The Soldier's Art - Anthony Powell [14]
Here was Pharaoh, carved in the niche of a shrine between two tutelary deities, who shielded him from human approach. All was manifest. Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson and Colonel Pedlar were animal-headed gods of Ancient Egypt. Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson was, of course, Horus, one of those sculptured representations in which the Lord of the Morning Sun resembles an owl rather than a falcon; a bad-tempered owl at that. Colonel Pedlar’s dog’s muzzle, on the other hand, was a milder than normal version of the jackal-faced Anubis, whose dominion over Tombs and the Dead did indeed fall within A. & Q.’s province. Some of the others round about were less easy to place in the Egyptian pantheon. In fact, one came finally to the conclusion, none of them were gods at all, mere bondsmen of the temple. For example, Cocksidge, officer responsible for Intelligence duties, with his pale eager elderly-little-boy expression – although on the edge of thirty – was certainly the lowest of slaves, dusting only exterior, less sacred precincts of the shrine, cleaning out with his hands the priest’s latrine, if such existed on the temple premises. Next to Cocksidge sat Greening, the General’s A.D.C., pink cheeked, fair haired, good-natured, about twenty years old, probably an alien captive awaiting sacrifice on the altar of this anthropomorphic trinity. Before anyone else could be satisfactorily identified, Colonel Pedlar spoke.
“How went the battle, Derrick?” he asked.
There had been silence until then. Everyone was tired. Besides, although Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson and Colonel Pedlar were not on notably good terms with each other, they felt rank to inhibit casual conversation with subordinates. Both habitually showed anxiety to avoid a junior officer’s eye at meals in case speech might seem required. To make sure nothing so inadvertent should happen, each would uninterruptedly gaze into the other’s face across the table, with all the fixedness of a newly engaged couple, eternally enchanted by the charming appearance of the other. The colonels were, indeed, thus occupied when Colonel Pedlar suddenly put his question. This was undoubtedly intended as a form of expressing polite interest in his colleague’s day, rather than to show any very keen desire for further tactical information about the exercise, a subject with which Colonel Pedlar, and everyone else present, must by now be replete. However Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson chose to take the enquiry in the latter sense.
“Pretty bloody, Eric,” he said. “Pretty bloody. If you want to know about it, read the sit-rep.”
“I’ve read it, Derrick.”
The assonance of the two colonels’ forenames always imparted a certain whimsicality to their duologues.
“Read it again, Eric, read it again. I’d like you to. There are several points I want to bring up later.”
“Where is it, Derrick?”
Colonel Pedlar seemed to possess no intellectual equipment for explaining that he had absolutely no need, even less desire, to re-read the situation report. Perhaps, having embarked on the subject, he felt a duty to follow it up.
“Cocksidge will find it for you, Eric, writ in his own fair hand. Seek out the sit-rep, Jack.”
In certain moods, especially when he teased Widmerpool, the General was inclined to frame his sentences in a kind of Old English vernacular. Either because the style appealed equally to himself, or, more probably, because use of it implied compliment to the Divisional Commander, Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson also favoured this mode of speech. At his words, Cocksidge was on his feet in an instant, his features registering, as ever, deference felt for those of higher rank than himself. Cocksidge