Hearing Secret Harmonies - Anthony Powell [93]
Widmerpool sighed.
‘But I know Bithel too. I knew all about him in those days. He commanded the Mobile Laundry. Don’t you remember?’
Widmerpool looked blank. While he had been speaking these words, his thoughts were evidently far away. He was almost talking to himself. If he had forgotten about the death of Sir Magnus Donners, he could well have forgotten about Bithel; even the fact that he and I had soldiered together. In any case the matter did not interest him so far as Bithel was concerned. He was evidently thinking of himself, overcome now with self-pity.
‘When Scorp found out that I’d had to tell Bith he must leave the army – leave the Mobile Laundry, you say – Scorp made me do penance. What happened had been duty – what I then quite wrongly thought duty to be – and wasn’t at all my fault. I must have been told by those above me that I’d got to tell Bith he had to go. I tried to explain that to Scorp. He said – he’d got the story from Bith, of course – that I acted without Harmony, and must make amends, mystical amends. He was right, of course. Scorp made me… made me …’
Widmerpool’s voice trailed away. He shuddered violently, at the same time swallowing several times. His eyes filled with tears. Whatever Murtlock had made him do as penance for relieving Bithel of his commission was too horrific to be spoken aloud by Widmerpool himself, even though he had brought the matter up, still brooded on it. I was decidedly glad not to be told. One’s capacity for hearing about ghastly doings lessens with age. At least this showed that Murtlock had taken over complete command. Even thinking about the retribution visited on him had brought Widmerpool to near collapse. In fact he looked much as he had described Bithel, when – not at all unjustly so far as the actual sentence went – the alternatives of court martial, or acceptance of a report declaring Bithel unsuitable for retention as an officer were put before him. This was the incident to which Greening had referred. It may well have been true – as Greening had said – that Widmerpool had talked in a callous manner later in the Mess about Bithel breaking down. Certainly he had spoken of it to me.
‘Bithel’s one of your community?’
‘For a year or more now.’
Again Widmerpool answered as if his thoughts were elsewhere. Bithel continued to stand apart, smiling and muttering to himself, apparently quite happy. His demeanour was not unlike what it had been in the army after he had drunk a good deal. Fiona left the group with which she had been talking, and came up to Widmerpool.
‘Look, Ken, I want you all to look in on my brother’s wedding party for a minute or two. Barnabas’s old boyfriend, Chuck, is there, and rows of people Barnabas knows. You must come. Just for a moment. Scorp always said that Harmony, in one form, was to be widely known.’
It looked very much as if marriage had caused Fiona to revert, from the gloom of recent years, to the more carefree style of her rampageous schoolgirl stage. Widmerpool made an attempt to avoid the question by taking a general line of disapproval.
‘You went away, Fiona. You left us. You abandoned Harmony.’
The others, uneasy perhaps, but certainly tempted, now began to crowd round. Fiona continued her efforts to persuade Widmerpool, who was plainly uncertain how the suggestion should be correctly handled. It seemed to daze him. Possibly he was not without all curiosity to enter Stourwater again himself. Bithel began to sing once more.
‘From every dark nook they press forward to meet me,
I lift up my eyes to the tall leafy dome.
And others are there looking downward to greet me,
The ashgrove, the ashgrove, alone is my home.’
At this, Fiona abandoned Widmerpool, and made for Bithel. Bithel seemed all at once to recognize her for the first time. He held his arms above his head. Fiona said something