The Valley of Bones - Anthony Powell [76]
‘And what would it be you’re all so busy with now?’ she asked. ‘Is it drilling and all that? I expect so.’
‘Drilling is some of it, Maureen,’ said Gwatkin. ‘But we have to practise all kind of other training too. Modern war is a very complicated matter, you must understand.’
This made her laugh again.
‘I’d have ye know my great-uncle was in the Connaught Rangers,’ she said, ‘and a fine figure of a man he was, I can promise ye. Why, they say he was the best-looking young fellow of his day in all County Monaghan. And brave too. Why, they say he killed a dozen Germans with his bayonet when they tried to capture him. The Germans didn’t like to meet the Irish in the last war.’
‘Well, it’s a risk the Germans won’t have to run in this one,’ said Gwatkin, speaking more gruffly than might have been expected in the circumstances. ‘Even here in the North there’s no conscription, and you see plenty of young men out of uniform.’
‘Why, ye wouldn’t be taking all the young fellows away from us, would ye?’ she asked, rolling her eyes. ‘It’s lonely we’d be if they all went to the war.’
‘Maybe Hitler will decide the South is where he wants to land his invasion force,’ said Gwatkin. ‘Then where will all your young men be, I’d like to know.’
‘Oh God,’ she said, throwing up her hands. ‘Don’t say it of the old blackguard. Would he do such a thing? You think he truly may, Captain Gwatkin, do ye?’
‘Shouldn’t be surprised,’ said Gwatkin.
‘Do you come from the other side of the Border yourself?’ I asked her.
‘Why, sure I do,’ she said smiling. ‘And how were you guessing that, Lieutenant Jenkins?’
‘I just had the idea.’
‘Would it be my speech?’ she said.
‘Perhaps.’
She lowered her voice.
‘Maybe, too, you thought I was different from these Ulster people,’ she said, ‘them that is so hard and fond of money and all.’
‘That’s it, I expect.’
‘So you’ve guessed Maureen’s home country, Nick,’ said Gwatkin. ‘I tell her we must treat her as a security risk and not go speaking any secrets in front of her, as she’s a neutral.’
Maureen began to protest, but at that moment two young men in riding breeches and leggings came into the pub. She rose from the chair to serve them. Gwatkin fell into one of his silences. I thought he was probably reflecting how odd was the fact that Maureen seemed just as happy talking and laughing with a couple of local civilians, as with the dashing officer types he seemed to envisage ourselves. At least he stared at the young men, an unremarkable pair, as if there were something about them that interested him. Then it turned out Gwatkin’s train of thought had returned to dissatisfaction with his own peacetime employment.
‘Farmers, I suppose,’ he said. ‘My grandfather was a farmer. He didn’t spend his time in a stuffy office.’
‘Where did he farm?’
‘Up by the Shropshire border.’
‘And your father took to office life?’
‘That was it. My dad’s in insurance. His firm sent him to another part of the country.’
‘Do you know that Shropshire border yourself?’
‘We’ve been up there for a holiday. I expect you’ve heard of the great Lord Aberavon?’
‘I have, as a matter of fact.’
‘The farm was on his estate.’
I had never thought of Lord Aberavon (first and last of his peerage) as a figure likely to go down to posterity as ‘great’, though the designation might no doubt reasonably be applied by those living in the neighbourhood. His name was merely memorable to myself as deceased owner of Mr Deacon’s Boyhood of Cyrus, the picture in the Walpole-Wilsons’ hall, which always made me think of Barbara Goring when I had been in love with her in pre-historic times. Lord Aberavon had been Barbara Goring’s grandfather; Eleanor Walpole-Wilson’s grandfather too. I wondered what had happened to Barbara, whether her husband,
Johnny Pardoe (who also owned a house in the country of which Gwatkin spoke) had been recalled to the army. Eleanor, lifelong friend of my sister-in-law, Norah Tolland, was now, like Norah herself, driving cars for some women’s service.