A Fox Under My Cloak (21 page)

These weekly guest-nights, Phillip thought, were rather fun. After dinner, they had high-jinks in the ante-room. One of the games was called
Kruger.
Two officers were blindfolded, and lay on the floor, rolled newspapers in their right hands, and
holding each other’s left hand. One cried, “Who goes there?” the other replied “Kruger!” and then had to move his head away from where he had spoken, or be sloshed by the rolled newspaper. Another game was to put two armchairs together, back to back, and taking a run at one, turn a somersault and land sitting down in the other chair. Then to do it blindfold.

Phillip had heard about this trick from Bertie, who had had it done on him. The joke with a newcomer was to remove a chair while he was being blindfolded, others talking round him to muffle the sound of the castors, and when, having learnt to do it with open eyes, he tried to somersault over the back of one chair blindfold, he went wallop on to the floor.

Phillip could not see the fun of it; indeed, remembering how he had hurt his spine years before when Gerry had pulled his chair away, at Gran’pa’s supper party, as he was about to sit down, he thought it was positively dangerous. Knowing what was in store for him, he shook his head and slipped away when Baldersly, the senior subaltern, flushed and smoking a cigar, called out with it between his teeth and his long yellow
moustache
, “Come on, you new wart, now do it blindfold!”; and waited in the lavatory until he thought Baldersby would have forgotten. There was a lot of clapping and cheering, and
unlocking
the door, Phillip darted back, in time to see the “Infant Hercules”, resplendent with three new pips, hair ruffled, do the somersault blindfold, to land upright on his feet. The Colonel looked very pleased, and patted “Hercules” on the shoulder. “Hercules”, of course, already knew the trick.

At ten o’clock the following night the officers went up to the wide gallops of the Heath, for compass reading. Pairs had to advance through darkness on imaginary trenches by given
bearings
. As Phillip did not have a luminous compass, the officer in charge, Major Howes, the bookseller in private life, kindly lent him his. When all was over, they re-assembled for a brief talk by the senior company commander, known to Phillip merely as the captain who had a Rover motor-cycle with a three-speed Sturmey-Archer gear in its huge rear-wheel hub.

“In finding your way at night in hostile territory, as any country would be, of course, occupied by the Germans in retreat, the question of silence is all-important. I heard one officer’s voice as I stood out in front, moreover, he was smoking a cigarette. That, of course, would be fatal if done at the front,
for he would immediately call down retribution on his head, in the shape of machine-gun fire.”

“Another point I would like to make, sir!” the captain went on, turning respectfully to the rather stumpy form of Major Howes, the bookseller. “At present progress in the dark on compass bearings is necessarily limited by the length between the compass-bearer and his partner who goes out before him, to mark the direction, and to remain the starting-point for the next advance. It occurs to me that if the marker carried a ball of string in his hand, he could pay it out as he advances, and when the compass-bearer sees he has gone far enough forward, that is to say, well before the point of invisibility, he could give the string a jerk, and stop the marker, without the necessity of any further notice.”

“An awful good idea,” said Major Howes. “Awful good,” he repeated. Phillip had heard the colonel use this expression: it seemed to be rather the fashion among those officers who were “’Vars’ty m’n”. Another expression was “awful bore”, the opposite of anything “awful good”.

“Chick” had been to the “Vars’ty”, though, Phillip
understood
, not as an actual member. He had been at Fitzwilliam Hall, a sort of extra college, which didn’t quite count. Some of the real colleges had strange nicknames, like Pemmy or Pemmer, Pothouse, and Keys.

“Anyone like to say anything?” asked the captain with the Rover motor-bike.

No-one spoke for a moment; then Phillip said, “Sir! Were we supposed to be going into trenches tonight?”

“Well, not exactly into our own trenches, but advancing on a position where the Germans would be entrenched. Why do you ask?”

“Well, sir, it isn’t done like that out there.”

“Oh, really.” After a pause the senior captain said, “
Perhaps
you will tell us how it is done, then?”

“Well, sir, if it was at night, the German lines would be lit by flares, making a compass unnecessary. Anyway, the luminous paint would not be visible in the bright lights.”

“But supposing the Germans were not sending up flares?”

“Well, sir, the Germans do send them up, all night.”

