Hearing Secret Harmonies - Anthony Powell [89]
‘Extraordinary I should not only have forgotten about Donners, but used that erroneous formula, there being no death, only transition, blending, synthesis, mutation – just as there are no marriages, except mystic marriages. Marriages that transcend the boundaries of awareness, the un-manifest solutions of Harmony, galvanized by meditation and appropriate rites, the source of all Power – rather than the lethal manufacture of tensions as constructed in these very surroundings today.’
Widmerpool’s observations on such matters were suddenly interrupted by a burst of singing. The notes, thin and quavering, possessed something of Flavia Wisebite’s conversational tones, mysteriously transmuted to music, weird, eerie, not at all unpleasant all the same. They came from the other elderly man, the bearded one, who had still moved no nearer to join the rest of the group.
‘Open now the crystal fountain,
Whence the healing stream doth flow:
Let the fire and cloudy pillar
Lead me all my journey through.’
Widmerpool started violently. It was as if someone had touched him with a red-hot iron. Then he recovered himself, was about to go on talking.
‘Who is that singing?’
‘Take no notice. He’s all right, if left alone. He finds Harmony in singing that sort of thing.’
The bearded man stood a little way apart, hands clasped, eyes uplifted. He had hardly more hair on his head than Gwinnett. Something about the singing suggested he had absolutely no teeth. It crossed my mind that the old red high-necked sweater he wore, over torn corduroy trousers, might have been passed on by Widmerpool himself. The beard was matted and grubby, his feet bare and horrible. Entirely self-occupied, he took no notice at all of what was otherwise going on. What he chose to sing altogether distracted my attention from Widmerpool’s discourse on death and marriage. The strains brought back the early days of the war. It was the hymn my Regiment used to sing on the line of march. The chant seemed to disturb Widmerpool, irritate, upset him. His expression became more agonized than ever.
‘Don’t you remember the men singing that on route marches?’
‘Singing what?’
Widmerpool, himself on the staff of the Division of which my Battalion had been one of the units, might not have heard the motif so often as I, but the tune could hardly have passed entirely unnoticed, even by someone so uninterested in human behaviour.
‘Who is he?’
‘One of us.’
Widmerpool had to be pressed for an answer. He was prepared to agree that I might have heard the verse sung before.
‘True, true. He’s a man I apparently ran across in the army. Somebody brought him along to us. He’d been a dropout for years – before people knew about an alternative lifestyle – and was at the end of his tether. We thought he was going to pass over. When he got better, Scorp took a fancy to him. At the time he came to us, I didn’t remember seeing him before. Didn’t recognize him at all. Then one day Bith brought it all up himself.’
‘Bith?’
‘He’s named Bithel. I seem to have known him in the army. Through no fault of my own, it seems I had something to do with his leaving the army. Many people would have been grateful for that. Scorp likes Bith. Thinks he contributes to Harmony. I expect he does. Scorp is usually right about that sort of thing.’
Widmerpool sighed.
‘But I know Bithel too. I knew all about him in those days. He commanded the Mobile Laundry. Don’t you remember?’
Widmerpool looked blank. While he had been speaking these words, his thoughts were evidently far away. He was almost talking to himself. If he had forgotten about the death of Sir Magnus Donners, he could well have forgotten about Bithel; even the fact that he and I had soldiered together. In any case the matter did not interest him so far as Bithel was concerned. He was evidently thinking of himself, overcome now with self-pity.
‘When Scorp found out that I’d had to tell Bith he must leave the army – leave the Mobile Laundry, you say – Scorp made me do penance. What happened had been duty – what I then quite wrongly thought duty to be