Free The Valley of Bones by Anthony Powell

it lots of times really,’
he said. ‘I like it. I don’t like any of the others so much.’
    ‘The Norman knight isn’t bad.’
    ‘Not so good as the centurion.’
    ‘Do you like his other books?’
    ‘Whose?’
    ‘Kipling’s.’
    ‘Oh, yes, of course. I know he wrote a
lot of other books. I did try one of them. I couldn’t get on with it somehow.’
    ‘Which one did you try?’
    ‘I can’t remember the name. Can’t
remember much about it, to tell the truth. I just didn’t like it. All written
in a special sort of language I didn’t understand. I don’t read much. Got other
things to do. It’s not like you, reading more or less as a business.’
    He stopped speaking, was almost
immediately asleep and breathing heavily. This was the first evidence come to
light that anyone in the unit had ever read a book for pleasure, unless Bithel’s
‘digests’ might be thought to have brought him to a public library in search of
some work on sexual psychology. This was an interesting discovery about
Gwatkin. By now snores were sounding from the store. I rolled over towards the
wall and slept too. The following day Gwatkin made no reference to this
nocturnal conversation. Perhaps he had forgotten about it. Leaving barracks
that evening there was a small incident to illustrate the way in which he took
failure to heart. This happened when Gwatkin, Kedward and I were passing the
vehicle park, where the bren-carriers stood.
    ‘I’d like to try driving one of those
buses,’ Kedward said.
    ‘They’re easy enough,’ said Gwatkin.
    He scrambled into the nearest carrier
and started up the engine. However, when he put the vehicle in gear, it refused
to move, only rocking backwards and forwards on its tracks. Gwatkin’s small
head and black moustache bobbed up and down at the end of the carrier, so that
he seemed part of the chassis, a kind of figurehead, even the front half of an
armoured centaur. There was also something that recalled a knight in the game
of chess, immensely large and suddenly animated by some inner, mysterious
power. For a time Gwatkin heaved up and down there, as if riding one of the
cars on a warlike merry-go-round; then completely defeated by the machinery,
perhaps out of order, he climbed slowly to the ground and rejoined us.
    ‘I shouldn’t have done that,’ he said,
humiliated.
    All the same, this sort of thing did
not at all impair his confidence in himself when it came to dealing with the
men. Gwatkin prided himself on his relationship with the ‘other ranks’ in his
company. He did not talk about it much, but the conviction was implicit in his
behaviour. His attitude towards Sayce provided a good example. That was clear
even before I witnessed their great scene together. Sayce was the Company bad
character. He had turned up with another couple of throw-outs voided as
unsuitable for employment from one of the regular battalions. His previous unit
must have been thankful to get rid of him. Small and lean, with a yellow face
and blackened teeth, his shortcomings were not to be numbered. Apart from such
recurrent items as lateness on parade, deficiency of shaving kit, lack of clean
socks, mislaid paybook, filthy rifle, generally unsatisfactory turnout, Sayce
would produce some new, hitherto unthought-of crime most days. Dirty, disobliging,
quarrelsome, little short of mutinous, he was heartily disliked by all ranks.
Although a near criminal, he possessed none of the charm J. G. Quiggin, as a
reviewer,
used to attribute to criminals who wrote memoirs. On the
contrary, Sayce, immoderately vain, was also stupid and
unprepossessing. From time to time, in order to give him
a
chance to redeem himself from a series of disasters, he would be assigned some
individual task, easy to undertake, but within
range of conferring credit by its simple discharge. Sayce always made a hash of
it; always, too, for the worst of reasons. He seemed preordained for detention.
    ‘It will be the Glasshouse for