“At present, yes. But present conditions of stalemate will not hold when the time comes for open warfare. It has already
begun, at Neuve Chapelle and elsewhere. Any more questions? No-one else has anything to say?” He turned and saluted Major Howes, who said, “Thank you, Captain Rhodes. I think that is all, gentlemen. Will you make your own way back?”

Phillip, on returning to Godolphin House, went upstairs to get his pipe; and on coming downstairs was about to enter the ante-room, when he paused by the half-open door, hearing the somewhat thick voice of Baldersby, the senior subaltern, saying something which at once he thought must refer to himself.

“Damned cheek! Bloody rude, contradicting Rhodes! ‘It isn’t done like that out there!’ Just because he’s been out for a week or two as a Tommy! Abominable manners! Blasted little Cockney! Look how he helped himself to half the trout mayonnaise the other day at luncheon! By God, we’ll take him down a peg or two—show him what isn’t done here, what?”

Phillip was about to creep away from this unpleasant revelation of his effect upon others, when he saw that the mess-sergeant, bearing a tray of drinks, had come silently on his rubber-soled shoes. “By your leave, sir,” said the sergeant, gravely, with a slight inclination of his head. Before the war he had been junior butler to one of the noble members of the Pigskin Club, Phillip had been told by “Chick”.

Phillip waited to hear no more; he felt shame about the incident mentioned by Baldersby. It had occurred three days before, when eight of them, including Baldersby, had had an early luncheon, at noon, as they were going out with an advance party on brigade manœuvres. The mess-sergeant had brought in a large silver two-handled tray, of salad and pink fish, said to be trout presented to the mess by Colonel Baldersby, father of the senior subaltern, who was often referred to, among the junior subalterns, as “Bertram Baldersby, of Baldersby Towers, Baldersby, Berkshire”. Phillip had been the second officer at table to be offered the dish, over his left shoulder; he had been helping himself liberally, while saying to the mess-sergeant, “I like this, Sergeant,” when the ex-butler said, slowly and gravely, “Yes, sir; but there are other gentlemen present.”

Hastily Phillip put most of it back on the dish, amidst a silence that had ended only when the sergeant had gone away; then O’Connor, also an attached officer, and an Irish barrister, had remarked, “I have not yet visited the Pigskin Club, after the colonel’s awful warnings to us about minding our pees and
queues in the matter of not sitting down in the favourite
armchair
of any of the venerable and noble members of that historic gaming house. Has anyone?”

“Of course I have, my uncle is one of the stewards,” replied Baldersby, shortly.

*

Phillip put on belt and cap, and wheeling out
Helena
,
pushed and ran and vaulted and sped away up the street with loud drum-beats of the open exhaust to the large and famous
red-brick
Belvoir Hotel. The entrance was under an arch, through which in the old days coaches had driven. He had been through the arch twice before, the first time to the bar, where the
barmaid
was the girl he had seen several times on the
flapper-bracket
of a Douglas motor-cycle belonging to a dark,
pale-faced
A.S.C. subaltern; on the second occasion, to listen outside a small room, lit by a pink-shaded electric light, through the open door of which had come the gramophone strains of
They’d
Never
Believe
Me
,
which “Hercules” sometimes played and sang with others in the ante-room, around the piano. It came from the George Grossmith musical comedy,
Tonight’s
the
Night,
according to the sheet-music.

Phillip, walking under the arch, heard the gramophone playing; and as before, stopped by the open door to listen. Several Royal Naval Air Service fellows were sitting in the room. Phillip knew that the Belvoir Hotel was the headquarters of the anti-Zeppelin gun-crews who drove the Rolls-Royce tenders, one with
searchlight
, the other with a pom-pom gun, about the countryside at night, whenever one of the German gas-bags was supposed to be over; but he had no idea that this little room was the Petty Officers’ mess.

“Jolly good little gramophone,” said Phillip, after a while entering the room, and sitting down.

“Yes,” said one of the petty officers. He had rather a cultured voice Phillip thought. “We find it sufficient for our limited circle.”

“Had any air-raid warnings recently?” asked Phillip, his voice assuming the tone of the older man’s voice.

“I am really not in a position to say,” replied the other, going out of the room.

