How Dear Is Life (20 page)

Later, when a committee was proposed to look after the district east of Aldgate, and Sylvia was asked to sit on it, Dora received a slight shock to see that the letter came from a Lady Tofield. She must be, she thought, the wife of the son of the man who had bought all the farms but one of her father’s property in Rookhurst. The Tofields were brewers, and wealthy people. Now that war had come, at least farmers would have a good market for their produce, after the long years of Free Trade, which had brought riches to the new industrial classes, but impoverishment to the countryside where there was no wealthy man to act the squire.

What a pity it was that the family property had had to be sold! Phillip and William should now be at the university, afterwards to set-to and farm the land in partnership; instead, both had become two very young urbanised pawns in what was basically a European Industrialists’ War, for markets, Germany being the latest competitor.

And having restored the balance of her mind according to her ideas, Dora went to look after her babies in the clinic.

*

The War Office announced that separation allowances were to be paid to the wives of men called up or enlisted: one shilling and one penny a day for the wives and an additional two pence a day for boys under fourteen and girls under sixteen. The soldiers might allot to their families, further, up to half their pay, which was a shilling a day. There were inevitably long delays in these payments; while rent of up to six shillings and sixpence a week must be met.

Lady Tofield’s Committee had not yet been formed, let alone done anything. So Dora sold more of her depressed Consols, and went out among her few remaining friends, begging.

On Sunday afternoon she visited Hetty, who gave her five pounds.

“It is out of the little nest-egg Mamma left me, so it is quite all right to give it to you. But you won’t mention it to Dickie, will you, Dora? You see, he thinks I have no idea of the value of money. Perhaps that is so; but I am sure Mamma would be glad to know that the poor little children will be fed because of it.” Hetty was thinking of Phillip, when he had been born, wasting away because she could not find the right food for him.

She went next door to see Mr. Turney, who wrote her out a cheque for ten pounds, asking her not to make it known.

“I don’t want to be besieged by beggars, he-he-he!” Then seeing Dora’s face at this unguarded remark, “Things will come right, Dora, don’t you worry over-much. The Government has an immense amount of work on its hands, and it takes time to organise under entirely unforeseen conditions, y’know. This war will make a lot of changes—it has already put my three grandsons into kilts, Scotsmen all, he-he-he! War, like roguery, makes strange bedfellows. Stay to supper, won’t ye? Marian has got some macaroni-cheese baking in the oven, with sliced tomatoes on top: ’twill do you good, I say. Bolton is coming, have ye met him? His boy’s another Scotsman for the duration! Bolton saw them all marching through the Green Park the other afternoon, and a fine sight they were, too, he tells me, pipes skirling and kilts swinging. I’ve just been reading again that passage in Henry the Fifth, before Agincourt. Wonderful stuff, wonderful! The Prince of Wales, now, I wonder what part he will play in the war? M’friend on the Hill, who is reporter
to
The
Morning
Post
, tells me the Army is in France, but the Prince wasn’t allowed to go with his regiment, the Grenadier Guards.”

The old man fell into a reverie. When he looked up he said, “Why, bless my soul, surely you were here, Dora, when I read the prologue before Agincourt, the night that Sidney Cakebread and m’boy Hughie were leaving for South Africa? Of course you were, I recollect now. Newman was here, wasn’t he, yes; and Sarah——”

He took out his red silk handkerchief and wiped his eyes.

Dora thanked him again for his gift, saying it would bring such
happiness to so many; and leaving the room, went into the kitchen to say goodbye to “my dear, dearer, dearest adopted Aunt Marian,” whom she hugged, being hugged in return.

Mr. Turney called her into the front room as she was about to leave.

“This bread question will ease up, you know, when the United States grain shipments reach our ports. The
Telegraph
said some days ago that it was a record wheat crop this year. Competition will bring down prices, and I shouldn’t be surprised if the Government puts on some sort of control, as it has already for bacon, margarine, and sugar.”

