Anthony Powell - The Valley of Bones

‘I will buy you a bitter, Idwal,’ said Breeze.

Kedward accepted the offer.

‘Finland is still knocking the Red Army about on the news,’ he said. ‘We may go there yet.’

Pumphrey, another of our non-banking officers (he sold second-hand cars), beckoned us to join the group with the chaplains. Red-haired, noisy, rather aggressive, Pumphrey was always talking of exchanging from the army into the RAF.

‘This is our new reinforcement, Yanto,’ he shouted, ‘Lieutenant Bithel. He’s just reported his arrival at the Orderly Room and has been shown his quarters. Now he’s wetting his whistle with me and the padres.’

We pushed through the crowd towards them.

‘Here is Iltyd Popkiss, the C. of E.,’ said Breeze, ‘and Ambrose Dooley that saves the souls of the RCs, and is a man to tell you some stories to make you sit up.’

Popkiss was small and pale. It was at once evident that he had a hard time of it keeping up with his Roman Catholic colleague in heartiness and avoidance of seeming strait-laced. Dooley, a large dark man with an oily complexion and appearance of not having shaved too well that morning, accepted with complaisance this reputation as a retailer of hair-raising anecdote. The two chaplains seemed on the best of terms. Bithel himself smiled timidly, revealing under his straggling moustache a double row of astonishingly badly fitting false teeth. He hesitantly proffered a flabby hand. His furtiveness was quite disturbing.

‘I’ve just been telling them what an awful journey I had coming here from where I live,’ he said. ‘The Adjutant was very decent about the muddle that had been made. It was the fault of the War Office as usual. Anyway, I’m here now, glad to be back with the Regiment and having a drink, after all I’ve been through.’

I thought at first he might be a commercial traveller by profession, as he spoke as if accustomed to making social contacts by way of a kind of patter, though he seemed scarcely sure enough of himself for that profession. The way he talked might be caused by mere embarrassment. The cloth of his tunic was stained on the lapels with what seemed egg, the trousers ancient and baggy. He looked as if he had consumed quite a few drinks already. There could be no doubt, I saw with relief, that he was older than myself. If he had ever played rugby for Wales, he had certainly allowed himself to run disastrously to seed. There could be no doubt about that either. He seemed almost painfully aware of his own dilapidation, also of the impaired state of his uniform, at which he now looked down apologetically, holding out the flap of one of the pockets from its tarnished button for our inspection.

‘When I’m allotted a batman, I’ll have to get this tunic pressed,’ he said. ‘Haven’t worn it since I was in Territorial camp fifteen or more years ago. Managed to spill a glass of gin-and-italian over the trousers on the way here, I don’t know how.’

‘You won’t get any bloody marvellous valeting from your batman here, I’m telling you,’ said Pumphrey. ‘He’ll be more used to hewing coal than pressing suits, and you’ll be lucky if he even gets a decent polish on those buttons of yours, which are needing a rub up.’

‘I suppose we mustn’t expect too much now there’s a war on,’ said Bithel, unhappy that he might have committed a social blunder by speaking of pressing tunics. ‘But what about another round. It’s my turn, padre.’

He addressed himself to the Anglican chaplain, but Father Dooley broke in vigorously.

‘If I go on drinking so much of this beer, it will have a strong effect on my bowels,’ he said, ‘but all the same I will oblige you, my friend.’

Bithel smiled doubtfully, evidently not much at ease with such plain speaking in the mouth of the clergy.

‘I don’t think one more will do us any harm,’ he said. ‘I drink a fair amount of ale myself in civilian life without bad results.’

‘You want to keep your bowels open anyway,’ said

Dooley, pursuing the subject. ‘That’s what I believe in. Have a good sluicing every day. Nothing like it.’

He held up his glass to the light, as if assessing the aperient potentialities of the contents.

‘Army food gives me squitters anyway,’ he went on, roaring with delight at the thought. ‘I’ve hardly had a moment’s peace since we mobilized.’

‘It makes me as constipated as an owl,’ said Pumphrey. ‘I should just about say so.’

Dooley finished his beer at a gulp, again giving his jolly monk’s laugh at the thought of man’s digestive vicissitudes.

‘Even if I’m all bound up, I always carry plenty of toilet paper round with me,’ he said. ‘Never be without it. That’s my rule. You can’t know when you’re not going to be taken short in the army.’

‘That’s a good notion,’ said Pumphrey. ‘We must follow His Reverence’s advice, mustn’t we. Take proper precautions in case we have to spend a penny. Perhaps you do already, Iltyd. The Church seems to teach these things.’

‘Oh, why, yes, I do indeed,’ said Popkiss.

‘What do you take Iltyd for?’ said Dooley. ‘He’s an old campaigner, aren’t you, Iltyd?’

‘Why, yes, indeed,’ said Popkiss, evidently pleased to be given this opening, ‘and what do you think? In my last unit, when I took off my tunic to play billiards one night, they did such a trick on me. You’d never guess. They wrapped a french letter, do you know, between those sheets of toilet paper in my pocket.’

There was a good deal of laughter at this, in which the RC chaplain amicably joined, although it was clear from his expression that he recognised Popkiss to have played a card he himself might find hard to trump.

‘And did it fall out in the middle of Church Parade?’ asked Pumphrey, after he had finished guffawing.

‘No, indeed, thank to goodness. I just found it next day on my dressing table by my dog-collar. I threw it down the lavatory and pulled the chain. Very thankful I was when it went away, which was not for a long time. I pulled the chain half a dozen times, I do believe.’

‘Now listen to what happened to me when I was with the 2nd/14th—’ began Father Dooley.

I never heard the climax of this anecdote, no doubt calculated totally to eclipse in rough simplicity of language and narrative force anything further Popkiss might attempt to offer, in short to blow the Anglican totally out of the water. I was sorry to miss this consummation, because Dooley obviously felt his own reputation as a raconteur at stake, a position he was determined to retrieve. However, before the story was properly begun, Bithel drew me to one side.

‘I’m not sure I like all this sort of talk,’ he muttered in an undertone. ‘Not used to it yet, I suppose. You must feel the same. You’re not the rough type. You were at the University, weren’t you?’

I admitted to that.

‘Which one?’

I told him. Bithel had certainly had plenty to drink that day. He smelt strongly of alcohol even in the thick atmosphere of the saloon bar. Now, he sighed deeply.

‘I was going to the ’varsity myself,’ he said. ‘Then my father decided he couldn’t afford it. Business was a bit rocky at that moment. He was an auctioneer, you know, and had run into a spot of trouble as it happened. Nothing serious, though people in the neighbourhood said a lot of untrue and nasty things at the time. Nothing people won’t say. He passed away soon after that. I suppose I could have sent myself up to college, so to speak. The money would just about have run to it in those days. Somehow, it seemed too late by then. I’ve always regretted it. Makes a difference to a man, you know. You’ve only got to look round this bar.’

He swayed a little, adjusting his balance by clinging to the counter.