The Valley of Bones by Anthony Powell Page B

family,’ Gwatkin said severely. ‘He
should be ashamed. That VC ought to give him a pride in himself. I wish a
relative of mine had won the VC, won an MC even. And it is my belief, I am
telling you, Nick, that all about Bithel’s rugger is tommy-rot.’
    That last conviction was unanswerable
by this time. No one who had seen Bithel proceeding at the double could
possibly suppose his abilities in the football field had ever been more than
moderate.
    ‘Do you know when Idwal was Orderly
Officer last week,’ said Gwatkin, ‘he found Bithel in his dressing-gown
listening to the gramophone with the Mess waiters. Bithel said he was looking
for Daniels, that servant of his I don’t much like either. And then we are
expected to keep discipline in the unit.’
    ‘That bloody gramophone makes a
frightful row at all hours.’
    ‘So it does, too, and I’m not going to
stay in those billets any longer. I have had enough. My camp-bed was taken down
to the Company Office this morning. That is the place for a company commander
to be. Half the day is lost in this place walking backwards and forwards from
billets to barracks. We are lucky enough to have an office next door to the
Company Store. The bed can be folded up and go into the store for the day.’
    We had reached a fork in the road. One
way led to barracks, the other to billets. Gwatkin seemed suddenly to come to a
decision.
    ‘Why don’t you come down to the
Company Office too?’ he asked.
    He spoke roughly, almost as if he were
demanding why I had disobeyed an order.
    ‘Would there be room?’
    ‘Plenty.’
    ‘We’re pretty thick on the ground
where I am at present, even though Idwal is on the Anti-gas course at the
moment.’
    ‘It won’t be so lively sleeping in the
office.’
    ‘I can stand that.’
    ‘The great thing is you’re on the
spot. Near the men. Where every officer should be.’
    I was flattered by the suggestion.
Kedward was at the Corps School of Chemical Warfare at Castlemallock – usually
known as the Anti-gas School – so that Breeze and I were Gwatkin’s only
subalterns at that moment, and there was a lot of work to do. As I have said,
accommodation at the billets had little to recommend it. The Company Office was
at least no worse a prospect. To be in barracks would be convenient, not least
in its reduction of continual trudging backwards and forwards to the billets.
    ‘I’ll have my kit taken down this
evening.’
    That was the beginning of my
comparative intimacy with Gwatkin. Sharing with him the Company Office at night
altered not only our mutual relationship, but also the whole tempo of night and
morning. Instead of the turmoil of Kedward, Breeze, Pumphrey and Craddock
getting dressed, talking, scuffling, singing, there was only the occasional
harsh, serious, professional comment of Gwatkin; his tense silences. He slept
heavily, often dropping off before the electric light was out and the blackout
down; never, like myself, lying awake listening to the talk in the Company
Store next door. The partition between the store and the office did not reach
all the way to the ceiling, so that conversation held in the store after Lights
Out, although usually carried out in comparatively low tones – in contrast with
the normal speech of the unit – was often audible. Only the storeman, Lance-Corporal
Gittins, was supposed to sleep in the store at night, but, in practice, the
room usually housed several others; semi-official assistants of Gittins,
friends, relations, Company personalities, like Corporal Gwylt. These would
gather in the evening, if not on guard dudes, and listen to the wireless;
several of those assembled later staying the night among the crates and piles
of blankets, to slumber in the peculiar, musty smell of the store, an odour
somewhere between the Natural History Museum and an oil-and-colour shop.
Lance-Corporal Gittins was CSM Cadwallader’s brother-in-law. He was a man not
always willing to recognise the artificial and