A Fox Under My Cloak (9 page)

At the evening round the doctor asked Phillip what he was before joining up.

“Junior clerk, sir.”

“I mean, what weight?”

“About ten and a half stone, sir,” replied Phillip, adding on a few pounds.

“Ever had a persistent cough?”

“A sort of persistent cough, sir, but it went away, when I took linctus.”

“H’m, we’ll sound your bellows.”

After tapping, followed by the usual
ninety-nine
business, the M.O. folded his stethoscope. “You seem all right, my boy.”

“Thank you, sir.”

There were three beds in Phillip’s room at the top of the house. One was vacant; the other held a young regular soldier of the East Surreys who had taught him Hindustani words as he told him about the old days in India, where each soldier, he said, had at least three native servants, or
wallahs
—one to clean his boots and equipment, another to make his bed and help keep the barrack room clean, a third to help cook and wait at table—each paid a few annas a week. An officer had anything up to a score of native servants, grooms or
syces
. In Hindustani porridge
was
ber
goo,
bread was
rooti,
jam was
pozzie,
tea was
char
‚
high-class
was
posh.

“You’re posh, aren’t you?” the other said to him suddenly, as though to surprise him into admission of a secret.

Phillip smiled modestly. He had an idea, all the same, that he was not really posh; as regular army officers were posh, for example. Most of the officers in the battalion had been partners or directors of firms in the City, if they had been in business; some were above business, and owned land. They went to Oxford University; perhaps to Cambridge; but not to London University. They were
really
posh. He was a sort of mongrel, a half-and-half person. All the same it was rather nice to be considered
posh,
in spite of the fact that the soldier could not really tell the difference. He was like Cranmer, who had believed that he was of another world.

The East Surrey man packed up one morning, for a base camp. Phillip felt very sorry for him. From the base camp he would go with a draft up the line.
When
hard
fighting
comes
—— The East Surrey man was bound to be killed. The regulars on 19 December had had to make attacks against uncut barbed-wire, as there were not enough high-explosive shells to cut it. The few lyddite shells of the British as often as not burst in their own trenches, or beyond the German; so the gunners used shrapnel to try and cut the thick belts of wire, with machine-gun bullets to help. As if a round lead shrapnel ball, or a pointed nickel bullet, could cut stretched or loose wire! It would in most cases ricochet off. So the regulars, cheering hoarsely, or rather uttering oaths and shouts of fear, were mown down before the enemy wire.

The East Surrey man looked worried all the time. He had far-staring dark eyes, and looked white about the face, and muttered a lot in his sleep, poor devil. He had no ten-shilling notes to spare; his wife lived in Bethnal Green, on a tiny little separation allowance. Phillip felt bad when he had gone away.

Alone in the room, shaded electric lamp by his bed, he lay and tried not to think of the truth of things. The truth was a sort of dry-rot, like there had been under the downstairs lavatory floor before Father had scattered carbolic about. He had gone down the trap-door with Father long ago, and seen the old ’cello standing there. Father had shaken the bottle, and a dollop had burned his leg. He hadn’t cried, he remembered; and
Father had come up to his room when he was in bed, and looked at the blister with a candle, and then given him a bar of Callard and Bowser’s cherry toffee, on condition that he ate it in the morning, since he had cleaned his teeth; and he had sucked it when Father had gone, then wrapped it in the silver paper again, in case Father came back, and said that he could not be trusted.

*

When the ten-shilling note arrived in a letter, with cigarettes and tobacco, Phillip said to the orderly, an amiable chap who sometimes sat on his bed and talked to him, “I say, could you get me marked ‘bunk’, before I get too well?”

“Why, d’you want to go home?”

“Yes, and I’ll explain why. It’s going to be a bloody long war. Have a Three Castles fag? Have several, go on, have a handful. You blokes don’t get the issue that we get up the line. Honestly, we paved the trench with air-tight tins of Capstan.”

“Go on!”

“It’s a fact. I’ll send you a hundred fags if I get home. I can send them duty-free, you know. Honestly, do you think I’ve got any chance to be marked ‘bunk’?”

“I’ll see the doctor. He says you are debilitated, and need a rest. Anyway, we are clearing out this place soon, getting ready for the spring offensive.”

Phillip took the note out of the envelope.

“Anyway, here’s a little present for looking after me so well.”

That evening when the doctor appeared—he always entered the room suddenly and left abruptly—he pointed a stylo-pen at Phillip and said dramatically, “You are too pale, you are not getting well fast enough, you are debilitated, so I am going to send you home for a long convalescence!” Then seizing the chart on its wooden board, he scribbled the word BUNK on it.

Phillip hoped that his face would remain pale and debilitated at least until the door shut behind the doctor. He lay quiet and solemn while the doctor stared at him, before turning on his heel and departing. The orderly, as he went out of the door, smiled at him. As soon as the door was closed, he got out of bed much quicker than he had been practising of late, and danced a jig on the oil-cloth. Then, lest it give him a good colour, he got back sedately into bed again, where he simmered with
suppressed
delight.

“When do I go?” he asked the orderly, at lights-out.

“Next boat, laddie. Probably early tomorrow morning. You’ll go from Lee ’arf.”

“Well, thanks very much for all you’ve done.”

“Don’t mention it,” said the orderly, in a mock-posh voice. “The pleasure is entirely mine. Now you get some kip, you mustn’t run a temperature now, hor you’ll have to stop ’ere—here. How’s that for classy speakin’?”

“Very posh indeed.”

In the night he grieved for the East Surrey soldier. He had been really sick, after a burst appendix. He had hoped to be marked
Bunk
, and get home to Bethnal Green, to see “the missus and kids”. Phillip shivered as he thought of the East Surrey soldier having to go up the line again; then, as he hid his head under the warm blankets, thoughts of
Bunk
made him entirely happy for himself.

*

In the morning letters, pipe, matches, packet of toffees, pencil, writing paper and envelopes, Prussian Guard leather belt with other souvenirs—all his few, portable possessions went into the linen bag given him for the purpose; and holding it on his stomach, he was carried on a stretcher down flights of stairs and so to the hall of the hotel. It was a day bright with north-east wind. When the motor ambulance came, a nurse bent down and gave him a delicious drink of hot milk, honey, egg, and brandy. He thanked her, and was lifted up into the ambulance, which held three stretcher cases. The motor was driven by a civilian Englishman in sloppy khaki cap with a red-cross badge on the front, and a loose-fitting khaki tunic—volunteer driver from the Royal Automobile Club.

The back of the body was open, the canvas door strapped back. Phillip could see the Channel, grey with rocking white tips of waves, and low chalk cliffs, as the motor hummed along the coast road. He felt warm and contented. He was marked
Bunk
: he was going to England! No-one in the ambulance spoke. He could see only the man opposite, who had a yellow face, a dark look of extreme weakness about it.

Soon the journey was over. He saw an immense red cross painted on the white side of the hospital ship. On a stretcher he was carried past iron doors opened in the side of the ship. There were hundreds of beds with railed sides, like children’s cots, filling the wide floor within. With a mild shock he heard
from an orderly that it was one of the Mackarness Antipodean liners. Uncle Hilary’s line! He lay all the morning in a cot, dozing and counting the number of port-holes converging along the walls. They were very crowded in the distance: he must count them before the ship left, otherwise he would be sent back to the front. Each counting gave a different number. He tried to scorn his superstitious dread; but returned to the
counting
. Then a slight vibration through everything told that it was heading for the open sea, and he gave it up. Why were not the port-holes covered? An orderly said the red-crosses were lit up by electricity on both sides, as warning marks for German submarines. Phillip hoped he would not be sick, as he had been going to Le Havre five months before. Five months! It was a lifetime.

He slept fitfully in the night; and lay awake in periods of calm reflection, picturing his home-coming. He would see Mother, Desmond, Mrs. Neville, Gran’pa, Aunt Marian, Father, his sisters and cousins. There would be his old white rat, Timmy, in the scullery. His birds’ eggs in his corner cupboard, his model yacht
Dipper
, stationary steam-engine, his electrical apparatus, and best of all his saloon gun and fly-fishing rod! And thinking of the old life in a sweet dream, he fell asleep and awakened to realise that the ship was gliding, the engines hardly turning.

