I was wondering what would happen next, when I realized that he and I were alone in the room. Quite suddenly the others must have decided to leave, drifting off to bed, bored, embarrassed, or merely tired. The last seemed the most probable. Their instincts told them the rag was at an end; that time had come for sleep. Bithel still lay face downwards on the bed, fondling and crooning.
‘Will you be all right, Bithel P We are all going to bed now.’
‘What’s that?’
‘We’re all going to bed.’
‘You lucky people, all going to bed …’
‘I’ll say good night, Bithel.’
‘Night-night,’ he said, ‘Night-night. Wish I’d decided to be a ’varsity man.’
He rolled over on his side, reaching across the dummy for the remains of his cigar. It had gone out. He managed to extract a lighter from his trouser pocket and began to strike wildly at its mechanism. Hoping he would not set fire to the hotel during the night, I shut the door and went down the stairs. The others in the room were at various stages of turning in for the night.
‘He’s a funny one is old Bithel,’ said Breeze, who was already in bed.
‘A regular caution,’ said Kedward. ‘Never saw anything like that dance.’
‘Went on a bit long, didn’t it,’ said Pumphrey, removing a toothbrush from his mouth to speak. ‘Thought he’d be at it all night till he fell down.’
However, although there was general agreement that Bithel had unnecessarily prolonged the dance, he did not, so far as his own personality was concerned, seem to have made a bad impression. On the contrary, he had established a certain undoubted prestige. I did not have much time to think over the incident, because I was very tired. In spite of unfamiliar surroundings, I went to sleep immediately and slept soundly. The following morning, although there was much talk while we dressed, nothing further was said of Bithel. He was forgotten in conversation about Church Parade and the day’s routine. Breeze and Pumphrey had already finished their dressing and gone downstairs, when Pumphrey’s soldier-servant (later to be identified as Williams, I.G.) came up to Kedward in the passage as we were on the way to breakfast. He was grinning.
‘Excuse me, sir.’
‘What is it, Williams?’
‘I was ordered to look after the new officer till he had a batman for hisself.’
‘Mr Bithel?’
‘The officer don’t seem well.’
‘What’s wrong with him?’
‘Better see, sir.’
Williams, I.G., enjoyed giving this information.
‘We’ll have a look,’ said Kedward.
We went upstairs again to the attic. Kedward opened the door. I followed him, entering a stratosphere of stale, sickly beer-and-cigar fumes. I half expected to find Bithel, still wearing his clothes, sleeping on the floor; the cap — surmounted sponge-bag still resting on the pillow. However, in the manner of persons long used to turning in for the night the worse for drink, he had managed to undress and get to bed, even to make himself reasonably comfortable there. His clothes were carefully folded on the floor beside him, one of the habits of the confirmed alcoholic, who knows himself incapable of arranging garments on a chair. The dummy had been ejected from the bed, which Bithel himself now occupied. He lay under the grey-brown blankets in a suit of yellow pyjamas, filthy and faded, knees raised to his chin. His body in this position looked like a corpse exhumed intact from some primitive burial ground for display in the showcase of a museum. Except that he was snoring savagely, cheeks puffing in and out, the colour of his face, too, suggested death. Watch, cigar-case, sleeping pills, stood on the broken chair beside the bed. In addition to these objects was another exhibit, something of peculiar horror. At first I could not imagine what this might be. It seemed either an ornament or a mechanical contrivance of complicated design. I looked closer. Was it apparatus or artifact? Then the truth was suddenly made plain. Before going to sleep, Bithel had placed his false teeth in the ashtray. He had removed the set from his mouth bodily, the jaws still clenched on the stub of the cigar. The effect created by this synthesis was extraordinary, macabre, surrealist. Again one thought of an excavated tomb, the fascination aroused in archaeologists of a thousand years hence at finding these fossilized vestiges beside Bithel’s hunched skeleton; the speculations aroused as to the cultural significance of such related objects. Kedward shook Bithel. This had no effect whatever. He did not even open his eyes, though for a moment he ceased to snore. The sleeping pills must have been every bit as effective as Bithel himself had proclaimed them. Apart from gasping, snorting, animal sounds, which issued again so soon as his head touched the pillow, he gave no sign of life. Kedward turned to Williams, I.G., who had followed us up the stairs and was now standing in the doorway, still grinning.
‘Tell the Orderly Corporal Mr Bithel is reporting sick this morning, Williams,’ he said.
‘Right you are, sir.’
Williams went off down the stairs two at a time.
‘I’ll come and have a look at old Bithel later,’ said Kedward. ‘Tell him he’s been reported sick. Nothing much will be expected of him this morning, Sunday and newly joined.’
This was prudent handling of the situation. Kedward clearly knew how to act in an emergency. I suspected that Gwatkin, confronted with the same situation, might have made a fuss about Bithel’s state. This show of good sense on Kedward’s part impressed me. I indicated to him the false teeth gripping the cigar, but their horror left him cold. We moved on to breakfast. It had to be admitted Bithel had not made an ideal start to his renewed army career.
‘I expect old Bithel had a glass too much last night,’ said Kedward, as we breakfasted. ‘I once drank more than I ought. You feel terrible. Ever done that, Nick?’
‘Yes.’
‘Awful, isn’t it?’
‘Awful, Idwal.’
‘We’ll go along early together, and you can take over your platoon for Church Parade.’
He told me where to meet him. However, very unexpectedly, Bithel himself appeared downstairs before it was time for church. He smiled uncomfortably when he saw me.
‘Never feel much like breakfast on Sundays for some reason,’ he said.
I warned him that he had been reported sick.
‘I found that out from the boy, Williams, who is acting as my batman,’ said Bithel. ‘Got it cancelled. While I was talking to him, I discovered there was another boy called Daniels from my home town who might take on being my regular servant. Williams got hold of him for me. I liked the look of him.’
We set off up the street together. Bithel was wearing the khaki side-cap that had been set on the sponge-bag the night before. A size too small for him, it was placed correctly according to Standing Orders — in this respect generally disregarded in wartime — squarely on the centre of his head. The cap was also cut higher than normal (like Saint-Loup’s, I thought), which gave Bithel the look of a sprite in pantomime; perhaps rather — taking into consideration his age, bulk, moustache — some comic puppet halfway between the Walrus and the Carpenter. His face was pitted and blotched like the surface of a Gruyere cheese, otherwise he seemed none the worse from the night before, except for some shortness of breath. He must have seen me glance at his cap, because he smiled ingratiatingly.
‘Regulations allow these caps,’ he said. ‘They’re more comfortable than those peaked SD affairs. Cheaper, too. Got this one for seventeen bob, two shillings off because slightly shop-soiled. You don’t notice the small stain on top, do you?’
‘Not at all.’
He looked behind us and lowered his voice.
‘None of the rest of them were at the ’varsity,’ he said.
‘I’ve been making inquiries. What do you do in Civvy Street — that’s the correct army phrase, I believe.’