The Valley of Bones

by Anthony Powell

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s all for you.’

  ‘All this?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can you really spare it?’

  ‘It’s meant for you. I thought you might not have any chocolate with you.’

  ‘I hadn’t.’

  He returned to the subject of the exercise, explaining, so far as possible, the stage things had reached, what our immediate movements were to be. I gnawed the chocolate. I had forgotten how good chocolate could be, wondering why I had never eaten more of it before the war. It was like a drug, entirely altering one’s point of view. I felt suddenly almost as warmly towards Gwatkin as to Corporal Gwylt, though nothing would ever beat that first sip of tea. Gwatkin and I had stopped by the side of the road to look at his map in the moonlight. Now he closed the case, buttoning down its flap.

  ‘I’m sorry I sent you off like that without any lunch,’ he said.

  ‘That was the order.’

  ‘No,’ said Gwatkin. ‘It wasn’t.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘There would have been lots of time for you to have had something to eat,’ he said.

  I did not know what to answer.

  ‘I had to work off on someone that rocket the CO gave me,’ he said. ‘You were the only person I could get at – anyway the first one I saw when I came back from the Colonel. He absolutely took the hide off me. I’d have liked to order the men off, too, right away, without their dinner, but I knew I’d only get another rocket – an even bigger one – if it came out they’d missed a meal unnecessarily through an order of mine.’

  I felt this a handsome apology, a confession that did Gwatkin credit. Even so, his words were nothing to the chocolate. There were still a few remains clinging to my mouth. I licked them from the back of my teeth.

  ‘Of course you’ve got to go,’ said Gwatkin vehemently, ‘lunch or no lunch, if it’s an order. Go and get caught up on a lot of barbed wire and be riddled by machine-gun fire, stabbed to death with bayonets against a wall, walk into a cloud of poison gas without a mask, face a flame-thrower in a narrow street. Anything. I don’t mean that.’

  I agreed, at the same time feeling no immediate necessity to dwell at length on such undoubtedly valid aspects of military duty. It seemed best to change the subject. Gwatkin had made amends – one of the rarest things for anyone to attempt in life – now he must be distracted from cataloguing further disagreeable potentialities to be encountered in the course of a soldier’s life.

  ‘Sergeant Pendry hasn’t been very bright today,’ I said. ‘I think he must be sick.’

  ‘I wanted to talk to you about Pendry,’ said Gwatkin.

  ‘You noticed he was in poor shape?’

  ‘He came to me last night. There wasn’t time to tell you before, with all the preparations going on for the exercise – or at least I forgot to tell you.’

  ‘What’s wrong with Pendry?’

  ‘His wife, Nick.’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘Pendry had a letter from a neighbour saying she was carrying on with another man.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘You keep on reading in the newspapers that the women of this country are making a splendid war effort,’ said Gwatkin, speaking with all that passion which would well up in him at certain moments. ‘If you ask me, I think they are making a splendid effort to sleep with as many other men as possible while their husbands are away.’

  Even if that were an exaggeration, as expressed by Gwatkin, it had to be admitted letters of this kind were common enough. I remembered my brother-in-law, Chips Lovell, once saying: ‘The popular Press always talk as if only the rich committed adultery. One really can’t imagine a more snobbish assumption.’ Certainly no one who administered the Company’s affairs for a week or two would make any mistake on that score. I asked Gwatkin if details were known about Pendry’s case. None seemed available.

  ‘It makes you sick,’ Gwatkin said.

  ‘I suppose the men have some fun too. It isn’t only the women. Not that any of us are given much time for it here – except perhaps Corporal Gwylt.’

  ‘It’s different for a man,’ said Gwatkin. ‘Unless he gets mixed up with a woman who makes him forget his duty.’

  These words recalled a film Moreland and I had seen together in days before the war. A Russian officer – the story had been set in Tsarist times – had reprimanded an unpunctual subordinate with just that phrase: ‘A woman who causes a man to neglect his duty is not worth a moment’s consideration.’ The young lieutenant in the film, so far as I could remember, had arrived late on parade because he had been spending the night with the Colonel’s mistress. Afterwards, Moreland and I had often quoted to each other that stern conclusion.

  ‘It’s just the way you look at it,’ Moreland had said. ‘I know Matilda, for instance, would take the line that no woman was worth a moment’s consideration unless she were capable of making a man neglect his duty. Barnby, on the other hand, would say no duty was worth a moment’s consideration if it forced you to neglect women. These things depend so much on the subjective approach.’

  I wondered if Gwatkin had seen the film too, and memorized that scrap of dialogue as a sentiment which appealed to him. On the whole it was unlikely that the picture, comparatively highbrow, had penetrated so deep in provincial distribution. Probably Gwatkin had simply elaborated the idea for himself. It was a high-minded, hut not specially original one. Widmerpool, for example, when involved with Gypsy Jones, had spoken of never again committing himself with a woman who took his mind from his work. Gwatkin rarely spoke of his own wife. He had once mentioned that her father was in bad health, and, if he died, his mother-in-law would have to come and live with them.

  ‘What are you going to do about Pendry?’ I asked.

  ‘Arrange for him to have some leave as soon as possible. I’m afraid that will deprive you of a platoon sergeant.’

  ‘Pendry will have to go on leave sooner or later in any case. Besides, he’s not much use in his present state.’

  ‘The sooner Pendry goes, the sooner he will bring all this trouble to a stop.’

  ‘If he can.’

  Gwatkin looked at me with surprise.

  ‘Everything will come right when he gets back home,’ he said.

  ‘Let’s hope so.’

  ‘Don’t you think Pendry will be able to deal with his wife?’

  ‘I don’t know anything about her.’

  ‘You mean she might want to go off with this other man?’

  ‘Anything might happen. Pendry might do her in. You can’t tell.’

  Gwatkin hesitated a moment.

  ‘You know that Rudyard Kipling book the other night?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There are sort of poems at the beginning of the stories.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘One of them always stuck in my head – at least bits of it. I can never remember all the words of anything like that.’

  Gwatkin stopped again. I feared he thought he had already said too much, and was not going to admit the verse of his preference.

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘It was about – was it some Roman god?’

  ‘Oh, Mithras.’

  ‘You remember it?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Extraordinary.’

  Gwatkin looked as if he could scarcely credit such a mental feat.

  ‘As you said, Rowland, it’s my profession to read a lot. But what about Mithras?’

  ‘Where it says “Mithras also a soldier—”’

  Gwatkin seemed to think that sufficient clue, that I must be able to guess by now all he hoped to convey. He did not finish the line.

  ‘Something about helmets scorching the forehead and sandals burning the feet. I can’t imagine anything worse than marching in sandals, especially on those cobbled Roman roads.’

  Gwatkin disregarded the logistic problem of sandal-shod infantry. He was very serious.

  ‘ “�
��keep us pure till the dawn”,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘What do you make of that?’

  ‘Probably a very necessary prayer for a Roman legionary.’

  Again, Gwatkin did not laugh.

  ‘Does that mean women?’ he asked, as if the notion had only just struck him.

  ‘I suppose so.’

  I controlled temptation to make flippant suggestions about other, more recondite vices, for which, with troops of such mixed origin as Rome’s legions, the god’s hasty moral intervention might be required. That sort of banter did not at all fit in with Gwatkin’s mood. Equally pointless, even hopelessly pedantic, would be a brief exegesis explaining that the Roman occupation of Britain, historically speaking, was rather different from the picture in the book. At best one would end up in an appalling verbal tangle about the relationship of fact and poetry.

  ‘Those lines make you think,’ said Gwatkin slowly.

  ‘About toeing the line?’

  ‘Make you glad you’re married,’ he said. ‘Don’t have to bother any more about women.’

  He turned back towards the place where we had first met. There was the sound of a car further up the road. The truck came into sight again. Gwatkin abandoned further speculations about Mithras. He became once more the Company Commander.

  ‘We’ve talked so much I haven’t inspected your platoon position,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing special I ought to see there?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Bring your men right away to the place I showed you on the map. We’ve got some farm buildings for a billet tonight. It’s not far from here. Everyone will have a bit of a rest. Nothing much expected of us until midday tomorrow All right?’

  ‘All right.’

  He climbed into the truck. It drove off again. I returned to the platoon. Sergeant Pendry came forward to report. He looked just as he had looked that morning; no better, no worse.

  ‘Captain Gwatkin just had a word with me about your leave, Sergeant. We’ll arrange that as soon as the exercise is over.’

  ‘Thank you very much, sir.’

  He spoke tonelessly, as if the question of leave did not interest him in the least.

  ‘Fall the platoon in now. We’re billeted in a farm near here. There’s prospect of some sleep.’

  ‘Right, sir.’

  As usual, the distance to march turned out further than expected. Rain came on again. However, the farm buildings were pretty comfortable when we arrived. The platoon was accommodated in a thatched barn where there was plenty of straw. Corporal Gwylt, as always, was unwilling to believe that agricultural surroundings could ever be tolerable.

  ‘Oh, what nasty smells there are here,’ he said. ‘I do not like all these cows.’

  I slept like a log that night. It must have been soon after breakfast the following morning, when I was checking sentry duties with Sergeant Pendry, that Breeze hurried into the barn to issue a warning.

  ‘A staff car flying the Divisional Commander’s pennon has just stopped by the road,’ Breeze said. ‘It must be a snap inspection by the General. Rowland says get all the men cleaning weapons or otherwise usefully occupied forthwith.’

  He rushed off to warn Kedward. I set about generating activity in the barn. Some of the platoon were at work removing mud from their equipment. Those not so obviously engaged on a useful task were found other commendable occupations. All was in order within a few minutes. This was not a moment too soon. There was the sound of a party of people approaching the barn. I looked out, and saw the General, his ADC and Gwatkin slopping through the mud of the farmyard.

  ‘They’re coming, Sergeant Pendry.’

  They entered the barn. Sergeant Pendry called those assembled to attention. It was at once obvious that General Liddament was not in the best of tempers. He was a serious looking man, young for his rank, cleanshaven, with the air of a scholar rather than a soldier. His recent taking over of the Division’s command was already to be noticed in small matters of routine. Though regarded by regular soldiers as something of a military pedant – so Maelgwyn-Jones had told Gwatkin – General Liddament was said to be an officer with ideas of his own. Possibly in order to counteract this reputation for an excessive precision in approach to his dudes, an imperfection of which he was probably aware and hoped to correct, the General allowed himself certain informalities of dress and turn-out. For example, he carried a long stick, like the wand of a verger in a cathedral, and wore a black-and-brown check scarf thrown carelessly about his neck. A hunting horn was thrust between the buttons of his battle-dress blouse. Maelgwyn-Jones also reported that two small dogs on a lead sometimes accompanied General Liddament, causing great disturbance when they squabbled with each other. Today must have been too serious an occasion for these animals to be with him. The presence of dogs would have increased his air of being a shepherd or huntsman, timeless in conception, depicted in the idealized pastoral scene of some engraving. However, General Liddament’s manner of speaking had none of this mild, bucolic tone.

  ‘Tell them to carry on,’ he said, pointing his long stick at me. ‘What’s the name of this officer?’

  ‘Second-lieutenant Jenkins, sir,’ said Gwatkin, who was under great strain.

  ‘How long have you been with this unit, Jenkins?’

  I told the General, who nodded. He asked some further questions. Then he turned away, as if he had lost all interest in me, all interest in human beings at all, and began rummaging furiously about the place with his stick. After exploring the corners of the barn, he set about poking at the roof.

  ‘Have your men been dry here?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘There is a leak in the thatch here.’

  ‘There is a leak in that corner, sir, but the men slept the other end.’

  The General, deep in thought, continued his prodding for some seconds without visible effect. Then, as he put renewed energy into the thrusts of his stick, which penetrated far into the roofing, a large piece of under-thatch all at once descended from above, narrowly missing General Liddament himself, completely overwhelming his ADC with debris of dust, twigs and loam. At that, the General abandoned his activities, as if at last satisfied. Neither he nor anyone else made any comment, nor was any amusement expressed. The ADC, a pink-faced young man, blushed hotly and set about cleaning himself up. The General turned to me again.

  ‘What did your men have for breakfast, Jenkins?’

  ‘Liver, sir.’

  I was impressed by his retention of my name.

  ‘What else?’

  ‘Jam, sir.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘Bread, sir – and margarine.’

  ‘Porridge?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘No issue, sir.’

  The General turned savagely on Gwatkin, who had fallen into a kind of trance, but now started agonisingly to life again.

  ‘No porridge?’

  ‘No porridge, sir.’

  General Liddament pondered this assertion for some seconds in resentful silence. He seemed to be considering porridge in all its aspects, bad as well as good. At last he came out with an unequivocal moral judgment.

  ‘There ought to be porridge,’ he said.

  He glared round at the platoon, hard at work with their polishing, oiling, pulling-through, whatever they were doing. Suddenly he pointed his stick at Williams, W. H., the platoon runner.

  ‘Would you have liked porridge?’

  Williams, W.H., came to attention. As I have said, Williams, W.H., was good on his feet and sang well. Otherwise, he was not particularly bright.

  ‘No, sir,’ he said instantly, as if that must be the right answer.

  The General was taken aback. It would not be too much to say he was absolutely staggered.

  ‘Why not?’

  General Liddament spoke sharply, but seriously, as if some excuse l
ike religious scruple about eating porridge would certainly be accepted as valid.

  ‘Don’t like it, sir.’

  ‘You don’t like porridge?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Then you’re a foolish fellow – a very foolish fellow.’

  After saying that, the General stood in silence, as if in great distress of mind, holding his long staff at arm’s length from him, while he ground it deep into the earthy surface of the barnhouse floor. He appeared to be trying to contemplate as objectively as possible the concept of being so totally excluded from the human family as to dislike porridge. His physical attitude suggested a holy man doing penance vicariously for the sin of those in his spiritual care. All at once he turned to the man next to Williams, W. H., who happened to be Sayce.

  ‘Do you like porridge?’ he almost shouted.

  Sayce’s face, obstinate, dishonest, covered with pock-marks showed determination to make trouble if possible, at the same time uncertainty as how best to achieve that object. For about half a minute Sayce turned over in his mind the pros and cons of porridge eating, just as he might reflect on the particular excuse most effective in extenuation of a dirty rifle barrel. Then he spoke.

  ‘Well, sir—’ he began.

  General Liddament abandoned Sayce immediately for Jones, D.

  ‘—and you?’

  ‘No sir,’ said Jones, D., also speaking with absolute assurance that a negative answer was expected of him.

  ‘—and you?’

  ‘No, sir,’ said Rees.

  Moving the long stick with feverish speed, as if he were smelling out witches, the General pointed successively at Davies, J., Davies, E., Ellis, Clements, Williams, G.

  No one had time to answer. There was a long pause at the end of the line. Corporal Gwylt stood there. He had been supervising the cleaning of the bren. General Liddament, whose features had taken on an expression of resignation, stood now leaning forward, resting his chin on the top of the stick, his head looking like a strange, rather malignant totem at the apex of a pole. He fixed his eyes on Gwylt’s cap badge, as if ruminating on the history of the Regiment symbolized in the emblems of its design.

  ‘And you, Corporal,’ he asked, this time quite quietly. ‘Do you like porridge?’