“We’re in Southampton Water, lad,” said the orderly,
bringing
him a mug of tea. It tasted so funny with milk, sort of
white-fatty
.

In the hospital train—of trucks white-painted inside and fitted with beds separated by a walking space down the middle—telegraph forms were given out, for messages to next-of-kin. Where were they going? A passing orderly told him. There were no windows in the truck, so he could not see what England looked like after all the long time.

Kent sounded more countryfied than London, S.E., which was really the postal address. He imagined Mother running in to tell Gran’pa and Aunt Marian; then Mrs. Bigge, perhaps, and then Mrs. Neville, and Aunt Dome. Cousin Gerry was already at home, and with the Second Battalion, his wound
having healed. Cousin Bertie was at Caterham, having been given a special reserve commission in the Lilywhites, his
grandfather’s
regiment. Fancy having to salute old Bertie! He would make a good officer, being so calm and thorough.

The viewless journey became tedious. The electric lights were put out, except one. The orderly appeared now and again, on plimsolled feet, to bring or take a china bottle. Why was everything so noisy, rattles everywhere, the wheels thumping so loudly over the breaks in the rails? Why were pictures of the Menin Road and all that hell so persistent in his mind? Ah, how lovely was the hot milk, with sugar and beaten egg in it! Now he could feel snug.

When he awakened the train had stopped. He lay drowsing contentedly between rough sheets (so much more intimate, somehow, than the smooth ones at Étretat) while it crawled on; stopped; went on gradually, until voices outside told him that they had arrived The doors were rolled back, revealing cold lilac lights of arc-lamps above a station platform.

“Manchester,” said the orderly. “They couldn’t take you little old lot at Brum.”

He was put on a stretcher, his bullet-torn overcoat, tail slashed off, covering blanket, as, glengarry on head, he was carried past staring civilians.

“Good old Jock,” said a man. “How are ye, laddie?”

“Arl recht the no’, mon,” replied Phillip, feeling like Harry Lauder. He hoped they would ask no more questions and find out that he was a fraud; so closed his eyes, pretending weariness.

The motor ambulance went to Ancoats Military Hospital as Phillip learned on entering the gloomy hall. He was put in a ward with fifty other patients.

In the morning, after inspection, he was given a hospital suit of bright-blue jacket and trousers lined with white flannel, carpet slippers, grey socks, and a red tie. Many of the men of his ward smoked clay cutty pipes and thick twist, which they cut up with knives, like the regulars in France. A whiff of smoke from one of them made his eyes smart, so he kept to the bulldog Vichand pipe Father had bought for him at the Stores, and Hignett’s Cavalier.

There was a room guarded by a soldier with rifle and bayonet. A dozen German prisoners were inside, dimly seen through the lower frosted glass.

“Can’t I go in and sec them, sentry?”

“My orders are no-one’s to enter, mate.”

Phillip saw they had shaven heads. Some were on crutches.

“Does anyone visit them?”

“Only the Medical Officer.”

“It wouldn’t do any harm, would it?”

“None s’far’s I know, but orders is orders.”

He went away, after waving at the curious figures. Instantly they waved back, smiling.

The next day he was driven out, in hospital garb, to a
convalescent
home at Alderley Edge. He was in Cheshire. How he was seeing the world! The convalescent home was also an asylum, with a great many buildings. One of them was for soldiers; the others for civvies, mental cases and nervous disorders.

The soldiers’ wing was almost empty, most of the patients having recently been sent back to their regiments after ten days’ leave.
When
hard
fighting
comes
—— Only about two dozen soldiers, including three Belgians in civvy suits, remained.

He made friends with this trio first. They were from the flooded Yser district. One, with crutches, had a very sad face, and a shattered leg in plaster cast. The other two were stronger looking. The second was thickset, with blue eyes and reddish hair; the third, a corporal, was smaller, but well set up, with pale face rather like that of Georges Carpentier, the European heavyweight champion boxer.