‘Why, yes, he does, sir. That’s him.’
‘You’re all in Captain Kedward’s Company?’
‘We are, sir.’
It seemed astonishing to them that I did not know that already. I could not understand this surprise at first, then remembered that I too was wearing the regimental crest and flash, so that they certainly thought that I belonged to the same brigade as themselves, possibly even newly posted to their own unit. Soldiers often do not know all the officers of their battalion by sight. Indeed, it is not uncommon for the Adjutant to be thought of as the Commanding Officer, because he is the one most often heard giving orders.
‘Is Captain Kedward likely to be about?’
‘He’s in the Company Office just now, sir.’
‘Near here?’
‘Over there, sir, where the swill tubs are.’
‘You stay here, sir,’ said one of them. ‘I’ll get Captain Kedward for you.’
Work was now more or less at a standstill. Cigarettes were handed out. It seemed they had arrived fairly recently in this sector. Earlier, the Battalion had been in action in the Caen area, where casualties had been fairly heavy. I asked about some of the individuals I had known, but they were too young to remember any of them. The L. of C. captain became understandably bored listening to all this.
‘Now you’re back with your long lost unit, I’ll leave you to have a natter,’ he said. ‘Want to check up on some of my own business round the corner. Be with you again in five minutes.’
He went off. At the same moment Kedward, with the young soldier who had offered to fetch him, appeared from the door of a small farmhouse. It was more than four years since I had set eyes on him. He looked a shade older, though not much; that is to say he had lost that earlier appearance of being merely a schoolboy who had dressed up in uniform for fun, burnt-corking his upper lip to simulate a moustache. The moustache now had a perfectly genuine existence. He saluted, seeming to be rather flustered.
‘Idwal.’
‘Sir?’
He had not recognized me.
‘Don’t you remember? I’m Nick Jenkins. We were together in Rowland Gwatkin’s Company.’
Even that information did not appear to make any immediate impression on Kedward.
‘We last saw each other at Castlemallock.’
‘The Casdemallock school of Chemical Warfare, sir?’
On the whole, where duty took one, few captains called a major ‘sir’, unless they were being very regimental. Everyone below the rank of lieutenant-colonel within the official world in which one moved was regarded as doing much the same sort of job, officers below the rank of captain being in any case rare. Responsibilities might vary, sometimes the lower rank carrying the higher responsibility; for example, the CIGS’s ADC, a captain no longer young, being in his way a considerable figure. All the same, this unwonted reminder of having a crown on one’s shoulder did not surprise me so much as Kedward’s total failure to recall me as a human being. The fragile condition of separate identity, perpetually brought home to one, at the same time remains perpetually incredible.
‘Don’t you remember the moment when you took over the Company from Rowland — how upset he was at getting the push.’
Kedward’s face lighted up at that.
‘Why, yes,’ he said. ‘You were with us then, weren’t you, sir? I’m beginning to remember now. Didn’t you come from London? … Was it Lyn Craddock took over the platoon from you? … or Phillpots?’
‘Are they still with you?’
‘Lyn got it at Caen commanding B Company.’
‘Killed?’
‘Yes, Lyn caught it. Phillpots? What happened to Phillpots? I believe he went to one of the Regular battalions and was wounded in Crete.’
‘What became of Rowland Gwatkin?’
‘Fancy you knowing Rowland.’
‘But I tell you, we were all in the same Company.’
‘So we were, but what a long time ago all that was. Rowland living in my home town makes it seem funny you know him.’
‘Is he out here?’
‘Rowland?’
Kedward laughed aloud at such an idea. It was apparently unthinkable.
‘When I last saw him it looked as if he were due for the Infantry Training Centre.’
‘Rowland’s been out of the army for years,’
‘Out of the army?’
‘You never heard?’
Having once established the fact that I knew Gwatkin at all, in itself extraordinary enough, Kedward obviously found it equally extraordinary that I had not kept myself up-to-date about Gwatkin’s life history.
‘Rowland got invalided,’ he said. ‘That can’t have been long after Castlemallock. I know it was all about the time I married.’
‘You got married all right?’
‘Father of two kids.’
‘What sex?’
‘Girls — that’s what I wanted. Wouldn’t mind a boy next.’
‘So Rowland never reached the ITC?’
‘I believe he got there, now you mention it, sir, then he went sick.’
‘Do, for God’s sake, stop calling me “sir”, Idwal.’
‘Sorry — anyway Rowland was ill about that time. Kidneys, was it? Or something to do with his back? Flat feet, it might have been. Whatever it was, they downgraded his medical category, and then he didn’t get any better, and got boarded, and had to leave the army altogether.’
‘Rowland must have taken that pretty hard.’
‘Oh, he did,’ said Kedward cheerfully.
‘So what’s he doing?’
‘Back at the Bank. They’re terribly shorthanded. Glad to have him there, you may be sure. I believe somebody here said they had a letter that mentioned Rowland was acting manager at one of the smaller branches. That’s quite something for Rowland, who wasn’t a great banking brain, I can tell you. Just what a lot of trouble he’ll be making for everybody, you bet.’
‘And his mother-in-law? Is she still living with them? He told me that was going to happen when we said goodbye to each other. Then, on top of his mother-in-law coming to live with them, having to leave the army himself. Rowland’s had the hell of a pasting.’
The thought of Gwatkin and his mother-in-law had sometimes haunted me; the memory of his combined horror and resignation in face of this threatened affliction. To have his dreams of military glory totally shattered as well seemed, as so often in what happens to human beings, out of all proportion to what he had deserved, even if these dreams had, in truth, been impracticable for one of his capacity.
‘My God, bloody marvellous what you know about Rowland and his troubles,’ said Kedward. ‘Mother-in-law and all. Have you come to live in the neighbourhood? I thought you worked in London. Did you hear that Elystan- Edwards got a VC here the other day? That was great, wasn’t it?’
‘I read about it. He came to the Battalion after I left’
‘It was great for the Regiment, wasn’t it?’ Kedward repeated.
‘Great’
There was a pause.
‘Look here, sir — Nick — I’m afraid I won’t be able to talk any more now. Got a lot to do. I thought first when they said a major wanted me, I was going to get a rocket from Brigade. I must make those buggers get a move on with their loading too. They been staging a go-slow since we’ve been here. Look at them.’
We said goodbye. Kedward saluted and crossed to the truck, where the loading operation had certainly become fairly leisurely. The L. of C. captain reappeared. I waved to Kedward. He saluted again.
‘Jaw over?’
‘Yes.’
Perhaps as a result of Kedward’s exhortations, the fatigue party began to sing. The L. of C. captain and I walked up the road in the direction of the cars, leaving them to move eastward towards the urnfields of their Bronze Age home.
‘Open now the crystal fountain,
Whence the healing stream doth flow: