Hearing Secret Harmonies - Anthony Powell [113]
Bithel took a deep gulp, finishing off the reasonably generous shot of whisky Henderson had poured for him. He held out the glass for more. Henderson allowed him an individual replenishment. I attempted to explain to Bithel that we had been comrades-in-arms. It was hard to think of an incident that had not reflected some unhappy moment in his own military career; any happy ones almost certainly experienced at times he would have been too drunk to recall.
‘Do you remember our Company Commander, Rowland Gwatkin?’
Bithel’s eyes, damp and bleary, suddenly reacted.
‘ Fol-low, fol-low, we will fol-low Gwatkin —
We will fol-low Gwatkin, everywhere he leads.’
Bithel sang the words gently. Their reference to romping round the Mess on Christmas night, following the Commanding Officer over tables and chairs, sideboards and sofas, must have been entirely lost on Henderson. In any case the Commanding Officer’s name had been Davies. Now Colonel was evidently merged as a single entity with Gwatkin in Bithel’s mind. Becoming more than ever impatient, Henderson once more tried to get hold of the parcel. Bithel demanded a third round before giving it up.
‘Not before I see the picture – know how you got it.’
Bithel made a violent effort to give an explanation.
‘Going to… be burnt.’
‘Scorp wanted to burn it. You rescued it?’
Bithel’s twitching face seemed to indicate that solution as near the mark.
‘Does Ken know?’
This question threw Bithel into a paroxysm of coughing, followed by an awful dry retching. He seemed about to vomit, something not at all out of the question in experience of him. An alternative possibility was apoplexy. When this violent attack was at an end he got out a sentence.
‘Lord Widmerpool’s… dead.’
‘What?’
Both Henderson and I exclaimed simultaneously.
‘Murdered.’
Bithel’s powers of speech made some sort of recovery now. He had contrived to articulate what was on his mind. This was when it became clear that nervous strain, at least as much as drink, was powerfully affecting him. In fact the whisky he had just drunk had undoubtedly pulled him together. At first his words, dramatically gasped out, aroused a picture of gun, knife, poison, length of lead piping.
Then one saw that Bithel was almost certainly speaking with exaggeration. Even so, some ritual – like the gash at The Devil’s Fingers – might have gone too far; for example, misuse of a dangerous drug. Allowing for overstatement, I was not at all sure which was meant. Henderson, with closer knowledge of the circumstances, seemed to regard anything as possible. He had gone white in the face.
‘Was he found dead? Has this just happened? Are the police in on it?’
‘Scorp was responsible. You can’t call it anything but murder. I’m not going back. I’ve left for good. I’m fond of Scorp – fonder than I’ve ever been of any boy – but he’s gone too far. I’m not going back.’
‘But what happened? You don’t really mean murder?’
‘What Scorp made him do.’
‘Say what that was.’
The story came out only by degrees. Even in a slightly improved condition Bithel was not easy to follow. In his – comparatively speaking – less dilapidated days, Bithel’s rambling narratives had been far from lucid. The events he had just been through seemed to have been enough to disturb anyone. They had, at the same time, to some degree galvanized him out of the state of brain-softening he had displayed at Stourwater. He kept on muttering to himself, his voice at times entirely dying away.
‘Lord Widmerpool ought never to have gone. Wasn’t fit. Wasn’t in the least fit. It was murder. Nothing short.’
That the old Bithel – with his respect for the ‘varsity man’ – survived under the tangled beard and foul rags, was shown by dogged adherence to calling Widmerpool by a title he had himself renounced by word and deed; if never by official procedure. After a bout of breathlessness, Bithel now showed signs of falling asleep. Henderson prodded him with a paper-knife.
‘What happened?’
Bithel opened