The Valley of Bones - Anthony Powell [23]
‘I’d like to try driving one of those buses,’ Kedward said.
‘They’re easy enough,’ said Gwatkin.
He scrambled into the nearest carrier and started up the engine. However, when he put the vehicle in gear, it refused to move, only rocking backwards and forwards on its tracks. Gwatkin’s small head and black moustache bobbed up and down at the end of the carrier, so that he seemed part of the chassis, a kind of figurehead, even the front half of an armoured centaur. There was also something that recalled a knight in the game of chess, immensely large and suddenly animated by some inner, mysterious power. For a time Gwatkin heaved up and down there, as if riding one of the cars on a warlike merry-go-round; then completely defeated by the machinery, perhaps out of order, he climbed slowly to the ground and rejoined us.
‘I shouldn’t have done that,’ he said, humiliated.
All the same, this sort of thing did not at all impair his confidence in himself when it came to dealing with the men. Gwatkin prided himself on his relationship with the ‘other ranks’ in his company. He did not talk about it much, but the conviction was implicit in his behaviour. His attitude towards Sayce provided a good example. That was clear even before I witnessed their great scene together. Sayce was the Company bad character. He had turned up with another couple of throw-outs voided as unsuitable for employment from one of the regular battalions. His previous unit must have been thankful to get rid of him. Small and lean, with a yellow face and blackened teeth, his shortcomings were not to be numbered. Apart from such recurrent items as lateness on parade, deficiency of shaving kit, lack of clean socks, mislaid paybook, filthy rifle, generally unsatisfactory turnout, Sayce would produce some new, hitherto unthought-of crime most days. Dirty, disobliging, quarrelsome, little short of mutinous, he was heartily disliked by all ranks. Although a near criminal, he possessed none of the charm J. G. Quiggin, as a reviewer, used to attribute to criminals who wrote memoirs. On the contrary, Sayce, immoderately vain, was also stupid and unprepossessing. From time to time, in order to give him a chance to redeem himself from a series of disasters, he would be assigned some individual task, easy to undertake, but within range of conferring credit by its simple discharge. Sayce always made a hash of it; always, too, for the worst of reasons. He seemed preordained for detention.
‘It will be the Glasshouse for that bugger Sayce,’ Sergeant Pendry, who got along pretty well with almost everyone, used often to remark.
In dealing with Sayce, therefore, it might be thought Gwatkin would assume his favoured role of martinet, imposing a series of punishments that would eventually bring Sayce before the Commanding Officer; and certainly Sayce took his share of CBs from Gwatkin in the Company Office. At the same time, their point of contact, at least on Gwatkin’s side, was not entirely unsympathetic. The fact was, Sayce appealed to Gwatkin’s imagination. Those stylized pictures of army life on which Gwatkin’s mind loved to dwell did not exclude a soldier of Sayce’s type. Indeed, a professional bad character was obviously a type from which no army could remain wholly free. Accordingly, Gwatkin was prepared to treat Sayce with what many company commanders would have considered excessive consideration, to tolerate him up to a point, even to make serious efforts to reform him. Gwatkin had spoken to me more than once about these projects for Sayce’s reformation, before he finally announced that he had planned a direct appeal to Sayce’s better feelings.
‘I’m going to have a straight talk with Sayce,’ he said one day, when Sayce’s affairs had reached some sort of climax. I’d like you to be present, Nick, as he’s in your platoon.’
Gwatkin sat at the trestle table with the army blanket over it. I stood behind. Sayce, capless, was marched in by CSM Cadwallader and a corporal.
‘You and the escort can leave the room, Sergeant-Major,’ said Gwatkin. ‘I want to have a word with this soldier in private