The Valley of Bones - Anthony Powell [37]
‘Anything might happen. Pendry might do her in. You can’t tell.’
Gwatkin hesitated a moment.
‘You know that Rudyard Kipling book the other night?’
‘Yes.’
‘There are sort of poems at the beginning of the stories.’
‘Yes?’
‘One of them always stuck in my head – at least bits of it. I can never remember all the words of anything like that.’
Gwatkin stopped again. I feared he thought he had already said too much, and was not going to admit the verse of his preference.
‘Which one?’
‘It was about – was it some Roman god?’
‘Oh, Mithras.’
‘You remember it?’
‘Of course.’
‘Extraordinary.’
Gwatkin looked as if he could scarcely credit such a mental feat.
‘As you said, Rowland, it’s my profession to read a lot. But what about Mithras?’
‘Where it says “Mithras also a soldier—”’
Gwatkin seemed to think that sufficient clue, that I must be able to guess by now all he hoped to convey. He did not finish the line.
‘Something about helmets scorching the forehead and sandals burning the feet. I can’t imagine anything worse than marching in sandals, especially on those cobbled Roman roads.’
Gwatkin disregarded the logistic problem of sandal-shod infantry. He was very serious.
‘ “—keep us pure till the dawn”,’ he said.
‘Oh, yes.’
‘What do you make of that?’
‘Probably a very necessary prayer for a Roman legionary.’
Again, Gwatkin did not laugh.
‘Does that mean women?’ he asked, as if the notion had only just struck him.
‘I suppose so.’
I controlled temptation to make flippant suggestions about other, more recondite vices, for which, with troops of such mixed origin as Rome’s legions, the god’s hasty moral intervention might be required. That sort of banter did not at all fit in with Gwatkin’s mood. Equally pointless, even hopelessly pedantic, would be a brief exegesis explaining that the Roman occupation of Britain, historically speaking, was rather different from the picture in the book. At best one would end up in an appalling verbal tangle about the relationship of fact and poetry.
‘Those lines make you think,’ said Gwatkin slowly.
‘About toeing the line?’
‘Make you glad you’re married,’ he said. ‘Don’t have to bother any more about women.’
He turned back towards the place where we had first met. There was the sound of a car further up the road. The truck came into sight again. Gwatkin abandoned further speculations about Mithras. He became once more the Company Commander.
‘We’ve talked so much I haven’t inspected your platoon position,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing special I ought to see there?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Bring your men right away to the place I showed you on the map. We’ve got some farm buildings for a billet tonight. It’s not far from here. Everyone will have a bit of a rest. Nothing much expected of us until midday tomorrow All right?’
‘All right.’
He climbed into the truck. It drove off again. I returned to the platoon. Sergeant Pendry came forward to report. He looked just as he had looked that morning; no better, no worse.
‘Captain Gwatkin just had a word with me about your leave, Sergeant. We’ll arrange that as soon as the exercise is over.’
‘Thank you very much, sir.’
He spoke tonelessly, as if the question of leave did not interest him in the least.
‘Fall the platoon in now. We’re billeted in a farm near here. There’s prospect of some sleep.’
‘Right, sir.’
As usual, the distance to march turned out further than expected. Rain came on again. However, the farm buildings were pretty comfortable when we arrived. The platoon was accommodated in a thatched barn where there was plenty of straw. Corporal Gwylt, as always, was unwilling to believe that agricultural surroundings could ever be tolerable.
‘Oh, what nasty smells there are here,’ he said. ‘I do not like all these cows.’
I slept like a log that night. It must have been soon after breakfast the following morning, when I was checking sentry duties with Sergeant Pendry, that Breeze hurried into the barn to issue a warning.
‘A staff car flying the Divisional Commander’s pennon has just stopped by the road,’ Breeze said. ‘It must