A Fox Under My Cloak (30 page)

After playing, she looked at him as he knelt by her side to turn over the sheet music, and said, “You are the strangest person. You don't even seem to love your own self, let alone anyone else!”

“I hate myself.”

Her hand moved to touch his head; but anticipating the move, he had already cried, “Good lord, I forgot to turn off my tap, and can smell the petrol dripping!” and hurried outside.

*

The July Races—during which the junior officers were warned by the colonel to keep clear of the Pigskin Club—arrived, and the town was filled with Rolls-Royces, Daimlers, and other majestic black landaus and landaulettes, many driven by
chauffeurs
in khaki; and one yellow Rolls, cheered by the stable lads when it passed down the High Street, the bewhiskered and genial figure of the Earl of Lonsdale sitting with his countess in the back.

After the races, Baldersby went away to be married. In the evening, redolent of ripening corn on the breeze, the captains
and the subalterns saw him off from the station. Bertram St George Baldersby, Esquire, in new barathea cross-woven
uniform
, sword and pistol attached to Sam Brown belt (he had been persuaded by Jonah the Whale that these were indispensable for any military wedding) and new flat hat which sat down low and square on his forehead—making his eyes look almost fierce under the peak—and new mustard-coloured puttees, was borne to the station in the T-model Ford of Captain Wyman, said to be the proprietor of two Electric Palaces, who wore the ends of his moustaches waxed to rolled points. Where this captain had come from Phillip did not know; he had appeared one day, his kit in the Ford standing outside Godolphin House.

It was after mess-dinner: the sun yet glistened in the sky, looking as though the day would never end, so timeless the feeling, so far away the war. Captain Wyman's Ford held fourteen men on its way to the station; eleven more followed in a two-seater Singer belonging to someone else. Phillip rode on the iron running-board of the Ford, holding on to Baldersby's shoulder, while someone held to his belt strap, and someone else to his collar.

“Oh, it's you again!” cried Baldersby, petulantly. Everyone had been drinking champagne, toasting the lucky man. “Let go, damn you!”

“I can't, I'll fall off if I do.”

“Then fall off!” Baldersby puffed violently. Someone was standing on his lap. The swaying load bumped on its flattened springs.

“I can't! Someone's holding me, too!”

“Bah!” cried Baldersby, struggling in vain.

By this time Baldersby was the major joke of the mess; Phillip the minor. The feeling of the send-off was part affectionate, part scoffing. Baldersby looked to be a man who had lived much in armour, with his strutting movements; his body, when seen in the private swimming bath of Tonge Park, where subalterns had a standing invitation to tea from the châtelaine, had appeared to be the same width from top of chest almost to his knees. Yet he was not fat; he was neither round nor rectangular; he was Baldersby the man of ancestral armour, slightly scowling as through a visor, long yellow moustaches turning down, long hair of the same colour; his eyes, teeth, and big-toe nails, as he stood for a dive on the edge of the bath—a belly-flop in the end—all
were noticeably yellow. The absence of all hair on the
insides
of his thighs showed where it had been worn away by friction against the ribs of horses.

Baldersby in the swimming bath of Tonge Park had swum slowly, on a breast stroke, puffing after Phillip to duck him in the traditional manner, in a horse pond. He succeeded, holding down the loathéd neck by a hand; but swallowing too much water himself, he was forced to let go. Phillip, all gasping over, bore Baldersby not the slightest ill-will. It was but another inexplicable act in the spree that was life.

The train came in. Baldersby stood there, flat hat, yellow boots, yellow puttees, sword scabbard scrubbed yellow and polished, not with saddle-soap (remarkable for a hunting man) but with light tan boot polish. There was no-one else in the train. Baldersby had it to himself.

The engine-driver waited, so did the guard. Watches, each as large as half a cricket ball, were consulted. Minutes sped by. At last the engine driver gave a little toot on his whistle.

“All right, all right,” cried Baldersby, fluttering a hand. “Well so long, you fellers.”

At this he was lifted up bodily to an open first-class carriage door, and flung in. Cheers as he got up, closed the door, leaned out, puffing his cigar.

“So long, you fellers.”

“So long!” cried Phillip, with the others, cheering. Abruptly Baldersby left the window. Nor did he look out again. He was reading the newspaper he had brought with him for the journey
—The
Pink
'Un.

