The Valley of Bones - Anthony Powell [15]
2
THE MOVEMENT ORDER came not much more than a week afterwards, before I had properly awakened from the dream through the perspectives of which I ranged, London as remote from me as from Kedward, Isobel’s letters the only residuum of a world occupied by other matters than platoon training or turning out the guard. As if by the intoxication of a drug, or compulsive hypnotic influences on the will, another world had been entered by artificial means, through which one travelled irresistibly, ominously, like Dr Trelawney and his fellow magicians, borne by their spells out on to the Astral Plane. Now, at last, I was geared to the machine of war, no longer an extraneous organism existing separately in increasingly alien conditions. For the moment, routine duties scarcely allowed thought. There was a day frantically occupied with packing. Then the whole Battalion was on parade. Orders were shouted. We moved off in column of route, leaving behind us Sardis, one of the Seven Churches of Asia, where the garments were white of those few who remained undefiled. The men, although departing from their own neighbourhoods and country, were in a fairly buoyant mood. Something was beginning at last. They sang softly:
‘Guide me, O thou great Jehovah,
Pilgrim through this barren land:
I am weak, but thou art mighty,
Hold me with thy powerful hand,
Bread of heaven,
Bread of heaven
Feed me till I want no more …’
This singing on the march, whatever form it took, always affirmed the vicissitudes of life, the changes, so often for the worse, that beset human existence, especially in the army, especially in time of war. After a while they abandoned the hymn, though not those accustomed themes of uncertainty, hardship, weariness, despondency, vain effort, contemplation of which gives such support to the soldier:
‘We had ter join,
We had ter join,
We had ter join Belisha’s army:
Ten bob a week,
Bugger all to eat,
Great big boots and blisters on yer feet.
We had ter join,
We had ter join,
We had ter join Belisha’s army:
Sitting on the grass,
Polishing up the brass,
Great black spiders running up yer – back.
We had ter join – we had ter join—
We had ter join – we had ter join …’
Gwatkin was in a state of unconcealed excitement. He bawled out his commands, loud as if through a megaphone, perpetually checking Kedward, Breeze and myself about minor matters. I could just see Bithel plodding along with his platoon at the rear of the company immediately ahead of us. He had turned up on parade carrying a small green leather dressing-case, much battered, which he grasped while he marched.
‘Didn’t like to trust it with the heavy baggage,’ he said, adjusting the worn waterproof cover, while we stood easy at the railway station. ‘The only piece of my mother’s luggage I have left. She’s gone to a Better Place now, you know.’
The train set out towards the north. This was the beginning of a long journey to an unknown destination. Night fell. Hours later, we detrained in stygian darkness. Here was a port. Black craft floated on a pitchy, infernal lake. Beyond the mouth of the harbour, the wash of waves echoed. The boat on which the Battalion embarked was scarcely large enough to accommodate our strength. The men were fitted in at last, sitting or lying like the cargo of a slave ship. The old steamer chugged away from the jetty, and into open sea. Wind was up. We heaved about in choppy waters. There was not going to be much sleep for anyone that night. After much scurrying about on the part of officers and NCOs, Sergeant Pendry reported at last that all was correct. He was accompanied by Corporal Gwylt, one of the Company’s several wits, tiny, almost a dwarf, with a huge head of black curly hair; no doubt a member of that primitive race of which the tall, fair Celt had become overlord. Not always to be relied upon to carry out purely military duties to perfection, Gwylt was acceptable as an NCO because he never stopped talking and singing, so that his personality, though obtrusive, helped the Platoon through some of the tedium inseparable from army life.