Phillip took up a
Tatler
and looked at it. When the record of
They
’
d
never
Believe
Me
ended, one of the R.N.A.S. took it off
and closed the Decca gramophone, making of it a black cube. Then he, too, went out.

Phillip thought he would go into the adjoining bar for a glass of beer. The R.N.A.S. men were there, but feeling that they did not want him to speak with them, he sat by himself. If the barmaid rode on the flapper-bracket of a Douglas, perhaps she might care for a ride on his ’bus? But she went off duty before he could ask her, and a cellar-man in a green baize apron took her place.

When he went outside a policeman with notebook and a long piece of iron wire was standing by
Helena.
He said it was his duty to report Phillip for offences contravening the law. He put the wire up the exhaust pipe, and said: “Have you any baffle plates in the pipe, sir?”

“If I had, they are all blown out by now, Officer.”

“Then would you agree that you have no silencer?”

“Yes, of course. This is an open exhaust.”

“Thank you, sir,” said the policeman, shutting his book.

“Your perfect witness, officer.”

*

Phillip liked O’Connor, the barrister from Trinity College, Dublin; and when he was summoned to appear before the Magistrates’ Court on two counts—(a) for exceeding the speed limit of 10 miles per hour through the High Street, and (b) riding a machine powered by an internal-combustion engine fitted with an insufficient silencer or alternatively the said machine not being fitted with a sufficient silencing box in accordance with the Motor Car Act of 1896 and subsequent Acts, he sought his advice. O’Connor advised him upon the wording of the letter pleading guilty to both charges and “
unreservedly
placing himself in the hands of the Bench”.

“We might dispute the legality of the ten miles an hour speed limit, which was imposed by local bodies, as it happens, without authority from the County Council, the duly elected and legally constituted body which alone can make such a speed limit enforceable by law; but that would be unwise under the
circumstances
, my boy. This is a town famous for bloodstock, and trainers have an established right to lead their strings through the High Street, and the burgesses to insist on protection for the valuable animals on whom the prosperity of the district largely depends—you follow me?”

“Yes,” said Phillip, “I’ll plead guilty as you say, and place myself in their hands.”

“And get a silencer fitted to that exhaust pipe, my boy, or they’ll get you again.”

The letter as advised by O’Connor was written and sent; with apologies that urgent military duties prevented the writer from being present in court to pay his respects and offer his regrets to the Bench in person. He was fined
£
1,
and there were six inches of single column in the local weekly newspaper headed WARNING TO YOUNG BLOODS IN ARMY RUSHING ABOUT ON MOTOR-CYCLES.

Alone in the ante-room just before half-past twelve, Phillip cut the report out of the paper, pinned it upon the green-baize board, and sat in a chair with
The
Times.
Officers came in to read it, before going into the mess. When, a few minutes later, he followed in, the Mess President, Major Fridkin, sitting at the top table, said out loud to the senior subaltern beside him,

“Who stuck it up there? ‘Young bloods in the Army’, what? I see the report says the ‘young blood’ was a member of this regiment, Baldersby. A bit inaccurate that bit, don’t you know.”

“It ought to have said ‘Young ticks attached’,” snorted Baldersby, his small deep-set eyes glaring. “Damn it all, a hoss might get foot-fever, or swelled pasterns, bangin’ ’em on those cobbles! Damn beastly things, motor-cycles.
Bikes
, little ticks call ’em! Young ticks on what they call ‘bikes’. Faugh!”

Phillip feeling Major Fridkin’s sleepy-lidded gaze on him, kept his eyes on his plate. He had never meant to agitate the race-horses as Baldersby seemed to think.

He saw the very thing for a silencer after parade the next morning, on one of the market-day stalls in the cobbled gutters beside the broad main street. It was lying amidst odds and ends of old junk on a shallow. A coffee pot, the very thing! The percolator would muffle most of the gasses, and he might even fit a whistle on the spout, as a cut-out! It seemed to him to be frightfully funny, a coffee pot on the end of the pipe, on his bike displaying in large white letters O.H.M.S. There was a garage half up the hill leading to the Heath, and thither Phillip went, pushing his machine, coffee-pot tied to handlebars. A dark young man with a handsome face, sharp of profile, wearing a bright red and blue striped tie, came out of the little glassed-in office.