The Valley of Bones - Anthony Powell [3]
‘Don’t you call the room to attention when your Company Commander comes in, Sergeant-Major?’ he asked harshly.
Kedward and CSM Cadwalladar hastily straightened themselves and saluted. I did the same. The captain returned a stiff salute, keeping his hand up at the peak of the cap longer than any of the rest of us.
‘Indeed, I’m sorry, sir,’ said the Sergeant-Major, beginning to shout again, though apparently not much put out by this asperity of manner. ‘See you at first, I did not, sir.’
Kedward stepped forward, as if to put an end to further fault finding, if that were possible.
‘This is Mr Jenkins,’ he said. ‘He joined yesterday and has been posted to your company, Captain Gwatkin.’
Gwatkin fixed me with his angry little black eyes. In appearance, he was in several respects an older version of Kedward. I judged him to be about my own age, perhaps a year or two younger. Almost every officer in the unit looked alike to me at that very early stage; Maelgwyn-Jones, the Adjutant, and Parry, his assistant sitting beside him at the table, indistinguishable as Tweedledum and Tweedledee, when I first reported to the Orderly Room the evening before. Later, it was incredible persons so dissimilar could ever for one moment have appeared to resemble one another in any but the most superficial aspects. Gwatkin, although he may have had something of Kedward’s look, was at the same time very different. Even this first sight of him revealed a novelty of character, at once apparent, though hard to define. There was, in the first place, some style about him. However much he might physically resemble the rest, something in his air and movements also showed a divergence from the humdrum routine of men; if, indeed, there is a humdrum routine.
‘It’s no more normal to be a bank-manager or a bus-conductor, than to be Baudelaire or Genghis Khan,’ Moreland had once remarked. ‘It just happens there are more of the former types.’
Satisfied at last that he had taken in sufficient of my appearance through the dim light of the barrack-room, Gwatkin held out his hand.
‘Your name was in Part II Orders, Mr Jenkins,’ he said without smiling. ‘The Adjutant spoke to me about you, too. I welcome you to the Company. We are going to make it the best company in the Battalion. That has not been brought about yet. I know I can rely on your support in trying to achieve it.’
He spoke this very formal speech in a rough tone, with the barest suggestion of sing-song, his voice authoritative, at the same time not altogether assured.
‘Mr Kedward,’ he went on, ‘have the new intake laid out their blankets properly this morning?’
‘Not all of them,’ said Kedward.
‘Why not, Sergeant-Major?’
‘It takes some learning, sir. Some of them is not used to our ways yet. They are good boys.’
‘Never mind whether they are good boys, Sergeant-Major, those blankets must be correct.’
‘Indeed, they should, sir.’
‘See to it, Sergeant-Major.’
‘That I will, sir.’
‘When was the last rifle inspection?’
‘At the pay parade, sir.’
‘Were the Company’s rifles correct?’
‘Except for Williams, T., sir, that is gone on the MT course and taken his rifle with him, and Jones, A., that is sick with the ring-worm, and Williams, H,. that is on leave, and those two rifles the Sergeant-Armourer did want to look at that I told you of, sir, and the one with the faulty bolt in the Company Store for the time being, you said, and I will see about. Oh, yes, and Williams, G. E., that has been lent to Brigade for a week and has his rifle with him. That is the lot I do believe, sir.’
Gwatkin seemed satisfied with this reckoning.
‘Have you rendered your report?’ he asked.
‘Not yet, sir.’
‘See I have the nominal roll this evening, Sergeant-Major, by sixteen-hundred hours.’
‘That I will, sir.’
‘Mr Kedward.’
‘Sir?’
‘Your cap badge is not level with the top seam of the cap-band.’
‘I’ll see to it as soon as I get back to the Mess.’
Gwatkin turned to me.
‘Officers of our Battalion wear bronze pips, Mr Jenkins.’
‘The Quartermaster told me in the Mess last night