*

Phillip never saw him again. After his month's marriage leave, Baldersby went to the third battalion, then being formed under the command of Major Fridkin, soon to be promoted
lieutenant-colonel
. There Baldersby got his company, his longed-for third pip, and his own charger. On it he led his two hundred odd, men on route marches; then another two hundred men; then another, and another; for it was a training battalion, feeding the two battalions at the front. At last, after the great battles of Somme, and the opening and middle stages of third Ypres, in the time of what was called the man-power shortage, Baldersby was sent out himself, and was killed almost immediately at the battle for Poelcapelle, one of scores of local battles, involving
the British in 600,000 casualties, for the Passchendaele ridge overlooking the plain of the Scheldt, between the end of July and the beginning of December 1917. This was a little more than two years after Baldersby's marriage at the age of
twenty-six
; to Phillip in the summer of 1915, Baldersby seemed quite old.

Lieutenant-colonel Fridkin, five years older than Baldersby, saw out the war in England. For his services in training troops at home during the four years of the war he was awarded the Order of the British Empire, together with a foreign decoration: the Chinese Excellent Crop, 2nd Class, with Grand Cordon.

M
EANWHILE
it was August 1915. Phillip was still haunted by the thought of having to return to the front. Cousin Willie, now commissioned, was in Gallipoli, of which many stories were told, of failure and disaster. Turkish snipers, their faces dyed green and their heads covered with grasses and twigs, were said to have been roasted after capture by the Australians; a division of second-line Lancashire territorials had broken at the recent Suvla landing, and stabbed the water-pipe from the off-shore barge, to fill their water-bottles: and the water had run into the sand. There was some talk, too, of a big push in France; two more subalterns in the mess had orders to proceed overseas, to join the first battalion. Soon the second battalion, it was said, was to fire its courses at the range near Southend, and then, with luck, go out as a unit.

He avoided the thought of far-off terrors by gadding about—never sitting still—always on the move lest something be missed in life that had no other horizon than death. He had no idea that he was escaping from his secret self, living in one dimension, from one moment to another moment, avoiding the thought of the length of his days.

Like a star, the thought of Desmond, his great friend, was fixed in his actual living, as the thought of Helena was fixed in his secret living, above his fears and uncertainties.

The gaiety of his friendship with Monty had gone after a
Saturday night and Sunday morning spent together at
Southend-on
-Sea, where they went, Monty on a Douglas motor-cycle, Phillip on his. They stayed in a cheap little house marked
Bed
&
Breakfast
,
and on Sunday morning, as they packed their haversacks, Monty suggested that they creep out and leave without paying. At first Phillip thought this might be fun: then, thinking of the landlady’s grey hair and thin face, rather like his mother’s, he demurred. So the bill was asked for, and paid. Monty insisted that there would have been no risk; second loots like Phillip were two-a-penny, and who was to know where they had come from? Phillip felt rather inferior in Monty’s eyes after that, coupled with the way Monty had sworn at him outside Ely; and the gay expeditions together seemed to be over.

Then there was a little trouble with the police, after a
motor-cycle
accident on the straight road across the Heath. The
hell-for
-leather Harley-Davidson owner, with whom Phillip had struck up a roadside acquaintance, was a subaltern in the Bucks, named Waterpark. He knew some people who lived in the red brick house among trees and stables lying off the Cambridge road. Waterpark, whose elder brother owned the racing
Métallurgique
, asked Phillip early one evening, when they stopped on the Heath for a chat astride their machines, if he would care to come to dinner with him at the House.

“The cove I was taking has just had his orders for overseas, and Mrs. Sweeting asked me to bring another cove. It’s a pleasant little place, two jolly girls, still in the schoolroom of course, and they give you a good dinner. Old Sweeting trains the Royal String.”

Greatly daring, for he suspected a trap, on the lines of
Down
fall
among
Bad
Companions
in the tableaux in Madame Tussaud’s, Phillip said, “Thanks”. What was a Royal String? Was it anything to do with a Royal Flush, like poker? A gambling house? What an experience to tell Mrs. Neville!

“I’ll go back to the mess, and have a wash and brush up.”

“Right. We’ll meet here at seven.”

As usual, Waterpark raced away on his twin Harley-Davidson, head down, eating up the road, as Monty said. Phillip dare not open his throttle wide, as the engine always began to vibrate, and cause a speed-wobble, at about forty-five. The Harley, with its high-compression pistons, could do over seventy.

