how odd, how typical of our island — unlike the Continent or America in that respect — that Gwatkin should put forward this claim, possibly in its essentials reasonable enough, be at once attracted and repelled by its implications, yet show no wish to carry the discussion further. Was it surprising that, in such respects, foreigners should find us hard to understand? Odd, too, I felt obstinately, that the incestuous Vortigern should link Gwatkin with Barbara Goring and Eleanor Walpole-Wilson. Perhaps it all stemmed from that ill-judged negotiation with Hengist and Horsa. Anyway, it linked me, too, with Gwatkin in a strange way. We had some more stout. Maureen was now too deeply involved in local gossip with the young farmers, if farmers they were, to pay further attention to us. Their party had been increased by the addition of an older man of similar type, with reddish hair and the demeanour of a professional humorist. There was a good deal of laughter. We had to fetch our drinks from the counter ourselves. This seemed to depress Gwatkin still further. We talked rather drearily of the affairs of the Company. More customers came in, all apparently on the closest terms with Maureen. Gwatkin and I drank a fair amount of stout. Finally, it was time to return.

‘Shall we go back to barracks?’

This designation of Castlemallock on Gwatkin’s part added nothing to its charms. He turned towards the bar as we were leaving.

‘Good night, Maureen.’

She was having too good a joke with the red-haired humorist to hear him.

‘Good night, Maureen,’ Gwatkin said again, rather louder.

She looked up, then came round to the front of the bar.

‘Good night to you, Captain Gwatkin, and to you, Lieutenant Jenkins,’ she said, ‘and don’t be so long in coming to see me again, the pair of ye, or it’s vexed with you both I’d be.’

We waved farewell. Gwatkin did not open his mouth until we reached the outskirts of the town. Suddenly he took a deep breath. He seemed about to speak; then, as if he could not give sufficient weight to the words while we walked, he stopped and faced me.

‘Isn’t she marvellous?’ he said.

‘Who, Maureen?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘She seemed a nice girl.’

‘Is that all you thought, Nick?’

He spoke with real reproach.

‘Why, yes. What about you? You’ve really taken a fancy to her, have you?’

‘I think she’s absolutely wonderful,’ he said.

We had had, as I have said, a fair amount to drink — the first time since joining the unit I had drunk more than two or three half-pints of beer — but no more than to loosen the tongue, not sufficient to cause amorous hallucination. Gwatkin was obviously expressing what he really felt, not speaking in an exaggerated manner to indicate light desire. The reason of those afternoon trances, that daydreaming while he nursed the Company’s rubber-stamp, were now all at once apparent, affection for Castlemallock also explained. Gwatkin was in love. All love affairs are different cases, yet, at the same time, each is the same case. Moreland used to say love was like sea-sickness. For a time everything round you heaved about and you felt you were going to die — then you staggered down the gangway to dry land, and a minute or two later could hardly remember what you had suffered, why you had been feeling so ghastly. Gwatkin was at the earlier stage.

‘Have you done anything about it?’

‘About what?’

‘About Maureen.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, taken her out, something like that.’

‘Oh, no.’

‘Why not?’

‘What would be the good?’

‘I don’t know. I should have thought it might be enjoyable, if you feel like that about her.’

‘But I’d have to tell her I’m married.’

‘Tell her by all means. Put your cards on the table.’

‘But do you think she’d come?’

‘I shouldn’t wonder.’

‘You mean — try and seduce her?’

‘I suppose that was roughly the line indicated — in due course.’

He looked at me astonished. I felt a shade uncomfortable, rather like Mephistopheles unexpectedly receiving a hopelessly negative reaction from Faust. Such an incident in opera, I thought, might suggest a good basis for an aria.

‘Some of the chaps you meet in the army never seem to have heard of women,’ Odo Stevens had said. ‘You never know in the Mess whether you’re sitting next to a sex-maniac of nineteen or a middle-aged man who doesn’t know the facts of life.’

In Gwatkin’s case, I was surprised by such scruples, even though I now recalled his attitude towards the case of Sergeant Pendry. In general, the younger officers of the Battalion were, like Kedward, engaged, or, like Breeze, recently married. They might, like Pumphrey, talk in a free and easy manner, but it was their girl or their wife who clearly preoccupied them. In any case, there had been no time for girls for anyone, married or single, before we reached Castlemallock. Gwatkin was certainly used to the idea of Pumphrey trying to have a romp with any barmaid who might be available. He had never seemed to disapprove of that. I knew nothing of his married life, except what Kedward had told me, that Gwatkin had known his wife all their lives, had previously wanted to marry Breeze’s sister.