The Valley of Bones - Anthony Powell [94]
The voice, like so many other dictating or admonitory voices of even that early period of the war, had assumed the timbre and inflexions of the Churchill broadcast, slurred consonants, rhythmical stresses and prolations. These accents, in certain circumstances, were to be found imitated as low as battalion level. Latterly, for example, Gwatkin’s addresses to the Company could be detected, by an attentive ear, to have veered away a little from the style of the chapel elder, towards the Prime Minister’s individualities of delivery. In this, Gwatkin’s harangues lost not a little of their otherwise traditional charm. If we won the war, there could be no doubt that these rich, distinctive tones would be echoed for a generation at least. I was still thinking of this curious imposition of a mode of speech on those for whom its manner was totally incongruous, when the clerk folded his pad and rose.
‘Will you sign these, sir?’ he asked.
‘ “For Major General”,’ said the DAAG, ‘I’ll sign them “for Major-General”.’
He turned in his chair.
‘How are you?’ he said.
It was Widmerpool. He brought his large spectacles to bear on me like searchlights, and held out his hand. I took it. I felt enormously glad to see him. One’s associations with people are regulated as much by what they stand for, as by what they are, individual characteristics becoming from time to time submerged in more general implications. At that moment, although I had never possessed anything approaching a warm relationship with Widmerpool, his presence brought back with a rush all kinds of things, more or less desirable, from which I had been cut off for an eternity. I wondered how I could ever have considered him in the disobliging light that seemed so innate since we had been at school together.
‘Sit down,’ he said.
I looked about. The shorthand clerk had been sitting on a tin box. I chose the edge of a table.
‘Anyway, between these four walls,’ said Widmerpool, ‘don’t feel rank makes a gulf between us.’
‘How did you know it was me when I came into the room?’
Widmerpool indicated a small circular shaving-mirror, which stood on his table, almost hidden by piles of documents. He may have thought this question already presumed too far on our difference in rank, because he stopped smiling at once, and began to tap his knee. His battle-dress, like his civilian clothes, seemed a little too small for him. At the same time, he was undeniably a somewhat formidable figure in his present role.
‘I’ll put you in the picture right away,’ he said. ‘In the first place, I do not mean to stay on this staff long. That is between ourselves, of course. The Division is spoken of as potentially operational. So far as I am concerned, it is a backwater. Besides, I have to do most of the work here. Ack-and-Quack, a Regular, is a good fellow, but terribly slow. He is not too bad on supply, but possesses little or no grasp of personnel.’
‘What about the General?’
Widmerpool took off his spectacles. He leant towards me. His face was severe under his blinking. He spoke in a low voice.
‘I despair of the General,’ he said.
‘I thought everyone admired him.’
‘Quite a wrong judgment.’
‘As bad as that?’
‘Worse.’
‘He has a reputation for efficiency.’
‘Mistakenly.’
‘They like him in the units.’
‘People love buffoonery,’ said Widmerpool, ‘soldiers like everyone else. Incidentally, I don’t think General Liddament cares for me either. However, that is by the way. I make sure he can find nothing to complain of in my work. As a result, he contents himself with adopting a mock-heroic style of talk whenever I approach him. Very undignified in a relatively senior officer. I repeat, I do not propose to stay with this formation long.