‘A French writer who’d been a regular officer said the whole point of soldiering was its bloody boring side. The glamour, such as it was, was just a bit of exceptional luck if it came your way.’
‘Did he?’ said Gwatkin.
He spoke without a vestige of interest. I was impressed for the ten thousandth time by the fact that literature illuminates life only for those to whom books are a necessity. Books are unconvertible assets, to be passed on only to those who possess them already. Before I could decide whether it was worth making a final effort to ram home Vigny’s point, or whether further energy thus expended was as wasteful of Gwatkin’s time as my own, Kedward crossed the yard.
‘Rowland,’ he said, ‘come to the cookhouse at once, will you. It’s serious.’
‘What’s happened?’ said Gwatkin, not pleased by this interruption.
‘The Company butter’s been flogged. So far as I can see, storage arrangements have been quite irregular. I’d like you to be present while I check facts with the CQMS and the Messing Corporal. Another thing, the galantine that’s just arrived is bad. Its disposal must be authorized by an officer. I’ve got to straighten out this butter business before I do anything else. Nick, will you go along and sign for the galantine. Just a formality. It’s round at the back by the ablutions.’
‘Nick’s just off to Div HQ,’ said Gwatkin.
‘Oh, are you, Nick?’ said Kedward. ‘Well best of luck, but you will sign for the galantine first, won’t you?’
‘Of course.’
‘Goodbye, then.’
‘Goodbye, Idwal, and good luck.’
Kedward hastily shook my hand, then rushed off to the scene of the butter robbery, saying: ‘Don’t be long, Rowland.’
Gwatkin shook my hand too. He smiled in an odd sort of way, as if he dimly perceived it was no good battling against Fate, which, seen in right perspective, almost always provides a certain beauty of design, sometimes even an occasional good laugh.
‘I leave you to your galantine, Nick,’ he said. ‘Best of luck.’
I gave him a salute for the last time, feeling he deserved it. Gwatkin marched away, looking a trifle absurd with his little moustache, but somehow rising above that. I went off in the other direction, where the burial certificate of the galantine awaited signature. A blazing sun was beating down. For this, my final duty at Castlemallock, Corporal Gwylt, who was representing the Messing Corporal, elsewhere engaged in the butter investigation, had arranged the galantine, an immense slab of it, in its wrappings on a kind of bier, looking like a corpse in a mortuary. Beside the galantine, he had placed a pen and the appropriate Army Form.
‘Oh, that galantine do smell something awful, sir,’ he said. ‘Sign the paper without smelling it, I should, sir.’
‘I’d better make sure.’
I inclined my head with caution, then quickly withdrew it. Corporal Gwylt was absolutely right. The smell was appalling, indescribable. Shades of the Potemkin, I thought, wondering if I were going to vomit. After several deep breaths, I set my name to the document, confirming animal corruption.
‘I’m leaving now, Corporal Gwylt. Going up to Division. I’ll say goodbye.’
‘You’re leaving the Company, sir?’
‘That I am.’
The Battalion’s form of speech was catching.
‘Then I’m sorry, sir. Good luck to you. I expect it will be nice up at Division.’
‘Hope so. Don’t get into too much mischief with the girls.’
‘Oh, those girls, sir, they never give you any peace, they don’t.’
‘You must give up girls and get a third stripe. Then you’ll be like the Sergeant-Major and not think of girls any longer.’
‘That I will, sir. It will be better, though I’ll not be the man the Sergeant-Major is, I haven’t the height. But don’t you believe the Sergeant-Major don’t like girls. That’s just his joke. I know they put something in the tea to make us not want them, but it don’t do boys like me no good, it seem, nor the Sergeant-Major either.’
We shook hands on it. Any attempt to undermine the age-old army legend of sedatives in the tea would be as idle as to lecture Gwatkin on Vigny. I returned to the truck, and climbed up beside the driver. We rumbled through the park with its sad decayed trees, its Byronic associations. In the town, Maureen was talking to a couple of corner-boys in the main street. She waved and blew a kiss as we drove past, more as a matter of routine, I thought, than on account of any flattering recognition of myself, because she seemed to be looking in the direction of the men at the back of the truck, who, on passing, had raised some sort of hoot at her. Now they began to sing:
‘She’ll be wearing purple socks,
And she’s always in the pox,
And she’s Mickey McGilligan’s daughter,
Mary-Anne …’
There were no villages in the country traversed, rarely even farms or hovels. One mile looked like another, except when once we passed a pair of stone pillars, much battered by the elements, their capitals surmounted by heraldic animals holding shields. Here were formerly gates to some mansion, the gryphons, the shields, the heraldry, nineteenth century in design. Now, instead of dignifying the entrance to a park, the pillars stood.starkly in open country, alone among wide fields: no gates; no wall; no drive; no park; no house. Beyond them, towards the far horizon, stretched hedgeless ploughland, rank grass, across the expanses of which, like the divisions of a chess-board, squat walls of piled stone were beginning to rise. The pillars marked the entrance to Nowhere. Nothing remained of what had once been the demesne, except these chipped, over-elaborate coats of arms, emblems probably of some lord of the Law, like the first Castlemallock, or business magnate, such as those who succeeded him. Here, too, there had been no heirs, or heirs who preferred to live elsewhere. I did not blame them. North or South, this country was not greatly sympathetic to me. All the same, the day was sunny, there was a vast sense of relief in not being required to settle the Company butter problem, nor take the Platoon in gas drill. Respite was momentary, but welcome. At the back of the vehicle the hospital party sang gently:
‘Open now the crystal fountain,
Whence the healing stream doth flow:
Let the fire and cloudy pillar
Lead me all my journey through:
Strong Deliverer,
Strong Deliverer
Be thou still my strength and shield …’
Gwatkin, Kedward and the rest already seemed far away. I was entering another phase of my war. By this time we had driven for an hour or two. The country had begun to change its character. Mean dwellings appeared more often, then the outer suburbs of a large town. The truck drove up a long straight road of grim houses. There was a crossroads where half a dozen ways met, a sinister place such as that where Oedipus, refusing to give passage, slew his father, a locality designed for civil strife and street fighting. Pressing on, we reached a less desolate residential quarter. Here, Divisional Headquarters occupied two or three adjacent houses. At one of these, a Military Policeman stood on duty.
‘I want the DAAG’s office.’
I was taken to see a sergeant-clerk. No one seemed to have heard I was to arrive. The truck had to move on. My kit was unloaded. The DAAG’s office was consulted from the switchboard, a message returned that I was to ‘come up’. A soldier-clerk showed the way. We passed along passages, the doors of which were painted with the name, rank and appointment of the occupants, on one of them:
Major-General H. de C. Liddament, DSO, MC.
Divisional Commander