The Valley of Bones - Anthony Powell [77]
‘Nice to meet again,’ he said, speaking as usual as if he expected a rebuff. ‘Haven’t seen you since the Battalion moved.’
‘How have you been?’
‘Getting rockets, as usual,’ he said.
‘Maelgwyn-Jones?’
‘That fellow’s got a positive down on me,’ Bithel said, ‘but I don’t think it will be for long now.’
‘Why not?’
‘I’m probably leaving the Battalion.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘There’s talk of my going up to Division.’
‘On the staff?’
‘Not exactly – a command.’
‘At Div HQ?’
‘Only a subsidiary command, of course. I shall be sorry to leave the Regiment in some ways, if it comes off, but not altogether sorry to see the back of Maelgwyn-Jones.’
‘What is it? Or is that a secret?’
Bithel lowered his voice in his accustomed manner when speaking of his own affairs, as if there were always a hint of something dubious about them.
‘The Mobile Laundry Unit,’ he said.
‘You’re going to command it?’
‘If I’m picked. There are at least two other names in for it from other units in the Division, I happen to know – one of them very eligible. As it happens, I have done publicity work for one of the laundries in my own neighbourhood, so I have quite a chance. In fact, that should stand very much in my favour. The CO seems very anxious for me to get the appointment. He’s been on the phone to Division about it himself more than once. Very good of him.’
‘What rank does the job carry?’
‘A subaltern’s command. Still, it’s promotion in a way. What you might call a step. The war news doesn’t look very good, does it, since the Belgian Government surrendered.’
‘What’s the latest? I missed the last news.’
‘Fighting on the coast. One of our Regular Battalions has been in action, I was told this morning. Got knocked about pretty badly. Do you remember a rather good-looking boy called Jones, D. Very fair.’
‘He was in my platoon – went out on the draft.’
‘He’s been killed. Daniels, my batman, told me that. Daniels gets all the news.’
‘Jones, D. was killed, was he. Anyone else from our unit?’
‘Progers, did you know him?’
‘The driver with a squint?’
‘That’s the fellow. Used to bring the stuff up to the Mess sometimes. Dark curly hair and a lisp. He’s gone too. Talking of messing, what’s it like here?’
‘We’ve had beef twice a day for just over a fortnight – thirty-seven times running, to be precise.’
‘What does it taste like?’
‘Goat covered with brown custard powder.’
We settled down to talk about army food. When I next saw CSM Cadwallader, I asked if he had heard about Jones, D. Corporal Gwylt was standing nearby.
‘Indeed, I had not, sir. So a bullet got him.’
‘Something did.’
‘Always an unlucky boy, Jones, D.,’ said CSM Cadwallader.
‘Remember how sick he was when we came over the water, Sergeant-Major?’ said Corporal Gwylt, ‘terrible sick.’
‘That I do.’
‘Never did I see a boy so sick,’ said Corporal Gwylt, ‘nor a man neither.’
This was the week leading up to the withdrawal through Dunkirk, so Jones, D. and Progers were not the only fatal casualties known to me personally at that period. Among these, Robert Tolland, serving in France with his Field Security Section, was also killed. The news came in a letter from Isobel. Nothing was revealed, then or later, of the circumstances of Robert’s death. So far as it went, he died as mysteriously as he had lived, like many other young men to whom war put an end, an unsolved problem. Had Robert, as Chips Lovell alleged, lived a secret life with ‘night-club hostesses old enough to be his mother?’ Would he have made a lot of money in his export house trading with the Far East? Might he have married Flavia Wisebite? As in musical chairs, the piano stops suddenly, someone is left without a seat, petrified for all time in their attitude of that particular moment. The balance-sheet is struck there and then, a matter of luck whether its calculations have much bearing, one way or the other, on the commerce conducted. Some die in an apparently suitable manner, others like Robert on the field of battle with a certain incongruity. Yet Fate had ordained this end for him. Or had Robert decided for himself? Had he set aside the chance of a commission to fulfil a destiny that required him to fall in France; or was Flavia