The Soldier's Art - Anthony Powell [5]
“That must have got home,” he said.
“Sounded like it.”
He began to speak again, then for some reason stopped, apparently changing his mind about the way he was going to put a question. Having evidently decided to frame it in a different form, he made the enquiry with conscious diffidence.
“Told me you were a reader – like me – didn’t you?”
“Yes, I am. I read quite a lot.”
I no longer attempted to conceal the habit, with all its undesirable implications. At least admitting to it put one in a recognisably odd category of persons from whom less need be expected than the normal run.
“I love a good book when I have the time,” said Bithel. “St. John Clarke’s Match Me Such Marvel, that sort of thing. Something serious that takes a long time to get through.”
“Never read that one, as it happens.”
Bithel seemed scarcely aware of my answer. St. John Clarke’s novel was evidently a side issue, not at all the goal at which these ranging shots were aimed. Though rarely possible to guess, when in a mood for intimate conversation, what he would say next, such pronouncements of Bithel’s were always worth attention. Something special was on his mind. When he put the next question, there was a kind of fervour in his voice.
“Ever buy magazines like Chums and the Boy’s Own Paper when you were a nipper?”
“Of course – used to read them in bound annuals as a rule. I’ve a brother-in-law who still does.”
It was Erry’s only vice, though one he tried to keep dark, as showing in himself a lack of earnestness and sense of social obligation. Bithel made some reply, but a sudden concentrated burst of ack-ack fire, as if discharged deliberately for that purpose, drowned his utterance.
“What was that you said?”
Bithel spoke again.
“Still can’t hear.”
He came closer.
“… hero…” he shouted.
“You feel a hero?”
“No … I…”
The noise lessened, but he still had to yell at the top of his voice to make himself heard.
“… always imagined myself the hero of those serials.”
The shouted words were just audible above the clatter of guns. He seemed to think they offered a piece of unparalleled psychological revelation on his own part.
“Every boy does,” I yelled back.
“Everyone?”
He was disappointed at that answer.
“I’m sure my brother-in-law does to this day.”
Bithel was not at all interested in my own, or anyone else’s, brother-in-law’s tendency to self-identification while reading fiction. That was reasonable, because he knew nothing of Erridge’s existence. Besides, he wanted only to talk about himself. Although wholly concentrated on that subject, he remained at the same time apologetic as well as intense.
“Only I was thinking the other night – when Jerry first came over – that I was having the very experience I used to read about as a lad.”
“How do you mean?”
“ ‘Coming under fire for the first time’ – that was always a great moment in the hero’s career. You must remember. Where he ‘showed his mettle,’ as the story usually put it.”
He laughed, as if trying to excuse such reckless flights of fancy, in doing so displaying the double row of Low Comedy teeth.
‘“The rattle of musketry from distant hills’ – ’a little shower of sand churned up by a bullet in front of the redoubt’?”
These conventional phrases from boys’ adventure stories might encourage Bithel to plunge further into observations about life. The clichés did indeed stir him.
“That’s it,” he said, speaking with much more animation than usual, “that’s just what I meant. Wonderful memory you’ve got. What you said brings those yarns right back. I was a great reader as a lad. One of those thoughtful little boys. Never kept it up as I should.”
This was all a shade reminiscent of Gwatkin, my former Company Commander, poring secretly in the Company office over the Hymn to Mithras; but, whereas Gwatkin had meditated such literary material as a consequence of his own infatuation with the mystique of a soldier’s life,