The Valley of Bones - Anthony Powell [81]
‘I took your advice, Nick,’ he said.
We were alone together in the Company Office.
‘About the storage of those live Mills bombs?’
Gwatkin shook his head, at the same time swallowing uncomfortably, as if the very thought of live grenades and where they were to be stored, brought an immediate sense of guilt.
‘No, not about the Mills bombs,’ he said, ‘I’m still thinking over the best place to keep them -I don’t want any interference from the Ordnance people. I mean about Maureen.’
For a moment the name conveyed nothing. Then I remembered the evening in the pub: Maureen, the girl who had so greatly taken Gwatkin’s fancy. Thinking things over the next day, I had attributed his remarks to the amount of stout we had drunk. Maureen had been dismissed from my mind.
‘What about Maureen?’
‘I asked her to come out with me.’
‘You did?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did she say?’
‘She agreed.’
‘I said she would.’
‘It was bloody marvellous.’
‘Splendid.’
‘Nick,’ he said, ‘I’m serious. Don’t laugh. I really want to thank you, Nick, for making me take action – not hang about like a fool. That’s my weakness. Like the day we were in support and I made such a balls of it.’
‘And Maureen’s all right?’
‘She’s wonderful.’
That was all Gwatkin said. He gave no account of the outing. I should have liked to hear a little about it, but clearly he regarded the latest development in their relationship as too sacred to describe in detail. I saw that Kedward, in some matters no great psychologist, had been right in saying that when Gwatkin took a fancy to a girl it was ‘like having the measles’. This business of Maureen could be regarded only as a judgment on Gwatkin for supposing Sergeant Pendry’s difficulties easy of solution. Now, he had himself been struck down by Aphrodite for his pride in refusing incense at her altars. The goddess was going to chastise him. In any case, there was nothing very surprising in this sort of thing happening, when, even after an exhausting day’s training, the camp-bed was nightly a rack of desire, where no depravity of the imagination was unbegotten. No doubt much mutual irritation was caused by this constraint, particularly, for example, something like Gwatkin’s detestation of Bithel.
‘God,’ he said, when he set eyes on him at Castlemallock, ‘that bloody man has followed us here.’
Bithel himself was quite unaware of the ferment of rage he aroused in Gwatkin. At least he showed no sign of recognising Gwatkin’s hatred, even at times positively thrusting himself on Gwatkin’s society. Some persons feel drawn towards those who dislike them, or are at least determined to overcome opposition of that sort. Bithel may have regarded Gwatkin’s unfriendliness as a challenge. Whatever the reason, he always made a point of talking to Gwatkin whenever opportunity arose, showing himself equally undeterred by verbal rebuff or crushing moroseness. However, Gwatkin’s attitude in repelling Bithel’s conversational advances was not entirely based on a simple brutality. Their relationship was more complicated than that. The code of behaviour in the army which Gwatkin had set himself did not allow his own comportment with any brother officer to reach a pitch of unfriendliness he would certainly have shown to a civilian acquaintance disliked as much as he disliked Bithel. This code – Gwatkin’s picture of it, that is – allowed, indeed positively kindled, a blaze of snubs directed towards Bithel, at the same time preventing, so to speak, any final dismissal of him as a person too contemptible to waste time upon. Bithel was a brother officer; for that reason always, in the last resort, handed a small dole by Gwatkin, usually in the form of an incitement to do better, to pull himself together. Besides, Gwatkin, with