Rev. III. 4.
‘Some of these blankets aren’t laid out right yet, Sergeant-Major,’ said Kedward. ‘It won’t do, you know.’
He spoke gravely, as if emphasising the Apocalyptic verdict of the walls. Although he had assured me he was nearly twenty-two, Kedward’s air was that of a small boy who had dressed up for a lark in officer’s uniform, completing the rag by rubbing his upper lip with burnt cork. He looked young enough to be the Sergeant-Major’s son, his grandson almost. At the same time, he had a kind of childish dignity, an urchin swagger, in its way quite impressive, which lent him a right to be obeyed.
‘Some of the new intake was taught different to fold them blankets,’ said the Sergeant-Major cautiously.
‘Look at that — and those.’
‘I thought the lads was getting the idea better now, it was.’
‘Never saw anything like it.’
‘A Persian market, you might think,’ agreed the Sergeant-Major.
Cleanshaven, with the severely puritanical countenance of an Ironside in a Victorian illustration to a Cavalier-and-Roundhead romance, CSM Cadwallader was not as old as he looked, nor for that matter — as I discovered in due course — nearly so puritanical. His resounding surname conjoined him with those half-historical, half-mythical times through which my mind had been straying a minute or two before, the stern nobility of his features suggesting a warrior from an heroic epoch, returned with dragon banners to sustain an army in time of war. Like the rest of the ‘other ranks’ of the Battalion, he was a miner. His smooth skull, entirely hairless, was streaked with an intricate pattern of blue veins, where coal dust of accumulated years beneath the ground had found its way under the skin, spreading into a design that resembled an astrological nativity — his own perhaps — cast in tattoo over the ochre-coloured surface of the cranium. He wore a Coronation medal ribbon and the yellow-and-green one for Territorial long service. The three of us strolled round the bunks.
‘Carry on with the cleaning,’ said Kedward sharply.
He addressed the barrack-room orderlies, who, taking CSM Cadwallader’s rebuke as an injunction to cease from all work until our party was gone, now stood fidgetting and whispering by the wall. They were familiar later as Jones, D., small and fair, with almost white hair, a rarity in the Battalion, and Williams, W. H., tall and dark, his face covered with spots. Jones, D., had led the singing. Now they began to sweep again energetically, at the same time accepting this bidding as also granting permission to sing once more, for, as we moved to the further end of the room, Jones, D., returned to the chant, though more restrainedly than before, perhaps on account of the song’s change of mood:
‘There in a gown of white,
By candlelight,
She stooped to pray …’
The mournful, long-drawn-out notes died for a moment. Glancing round, I thought the singer, too, was praying; then saw his crouched position had been adopted the better to sweep under one of the bunks. This cramped attitude no doubt impeded the rendering, or perhaps he had paused for a second or two, desire provoked by the charming thought of a young girl lightly clothed in shimmering white — like the worthy ones of Sardis — a picture of peace and innocence and promise of a good time, very different from the stale, cheerless atmosphere of the barrack-room. Rising, he burst out again with renewed, agonised persistence:
‘… The Mission bell told me
That I mustn’t stay
South of the border,
Down Mexico way.
The message of the bell, the singer’s tragic tone announcing it, underlined life’s inflexible call to order, reaffirming the illusory nature of love and pleasure. Even as the words trailed away, heavy steps sounded from the other end of the chapel, as if forces of authority were already on the move to effect the unhappy lover’s expulsion from the Mission premises and delights of Mexico. Two persons had just come through the door. Kedward and the Sergeant-Major were still leaning critically over one of the bunks, discussing the many enormities of its incorrectly folded bedclothes. I turned from them and saw an officer approaching, accompanied by a sergeant. The officer was a captain, smallish, with a black moustache like Kedward’s, though much better grown; the sergeant, a tall, broad shouldered, beefy young man, with fair hair and very blue eyes — another Brythonic type, no doubt — that reminded me of Peter Templer’s. The singing had died down again, but the little captain stared angrily at the bunks, as if they greatly offended him.
‘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.’