He signed out for mess dinner, then went upstairs to change.
He left his money, except two shillings (possibly needed for a tip) in a drawer, just in case poker was the idea. He must be wary not to sign an IOU, which was legal tender, the new fellow in his room, drinking gin and water out of tooth-mug as he lay on his bed reading, told him in his dull voice.

This new fellow, called Flynn, was a curious fellow, Phillip thought. He was an undergraduate in his second year, and had recently been commissioned. Whenever Flynn could get a lift back to the university town, he went into the Blue Boar, and drank beer steadily. Flynn had a putty-coloured face, and long hair parted in the middle which often flopped over his eyes, which were dull grey. His hands were cold and damp. On his first night in the attic-room he had turned in his camp bed, while resting on an elbow, and muttered to Phillip in his thick voice that Phillip could do something to him if he liked, and then he’d do it to Phillip. Phillip pretended to have heard the word as “beggar”, and replied with assumed innocence, “No thanks, I don’t play cards for money.”

“Who the hell’s asking you to?” Flynn had growled, and Phillip saw that his putty face was sweating.

“Beggar my neighbour is a card game, isn’t it?” said Phillip; whereupon Flynn repeated his offer, to which Phillip replied unconcernedly, “No thanks,” and thought no more of it. Nor had Flynn mentioned it since. What Phillip did notice, however, was that Flynn was always wetting his bed.

Phillip told him that he was going out to dinner with strangers. Flynn grunted. “This town’s full of four-flushers and three-card coves, so don’t go getting into any fix-up. You really need me to look after you, you know.”

“Oh, I’m only taking two bob. Well, cheer-ho.”

He met Waterpark as arranged, and they went down the gravel drive to the house covered with Virginia creeper. The people inside seemed very quiet and nice. There were coloured pictures and engravings of race-horses, and many signed
photographs
in silver frames. He recognised Edward the Seventh, the Kaiser, George the Fifth, Queen Mary and others.

There was duck for dinner, and green peas that looked so very green that he wondered if they were doped. But more pressing was the problem,
Which
way
up
ought
the
fork
to
be
held
?
Supposing he made a mistake? The thought was so painful that he decided not to take any peas.

“Oh, but they are just at their prime, the tomtits are
beginning
to peck the shucks! Won’t you change your mind?”

“No thanks, really.”

“Don’t you like peas? And with duckling, Mr. Maddison?”

“Well, you see, the last lot I ate made me sick.”

“Oh dear!”

The two girls, in white, long-haired with bows, were jolly sorts, he thought. By this time he realised that his fears about being lured to a gaming house were foolish, for these people obviously moved in very high society. Trying to make up for his awkwardness at table, sitting on his hands and hunching up his shoulders, he volunteered to sing songs at the piano in the drawing-room. Alas, he made a bigger fool of himself, choosing the
Indian
Love
Lyrics
, which he had heard sung only, but never sung himself; the result was rather like riding the white horse for the first time. To make it worse, he changed from tenor to bass, and blared out notes muffled in throat,

They all clapped together, with smiling faces: perhaps it had not sounded too bad: so with elation he decided to give an encore of a different kind, his favourite poem
To
a
Skylark
by James Hogg, first heard when Uncle Hugh had recited it by his cot when he was nearly three, when the feeling in Uncle’s voice had made his tears run in sympathy.

The words moved him now, with a feeling of all such things gone from his life, never to return: the lark singing high over the heather of Ashdown Forest, heard by Baldwin and his girl and himself on that Sunday before they had struck camp and gone to France. Were larks now singing over the graves of
Baldwin
and all the others upon the crest of Messines? And Uncle Hugh dead long ago, shrinking to skin and bone with cries of pain——

“You were a great success,” said Waterpark, when they were outside after the goodbyes. “I think perhaps your métier is electrocution, or whatever the beastly word is, rather than singing. We must make our dinner call together in two days’ time. Most hospitable people. Well, au revoir, many thanks for helping me out!” and leaping on his heavy brown machine, Waterpark rushed the dust away.

