The Valley of Bones - Anthony Powell [69]
‘What the hell is all this row?’
‘He’s always on at me,’ said the private, sobbing convulsively.
The sergeant looked uncomfortable. They were neither of them Gwatkin’s men.
‘Come along,’ he said.
‘What’s the trouble?’
‘He’s a defaulter, sir,’ said the sergeant. ‘Come along now, and finish that job.’
‘I can’t do it, my back hurts,’ said the private, mopping his eyes with a clenched hand.
‘Then you should report sick,’ said the sergeant severely, ‘see the MO. That’s what you want to do, if your back hurts.’
‘Seen him.’
‘See him again then.’
‘The Adjutant-Quartermaster said if I did any more malingering he’d give me more CB.’
The sergeant’s face was almost as unhappy as the private’s. He looked at me as if he thought I might be able to offer some brilliant solution to their problems. He was wrong about that. I saw no way out. Anyway, they were neither of them within my province.
‘Well, go away, and don’t make a disturbance outside here again.’
‘Sorry, sir.’
The two of them went off quietly, but, as they reached the far end of the stone passage, I heard it all starting up again. They were not our men, of course, amongst whom such a scene would have been inconceivable, even when emotions were allowed full rein, which sometimes happened. In such circumstances the display would have taken a far less dismal form. This sort of incident lowered the spirits to an infinitely depressed level. Even though there might be less to do here than with the Battalion, no road-blocks to man, for example, there were also no amusements in the evening, beyond the grubby pubs of a small, down-at-heel town a mile or two away.
‘There isn’t a lot for the lads to do’ said CSM Cadwallader.
He was watching, unsmilingly, a Red Indian war-dance a group of men were performing, led by Williams, I. G., whose eccentric strain probably accounted for his friendship with Lance-Corporal Gittins, the storeman. The dancers, with tent-peg mallets for tomahawks, were moving slowly round in a small circle, bowing their heads to the earth and up again, as they gradually increased the speed of their rotation. I thought what a pity that Bithel was not there to lead them in this dance.
‘What about organising some football?’
‘No other company there is to play, sir.’
‘Does that matter?’
‘Personnel of the School, C.3., they are.’
‘But there are plenty of our own fellows. Can’t they make up a game among themselves?’
‘The boys wouldn’t want that.’
‘Why not?’
‘Another company’s what they like to beat.’
That was a good straightforward point of view, no pretence that games were anything but an outlet for power and aggression; no stuff about their being enjoyable as such. You played a game to demonstrate that you did it better than someone else. If it came to that, I thought, how few people do anything for its own sake, from making love to practising the arts.
‘How do they amuse themselves when not doing Indian war-dances?’
‘Some of the lads has found a girl.’
The Sergeant-Major smiled quietly to himself, as if he might have been of that number.
‘Corporal Gwylt?’
‘Indeed, sir, Corporal Gwylt may have a girl or two.’
Meanwhile, since my return from Aldershot, I was aware of a change that had taken place in Gwatkin, though precisely what had happened to him, I could not at first make out. He had been immensely gratified, so Kedward told me, to find himself more or less on his own as a junior commander, keenly jealous of this position in relation to the Castlemallock Commandant, always making difficulties with him when men were wanted for demonstrational purposes. On the other hand, Gwatkin had also developed a new vagueness, even bursts of apparent indolence. He would pass suddenly into a state close to amnesia, sitting at his table in the Company Office, holding in the palm of his hand, lettering uppermost, the rubber-stamp of the Company, as if it were an orb or other symbol of dominion, while he gazed out on to the cobbled yard, where outbuildings beyond had been transformed into barrack rooms. For several minutes at a time he would stare into space, scanning the roofs as if he could descry beyond the yard and stables vision of battle, cavalry thundering down, long columns of infantry advancing through the smoke, horse artillery bringing up the guns. At least, that was what I supposed. I thought Gwatkin had at last