Anthony Powell - Hearing Secret Harmonies

‘Here’s Bith. I thought it might be him, but I never guessed what he’d bring with him. He can’t speak at present. Wait till he’s unwrapped the parcel.’

Henderson made an unsuccessful effort to get hold of this. Bithel clung on. He was, as described, entirely speechless. If Bithel had seemed filthy at Stourwater, out in the open, he looked infinitely filthier enclosed within the narrow confines of the gallery’s office. He smelt horrible. In the army he had admitted to an age in the late thirties, so now was at least seventy, if not more. He appeared a great deal older than that; some dreadful ancient, brought in from tramping the roads day in day out. A decaying push-teen, torn and grimy, covered patched corduroy trousers. This time his feet were in sandals.

‘Sit down, Bith. When did you get to London? Pretty early I’d guess from your state. Let’s have a look at the picture.’

Bithel, deposited in the other exotically designed armchair, evidently wanting desperately to make some statement, was literally unable to speak. What had at first seemed a mere state of drunkenness gave signs of being something more than that. Drink had at least brought no solace, none of the extreme garrulousness that had characterized Bithel’s army toping. He conveyed the air of a man, whatever his innately broken-down state, who had been seriously upset. That might be the form Bithel’s intoxication now took. Henderson was chiefly interested in the brown-paper parcel, trying to get it into his own hands, always failing. Then Bithel got a word out.

‘Scotch.’

‘Haven’t you had enough?’

‘Not… feeling… myself.’

‘No, you’re not your usual self, Bith, on a day off. All right. We’ll see what can be done.’

Henderson, opening a cupboard, brought back to the desk a bottle and glasses.

‘Now unwrap it. How did you manage? It wasn’t theft? You’re sure of that? I’m not going to handle it, if it’s stolen. There must be evidence you were allowed to take it. That’s absolutely definite.’

Bithel made a jerky movement of his shoulders, apparently indicating that nothing at all nefarious had taken place in regard to whatever was under discussion.

‘All right, but why can’t you say more? You’re not usually like this, Bith. You’ve had much too much. What will Scorp do to you? Try and tell me about it.’

Bithel took a deep gulp, finishing off the reasonably generous shot of whisky Henderson had poured for him. He held out the glass for more. Henderson allowed him an individual replenishment. I attempted to explain to Bithel that we had been comrades-in-arms. It was hard to think of an incident that had not reflected some unhappy moment in his own military career; any happy ones almost certainly experienced at times he would have been too drunk to recall.

‘Do you remember our Company Commander, Rowland Gwatkin?’

Bithel’s eyes, damp and bleary, suddenly reacted.

‘ Fol-low, fol-low, we will fol-low Gwatkin —

We will fol-low Gwatkin, everywhere he leads.’

Bithel sang the words gently. Their reference to romping round the Mess on Christmas night, following the Commanding Officer over tables and chairs, sideboards and sofas, must have been entirely lost on Henderson. In any case the Commanding Officer’s name had been Davies. Now Colonel was evidently merged as a single entity with Gwatkin in Bithel’s mind. Becoming more than ever impatient, Henderson once more tried to get hold of the parcel. Bithel demanded a third round before giving it up.

‘Not before I see the picture — know how you got it.’

Bithel made a violent effort to give an explanation.

‘Going to… be burnt.’

‘Scorp wanted to burn it. You rescued it?’

Bithel’s twitching face seemed to indicate that solution as near the mark.

‘Does Ken know?’

This question threw Bithel into a paroxysm of coughing, followed by an awful dry retching. He seemed about to vomit, something not at all out of the question in experience of him. An alternative possibility was apoplexy. When this violent attack was at an end he got out a sentence.

‘Lord Widmerpool’s… dead.’

‘What?’

Both Henderson and I exclaimed simultaneously.

‘Murdered.’

Bithel’s powers of speech made some sort of recovery now. He had contrived to articulate what was on his mind. This was when it became clear that nervous strain, at least as much as drink, was powerfully affecting him. In fact the whisky he had just drunk had undoubtedly pulled him together. At first his words, dramatically gasped out, aroused a picture of gun, knife, poison, length of lead piping.

Then one saw that Bithel was almost certainly speaking with exaggeration. Even so, some ritual — like the gash at The Devil’s Fingers — might have gone too far; for example, misuse of a dangerous drug. Allowing for overstatement, I was not at all sure which was meant. Henderson, with closer knowledge of the circumstances, seemed to regard anything as possible. He had gone white in the face.

‘Was he found dead? Has this just happened? Are the police in on it?’

‘Scorp was responsible. You can’t call it anything but murder. I’m not going back. I’ve left for good. I’m fond of Scorp — fonder than I’ve ever been of any boy — but he’s gone too far. I’m not going back.’

‘But what happened? You don’t really mean murder?’

‘What Scorp made him do.’

‘Say what that was.’

The story came out only by degrees. Even in a slightly improved condition Bithel was not easy to follow. In his — comparatively speaking — less dilapidated days, Bithel’s rambling narratives had been far from lucid. The events he had just been through seemed to have been enough to disturb anyone. They had, at the same time, to some degree galvanized him out of the state of brain-softening he had displayed at Stourwater. He kept on muttering to himself, his voice at times entirely dying away.

‘Lord Widmerpool ought never to have gone. Wasn’t fit. Wasn’t in the least fit. It was murder. Nothing short.’

That the old Bithel — with his respect for the ‘varsity man’ — survived under the tangled beard and foul rags, was shown by dogged adherence to calling Widmerpool by a title he had himself renounced by word and deed; if never by official procedure. After a bout of breathlessness, Bithel now showed signs of falling asleep. Henderson prodded him with a paper-knife.

‘What happened?’

Bithel opened his eyes. Henderson repeated the question.

‘What happened about Ken? *

‘We could all see Lord Widmerpool wasn’t well. He hadn’t been well for weeks. He was bloody ill, in fact. Not himself at all. He could hardly get up from the floor.’

I asked why Widmerpool was on the floor. Henderson explained that the cult did not use beds. Bithel groaned in confirmation of that.

‘When Lord Widmerpool did get up he was all shaky. He wasn’t fit, even though it was a warmish night last night. It was Scorp who insisted.’

‘Was Widmerpool unwilling to go?’

Bithel looked at me as if he did not understand what I was talking about. Even if prepared to accept that we had served in the same regiment, could recognize the same songs or horseplay, he certainly had not the least personal recollection of a common knowledge of Widmerpool.

‘Lord Widmerpool didn’t object. He wanted to be in Harmony. He always wanted that. He took a moment to get properly awake. At first he could hardly stand, when he got up from the floor. All the same, he took his clothes off.’

‘Why did he take his clothes off?’

Henderson explained that was the rite. He seemed to have fallen back into regarding what had gone forward as natural enough in the light of the ritual, a normal piece of ceremonial. Not only did he understand, he seemed a little carried away by the devotional aspects of the story.