The Valley of Bones - Anthony Powell [73]
‘All those bugle calls have words to them,’ said Kedward. ‘What are the ones for the Alarm?’
‘That’s it,’ said Gwatkin, pleased at this opportunity to make practical use of military lore, Cookhouse, for instance:
Come to the cookhouse door, boys,
Come to the cookhouse door,
Officers’ wives have puddings and pies,
Soldiers’ wives have skilly.
How does the Alarm go, Sergeant-Major? That must have words too.’
It was the only time I ever saw CSM Cadwallader blush.
‘Rather vulgar words they are, sir,’ he said.
‘Well, what are they?’ said Gwatkin.
The Sergeant-Major seemed still for some reason unwilling to reveal the appropriate assonance.
‘Think most of the Company know the call now, sir,’ he said.
‘That’s not the point,’ said Gwatkin. ‘We can’t take any risks. There may be even one man only who won’t recognise it. He’ll need the rhyme. What are the words?’
‘Really want them, sir?’
‘I’ve just said so,’ said Gwatkin.
He was half irritated at the Sergeant-Major’s prevarication, at the same time half losing interest. He had begun to look out of the window, his mind wandering in the manner I have described. CSM Cadwallader hesitated again. Then he pursed his lips and gave a vocalized version of the bugle blaring the Alarm:
‘Sergeant-Major’s-got-a-horn!
Sergeant-Major’s-got-a-horn! …’
Kedward and I burst out laughing. I expected Gwatkin to do the same. He was normally capable of appreciating that sort of joke, especially as a laugh at CSM Cadwallader’s expense was not a thing to be missed. However, Gwatkin seemed scarcely to have heard the words, certainly not taken in their import. At first I thought he had been put out by receiving so broadly comic an answer to his question, feeling perhaps his dignity was compromised. That would have been a possibility, though unlike Gwatkin, because he approved coarseness of phrase as being military, even though he might be touchy about his own importance. It was then I realized he had fallen into one of his trances in which all around was forgotten: the Alarm, the Sergeant-Major, Kedward, myself, the Battalion, the army, the war itself.
‘Right, Sergeant-Major,’ he said, speaking abruptly, as if he had just woken from a dream. ‘See those words are promulgated throughout the Company. That’s all. You can fall out.’
By this time it was summer and very hot. The Germans had invaded the Netherlands, Churchill become Prime Minister. I read in the papers that Sir Magnus Donners had been appointed to the ministerial post for which he had long been tipped. The Battalion was required to send men to reinforce one of the Regular Battalions in France. There was much grumbling at this, because we were supposed to be something more than a draft-finding unit. Gwatkin was particularly outraged by this order, and the loss of two or three good men from his company. Otherwise things went on much the same at Castlemallock, the great trees leafy in the park, all water dried up in the basins of the fountains. Then, one Saturday evening, Gwatkin suggested he and I should walk as far as the town and have a drink together. There was no Anti-Gas course in progress at that moment. Kedward was Duty Officer. As a rule, Gwatkin was rarely to be seen in the Mess after dinner. No one knew what he did with himself during those hours. It was possible that he retired to his room to study the Field Service Pocket Book or some other