Free The Valley of Bones by Anthony Powell Page A

that
bugger Sayce,’ Sergeant Pendry, who got along pretty well with almost everyone,
used often to remark.
    In dealing with Sayce, therefore, it
might be thought Gwatkin would assume his favoured role of martinet, imposing a
series of punishments that would eventually bring Sayce before the Commanding
Officer; and certainly Sayce took his share of CBs from Gwatkin in the Company
Office. At the same time, their point of contact, at least on Gwatkin’s side,
was not entirely unsympathetic. The fact was, Sayce appealed to Gwatkin’s
imagination. Those stylized pictures of army life on which Gwatkin’s mind loved
to dwell did not exclude a soldier of Sayce’s type. Indeed, a professional bad
character was obviously a type from which no army could remain wholly free.
Accordingly, Gwatkin was prepared to treat Sayce with what many company
commanders would have considered excessive consideration, to tolerate him up to
a point, even to make serious efforts to reform him. Gwatkin had spoken to me
more than once about these projects for Sayce’s reformation, before he finally
announced that he had planned a direct appeal to Sayce’s better feelings.
    ‘I’m going to have a straight talk
with Sayce,’ he said one day, when Sayce’s affairs had reached some sort of
climax. I’d like you to be present, Nick, as he’s in your platoon.’
    Gwatkin sat at the trestle table with
the army blanket over it. I stood behind. Sayce, capless, was marched in by CSM
Cadwallader and a corporal.
    ‘You and the escort can leave the
room, Sergeant-Major,’ said Gwatkin. ‘I want to have a word with this soldier
in private – that is to say myself and his Platoon Commander, Mr Jenkins.’
    The Sergeant-Major and other NCO
withdrew.
    ‘You can stand easy, Sayce,’ said
Gwatkin.
    Sayce stood easy. His yellow face
showed distrust.
    ‘I want to speak to you seriously,
Sayce,’ said Gwatkin. ‘To speak to you as man to man. Do you understand what I
mean, Sayce?’
    Sayce made some inaudible reply.
    ‘It is not my wish, Sayce, to be
always punishing you,’ said Gwatkin slowly. ‘Is that clear? I do not like doing
that at all.’
    Sayce muttered again. It seemed very
doubtful that he found Gwatkin’s statement easy to credit. Gwatkin leant
forward over the table. He was warming up. Within him were deep reserves of
emotion. He spoke now with that strange cooing tone he used on the telephone.
    ‘You can do better, Sayce. I say you
can do better.’
    He fixed Sayce with his eye. Sayce’s
own eyes began to roll.
    ‘You’re a good fellow at heart, aren’t
you, Sayce?’
    All this was now beginning to tell on
Sayce. I had to admit to myself there was nothing I should have liked less than
to be grilled by Gwatkin in this fashion. A week’s CB would be infinitely
preferable. Sayce began swallowing.
    ‘You are, Sayce, aren’t you?’ Gwatkin
repeated more pressingly, as if time were becoming short for Sayce to reveal
that unexpected better side of himself, and gain salvation.
    ‘Yes, sir,’ said Sayce, very low.
    He spoke without much conviction. That
could scarcely be because there was doubt in his mind of his own high qualifications.
He probably suspected any such information, freely given, might be a dangerous
admission, lead to more work.
    ‘Well, Sayce,’
said Gwatkin, ‘that is what I am going to believe about you. Believe you are a
good fellow. You know why we are all here?’
    Sayce did not
answer.
    ‘You know why
we are all here, Sayce,’ said Gwatkin again, louder this time, his voice
shaking a little with his own depths of feeling. ‘Come on, Sayce, you know.’
    ‘Don’t know,
sir.’
    ‘Yes, you do.’
    ‘Don’t, sir.’
    ‘Come on, man.’
    Sayce made a
great effort.
    ‘To give me CB
for being on a charge,’ he offered wretchedly.
    It was a
reasonable hypothesis, but Gwatkin was greatly disturbed at being so utterly
misunderstood.
    ‘No, no,’ he
said, ‘I don’t mean why we are in the Company Office at