The Valley of Bones - Anthony Powell [35]
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.