“And a jolly good thing, too, Mr. Turney! The Canadian exporters declared their solidarity with the Mother Country almost as soon as war was declared, but that did not prevent them from substantially putting up their prices, well knowing that they had nothing to fear in competition with the Central European grain harvest!”

“Ah ha, I know what you are thinking, Dora! But reflect a moment that it was Free Trade that kept the prices down, in the normal course of buying in the cheapest market, before hostilities upset the balance!”

“The Shop Assistants’ Union has complained, Mr. Turney, that many of their members have been put on half-pay ‘on account of the war’, yet it is noticeable that the shops have also raised their prices.”

“Supply and demand, Dora, supply and demand! As I said just now, everything is abnormal. No one knows from one minute to the next what is going to happen. Things will settle down. The cry is already, ‘Business as usual.’ I see Kitchener has appealed for another hundred thousand men; their going will further add to the dislocation. People think it is going to be a short war, but I am beginning to doubt it. Both the Germans and ourselves are very strong. As for Russia, I don’t have all the faith in Russia that the papers seem to have. Her industrial strength is not very much, and it will be industrial strength that will tell in the end, you mark my words. Steel!”

Theodora smiled wanly as she thought of bayonets. “Let us hope that all people will come to their senses, Mr. Turney, very soon.”

“I wish I could think so, too, Dora, but facts rule this world, you know, my girl, not theories. Are you sure you won’t stay
and take some macaroni pie? The Germans will be buying up all they can, I expect, from Italy. Won’t you change your mind?”

She thanked him once more for his kindness and generosity, and went next door. Unfortunately she allowed herself to be drawn into an argument with Dickie, a foolish thing on her part, as it upset Hetty. Together they went to London to see Phillip.

*

The next evening Richard remarked to his wife,

“Dora had better look out for herself, now that this second Defence of the Realm Bill has become law. It declares here that anyone found to be spreading ‘reports likely to cause disaffection or alarm among any of His Majesty’s forces, or among the civil population’—as the act declares—can be arrested and tried in the ordinary course of the law.”

“Oh, I am sure Dora would never do anything like that, Dickie.”

“Well, I am not so sure.”

A few minutes later he found more in
The
Daily
Trident
with which to justify himself. “Listen to this, Hetty! It is from an article by Lady Frances Balfour. I think it disposes of Dora’s exaggerated claims for her ‘deserving poor’!”

Hetty was saved from reply by a double
rat-tat
on the front door. She hurried up the stairs; but Doris from the front room got there first.

“A postcard from Phillip, Dickie! Would you like to read it?”

“You read it out, old girl. After all, he’s your best boy.”

Richard laughed. “He’s developed a pawky sense of humour, since wearing the kilt, hasn’t he?” He picked up his paper once more. “Funny that he should mention the Women’s Rifle Club—one has been formed, you know, by the Amazons. Pity Dora doesn’t join, too. I wonder why he suggests a pull-through for my rifle—I am not likely to lose it, now Master Phillip is no longer here.”

“I expect Phillip meant it kindly, dear.”

“Of course I know that! Do you think I am a fool? There is no need for you to defend him to me, anyway.”

“Of course not, dear, naturally. Well, I think I’ll go and see Papa for awhile, Dickie, he does so look forward to his game of bezique. I’ll be back in time for a game of chess.”

She took the postcard with her out of the room. He had wanted to read it himself, to look at the post-mark, at his son’s handwriting; but it was addressed to the boy’s mother, and not to him; and she had a perfect right to keep it to herself.

Hetty came back into the room. “How silly of me,” she said. “I was taking Phillip’s card with me. Perhaps you would like to see it, dear.” She put it beside him on the tablecloth, while he continued to read his paper.

“Thanks,” he said, as she was going out of the door. “Oh, before I forget it, what about those campaign clumps of his? He seems most anxious about them.”

“I got them this morning, and posted them off, Dickie, straight away.”

“What were they like?”

“The soles seemed to be nearly two inches thick, Dickie.”

“Good heavens, I thought he was now a Scotsman, not a Dutchman!”

He waited until she was gone before he took up the postcard, an expectant light in his eyes.

P
HILLIP’S
faith in heavy-nailed campaign clumps was gone by the time the
battalion reached the granite-setts of London Bridge at half-past six on the summer morning. The sun was already hot
in the eastern sky above the Tower Bridge. There were few people about to cheer the skirl of pipes and tramp of feet; but enough to make him proud of being a London Highlander, to forget his disappointment in the shoes. But by the time the battalion had marched over similar jarring setts along tramlined Kennington, crossed Clapham Common, and reached through Wandsworth the brigade rendezvous by the windmill on Wimbledon Common, the skin of his feet was broken and raw in a dozen places. Fortunately they piled arms, and could lie on the grass.

Reveille had been at 5 a.m., with coffee and biscuits. They remained on the Common for three hours, then Captain Forbes led them away to an empty school for the night. It was now 6 p.m., and they had had no food since the early-morning biscuits. After dismissal, a wash, and patching of heels with the black plaster called ‘New Skin’, Phillip and Baldwin went with others to look for a restaurant. Sam Isaacs’ was thronged; but they managed, after waiting an hour, to get two seats, for coffee with fish-and-chips.

If the first day had been trying, the march next morning absorbed all memory of its fatigue. It began with great spirit in the bright air of morning, as the outer suburbs of London were left behind. The Highlanders were the rear-guard battalion; they swung along to the beat of drums with thin high tuneless fifes, followed by massed bugles, and, proudest of all, the skirl of the pipes playing
The
Road
to
the
Isles
. Songs arose; cheering; laughter, as the sun climbed up.

Then, as the dust arose with the heat, fife, bugle, drum, and pipe were silent; songs were no more; the landscape passed in jagged monotony with the trudging tramp of shoes sweat-dull in the dust of the white lanes, stirred and restirred by the rhythmic tramp of feet: grit, sweat, aches, blisters, glare, and thirst. As the sun brazed the zenith, the permanently undernourished of the other battalions of the brigade recruited from poorer districts upon the old marshes of the Thames, in twos and threes, in half-dozens, wet-haired, thin and white of face, open-mouthed with exhaustion, began to stagger into gaspless shade beside the road. Phillip, desperately shifting equipment weights—rifle slung, rifle sloped, rifle slung again—hands clutching shoulder webbing to lift weight of pack forward—to take the ache from collar bones, body running with wet, feet burning, throat parched—Phillip
yet noticed their thinness, whiteness of faces, and why were so many covered with pimples, and often greenish boils? Were the eruptions on their faces due to sun-stroke? Had the great heat driven the poison from their bodies, with the perspiration which poured from them? Hundreds were lying in the shade on the grass, absolutely done in.

Phillip, together with every marching man in the brigade, carried fifty-six pounds; rifle, ammunition, water-bottle, haversack, entrenching tool, bayonet, rolled greatcoat strapped on back with mess-tin in khaki cover on top. Every step forward in the torrid heat of the glaring day he felt must be the last. He saw himself flinging himself upon the grass in the shade, there to lie for ever and ever. He thought of snow, of ice—never again would he complain of being cold. He blinked to loosen the grit upon his eyeballs, he clenched his teeth to keep on, tunic yellow-thick with dusted sweat, feet burning, flames of pain—and the next ten minutes’ halt at the end of every hour was a thought beyond a thousand thoughts of broken glass, with which his shoes were filled.

Under dust and glass and flame were the songs of the morning, when more and more men and a dog had gone to mow a meadow, or in a tavern in the town, where his true love sat him down; now the ribald chant, composed by Collins and Kerry, the beery comics of ‘B’ Company, which periodically had been roared along the length of the battalion before the August sun had climbed to splash down its molten brass, was a horrible scissoring inside the head, words mixed up with an unbearable multiplication of hose and spats scissoring and swooshing short-shadowed in the dust, dust, dust. 

Aa-aa-ah
!
Was ever pint of shandy-gaff so welcome? Another; then a third; and from the billiard room of the Red Lion he hobbled out beside Baldwin, each to buy a ha’penny picture postcard and ha’penny stamp; and having dashed off pencil messages to parents, they walked, curiously insubstantial, down the village street. A cobbler’s shop was open; and going inside, Phillip asked the old man if he had any second-hand shoes—“I want a pair well broken-in. No nails. I don’t mind how light they are.”

The cobbler had only a pair of elastic-sided boots, of his size. These fitted; and when spat straps were fastened, only a small section of black elastic was visible. The dust would soon hide that.

“They belonged to his rivirince, but he won’t need they again, I reckon.”

“How is that?”

“He be dead. I be asking two shillin’ for ’em.”

Having packed up his campaign clumps, he took them to the post-office, and labelling them O.H.M.S., addressed them to his father. “He’s a special constable. They may come in handy, especially as taxes are going up all round,” he told Baldwin.

Feeling much relieved in his new boots, which, he hoped, together with ‘New Skin’ would end the pains of marching, he went with his friend and, coming to a river, decided to bathe. No one was about; so getting out of uniform, they slipped into the water from under a decayed wooden platform beside an empty mill, and swam in the mill-pond. Gone were the desperate thoughts on the march; this silent swim starko was worth every step of it.

Lance-corporal Mortimore had fixed up a supper of ham and tomatoes with the landlord of the Red Lion, which rounded off the day. As for sleep under the billiard table, what more could one want, after the hearthstone in the classroom of the school? For with wood under him, and with the pneumatic rubber-cloth pillow which Aunt Dora had sent him under his head, sleep, beautiful sleep was only ended by the morning sun pouring into the room.

For the next day’s march the Highlanders were to be the leading battalion in the brigade. Lance-corporal Mortimore, who had shared with two of his especial friends a bottle of champagne at supper the previous night, advised them to rub soap inside their socks, to prevent blisters. Phillip did this in the lavatory, not wanting his boots to be seen. His heels were black with ‘New
Skin’, and with the extra soap on his toes, he hoped to last out the march. Looking in the mirror, he thought that he would have to shave soon; it was nearly a week since he had done so, and small black hairs here and there on his chin were distinctly visible. He intended to let his moustache grow, but it was very slow. The sunshine might hasten it.

At the end of a torrid march, again wringing-wet with sweat, the battalion reached East Horsley, and passed under a tall brick arch and through grassy fields to the long hovel or cart-shed where “B” Company was to sleep the night. Beyond was a grey mansion with towers. For the first time since mobilisation the battalion cook-house was set up, manned by volunteers who were excused marching, and rode on the waggons, to conserve their energy. Phillip and Baldwin were detailed to draw the half-section’s dinner. They bore back two big black iron trays in which several porterhouse steaks had been fried over a roaring fire of beech boughs, which had made the cooks’ faces extremely red.

“My God!” said Lance-corporal Mortimore, gazing at the contents of the trays. “Burnt offerings, if ever there were any.” He stabbed a steak with his bayonet. It was dry and frizzled, lying in gravy like flaked tar. “I prefer a bloody sacrifice, where a steak is concerned. Well, thank God we’ve got our health and strength! ‘I owe it all to Phospherine’.” Opening his clasp knife, he hacked off dried strips. “Help yourselves, boys. I’ll be in the Duke of Wellington, if anyone asks for me.”

After chewing and swallowing, Phillip and Baldwin went to look for a shop, to round off the meal with biscuits and chocolate. There was a foot inspection at four o’clock; until then they were free. Having bought some licorice bootlaces, bull’s-eyes, and nut-chocolate, they went exploring, and found under some trees a pond where fellows were bathing, the Wallace brothers among them. The pond was shallow, black mud on the bottom, but it was cool and refreshing.

“Good heavens,” said Mr. Ogilby, at the foot inspection. “What is that stuff on your heels?”

“‘New Skin’, sir.”

“H’m. Do your shoes fit?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Let me see them, will you?”

Phillip uncovered the elastic-sided boots.

Mr. Ogilby prodded one with his walking stick.

“My shoes were a bad fit, sir, I bought these yesterday, all I could get, sir.”

“I see,” said Mr. Ogilby, quietly. “Let this man see the medical orderly, sergeant, and get those heels looked at. Aren’t you the man who had those enormous soles on his shoes on the first day’s march?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you march yesterday, or ride on one of the G.S. waggons?”

“I marched, sir.”

Mr. Ogilby nodded, as once more he turned over the late vicar’s elastic-sided boots.

“Not exactly regulation, are they. Still, until your feet are healed, you had better continue wearing them. But the medical orderly should see your feet.”

Phillip did not dare to ask where the battalion was going, so that his second-best pair of shoes, which he posted home on receiving the heavy pair, could be returned to him.

He chose for his bed that night an old faded blue cart, under the hovel or cart-shed. He laid hay in it, and awaited the last of the sunset. On the side of the blue cart was painted in white
Lionel,
Earl
of
Lovelace
.
He was the owner of Horsley Towers, where the officers had been invited to dinner that night, lucky dogs.

The chaps began to come back from the Wellington, among them Collins and Kerry, the half-section comics, leaning on one another, and singing. Kerry was small and perky, with pince-nez glasses and a furze-bush moustache; Collins was big and heavy, with a rather bloated, clean-shaven face. His lips were thick, and the lower one hung down.

Phillip forgot himself in romantic musings as the sun disappeared, then he took off his tunic, and put his feet through the sleeves for warmth. Having wrapped himself in his greatcoat, he settled down back to back with Baldwin. The last of the sunset diminished in the west; tawny owls were calling among the trees—and night had come to end the second day’s adventure. Despite his hot and aching feet, where the iodine had bitten, he fell asleep at once.

   *

Onwards again through another radiant morning; but whither? He had written to Mother to stand by to post his old shoes to an address he would send her. Did Lance-corporal Mortimore know where they were going?

“They never tell you a damned thing in the Army,” said Morty. “They’ve got us body and soul now.” He laughed, with his usual good humour.

Again they marched to the massed copper gleam of bugles, the colourless high wind of the fifes, to the skirl of
The
Road
to
the
Isles
. This march took them, after the third ten-minute halt, when collar-bones once more were aching and shirts and tunics dewy with sweat, past a row of cottages before which stood women with smiling faces and little girls wearing ribbons in their hair, holding out baskets of apples and pears. There were feminine cheers and cries, waving of hands. Thereafter endurance in great heat, as the sun passed the top of its harvest arc; the ten-minute halts flat on back, eyes closed, neck on hard pillow of rolled greatcoat.

They arrived that afternoon, lips rough with fine dust, at Reigate, to be billeted in an empty hall; and after a meal of skilly, they were marched to open-air baths in fatigue dress. Water again glorified all. Tea tasted of skilly grease, and it was not hard to guess that it had been brewed in the remains of the skilly, since washing-up of dixies was on a par with cooking. Afterwards Phillip took Baldwin looking for old bird-nests in the hedges, while telling him of past days in Knollyswood Park and the Squire’s woods along Shooting Common. In return, Baldwin told him of rugger matches at Twickenham, the Rectory Field at Blackheath, and other famous places, with the Harlequins.

During the next day’s march, as they approached a bend in the road, unexpectedly they were called to attention. A whisper went down the column,
The
King!

“‘B’ Company! Eyes right!” Fiery Forbes cried fiercely.

Phillip saw a group of four blue-uniform’d figures, their tunics buttoned to the neck, red-gold tabs on each side of the stiff collars, red-banded blue hats with thick gold braid on the peaks. They wore riding boots with spurs, and stood on a raised grassy bank above the road. The central front figure, dark-bearded, wearing gold spurs, held an arm at the salute. Phillip held the muscles of neck, eyes, and shoulders rigid before the majestic figure.

“‘B’ Company! Eyes front!”

Undulating rifles, glengarries, khaki-covered mess-tins above rolled greatcoats jumped into view again, with swinging kilts and dusty spatted shoes moving in unison in a haze of grit.

“‘B’ Company! March at ease!”

They passed three black Daimler cars, one with the Royal Standard on its bonnet, drawn up on the other side of the road.