What happened afterwards was that he was blinding over the Heath, head down as usual, and did not see a motor coming towards him and went slap into it and the forks of the Harley were found somewhere near the flywheel of the motor car. Phillip heard the noise of impact half a mile away; and had to give evidence at the inquest. Afterwards he was served with a summons for not having the
£
1 annual licence required for a mechanically-propelled vehicle; and once again his name appeared in the local paper as a Young Blood in the Army Rushing About.

*

In mid-August the battalion entrained for a village near Southend-on-Sea to dig trenches and fire a musketry course. Several other regiments were in the district north of the Thames estuary. In one of the village pubs at night, in the saloon bar where some of the older junior officers, including Brendon, the Boer War gentleman-ranker, went after mess dinner, Phillip saw a most extraordinary officer. When first seen, as the
Cantuvellaunians
entered, he was seated on a chair in the little square room with the barmaid on his lap, one hand round her waist, the other holding a glass of stout. He made no attempt to alter his position as the half-dozen newcomers came in, but called out, “Cheero, cocks!”

The barmaid got up, a little flustered, to return behind the counter, thus enabling the row of variegated colours of medal ribands to be seen on the lieutenant’s breast. There were yellows, reds, browns, blacks, and blues, an exotic section of butterfly-wings. He had a sort of butterfly-face, or a large caterpillar’s, with his large black eyes, thin black moustache, little irregular teeth when he smiled, and parchment-rough texture of skin. Brendon, who wore the two ribands of the South African War, stared a lot at the fellow’s ribands, Phillip noticed.

He was, it turned out, the adjutant of the Navvies Battalion
of the Middlesex Regiment, recently formed by a Labour Member of Parliament, who had been made a lieutenant-colonel. Some of the navvies were to be seen in the district by day: many with grey hair, some very old and almost tottery, with campaign ribands going back to the Crimea, Ashanti, and
long-forgotten
Indian Frontier fights.

About the adjutant, Brendon was definite. He was, said Brendon, a sprucer.

“He’s got both the Queen’s and King’s South African ribands up,
and
the Boxer Rebellion riband. Now to qualify for the King’s medal you had to have two years’ service in South Africa; and as the war lasted two years and four months, including the periods of transportation of troops from England, it isn’t
physically
possible to have served two years there and to have got to China in time to get the Boxer medal. And there he is, with adjutant’s pay and a captaincy in the offing, probably never having left the Liverpool docks, judging by his accent—and here am I, at the age of thirty-six, having to support myself, wife, and child on a second lieutenant’s pay of seven-and-six a day, unable to afford even a second whiskey and soda.”

After a while Phillip said, “Will you have a drink with me, Brendon?”

Brendon went on immediately. “Someone ought to tackle that fellow—Navvies battalion!—Fred Karno’s Army!—You!”
turning
to Phillip. “Now there’s the battalion for our prize young stumer, Maddison—he would fit in well there. As a soldier, Maddison is in that state known as
non
est
.”

One more snub made little difference to Phillip: it was part of ordinary existence as he had known it from early consciousness: but it gave him an idea, that grew as he thought that the old navvies would spend the war digging trenches in England, or miles behind the front if ever they got so far as France. If only he could get into the battalion, he would be able to spend the rest of the war behind the lines!

He went to see the navvies’ adjutant, who was billeted at the pub. He greeted Phillip as “Old Cock”, accepted a double gin and tonic, and then said, “Well, what’s your trouble?”

Phillip explained.

The adjutant said that he was expecting to be given the second-in-command of the reserve navvies’ battalion about to be formed, and at the moment was officer in command of the
detachment preparing a defensive line under the sappers; so at the moment he could do nothing.

“I’ll tell you what, old cock. I’ll give you the colonel’s name and address in a moment, it’s Alexandra Palace, near the
race-course
, you know, north of London, but we’re leaving there any moment. When you write and ask for an interview, lay on the soft soap, but be regimental at the same time—if you follow my meaning—it can be done, cock, both ways, like most things in life, though some”—he bumped Phillip with his elbow, and leered—“can be done in a variety of positions, eh? Don’t you agree?—to resume, cock—write the letter, say you were with the Londoners in France, no, don’t say that, he’ll think you’re a skrimshanker, which you probably bloody well are, like the rest of us, but eyewash, cock, eyewash every time! Well, write your letter, see; and I’ll put a word in for you, I’m going to Alexandra Palace in two days’ time—and when I get to be second-in-command of the reserve battalion, I’ll see you get a company, promoted to captain, how’s that, cock?”