Anthony Powell - The Valley of Bones

Before CSM Cadwallader could say more — not a man to take lightly opportunity to speak at length on the occasion of such a leave-taking, he was certainly going to say more, much more — Corporal Gwylt came running up. He saluted perfunctorily. Evidently I was not the object of his approach. He was tousled and out of breath.

‘Excuse me, sir, may I speak to the Sergeant-Major?’

‘Go ahead.’

Gwylt could hardly contain his indignation.

‘Somebody’s broke in and stole the Company’s butter, Sergeant-Major, and the lock’s all bust and the wire ripped out of the front of the meat-safe where it was put, and the Messing Corporal do think it be that bugger Sayce again that has taken the butter to flog it, so will you come and see right away, the Messing Corporal says, that we have your witness, Sergeant-Major, if there’s a Summary of Evidence like there was those blankets …’

CSM Cadwallader shortened his speech in preparation to a mere goodbye and grip of the hand. There was no alternative in the circumstances. He looked disappointed, but characteristically put duty before even the most enjoyably sententious of valedictions. He and Corporal Gwylt hurried off together. By this time the truck that was to take me to Divisional Headquarters had driven up. An NCO was parading the men who were to travel up in it for medical treatment. Gwatkin appeared. He had been busy all the morning, but had promised he would turn up to see me off. We talked for a minute or two about Company arrangements, revisions proposed by Kedward. Gwatkin had resumed his formality of manner.

‘Perhaps you’ll arrive at the ITC yourself, Nick,’ he said, ‘on the way to something better, of course, but it’s used as a place of transit. I trust I’ll be gone by then, but it would be good to meet.’

‘We may both turn up on the same staff,’ I said, without great seriousness.

‘No,’ he said gravely, ‘I’ll never get on the staff. I don’t mind that. All I want is to carry out regimental duties properly.’

He tapped his gaiter with the swagger stick he carried. Then his tone changed.

‘I had some rather bad news from home this morning,’ he said.

‘You’re not in luck.’

‘My father-in-law passed away. I think I told you he had been ill for some time.’

‘You did. I’m sorry. Did you get on very well with him?’

‘Pretty well,’ said Gwatkin, ‘but this will mean Blodwen’s mother will have to move in with us. I like her all right, but I’d rather that didn’t have to happen. Look, Nick, you won’t speak to anyone about last night.’

‘Of course not.’

‘It was bloody awful,’ he said.

‘Of course.’

‘But a lesson to me.’

‘One never takes lessons to heart. It’s just a thing people talk about — learning by experience and all that.’

‘Oh, but I do take lessons to heart,’ he said. ‘What do you think then?’

‘That one just gets these knocks from time to time.’

‘You believe that?’

‘Yes.’

‘You really believe that everyone has that sort of thing happen to them?’

‘In different ways.’

Gwatkin considered the matter for a moment.

‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘I can’t help thinking it was just because I was such a bloody fool, what with Maureen and making a balls of the Company too. I thought at least I was being some good as a soldier, but I was bloody wrong.’

I thought of Pennistone and his quotations from Vigny.

‘A French writer who’d been a regular officer said the whole point of soldiering was its bloody boring side. The glamour, such as it was, was just a bit of exceptional luck if it came your way.’

‘Did he?’ said Gwatkin.

He spoke without a vestige of interest. I was impressed for the ten thousandth time by the fact that literature illuminates life only for those to whom books are a necessity. Books are unconvertible assets, to be passed on only to those who possess them already. Before I could decide whether it was worth making a final effort to ram home Vigny’s point, or whether further energy thus expended was as wasteful of Gwatkin’s time as my own, Kedward crossed the yard.

‘Rowland,’ he said, ‘come to the cookhouse at once, will you. It’s serious.’

‘What’s happened?’ said Gwatkin, not pleased by this interruption.

‘The Company butter’s been flogged. So far as I can see, storage arrangements have been quite irregular. I’d like you to be present while I check facts with the CQMS and the Messing Corporal. Another thing, the galantine that’s just arrived is bad. Its disposal must be authorized by an officer. I’ve got to straighten out this butter business before I do anything else. Nick, will you go along and sign for the galantine. Just a formality. It’s round at the back by the ablutions.’

‘Nick’s just off to Div HQ,’ said Gwatkin.

‘Oh, are you, Nick?’ said Kedward. ‘Well best of luck, but you will sign for the galantine first, won’t you?’

‘Of course.’

‘Goodbye, then.’

‘Goodbye, Idwal, and good luck.’

Kedward hastily shook my hand, then rushed off to the scene of the butter robbery, saying: ‘Don’t be long, Rowland.’

Gwatkin shook my hand too. He smiled in an odd sort of way, as if he dimly perceived it was no good battling against Fate, which, seen in right perspective, almost always provides a certain beauty of design, sometimes even an occasional good laugh.

‘I leave you to your galantine, Nick,’ he said. ‘Best of luck.’

I gave him a salute for the last time, feeling he deserved it. Gwatkin marched away, looking a trifle absurd with his little moustache, but somehow rising above that. I went off in the other direction, where the burial certificate of the galantine awaited signature. A blazing sun was beating down. For this, my final duty at Castlemallock, Corporal Gwylt, who was representing the Messing Corporal, elsewhere engaged in the butter investigation, had arranged the galantine, an immense slab of it, in its wrappings on a kind of bier, looking like a corpse in a mortuary. Beside the galantine, he had placed a pen and the appropriate Army Form.

‘Oh, that galantine do smell something awful, sir,’ he said. ‘Sign the paper without smelling it, I should, sir.’

‘I’d better make sure.’

I inclined my head with caution, then quickly withdrew it. Corporal Gwylt was absolutely right. The smell was appalling, indescribable. Shades of the Potemkin, I thought, wondering if I were going to vomit. After several deep breaths, I set my name to the document, confirming animal corruption.

‘I’m leaving now, Corporal Gwylt. Going up to Division. I’ll say goodbye.’

‘You’re leaving the Company, sir?’

‘That I am.’

The Battalion’s form of speech was catching.

‘Then I’m sorry, sir. Good luck to you. I expect it will be nice up at Division.’

‘Hope so. Don’t get into too much mischief with the girls.’

‘Oh, those girls, sir, they never give you any peace, they don’t.’

‘You must give up girls and get a third stripe. Then you’ll be like the Sergeant-Major and not think of girls any longer.’

‘That I will, sir. It will be better, though I’ll not be the man the Sergeant-Major is, I haven’t the height. But don’t you believe the Sergeant-Major don’t like girls. That’s just his joke. I know they put something in the tea to make us not want them, but it don’t do boys like me no good, it seem, nor the Sergeant-Major either.’

We shook hands on it. Any attempt to undermine the age-old army legend of sedatives in the tea would be as idle as to lecture Gwatkin on Vigny. I returned to the truck, and climbed up beside the driver. We rumbled through the park with its sad decayed trees, its Byronic associations. In the town, Maureen was talking to a couple of corner-boys in the main street. She waved and blew a kiss as we drove past, more as a matter of routine, I thought, than on account of any flattering recognition of myself, because she seemed to be looking in the direction of the men at the back of the truck, who, on passing, had raised some sort of hoot at her. Now they began to sing: