How Dear Is Life (25 page)

“Oh, those Russians!” exclaimed Mrs. Neville. “The number of people who have friends who have seen the snow on their boots!”

Before Phillip could have his say, that it had been officially denied, his grandfather, chuckling, went on, “Two hundred thousand Russians! They certainly were white but not with snow, he-he-he! As ye know, Hetty, I talk sometimes on the Hill with a fellow on the staff of
The
Morning
Post,
and he tells me that one of the large wholesalers in Leadenhall Market—he-he-he!—received a telegram ‘Two hundred thousand Russians arrived from Archangel’, and they were—he-he-he!—eggs!”

Mrs. Neville laughed as heartily as Thomas Turney: Hetty hovered between amusement and concern for Richard, for whom the explanation was a disappointment. He had believed in the arrival of two army corps of Russians. He went to the gramophone, took off the record, put it in its cardboard case, and closed the lid softly. As he did so Phillip got up and left the room. Richard said, with an air of conspiratorial intimacy,

“I think if you will all excuse me, I will go
and see if the boy wants to ask me anything before he leaves.”

He found Phillip sitting by the pot-board in the kitchen, changing his shoes. It was some effort for Richard to say,

“Well, old chap, look after yourself out there, won’t you. And don’t forget to write to your mother sometimes. If there is anything I can do for you at any time, do not hesitate to ask me.”

“No, Father. Thank you very much.”

“I’ll keep an eye on Timmy Rat for you, of course.”

“Oh, thanks.”

With light, almost bantering voice, Richard went on, “Do you remember the large black spider, with the pale yellow spots on
its back, which used to live in the corner up there, all one summer?”

“Yes, Father. I found one like it once, in a crack of the garden fence.”

“I don’t suppose you remember the spider we saved from a watery grave in the bathroom, when we paid our first visit to this house, do you? Let me see, it must have been”—he made a pretence of calculation—“March, eighteen ninety-seven—you were nearly two years of age.”

“I remember, Father. You put the spider on the window sill.”

“So I did. Fancy you remembering that!”

“I thought it was very kind of you.”

Richard felt the words like a blow. He said, when Phillip stood up, “By jove, are you going to wear the ‘campaign clumpers’ after all? Won’t they be too heavy?”

“Yes, on second thoughts I think they will be, Father.”

Almost feverishly he plucked at the laces.

“No great hurry, my boy. You have ten minutes: then you ought to be toddling along. By the way, it might be as well not to mention the fact that you had a German grandmother. Some of your cousins, I expect, are now fighting on the other side.”

“I noticed that you had painted over the letter-spaces of the name on the gate.”

“Well, it is just as well to take no risks in these times, Phillip. I hear, between you and me, that many German shops in the East End have been smashed by the mobs. In one case, an attempt at arson was made. So you see, old chap, the less we say about it, the better for all concerned. Here’s Mother—I expect she will want to have a word in private with you, so I will leave you with her.”

Mother and son went into the front room. He closed the door, to whisper words which revealed to her the doubt and longing that obsessed her little boy—O, he was still that, she could see.

“Mum, do you think I ought to go in and say goodbye to the Rolls? Would Mr. Rolls be cross, do you think? Oh no, I daren’t! What would they think if I did? Anyway, they may be going to church. But, Mum, when you write, you will tell me any news about them, won’t you?”

“Yes, dear. I am sure that both Mr. and Mrs. Rolls regard you as a brave boy.”

There were footfalls outside. Now it was time to leave.

Richard decided that, as he would probably not be asked to accompany his son to the station, he would first find an excuse for remaining behind. “Well, I’ll say goodbye now, old chap.”

“Here y’are, Phillip m’boy,” said Gran’pa. “I’ve had to give up smokin’ ’em. I gave one each to Bertie and Gerry, who came home yesterday. It’s a good cigar—a Corona. Would ye care for one, Dick?”

“No thanks, Mr. Turney, I’ve chucked smoking.”

Phillip went into the scullery, where his white rat was awaiting him, whiskers twitching, pink eyes bright. Timmy sneezed: he had a chill. Phillip scratched his ears, the rat closed his eyes, warm in his owner’s hands. Then, “Goodbye, Timmy,” whispered Phillip, and putting him back in his box, closed the door.

As in a dream, it seemed, he was walking up the gully, Desmond beside him, with Mother and the girls. It seemed only a moment since he had come down there, the day before.

Under the elms, by the Refreshment Shelter, he said, “Please, Mother, I think I would rather go on, with Desmond only. Please don’t mind. Only if you all come to London Bridge, there will be a lot of chaps, and besides, I—oh, I can’t explain. You go back now, with Petal and Mavis and Doris.”

“Yes, dear, of course, naturally. Just as you like. We’ll go back to Father, he is all alone. Don’t forget to write, will you?”

“Of course not.”

He kissed her, said goodbye to Petal and his sisters, and went on with Desmond, feeling less cumbered.

“I want to join up in the London Electrical Engineers, Phil, but Mother says I’m too young.”

“You look much more than sixteen, Des. But surely you’ll have to stay at school?”

“My guardian may give permission. He’s my uncle.”

“Oh, yes.”

“My father’s separated from Mother, you see.”

Phillip wondered why Desmond spoke in so low a voice, as though there were some secret in his life.

“The London Electrical Engineers operate searchlights, and I am keen on physics. Our science master is now an officer with them. The Zeppelins used to fly over our school at night, you know, spying out the land, before the war. We used to hear the engines up among the stars.”

“I would much rather work a searchlight than footslogging!”

Desmond went with him to London Bridge Station. As they waited on the platform, Phillip said, “How is Eugene?”

“He’s very well. He’s with his father. We did start once, to come and see you at Crowborough, but his bike kept getting punctures, so we turned back. It’s quite a journey, you know, eighty miles both ways. And to be frank, I didn’t want to run the risk of seeing the Churches again.”

“No, they’re not much cop. I nearly had a fight with the younger one. Well, Des, I can’t tell you how glad I am you are my great friend.”

“Phil,” said Desmond, looking at him steadily, “I shall miss you very much.” He had gone pale. There were many faces under the dark and dirty glass roof—all soot, sulphur, and grime. The faces were part of it all—and the sorrow of living. The last Phillip saw of his old life was his great friend’s oval face and waving hand among a fluttering of many waving hands and set faces along the gloomy platform.

He settled into his corner, and lit the cigar as the train rattled over the points on its way to Croydon; but before the train stopped at that junction, the Corona was lying on the permanent way, more or less in line with instalments of his tea. It was the inoculation, he decided, as he wiped his mouth and faced the future with shut eyes.

I
T WAS
a fine day in the third week of September when the London Highlanders, made up to strength by a draft from the Second Battalion, marched away from Ashdown Forest behind the pipers playing the
Marseillaise
. This tune, or its approximation limited to the minor scale of the bagpipes with their fixed buzzing bass note, immediately confirmed the rumour that they were off to France.

As a fact, the Colonel did not know the destination of his battalion, beyond Southampton. Sealed orders were to be given him after the transport had steamed beyond land: but to be on the safe side, the grey-haired, regular soldier, seconded from the Coldstream, had ordered the Pipe-Major to teach his pipers the
French national anthem. As time had been short, the pipers were practising the difficult tune on the way to the station.

As they approached the town, after an interval of silence, the pipes played
The
Road
to
the
Isles
,
the regimental march, and at once an air of braced alertness moved down the swinging length of a thousand-odd men.

From the scouts wheeling bicycles, then the Pipe-Major and his pipers, then the Commanding Officer and his Adjutant on grey chargers, the Regimental Sergeant-Major just behind on foot—first-class warrant officer, also of the Coldstream, dressed like a commissioned officer except that his tunic was buttoned to the neck instead of being open for khaki collar and tie—all the way down the column to the second-in-command at the rear, the Iron Colonel with his gigantic brown moustaches and brooding military impressiveness, the battalion was braced in more senses than one. Indeed, before they moved off from the old bare-trodden lines of Bleak Hill—the leading fours of ‘B’ Company overheard the Adjutant saying with a laugh to Captain Forbes, “I don’t know how you feel, Fiery my boy, but I feel like a Christmas tree!”

The Company Commanders, breeched and spurred, rode horses; the subalterns marched at the head of their sections. But astride or on foot, all officers were encumbered for war with various articles of equipment suspended or attached about their leather belts and braces. There was the rucksack humped on the Iron Colonel’s back, his long sword in leather scabbard hanging from the frog attached to his belt on his left side, under the stuffed haversack; water-bottle, revolver in holster and cartridge wallet, on his right. Thus sword in one hand, pistol in other, map-case and field-glasses dangling, he saw himself going into action, to rehabilitate himself in his own eyes for the funk, sheer blue funk, at Modder River! This time it would be a case of do or die! The Iron Colonel had a sovereign sewn under each crown and stars of each cuff, in case he were taken prisoner, as in South Africa.

As for rank and file, they were even more loaded by webbing belt and straps. They carried at the slope the newly issued Mark I rifle; one hundred rounds of ammunition, in clips of five within the pouches pressing on their ribs. Entrenching tools hung over the base of each spine, upon the left thigh lay haversack, bayonet, and entrenching-tool handle, a water-bottle on the right. The
new valise held greatcoat and mess-tin, with spare shoes, socks, and shirt—said to be fifty-six pounds weight in all.

On the station platform Phillip noticed a new kind of officer, near several staff-officers in red-banded hats and tabs. He had a brassard on his right arm, a white band with the letters R T O in black. Eight men to a third-class carriage, was the order.

On the platform Colonel Findhorn stood chatting to the Brigade Commander. Beside them was the graceful figure of the General who had inspected them the day before they had struck camp. Everyone knew his name, Sir Ian Hamilton, hero of the Boer War; and immensely great to Phillip since the General had stopped by him as he passed down the ranks; he said only a few words, but in those moments Phillip had felt his whole self to be alive. The General, who had a smiling face of unusual amiability, said, “This man has a look of Robbie Burns about him, Colonel.” Then to Phillip, “Do you know whom I mean?”

“Yes sir, and James Hogg, the Ettrick shepherd lad, too.”

“The poets will be wanted after this war,” said the General to the Colonel; and the kind eyes passed on down the ranks.

Standing with others, at the open window, Phillip watched the General who did not look heavy-bodied like other old officers, and had a manner like that of Mr. Rolls. Eagerly he regarded the handshakes, the slight bows with heels together, the salutes, the smiles among the great ones. Then the Earl of Findhorn stepped back, gave the General a full salute, and got into his carriage, followed by the Iron Colonel and the Adjutant. The anxious-faced Railway Transport Officer blew his whistle; the civilian guard waved his green flag; the engine screeched; Sir Ian Hamilton and his staff stood to attention while Sir Ian saluted. A roar of cheering, in which Phillip joined, broke out along the length of the train as it moved away from the platform.

*

Equipment off and stuffed on racks, they examined their new rifles. Baldwin told him that they had a flat trajectory for six hundred yards, superior to the old long rifle’s four hundred. The order was that no man was to charge his magazine until ordered to do so. They had rattled and clicked away with bolt and trigger while in extended order in the heather of Ashdown Forest, but always with imaginary ammunition. There was no
firing
range
.

Two of the Leytonstone tent were in the carriage, Collins and Martin. Collins suggested a game of nap. Phillip had learned this game, and the more interesting solo whist, in the tent. Before learning, he had considered the men seen in trains, newspaper over knees, flipping out cards, to be rather low sort of people. Now, with a paper over his knees and those of Martin, Collins, and thin little Kirk, who wore pince-nez spectacles, he gambled happily with ha’pennies and pennies. The others read, talked, or looked out of the window.

One of them, Tommy Atkins, was writing a very long letter. Tommy Atkins was his real name, not one nicked on to him. Tommy Atkins was exactly what the mythical British soldier was supposed to be, always cheery. Like Phillip, though in a different way, he had never quite mixed in with the others. Tommy was apple-cheeked and alert, with a small black moustache. He was ever ready to help others in any way he could with good advice, as well as practice. He had a tendency to preach the good life, and neither drank alcohol, smoked tobacco, nor used swear-words.

Tommy Atkins was something of a joke in the company; a nice joke, owing to his cheerful unselfishness, a sincere rather than an amiable nature. He had unusual habits; he washed all over every evening before putting on a white night-shirt to sleep in; then lying down in his place, feet to pole, he read the Bible; and knelt up, eyes shut and hands folded before him, to say his prayers. When at first he had been ragged good-naturedly, he replied, always with energetic cheerfulness, that he was a member of a Christian civilisation. Phillip had greatly enjoyed the cross-talk between Tommy Atkins and Lance-corporal Mortimore.

“So you think this is a Christian civilisation, do you, Thomas my son?” Morty would enquire, with his disarming smile.

“Certainly it is, Corporal! It is built on rock, not on sand.”

“London, the centre of it, is built on clay. How do you account for that, Tommy?”

“Part of it is built on chalk, Corporal; but I speak metaphorically.”

“Have a drop of this wine, Tommy. It came from limestone, which is allied to chalk, and sunshine—Beaujolais, very special, Tommy. It will liven you up.”

“I am already quickened by the Spirit, Corporal.”

“You sly dog, been at the whiskey, have you? Well, never mix malt and grape, they say.”

Imperturbably Tommy Atkins opened his Bible. No one ragged him then.

Cards flipped on the newspaper; coppers clinked.

“Do you believe in gambling, Tommy?” asked Collins, looking up.

“I do not, Collins, but carry on with your game, if it seems right to you. But look out of the window, man, the Downs are in sight!”

A grey-green extended hump lay above the heat mist.

“I’ll go the bundle,” said Collins, closing his cards.

“We must be going along the coast to Southampton, behind Brighton and Worthing and Chichester! Hurray!” cried Elliott, hanging between the racks by his hands. Phillip did the same;
Collins took the opportunity to give him a hard slap on his backside.

“That’s for bloody well sucking up to the General.”

“But he asked me a question, and I answered it!”

“Arse crawler!” said Collins, contemptuously. “Come on, it’s your deal.”

“That remark injures yourself,” said Tommy Atkins.

“I don’t think I want to play any more, thanks all the same,” said Phillip.

The train ran on steadily, passing over many points behind towns which Tommy Atkins obligingly named from time to time, after scrutiny of the map in the glass case above his seat. So they came to Southampton, as he had prophesied, in the late afternoon, entering above marsh grazing where red and black cattle stood tail-swishing at trodden places in the dykes, and ragged ranks of thistles yielded shining floss to the heated airs above.

*

The railway lines were shining, too; and floating thistle-seeds were sucked into the carriage past the gazing eyes of one who was feeling that the world he had hitherto known, which had been leaving him in some unrealisable way since the far-off excitements of August Bank Holiday, was now at last come to its end.

Remotely, as with the moon’s pale shade in the September sky, his mother’s face looked upon his mind. He fingered the crucifix under his shirt, and felt the reassurance that, unknown to him, he had lost since
childhood; when his father had taken from his cot and forbidden further use of the silken scrap of his mother’s
old petticoat which had served, with his sucked thumb, as substitute for lost warmth and safety. Tears, sobbings of aloneness in dark fear had followed; but the father had been firm in this duty. The sooner the donkey boy learned manly ways, the sooner he would cease to whine, to cry at the least reprimand; the donkey boy was then two years old.

The troop train drew into the port. He stared at a row of brick back-to-back houses, where in tattered-looking gardens small tattered-looking children waved from porch and cinder path. Each garden, he noticed, had its faded wooden rabbit hutches and wired-in hens. Leaning sunflowers hung their brown heads askew in little shabby garden after garden. Each head hung as though weary of its weight of seed, its green and twisted neck tired of following the sun so many times around the sky, only to die when its race was run.

When
its
race
was
run
—it was a sad and yet beautiful thought, first heard from Uncle Hugh, and recurring to him in secret since his earliest memory of faces and moments passing—Minnie his German nurse; Mona Monk the little maid who had wheeled him in the mail-cart on the Hill until her father had gone to prison; the early days at Beau Brickhill when Great-uncle Toby Thacker was still alive; the woods in Whitefoot Lane; cycling with Desmond to the Fish Ponds on Reynard’s Common; the catkins and red-speck flowers among the tracery of the hazel coverts of Shooting Common about the time the chiff-chaff flew across the sea from Africa; and the nightingales filling the new green wood with their dark purple notes above the acres and acres of bluebells, to announce the fullness of sap and egg. Well, he had had a lovely life, and now perhaps his race was run. He stifled the anguish of his thoughts by staring fixedly through the window; relieved that now it was time to put on his equipment, within the carriage slowing in sudden dimness, as it moved under a long covered shed.

*

They piled arms in the centre of the platform. They were told to sit down, but not to fall out except to go to the lavatory on the dock at the end of the shed. At once he used this excuse to look around.

He pretended not to see the upright iron shelter, painted green, on the dock, for an excuse to walk beyond. It certainly was an unfamiliar lavatory, like a long green barrel which showed a
man’s feet below and the top of his head above. He walked past it, looking at some silent Lascar sailors, various objects on the quay, including big wooden crates marked with the government broad-arrows. There was an enormous rectangular pile of rolls of galvanised barbed-wire. Beyond the grey stack stood something that he had seen before only in photographs; a howitzer with its short thick barrel pointing into the air; and the sight was startling.

Its shield was gashed and holed. Part of the barrel was pitted deeply, little ragged craters amidst gougings and jagged cuts. If steel could be so torn by shell-fire, as though spattered upon it, how much more so would the flesh and the body of a man! Hitherto his vision of death upon the battlefield had been of men falling, shot through the heart, the cheer ceasing on their lips; somehow the body was borne off, covered with Tricolour or Union Jack, to be buried with reverence, while bugles sounded in the sunset of the hush of battle; the noble soul at rest, understood at last by all in death.

The sun was going down over funnels, masts, and cranes. Chains were rattling, dirty men with greasy faces walking up planks with small wooden boxes on their shoulders. He hurried back to Baldwin, and tried to feel that this was the Great Adventure.

They waited on the platform, whiling away time writing letters, smoking, wondering. The haversack ration of cheese and bread had been eaten in the train. They had only their iron rations—a blue tin of bully beef each, and six hard thick biscuits, in a little linen bag. The iron ration must not be eaten until the order was given.

Phillip had some apples and chocolate, and Baldwin had a nut cake, so they shared.

Dusk descended. At last a stir, an order, rattle of piling-rings
and knock of butts, shuffle of leather on wood; and up a gangway.

The transport was a rusty iron steamer, with a Lascar crew. Gleaming dark eyes under black ringlets passed noiselessly above bare feet. One murmured in a thin voice, “The la-dies from hell”, with a grin of very white teeth. Baldwin said, “That’s what the Germans call the Jocks.” Ladies from hell! He saw himself running in huge elastic-sided boots, bayonet outheld as in practice through the heather of Bleak Hill, his face contorted as in the pictures of soldiers in the Boer War, yet grinning like
Grannie in
Little
Red
Riding
Hood
.
He felt cold and hollow. If ever in a charge, he would keep a bullet in his rifle, to save himself when a German came to bayonet him, at the last minute. The water below slopped oily between ship and dock. Then in the darkness the quiet pulse on the iron deck became a trembling. Water swirled below, glittering in the lilac light of the arc-lamps spluttering on the quay. They were leaving England!